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Nicole Krauss and my inner 13-year-old

2012-03-07T07:43:00.020-08:00

Tuesday afternoon, Nicole Krauss due any moment for a Q&A, I was excited and a little nervous. A birthday this week, I had just confessed to Nancy that despite my 51 years, I still feel like the anxious 13-year-old girl I was in 1974. Nicole Krauss. Yikes. Bestselling novels. Young, hip, East Coast Jewish writer. Famous hubby. Rumor had it that she deflects all questions about her personal life, and I wondered if all I would see was Krauss's lovely forehead as she angled her gaze toward the floor to look down at me. Thankfully, as is almost always the case, my inner 13-year-old was wrong. Fantasies of Midwest inferiority notwithstanding, Nicole Krauss was polite and well-spoken.

At the Q&A Krauss spoke about becoming a novelist, saying that by the age of 15 she knew she wanted to become a published writer. "The need to write is a need for freedom," she said. The literary form that first captured her attention was poetry, and she studied with Joseph Brodsky. By the time she turned 25, though, she realized the compact and compressed form of poetry demanded perfection, and diminished her personal space. She felt trapped. She discovered what she was meant to do even as she wrote the first few pages of what would become her first novel, "Man Walks Into a Room." Joking that she is now a failed poet, she explained that within the space of a novel she finds infinite freedom, a way to recreate herself. "Novel writing," said Krauss, "fits the way I think." An ill-defined form, she said, the novel is by nature imperfect. "I've learned to enjoy relaxing into a novel's imperfections. Novels illuminate new aspects of life, she said, and within their pages there is always a conversation between the fictional world and real life.

Krauss told us a bit about her writing process. She begins a novel by using a series of dots -- characters, images or moods that compel her -- that serve as jumping off points. "My work as a writer is to find the coherence. I'm interested in seeing how the parts are juxtaposed," she said. She creates a set of characters, the underlying requirement is that for each she must feel a profound empathy. The quality of this empathy, though, has a different quality in each of her books. "Leo and Alma, from "The History of Love" wear their hearts on their sleeves," said Krauss. On the other hand, the cruel Israeli father from "Great House" had Krauss wondering what the quality of that empathy was. She came to see that, as with many of her characters, he needed to unburden himself.

Krauss said her writing is a process of enormous trial and error, a throwing of herself into the unknown and coming up against parts of herself she didn't know she had. In describing her three novels, she noted that "Man Walks Into a Room" is a linear work, whereas "The History of Love" is polyphonic. "History of Love," she said, is about the power of imagination, about the power we have to reinvent ourselves. "Great Desk" is made up of stories that touch at points, that allow readers to see parts echo within the whole. Referring to "Great House," Krauss described the desk as related to the idea of the burden of inheritance. A huge and bulky hand-me-down, the desk was incredibly flexible as a metaphor, and served as the connective tissue between the stories.

Interestingly, Krauss said she embarks on each new novel without a game plan, without an endpoint. As she works on a novel, the concerns within it need to grow, and as this sense of urgency builds, her characters' paths reveal themselves. Ultimately, for both Krauss and her readers, each novel is a discovery until the very end.

Krauss's masters degree is not in creative writing, but in art history. I asked her how her studies of the visual arts impacted her writing, and she noted that she sees her novels visually. When someone asked to what extent she keeps the reader in mind as she writes, Krauss replied that, in general, she doesn't think a lot about the reader until revision begins.

Writing pal Maria Cook asked Krauss why her writing lens focuses on how characters deal with trauma's after-effects, rather than how they survive the trauma itself. Krauss responded that writing about the traumatic situations theselves simply doesn't provoke her imagination. "What fascinates me is what trauma asks of the survivors, how they are called upon to radically recreate themselves."

Sitting across from Krauss at dinner that night, my inner 13-year-old reappeared. How many people get to say they had dinner with Nicole Krauss? Still, I hoped for a chance to see the author a little less guarded. It was clear Kraus was still on duty, though. She agreeably chatted about literature, but wasn't eager to engage on a personal level. She shared with us her fondness for translations and works by European and Israeli authors. I asked Krauss if she thought of herself as a Jewish writer, and she resisted the label, saying she would like to be able to write about anything that spurs her imagination.

Charming at her evening reading, she apologized to anyone in the audience who might have come to see Nicola Kraus, author of "The Nanny Diaries." She read from "Great House," and answered a few questions. It was while answering one of these questions that Krauss returned to the theme that lies at the foundation of her work: empathy, which she said was, for a writer, one of the most important things. "Literature is one of the few opportunities to stand in another's shoes, to transcend boundaries and experience another's life.

"We'll always need literature as long as empathy matters to us."

Happy Accidents, by Jane Lynch

2012-03-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

For me, it's all about the connection. I thrive on it. I want to get to know others -- and not in a small talky way. Also, I'm a supreme busybody. I want to know everything about everybody, and not only do I not mind reciprocating, I want to. My dear friend and fellow MFAer Nancy Hill became enamored with the work of poet Simon Armitage and, two weeks back when Armitage crossed the pond to spend a few days with us at Butler, Nancy's open and generous nature shined bright. Connection? Between Hill and Armitage I felt as if I'd won the lottery.
First, Nancy kindly invited me to join her and Simon for lunch after she picked him up at the airport. After his evening reading, Nancy invited me to join her, her genial husband, John, and Armitage for a few pints. Not only did that provide me an opportunity to get to know the poet Armitage, but a bit about the man behind the poet.
This semester I'm lucky to be in Andy Levy's (the director of Butler's MFA program), Visiting Writers class. Andy's a treasure trove of literary wisdom, and he recently presented us with this gem: Novels teach us how to read them, and that as this occurs, we learn a different way to see the world. The best writing of any type serves to connect us to the world through a lens different than the one through which we normally view. When memoirs accomplish this it's magical.
I had hoped "Happy Accidents" would do all this: connect me with an intriguing actress, and give me a glimpse of an experience unlike my own. Indeed, Lynch's celeb-oir is satisfying as a fun, entertaining romp. Ultimately, though, it's the equivalent of superficial small talk. It's a light read -- in its own way refreshing, yet non-nourishing, like an ice cold glass of Kool Aid on a ninety degree day.
Lynch takes the reader through her angsty childhood, one in which she couldn't shake a sense of otherness. And although it was a nice surprise to find that she doesn't fall into the easy trap of parent blaming, she doesn't show us what it was like to feel so 'other,' of why she felt this way. Lynch's path to becoming a well-known actress has been unique. She didn't hit her stride and find fame until later in life, and she had me with this part of her story.
To her credit, Lynch doesn't hold back about her personal life. Or does she? She writes about her years of therapy, years of not being able to get along with others, and a seemingly asexual life. She writes that she finally was able to admit what those around her knew long ago, that she is a lesbian. And yet she doesn't pull us close and show us the emotion that comes with this self-isolating behavior, or how her coming out impacted her life.
Like Glee, the show that presented Lynch with the character of Sue Sylvester, that ushered in her breakout fame, Happy Accidents is heartfelt and sentimental, yet at its foundation is constructed of superficial platitudes.

Simon Armitage

2012-02-23T09:58:00.006-08:00

The Butler writing community didn't know what to expect when they arranged to fly British poet Simon Armitage across the pond. His book, "Seeing Stars," features whimsical, surreal poems. We wondered about the man who penned this work. A stereotypical stand-offish Brit? A dry, funny, Monty Python wit?

We were surprised in the best way. Memories of certain authors' visits stay with us. Jonathan Lethem and John Green, with their open-hearted generous spirit, with their desire to engage and share literary wisdom, left deep marks. And so it was with Armitage's quiet energy, his eagerness to participate and engage.

Not as well known in the U.S., Simon Armitage, awarded the title Commander of the British Empire, is a writer of poetry, novels, translations and nonfiction, and has also written for radio, television and film. What's the path a young Brit takes to becoming a CBE awarded poet? By the time he entered his teens, Armitage was enthralled with poetry. One year his teacher posted the six best poems from Armitage's class. Armitage's wasn't one of them. He chuckled as he told us that he might be pursuing a career of revenge.

Following his father's footsteps, Armitage's first job was as a probation officer, in Britain a position more closely aligned with social worker. There's a link between the social values of probation officers and the social values of poetry, he said, in that in both professions you're social irritants, not fully signed up to society's expectations. When he started writing poetry, still working as a probation officer, others asked him if he'd still have material from which to draw upon if he quit his job. Armitage wondered if the world of a probation officer, with its drama of, for instance, babies with burn wounds, is actually the real world. His days in social welfare behind him, he has now achieved his independence -- freedom of thought and expression -- through the quiet world of poetry.

At his Tuesday night reading Armitage read his poems with soft-spoken humor. He was funny, gracious and quick to respond to questions with dry wit. He began by explaining that for U.K. poets, 'place' is emphasized, is the taproot and wellspring of their work. The poems in "Seeing Stars," he said, have been described by some reviewers as prose poems, but he doesn't agree with this classification. Others have said the works are flash fiction, and Armitage quipped that he wasn't sure what that designation means. They have also been called "Not Poems." Because, he said, if one writes poems it's almost impossible not to write one, he gave this label a hearty Yes!

Armitage prefaced each piece by relaying a personal story that formed the seed for the poem. Despite his quiet nature, Armitage was a natural performer. His reading, deadpan and peppered with singular inflections and wry pauses, entranced. He told us that his interest lies with poetry that has a living voice within it, a relationship with the language, rather than poetry that sounds like writing or thinking.

Although Armitage has penned novels, he said that the longer term energy commitment a novel requires no longer suits him, and he much prefers the short bursts of energy involved in composing a poem. He loves the idea that poetry is portable, and can have poignancy, life and energy in different settings. In writing poetry Armitage said he is trying to communicate an idea

"Poems come to me as daydreams. My mind floats from one idea to the next, and a bit of language comes along."

Karen Maezen Miller. Zen Priest. Memoirist

2012-02-15T20:19:00.001-08:00

I was due to join the Butler grad student dinner last night with Zen Priest Karen Maezen Miller, and I didn't know what to expect. A silent, beaming figure? Beatific smile? Otherworldly? Maezen Miller wasn't exactly that. Not that she didn't radiate a certain type of energy, but she was a lively dinner companion. She asked each of us about our lives. She had opinions about topics of discussion and she shared them. In short, she was engaging, definitely of this earth.

I was psyched to meet Miller. Her first book, "Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood," was, for me, that magical book that found its way to me at the very time I needed it most. In "Momma Zen" Maezen Miller tells how she uses Zen to navigate the "crooked path of motherhood." Maezen Miller said that while "Momma Zen" is the story of a daughter becoming a mother, her new memoir, "Hand Wash Cold," is the story of a woman becoming a wife.

After dinner we gathered at the Efroymson Center for Creative Writing (my graduate writing program's lovely new home). Maezen Miller spoke about the path she took to becoming a writer. A petite woman with close-cropped gray hair, she slipped off her shoes and moved around the floor, gesticulating to emphasize points. "Everything I read and write is right in front of me," she said. To illustrate this she read a quote from an article she found in her Efroymson Center bedroom. The quote, from Andy Levy, director of the grad program, was about how the Efroymson Center will give our program a home and enable it to grow. Maezen Miller remarked that her writing helps her to make a home in her own life, and enables her to grow.

Growing up, teachers praised her writing, giving her confidence in her creative ability. She loved words and language. This affection for the written word led to her successful career in marketing. Ultimately, though, her work as a ghost writer and in writing speeches for others left her unfulfilled. After her mother died she realized she wanted her words to be her own, to serve something other than the corporate world.

"Don't write what doesn't need to be written," she said.

Maezen Miller uses writing as a process to examine and become intimate with her life, pointing out that there's a difference between one's life and the story of one's life. When she finds herself sick of one of her life's stories, she seeks the underlying truth, tries to unwind it, and look at it with fresh eyes, without filters and judgment.

In response to a question from the audience, she said she never hates writing. "Hate comes from fear," she said. "There are times I may not be ready to write, or may be confused. It may be hard for me to have faith during these times, but if I can roll with that, without ever passing through hate, I end up in love with writing again."

The funniest part of the evening was when Maezen Miller addressed discipline and practice, as they pertain to writing and Zen. "Put your ass on a chair," she said as she slapped her rump and pointed to the chair behind her, illustrating the point. "Every practice needs structure."

A self-professed late-comer to both Zen and motherhood, Maezen Miller told us she came to Zen when "everything fell apart." "Liberation comes when the walls collapse," she said.

She closed her talk by reading new work that happened to tap into my interest in the Hasidic roots of my family's lineage. She commented that just as it's the older generations' job to take root, the newer generations' job is to uproot.

Definitely something on which to meditate.

Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell

2012-02-12T19:38:00.001-08:00

You may wonder how many times can I possibly evoke Mr. Slinger, the hep teacher from the children's book "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse," whose catch-phrase is "Wow, because that's about all I can say. Wow." Yet, here it is again, because that's about all I can say. Wow.

I could tell you that Swamplandia! is set in a rundown theme park in Florida. I could tell you about the delicious, compelling and brimming-with-quirk children of parents who run the park. I could tell you about how, like in every Disney movie, the mother dies and that this sets in motion the kids' quest. I could tell you that Swamplandia! is so story-rich it almost feels like two separate stories.

But I won't.

Instead, I'll just say this: GO OUT AND BUY THIS BOOK! And this: Russell's writing is swoon-worthy. In previous posts I've shared with you the dirty little secret of my less-than-fully-developed fiction gene. Yet, Russell's inventive turns of phrase, her sparkling similes, her vivid descriptions...Oh, for God's sake, just read it! Thank me later.

Poet Anne Waldman

2012-02-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

As the song goes, "Don't know much about poetry." It's not just me, is it? I hear "poetry" and I narrow my eyes and tighten my lips. I expect to be perplexed, to struggle to understand.

Waldman was one of the key figures in the Beat movement, and co-founded with Allen Ginsberg the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Despite my San Francisco upbringing, despite that my high school was a block away from the corner of Haight and Ashbury, I expected Waldman's reading to leave me dazed and confused.

I missed last night's reading, but was able to attend a reading/performance Waldman gave for a small group of Butler students this morning. Donned in a gold and scarlet fringed paisley scarf and skinny black slacks, Waldman brought her musician son, Ambrose Bye, to accompany her readings. She began with "Why Am I Daring To Show My Face," a piece Bye accompanied with keyboard and a recording of a repeating vocal taken from the poem. Say what you will about poetry, Waldman's not boring. She doesn't simply read. She sings. She chants. She clips and staccatoes some words while drawing out others. That Waldman's sensibility was born in the social revolution of the '60s gave her reading a strange duality, as if existing both in the present and back in the psychedelic flower power days. This sense of time-travel echoed in Waldman's appearance, her face now lined, but her hair still long, stick-straight and jet black.

(Speaking of art that feels out of time, check out Uh-Oh Plutonium, a strange punk-glam music video featuring a 1982 Anne Waldman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHX-PU9SN8A )

Her next poem, Doubt, a state of mind that's one of my more reliable companions, especially resonated.

Waldman read from her book, Manatee/Humanity. Over Bye's background track of synthesized aquatic sounds, Waldman explored her environmental concerns. She read, gestured and swayed, as if the words' energy pulsed through her body. In the Q&A that followed the performance Waldman explained that the manatee, a huge yet fragile beast, is the central deity of the piece, and the idea came from her encounter with a manatee at a theme park. Other elements woven through the piece are Buddhist tenets, and the loss several of her close friends.

Waldman also performed a poem she penned that was included in a literary magazine's Beatles tribute. Her poem riffs on the song "Tomorrow Never Knows." She noted that John Lennon wanted the song to sound as if it had been recorded from a mountaintop, so the Bye's soundtrack included the call of sea gulls.

In the Q&A I had the chance to ask Waldman to describe the starting point of her path to becoming a poet. It's an intriguing question, don't you think? What does a poet's childhood look like? Waldman answered that her artistic parents led her naturally to a creative path, that art was such an integral part of her upbringing, it became her identity. In essence, she had no other choice.

Still don't know much about poetry, but I'm now a Waldman fan.

Last Night at the Lobster, by Stuart O'Nan

2012-01-29T12:18:00.001-08:00

Okay, here's the back-story. My son's friend's mom is in charge of a yearly charity luncheon where Big Name Authors come to speak. The mom knows I'm studying creative writing, so she shares the top secret authors' names with me before they're made public. And, because I'm the worst liar in the world, it's not worth it for me to even try to hide the embarrassing fact that I never recognize any of the names! Yup. That's me: Literary fraud. This year she trotted out Stuart O'Nan's name and, once again, I had to confess ignorance. My next move, naturally, was to find out who the hell O'Nan is. I scoured his titles and, naturally, looked for his shortest book! And that's the story of how I made 160-page "Last Night at the Lobster's" acquaintance.

O'Nan's title certainly had me quizzically tilting my head. Couldn't imagine what this novel could be about. Turns out LNATL has a simple premise. It's a lean, tight portrait of Manny Deleon, the manager of a Connecticut Red Lobster on its last day before closing for good. Not an edge-of-your-seat novel, not a plotty book, but an eerily dead-on character study. And man, oh man can O'Nan write! In this way books are like life: when you come across something truthful, you just know it. You automatically connect. So even though, at first glance, LNATL seems to be about the closing of a chain restaurant, in fact it's book about life and loss.

What can I say? A former O'Nan ignoramus, I'm now a staunch O'Nan fan. LNATL gets two claws. (Sorry, too cheesy to resist.)

The Memory Palace, by Mira Bartok

2012-01-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

Thought I was on a roll, had finally posted a few reviews at weekly intervals. So what happened?

Spring semester. Last semester I didn't have class responsibilities, I only audited. I feel like a classroom virgin again. Despite my struggles to get back in the rhythms of my fab creative writing program, it's great to be 'back in the saddle.'

The Memory Palace had glowing reviews and I anticipated a fine read. The premise is delicious and has all the necessary components of compelling memoir. As an adult, Mira Bartok is injured in a serious car accident. She can't think straight, suffers from cognitive deficits. While she struggles with a loss in brain function, she reconnects to her long-estranged, ailing mother, Norma. Both Mira and her sister cut off contact with Norma years before, going so far as to change their names, to protect themselves from Norma's abusive, paranoid and violent behavior. Their mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

I don't envy Bartok's job as a writer because telling the true story of growing up in a crazy world is excruciatingly tough. When you grow up in an environment where everything and everyone around you is crazy your ability to form and process memories becomes impaired. From this, I know. So maybe that's why The Memory Palace had a disjointed, ephemeral feel. I read this a few months ago, and my own memory falters here, but what I remember is this: I was a frustrated reader. The narrative fragmented, slipped in and out of time. I tried to hang on, to stay engaged, but fought to keep my interest from slipping. Bartok's prose kept me at arm's distance. What I wanted: to feel more of a connection to the author, to hold onto the thread of her story in a more linear fashion.

Next up, something completely different -- Stuart O'Nan's "Last Night at the Lobster."

Your Voice in My Head, by Emma Forrest

2012-01-06T18:58:00.000-08:00

When asked for parenting advice, Lori Palatnick, the leader of the group which sponsored the trip I took to Israel this past summer, said this: What children -- and adults -- want, more than love, is to be understood. For someone to "get" them.

My friend, Nancy, wrote a story about how she struggled with anxiety while on a walking tour abroad. At the story's sweet end Nancy finds inner calm by connecting with another traveler. Both Lori's advice and Nancy's story illustrate the allure of memoir: by attending to our innate need to forge relationships with others, we find meaning, and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Read "Your Voice in My Head." Emma Forrest's own voice is funny, sarcastic and staggeringly honest as she writes about her rocky path. Depressed, bulimic, lonely and self-mutilating, she finally finds an understanding, sympathetic and trustworthy psychiatrist. One day, unable to reach him, she discovers he had died. Then, as she struggles to overcome the shock and pain of this loss, her serious boyfriend (Colin Farrell, for all you People Magazine and TMZ lovers), breaks up with her.

Forrest, so unmoored and mired in loss, takes the reader deep to the core, to that place of honest connection. It's a courageous book. A hopeful book. I didn't want Forrest's story to end, but when it did, I felt changed.

The Possibility of Everything, by Hope Edelman

2012-01-01T18:36:00.001-08:00

"The Possibility of Everything" was my beach read on our family's end-of-summer trip to the Outer Banks. Gawd, I wanted to love this book. Edelman's "Motherless Daughters" will always hold a place close to my heart. When I read that book I felt, for the first time, that someone understood about growing up in a one parent, motherless household. Unexpectedly, I felt liberated, as if I'd come out of the closet.
Edelman set the bar high.
TPOE, a momoir (mommy memoir), has a great and promising premise. Edelman is an anxious mother (yup, I'm still relating, Hope), who struggles with her three-year-old's behavioral issues and takes her to Belize to find alternative, native cures. To her credit, Edelman doesn't sugar coat. Nevertheless, there was something that didn't sit quite right in TPOE. Maya's (the daughter's) behaviors never came across as pathological, although it was clear Edelman viewed them as such. Also -- and I'm hesitant to write this, as I don't want to be perceived as judgy -- Edelman often came off looking like one of those mothers. You know the ones I'm talking about -- the ones in restaurants who blithely ignore their misbehaving tots until the chaos has gone on so long, and created such a ruckus, that any attempt to reign in the child is too little and too late. Unfortunately, Edelman appeared a bit bumbling and ineffective, while poor Maya tantrumed her way across Belize.
Edelman did a disservice to the pace by slowing the narrative, plugging in too many big chunks of the history and culture of Belize. Nevertheless, her story, despite being a little unsettling, still compelled.

A Stolen Life, by Jaycee Dugard

2011-12-21T10:55:00.000-08:00

Alicia Erian, author of the novel "Towelhead" and upcoming memoir, "The Dragon Lies Down", told me that some stories are too fascinating to be ruined by pedestrian writing. To illustrate her point she mentioned "Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison," by T.J. Parsell, "My Lobotomy," by Howard Dully, and "A Stolen Life," by Jaycee Dugard. I had never considered reading Dugard's story. Why? I imagined I'd feel slimey, like a voyeur.

When Erian told me Dugard's memoir riveted, I decided to shelve my misgivings and put "A Stolen Life" at the top of my to-read list.

Dugard does an admirable job. She tells her story evenhandedly, and avoids getting caught up in emotion. Given what she's gone through, that's a literary miracle in and of itself. In Dugard's case, not being a writer may be a plus; it's hard to imagine being able to read a story like this if the teller had gone at it with a heavy hand. The writing doesn't dazzle but just as Erian said, I didn't much care. And sometimes the lack of writing mojo worked to Dugard's benefit; that she was able to periodically break into platitudes, casting a little sunshine -- something that would diminish most other stories -- made her story even more compelling. As added value, for those of you who, like me, prefer audiobooks, Dugard narrates "A Stolen Life."

It occurs to me that I thought 'A Stolen Life" would leave me feeling sad and scared. When I think about Dugard and how she survived this nightmare, though, what I'm left with is hope.

One Hundred Names for Love, by Diane Ackerman

2011-12-12T18:51:00.000-08:00

Ackerman's "The Zookeeper's Wife" is a sparkling gem, the tale of a young Polish couple in the 1940s who manage a zoo and save Jews by hiding them in animal cages. When Diane Ackerman came out with the intriguingly titled "One Hundred Names for Love," I couldn't wait to crack the book's spine and again lose myself in her prose.

OHNFL recounts Ackerman's experience as caretaker after her husband suffers a major stroke. Sadly, although "The Zookeeper's Wife" rivets, this medical-recovery memoir disappointed, was riddled with cliches. Ackerman does a lot of "telling" here, presenting information and directing us toward a conclusion, instead of "showing" us and letting us form our own thoughts about the outcome.

Mike Dahlie, (esteemed teacher at Butler, and author of "A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living"), says that, contrary to popular notions about writing, it's not always wrong to eschew showing for telling. He wasn't, of course, referring to prose pocked with cliche. Here's a taste: "So our days together still include many frustrations, but once again revolve around much laughter and revelry with words." There's a lot of generalizations and broad, descriptive words packed into that sentence! I dug into OHNFL with high hopes, but it wasn't long before drowsiness overtook and, craving caffeine, I found myself rummaging through the kitchen junk drawer, searching for toothpicks with which to prop my eyelids open.

Blue Nights, by Joan Didion

2011-12-11T12:55:00.001-08:00

"I just finished 'This Beautiful Life.' What did you think of it?" asked Rebecca.

"Um..." I stalled.

"It's on your blog list thing, isn't it?" she asked.

Fair enough.

Let me explain. Fall brought a glorious parade of rockin' authors to the circle city. Anita Diamant, Myla Goldberg, Richard Rodriguez, John Green, Lee Martin -- oh my God, it was enough to make a girl swoon! Fascinated by the literary line-up, I may have lost my way -- temporarily. Titles on my "Waiting to be Reviewed" list have languished since summer. So when Rebecca asked what I thought of "This Beautiful Life" -- a novel I finished before autumn's first chill -- all I could conjure was a faded feeling of vague disappointment.

Memory-refreshing is the order of the day, and the "Waiting to be Reviewed" titles are back on hold at the library for that very purpose. While my beleaguered brain struggles to recover plots (how shocking is it that these storylines are so easily lost?), with "Blue Nights" I'll start anew. After all, if Didion can't cut in the "Waiting to be Reviewed" line, who can?

Didion's newest memoir, "Blue Nights," explores her feelings about growing old, and the tragic death of her only child, her daughter, Quintana Roo. This, on the heels of the sudden and unexpected death of Didion's husband, John Dunne, an event that spurred her previous memoir, "The Year of Magical Thinking."

Do I recommend "Blue Nights"? Absolutely. For God's sake, she's Didion -- sparkling prose, and an eye that doesn't for a moment shy away from brutal self-examination. Do I also have reservations? Well, yeah.

In "Blue Nights" Didion elegiacally examines her perceived motherly failings, her detachment. I couldn't help but find a parallel detachment in her memoir. Maybe anxiety's the issue -- something I know only too well. Anxiety tends to stain, darkening all other aspects of relationships. As an admittedly anxious mother writing about her relationship with an anxious child, Didion's worries are well explored, but her mother-daughter bonds -- not so much. I yearned to read about Didion's connection with Quintana, and hoped she would do so with the same unsparing prose she uses to chronicle the unease. Instead, Didion filled page after page with stories of celebrity friendships, and her literary jet set lifestyle. There's enough celeb name-dropping and discussion of designer labels to wean People Magazine and QVC from the most addicted fans.

In the end, though, I consider a book satisfying if it moves me. Leaves me feeling changed. And despite the annoying arm's-distancing Hollywood babble, "Blue Nights" succeeds.

Lee Martin and his memoir, "From Our House"

2011-11-28T15:11:00.001-08:00

Martin was the keynote speaker at The Writers' Center annual Gathering of Writers. TWC always pulls in big names -- previous speakers include Alice Friman and Elizabeth Stuckey-French -- and although I always enjoy listening to authors discuss writing, Martin's words resonated with me in a way others haven't.

Martin began by admitting that he never meant to write memoir. He thought of himself as a fiction writer, but life took him to unexpected places -- a new job at a university teaching CNF (creative nonfiction, my genre of choice). Stepping out from the "scrim of fiction" for the first time, he was prompted to pen the essay, "From Our House." Martin said that writing the essay awakened something in him, and led him to arrive at these conclusions: "This is me. I'm here to tell the truth. I'm no longer keeping secrets." Compelled to leave the "safety of fiction," he "opened the door and stepped back into memory."

In writing and teaching creative nonfiction, Martin also realized these things: All lives hold private truths; memoir writers speak when they have a reason to speak; memoirists write to understand themselves and others. He encouraged us to write from what we don't know, saying that by investigating and digging into layers of memories we allow our former selves to come into focus.

Martin quoted the memoirist Patricia Hampl, saying that memoir is never about the past, but the future.

Writing "From Our House" opened the floodgates for Martin, who continued to write about his life and saw the arc of a narrative. This exploration led to his memoir, which carries the title of the essay.

After the Gathering of Writers, one of the first things I did was shuffle Martin's "From Our House" in my lineup of books, placing it on top. Good decision. The memoir is gorgeously rendered, the story of Martin's life as the only child of older parents, and his struggles with his father. Lee Martin's father lost both his hands in a farming accident when Lee was a baby, and although Lee's father sometimes displayed heart-melting tenderness toward him, more often than not he terrorized his son with an out-of-control rage.

Martin responded generously when I asked him if writing his memoir changed him. "Shaping that experience into something that I hope is artful required me to have a simultaneous immersion in memory and an aesthetic distance from it. By the time I finished, I knew the experience more intimately, and with knowledge comes control. Instead of that experience controlling me -- I'd had my own anger issues for years as a result of my father's influence -- I now in some way controlled it simply because I'd faced it and shaped it. I look back on my younger years now with much more clarity because I had to see it wholly and completely in order to write about it."

Just as Martin's speech did, "From Our House" spoke to me and left me changed. At the finish, despite not being overly sentimental, I wiped away tears. "From Our House" is memoir (and for that matter, storytelling) at its best. Move it to the top of your "To-Read" list. You won't be sorry.

Anita Diamant talks about the body

2011-11-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

Reeling from my fun, cousin-filled Thanksgiving holiday, I'm also still processing this fall's authors' readings. In literary terms November brought to Indianapolis an embarrassment of riches. Anita Diamant came to Indianapolis and gave two talks (as did Myla Goldberg a few days before). The first was sponsored by the Jewish Community Center's Book Festival, where she talked about the body as a way to connect her works.

For those unfamiliar with Diamant -- can there be anyone out there who is? -- she is the author of four novels and many more nonfiction titles. Her bestselling "The Red Tent," a historical novel based on the Old Testament's Dina, is a mainstay of book clubs. And her Jewishly-related how-to books have served as Jewish life-preservers, assisting non-Orthodox Jews (the vast majority of the Jewish population), in navigating and renegotiating Jewish life with a modern day sensibility.

Diamant began by noting how the subject of the body is so multi-faceted. "As a journalist I have written about food, AIDS, and infertility treatments," she said. During the past ten years Diamant has spent her time "underwater," involved in the creation of a new type of mikvah in Boston. Mikvah, a pool of water in which Jews ritually immerse -- sans clothes -- is inextricably tied to 'body.' Diamant shared that she has a cellular empathy for telling the stories of women, and that although her four novels are very different, each focuses on the common threads of women's friendships, the female body and the concept of resilience.

According to Diamant, the female body was historically problematic. When she comes up against the problem of telling a story in which the feminine and the divine are not mutually exclusive, she turns to the body -- "an unbroken continuity of flesh and bones."

Her recent novel, "Day After Night," takes place at the close of the Holocaust. Diamant noted that Holocaust stories weren't freely told until the early sixties, that it wasn't until the time of the Eichmann trials that the floodgates opened for the telling. She strives to get into the emotional and psychological landscape of the time she writes about, but said that out of all her novels, "Day After Night" was the most difficult to write; living in a female body during the Holocaust held a particular kind of risk.

That evening Diamant took part in a program sponsored by Indianapolis's Spirit and Place Festival. Here she was part of a panel whose task was to have a conversation about the body. Sharing the stage with Diamant were Thomas Lynch (essayist and undertaker, whose work inspired the creation of HBO's series "Six Feet Under), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Thomas Lynch spoke about language: the words gravity, gravitas, gravid and grave are all on the same dictionary page, and Lynch pointed out that the body, just like language, plays tricks on us. Diamant spoke about childbirth being the crucible of womanhood, and that her experience of giving birth allowed her to write "The Red Tent."

Abdul-Jabbar remarked that athletes die twice -- the first death occurring when the body can no longer continue in professional sports. He disclosed that he was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008, and credited his otherwise good health to his long-standing yoga practice, that it provides his body with preventative maintenance.

Diamant, also a staunch believer in regular yoga practice, said that as a sixty-year-old, she is learning to accept the blessings of her body. Both Abdul-Jabbar and Diamant spoke out against plastic surgery, expressing the wish that society valued wisdom and experience over youth.

The panel spoke to a packed house, and the conversation was followed with opportunities to buy books penned by these three authors (Yes, Abdul-Jabbar is an author, too!), and have the books signed. I was anxious to shake Diamant's hand, as I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to interview her for The Jewish Post & Opinion. (Thanks, Jennie!) I was worried there would be a long line at Diamant's table, but the only line that formed was at Abdul-Jabbar's table. That night I drove home happy, my signed copy of "Day After Night" resting on the passenger seat.

I guess I shouldn't cast stones at the star-struck basketball fans. Next to Diamant's table was Lynch, who despite his own impressive oeuvre, I never thought to visit.

The link to my interview with Diamant: http://www.jewishpostopinion.com/Jewishpost/NAT_11-9-11F.pdf

Myla Goldberg

2011-11-17T16:48:00.001-08:00

Let me just say this: Myla Goldberg is unique. She's remarkable. In preparation for her visit, I had the good fortune to profile Goldberg for The Jewish Post & Opinion. We spoke on the phone, and she gave great interview -- was well-spoken and thoughtful. Despite her focused, articulate answers, she took a relaxed path from Point A to Point B, peppering her erudite explanations with almost whimsical twists. Goldberg clearly retained the wide-eyed curiosity and creativity that most of us lose as we passage into the adult world. As Myla answered my questions, this quality of uninhibited creativity shined. Goldberg made an appearance recently at the Jewish Community Center's book festival, and it was a delight to see how much more evident this Myla-ish-ness is in person.

Indy fans were treated to two Goldberg talks that night. The first was a discussion of "The False Friend," Goldberg's most recent novel. The second was a discussion of what it means to be a Jewish writer.

Today's post will focus on Goldberg's second talk. (See my blog post of July 17th, 2011, for a review of "The False Friend.") Goldberg admitted that she bristled when she first heard she was labeled a Jewish writer. She was uncomfortable thinking that this classification might turn off non-Jewish readers. Then she reflected that the memory that provided the seed for "The False Friend," a childhood incident of throwing a pair of scissors at her best friend, resurfaced on Yom Kippur. Also, she described her recent urge, as a mother to two young daughters, to reconnect to Judaism. In navigating modern day options in the Jewish world she found a home in Progressive, Humanistic Judaism. Her connection to this part of the Jewish community brought about a new openness to the idea of being a Jewish writer.

In considering her work and her Jewishness, Goldberg noted that the concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world) is threaded through each of her books. She gave the example of the character of Lydia in "Wickett's Remedy" who helps with the investigation of vaccines.

Goldberg concluded that she no longer bristles at the Jewish writer label; now she embraces it. She noted that Jewish literature is a broad category, and that the books labeled as such don't necessarily even concentrate on Jewish subject matter. Jewish literature must gaze through a lens that has been shaped through thousands of years of Jewish history, but as long as the prose is written from this perspective, the subject examined through that lens can look at anything.

Before leaving us for the evening, Goldberg answered her fans' question about the subject of her next novel. Kind of. Comparing the novel-writing process to gestation, she explained that she feels the need to protect her fetus-like subject matter. She left us with one word: ambition. It was a teaser, to be sure, but one made with Goldberg's characteristic openness and candor.

When authors give readings I look for this unguarded quality, a willingness to share of themselves. Hopefully Goldberg will find her way back to Indy again soon. If she does, grab a front row seat.

For more on Goldberg, here's the link to my profile: http://www.jewishpostopinion.com/Jewishpost/NAT_11-9-11F.pdf

Richard Price

2011-11-15T07:11:00.001-08:00

Why do Jews fixate on IDing other Jews? I saw Richard Price standing behind the lecturn, and here's the pressing question that came to mind, the question every Jew asks: Is he, or isn't he? It wasn't long before Price answered this essential question. I asked him to describe his path in becoming a writer, and he mentioned the legacy of his grandfather, who wrote Yiddish poetry. Richard Price: MOT (Member of the Tribe, for those who aren't.)

Price, who now lives in Harlem, filled us in on his background. He was the first in his family to attend college. He almost succumbed to family pressure to get a professional degree (M.D. or J.D.), but took creative writing courses instead, and despite feeling guilty about wanting to write, enrolled in an MFA in creative writing program.

Now that the vital mystery of Price's ethnicity was solved I could use my considerable brain power for literary purposes. What I learned at the Q&A/lunch with Price (by the way, thanks for the pizza, Butler), is that at 74, he has written several novels (set in gritty, urban landscapes that tell stories where drugs and race relations play a big part), and has screenplays and TV scripts to his credit. He has written for the HBO series "The Wire." He is known for his authentic use of dialogue.

I can learn something from anyone as long as there is an honest exchange, and Price didn't disappoint: He's a good guy -- engaging, entertaining and shockingly candid. He began by bemoaning the fact that whatever project he is working on quickly becomes a drag, and that he always wishes he could go back to whatever he was working on before -- even though he wasn't any happier working on that project.

Price spoke of writing for TV and movies. Despite the bigger audience and heftier paycheck that comes with working in TV and movies, he loses control of his work. Novel writing is where he maintains artistic control. Price noted that his novels are what's ultimately important, his prize.

About books and movies. Price said that great novels can be made into terrible movies, that the people involved with the adaptation tiptoe around the prose, giving the literature too much respect. The result can be that the movie is solemn. Doesn't do well. Conversely, B-novels can make great movies.

About dialogue -- Price's strong suit -- he said that there are moments in the TV series "The Wire," that are so authentic, people are convinced they are unscripted. That's not the case. Price also emphasized the importance of the visual: if there is a choice between giving a great actor fantastic lines, or simply allowing the actor's face to communicate, it is best to short-shrift the dialogue and let the visual "speak." In a related comment Price said it's a mistake to write a role with a specific actor in mind. His advice is to build the most interesting character and the right actor will come.

Speaking about his novels, Price claims he's not interested in "whodunit," but "why-dunit." He doesn't aim to write genre -- nothing as transparent as good versus bad -- but a layered, realistic portrayal of life where the good guys are always a little bad, and the bad always a little good. His most recent novel, "Lush Life," is an exploration of the Lower East Side, where many worlds encapsulate, but never meld; people only have eyes for those like themselves. One-hundred-years ago Price's great-grandparents were arrested for stealing fifty cents in order to make rent. Now gentrifying, Price found it ironic and amusing to see five-dollar dishes of gelato for sale there. Today, in the way things often come full-circle, his daughters spend time in the Lower East Side.

In researching "Lush Life" Price said the first thing he did was find a cop to shadow. Price said he "tried not to be a jerk," so he could meet as many people as possible while on patrol. Price said that the draw of "Lush Life" was that, in telling the story of a killing that occurred during a robbery, it brought many of the Lower East Side's worlds together.

Richard Price must have accumulated boatloads of great stories during his lifetime, in researching his novels, and in his work in Hollywood. If only we had more time together. Come back soon, Richard Price.

John Green

2011-11-07T19:17:00.001-08:00

Butler blows me away with its visiting writers series. Last week brought YA (Young Adult) author John Green. For those of you without resident tweens or teens, Green's most well-known titles are "Looking for Alaska" and "An Abundance of Katherines." I've never given much thought to YA books, but Green's talk was eye-opening.

According to Green there are two camps of YA literature. The first is typified by the Chris Crutcher-type book, one that aims to help kids feel less alone by giving them a group to identify with. The second camp focuses on the "I," emphasizing that every person (teen) is unique. These 'second camp' books are inherently empathetic. According to Green, books that fall into the first camp miss the point. Despite that we need stories about under-served populations, these 'first camp' books are not the be-all, end-all of reading.

The most notable thing about Green was the sincere affection and appreciation he expressed toward his readers. He gave the impression that his work isn't an entity separate from his fan base, but that the two are part of a whole. He originally built this fan base by engaging in a project of video blogs, or vlogs, with his brother. The project's premise -- which became wildly popular -- was that the only communication between the brothers would be through their published video blogs.

Green spoke about his authorly beginnings, entering ISBN codes into a computer for Booklist. Despite the scut-work nature of his job Green made a point to remain friendly and helpful. When Booklist needed someone to review books about Islam, they asked Green, as he had studied Islamic culture in college. After 9/11, the number of books about Islam mushroomed, and Green's career was headed in a more literary direction. When Booklist's reviewer George Cohen died, Green given Cohen's old "carnival gig," which included books about conjoined twins, and little people. It was around this time that Green also started reviewing YA literature. At first Green looked down at the genre, thinking it would consist of simplistic, moralistic titles like "Don't Bring Your Gun to School." But at closer look he saw a community of YA writers who were writing great stuff -- unpretentious, and not overwhelmed by irony. This was when Green caught the YA bug. He joked that he thought that by writing YA he could steer clear of the cut-throat, Pulitzer-seeking competition of the adult literary community; this didn't turn out to be the case, though.

In characterizing the YA genre, Green said that, in general, stories in this genre don't employ narrative distance -- the story happens in real time. He used "Catcher in the Rye" as an example of a story that does employ narrative distance -- within those pages there is a consciousness that a few years have passed between the telling of the story and when the story happened.

Green said these things about his work: his books often change plot dramatically while he writes; he needs lots of guidance, and has had one editor who has been invaluable. Green commented that he feels a duality in his writing: both confident (brilliant, the way F. Scott Fitzgerald felt) and despondent, as if he's the "worst writer ever." Expanding on this Green said that without confidence he can't write well, but without doubt he loses the sense that he's fallible.

We MFA students had the chance to chat with Green over lunch and then at the Q&A that followed. Throughout this two-hour chunk of time, the one comment that left the biggest impression was when Green spoke about why he writes. He reported that he struggles with depression and anxiety, and writing makes him feel less crazy. Writing does that, doesn't it? It helps us to make sense of the world, and helps us to understand ourselves. Green added that modern society is one of surfaces. We skim, surf the web, and employ a million distractions to escape from the ennui and boredom of life. For Green, writing makes this feeling go away. "It's contemplative. It feels like paying attention. I need to write to be engaged in the world," said Green.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends, by Rob Lowe

2011-10-29T06:29:00.001-07:00

Now and again I crave fluff. Literary fluff. In a literary sense, a steady diet of fiction and creative nonfiction provides nourishment the same way three-squares and green leafies do. Still, we all need a treat now and then. When one of those days hit, what I look for is the literary equivalent of a bowl of Cap'n Crunch.

Enter the celebrity memoir. Celebrity stories are a great way to yummify your reading. Who better to immerse you in drama, and distract you from the tedium of your life than a celeb? Has anyone in Hollywood not fallen from grace? These juicy stories drip with drugs, politics and sex. Not to mention the name-dropping. My list of 'Stars I Pine Over' has never included Rob Lowe -- that chiseled jaw is just too perfect -- but from the moment I saw "Stories I Only Tell My Friends" I was hooked. A Rob Lowe memoir -- what could be juicier? After all, if it's literary fluff you're looking for, you might as well go "all the way."

So, you ask, what did I think? I liked it! I really did! SIOTMF was a fun, rollicking read. Lowe doesn't disappoint, gives us everything we're looking for: insider notes on the Sheen family; encounters with royalty; the sex tape scandal. Lowe tells all. My only complaints were the name-dropping, which was so prevalent it became tad wearisome, and the way Lowe sometimes let himself off the hook too easily, rationalizing away his outrageous behavior.

Even while engaged in the story, though, I burned with curiosity What I really wanted to know was whether Lowe worked with a ghost writer. Celebrity memoirs are a dime a dozen, and not many credit a professional writer. C'mon. But Lowe claims he wrote this alone. And who knows -- it's obvious from reading SIOTMF that Lowe's no dummy; maybe he did pen it hemself.

In the end, "Stories I Only Tell My Friends" is the literary equivalent of a huge sugar high. So if you find yourself smack in the middle of a bad morning unable to tackle one more egg white omelet, pour yourself a bowl of literary Cap'n Crunch, and cozy up to a copy of SIOTMF. It's delicious.

http://www.dystel.com/2011/05/mfa-cookie-cutters-and-celebrity-pie/

Richard Rodriguez

2011-10-25T06:21:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'll admit it: I went to Monday night's Richard Rodriguez reading AMA (against medical advice). Since the Thursday before I had been roasting with fever, keeping my husband up at night with my barking seal cough, and I was done, DONE, HEAR ME?, with illness causing me to miss out on life. No matter that the doc, who sent me for a chest x-ray, had that very Monday afternoon slapped me with a diagnosis of pneumonia. I had already missed my Thursday hair appointment, Friday writing group and the entire weekend. I knew I couldn't go to dinner before the reading with Mr. Rodriguez and the Butler group -- who would want to sit next to me? Besides, I was afraid of infecting our visiting author. But the reading? My physician husband looked at me and shook his head. " Do whatever you want," he said. This really meant 'I know you're going to do what you want so I'm washing my hands of the entire matter.' My physician friend tsk-tsked, said oh, no. But, when pressed, she acquiesced and said that if I sat alone, suppressed my cough, and didn't touch anything, I could probably live without the gnawing guilt that comes with infecting a crowd of undergraduates with pneumonia.

So Monday night I slugged back an antibiotic, two Tylenol, half a dose of cough syrup and headed off. (I know this isn't SOP. I certainly don't recommend anyone else ever do this. Because I know how my body reacts to all these medication, though, I knew I could pull it off.) Purposefully waiting until the crowd was seated, I slid into Butler's Reilly room and sat on the floor, slumped against the back wall. No matter, I was there. Rodriguez didn't disappoint.

Richard Rodriguez is an intriguing man: an academic who, because he felt affirmative action gave him an unfair advantage, eschewed an academic career. A Hispanic who is outspoken about his belief that immigrants should learn their new country's language. A homosexual who doesn't want to be labeled gay. A nonfiction writer with three memoirs, who writes essays for some of the countries most prestigious publications.

Rodriguez focused on "Brown," his most recent memoir. Despite that he's now working on a book about the Abrahamic religions and their connection to the desert, he still has plenty of fire for "Brown," and its thesis, that increasingly, few of us can claim pure heritage, and that's a good thing. He began by telling us that he wants us to feel that "Brown" is about us, and not him. Then he raised his hands to his head, smoothed back his silver hair and demanded, "I want to know, what is brown? Once I decided to write about 'brown,' it was everywhere I looked."

Mr. Rodriguez spoke in measured, precise words. Following his thoughts was a little like watching a paint-by-numbers canvas fill in magically. Here are some on Rodriguez's thoughts about 'brown': Hispanic is not a racial category, but an ethnic one; Mexico came about as a result of the love story between Indians and Spaniards; some day our kids will all look mixed, like Keanu Reeves; Many people have blood that is so mixed they no longer know what to call themselves.

Rodriguez shared a story: He corresponded for a long time with a prisoner, incarcerated for bank robbery. The man described his road away from the law. He wrote that he had a brother, and their mother died when they were young. Their father despised them, and once held the head of one underwater while the other slashed at the father's neck with a kitchen knife, trying to free the other. The prisoner wrote that the reason he never became completely evil is that he was taken to Chinese restaurants and saw chopsticks. The chopsticks showed him there was another world, one that extended beyond the confines of the horrible one in which he was stuck.

One fascinating question posed by the audience: If all people are blending, won't we lose our specific, rich cultures? Rodriguez answered Yes. Maybe. But then he added that there is a biological notion that will keep reinventing separateness. And then he added a touching statement, saying that he wants to know that others are part of him.

I'm sure my husband, who I know had only my best interests at heart, thought I'd regret going out Monday night. But I don't. Four days later and, yes, I'm still sick, but I don't think Monday night's outing impacted the length of my illness one bit. Look, how many times am I going to get the chance to hear a speaker as unique, insightful and articulate as Richard Rodriguez? And it was better than being at the dinner, where I would have been trying to figure out how to politely suck up Pad Thai noodles without making slurping sounds. Not that I'm bitter.

Indy's author scene: Hass and McElmurray

2011-10-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

This season's Butler's Visiting Writers series began with a reading from poet and essayist, Robert Hass. It's not that Hass and I have nothing in common --both of us from the Bay Area, from childhoods spotlit by emotionally friable mothers. Still, I had a hard time connecting to his work. I'll be the first to admit it: I know nothing about poetry. Sure, Hass was genial, but I don't think anyone in the auditorium that night left invigorated.

Next on the docket was novelist and memoirist Karen McElmurray. McElmurray's memoir, "Surrendered Child," was haunting. Lyrical. 'Dark Memoir,' with a capital 'D.' McElmurray grew up with a punishing, mentally ill mother. When the mother leaves home McElmurray, finally free, rebels, gets pregnant and married at 16 -- in that order -- and then gives her baby up for adoption.

There were whispers. Some thought McElmurray should have employed a more traditional structure for her memoir. Me? I think stories can be many things, can be told many ways. They don't have to follow the standard 'start at point A, end at point B, add conflict along the way' recipe. (Thanks, Michael Martone.) Can't valid writing include mosaics, portraits, or even slices of life? Words strung together illuminate. The light may have different qualities, but the prose still shines.

You might write "potato" and I might write "potahto," They're both spuds. Maybe there's space in the literary potato bin for every type of writing. As long as it's done well.

Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova

2011-10-02T18:03:00.001-07:00

The brain is mysterious, endlessly fascinating. Oliver Sacks enthralled us with "Awakening" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." Lisa Genova first entered the neuroscientist-as-author arena in 2009 with "Still Alice," the story of a woman who succumbs to early onset Alzheimer's disease. With "Left Neglected," Genova tells the story of Sarah Nickerson, a high powered VP, wife of Bob, and mother of three young children.

As she did in "Still Alice," Genova picked a great story to tell. The neurological disorder, in this case Left Neglect, serves as the novel's foundation. Around this foundation Genova crafted a narrative that's compelling and relatable. Sarah's conflicts -- efforts to balance children and career, worries about keeping up with the Joneses -- although ratcheted up from the level many of us experience, are universal. So when Sarah looks away for a moment, crashes her car and ends up in the hospital with a brain injury, we're right there with her. She's forced out of the hamster wheel of every day life -- she couldn't move quickly if she tried. Her superwoman cape gone, Sarah has no choice but to accept help --from her mother, no less.

The lessons Sarah learns in her new life, which has been transformed and is ostensibly less-than, are ones we could all benefit from: Slow down. Appreciate small gifts. Live in the present. "Left Neglected" paints a picture of acceptance and gratitude. My wish for the New Year is that --without any tragedy involved -- we'll all hear these lessons.

Shana Tova, U'Metukah!

Bossypants, by Tina Fey

2011-09-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

Do yourself a favor. Get behind the wheel and pop in Fey's audiotape, "Bossypants," which she narrates herself. Whether recalling childhood memories of her father, the always formidable and sometimes frightening Don Fey, her climb up the ranks in the world of comedy, or her stumbles when trying to combine motherhood and career, her prose gleams. She's hysterical.

My favorites: new-mother-Fey's encounters with "lactation nazis," and the chaos surrounding her impersonation of Sarah Palin.

The disappointment: Fey deftly avoids stepping on the toes of her colleagues. Even as she relays the chaos surrounding the Palin affair, her word choice skirts the bottom line, her phrasing keeps us at a distance. Oh, Tina, I know there has to be dirt! Tell us! We want to know! Give us the real scoop on how Lorne Michaels screwed you. Tell us how Alec Baldwin bullied his way through scenes. Spill the beans on Palin's bumbleheadedness.

Still, a minor quibble amidst major hilarity.

My kids claim I don't think anything is funny. And they're not entirely off the mark. I'm not often moved to laughter. It's not that I never find amusement, I just prefer to think I'm discriminating. "Family Guy?" Not for me.

Take my advice. Go for a drive and turn on Fey's "Bossypants." I dare you not to laugh.

Found, by Jennifer Lauck

2011-08-22T19:21:00.001-07:00

Jennifer Lauck comes full circle in this latest -- and self-proclaimed last -- memoir offering. Lauck's first book, "Blackbird," rightfully included on many must-read memoir lists, tells how, through a cascade of tragic childhood events, she was left to raise herself. In "Blackbird" Lauck's prose beams as she unsentimentally recounts the gruesome illness that took her adoptive mother's life, and the out-of-nowhere heart attack that killed her adoptive father. All this, and she was only ten. Left in the care of an unstable, uncaring woman, she was ultimately abandoned at a commune, where she worked while attending school.

Lauck's subsequent memoirs tell of further struggles, and how, as an adult, her life was impacted by earlier events. Lauck was separated from her brother when her adoptive parents died. As a young adult her brother commits suicide, and Lauck, then an investigative reporter, delves into her brother's story, searching for answers to the riddle of his life. She struggles in her relationships, but ultimately marries, and has two children.

"Found" is made up of small slices-of-life chapters, and speaks to Lauck's journey to address her simmering unhappiness. In first part of the book she takes us back through her complicated history -- necessary for readers new to Lauck, and nicely wrought reminders for those of us already familiar. Lauck goes on to tells us of forays into Buddhism and a niggling urge to know her birth mother. To her credit, Lauck relays the birth mother reunion part of the story unflinchingly; it's not a running-across-a-grassy-meadow coming together; it's fraught.

"Finding yourself" stories are a risky proposition. They're inherently heartfelt, but because they shine a spotlight on emotion, they can be pedantic and self-involved. Commendably, Lauck's honesty is brazen. Occasionally her passion overshadows the plot, as she casts judgment on uncaring caretakers, and describes her beliefs about a baby's biological need for his/her birth mother -- her stance, basically anti-adoption, is extreme and is sure to ruffle feathers -- but these are understandable, if minor, infractions. Mary Karr, a beloved memoirist, is so dispassionate in her stories that, at times, I feel a disconnect, held back from knowing what she went through. Not so in "Found," a magnetic chronicle of Lauck's struggle to shed her past and find her way back to herself.

Check out Jennifer Lauck's blog, Prolifically Raw, a great resource for memoir writers.

Persian Food from the Non-Persian Bride, by Reyna Simnegar

2011-08-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

My ancestors' old country is Eastern-Europe -- Poland and Ukraine. Nevertheless, the synagogue I belong to is Sephardic, representing Jews from Spain, Portugal, Greece, Arabic and African countries. The ladies at my shul are no shrinking violets; they're a force to be reckoned with. I'm pretty sure that if they had been around to help during the first days of creation, G-d wouldn't have needed to rest that seventh day.

I ponder this now, getting ready for the shul's big fundraiser: The Annual Bake Sale. Trying to get the ladies a little publicity for their herculean baking efforts, I've written a few pieces advertising the sale. A researcher by nature, I ordered seven Sephardic cookbooks from the library -- just to get in the mood. Let me be clear, though. I'm not a cookbook afficionado. Following recipes is too much trouble and fuss. Despite my family's complaints I've stuck with a few tried and true dishes. Perusing cookbooks, I see pages of impractical, complicated recipes, chock full of ingredients my family, whose tastes run to the pedestrian, wouldn't touch. Still, once in a great while a cookbook reaches out and grabs, not my stomach, but my heart. "Persian Food" is one of those. Like "The Gefilte Variations," the only other cookbook I've reviewed, this one is a work of art -- heavy paper bordered with Indian-style designs, gorgeous photos of the recipes and nicely voiced stories. Simnegar, herself a Sephardic Jew from Venezuela who grew up loving shmaltzy, Ashkenazic cuisine, tells of moving with her Persian-Jewish husband to Irangeles. (Los Angeles is home to a large and prosperous community of Iranian Jews.) Persian Jews are proud of their culture, and Reyna found that cooking non-Persian food was no longer an option in her new household. Throughout the cookbook, with an honest and engaging voice, Simnegar sprinkles fun anecdotes and lots of great cooking tips. As a testament to her undying love for the Ashkenazi dishes she grew up with, she slips in a few classics, like Hamantashen, noting with irony, that all the events that led to our celebration of Purim, the holiday of Hamantashen eating, took place in Persia.

"Persian Food from the Non-Persian Bride" would be a great birthday gift for your favorite foodie, and a lovely addition to any Jewish household, whether Sephardic or Ashkenzi.

P.S. For those jonesing for a taste, the bake sale is Sunday, September 18th, from 11am-1pm at the Jewish Community Center's Laikin Auditorium. Bring your checkbook and get there early. Bourekas sell out fast.

Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese

2011-08-14T13:26:00.001-07:00

My husband doesn't care for travel, so early in the summer when he suggested we take a family vacation, he caught my attention.

"What?" I asked.

"I know, you're surprised to hear this from me," he answered. "It's just that Rachel will be going off to college in two years and I realize we may not have many more opportunities to travel together as a family. What about the Outer Banks?"

Although I have fond memories of each of our family trips, they've all been low budget affairs, with three young kids in tow. The thought of another labor intensive vacation exhausted me.

"What's the matter?" asked Charles. "Don't you want to go?"

The truth of the matter was that No, I didn't. I didn't want to spend a week in a rented beach condo shopping, cooking and cleaning. Marital negotiations ensued. Despite my misgivings, I acquiesced. Rental agreements were signed.

Turns out all my misgivings were unfounded. The kids, now teenagers, carried their own gear and picked up after themselves. Charles shopped and cooked. Now that we're back, and have shaken out the sand from our suitcases, all that's left are our memories of boogey boarding, nighttime games of Scattergories and luminous red beach sunsets.

Unfounded misgivings almost cost me precious vacation time with my family, and are also the reason I'm probably the last person around to read Abraham Verghese's "Cutting for Stone." All my reading friends insisted this novel is a must-read, but I couldn't. Not another African story, I thought. They're just so heart wrenching. Inevitably I'm left feeling so powerless. Months passed, with "Cutting for Stone" shuffling, time and time again, to the bottom of my reading pile.

Finally, last month, I held Verghese's book and, not having the heart to bury it one more time, cracked open the spine. It wasn't long before I a goner, my mouth set in an O shape that didn't release until the last page. The lyrical prose, engaging characters and complex, compelling narrative sucked me in. "Cutting for Stone" is an elegant, winding story of twin brothers, Shiva and Marion, born to a nun and the surgeon she has nursed back to health. Verghese, a physician, uses his medical knowledge to add verisimilitude and texture, without overwhelming the story with technical jargon. This is a big scope story, expertly set in time and place, so perfectly rendered that it's hard to find adjectives that do it justice. If you have misgivings, set them aside. You won't be sorry. Like a week at the beach with your family, Verghese's novel will stay with you a long time.

Dark Memoir: Darkroom, by Jill Christman

2011-08-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

Behind on reviews (and why the heck is this text coming out underlined?) so I'm pulling one out of hopper. I wrote this at the end of winter, when it seemed like the sun would never come out again. Right now it's overcast in Indy, which eases the 90-plus degree temps, and it's funny to remember my blue, winter self looking onto a parking lot from the front window of a Starbucks, writing this.

It has been raining for more days than I can count. Gray. Wet. I must admit I've been in a bit of a funk lately. Sometimes the 1970s motors forward, the past leaving the realm of memory and entering the realm of the present-day. For those of us who have "significant" pasts -- and really, who among is survived childhood unscathed -- there are triggers -- sights, sounds, smells -- that can take us back us back to a time where our emotional palettes were as gloomy as the Indianapolis sky.

Sometimes, well often really, I like to read the stories of others who have lived through horrific times. Why? Mostly, it's knowing I'm not alone. It's feeling a connection to others who understand. And it's fascinating so see what we humans do to one another, even when we treat each other abominably. It's heartening to take notice of what can be endured, and how we make it through.

Jill Christman, the author of Darkroom, is a local author, and I was lucky enough to take a memoir workshop with her last fall. Jill's memoir illustrates the "trash in, trash out" concept -- a shabbily labeled idea of mine, based on personal experience, that when your early life is characterized by basic needs unmet, neglect and abuse, you can pretty much count on fallout showing up in your adult life like an unwelcome house guest. As a child Christman suffered horrifying abuse, and the consequences surfaced in her teens and early adult years. What a beautiful, shocking, stunningly honest account of a life. If you're a lover of dark memoir, wait for a gray day and open Christman's memoir.

I Remember Nothing, by Nora Ephron

2011-07-30T17:12:00.001-07:00

Months ago I listened to an audiotape of "I Remember Nothing" and because my memory is, like Ephron's, shall we say, porous, I remember almost nothing about her newest offering.

Here's what I do remember: This collection of essays sparkles. Ephron, as always, is funny, self-effacing, erudite and opinionated. Whether bemoaning her sagging turkey-skin in "I Feel Bad About My Neck," her previous book of essays, or lamenting senior moments in this offering, she does so with humor, grace and flair.

If you're a nonfiction lover like me, you've noticed two things: bookstores don't devote a lot of shelf space to essay collections, and not many of the essayists published are women. So read (or listen to) "I Remember Nothing." If, like me, you're a woman of a certain age, you may not retain the particulars of Ephron's essays, but you'll never forget the enjoyment that comes with reading the work of a master of the form.

The False Friend, by Myla Goldberg, and The Family Man, by Elinor Lipman

2011-07-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

Readers, your summer reading list: Myla Goldberg's "The False Friend," and Elinor Lipman's "The Family Man."

Goldberg's newest offering is the story of Celia Durst's rediscovery. The False Friend explores the vagaries of memory, and the phenomenon of how, if events are recalled over and over, over a long period of time, they become fact -- whether or not they actually happened. Celia Durst, after twenty years, is finally ready to admit and explore what she now believes is the truth: that when, as a 10-year-old, she told the police she saw her friend disappear into a stranger's car, she was lying, and that her friend actually fell into a deep hole along a forest path. As Celia returns to her childhood home and tries to set the record straight, she discovers surprising and unsavory truths about her ten-year-old self. Beautiful, haunting language, intriguing, nuanced story. Another great Myla Goldberg offering.

My most recent literary mistake: because the "The Family Man's" author's name, Elinor Lipman, brought to mind an older woman, I figured the novel would be a snoozer. It doesn't escape me that I'm an older woman. Embarrassing and ironic. Lipman's book sat on my shelf for months, as I pushed it back down to the bottom of my to-read pile again and again.

Luckily, I opened it just in time to enjoy one of the most delicious summer reads ever. Lipman's work brings to mind the novels of another master storyteller: Jonathan Tropper. Like Tropper, Lipman paints quirky, deeply flawed families and then backs them into corners, which prompts them to do and say the funniest things. In "The Family Man," Attorney Henry Archer is a gay, ex-husband who, after 25-years, is reunited with the non-biological daughter of his brief marriage. And that's all I'm going to tell you, because the twists and turns of the plot, the authentic, smart dialogue and fast pacing all make this a great summer read.

Enjoy!

Summer's Book Fails

2011-07-17T10:53:00.001-07:00

Oh, Booklerner, I've missed you so. Truly. Even as I've unsuccessfully tried to ward off my annual case of chlorinated straw-hair, even as summer days melt into one big blur of heat shimmers off the tar, I've pined away, longing to get back to you, get bossy and opinionated, and tell unsuspecting readers what they should read.

Books: beware! Summer's heat wilts my neurons, leaving me with the attention span of an unmedicated, hyperactive 10-year-old boy. Books, if you want to be lovingly dog-eared, smeared with drips of blueberry frozen yogurt, and pruned by splashes of pool water, you'd better be up to the task. Enough of this "if you get past the first 30 pages, it gets really good" bulls#@t. What kind of malarkey is that? Books, if you want me, if you really want me, don't be coy; engage me from the start. Fill page one with funny, empathetic characters who quickly find themselves in ridiculous, conflict-ridden messes.

Two examples of the multitudes of popular books that didn't cut the muster for me: Jennifer Haigh's "The Condition," and Anita Shreve's "Rescue." Verdict? Snoozers!

But enough of the negative. Stay tuned for the must-reads of summer in my next post.

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, by Heather Sellers

2011-06-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

If you're a memoir fan you'll love this offering by Heather Sellers. Sellers' account of her upbringing -- psychotic mother and alcoholic, cross-dressing father -- makes my own crazy childhood sound like "Leave it to Beaver." But the meat of Sellers story isn't the chaos of her childhood, but a neurological condition, one she didn't realize she suffered from until she was an adult, called prosopagnosia, or face blindness.

This intriguing condition leaves Sellers unable to recognize faces, and the anecdotes she shares -- one, for instance, about walking right past her boyfriend -- are in turns bizarre, funny and sad.

Seller's memoir is really two overlapping stories: one of a child growing up with crazy parents, and the other of an adult with a strange disorder, and this structure gave YDLMA a fragmented feel. Although there is no known cause for face blindness, Sellers interweaves the stories as if there is a connection between her crazy childhood and her face blindness. Sellers also tosses around the idea that her prosopagnosia might have resulted from the concussion she suffered when her father hit her on the head with a frying pan.

All this drama and trauma had to cause her distress, but Sellers takes an even hand to the telling; she's not vying for sympathy. Sellers' don't-cry-for-me tone, though, kept me from being able to fully sympathize with her. Her steady, this-is-just-the-way-it-was voice kept me at arm's length. Still, if you're anything like me, you'll be riveted by Sellers' unusual, compelling story.

The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua

2011-06-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

Parenting. What other subject triggers such anxiety? Chua's memoir describes her type A parenting philosophy, as she tells the story of raising her two daughters.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a rollicking summer read. Chua writes a lively, compelling story. Half the fun was comparing my mothering to Chua's. I labeled Chua a "Nazi Mother" when she described how harsh she was with her daughters. I held myself up as poster child for slacker mothers when she described the astonishing accomplishments her intense parenting produced.

Look. I'm the mother of three teenagers. I get my fair share of eye-rolling and looks that drip with disdain. But reading how Chua sometimes shamed her daughters to get them to perform at such high levels made me feel like mother of the year.

Richard Russo, the Grand Finale, Part Three.

2011-06-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

Devora Mack, my great-grandmother, was one of the many faces from the past featured on a large poster board I displayed in the front of the synagogue the morning of my son's bar mitzvah. Devora, who passed in 1939, was known to my father as Babalompola (his child version of baba from Yompola). Thanks to my dad's stories, Babalompola has reigned supreme throughout the years when I dream of my ancestors, so imagine my thrill at getting my hands on her photograph! This pic came courtesy of one of Babalompola's granddaughters, Lorraine Raskin. Lorraine told me how scared she was as a child when she did her granddaughterly duty and bent over the ever supine Babalompola, to kiss her. Dad, on the other hand, tells of a kind, gentle, and not-at-all-scary Baba, one unable to get up off the couch as the result of the watermelon-sized tumor in her gut, supposedly of the "female variety."

Life and stories are like this: there's never one answer, one point of view, or one way of telling the tale. For instance, those uber-observant cousins who came to celebrate my son's bar mitzvah, the ones I mentioned in Part Two. I wrote you how crazy complicated it was to arrange walking-distance accommodations for them because, well, I'm a glass half-empty kind of girl. Sure, it was discombobulating to figure out how to make their visit possible, but if I was a glass half-full kind of girl, my story would have told how happy I was that my cousins made this trip to celebrate with me. After decades of estrangement we've reconciled, and this was a show of their love and support. So what's my point? I guess my point is this: when you peel back a story, there are always more layers.

Russo's multi-layered visit at Butler ended with a Q&A especially for Butler's English students. Here Russo shared more thoughts on writing.

He explained that in the beginning of his writing career he envisioned his readers as average, working people -- just like the characters in his books. It wasn't until much later that he realized the average, working person doesn't want to be reminded of the sadness and limits in his world; he or she reads -- if he or she even has time to read -- to escape. Russo said he now knows that he is writing for an educated and urban reader, one that may have a small town in his/her background.

Russo spoke about writing about women. He said that because women are in the forefront of his life, he finds himself writing about women more and more. This was scary at first, though, because he was afraid of being told he doesn't understand women.

In speaking about his nonfiction work Russo said he initially shaped his pieces as fiction even though they were factual. The thought of calling the work nonfiction was unnerving. In discussing the tangled boundaries between fiction and fact, Russo said that the question isn't Did you invent this? but How is this shaped? He mentioned Jenny Boyle, a memoirist he admires, a transsexual who transitioned from man to woman. In speaking about Jenny, Russo mentioned this quote: Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it's not true. Now that's a line to remember! Russo said his recent writing has made him realize that the distinctions between fact and fiction are blurred.

Russo said that a writer can't create fictional characters without first learning empathy, and that fiction in general is a complicated business, and many attempting it fail. Every artistic decision the author makes takes other options off the table, and further limits every other choice the author makes down the line. He noted that in the journey to becoming an accomplished writer, the last things to come are voice, and a sense of the author's identity and style.

Russo ended his Q&A by discussing the genesis of his novels, saying that each new novel is born out of the dissatisfaction of the novel that came before.

Russo's visit was richer than I could ever imagine, as was my son's bar mitzvah. My uber-observant cousins came, as did my brother, who I've only seen a few times in the past decade. After so many years of living in the land of family-hunger, everyone who has ever staked a claim to my heart found a way to come to Indy and join in my family's celebration. We shared Shabbos dinner the night before the ceremony, listened while my son read from the Torah during his bar mitzvah, and danced to raucous music way later that night, staying up way past our bedtimes. We laughed and reminisced. We bickered and disagreed. We are family -- the best device ever for introducing drama and conflict into a story. The weekend passed like a dream. Even though it's true that, as Russo said, something doesn't have to actually happen for it to be true, I think a version of the flip side also holds: When what you want most in life finally comes true, it may take awhile for it to feel true.

Richard Russo, the Grand Finale. Part Two.

2011-06-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

Richard Russo's visit to Butler was the grand finale of the year's Visiting Writers' Series. In my last post I wrote of part one of hits grand finale: Russo's jaw-droppingly instructive roundtable discussion of the five finalists in Booth's First Chapter Contest. I also mentioned a recent personal grand finale in the form of my son's bar mitzvah, the culmination of more months of planning than I care to admit. Part one of Sam's bar mitzvah began with this photo of my husband's ancestors.

Can't even remember where I got this gem; might have come from one of the piles of old photos my mother-in-law had squirreled away in her attic; might have been sent by dear Uncle Beryl. What matters more than its provenance, though, is the image itself, so textured and complex. This is what enchanted me: the multitudes of stories, all mysterious, held within this single frame. The landscape is barren, but each one of the faces superimposed on it hints at worlds of hardships, sorrow, and love. Part one of Sam's bar mitzvah concluded with stacks of vellum and a mess of satiny, sepia-colored ribbon, which dressed up the photo, transforming it into the invitation to my son's big day.

Part Two of Russo's visit was the reading he gave to the packed crowd at Atherton Union. The reading was as multi-faceted as the picture of Charles's ancestors. Russo began by telling us that he had never understood why readers want to know about the personal lives of authors. Recently, though, he said he has come to understand that people bring a curiosity to the relationship between the author and his work. It was this notion, Russo said, that informed the pieces he chose to read that night. Trying something new, he picked a few nonfiction pieces, so he could share a bit about his life, and then followed those up with some fiction, so we could see the relationship between Russo and the stories he writes.

It was a well thought out plan that made for a fascinating reading. Russo's nonfiction was every bit as compelling as his fiction, and it was astounding to see the myriad points of connection between the two.

When Russo finished reading he made some general comments that addressed this connection. He noted that every author uses similar imagery and phraseology within his/her work. For the author these repetitions exist at the molecular level, and are about as close to the author's soul as one can get. Just as Dickens writes about orphans, Russo said, his own work speaks to the despair of small towns past their prime, and the price paid by the men and women who work to sustain them.

Here are a few comments from the Q&A that followed the reading:

When asked about a passage from "Bridge of Sighs" that inferred that men are needier than women, Russo replied that in order to go beyond a surface, intellectual understanding, and reach a bone-level understanding, men may need to experience the same thing multiple times. And in addressing the differences between the sexes from another angle, Russo said that literature doesn't exist as men's writing or women's writing, and that writers must be able to transcend the deep boundaries so as to not be trapped in their own experiences. In Russo's most quotable quote of the evening, said that what he believes in first and foremost is imagination.

When speaking about his short story collection, "The Whore's Child," Russo remarked that his protagonist needed to overcome seemingly insurmountable conflict, and that this is required for all great writing. Dramatic urgency. Russo reinforced that the necessary ingredient for a successful story is a conflict he can't figure out how to solve. Writers investigate territory where there are no answers, he said.

Russo spoke about his writing process, saying he begins by reading, to get words in his head. Then he writes for 2-3 hours, longhand, which produces about 2-3 pages. Then he revises. And then he repeats the sequence over and over.

Russo's reading was epic, I wouldn't have missed it for the world, but it couldn't hold a candle to part two of Sam's bar mitzvah. Russo spoke about creating insurmountable problems in his work. One of the practically insurmountable problems in bar mitzvah planning is that Indianapolis has no hotels within walking distance of the synagogues. Try figuring out how and where to house the good-hearted and generous uber-observant cousins who can't drive on the Sabbath seemed like a hopeless task.

Family and conflict; they go hand in hand, don't they? Looking back, everyone -- including myself -- behaved reasonably well, but that doesn't mean the event passed without a few great stories.

I'll save those for part three.

L'Chaim!

Richard Russo, the Grand Finale. Part One.

2011-06-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

Still weeks behind on posting book reviews and recaps of author visits, it seems only fitting to put together the two grand finales that have recently marked my literary and personal life: Richard Russo's visit to Butler last April, and my youngest child's bar mitzvah, last weekend.

Each finale was comprised of several smaller events, and each of these were peppered with so many heart-touching moments, that a quick recap wouldn't do either justice.

Like any Jewish mother I started planning my son's bar mitzvah from the moment of his bris. Also, this was the last of my children to come of age. We were lucky enough to have family and friends come in for our celebration from all over the country. All these notions lent the bar mitzvah the feel of a grand finale.

Richard Russo was the last and biggest name on this year's Butler's Visiting Writers' Series's roster. Along with the prerequisite reading, Russo agreed to be the judge for a "First Chapter" writing competition staged by the editors at Booth, the literary journal at Butler (a genius idea, may I add). The afternoon before his reading, Russo gathered with us to go over the five finalists.

A little OCD about being late, I was the first one in the room. When the door opened, it was Russo! He entered, extended his hand, and with eyes smiling said, "Hi, call me Rick." I was floating. I think it's true that it can be a mistake to judge by first impressions, but sometimes first impressions say it all: Russo, a highly accomplished writer of considerable fame, came to Butler with a gracious, open heart.

What happened next was the stuff of dreams. No really, even I couldn't have dreamed this. Three of the editors of Booth, me, my classmate Maggie, and Russo, all sitting around a boardroom table. I have to admit I was pretty nervous; I had no idea how this meeting would play out. I figured Russo would announce the winning chapter, and then give us a brief rundown of the faults of the other four finalists. What actually happened was nothing like that. Russo introduced each of the final entries, one by one, and, while addressing us by name, asked each of us for our opinions. What ensued was a discussion on the merits and pitfalls of each piece. When we had all weighed in -- and, jeez, how intimidating is that? -- he added his own final thoughts. The meeting turned out to be a master class in novel writing, as he pointed us towards the hallmarks of what makes a winning first chapter.

One chapter, although by far the most polished and professional, lacked a sense of building drama; each of its scenes had the same weight, which led Russo to believe that not all of its aspects were fully imagined. He questioned whether the chapter's crystalline sentences were enough to sustain the novel, saying that they should serve the momentum of the story.

When evaluating another chapter he noted the lack of character development, saying that by the end of the first chapter the reader needed to know more about the protagonist.

The chapter written in epistolary style was a favorite among us, but Russo pointed out that although this unique style make a splash, he was doubtful it could sustain a novel. Russo's point was that although this style lends itself to rapid pacing, it doesn't allow the author to slow scenes down, or to immerse in the physical world of its characters.

Analyzing another chapter, he remarked that the author broke from scene before the action of the scene ended, and went into narration. It's important for an author to know, Russo said, what s(he) wants a scene to accomplish. Scene and narration ground a story over time, and the author of this chapter showed he wasn't comfortable writing either.

Russo then revealed the winning chapter, noting that although it was not the most polished entry, it wowed him with its strong characters, humor and wild imagination. During our discussion of this work he left us with these literary words of wisdom: an easy editing fix consists of marking stuff out with a pencil; what's more worrisome are gaps.

And with that, and a recommendation to read Russo's epic novel "Empire Falls" and his short story collection "The Whore's Child," I'll sign off. Stay tuned for part two of Russo's visit, and more on the epic Lerner bar mitzvah.

Marilyn Chin

2011-05-15T12:52:00.001-07:00

Wow, am I behind on these posts. Pleading bar mitzvah preparation overwhelm. And yes, in response to the question I've been asked over and over, it IS easier the third time! (But it's still not EASY.)

Okay. Enough of all that. I'm better now. Poet Marilyn Chin came to Butler several weeks ago, and I couldn't attend her reading -- had class. I was lucky, though, that someone on the English department faculty took pity on me and allowed me to sit in on a class Marilyn was visiting. So I spent an hour with Chin, the instructor (Thanks, Rob!) and 15 undergrads. It was a blast. Marilyn didn't pack an attitude. She was happy to sit back and have a casual literary chat with anyone who showed an interest. The shade of pink that washed over the faces of the boys (men?) in class when she tossed out the words "vagina and pussy" made me wish I could take her out for a pitcher of margaritas that night. Alas, I never knew if she would be game, she was leaving town that afternoon.

Chin spoke of Asian-American literature, saying that all roads lead back to Maxine Hong Kingston. She also spoke of poets, saying that although it is natural for poets to transition into nonfiction, she likes the freedom of fiction, making stuff up. She has enjoyed how Vixen has expanded her readership, and bemoaned that poetry in America has become institutionalized, and has a narrow audience. Chin told us she grew up in a stereotypical Asian family, one that pushed for excellence, despite her grandmother's illiteracy. Her grandmother, who demanded top performance, couldn't read Chin's report card!

She spoke about her book, "The Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen," a genre-bending novel that might be more appropriately described as a collection of linked stories. This was, she said, her first attempt at prose, rather than the poetry she is famous for. She told us that in Vixen, she "cross-dressed" into a different genre, the stories arising from an autobiographical truth, which is not the same as fact. (A point I have recently smacked my head against -- a story for another day.) In Vixen Chin messed with the facts, but wrote basic truths. This book was ten years in the making, stemming from several isolated short stories based on translations of old Zen tales. Her editor liked these so much she asked for more. After 100 pages Chin realized she had no idea how to finish the book. She wanted something that could be called a story cycle, or composite novel, but had to see how the parts contributed to the whole.

In "cross-dressing" into the world of fiction Chin had to stretch. She told us her mind works like a poet: line by line. Thinking in paragraphs was painful. She did a lot of homework to see what a story cycle would look like. She had to teach herself how to read a novel, and read Hemingway to learn structure.

One final pearl from Chin on poetry: It's what you leave out of a poem that gives it its mystery.

Til next time,

Susan

The Sunset Limited, by Cormac McCarthy

2011-04-29T19:20:00.001-07:00

I've always wanted to read McCarthy's "The Road," but never felt emotionally ready to immerse myself in "bleak." On a recent stroll through Carmel's library, though, I spotted another McCarthy title: The Sunset Limited. And this one on audiotape!

In "The Sunset Limited" McCarthy pares the world down to the bare minimum -- two men, one room. That's it. The premise is simple enough: one of the men has just saved the other from throwing himself in front of the Sunset Limited train. The men, one white and one black, go by the names "White" and "Black." (Can't get more pared down than that!) The men are opposites in every way -- education, means and outlook on life. McCarthy gives his characters the perfect setup, a room that forcing these two men, embodiments of two diametrically opposed ideologies, to interact.

Just so we're clear here: "The Sunset Limited" really is a book in which two men sit in a room and discuss the meaning of life. How bleak is that? But don't sell it short, on those two slim discs, the story kept me intrigued until the very end. McCarthy wrote sparkling, compelling dialog that kept me riveted throughout, and left me pondering long after, and the actors displayed incredible skill at bringing the characters to life.

"The Sunset Limited" is the perfect "listen" for a two-hour road trip. Unfortunately, it's too nihilistic for the kids, so don't pop it in our CD player unless you're road tripping with adults.

Taylor Mali

2011-04-23T18:49:00.001-07:00

"I didn't come here to entertain you, I came to read a poem." Mali's bon mot summed up the controversy around his visit to Butler last month. Some in the English Department bristled at the notion behind this remark. "Poets ARE entertaining," they said. Knowing nothing about poetry, I've made a concerted effort to attend Butler's poetry readings. I have to admit that, for someone like me, with no understanding of the form, they're a mixed bag. Judging from the laughter Mali's remark engendered, I'd venture to say I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Mali delighted the crowd with performances of some of his most famous poems like "The The Impotence of Proofreading," "What Teachers Make," and "Like Lilly Like Wilson," along with lesser known works such as "Naked Gardener" and "Benediction." Mali also read "Lanyard," a poem by one of his favorite poets, Billy Collins. He relayed that Collins said his best poems come from giving himself permission to tell what he never thought he'd tell.

Mali began as a teacher and now is a slam poet. His poetry is fun and accessible. I imagine he's had people question whether or not his work actually qualifies as poetry. The moment from the reading that stayed with me was when he spoke to this unvoiced question. Mali said that poetry evolves, and that poems from one time period differ from those written in another. In fact, the definition of what poetry is is always changing.

When you pull out the thin silver bar on the side of Mali's souvenir pen a banner unfurls. One of Mali's poems is printed on one side of the banner. On the other side, around the jumbo letters that spell "SHUT UP," is an array of Scrabble-ready, two-letter words. Are poets boring? There may never be a consensus, but there's no argument that Taylor Mali's visit was unique and entertaining.

Check out Mali's hysterical poem on the youtube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OonDPGwAyfQ

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, by Patton Oswald

2011-04-17T06:06:00.000-07:00

Patton Oswald, stand-up comic and King of Queens sidekick, put out a book and, who would have guessed, it's smart, and really funny. The title is a based on Oswald's observation that people's mindsets generally fall into one of three nerdy teenage categories: Zombie; Spaceship, or Wasteland. Appropriately, Patton voices the audiobook version. Here he mentions that there are illustrated sections on one of the discs, and that these can be accessed via computer (have I revealed my pathetic lack of tech savvy?). Even if I could have figured out how to access these I wouldn't have wanted to disrupt the flow of his delivery. I wanted to listen, and stay in that experience. A few of the chapters (bits?) fell short of the mark, but not enough to ruin the fun. Oswald is smart, funny and opinionated, and Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland is the perfect disc to slip in your CD player for your next road trip. Given the ribald nature of Oswald's material, though, save it for the drive WITHOUT the kids!

How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gill, and Poser, by Clare Dederer

2011-04-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

I'm a Starbucks junkie. My need for a regular latte fix reminds me of the way my mom needed her Marlboros -- as a pick me up, a stress releaser, a way to channel nervous energy by giving hands something to hold, and a way to indulge. (And now, even though I've gone decaf, I continue to glory in Starbucks' warm, milky creations.) In the way that our patterns and addictive habits help us deal with life's vicissitudes, one might make the argument that, in small ways, Starbucks saves my life every day. So I was eager to read Michael Gill's account of how Starbucks saved his life! Alas, this memoir was so bad it was almost offensive. "How Starbucks Saved My Life" is really nothing but an empty, vapid telling of Gill's story. Gill, a 60-plus-year-old victim of downsizing, could have written a book about his late-in-life stint as barista, and the insights this dramatic change in employment brought him. Instead he wrote a paean to the corporate giant that is Starbucks. Gill's account of his new life in retail lacks verisimilitude. Certainly, dealing with the public can be rewarding, but there's no denying that large slices of the multitudes are cranky and difficult. Gill's experience on the retail front lines is nothing like my memories of working with the public, where my demanding customers occasionally left me in tears! In "How Starbucks Saved My Life" all the customers are understanding, helpful and supportive, Gill's boss is the ideal mentor and his coworkers, with one minor exception, are all openhearted, top performers, without personal agendas and attitudes. Message to Howard Schultz: is Gill's book one of your marketing ploys?

Yoga and the mind-body connection fascinate me, are topics ripe for exploration. "Poser" was recently reviewed by Dani Shapiro for the New York Times, and it caught my eye. I love Shapiro. She writes earth shaking, heart-and-soul memoir and it was because she wrote up Dederer's book that I was eager to read "Poser." I wanted to see what Dederer learned about herself through the practice of yoga. The title led me to believe "Poser" would consist of separate accounts, each one focused on a single yoga pose -- like pigeon, downward facing dog, or tree pose -- and then take us to the insights Dederer found by practicing this pose. This was the book I wanted to read, but it's not the book Dederer wrote. The book I wanted to read would have given Dederer's account of how she suffered from perfectionism and the need to fit into the mothering culture in Seattle, (where co-sleeping, organic. locally-grown food, cloth diapers, breast-feeding for a minimum of a full year and coop nursery schools are de rigueur), and how her practice of certain yoga poses eased this anguish. Although Dederer writes about specific yoga poses, she doesn't necessarily link them in an easy to follow, I've done a pose,"point A" and this brought me to a different place in my life, "point B," fashion. Instead, "Poser" is a jumbled assemblage -- part memoir and part lesson on the history of yoga. For my taste, the memoirish part rambled, often not digging deep enough to touch me. And as for the history lessons, well, I just didn't care.

Til the next book,

Susan

Tom Chiarella

2011-03-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

There's been a steady stream of writers at Butler recently. Tom Chiarella held an intimate talk with us MFA's a few weeks ago. Chiarella's penned a few books but is probably most famous for his magazine writing: Esquire, The New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine and more. He's done a lot of golf writing, and was sited by Sports Illustrated.com as "the best golf writer you never heard of."

Chiarella's talk was titled something like "MFA Stands for Mother F@cking Artist," which provocative enough to pull me out of my house on a Wednesday night in February. Chiarella's funny, honest, forthright, stream of consciousness speaking took us on a wild ride, as he recounted the path he took to become a writer, and the role of MFA programs in the newly upturned writing world. There was the gem of a story about how Anne Beattie advised him to submit to The New Yorker. He did, although it took him 23 tries to get a piece accepted there. And how Margaret Atwood put down all writing efforts but fiction. Still, Chiarella continued writing essays and publishing in magazines.

Chiarella, nothing if not earnest, ended with a semi-question, wondering out loud if his words gave us something of value. The message I walked away with was that today's writing world blurs boundaries and genres and eschews labels. And that if one wants to have his or her work read, and have others respond to it -- which was what Chiarella decided he wanted many years ago -- one must be dogged, be prepared to struggle, persevere and do whatever it takes.

There's something to be learned by anyone willing to share their own experiences. Tom's talk could be summed up as "write what you love, get your work out in the world any way you can, and never give up," and that's a valuable lesson, if ever there was one. But I'd never want to condense Tom's talk to those few points. The sweet and hilarious journey that Tom took us on to get to this advise stays with me still.

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

2011-03-21T06:25:00.001-07:00

When I picked up David Mitchell's "Black Swan Green" I had no idea what to expect. Discerning readers raved about this author, but I hadn't read Mitchell's previous buzz-worthy offering, "Cloud Atlas," or anything else he'd written.

"Black Swan Green" is the story of Jason Taylor, a 13-year-old boy in a small village in England who navigates his adolescence while dealing with the burdens of a stammer and warring parents. I liked Jason. The problem I had with him is that most adults I know aren't able to articulate their feelings nearly as well as Mitchell's character. Although I believed a character like Jason would have felt the emotions Mitchell describes, I didn't believe for a minute he would be able to articulate those feelings. Because Jason tells his story with such an uncanny, supernatural level of self-knowledge the book lost its ability to completely engage me. I couldn't fully suspend disbelief. Ironically, Jason's unself-conscious, casual narration, full of 13-year-old boy colloquialisms, came off sounding self-conscious. I enjoyed Jason's story, and the lyrical voice he employed in telling it, but, in the end, did I buy it? No.

The other aspect of "Black Swan Green" that threw me had to do with structure. Perhaps if I was more of a short story fan and less of a novel or memoir fan, Mitchell's compilation of 13 separate, yet linked, stories would have satisfied, But I'm not. I know this about my "reading self" -- I need the author to hold my hand, to guide me through the narrative. The threads of the previous stories need to shine through the fabric of all that follows. If a story is presented as chopped up pieces of a whole I inevitably feel a disconnect, like I've been pushed to the periphery.

Novels are such multi-layered works of art. Despite the ways "Black Swan Green" didn't satisfy, there were components of the story that stayed with me. Like Emma Donoghue's "Room," in "Black Swan Green" Mitchell captures an engaging, compelling (if not fully authentic) young voice. I particularly enjoyed how Jason labeled the shadowy, negative speaking parts of his own personality "Unborn Twin," and "Hangman."

Books are way too complicated for a thumbs up, thumbs down rating system, don't you think?

Bob Hicok

2011-03-12T16:49:00.001-08:00

When I was offered a place at Hicok's lunch table, I was psyched. Lunch with a poet! That's how I found myself, with 3 Butler poets, at Cafe Patachou, sitting across the table from Bob Hicok. I felt like I was inhabiting an alternative universe!

The great part about having lunch with Hicok is that I got the chance to ask him every little thing that entered my mind. And I'm a curious person, so I had a lot of questions. I had recently read his newest offering, "Words for Empty, Words for Full," and among other things was curious about his writing process and, specifically, the poem that spoke about the BRCA gene. I was also curious about Hicok's skepticism about traditional writing workshops, which I read in one of his interviews. I have to admit, though, that in the end, the lunch was a little mixed for me. First, because this was a lunch and not a class or an interview, I didn't feel comfortable taking notes. So although Hicok radiated intelligence and thoughtfulness, I can't remember any of his brilliant comments. Second, there's the matter of carbs. As in carbohydrates. Have I mentioned this, how I fall asleep when I consume them? I know this about myself (the first step is admitting you have a problem), and that's why I ordered an omelet for lunch. And it would have been a genius choice, if only I had not munched the toast that came with it. I didn't want to eat it, but the toast and I had a face-off and, in the end the toast won. Like an addict finally getting a fix, I scarfed down every last crumb. Sure enough, the toast kicked in just after lunch, just in time for Hicok's formal Q&A at Butler. Just when I had my pen and paper out, ready to take notes, my brain shut down, as if the waitress had spiked my water with a Rophy.

Despite this I managed to jot down a few coherent notes. Hicok was asked how he comes up with the ideas for his poems, and he remarked that he doesn't have an agenda when he sits down to write. The ideas arise on their own. He doesn't try to force them, and this makes his poems personal and keeps them from becoming preachy. When I asked him what he does when he is faced with a problem in his writing, he answered that he tries to relinquish control, that poems are served best when the focus is not on the result. (This is the comment that spoke to me the loudest.) When asked about the process of revision, Hicok answered that he often gets rid of entire poems, but that if a piece is not working it's often a matter of trying to find a new angle of entry into the poem.

Hicok said a poem is a facet of something that, for the writer, is ongoing. As a writer he keeps writing about the same thing over and over. (I think this is something prose and poetry have in common.)

When asked how he knows when a poem is finished, he said he writes a poem to follow something that interests him, and when he arrives at this point of interest, the poem is finished.

At this point, though, I was the one who was finished. The toast had toasted me and I was struggling to keep my eyes open. Nothing more embarrassing than fighting the head nod in front of the generous and thoughtful poet you just had lunch with!

Bob Hicok is not a fan of blogs. (In one of his interviews he called them "bogs.") He'll never see this, so he'll never know I was nodding off because of two slices of whole wheat. Still, I hope he is aware of the mark he left on Butler, and on me.

Alicia Erian

2011-03-08T14:54:00.000-08:00

Early on this semester I volunteered to introduce author Alicia Erian when she came to Butler as part of the Vivian Delbrook Visiting Writers Series. I thought it would be interesting to mix it up, and have the Jew (me) introduce the Arab (her). (Actually, she's only half-Arab. Her father is Egyptian.) This was one of my more ridiculous ideas, as my knowledge of Middle East politics is sketchy, at best. What did I expect -- to debate her on the current unrest in the Arab world?

It wasn't until a few weeks later when I read her novel, "Towelhead," and watched the movie adaptation with the same name, that I realized Erian's overriding personal theme, wasn't ethnicity, but sex, which is a lot more interesting than politics, anyway.

I learned a lot from Erian, so much that it's hard to put it all into neat sentences, so I'll just share some of the highlights of my time with her. I first met her when she made surprise appearance at my Visiting Writers class. She leaned back in her chair and proved herself worthy of holding her own next to our instructor, Dan. Dan's a devoted teacher, but he's not known for his subtlety or demure nature. Next I trailed Erian to an undergraduate writing workshop. Here again she engaged fully in the discussion. She came to the class prepared, having read the student's work that was being discussed. Then I got the chance to join the group that was taking her to lunch, and it was there that her warmth really shined. She shared her life experiences and asked about ours.

I also had the privilege of joining her family (boyfriend and two young and delicious boys) for dinner that evening! Despite the busy day Erian remained engaged and gracious. Then came the very best part: her reading. Turns out Erian has switched tracks. She's no longer writing fiction, but is deep into a memoir (my favorite genre). We got a small taste of it that night and, let me tell you, it was fabulous. It had everything you want in a memoir: an engaging, personal voice, a lot of truth-telling (Erian is NOT shy!) and a compelling story.

And there's more! As if all this wasn't enough, I got to spend another hour with Erian the next day, interviewing her for Booth, Butler's literary magazine. In the interview I discovered how devoted Erian is to helping her students achieve their potential. I reflected back to her that she seems to have strong opinions about how her students should learn. She agreed, saying, "When they're with me they should do it my way. When they're with the next teacher, they should do it his way. In the end, they can see what works best for them." Makes sense to me.

Erian epitomizes the best qualities of a visiting writer, a writing teacher and a writer. She's a clear thinker, and is fearless in speaking the truth, whether in regard to her own life or the world around her. She's engaging, open-hearted, curious and generous. My only complaint is that I have to wait for the publication of her memoir.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris

2011-03-05T03:10:00.000-08:00

David Sedaris's essays are magic. His unflinchingly honest tales of his personal misadventures shine a light on the human condition. We can all see ourselves in Sedaris's stories of obsession and humiliation.

In "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" we get none of the Sedaris magic. There's not a human in sight. Vignettes are populated solely by animals and, unlike Sedaris's previous books, that resonate with readers by prompting us to think, or ponder life's vagaries, these stories have the feel of etudes -- whimsical exercises in creative writing with no deeper meaning attached. Both in content, and in the way the book failed for me, "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" reminds me of "Blue Beyond Blue," the most recent offering by another of my favorite authors, Lauren Slater. In Slater's earlier work she connected with readers through lightening sharp writing about her fraught relationship with her mother, her mental illness and her work as a psychologist. In "Blue Beyond Blue," though, Slater moves to something new -- a book of her own fairy tales and, in doing so, loses her personal connection with the reader.

"Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" is a collection of fable-like animal stories. The animals are anthropomorphized. They gossip, cheat and misbehave like humans. But within the artifice of these stories something vital is lost; they don't do what Sedaris does best, connect. I love David Sedaris. I'll always love David Sedaris. But I look forward to his next book...which will hopefully be peopled with people.

The Poet Mark Halliday

2011-02-27T06:45:00.000-08:00

Mark Halliday seemed a little discombobulated at the first question. Professor Flanzbaum asked Halliday to compare his work to Keats. Her class had studied Keats's "Ode to Autumn." "How is it," she asked, "that two such disparate works can be grouped under the umbrella of poetry? What do you think the older poets, like Keats and Frost, would think of modern poetry, with its lack of regular meter, and lack of elaborate metaphor?"

I must admit it was fun to see the Q&A begin with a provocative question, one that put Halliday on the spot. And the beauty of this meaty question was that, for a poetry ignoramus like me, it drove Halliday to speak about poetry at its foundations. It didn't take long for Halliday to rise to the moment. After stumbling, for just a minute, he began to speak about poetry in general and, more specifically, his own work. He tried one answer then came at it from a slightly different angle. As he continued I could feel his passion for poetry, could hear it in each sentence. As Halliday got closer to what he wanted to say his language sharpened, and I began to feel, for the first time really, that I was approaching the first glimmers of understanding about this literary form.

Halliday explained that both older and modern poetry arise from a desire to take the torturous parts of the human experience and make sense of them -- all at one time. Poetry, he said, is a crystallized, focused, small, condensed and adequate response to the problem of life. One of the motivations behind poetry is to preserve a facet of life. Poetry reflects a hunger for the experience of seeing an individual come to terms with one of life's issues and reach a sense of fulfillment. He went on the say that poetry puts a magnifying glass on one person, in one place, at one specific time, as he or she gets a grip on that experience.

Halliday explained that poetry's scope is different than the novel's, which shows a passage of time. Fiction deals with plot, and how experience develops, showing itself in actions that occur over time, whereas poets have an obsession with the moment. Poets are obsessed with personal experience, whereas fiction writers have a curiosity about others. He quoted William Carlos Williams, who wrote that "People die every day for what is lacking in poetry." Halliday said that while he is drawn to voice-driven, conversational, discursive, explanatory poetry, other poets can speak to a different clutch of aesthetics.

I asked Halliday if he could share a pivotal moment from his earlier days, one of reading a poem that inspired him towards his life's work. He gave the example of the poem, "Fresh Air," by Kenneth Koch. Koch rose from a New York school of poets in the early '50s who were rebellious to academic approaches to poetry. The poem's irreverence struck Halliday, and stayed with him for years, circling back to him later in his life after reading the poet Frank O'Hara.

I wanted to share my favorite poem from Halliday's "Tasker Street," "The Zoo's Librarian," but couldn't find it online. Meanwhile, here's a link to the poem that inspired the poet, Koch's "Fresh Air."

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=237636

Open, by Andre Agassi

2011-02-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

Okay. Let me admit this right up. 1) I'm not a sports fan. 2) I listened to an abridged audiobook version of "Open." Despite that a lot of friends recommended "Open," there was no way I was going to commit to reading a 400-page sports memoir. So my comments here won't reflect as if I've "read" the whole book (technically, I guess I haven't read any of it.)

Whether or not you're a sports fan, though, it turns out "Open" is a compelling read. For the most part, Agassi digs deep, telling us how his tennis-obsessed father pushed him into a sport he quickly came to loathe. He comes clean about his drug use, his rebellious nature and failed marriage to Brooke Shields.

I had a few minor beefs with "Open," though. One is that I wanted to know how Agassi's father came to be such a driven, tennis-obsessed parent. I realize this complaint may not be fair, though, as Agassi may have addressed this in the unabridged version. My other complaint, though, is not one of omission, but of a bit of information Agassi chose to include that I considered petty. Agassi writes that Sampras once gave a valet outside a restaurant a one-dollar tip, with instructions to split it among his colleagues. (And this, according to Agassi, was not a response to bad service, but simply a manifestation of Sampras's cheap nature.) I have no idea if this story holds water but, to be honest, I doubt it. It strains credibility. It just doesn't make any sense. Why would Sampras, flush with prize money AND, knowing that eyes are on him at all times, do something that would cast him in such an unfavorable light? And, speaking of cheap, even if the story is true, isn't it a really cheap shot for Agassi to tell us this? Agassi works so hard at truth-telling through the rest of "Open" -- why would he narc on one of his rivals and risk undermining his readers' trust? Earlier in the book Agassi wrote of Sampras with admiration and affection, so I was perplexed that he included this spurious vignette. Still, these are small issues in an otherwise compelling memoir.

Overall "Open" was an eye-opening look into Agassi's life and the world of marquee tennis stars.

Happy Reading!

George Saunders, Part Two

2011-02-10T04:10:00.000-08:00

All the writers that come to Butler share their thoughts on the craft, but the ones who do so by opening up and sharing of themselves are the ones who remain with us. George Saunders was one of those authors.

Here are some of his comments from the Q & A sessions from his visit. Saunders was asked about his background in geophysics and how this informs his writing. He answered that back when he first worked in the oil fields of Sumatra he read Ayn Rand and saw himself as a right-winger. But, as time went on, working in far-flung parts of the world served to open his eyes and reform his politics, and, naturally, this informs his fiction. About writing in general he commented that all our minds are similar, and that anything that manifests in the world has a presence in each of us.

Saunders said that at one point in his life his worst fear came true: he had an office job. At that time he thought that in order to find stories he had to be in an exotic locale, but he soon realized that his boring office job was a blessing in disguise -- it showed him that stories were all around him, wherever he was.

Saunders reported that after the birth of his second child he found himself able to allow humor into his work, and that bits of wisdom manifested as he wrote freely. He sought to emulate the clean, spare sentences of Barry Hannah and Raymond Carver, and convey his ideas using as few words as possible, even if the sentences lost some of their elegance.

When asked what advice he would give aspiring writers he emphasized revision. He said any given piece of writing has infinite doors, and that a writer should live with a story a long time before sending it out. In this way, if the piece is rejected, at least the author can feel (s)he sent out his/her best work. Saunders revises obsessively, and he sees this same trait among other writers who succeed in publishing their work. Many pieces, he suggested, would improve if only the author let them sit awhile and then revisited them at a later date. Saunders emphasized how vital it is not to short-shrift revision.

I asked Saunders about his recent move into the realm of nonfiction with "The Brain-Dead Megaphone," a collection of essays. He replied that he sees himself primarily as a fiction writer, that he's better at short stories than big ideas (I'm not sure I agree with him on this point.) He said his essay, The New Mecca, was written as an assignment for GQ, He joked that his daughter claimed he never did anything cool, so he accepted the job, and was sent to four-star hotels in Dubai. He feels his nonfiction work allowed him to more fully describe the physical world in which his writing took place. When I asked Saunders if the book's title essay most conveyed his essence, Saunders said yes, although he added that he thought the piece was preachier than he would have liked.

I smile when I think about how his face brightened when he did an impersonation, as if morphing into a playful 15-year-old. Mr. Saunders, you were open-hearted and generous. Thank you.

George Saunders

2011-02-09T10:39:00.000-08:00

I half-expected George Saunders to look like a sunken-faced crystal-meth addict. I mean, what kinds of person dreams up stories like these? Even as a crazed teenager, high in high school in the Haight-Ashbury, my hallucinations weren't nearly as vivid and outrageous as Saunders' stories.

But Saunders showed no hint of being a strung-out, crazy person. He was an affable, congenial man with an open heart, who gladly answered questions about his work and shared his thoughts on writing.

Not only did I have the privilege of joining Saunders and a group of other writers for dinner before his reading, but I also got to introduce him at his reading. For a writing geek like me it doesn't get much better than that.

I want to fill you in on everything I learned from Saunders, but it's late and I've got to turn in. When I'm rested and fresh I'll dish more, but for now I'll leave you with my introduction speech, which just hints at the genius of George Saunders.

My first taste of George Saunders' writing was in “The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip,” his children's book. Here, parasites take the center stage. They come in the shape of bright, orange balls known as Gappers, that crawl from the shore and attach themselves to the village's goats, rendering the goats incapable of producing milk. One day the Gappers begin to attach to the goats of one girl, Capable, while leaving the neighbors' goats alone. Now Capable can't manage by herself. She asks for help. Unfortunately, her neighbors hadn't yet heard the phrase 'it takes a village.” Not only do they refuse to help Capable, but they take their new Gapper-less status as a sign they are better than Capable. Here's a quote from the book:"Not that we're saying we're better than you, necessarily, it's just that, since gappers are bad, and since you and you alone now have them, it only stands to reason that you are not, perhaps, quite as good as us." “The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip” is a fable that's entertaining, thought-provoking, and lesson-teaching. It opens a window for readers of all ages to look at the issues of justice, class, and dignity.

My next Saunders pick was “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” a collection of short stories and a novella in which many of the same themes thread. Sad-sack characters struggle to find safety and happiness in the alternate versions of a dystopic America. Saunders puts his characters in outrageous setups that force them to commit savage and heroic acts just to survive. Saunders characters are so compellingly flawed, so tender, and so human that I was riveted. One character, for instance, is a 400-pound man who becomes the head honcho at Humane Raccoon Alternatives – a business that purports to rid its clients of pesky racoons without inflicting suffering or bloodshed on the animals. In fact, no surprise here, we're in a Saunders' book, their methods involve nothing but suffering and bloodshed. Another character, this time from Saunders' novella, Bounty, has been branded a Flawed, and that's flawed with a capital F. He's a sympathetic, loving brother who tries to reunite with his sister. He fights the shame he feels as a result of his deformity, hideously clawed feet. How could anyone not fall in love with characters like these? Just as in real life, Saunder's characters straddle the fence – they have facets that are both beautiful and revolting. They always have an altruistic side, but sometimes, when they're pushed over the edge, they just might murder their bosses. Their struggle is the human struggle – that of believing they are valuable despite the outside messages that tell them otherwise. Saunders' stories take place in alternate realities that serve to highlight the absurdities of the world we live in today. But no matter where he sets his stories, Saunders' exuberant, wacky voice comes through loud and clear. Saunders' most recent offering is a departure from the rest – a collection of essays that still manages to capture the clear-thinking, bullshit-exposing voice of whimsy and vitality that gives his fiction its bite.

Hasta Manana,

Susan

Michael Dahlie, and "The Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living"

2011-02-01T04:47:00.000-08:00

Last night Butler hosted its first author of 2011, Michael Dahlie. Dahlie, a PEN/Hemingway and Whiting Award winner, is Butler's first Booth Tarkington Writer-in-Residence, has published short fiction in prestigious literary journals such as The Kenyon Review, and has written several young adult novels.

Last night's reading was unique. Although I've attended most of the author lectures at Butler over the past year or two, this was the first time I've ever had occasion to meet the author beforehand. Dahlie was my teacher last semester, in a prose workshop. I could recall times in class when Michael, (am I showing off by casually calling him by his first name?), touched upon certain parts of his novel in making a point about a student's writing, so I approached his reading last night with curiosity, wondering what might lie behind those brief remarks.

One of the parts of "The Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living" Dahlie read from last night was the section that recounted Arthur Camden's childhood. The restaurant scene in which boy-Arthur insists on ordering Lobster Newburg only to realize that, despite its disgusting appearance, he would have to eat it in order to save face, was so poignant and vivid I couldn't help but recall a time from my own childhood when my brother found himself trapped in the same unfortunate circumstance.

In the Q & A portion of the evening I asked Michael if the plot of "The Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living" came to him in bits and pieces as he wrote the story, or if it came to him as a whole, even before he began writing it. He answered that the seed of the book was the first section, or quarter, in which Arthur accidentally burns down his fishing lodge. He originally wrote this as a short story, (which he claimed was unpublishable), and then decided to take the story further by adding three additional sections.

Dahlie was asked how he felt about the protagonist, Arthur Camden. (There was a buzz, both in the audience last night and in the Visiting Writers class I'm now taking, that Arthur's character is, for some readers, a challenge to embrace. Arthur tries to do the right thing but is ineffectual, and those around him use him as a punching bag.) It was clear Dahlie has a lot of affection for this character, and he explained that Arthur's struggles and missteps were a reflection of his own struggles as an adolescent. When Michael was twelve his family moved from London to New Jersey. That first year in America, trying to bridge the culture gap, proved to be a challenge. It was from that experience of eating lunch by himself everyday, from that geeky feeling of otherness, that Arthur emerged. Dahlie described Arthur as "an agent of his own misery," although in the end Arthur shows his essential goodness by nobly taking the higher road and not exacting revenge on those who have shunned him.

There was some discussion about the novel's title. Dahlie remarked that many books are published only to fade into obscurity, and that this catchy title was chosen in an attempt to bypass that potential pitfall. Even so, he said he has remorse about this title because it is somewhat misleading.

One of the English professors in the audience asked whether or not the book was a statement about class and politics, as the world Arthur and his cohorts inhabit is one wealth and privilege. Dahlie remarked that, because of the book, people often assume he is of that world, but that's not the case. Still, despite this, Dahlie pointed out that no one goes through life problem free, regardless of his or her socioeconomic status. Just because someone comes from a privileged background doesn't mean his or her life's challenges aren't interesting.

There's a thick layer of ice covering the streets today. School is cancelled. I had hoped to ask Michael more questions as he was due to come to my Visiting Writers class today. Let's hope for a thaw so I can post Part Two of Michael Dahlie.

Oogy, by Larry Levin

2011-01-24T09:59:00.000-08:00

There was a time in my life, about two years ago, when every time I left the house I saw a loose dog. A bear-like chocolate lab lumbered down the cement divider on 86th Street. An Irish Setter crouched near the fence of my kids' school. A tiny Pappilon veered across Grandview. What could I do, leave those poor animals to fend for themselves on the street? Got to be that at dismissal, when I picked up my kids in car line, they weren't at all surprised when they opened the door of the minivan to find a strange dog nudging his nose out through the crack to greet them. At that point the drill was almost routine: a crazy-slow drive through neighborhoods, searching for addresses and clues. The kids loved it and always jockeyed to snuggle up to the lost dog in the way-back of the van.
It was ludicrous how many lost dogs crossed my path. At its apex it wasn't unusual for me to find four dogs a month, sometimes as many as two in a single week. When I left the house to run errands my new refrain upon returning was guess what kind of dog I saved this time?
There's something about a lost creature's lack of guile that makes it feel rather heroic to return it to safety. Two years ago, when I was closing in on having helped return almost twenty dogs to their owners, the whole shebang felt, well...epic. It felt like there was something cosmic at play. I had the impulse to write it all down.
It didn't take many drafts for me to realize a truism I still stick by: the world does not need another dog story! I'll admit it: I cried when Marley died, but how many times can a story of a dog's unwavering love rescuing a lost soul/marriage/child stay fresh? And so it was with curiosity and slight trepidation that I picked up "Oogy," Larry Levin's story about the puppy who had been used as a bait dog and found near death, only to be adopted and nursed back to health by his family.
The plot may sound trite and cliche -- and that's because it is! If there's a compelling story in "Oogy," just waiting to be teased out, I couldn't find it. From beginning to end, Levin tells a sweet, yet completely predictable and hackneyed story about the trials and tribulations of raising Oogy, a puppy who survived the trauma of his mauling but was left with major deformities. There were the predictable lessons about short-sighted people who were frightened by Oogy's asymmetrical face, who prejudged him as dangerous. There were the tales of how loyal Oogy became, how the people at the vet clinic were heroes, and how Oogy taught Levin and his family how to love unconditionally. I found Levin's language heavy-handed and cliched. And, to add insult to injury, Levin saw fit to includes explanations of ridiculously common situations in his book, such as describing the ins and outs of learning to fasten car seats for his infants, and the reason behind the need for standard dog paraphernalia. Filler. Boring.
Although I'm sure I would have fallen in love with Oogy the dog, I didn't care for "Oogy" the book one bit.
But I'm not done bashing animal-themed books yet. Next up: David Sedaris goes rodent in "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk."

Half a Life, by Darin Strauss

2011-01-17T16:30:00.001-08:00

I can't imagine anyone makes it through life trauma free. It seems to me it's an inevitable part of being human. But although it may be common to undergo trauma, it's not at all common to read an account that fully captures the details and texture of both the experience and its aftermath. Until now.

In "Half a Life," Darin Strauss tells his story with details so intimate and true I felt as if I was right there with him, living the moment when, while behind the wheel, one of his high school classmates veered her bicycle in front of his car. I saw the girl hit Darin's windshield. I felt his detached stun as he learned that, shortly after, she died. I felt the confusion, the numbing, as Darin pulled away from the self he was before the accident and moved to a new self, one who watched this scenario with a second-guessing remove.

"Half a Life" is a remarkable and beautiful book, down to its trappings: a dustcover that extends only halfway up the length of the book, illustrated with a crack in a windshield, a single diagonal fissure that divides the surface into two jagged halves. Within those pages Darin Strauss tells his story with a captivating precision that shines the light on the commonality of the experience of trauma. By holding a magnifying glass to his experience, Strauss broadens his story, moving it from the realm of the personal into the universal, thereby providing a vehicle of self-discovery for us all.

Fly Away Home, by Jennifer Weiner

2011-01-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

My family spent New Year's Eve at my mother-in-law's. Also present: my brother-in-law and his family -- in for the weekend from Connecticut -- and the widower and kids of my sister-in-law (she passed away two-years ago). Three families, all packed into one house. It was a classic setup, had all the elements of a juicy novel: a family (who has the potential to push our buttons and introduce conflict more than our own family?); a house (it kept us close to one another, forcing us to interact); and a holiday (what good's a holiday if not to serve as a vehicle for expectations just waiting to be dashed.)

This is the bread and butter of what I like to call "easy-reading," a broad category which includes genres like chick-lit. One of my favorite "easy-reading" authors is Jonathan Tropper, who used these exact devices in "This is Where I Leave You," using the shiva of the patriarch of a family to conveniently entrap his descendants in a house for 7 days. In "Fly Away Home" Jennifer Weiner places Silvie, the disgraced wife of a politician, in a New England cottage where her daughters, boyfriend and estranged husband all swoop in for Thanksgiving dinner. Weiner, like Tropper, is a master at character and plot. I won't give away what transpires with Sylvie and her family, suffice it to say that Weiner has given us a fun, satisfying story.

Like a juicy novel New Year's Eve at my mother-in-law's didn't disappoint. There were the usual small plot points: me, my mother and sister-in-law wearing concerned expressions, sitting around the kitchen table late at night, rehashing the lurid details of the misfortune of other family members (Can you spell schadenfreude?); the tussles among our kids; the stuffing of our faces with the local pizza. The climax of the visit came during our afternoon walk. It was then, with my mother-in-law and all our kids still lazing around the house, that my sister-in-law's widower dropped the bomb -- he was engaged. I was stunned, but not surprised. Joy and sadness washed over me all at once. But there was more. Turns out the engagement news was spreading fast and my mother-in-law, still at the house, had to be told soon so she wouldn't hear through the gossip line. For complicated reasons my former brother-in-law couldn't do this, so I became the designated bearer of the news. (I won't tell you how horrible I felt the moment I told my mother-in-law the news and saw gray cast over her face) Ugh. And there was more. We were invited to stop by our former brother-in-law's house that evening to meet his intended. This turned out to be a 45-minute affair that, despite our best intentions, probably came across more like an inquisition than a friendly introduction.

Just like the Thanksgiving scene in Jennifer Weiner's new book, "Fly Away Home," our New Year's Eve visit was freighted with drama. It's just a lot more fun when you don't have to live it yourself.

Half Empty, by David Rakoff

2011-01-02T04:50:00.000-08:00

One afternoon during my recent trip to St. Louis I had the pleasure of interviewing my second cousin, once removed, Irene, as part of my research into my family tree. I had been searching for someone with old family photos and, like a prospector whose luck turned, with Irene I struck a deep vein of gold. Irene had a personal treasure trove of photos -- some close to 100-years-old. Even more astounding than her visual record of our family's history, though, were Irene's stories. She had the standard headlines that come with family histories, of course: abandoned spouses, suicides, babies that died and the cousins who were "not quite right in the head." She remembered the landmark events, but what made Irene's memories so rich was that she remembered the in between: the small, everyday, non-happenings that give life its texture. That's the funny thing about researching a family tree; it's not unlike looking at an intricately patterned fabric: the weave may be so dizzyingly complex that the fleck of gold threads may not glint unless held up to just the right light.

When held up to this light the stuff of real life is so thick -- chock full of hilarious missteps, drama, intrigue and conflict of all kinds -- that I sometimes wonder why any writer needs to fabricate a story. Fiction is the sexy sister of nonfiction, but real life is just as dazzling.

In David Rakoff's first book of essays, "Don't Get Too Comfortable," he riffs on becoming an American citizen (he was born in Canada), the ridiculousness of American politics and the pre-bust economy. In "Half Empty," Rakoff's third offering, he aims his bat at a wide range of topics, using his erudite prose and dry sense of humor to hold a magnifyng glass to optimism, the Mormons and Hollwood's Walk of Fame and his anxious childhood. Rakoff's essays about the unsexiness of a pornography convention, and the lack of substance behind the supposedly substantial "Dream House" display at Disneyland show his keen eye. These seemingly banal topics become compelling under Rakoff's telling because he's astute enough to go beyond the obvious -- these are no diatribes -- to show us what we've never noticed. But Rakoff really shines when he delves into the personal -- his writing about the special love he and his fellow (non-observant) Jews have for bacon had me laughing out loud. And, strategically placed at the end, the jaw-dropping honesty with which he tells us about his gruesome battle with cancer left me stunned.

I'm still transcribing Irene's anecdotes. She was so unflinchingly honest -- some of her stories have details so intimate they still can't be told using the family members' names. There was the dignified older auntie who confided to child-Irene that her pious and reserved husband was especially attentive to her sexual needs! There was the older cousin who fought with her daughter only to retreat to the bed of an older aunt and uncle -- with them in it! Irene was generous and trusting enough to let me borrow her photos overnight so I could scan them and add them to our online family tree. But if you look at the fading sepia photos closely something much more valuable is revealed: stories so funny and tragic they glimmer.

Hush, by Eishes Chayil

2010-12-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

I'll never forget the day, back in the 80s, when I told my husband, Charles, then just my boyfriend, about my history. "When I was a girl I was sexually abused by a relative," I said, forcing the words out. This was the first boy I had ever told. It seemed right, like the thing to do at that point in our relationship, but even as the words left my mouth I knew they could be a deal breaker. I waited nervously, the silence hanging heavy in the air. If he was going to break up with me then he should just say it and get it over with, I thought. "Well," I asked with an urgent, frustrated edge, "does this make you feel any different about me?" Charles began as always, slow and measured.
"Well," he said, and my breath caught as I realized that he was beginning a sentence that would take me to an unknown place, "I don't feel any different about you, but it doesn't make me feel very good about your relative."

Charles was one of only a handful of people I shared this with. The shame of what happened to me as a child gripped me so completely that I was a young adult before I even told my family, and even then the fallout from the abuse still hung over me like a thick, gray cloud. I couldn't shake it. Two more decades would pass before I could even imagine typing these words.

My story, and the stories of so many others, brings to light not only the scourge of sexual abuse against children, of course, but something else just as harming: the secrecy that surrounds it. Secrets are toxic; you hide something when you are ashamed of it. 40-years ago when my abuse took place the world was not nearly as enlightened as it is now, but this fact still holds true: Our society puts a premium on surfaces -- niceties and smiling faces -- at the expense of the more difficult work that comes with honest discourse. Children aren't unaware; they see this; they know others will be uncomfortable in the wake of their disclosure so they often keep it to themselves. Because children often keep their abuse secret, the shame of what happened falls not on the perpetrators of the abuse -- where it belongs -- but on the victims. This is when the abuse -- a terrible enough thing in and of itself -- becomes freighted. As a girl I knew implicitly that the adults around me would be uncomfortable if I disclosed what happened, and because of this I put myself in the position of being responsible for bearing the burden of the secret; I made it possible for those around me to go on with their lives unfettered by the discomfort of dealing with my suffering and having to confront the pedophile relative who abused me. The terror of being abused became spider-webbed in confusion and shame. The burden was crippling. The premium our culture puts on its smiley face has another notable repercussion: because victims keep their abuse hush-hush, their abusers face no repercussions and are allowed to go on molesting. (Just so you know, it wasn't my imagination that my family would not welcome my disclosure. When, as a young adult, 20 years ago, I finally summoned up enough courage to speak out about it they responded by insisting I stay quiet, murmuring that I was either unbalanced, making it up, or both. It has only been in the past few years that they've apologized and we've been able to sit down and talk about what happened openly.)

The long-held, unspoken belief within the Jewish community is that sexual abuse is not a Jewish problem, especially among the more observant Orthodox and Hassidic groups. It doesn't take a social scientist, though, to realize that cultures that seek to preserve traditions -- not an unworthy goal -- by definition tend to be insular, and that an insular society can be a breeding ground for predators if it handles its dirty laundry from within, as these communities do. There can be an enormous amount of pressure within these communities to keep quiet about sexual abuse. And because sexual abuse against children is almost always unwitnessed, and therefore unprovable, victims (and their families) are often told by those in power that their allegations fall under the umbrella of lashon hara, or gossip, which is strictly forbidden.

Although "Hush" is billed as a novel for young adults, the story is well-written and compelling reading for adults, too. It's telling that the author, a woman from one of the observant communities, felt compelled to use a pseudonym. It's sad that the atmosphere within these communities is still such that the author couldn't comfortably use her own name, although the pseudonym she picked couldn't be more fitting; Eishes Chayil translates as woman of valor.

In the author's note at the back of the book, Chayil writes that she used the story of her own life to craft "Hush," combining two events from her childhood to form the plot. As a young girl she witnessed a friend being molested, and also heard of an 11-year-old boy in her community who hung himself. In "Hush," Gittel's best friend, Devory, hangs herself in the aftermath of being molested by her brother. As the plot unfolds we see that Devory wasn't the only person victimized by the abuse; Gittel witnessed it and the guilt she suffers from keeping quiet about seeing Devory's abuse, and from outliving her, takes its toll in the form of symptoms we now know are part of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I had a few minor quibbles with the plot and structure of "Hush," but I hesitate to even bring them up. Those details are besides the point. "Hush" is an important book. It shines the light on the sexual abuse within traditional Jewish communities and, in the telling, secrecy and shame are vanquished. I can't help but believe that G-d would be pleased to see this. Eishes Chayil should be proud.

The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem

2010-12-15T20:25:00.000-08:00

Today I had the opportunity to speak with two relatives I'd never even heard of until recently. One was Jerry, who lives in Detroit and is the nephew of the husband of my second cousin, twice removed. The other was Tzuriel, a forth cousin who lives in Milwaukee and is the father of seven children!

Those are your clues, the giveaway to what I've been up to: working on my family tree. Genealogy is like crack cocaine: it leads to a quick rush and you're left wanting more, more more! (Just for the record -- My high school was in the Haight-Ashbury but my description of a crack high is purely conjecture.) For the few people out there who haven't heard, (and there must be someone out there I still haven't shared this with), the legend in my family is that we are descendants of Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer, otherwise known as the Baal Shem Tov. The Baal Shem Tov (also known by the handy acronym, Besht) was born in 1700, lived in the Ukraine and is known for founding the Hassidic Judaism.

The path between Okopy, the Ukrainian village of the18th century that was Besht's home, and present day Indianapolis is, well, complicated. But even as the names and dates are filled in, a brief look at the mosaic of data -- and a family tree is so compelling, how could one not look? -- will reveal that the meat of the stories of those lives lies in the negative space, the myriad details that take place in between birth and death. Like my conversation last week with the niece of my great-grand aunt, Gitel Chervitz Ridker. That niece, Ruthie, who lives in Chicago and is not even my relative, was chatty and helpful, despite that she remembered very little about Gitel. But oh, what gold there was in those few tidbits! The negative space around Gitel's name reveals that she was a large woman. Well, large is not exactly how Ruthie put it. I believe the words Ruthie used were bottom-heavy! And, according to Ruthie, Gitel and David's family would never have been named "neighbors of the year." Ruthie recalled going to one of their Bar Mitzvah celebrations, still struck with how few friends they had.

"The Fortress of Solitude," which tells the story of two boys growing up in 1970s Brooklyn, is like the negative space of a family tree, in that it richly depicts the many twists and turns these lives take. Sure, FOS has some of the fantastical elements that are Lethem's trademarks, but these elements are rooted in the grit and grime of everyday life as we see Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude navigate the big issues of their Brooklyn neighborhood in the 70s: race, sexuality, crime and drugs. Like real life, the story of Dylan and Mingus is full of joy, wonder, heartbreak and loss. And like real life, you never know where the story will take you. In my case it might be to the nephew of the husband of my second cousin, twice removed, from who I learned that the name of the ship my ancestor sailed to America on in 1907 was the Carolina. Or it might be to a cousin in Milwaukee, who told the story of how our great-grand-aunt had her old country rebbe write down the names of her Baal Shem Tov ancestors on a slip of paper, and how she came to America with that slip of paper tucked into her father's Siddur. Life is a wild ride, full of moments just like these, rich and fraught. The phone rings -- it might be a long-lost cousin. A scrap of paper falls from the pages of that dusty, old Siddur. Even as I discover the bones of the structure of my family tree, it's the stories that rest in the negative space give it its color.

Elmore Leonard

2010-12-07T11:57:00.001-08:00

Incredible. That's the only response I can come up with when I reflect on the hour this morning I got to spend with 20 other grad students at an intimate Q & A with legendary novelist Elmore Leonard.

To call Leonard a veteran writer would be an understatement; He's been at it for 60 years. Leonard began by looking back on his long career, which began in the '50s. He wrote westerns, which were in vogue at the time. In giving a nod to commercialism, he said that when he writes he always has in mind what the public will like, what will sell. It wasn't until the '80s, Leonard said, that he finally made the New York Times bestseller list. He reported that this didn't feel like a big deal, though, as he never read any of the books that made the list, but the achievement pleased him because he knew it would increase his book sales.

He spoke about his influences and how the first writer to profoundly impact him was Hemingway, although he also loves Cormac McCarthy, Pete Dexter, George Higgins and Jane Smiley. He spoke about his writing style, and how he writes a story solely through the eyes of the novel's characters, and that he eschews any writing in which the author's point of view muddies up the pureness of that ideal. Also, he noted that the point of view in a story can sometimes change as he writes a novel, as he realizes a secondary character has become more interesting than the primary one.

When Leonard was asked how he goes about writing from a point of view different from his own, he answered that the key is research, and that the details about the characters and their surroundings give them an authentic voice. Leonard then pointed to the back row, to a closely-cropped, serious looking, solidly built young man named Greg, who looked as if he could serve as Leonard's bodyguard, and could have been easily lifted from the pages of one of Leonard's novels. This was Leonard's research assistant and right-hand-man. At 86, Leonard is still sharp, but the few times he was unsuccessful in conjuring up the name of one of his novel's characters, his assistant would bark out the answer from the back row.

Leonard then addressed how he came up with the ideas for his novels, and said the genesis for many of his them come from photographs. Karen Sisco, one of the characters from "Out of Sight," came from an evocative photo of a female marshal.

I got a chance to ask Leonard about my favorite Elmore Leonard book, "Ten Rules of Writing." He said he originally wrote these rules out on two yellow sheets of paper as part of a speech. After the speech someone asked him for the sheets of paper and Leonard handed them over without a thought. Later, the New York Times asked him to write a column expanding on these rules, so he had to rewrite them. Meanwhile, the original papers were listed for sale, and Leonard had to buy them back for $600! Leonard went on to read us the rules, which are funny simply because they're so basic. He likes to bandy about the word Hooptedoodle, a word that sums up the intent behind his rules and has a sound that conveys its meaning: prose that is descriptive, flowery, extraneous and cluttered and, by definition, not dialogue. Leonard is a proponent of the "show, don't tell" school of writing, and said that he dislikes reading descriptions of what characters look like. He would rather paint of picture of the character with dialogue and action.

Telling us about his writing process, Leonard said he eschews computers. He likes to feel directly connected to his pen and paper, with no computer screen involved. He writes for eight hours each day, and no longer uses outlines for his chapters. He would rather see what his characters do, and that might not be what he originally had in mind. In order to get into the mind of his characters he may rewrite a scene from a different character's point of view. He shared an interesting anecdote about how a critic's accusation that he wrote his female characters in the style of Mickey Spillane led to Leonard taking a closer look how he writes the women in his novels. Because of this introspection, when he writes female characters he now thinks of them as simply as people, rather than women.

Leonard told us that it is said that it takes a million words to develop one's own writing voice. A prolific writer like Elmore has certainly achieved that many times over, leaving us with a distinctive voice in contemporary American literature.

Room, by Emma Donoghue

2010-12-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

"Room" is a breathtaking, captivating and suspenseful novel. Donoghue vividly depicts her story's narrator's world, and tells the story from his singular point of view. If I reveal anything else about the story, though, I would take away from the jaw-dropping awe that comes with discovering that world for yourself. I don't want to spoil it for you. Which leaves me in the tricky position of trying to put together a book review without revealing any of the plot. I'll just say this: you will be drawn in by the compelling premise of Donoghue's story, as well as by Donoghue's ability to convey her narrator's story so convincingly. And, as if all that isn't enough for one novel, Donoghue structures the plot of "Room" with a great deal of finesse, withholding information and then artfully releasing it bit by bit, so as to maximize suspense.

"Room" was an uncomfortable read. At its start it was apparent there was something vague and unidentifiably wrong in the world Donoghue was painting, and as I tried to make sense of it I was reminded of a slowly developing Polaroid picture that still had blurry, unidentifiable forms. I felt a creepiness. I wanted to put the book down, but I didn't -- the suspense had me in its vice grip. Then, very slowly, the edges sharpened and the forms became recognizable. By that time "Room" was one of those books that demanded to be read. I let the phone ring, and forgot to start dinner; I couldn't put "Room" down.

There are great books, like "Room," and there is also life outside of great books, and sometimes the two intersect. Which brings me to my story of the bar mitzvah party I attended last night, in this year of endless bar and bat mitzahs. Last night, amidst the flutter of near-teenagers and the boom of Cotton Eyed Joe blasting over the sound system, I was struck at how a party can be very much like a novel. A party and a novel each consists of a set of characters forced by circumstance -- the constraint of a party room or the plot that tosses them together -- to interact, which is something that inevitably creates conflict. The cast of characters at a bar mitzvah party is stock: there are shy kids who hang at the perimeter, heads tilted towards the floor; there are gregarious, macho boys; there are flirty girls with shiny, long hair who have one foot in the adult world; there are the one-drink-too-many older relatives; there are the I'm-way-too-cool-to-get-on-the-dance-floor older siblings, and of course, there are the boisterous, middle-aged friends of the hostess who take advantage of every bar mitzvah party to bust a move. (Guess which category I fall in?) When I see the shy kids I'm reminded of the shy kid I once was and I want to shake those kids out of their self-conscious, self-inflicted oppression. When I see the flirty girls I want to say to them hey, slow down, have some fun, and be sure to be nice to the chubby kids. It's only now that I'm pushing 50 that I see that it's only when we can step out of the stories we have written about our own lives that we are afforded the opportunity to transcend the constraints we've imposed on ourselves.

Which brings me back to "Room," which, in a very round-a-bout way, illuminates one of the central struggles we humans face as we make our way through this world: the impulse we have to impose constraints over ourselves. In "Room" we get a tousled, yet heartbreakingly poignant riff on this theme, as we see a transcendence so astounding it can't help but make us reflect on the limitations and potential in own lives.

The End of Overeating, by David Kessler

2010-11-23T19:29:00.000-08:00

My husband and I closed in like vultures. It was 8:30pm, typically a dangerous time of rampant and flagrant late-night snacking in our house and our daughter had just come home from a friend's birthday dinner at the upscale restaurant chain Naked Tchopstix with a carton of leftovers. I placed a chunk of Kung Pao Chicken in my mouth. The texture: firm within, covered with a bumpy crust, and then coated by a silky sauce. The flavor: bursts of sweet, then savory, (the newly discovered taste of umami came to mind), then the tang of citrus, then a layer of saltiness, and more sweet. My mouth was paralyzed, flooded with pleasure. As I started to chew, the delicate crunch of the coating slowly dissolved into the smooth sauce, all of this melding into the tender texture of the chicken inside. Charles took a bite, and we looked at each other incredulously, our eyes wide. The question silently passed between us: How could anything taste so impossibly good?

It has seemed to me for awhile now that the food available these days, compared to the food I ate as a child four decades ago, is vastly different. Enter "The End of Overeating," an eye-opening book by David Kessler, a physician and former commissioner of the USDA, that confirms every one of my paranoid suspicions.

Sugar, fat and salt. Kessler writes that, although there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these substances, the food industry overloads our food with them and this diabolically changes the chemistry in our brains, thereby messing up how we regulate our intake. These three ingredients make food compelling, and the purposeful loading and layering of our foods with sugar, fat and salt makes them highly hedonic. Today's food producers design products so that consumers ingest substances with differing stimuli and sensations, taking into account such factors as mouthfeel, temperature, texture and viscosity.

As Kessler explains, the sugar/fat/salt issue effects all processed food, from packaged food in our grocery stores to the food we eat in restaurants. Kessler devotes several chapters revealing the practices of some of the marketplace's worst offenders, and then offers solutions, explaining in detail how we can retrain our brains, reducing the craving these substances give rise to and ease the neuro-biochemical roller coaster changes they induce.

The Kung Pao Chicken had a few stalks of deep, green broccoli. I took a bite. It was crunchy, yet soft, and cloyingly sweet; the taste of sugar completely overshadowed any vegetable flavor. When broccoli tastes like sugar it's no wonder that, as a society, we find ourselves at the mercy of the array of prepared foods sold in our groceries and restaurants. Willpower won't always trump our brain's quest for pleasure. In the battle of the bulge our appetites will win unless we arm ourselves with knowledge about the larger forces at play, forces that lead to food laden with unhealthful, addictive ingredients.

Jonathan Lethem, Part Two

2010-11-17T18:28:00.000-08:00

In my last post I tried to relay all the wisdom Jonathan Lethem imparted during his time at Butler. Since then, though, more bits of Lethem wisdom have floated back into my consciousness and I realize that because he was so generous in sharing his thoughts about his writing process, and about writing in general, there is much more to tell.

So here's part two:

When a student asked Lethem what authors have influenced him, he reported that, depending on what he's writing, a wide selection of authors inform his work. Still, he gave us a short list of the authors that became what he called structural influences, impacting everything he writes: Lewis Carroll, Shirley Jackson, Graham Greene and Raymond Chandler.

Lethem said he first aspired to the writing life as a boy. He said he had always been enthralled by books, but it wasn't until he read "Alice in Wonderland" that he had the sense that an author's hand was responsible for structuring the words on the page. He added that it wasn't long after that he developed an awareness of what constituted good writing -- and what didn't. He used "The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories" series as an example of the type of books he read that were predictable and formulaic, and lost the surprise and mystery he craved. Lethem said his goal as a writer now is to constantly challenge himself by exploring the uncertainty in the world, in an effort to find the surprise in a story.

Lethem then spoke about writing in general, saying that it is an intellectual pursuit that organizes one's thinking and increases one's understanding of the world, adding that writing is a game for the tortoise, not the hare. He compared writing to athletics, saying that the practice of training every day is common to both pursuits.

He discussed the genesis of the Tourettes suffering protagonist in "Motherless Brooklyn," and in doing so delved even deeper into the meaning writing holds for him. The idea of a character with Tourettes syndrome came from reading one of Oliver Sacks case studies. The man in the case study was a brain surgeon whose flagrant symptoms subsided only when he operated. When pondering the contrast between the chaos and the focus in the surgeon's head, Lethem saw a comparison in his writing. He imagined his own brain as a generator of a random boil of ideas that becomes focused when he writes. The disparity between the wild chaos and single-mindedness in the brain surgeon's mind echoed Lethem's view of his writing process. Further riffing on this theme, Lethem then saw his bustling, brash hometown of Brooklyn as "having Tourettes." Painting this line of thought broadly, Lethem said that, like Tourettes symptoms, the "wrongness" and bullshit that are generated in his own mind are what is golden to writing.

All this, of course, culminated in Lethem's welling up when he spoke of those moments of connection, when an author experiences readers "getting" the work. This is the moment that stuck. It's rare thing to find someone brave enough to peel back the artifice, reminding us that at the most fundamental level, the essence of the impulse to put pen to paper is the basic desire to connect.

Oh, one last thing. Lethem has an awesome website, offering free stories and song lyrics for others to develop. Check it out at http://www.jonathanlethem.com

In two weeks Elmore Leonard is scheduled to read at Butler, but until then, more book reviews!

Jonathan Lethem

2010-11-16T10:22:00.001-08:00

Last night Jonathan Lethem dazzled the crowd at Butler by reading the third chapter of his upcoming novel, which takes place in late '50s Queens. The chapter, titled Grey Goose, takes its name from the title of a Burl Ives song featured in those pages. Here, Miriam, the young daughter of Rose, a single mother (and apologetic communist), is on a quest to lose her virginity. Expectedly, the prose was rich and textured, and the sentences were saturated with nuance and color.

Lethem's two-day visit to Butler was off to a breathless start. After the reading it was time for questions from the audience, many of which had to do with the craft of writing. Lethem advised that the process of revision is where the real writing happens; that editing is a process of self-understanding. His best advise to aspiring writers is to write every day, although having said that he admitted his own practice is less than consistent. He joked that if someone were to take an average of the time he spends each day writing it would come to about 17 minutes! Even so, making writing an automatic part of the day is important, he said, adding that one's relationship to his or her writing practice is also important. He prefers to think of the practice of writing each day as a habituation (something you do because you love it) rather than a discipline (something you make yourself do).

In response to another comment, Lethem agreed that a theme common to many of his books is the negative space left by a missing or deceased mother, most notably in (my personal favorite) "The Fortress of Solitude." He said readers incorrectly assume that this book is autobiographical because it carries within it many details of Lethem's young life (Lethem's mother died when he was 14), but that the plot of "The Fortress of Solitude," most of which takes place after the mother absents herself, is completely unlike his own childhood.

When asked about his newest book, "Chronic City," Lethem said he aimed to emulate the "chilly" characters of his favorite conceptual writers but that what he ended up writing were "hot" characters, and the mess of their humanity gummed up the "chilly" concept.

Today there was more Lethem: a Q & A in the morning followed by pizza. At the Q & A Lethem spoke about "Motherless Brooklyn," saying he got the idea for a Tourettes inflicted protagonist by reading Oliver Sacks. At the time he was living in the Bay Area, an area much more laid back than the East Coast, and as he ruminated about the frenetic energy and spurts of thought and language that are the hallmarks of Tourettes, he came to see his hometown of Brooklyn as "having Tourettes."

He went on to spend a good part of the Q & A addressing the subject of reading, emphasizing that no writing happens in a vacuum. Lethem was adamant in saying that writing is an intellectual pursuit rooted in language, and that every single word carries with it layers of meaning ascribed to it by the culture it exists in. He said that the supposition that a writer can generate work in an unsullied, pure environment, without contamination by the surrounding culture, is ludicrous. Reading and writing are reciprocal activities that feed off the other. In other words, read, read, read!

Then the pizza arrived, and even as we ate, Lethem generously continued to share his thoughts. In fact, it was during lunch that the most remarkable moment of Lethem's time at Butler occurred. One of my classmates asked Lethem what he thought about the workshop process (This is the structure of a standard creative writing class. Writers hone their craft by presenting work to a class of their peers who then offer feedback.) Lethem first commented that it has become fashionable to disparage the workshop process and say it turns out mediocre writers whose work all reads the same. He then offered his opinion: that writing workshops offer writers that golden, sought after opportunity to connect with other writers. A chance to say, "Hello? Anybody there?" through the can at the end of the string and find a "Yes!" at the other end. Lethem said that, as writers, this is what we all want, to be heard. And at this, Lethem's eyes actually welled up.

Butler's semester of visiting writers has brought authors of all stripes. While all of them read enthusiastically from their work, some clearly came with an agenda to engage, while others did not. But even of the authors who sought a mutuality to the author/reader dialogue, none of them did it with the articulate, generous, open-heartedness of Jonathan Lethem. An author who is brought to the brink of tears by discussing connecting with others through art? It leaves me all but speechless. All I can say is come back soon, Jonathan. We want more.

Madeleine Albright

2010-11-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

On International Food Day the teacher in the children's book, "Yoko," tells her students to, "Try everything!" Friday I thought I would do just that by attending a talk by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. As I made my way through Michigan Road's construction traffic, though, I wondered if I should bail. Maybe the hassle getting there was a sign. I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not politically savvy, and I wondered if I would get anything out of hearing an ex-politico expound about foreign policy.

When Albright walked on stage I immediately knew that I made the right decision by not bailing. Now in her 70s, Albright had a gracious, erudite air about her. She opened with a funny, self-effacing anecdote that set the tone for a casual discussion. Throughout the talk Albright was accessible, witty and engaging. She approached all questions with candor, handling even difficult ones with aplomb.

When asked if she thought women brought a different sensibility to the job of Secretary of State, Albright replied that although women may bring more consensus building to the task, both men and women want the same thing: to defend the interests of their state. When asked about her thoughts about the results of the mid-term election, she explained how important it is for elected officials to work across party lines, recounting her work in expanding the role of NATO and how she found an unexpected and unlikely partner in Jesse Helms. When asked how she would rate the Obama administration so far, she said that although they had the added task of trying to overcome the legacy of the Bush administration's heavy-hand, she would give them a B+, praising in particular Obama's trip to India.

When Albright was asked about the subject of her newest book, "Read My Pins," she told the story of how she began to wear brooches. She recounted that Saddam Hussein printed a poem about her, comparing her to a serpent. In response she wore a broach in the shape of a snake. Thus the start of a tradition of wearing brooches whose designs matched the task at hand.

Albright seemed to enjoy discussing her close relationship with Condoleesa Rice (Albright's father taught Rice) and affectionately retold the story of the conversation in which Rice admitted to her that she was a Republican.

Albright was asked about her now infamous statement on the show 60 Minutes. In response to a leading question by Lesley Stahl, Albright had said that she stood by the sanctions against Iraq -- even though they resulted in the death of half a million Iraqi children. In a moment of refreshing candor, she admitted she misspoke and that she wishes she would have framed her answer differently. She reminded us that no one goes through life without saying something he or she later regrets. Then, in her own defense, she went on to dispute Stahl's figures. She added that Iraq was never denied food or medicine, explaining that ultimately it was Hussein who was responsible for the deaths because he used his country's resources to build palaces when the citizens of his country were in need.

Albright said that as a girl she began international relations clubs in the schools she attended and then made herself president. Now, in her role as teacher at Georgetown University, her goal is to make foreign policy less foreign. She defined foreign policy in simple terms: getting a country to do something you want. It was in these simple terms that Albright shared her stories, and she did it with style, grace and an open heart. I learned a lot listening to Madeleine Albright. I may not be well-versed in foreign policy but I do know that it's always a good idea to try something new; you never know what it will bring. I had no idea that in Madeleine Albright I would find an amazing role model, a woman with integrity who just happened to be our first female Secretary of State.

Lorrie Moore

2010-11-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

What was that sound, you say? Oh, that was the buzz that emanated from Butler University last week as the English Department readied itself for the upcoming visit by author, Lorrie Moore.

It was back in the '80s that Moore first entered the literary world, and she did it with a bang: her first published work was comprised of short stories she wrote for her master's thesis. She is now the author of three short story collections, and three novels. Her newest work is the novel, "A Gate at the Stairs."

Moore opened the evening by reading a section from "A Gate at the Stairs," and then went on to read the short story "Foes," which hasn't yet been published in the U.S.

After her readings she took a few questions. When asked if it had been difficult to write the more troubling scenes in AGATS, she said no, adding that the purpose of those scenes was to illustrate the damaging things adults unwittingly do to children. She also spoke to the setting of AGATS, saying that although the word "Wisconsin" is never used in the book, she wrote of a fictional place that resembles Wisconsin so she could "have a conversation with it."

When asked about the publishing world's current state of flux, Moore answered that she would be a writer even if she was not paid for her work, mentioning that although we may think that copyright laws have been around forever, they were created a mere 100 years ago. The upending of the status quo in the publishing world is, in essence, taking us back to those days before copyright laws when writing was unprotected.

And then it was over. Moore tossed out a thank you and headed for the book signing table. It all happened so fast. I found myself wondering if I had really seen Moore or if she had been a figment of my imagination. True, Lorrie Moore had read her work -- which was sharp and witty -- and answered questions. So why, when all was said and done, was I left with an undeniable feeling of dissatisfaction? Lorrie Moore was all-business. She kept herself at-a-distance. as she read her sharp and witty writing she gave no hint of the person who wrote those words.

Sena Jeter Naslund

2010-11-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last week The Writers' Center brought in author Sena Jeter Naslund to speak on the topic of, "Structure, Style and Subject." I haven't read any of Naslund's books, (the most widely known is "Ahab's Wife"), but I was excited to hear what she would have to say about structure and style. "Subject" is a fundamental aspect of writing and although it mildly piqued my interest to know why Naslund choose certain topics, I came to her lecture to learn about writing; I knew the real learning would come from a discussion of structure and style.

Naslund had a thoughtful way about her. She chose her words carefully and had obviously put thought into preparing her speech. Unfortunately, Naslund got so involved with each of the anecdotes that told of how she came to pick her novels' subjects, she ran out of time before she could delve much into the topic of style. And she didn't get a chance to broach the topic of structure at all (Well, to be completely honest, she might have touched upon it, as towards the end of her talk I nodded off, but that was mostly because I got bored with all the anecdotes.) Not only did Naslund cheat us out of a discussion of the topics of structure and style, but she also missed out on a chance to read from her new book, "Adam and Eve." ("Adam and Eve" was just reviewed in The New York Times, which reported that it was a bizarre, crazy, unbelievable riff on the original. How ironic that a writer so wild and loose on the page can be so controlled and overly-focused in person. I guess it just goes to show that just because someone can write compelling stories doesn't necessarily mean they can be compelling writing teachers.

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

2010-10-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

Never before has a new novel brought with it such hype and hyperbole. Franzen on the cover of Newsweek. Franzen on the Oprah show -- and this after he got his previous novel, The Corrections, booted off her book club list! Franzen on the president's reading list, with his new not-yet-released book phographed in the clutches of Obama. Franzen on the cusp of a dustup in the literary world, such that the word Franzenfreude is coined in his honor; well, honor may not be exactly the right way to characterize the word. (Franzenfreude refers to the phenomenon that the powers-to-be of the literary world take work seriously only if it's written by men. White men.

So it was with much interest and anticipation that I sat down to listen to the audiobook version of "Freedom," which I had to nab from the library of the shiny suburb to the north, as my local system didn't stock it. And it is with great pleasure that I tell you, YES! It did live up to its hype! Freedom tells the story of the lives and marriage of Patti and Walter Berglund over the course of several decades.

Franzen's great strength is in the fullness, texture and depth with which he draws his characters. It's shocking how completely he gets into his characters' heads. Sometimes I think that characterization is a writer's primary task: draw the characters precisely, completely, and believably and they will do the rest, behaving in a way that befits their personalities, and thereby creates the plot. Franzen is also spectacular at elucidating the world that his characters maneuver in, and showing us the interplay between the state of society and the state of the individual, and how each of these two conditions effects the other. (Which brings to mind the old adage: The personal is the political.)

Despite my under-developed fiction gene; despite that I think that nowadays memoirs have supplanted novels as the most culturally significant way to tell a broad, far-reaching story, Franzen's new novel reminded me of the power of that form. When a novel is executed with such exquisite care and attention it can't help but compel. I'm only sorry to have finished "Freedom," and that I'll have to wait for Franzen's next offering.

Oh, and by the way, if you're an audiobook fan -- get your hands on this one! The narrator does a fabulous job conveying the pessimistic, personality-disordered grouchiness that is part and parcel of Franzen's characters.

And, click on the link below for Salon's recent Franzen interview

Reading Club interview: Jonathan Franzen answers your questions

The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman

2010-10-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

I love to read young, Jewish authors, and Goodman's previous novel, "Intuition," a story about institutional dysfunction at a research lab felt spot-on, so I was psyched to begin "The Cookbook Collector."

Because I had such high hopes for Goodman's book, I went against my usual practice of bailing out on books that don't work for me and stuck with it until the end, but unfortunately, by the time I reached the end the novel had become a painfully boring, hum-drum read. In "The Cookbook Collector" Goodman portrays the lives of two sisters whose personalities and lives an diverge dramatically. Sympathetic characters -- no, make that relatable characters -- can allow an author to get away with a multitude of sins, but I never related to or felt invested in either of the two main characters' lives. This is a novel heavy on dialogue, in which the characters chat endlessly about their feelings and motivations. It could be argued that, in this case, the dialogue almost serves as exposition. The end result is that all that explaining slowed down the pace, and there was not a lot of forward momentum to the plot.

Also, as a side point, although not an insignificant one, although I love that Goodman includes a thread about a sect of Hasidim, (the Bialystockers, a thinly veiled riff on the Lubavitchers and the Chabad movement), I thought her treatment of this group was heavy handed and pandered to Hasidic stereotypes in such a way as to almost render those characters caricatures. Goodman concludes "The Cookbook Collector" by delving into the issues of family lineage and Jewish continuity, issues of great interest to me, but even so, in my eyes, "The Cookbook Collector" didn't quite capture the right recipe.

Jean Valentine

2010-10-18T11:50:00.001-07:00

Let me just say this upfront: I know absolutely nothing about poetry. I haven't read much of it, and the few poems I've read I didn't understand. Occasionally I'll come across a poem that is more accessible than the rest, and a glimmer of hope will flicker through me that I'll gain an appreciation for this art form, but most poems leave me perplexed, scratching my head.

The poet Jean Valentine spoke at Butler tonight. In preparation for Valentine's reading I visited the library, taking out every one of her books. Over the past few weeks I looked through the pages of her books, sampling the poems. I was intrigued, taken by the sequence of her words. Even I could tell there were layers of meaning within but, alas, even the outermost of those layers remained out of my reach. So when I took my seat tonight in the Butler auditorium, I brought with me a deep curiosity. I was eager to find if I could come any closer to understanding Valentine's work by hearing her read it. Also, I wanted to see what Valentine would bring to the table as a writer; if she, like last month's poet, Yusef Komunyakaa, would bring a sense of mutuality to the reading, share her experience as a writer and engage with the audience.

From the start it was clear Valentine was up for the challenge. She read poems from her new book, "Break the Glass," several of which incorporated the subject of Lucy, the 3-million year old skeleton unearthed in the '70s in Ethiopia. Valentine's reading was lovely. Did the reading bring me any closer to understanding these poems? Not really. My experience in hearing the poems read was not unlike my enjoyment the few times I've gone to the symphony: I didn't understand the meaning of the program but I took pleasure in the sound. But even though my poetry literacy hadn't changed, there was still a revelation in store for me and it came with the Q and A session that followed the reading. In conversation with the audience Valentine was generous, and I learned not only about her writing process, but also about the ideal way for a writer to navigate the world of readers and other writers.

When asked about her use of blank space within poems, Valentine reported that she employs this feature to accent the emotional effect of timing in her poems when they are spoken. When asked how it came to be that Lucy became her muse, she amused us by saying that she first saw Lucy's face in an issue of AARP's magazine, and joked that AARP wanted to show its readers someone older than themselves! She said that the photo of Lucy's face effected her powerfully in a way she couldn't (and can't) explain, only that it spoke to her. When Valentine was asked how she knows when a poem is finished she told us of the three poet friends she uses as readers, adding that she endlessly revises. In response to another question she told us her early influences were ee cummings, (she liked how he flaunted the established rules and had a dreamy sensibility), and Emily Dickinson.

I asked Valentine about her beginnings as a poet, and she said she knew from the tender age of nine that she wanted to be a poet. Then, in a surprise move, employing a phrase she would use a few more times with other audience members after she was done with me, she turned the tables and asked me, "How about you?" After a moment of stun, I managed to reclaim my composure and say that, like her, poetry has always fascinated me; which I suppose is true, but perhaps not exactly in the way she might imagine!

Valentine seemed to take genuine pleasure in taking part in a conversation about her work, and that open-hearted engagement with the world can't help but draw others in. Even someone for who struggles to make sense of poetry, like me.

My Little Red Book, by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

2010-10-17T07:12:00.001-07:00

"My Little Red Book," a compilation of menstruation stories by a wide variety of women, was published by Twelve books, a relatively new publisher whose goal is to publish a small number of books each year (one per month...hm, like a woman's cycle!) that illuminate less explored aspects of our culture.

The essays in "My Little Red Book" range from winsome to sarcastic to downright hysterical. The stories that stayed with me the most were the ones in which women told tales of how, as young girls who hadn't yet learned about menstruation, they witnessed evidence of it. In these essays we get a glimpse back into the strange ways our young, innocent minds explain things we don't have the ability to comprehend. These stories bring to mind the childhood memories we all have of various aspects of the adult world, and how dangerous and frightening the terrain of adults can seem when seen through the eyes of a child.

It's a great world when subjects that used to be taboo can be exposed to the light of day and discussed freely. Now, if I could only convince my daughters, (who automatically reject every book recommendation I've ever made), to read it.

The Unhealthy Truth -- How Our Food is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It, by Robyn O'Brien

2010-10-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

Last month I received a copy of my family tree from a distant cousin. It's a scroll covered with rows of tiny black boxes, and each box is inscribed with even tinier black letters. The thing is huge -- end to end it measures over 8 feet! And, confirming the long held family legend, the name in the box at the pinnacle of this wide pyramid holds the name of the man who is credited with starting the Hassidic movement back in the 18th century, The Baal Shem Tov.

It's not just The Baal Shem Tov that draws me in, though. All the names on the family tree fascinate me, so I've taken it upon myself to try and find out who all these distant cousins are. My most useful research tool: Facebook! I'm still in the process of searching, but I've already found at least 50 cousins, and they reside in every part of the world. I never knew I had hundreds of cousins, but now that I know to look for them, I find them everywhere!

When I read "The Unhealthy Truth," this same scenario came to mind, but this time concerning the sorry state of our food supply: the not noticing, but then discovering it everywhere once you know to look for it. Robyn O'Brien wrote "The Unhealthy Truth" after learning that her children had severe food allergies. She began addressing this issue by doing what I'm doing: research. What she found is both illuminating and unsettling. She discovered that the rates of allergy and asthma have risen exponentially is the last several years. Just like my newly found cousins, O'Brien found that kids like hers were everywhere. She attributes the rise in these illnesses to 4 factors: our highly industrial environment; our overuse of antibiotics; increased pollutants and environmental toxins; and our increased consumption of processed foods laden with chemical additives.

The parts of "The Unhealthy Truth" that intrigued me most were the sections in which O'Brien exposes how Big Pharma and Big Food have corrupted the realms of food and health. She tells the story of how, in her efforts to educate the public about food allergies, she tried to elicit support from FAAN (Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network). She thought her work would naturally into FAAN's framework, but every effort she made at trying to form a relationship was met with stony silence, until finally they ended up suing her with bogus claims. As she continued to research allergies, and the organizations in place to educate the public about them, she discovered that the FAAN web site was subsidized by Kraft Foods and peanut growers.

Another provocative issue highlighted in "The Unhealthy Truth" is the potential downside to all the genetically modified food we are eating. Foreign genes inserted into a plant cause it to produce new proteins -- and these new proteins are potential allergens. A mother might think a certain food was safe to give her highly allergic child but, if that food was made with an ingredient that came from a genetically modified plant, it could potentially cause a life-threatening allergic reaction.

These are just some of the eye-opening facts in "The Unhealthy Truth." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the shelves of our grocery stores are filled with processed and unnatural stuff that masquerades as food. If you take even a cursory look at the state of our food supply, it is obvious there are problems everywhere, at every level. After reading "The Unhealthy Truth" I can't help but start being more mindful of the food I feed my family. You never know what you'll find out there when you take a really good look. You could find something really troubling, like the myriad issues plaguing our food supply, or you might find something that stuns and amazes you -- like constellations of cousins found all over the planet .

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers

2010-10-10T12:49:00.001-07:00

When I moved to Indianapolis, over 11 years ago, I met three neighborhood women. Back then we all had 1-year old babies, and 3 of us also had 2 older children, all roughly the same ages: 5 and 3. I didn't know it then -- at the time I couldn't see past the high maintenance child care -- but throughout the years we would forge long-standing friendships.

This year all 4 of our youngest children turn 13. They all have Bnai Mitzvahs scheduled. This weekend marked the second one. Last night, on the dance floor, I was thinking about the significance of the year. I love a good party as much as the next girl, maybe more but, while dancing with my three close friends, my mind wandered, and what settled in was the realization of how weighty this year of simchas is. I wasn't giving short shrift to the obvious significance of the year -- that our newly-minted teens are becoming responsible members of the Jewish community -- but I couldn't help but feel the passing of our lives as mothers to young children. It was a sad and joyful moment, looking back on our 11-plus years of mothering and friendship. I thought about our friendships and what came to mind first were the big, dramatic moments -- like when my friends swooped in and took care of my kids when I had my tonsils out; when they helped care for two of my kids when my middle child had an emergency appendectomy. Those are the things extended family usually help with, and because no one in our little group has extended family in the area, we have come to depend on each other. Then I reflected on the little, routine, everyday moments -- those smaller, everyday transactions like carpooling, venting frustrations over the phone, or joined holiday celebrations. Those are what makes up the bulk of the foundation of our relationships. Each one of those small transactions is like another pour from the pitcher, the layers of all these moments accruing, creating a deep, family-like bond.

Family. My parents divorced when I was young and my dad raised me in a town far away from our extended family. Sometimes I think the underlying theme of my life has been my attempt to recreate and recapture that elusive element. Even though I now have a family of my own, I think there is a part of me that is always searching. In "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," Dave Eggers tells the story of his own family's dissolution. When Dave was in his early twenties, within a span of just months, both his mother and his father died of cancer. Because Dave's older brother and sister had commitments, Dave was left to care for his 7-year old brother. Eggers's memoir is a shining example of the type of fluid writing that many teachers nowadays encourage (and English teachers of yesteryear worked to quashed out of us). Eggers's story isn't easy to read -- I mean, how comfortable could it be to read a story about someone so young who had to deal with incredible loss, while at the same time bravely navigating the unknown by raising his own brother? Still, despite the difficult subject matter, because Eggers is such a lay-it-all-on-the-table writer, I found his memoir uplifting, in the same way you might be relieved after the burden of a long-held secret is revealed.

Family. Like Eggers, I guess we all strive to make the best out of our situations. Like Eggers, we may try to recreate a sense of family to fill in the gaps. Sometimes, like in Eggers's case, we may need to strike out on our own and be pioneers. Or, if you're really lucky, you might find family in unexpected places, like in the smiling faces of your friends on the dance floor.

Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert

2010-09-30T10:26:00.001-07:00

The phenomenon of the celebrity chef was evident Thursday night when Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert joined forces at Clowes Hall. The event was sold-out; the crowd was a mix of well-heeled, privileged foodies from the shiny suburb just north of Indy and sandaled, Whole Foods-shopping, granola types. When I first heard news of this event I was surprised to find it would not include a cooking demonstration, or even a discussion of culinary technique -- and indeed, there were no spatulas or whisks used in this program. In fact, aside from the two couches and coffee table onstage, the only prop was an over-sized bucket of iced beer, the contents of which facilitated the two-hour conversation about food between these two celebrity chefs.

Initially, I was dubious about the idea of hearing these two men talk about food. I wondered if I could connect with them. After all, just because a person can cook, or can cook on TV, doesn't necessarily mean that what he has to say is worth listening to. But Bourdain and Ripert did have something special to offer. There was a genuine affection and a natural chemistry between the two men that made for an engaging and lively discussion. Also, their contrasting personalities played off each other nicely. Ripert's calm and thoughtful manner was the perfect foil for Bourdain's gregarious, unedited and provocative persona.

Some of the more noteworthy moments of the evening came when Bourdain let loose. He took on The Olive Garden (for bastardizing Italian food), and chef Gordon Ramsey (for his punishing ways on the show "Hell's Kitchen"). Bourdain's most entertaining tirade was when he took on one of the more cherished icons of the foodie world, Alice Waters. I heard Waters speak at the Indianapolis Museum of Art a year or two ago, and I remember her mentioning a program that would promote organic school lunches. Bourdain concurred that Water's goal of organic school lunches is laudable, but then put things in perspective by pragmatically suggesting that before funds are directed towards making sure a child's lunch is organic (complete with a flower vase decorating the table!), those funds should first go towards making sure the child can read.

I hadn't expected this non-cooking program about food to be so enjoyable. As I left, I reflected on how the two men, especially Bourdain, connected so well with the audience. Both men, despite being in the spotlight, were able to be themselves onstage. Each came across as comfortable in his own skin. This ease lent them a natural magnetism, and reminded me of what a precious gift self-expression is -- how the ability to express oneself facilitates connections -- and isn't that what we're all looking for, anyway? Bourdain and Ripert made for a fun night -- and this without consuming a single calorie.

You Don't Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem

2010-09-26T19:13:00.000-07:00

Our family's tradition is to hold big dinner parties during the weekend that falls during the eight-day holiday of Sukkot. On those nights big, aluminum trays heavy with lasagna, and baskets of garlic bread cover the table in our sukkah. As the sun sets we light an oil-burning lantern that hangs from one of the roof beams and it casts a cozy, yellow glow over the faces of our guests. This year, though, something unexpected happened. This year, the Bat Mitzvah of the daughter of a dear family friend was scheduled over the holiday weekend so, instead of the frantic bustle of big dinners, we had the honor of attending this special event.

Although I was excited to be a part of my friend's daughter's Bat Mitzvah, because I wouldn't be holding our usual dinner parties, I expected I might feel as though something was missing. What took me by surprise, though, was how meaningful the weekend ended up being despite the absence of our Sukkot dinners. In fact the experience of joining in a good friend's simcha touched my heart so deeply, I didn't miss the dinners at all. That was unexpected.

There were a few moments that stood out. The first came during the ceremony when the rabbi called the Bat Mitzvah girl by the wrong name. At that time the Bat Mitzvah girl was sitting way at the edge of the stage, not exactly close to the rabbi, but she had the moxie to interrupt him, and called out to remind him of her name! Moxie from a 13-year-old girl under the pressure of a Bat Mitzvah ceremony -- who knew? The next moment came later that evening, at the end of the kids' dance party. It was time for the closing song, which was, of course, Green Day's, "The Time of Your Life," (this was expected) and the kids had their arms around each other, singing and swaying to the music. And that's when, spontaneously, six of us adults -- all good friends of each other and the celebrating family -- formed our own little circle. We slung our arms over each others' shoulders, swayed and sang along like the teenagers. Sure, the song has been so overplayed that is has become a cliche, but it isn't every day that I get the chance to celebrate the important place my friends hold in my life. And the third moment? This one still has me floored. Turns out one of the guests at the Bat Mitzvah was just featured in the news. Her parents were killed in the Holocaust and, through several serendipitous twists of fate, JUST LAST WEEK she was reunited with a member of the French family who housed her and helped to smuggle her safely into America.

The weekend's lesson: even if I don't get what I expect, if I am able to keep an open mind, I may end up with something even better. Take Jonathan Lethem's, "You Don't Love Me Yet." I've never read a Lethem novel, but because he is scheduled to speak as part of Butler's writers series I felt spurred to fill in this particular literary gap. In "You Don't Love Me Yet" Lethem tells the story of the four members of a garage rock band. At the start, an avant-garde performance artist sets up a complaint hotline as an art exhibit and the female member of the band is charged with answering the phone. One of the callers, known only as The Complainer, intrigues the band member and the story is off. YDLMY was one wild ride, and although I didn't understand it, I sure liked it. What is Lethem's theme? I have no idea. In YDLMY, just as in my Sukkot weekend, I didn't get what I expected. But I sure had fun.

Check out the link below for the Bat Mitzvah guest's amazing story -- and no, unlike the recent fiction of the story of the man who reunited with the girl who tossed him apples over the camp fence -- this one is for real!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100924/us_yblog_upshot/after-62-years-holocaust-survivor-reunites-with-lost-friend-whose-passport-led-her-to-america

Yusef Komunyakaa

2010-09-23T10:30:00.001-07:00

Yet another perk of being a grad student at Butler is that not only does Butler bring in an astounding array of writers to give readings, but the writers also hold a separate Q & A session just for Butler students. This afternoon I sat in on Yusef Komunyakaa's Q & A session, amidst a couple of dozen undergrad and grad students.

Right away I could tell we were in for a treat. Mr. Komunyakaa has a distinctive demeanor: he was playful and thoughtful at the same time and had a warm, mischievous grin. He introduced himself by saying that his poetry carried a lot of insinuation and many possibilities of meaning. When he answered students questions, his answers were not straightforward, but open-ended, feeling as full of insinuation and possibility as his poetry.

Two aspects of the session warmed my heart. The first was that the students around me had a high level of attentiveness and preparedness; they were no slouches, and brought with them a plethora of intriguing and insight-drawing questions. Second, Komunyakaa was up and open to the challenge. Much later in the day when I saw him again, and I mentioned that the Q & A session had gone well, and K. agreed, saying it had developed into a good dialogue. And that was exactly right. Komunyakaa was clearly not an author going through the motions to sell books; he was utterly engaged in the mutuality of discussion -- reflecting on our questions, speaking his thoughts, and even tossing a question or two back to the students.

Here are some gems from his part of this thoughtful dialogue: K. told us that poems take us back to the oral tradition, and are templates for extended possibility...we read them to bring us to a mystery. Poems invite the reader to bring his or her own meaning to the words, thereby making the text elastic. When K. was asked why people write poems, he answered that we do this in order to have a dialogue, to understand. Lastly, he told us that poems have to have tension.

I had a few questions for K. about music, especially since his poetry is said not only to be lyrical, but have rhythm and tonality. First I asked K what his relationship is to jazz, and he responded that he loved the freedom of expression embodied in jazz. In addition, he told me jazz informs his poetry by giving an example of a wandering away from and then returning to a central theme. K. related this to his poetry, and said when he writes he likes to add discursive elements that are outside the logical narrative perspective. When I asked K. what he held close to his heart about Charlie Parker, the jazz saxophonist who is the subject of some of K.'s work, he said he is still struck by the astonishing tonality of Parker's work, along with the duality of Parker's love for his art and the agony the demons within him caused.

When I ask how he became a poet, K. recalled that the seeds of his poetry-making were sown in his childhood, in his singing to the radio, and reading of Whitman as well as the poets of the Harlem renaissance. For Komunyakaa, language is music, and the best way to gain access to the notes is to read.

K. devoted a portion of the discussion to poems about his tour in Vietnam and how it took him 14 years to write about his experiences there.

Lastly, I asked him about the 11 years he lived Bloomington, IN. K. said those years stayed with him, in a positive way, noting that much innovation in this country happens between the coasts.

Mr. Komunyakka, it was a pleasure. Next visiting poet: Jean Valentine.

Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder

2010-09-20T15:54:00.001-07:00

This morning my husband, Charles, asked if I had a good audiobook, as he needed something to listen to on his long drive to work. I recommended "Strength in What Remains."
"What's it about?" asked Charles.
"Well," I responded, "it's a genocide memoir."
There is a trend towards genocide memoirs these days. Despite the discomfort this label can evoke, these books have the ability to transform a story so mind-numbingly overwhelming in the scale and scope of its horror into a singular, compelling narrative. I'm reminded of Dave Eggers's "What is the What," another story of a massive-scale tragedy told through the eyes of one person. And what could possibly be more compelling than one person's story?
"Strength in What Remains" is the story of the recent genocide in Burundi and Rwanda, as told by Deogratias, a medical student from Burundi who is forced to travel through Rwanda to escape. Once in America Deo works delivering groceries and sleeps in the park. Ultimately, though, amidst Deo's gruesome struggles both in Africa and America, he finds help, and eventually returns to Burundi to help rebuild his homeland. Through Deo's efforts in Burundi, the reader is reminded that goodness can prevail over the suffering inflicted by the misguided or evil among us. Ultimately, what remains is hope.
"Strength in What Remains" is a difficult and inspiring story, and like all genocide memoirs it also educates, one of the side benefits of stories like these. The history, geography and political science (the stuff I snoozed through in high school and college) that informs the plot are told through the lens of one person's story, rendered, finally, in a personal, attention-holding way. Here's the tidbit that fascinated me the most, one I gleaned from Kidder's explanation of the seeds of the Hutu, Tutsi dispute: These two peoples coexisted peacefully until Belgium and Germany colonized the areas. The colonialists, in order to maximize their profits, chose to spend the majority of their time in Europe and therefore needed to use natives in order to implement their plans. To facilitate this, the colonialists created a mythology. They spread the story that the tutsis were white, even though their skin was black. Then the colonialists gave the tutsis power over the hutus, charging the tutsis with enforcing their mandate that the hutus do their back breaking labor. By the time Burundi and Rwanda reverted back to self-government, the rift between the tutsis and the hutus had been cemented.
I was glad to have listened to Kidder's beautifully told story about Deogratias. Next time, though, if I want Charles to listen to something other than NPR, I'll have to find a way to rephrase the genocide memoir label.

Kim Addonizio

2010-09-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

I recently had the honor and privilege of being included in a group of faculty and students that took poet/novelist Kim Addonizio out to dinner before her scheduled reading. I was so psyched. As a new grad student in Butler's English department, my mission is to milk the experience for all it is worth. Butler brings in a lot of famous writers, and in service of my mission I am determined to meet as many of them as possible. Now that I had a spot at Addonizio's dinner table, though, panic struck. What would I talk about with this famous author? But wait, I thought. Kim Addonizio's novels are set in the Bay Area, and the author herself lives in Oakland. That's something! I grew up in San Francisco, and my mom lived in Oakland. That small sliver of commonality in the Venn diagram of our lives gave me hope. Maybe all I had to do to connect with Addonizio was find a way to oh-so-casually drop this little tidbit into the dinner conversation. "Kim," I would say, "did you know we share a common geography?" and our Bay Area sisterhood would instantly forge. Like a true insider I would ask, "Is McArthur Boulevard still teeming with streetwalkers, and do they still get incrementally fancier the further you drive? And -- don't laugh -- but as I pictured her acknowledging my savvy, in-the-know question, this is how I imagined she would reciprocate: "Oh, Susan, they do!" And hey, have you ever had the Black and Tan sundae at Fentons?" (Fentons is Oakland's semi-famous ice cream parlor, and ice cream has always been my drug of choice.) And if all that wasn't enough grist for the mill to establish our sisterhood, there are the small matters of grit and bad decision making. The characters in Addonizio's novels tend to show both these qualities, and I was certain this was born of the grit Addonizio showed and the bad decisions she must have made in her own life. Double kinship! Kim and I were going to be tight! I couldn't believe how much we had in common! Well, except for the "tats," of course, but I was confident that, despite my unadorned skin, Kim and I were sure to bond. Our tablemates were going to sit by and watch our friendship meld with open-jawed awe.

So that's how I found myself, Thursday night, sitting nervously on a mile-high stack of unrealistic expectations, across the table from Kim Addonizio, ready to dish about our shared hometowns. And how did it go, you ask? Well, Kim was congenial, pleasant and affable, but she was pretty much all business. Not exactly forthcoming about her own life, and not especially inquisitive about anyone else's at our table . I guess I assumed a wide-eyed curiosity would be the hallmark of any writer, but Addonizio came off as, to me at least, a little guarded (perhaps it was me who was guarded?) When I look back on the evening, though, I have to laugh. Why should I have expected an instant friendship with a total stranger just because we both hail from the same part of the country or because we both have an interest in writing? There could have been a million things on her mind that night. Who knows, maybe she was tired. Maybe it ends up being a big drag to travel across the country to spend time with strangers (who carry all sorts of expectations with them!) and read the same poems over and over. And the Bay Area connection I so unrealistically thought would magically bond us? The couple of attempts I made at bringing up our common Bay Area provenance were met with nonchalance.

After dinner we all moved on to Butler for her reading. At Butler Addonizio pulled out all the stops, reading poems and accompanying some of them with blues harmonica, which made for an entertaining and informative evening. That my construct of a Bay Area sisterhood, (born of my fantasies of immersing myself in the world of famous writers), didn't pan out didn't take away from the fact that I HAD DINNER WITH KIM ADDONIZIO!

I'll remember Addonizio best by the button on the lapel of her jacket. She draped it over the back of the seat in front of me during her reading. It read: "F@ck the world. I'm an artist." (The button didn't make use of the "@.")

Well, it's on to author number two in Butler's series, another poet, Yusef Komanyakaa.

Blame, by Michele Huneven

2010-09-13T17:42:00.001-07:00

Friday night marks the beginning of the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. Commonly translated as The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and contemplation. On Yom Kippur we don't ask for forgiveness from the people we have hurt; we should have already done that. On Yom Kippur we ask for God's forgiveness for our transgressions against Him.

It is particularly timely then, in this season of accepting responsibility and granting forgiveness, to review Michelle Huneven's "Blame." In an inventive plot, Patsy MacLemore, a History professor and reckless alcoholic has, in one of her standard evenings out, a blackout. When she wakes up she finds she is in jail, and discovers that while under the influence she had a terrible accident in her own driveway, killing two people. The bulk of the novel goes on to explore the changes Patsy goes through when she is convicted, serves her prison sentence, is subsequently released, and, with the help of AA, slowly learns how to rebuild her life, accepting the blame for the deaths of two innocent victims.

I had a few minor squabbles with "Blame." The first section concentrates not on Patsy, but on one of the book's supporting characters, and I felt a little mislead and confused when I finally realized, a third of the way through the book, that this minor character wasn't the protagonist. Was this just my peri-menopausal-brain's need for simplicity? Perhaps. Also, I found the last scene, although quite poetic, a little heavy-handed in its attempt at allegory. Still, if you're looking for a well-crafted, thought-provoking read in this season of atonement, then check out "Blame." (Also perfect fodder for book clubs)

Also, in a nod to Yom Kippur, here is Marjorie Ingall's article on the uber popular young adult novel "Hunger Games" and how it relates to this season. Due to my technical skills, or lack thereof, you'll have to cut and paste this as the link didn't come through....

http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/44797/hunger-games/?utm_source=Tablet+Magazine+List&utm_campaign=4ed7422385-9_13_2010&utm_medium=email

The Embers, by Hyatt Bass

2010-09-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

I won't even try to give "The Embers" a just review. My brain is so sluggish from an over-generous Rosh Hashana lunch that I can barely eke out a coherent sentence. Still, I have had something to say about this book for awhile now. I've been "sitting" on this review for over a week now. I've been stalling, not sure about how I want to say how I feel about this book.

I try to find something admirable in every person I meet, and I try to find something compelling in every book I read. I was intrigued by Bass's plot: an exploration of a family as the daughter plans her wedding on the spot her brother's ashes are buried. As is my custom, I borrowed the audiobook from the library, and forced myself to listen to the first 3 CDs before I cracked and gave up. Not only was I not getting into this book, I simply wasn't getting it. Is there an actual plot to this novel, I wondered, or am I too obtuse to catch the subtlety? So I tried again, but to no avail. I am not a reader that needs to be hit over the head with gunfights, car chases and sex scenes, but I do need some sense, amidst the everyday chatter that fills in between more dramatic scenes, that there is something happening in a book that moves the plot along, and I could not find that in "The Embers." But just as people are different, so are books. "The Embers" didn't light a fire under me (who says I didn't inherit my Dad's pun gene!) doesn't mean that it won't do it for you.

Meanwhile, Shana Tova!

Let's Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell

2010-08-30T17:15:00.001-07:00

In a perfect world Muslims would be allowed to build mosques anywhere they want, but wouldn't choose to pick a site that offended. In a perfect world teachers in our Indianapolis Public Schools would have the funds to purchase all the supplies they need, obviating the need to dumpster dive in the back lots of the school in the neighboring, wealthy, suburban school. And, in a perfect world love would trump all.

Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp both descended into alcoholism in their younger lives; but despite their troubled starts, each recovered and went onto have successful writing careers. Then, in that 40-plus stage of life, they each found the other and forged a friendship of the highest caliber.

"Let's Take the Long Way Home" is their love story. And no, it's not a romantic love story; this one is purely platonic. Gail Caldwell, a journalist, and Caroline Knapp, author of the memoir "Drinking: A Love Story," bond over many things, but what stands alone is their shared love for their pets, the two dogs Clementine and Lucy. LTTLWH includes many stories about the two women walking and training their two dogs together, and this helped to cement their friendship. In one horrific part Caldwell tells of an incident in which Clementine is mauled by two pit bulls, and her description of the scene and the small details of her reaction are so spot-on I had to pause the CD, as it brought back in vivid detail memories of the time my dog, Mischief, was attacked.

Caldwell cared for Caroline in her last days (she died of cancer) and memorializes their friendship in stunning prose, including many passages that are descriptive rather than driven by scene, which adds to the depth of the narrative. LTTLWH is a gorgeously written, hopeful story. If you have a beloved friend, or a beloved dog, you will find your heart touched.

No, it's not a perfect world, but by giving us this glimpse into her friendship and showing us the unwavering, pure love two people can have for each other, Gail Caldwell reminds us how to make our world just a little less imperfect.

Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon

2010-08-28T16:15:00.001-07:00

While in my dentist's waiting room today I noticed a poster advertising a special on teeth bleaching, compete with a picture of a face sporting the now common ultra-white smile. Staring at the face it struck now just how incongruous and ironic these uberwhite teeth are: teeth are one marker of internal health; if our teeth look good we look healthy. Bleaching teeth artifically gives them that healthful look, while in fact, not only are the now-white teeth no healthier than before the process, but the process of bleaching may damage teeth (Mine now have ultra-sensitive spots; this, after a few sessions of bleach, with the exception of coloring my hair is my one nod to artifice).
Every now and then I request "Nourishing Traditions" from the library, just to remind myself of what to shoot for, culinarily speaking. In "Nourishing Traditions," Sally Fallon has created a gem of a cookbook. It's beautifully designed, and also includes information about nutrition based on the research of dentist Wes Price back in the 1930s. Dr. Price is famous for rooting out some of the last remaining "primitive societies," ones untouched by modern culture, that ate diets comprised entirely of local foods. They people in these cultures had wide jaws with uncrowded (think -- no braces!) teeth. There were several factors these societies' diets had in common, and these are not necessarily thought of as healthful by modern society. These societies ate a lot of protein, either in the form of meat or seafood; they didn't eschew animal fat; they used broths made of animal bones; they fermented their food and, of course, included lots of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, along with raw foods originating from both animals and vegetables.

These "primitive societies" were found to be virtually free of chronic disease. Humans who grew up "nourished" on modern day diets, on the other hand, had narrow jaws, tooth decay, infectious disease and degenerative illnesses.

Fallon's book is complete, with chapters on every category of food and drink, and has the great feature of including tips and bits of supporting research in the columns on the outside margin of many of the pages. There is no shortage of theories that purport to know what and how we should eat, but I think one can't go wrong by sticking to the basics: eating a wide variety of fresh, whole foods.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender

2010-08-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

Rosh Hashanah is just around the corner and, as with all the Jewish holidays, there are certain foods that serve as symbols to ground us in the holiday's underlying meaning. Because Judaism has such a strong focus on the passing down of customs, there are myriad traditions to choose from. My son has already made the honey cake for the desert for this year's meal and, of course, there will be apples dipped in honey, both serving to forecast the sweetness of the upcoming year. The head of a fish symbolizes the new head of the year, although that is one traditional food that has never graced my holiday table; it seems a little hard-core. I always serve pomegranate, though, and it is said that there are as many purple-red, pulpy seeds underneath the leathery skin as there are mitzvot: 613. Every year my kids unsuccessfully try to debunk the theory by trying to count them; an obscenely, impossibly messy, impossibility. Pomegranates are an autumn fruit, but if Rosh Hashanah falls early enough, the fruit may not have hit the produce section yet. This sends all us Jewish mothers scrambling. There are frantic emails and calls, as we direct each other to the one grocery store that has the goods. It's as if we are a Jewish-mother team on the show "The Amazing Race," trying to get to Pomegranate-Land before sundown on Rosh Hashanah to win the grand prize.

As I make holiday dinners, as with any meal, it gives me a particular pleasure to think that the time, care, and energy (this concept is best conveyed by the Hebrew word kavanah, which translates into intent) I put into preparing the meal all are, in the grand, karmic scheme of life, metaphysically transferred to the food. So, when I read that Aimee Bender's protagonist, the young Rose Edelstein, can taste food and feel the emotions of the person who prepared it, I didn't assess this premise to be fantastical; the concept wasn't all that far outside of the Jewishy, New Agey spirituality that informs my belief system. It wasn't until much later in Bender's narrative, when the plot nose-dives into the surreal, that I realized that Bender's novel fits into the category of magical realism.

"The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" is a strange, yet wonderful story, one that showcases the interior realm of its characters, as we are privileged to glimpse this amidst a world with different rules from the one you and I inhabit. I can't say that I was riveted throughout the entire book, but in the end, it didn't matter; Bender's prose shimmers. The characters in TPSOLC, despite their supernatural powers, are drawn with texture and subtlety. Their actions belie their complex emotions as they do the work of life, and overcome personal challenges to reach out and build bridges with each other and the world.

Rosh Hashanah is very early this year and I know I will be scrambling to track down my treasured pomegranates. Like "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake," inside their covers are hundreds and hundreds of jewels.

A Matter of Taste: Road Dogs, by Elmore Leonard; Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart; and This Time Together, by Carol Burnett

2010-08-17T19:09:00.000-07:00

Summer is almost over and in my fury to make it through the stack on my overflowing shelf of library books, I found three titles that, for various reasons, didn't hit the mark. It's purely a matter of taste. Here's my take. Maybe you'll feel differently.

On the drive home from my recent trip to St. Louis I was finally able to fill in one of the embarrassing gaps in my literary knowledge: I had never read or, in this case listened to, a single book by Elmore Leonard. Crime novels? They're not what I like to read. Still, Leonard is touted to be a master of the genre, and because I think I can always learn something by reading anything that's well written, I decided to give this one a try.

In "Road Dogs," Jack Foley, a cerebral bank robber, is released from jail and begins his new life as a free man by entangling himself in the dealings of with his friend, the Cuban gangster Cundo, and Cundo's psychic girlfriend, Dawn. Because I'm not a crime fiction fan, I can't wax poetic about the gritty plot details of murders and bank robberies. I read to learn about people's inner lives, of crimes of the heart. Although Leonard is a great storyteller and endows his characters with a complexity that lends them verisimilitude, the nature of the genre dictates that the story is saturated with testosterone. This might be one for my non reading husband.

One of my brother-in-law's favorite truisms is that if anyone tries to convince you of something, but has to tack on a modifierin order to make the statement accurate, then whatever they're trying to convince you of isn't all that great. My brother-in-law likes to site examples from when he had to relocate. Realtors and head-hunters attempted to "sell" their small towns by saying, it's a got a great (fill in the blank: symphony, library, park system, etc.), but then modify their proclamation by saying, "for a city this size." It's the telltale modifier "this size" that voids the proclamation. And so it goes with Gary Shteyngart's third novel, "Super Sad True Love Story." I wish I could simply say SSTLS is a great novel but, in order to be accurate, I have to say that SSTLS is a great novel, for a satirical story about modern consumer culture and globalization as seen through the eyes of Eastern European misfits. Here, as in his two previous novels, Shteyngart plays on his strength, his outsider-ness. He brings a clear focus to the crazy world we live in because he is the quintessential alien. I enjoyed "Absurdistan," Shteyngart's second novel, and SSTLS has the same over the top, sarcastic, dyspeptic tone. Still, there's only so much Eastern European-inflected, futuristic dystopia I can take before, well, I'm ready to move on.

I was excited to get my copy of "This Time Together" from the library. I still remember the Saturday nights of my childhood, wearing footie pajamas while sitting on the floor and looking up at the TV watching my favorite shows. The Carol Burnett Show was one of them. Burnett's humor was outrageous and slapstick, but somehow, amidst the hokey accents and goofy costumes she conveyed a sensitivity, a down-to-earth, I'm-one-of-you-ness. I wondered if Burnett's humor, like that of other comedians, was born of her inner struggles. I was curious. But TTT is more like a traditional autobiography than a memoir, and it was a disappointment. In TTT Burnett gives us a series of breezy vignettes about her path to stardom and the famous folk she befriended along the way. Her stories are entertaining, but Burnett only shared half-stories. Her tales were sanitized, and fairly one-dimensional, and in her language she often reached for the easy cliche. I'll have to read Burnett's memoir of 2003, entitled, "One More Time," which tells of her early struggles amidst alcoholic parents who left her in the care of her grandmother. "This Time Together" wasn't time well spent, but I'll always love Carol Burnett.

This is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper

2010-08-11T18:44:00.001-07:00

My Great-Aunt Lil always left a restaurant with her purse filled with sugar and Sweet N Low packets, as well as the occasional foiled-covered baked potato. I still remember the pearl of wisdom she dispensed to me -- with love and affection -- when I was 18. She called me Dolly, and advised me to put on my tightest sweater and go to the library to meet the boys; this, to combat freshman year loneliness.

If you love the eccentric, Yiddishy characters in your own family the way I love mine, you will fall in love with Jonathan Tropper's "This is Where I Leave You." Tropper's narrator is Judd Foxman, who tells his tale with deadpan humor. The story begins as the family gathers to sit shiva for Mort, the patriarch. Judd is one of 4 siblings, and each one arrives to the shiva with his or her own bulky set of family baggage. Despite the Foxman family's inability to communicate effectively on an emotional level, in true Jewish/Yiddish tradition, they spar, and toss barbs and bon mots back and forth like ping pong balls.

Tropper is a master craftsman: although the characters are drawn from bits and pieces of stereotypes, the cast of characters, and there are a lot of them, rings true. The story artfully weaves in and out of Judd's complicated relationships with his wife and each of his siblings, compelling me to read to the very end. The pacing of the story was impeccable. I never had a single one of the I'm-not-sure-I-care-enough-to-read-on moments that frequent my reading these days. It is amazing to me that Tropper can write novels from the male perspective and is able to credibly mine the emotional landscape of his male protagonists in a way that can't help but appeal to both men and women. I'm not positive, but I even think my reading averse husband might even enjoy TIWILY. It's definitely not chick-lit. Is it dude-lit?

I have had the opportunity this summer to reconnect with several parts of my extended family, and the family bonds we strengthened and forged have reinforced the importance family holds for me. Tropper's trope is just that: that those crazy, twisted, and sometimes tortured relationships we have with our family are precious. Aunt Lil passed on years ago, but I still remember her raspy voice as she called to me, and how she used to plant a big one on my cheek, leaving a smear of waxy lipstick. You may not have had an Aunt Lil in your family -- but with any luck you had someone close.

If you're looking for a fun, yet well written, end-of-summer read, I highly recommend "This is Where I Leave You." You might want to check it out from the library. Just remember to put on your tightest sweater before you go.

Little Beauties, by Kim Addonizio

2010-08-11T18:42:00.001-07:00

When I saw that Kim Addonizio is coming to Indy as part of Butler's Authors' Series, I was anxious to check out her work. Addonizio has published poetry and short story collections, but, except on rare occasions, neither of these forms resonates with me, so I bypassed these and nabbed her novel.

In "Little Beauties," Diana McBride, a former child beauty contestant, and Jamie Ramirez, a recalcitrant, pregnant teenager cross paths and change each other's lives. When Jamie wanders into a baby supply store, she purchases a teddy bear. The baby store is Diana's newest place of employment, as each of her other jobs inevitably became sullied by imagined contaminants that sparked her OCD.

"Little Beauties" is a fun, fast-paced, yet thought-provoking story. Addonizio imbues her characters with texture; they do good things with misguided intentions, and bad things when trying to do right. They are, each in her own way, slightly unhinged, yet true to life. Her characters, their dialogue, and the snappy scenes all work together, and something about Addonizio's sensibility reminds me of Anne Lamott, especially her new novel, "Imperfect Birds." In fact, in checking out the inside back cover, I see both women hail from my old stomping grounds: San Francisco's Bay Area.

"Little Beauties" was a great read and I look forward to hearing Kim Addonizio speak this fall. Maybe I'll even crack open some of her poetry.

Denial, by Jessica Stern

2010-08-04T13:57:00.001-07:00

Jessica Stern holds a doctorate in public policy from Harvard and lectures on terrorism. During the Clinton administration she was a member of the National Security Council. She worked behind the scenes when Daniel Pearl was kidnapped. Undoubtedly she comes across as competent and fearless, with nothing in her appearance or demeanor clueing anyone in to the fact that, as a teenager, she experienced a horrific and terror-filled event: she was raped at gunpoint.

And there's a back story to the rape: Shortly after Stern's mother died -- this happened when Stern was just a toddler -- her father remarried a much younger woman. Stern's new stepmother was immature and ill equipped to take on the role of mother. The marriage lasted a few years and then Stern's father divorced, and remarried again. The night of the rape, Stern and her sister were at the empty apartment of their first stepmother, while their father was out of the country with his new wife. He was told about the rape but didn't change his plans to return home early.

Stern begins her memoir by describing herself a few years back, as an accomplished adult who runs away from all things emotional. She sees a therapist, complaining that she wants to feel even less. She describes feeling a detachment, as if she was floating above her body. A hypersensitivity, even aversion, to fluorescent lights, loud noises and certain scents. An intolerance for specific, seemingly mundane, situations. Her relationship to fear as a tortured dance -- she is bizarrely fearless whenever there is a real reason to be afraid, yet experiences an undercurrent of panic in her everyday life.

Then, out of the blue, the police contact her about her rape case, now decades old, and she decides to investigate her rape herself. In "Denial," she details her investigation, describing what she learned about herself by learning about her attacker, now deceased, from his family and friends.

Stern then tells how she attempted to understand and come to terms with her father, his denial of what she went through, and the fraught relationship they have had. She asks him about his life in Europe during the Holocaust, and his descriptions of what he endured shined light on aspects of his personality and why he did things that were hurtful to her.

In her work with her therapist, Stern discovers she is suffering from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition that, until then, she had associated only with war veterans and victims of the very terrorists she studied . Stern is now a staunch advocate of PTSD awareness. For her, she reports, there is no cure, but she continues to learn how to manage her symptoms.

Many of the unusual states-of-being that Stern describes are familiar to me. Like Stern, I have endured both sexual abuse, as well as the pain of struggling with the denial of family members who were unable to accept the truth. As a result, I've never been able to see the narrative of my life in one piece. Instead of one, unbroken story, my life has felt like a mishmash of events, all separate fragments, like memory snapshots that hide out just under my conscious thought. To be able to put a name to these experiences is a comfort.

I'm grateful for "Denial," and am certain that Stern's courageous and honest story will help others, too.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein

2010-08-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

I asked my 12-year-old son this question: of everyone you know, who best embodies his or her name? His answer? Mischief, our dog. Touche'. Dog stories. How can anyone resist a story that features a dog -- a creature so guileless, one imbued with only the best of humanity's qualities -- a staunch loyalty, an unending affection, and the ability to derive immense joy from the simplest offerings? Still, at the same time, inevitably there is a cloying, formulaic quality to even the best of these dog stories. It is the nature of the beast, (pun intended), that while dogs' brains render them unquestioningly loyal, their inability to engage in more sophisticated thought processes also restricts any dog-centered story to a fable-like simplicity. Dog stories are all cut from the same cloth: Through a series of misadventures, conflicts and losses -- almost always including the death of a beloved family member -- the dog teaches its humans the valuable lessons of trust and unconditional love.

My own dog story wouldn't feature my infamous pooch, Mischief, although he's always good for a you'll-never-be-able-to-guess-what-he-ate-today story. My story started a couple of years ago, and featured strays, another heart-tugging icon of the stereotypical dog story. I began to find stray dogs everywhere. Or rather, stray dogs started to find me. Wherever I was, a stray dog inevitably appeared, as if out of the ether. Within the span of a year I must have corralled about two dozen of them, before eventually -- with a significant investment of time and effort -- returning each of them to their owners. During this rainstorm of stray dogs, which lasted about a year, I began to feel that God must have been trying to tell me something.

So, enough of your dog story, Susan, you say, what about "The Art of Racing in the Rain," did you like it or not? I'll say this: Stein constructed a nice dog story, and even threw in some creative twists. But just as a dog's love is unconditional -- either it's on or it's off -- Stein colored his novel's characters black and white and with not much gray. Enzo's owner, Denny, was the quintessential good guy, and then there were the bad guys. Also, there was the cliche of the lost family member, here played by Denny's wife, who died from cancer (I don't think I'm giving away anything earth-shattering here).

And the ending? So predictable, you could write it yourself. Still, if you're a dog story lover, the flat characters probably won't stand in the way of you loving this book. It's a bestseller, so obviously I'm the only pooch in the pack not wagging her tail.

Next, a book with a tad more gravitas: Denial, by Jessica Stern. Meanwhile, I just saw a loose dog dart down my street. Gotta run!

1/2 books: Books I only got halfway through

2010-08-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

It's the age old question: How far do you continue to read when a book has lost your interest? Some friends feel obligated to see the thing through, but not me. Life's too short and the list of books I want to read is too long! Here are two books that held such promise I stuck with them through the first halves, long after I first heard that familiar voice in my head whisper, "This is not working, move on!" In this case, two half-books do not equal one!

I loved Leah Stewart's "The Myth of You and Me," and so appreciated her sensibility, that I thought her newest offering would be a sure bet. I was hooked at the start -- Sarah and Nathan are getting ready to attend the wedding of two of their friends, when suddenly Nathan discloses that he has had an affair. Stewart's strength are her characters, so multi-layered and realistic, and usually this is all I need to be sucked in. Still, there just wasn't enough happening in "Husband and Wife" to hold me. Sarah's introspection held sway over the plot line and, well, I realized I just didn't care enough to read on and see if the two worked out their marriage.

Joshua Braff (Zach Braff's brother) penned this provocative sounding novel about the travails of a teenage boy enduring his parents divorce in the 70s. His father owns, and is trying to keep alive, one of Times Square's old-fashioned peep shows, while his mother becomes a baal t'shuva, returning to tradition and adopting the customs of the Hasidim. The only thing that stayed with me in this dark, depressing, and unbelievable novel was my embarrassment at the title. I started reading it on a plane, and realized I felt compelled to hide the cover, folding it under the book on the fold-out tray in front of me.

Next up: two books that couldn't be more different from each other. Denial, by Jessica Stern, is a memoir by an expert interrogator of terrorists, who reflects on the rape she experienced as a teenager and the PTSD it caused. "The Art of Racing in the Rain," by Garth Stein, is the story of the life of a man as told through the eyes of his dog. Stay tuned.

Hurry Down Sunshine, by Michael Greenberg

2010-07-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

I get scared reading books that feature characters that suffer from bipolar illness. Well, that's not quite right. The truth is that I am both afraid of and drawn to reading about this subject, as if by conquering my fear and moving closer to this thing, I can capture a bit of the person whose bipolarity kept her at an unbreachable distance -- my mother. Although I believe some deep part of me, perhaps at the cellular level, will never forget the way her catatonic-like depressions and her raging manias impacted me, for the most part my mind reacted to the terror in the same way countless others have faced trauma -- by erasing it from my memory.

Maybe the only thing as frightening as growing up with a bipolar mother is discovering that your child has the disease. In Michael Greenberg's, "Hurry Down Sunshine," he tells the story of his troubled teenage daughter, Sally, and her descent into bipolarity. From the outset Greenberg tells his story with an unflinching honesty. When Sally's illness first comes to a head, Greenberg must hospitalize her and he struggles to navigate the health care system in order to find an appropriate setting. Greenberg details the ups and downs of the course of Sally's disease, and in doing so he looks back at the difficulties of Sally's childhood, as well as those of his mentally ill brother.

As Greenberg's story progresses, he shows how Sally's illness comes under control, with the help of drugs and therapy. In the end, though, she relapses. With his words, Greenberg paints a picture of his daughter, and we see Sally as a gentle and vulnerable person at the mercy of her bipolarity.

The stories we tell ourselves, especially when those stories involve difficult relationships, can be incomplete; I know the story my childhood memories tell me about my mother is. I think I'll carry Greenberg's lovely image of Sally with me as a reminder of just that.

The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore

2010-07-28T15:48:00.001-07:00

I just got back from my niece's wedding, a five-hour drive each way, that I made solo. I had a big pile of audiotapes, but I couldn't decide which one to bring since none of them jumped out at me as you-must-listen-to-me-first titles, so I brought them all. I figured I would have an audio "tasting" party and sample a bit of each book, and that in the end, one would surely show itself as a "must-read." First I put in "The Big Short," by Michael Lewis, but there was so much detailed information on sub-prime interest rates, I decided it was just too much work for my drive. Then I tried Tana French's "In the Woods," which I might get back to, but at a whopping 18 discs felt like too much of a commitment. Then came "Days of Obligation," by Richard Rodriguez, which was also good, but felt too heavy for my drive. I liked the first disc of Andrew Sean Greer's "The Confessions of Max Tivoli," but still wasn't satisfied. I wanted something else. So I put in the first disc of the last audiobook in my stack, "The Other Wes Moore." I didn't hold out much hope for this book; its title made it sound flat. After the the first couple of tracks, though, I knew it was bashert.

"The Other Wes Moore" is the story of two boys who had very similar beginnings, but whose lives diverged dramatically as they grew up. Wes Moore, the author, grew up in a single parent household, in poor neighborhoods, and began to show signs of acting out and rebellion. His mother first had him attend a ritzy, private school, but when he continued to give her problems, sent him to a military boarding school to force him back on the right track. Not only did Moore end up on the right track, but he excelled, matriculated from Johns Hopkins, became a Rhodes Scholar, and wrote this book.

During his studies Moore became aware of another young man who shared his name, who had been convicted of killing a police officer and was serving a life sentence. Author Moore sends the other Moore a letter, and they embark on a relationship. The other Wes Moore had many of the same disadvantages as the author, but, for myriad reasons, had not been able to overcome the challenges of his life. In "The Other Wes Moore," Moore contrasts their lives, examining each in order to learn why their lives took such different paths.

I appreciated Moore's unflinching honesty as he wrote of the issues of the poor African American community in which both Moores were raised. He brings up important questions about how the things that happen to us in our formative years impact us as we mature. He shows how easy it is to get off track. The tales of both Wes Moore's are compelling, and author Moore ends his book with an epilogue and call to action that are poignant.

Moore's style reminded me of Mitch Albom's writing, especially since "The Other Wes Moore" and Albom's new book both contrast two people who share important touchstones in life. Coincidentally, one of the authors Moore says inspired him towards his literary path is Albom. Moore's book, however, has more gravitas. I suppose sometimes the student rises above the teacher.

This is Not the Story You Think it is, By Laura Munson

2010-07-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the summer, when I pictured myself with my kids, I saw myself in standard mode, barking, reminding them to get their chores done. I decided to change that. It's not that my kids never had fun, but I wanted to put into practice something new, to put down the frantic lens through which I saw life, so that I wasn't focused solely on getting the next goal completed. I didn't want to be the person who, because she can only see the destination, missed savoring the journey. I wanted to be more present with my kids. Have more fun.

You might think my decision to have more fun with my kids would be no big deal, but that wasn't the case. As with anything, making this change was easier -- so much easier -- said than done. Putting this into practice was, and is, an exhausting proposition, because my mind always wants to go back to the same place, the place it has always gone, to the rush of completing tasks. To pry myself out the hamster wheel of "doing" and just "be" with my kids turned out to be no small task. It seemed like I was constantly pulling my mind out of the weeds of its old stomping grounds, where it nudged me to get something done. Getting my mind out of that place, took (takes) effort. It helped me to recall the chant they taught me in kindergarten, the one used to make sure kids crossed streets safely: Stop, Look and Listen.

I first read of Laura Munson's story in an essay featured in the Style section of the NY Times, adapted from her memoir, "This is Not the Story You Think it is." In her essay Munson wrote of how her husband, after many years of happy marriage and raising two children, told Munson he didn't love her anymore. He was distant, angry and cold, and treated her disrespectfully, coming and going when he pleased, speaking to her in a belittling and sharp manner. In Munson's eyes he acted like a two-year-old having a tantrum.

After much suffering and soul-searching, Munson decided that, despite her husband's crappy attitude, she was still in love with him and wanted to try to save her marriage. Even though at that moment, her husband thought his love for her had ended, Munson held steadfast to her belief that, under all his angst, he still loved her. As Munson saw it, she had two choices: She could take the obvious road, and react to her husband's unfairly treatment, or she could practice non attachment, and let his anger play itself out, and see what happened. In the latter scenario she didn't have to play the role of the wronged woman. She would set limits on what sort of behavior she would accept from her husband, and for how long, and then, without reacting to his provocative comments, try and ride out his tantrum. TINTSYTII is the story of Munson's decision to change her life and how she struggled to stay on that path.

Any story that focuses on an inner journey has to walk a fine line, and TINTSYTII falls into some of the classic pitfalls of stories of this type. Munson's story is compelling, but a fundamental part of her story is anchored in the endless, exhausting, work of changing your life from the inside out, and this work is rooted in inner dialogue -- a conscious changing of the way you think. In storytelling, though, inner dialogue only takes you so far. At times, plowing through the back and forth of the author's process as she worked her way through this tough marital time was tedious. I sometimes get weary of listening to my own chatty inner voice, so even though it's fascinating to be able to be in someone else's head, in this case it was also tiresome. The most riveting parts of TINTSYTII were not the passages that "told" the author's thoughts, but the parts that "showed" -- the scenes. When Munson described scenes in which her husband's angry, bristly anxiety led him to lash out at her, I became uncomfortable, yet I wanted to read on. In these scenes the tension was so thick, and the emotions so dramatic, that I wondered how Munson could possibly accomplish this task of continuing to let her husband's trauma run its course.

The other morning, it was my eldest daughter's 16th birthday, and I was faced with a choice. My husband and all three kids were getting ready to leave for the park to shoot off rockets. Rocket launching is a special activity, something my husband does with the kids two, maybe three times a year. I have never joined in with the rest of the family to shoot off rockets. In the division of labor that organically develops in a marriage, rocket launching fit nicely in my husband's realm, and that was fine with me. My realm? Well my plate was filled with the hustle and bustle of the everyday -- the schlepping to and from music lessons, orthodontist appointments, etc. I told myself it was good for my hubby to have an activity he enjoyed with the kids separate from me. But underneath this rationalization was my reluctance upset the applecart of the part I play in my kids' lives.

It didn't even occur to me that I was excluding myself from family fun until the moment they were all about to leave. "Wait for me," I called out, "I'm coming, too." It hasn't been easy staying on track, keeping the commitment I made at the beginning of summer. But amidst the inevitable backtracking, there have been mornings like the day of the rocket launch -- breezy and blue. Standing in a grassy field peppered with Queen Ann's Lace, the pop of the rocket alerted me to look up. A tail of white smoke faded into the Popsicle-blue sky as the three of the best people I know ran across the field to catch it, grinning.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

2010-07-16T16:01:00.001-07:00

So I was driving to IKEA yesterday, finishing up the last disc of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," and it wasn't until I had just about pulled into IKEA's parking lot that I got the irony of driving to a Swedish store while listening to a book by a Swedish author. It still amazes me how the simplest things escape me.

Here's a simple story. Charles recently told me about a co-worker's son. In response to his fiance's query as to why his carry-on bag contained no pants, he replied, "We're just staying a day. Why would I possibly need a second pair of pants?" He then proceeded to unwittingly sit down in the one seat on the airplane that had soda pooled in the cushion.

Here's another simple story: This just happened, on the very same trip to Ohio that included IKEA and Larsson, on an overnight visit to my mother-in-law's, and I can already tell this story will be one my husband will tell again and again, until the story takes its place in our family's mythology. Before we left, at the very last minute, thinking of the story of his coworker's son, Charles threw an extra pair of khaki shorts into his duffel. We drove off with Mischief in the van, as we were going to drop him off at the dog sitter's along the way. We we got out of the van at her house, though, Charles looked down at his khaki shorts and, to his horror, saw two spots of brown, each the size of pennies. According to the dog sitter, poor Mischief, who sat in Charles lap on the ride to her house, needed to have his anal glands emptied. (Just as an aside, does anybody ever tell prospective buyers about this disgusting issue when they are thinking of buying a cute little puppy? Honestly, it's no wonder the people who sell dogs never discuss it -- because NO ONE WOULD BUY A DOG IF THEY KNEW!) Anyway, I digress. Back to the shorts. Charles was tickled to have dodged this particular bullet and made a quick change in the van before we continued on to IKEA. Cut to later in the afternoon. At his mother's, we were all excited, gathered on the third floor of her over one-hundred-year old house, to explore one of the eaves, where Charles hoped to recover the toy fire engine of his childhood. As he put one foot into the hot, dark space behind the wall, his shorts caught on the edge of one of the door hinges and ripped. Really ripped. Not only did Charles need one pair of extra shorts, but two! Luckily, the dog-stained khakis were just about ready to come out of the dryer by the time he ripped the replacements.

If, like me, you need things simple, then heed this warning: Do not read Larsson. I don't think there is enough caffeine in the world to get my brain to kick in to a gear high enough to keep track of the intricate plot lines and business dealings in TGWTDT. Although Larsson held my interest at times, for the most part I found the story way too contrived and completely unbelievable. Do I sound too crass if I wonder if the author's recent death has created a hype that has elevated his work to mythic levels? I also wonder if the movie version of TGWTDT might be more satisfying, because I think a movie generally allows for more of a suspension of belief than a book.

Then again, maybe it's just me and my addled brain. Maybe the reason I've never been a huge fan of genres like murder mysteries or thrillers is that I just can't keep up with the facts. Who knows? But it's ironic that Larsson, from the land of IKEA, a store that specializes in furniture with clean, simple lines, has written a book that is not for the simple minded.

The New York Times Magazine recently published a fascinating article on Larsson's family and long time girlfriend, and the fight over his estate....

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Larsson-t.html

So Many Books, So Little Time!

2010-07-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

What's a girl to do? I've got a stack of books (and audiobooks) I'm dying to read (and listen to) and there just aren't enough hours in the day. The uber-original plan I had for the summer? I figured I would make my way through all those great titles while the kids flipped around in the pool. The Book-gods are laughing even as I write these words. Sure, there is pool time, but there is also schlepping (to and from summer school for my high school girls, to and from camp for my son, to and from violin.....well, you get the idea), traveling coast to coast for relatives' Bar Mitzvahs (and I'm not complaining. I'm kvelling!), and downtime for the summer virus we're passing around (also as I write these words). My stack of books? I'm not making much headway.

And NOW, Tablet comes out with an article that lists new books by all my favorite Jewish authors (Well, almost all my favorites. One notable exception is Shalom Auslander, who now regularly writes for Tablet. Everything Auslander writes is great but I'm going to need something meatier than those essays, Shalom). Reading Tablet's article made my mouth water. Really. Click on the funky "Your" tab below (computer savvy I'm not) to get a head start on reserving the newest titles from Ayelet Waldman, Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Franzen and more!

Your

Every Last One, by Anna Quindlen

2010-07-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

Just got back from visiting my brother and his family in California. I hadn't seen them for 13 years. The history of our estrangement is so long and complicated that neither one of us can clearly recall its origins. So often life is like this -- a narrative that intertwines the stories we tell ourselves about our hurts from the past with the facts of the present. Those unaired hurts amplify, and leave marks, like wounds that never heal. As my brother and I reflected on our past hurts, there didn't seem to be one pivotal moment that altered our paths. It was more like our past was a trail littered with misunderstandings and silence. As I work at owning my part in creating the rift between us -- something that is long overdue -- I can see that I have said and done so many hurtful things. During my recent visit our relationship didn't magically heal; we didn't become the close-knit family I had always dreamed we might be. As much as I wished for that, I knew it would be unrealistic to expect such a turn. Instead, we created a bridge. It's a narrow bridge, but one that spans the distance between us. My hope is that the conversations between us continue and the bridge that connects us widens.

I think most stories in life are like this, they don't distill into an easy, even slicing of time into a before and an after, either in the rift or the resolution. Sometimes, though, life dishes out an event so dramatic that one moment changes everything that comes after it forever. Anna Quindlen's new book, "Every Last One" tells such a story, one in which a life transformed by a single stunning moment. In the first half of the book, Quindlen puts a magnifying glass on the daily struggles of an upper-middle-class family. She paints the picture of the family with a fine brush, describing the subtle interplay between the physician father, the self-starter mom with a thriving landscaping business, their artsy, teenage daughter recently recovered from bulimia, their confident, sports obsessed son, and another son who becomes increasingly depressed as the story progresses. "Every Last One" is told through the eyes of the overprotective, helicoptering mother. As Quindlen details the mother's endlessly spinning anxieties about her children's well being, the writing was so true to life, so familiar, that I started to actually feel uncomfortable, as if a mirror was being held up to my own interior landscape. The telling was brutally honest and real, but, by the middle of the book I was feeling tired of the worrying, the never ending flow of maternal anxiety was starting to become a bit tedious.

But, just then, just when I was wondering if I would be able to make it through "Every Last One,".....ta, da!....something happens. The last half of the book is all about what happens after that pivotal moment, and it's a riveting story that I will not spoil.

Just as in Quindlen's story, life takes us all on myriad twists and turns. We might take an active role in creating drama or alternatively, the drama might unfold completely out of our control. Either way, and whether or not the drama comes suddenly, or is something more drawn out and murky, the most interesting part is what we decide to do next.

Power in the Blood, by Linda Tate

2010-07-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

Recently I had a facebook reunion with Pat, an old friend from college, and she recommended I read "Power in the Blood." Pat had been a true friend back in college, and my renewed connection with her brought back memories of the tough times she helped me through, almost three decades ago(!), of struggling to keep my head above water while trying to navigate the waters of young adulthood. Those memories had faded over the years, like cushions left in the sun, but recalling that time now, I can see how my chaotic childhood replayed itself in my life back then as a newly minted adult. Although my parents had been well meaning, they passed on to me a legacy of fear and anger.

Linda Tate found herself in grad school when she wanted to discover more about her family's history. She had niggling questions about her parents and their odd and hurtful ways and, in order to understand why her parents were the way they were, she had to uncover the mysterious history of their families. She was compelled to do this, knowing that there was wisdom to be found in the revelation. Ever curious, Tate dug in, never letting the myriad challenges posed by this laborious search stop her. Tate traveled, scoured through archives, found long, lost relatives, and traced her family tree back to the Appalachians, an area between Tennessee and Kentucky called the "Land Between the Rivers." At the end, along with stories of colorful ancestors, Tate found the words to detail the suffering in her family that went back generations and finally was able to put the pieces of her family's puzzle together. By solving the mystery of how her parents came to be the way they were, Tate, in turn, shined light on her own childhood, and on herself.

My relatives insist our family descends from The Baal Shem Tov, the 1770 Ukrainian rebel who is credited with founding the Hasidic movement. As I understand it, one of Hasidism's basic tenets is that God has imbued each of us -- in fact, all of His creations -- with a unique nature, and that the closer any of us can come to knowing ourselves, to finding and expressing our authentic natures, the closer we become to God. It's a concept that has fascinated me for years. How does any of us go about knowing, truly knowing, what's in our heart of hearts, especially if the circumstances of our upbringings has smudged the lens through which we would clearly see our own natures?

Because I have wondered about the effects my chaotic childhood had on me, I was curious as to how the process of researching and writing "Power in the Blood" effected Tate -- so I wrote her. This is what she said: The process of discovering the details about my ancestors' lives and the writing of the book itself changed my life immeasurably. I had a much fuller understanding of why things had happened the way they had in my own life, and as a result I was able to achieve more of a sense of peace and acceptance about all that had occurred. Ultimately, I found that sense of home in myself -- found a place to belong. All of this healing ultimately made it possible for me to invite love into my life, and that's why the last paragraph of the book mentions my husband.

Unlike Tate's, my parents' families came to this country from the "Fiddler on the Roof" type villages of Eastern Europe. My father's great-grandmother was affectionately nicknamed by her grandkids as Babalompola, because she was the baba from Yompola. The specifics of Tate's story are very different than mine but, at their bedrock, our stories are the same: suffering passed down from one generation to the next. I picture the pure innocence of The Baal ShemTov (known for communing with God by dancing ecstatically in the forests of the Ukraine) and then I think of my childhood in San Francisco, steeped in anxiety, paranoia and anger. Somewhere along the way, between the Ukraine of the 1770s and the West Coast of the 1970s, some thing happened that changed the course of my family, and its legacy was a cloak of suffering. For those of us who find ourselves at the receiving end of generations of suffering, "Power in the Blood" is an amazing story, one that shows how one woman stopped the chain by illuminating the stories of her ancestors and by doing so gained an understanding of how they impacted her. Maybe The Baal Shem Tov had it right, and that by seeing clearly what lies inside one's heart-- however that's accomplished -- the heart can open, and the suffering replaced with God and love.

Crazy Israel Propaganda

2010-07-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

No book review today. While I work on my review of "Power in the Blood," (and watch for it -- I'm trying something new there, too, and including the author's answer to a question I sent her), I thought I would try something new and offer up my newest find as I stumble through, once again attempting to understand the political situation in the Middle East.

I've made no secret of the fact that I am no political science scholar. Recently I've been trying to sift through the myriad opinions, both pro and con, of the recent flotilla incident and that has been overwhelming. I'm left knowing only one thing: that I love my homeland, warts and all. If you're anything like me and feel perplexed by the flood of information and the battling pundits, you might be ready for a change of pace. A laugh. Three rather unconventional (I use this term generously) South Americans have posted a video promoting the land of Israel and its beauty. It's the strangest and campiest thing I've come across in a long time, and it was so unexpected made me laugh (No small feat. Ask my husband. ) Today, Tablet Magazine (a great online magazine with Jewish content) came out with an article about the video's origins. If this uber-hysterical utube video (which is linked on the link) hasn't crossed your path, check it out on the link below

http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/38292/viral-zionism/?utm_source=Tablet+Magazine+List&utm_campaign=d5af1949f9-7_2_2010&utm_medium=email

The Bedwetter, by Sarah Silverman

2010-06-28T15:48:00.001-07:00

As a girl Sarah Silverman was put on 16 Xanax a day. Then one day she walked into her therapist's waiting room only to have the hypnotist who had unsuccessfully treated her unremitting bedwetting, and shared office space with the therapist, scream hysterically at her. Apparently the hypnotist had just discovered the therapist, who had just committed suicide, hung himself upstairs.

Sarah Silverman has some story to tell, and in "Bedwetter," she tells it in her signature style -- laden with sarcasm, explicit sexuality and a boatload of bathroom jokes. To be honest, I'm not the best person to review any comedian's memoir -- I just don't find most comedians very funny. My husband insists I'm a stick-in-the-mud, that I don't find anything funny, and maybe that's true, but I would rather think of myself as discriminating. At any rate, I would like to think that jokes that feature the word fart, or attempt to evoke laughs through the shock value of let's say, naming genitalia, are the keepsakes of the fraternity set. I don't get Silverman's humor, but then again, I don't get a lot of what passes as funny these days. Still, whatever you think of Silverman's humor, there is something very intriguing and likable about her.

Silverman's potty-mouthed memoir was breezy, giggly fun that left me craving the story behind all the snark and sex. Certainly, even with the little I knew of the Sarah Silverman "brand" at the outset, I realized this would not be a truth telling in the traditional sense; no light would be shone on the childhood sturm and drang that would ultimately give rise to her career as a comedienne. Still, I would have loved to have read that book.

But that's not the book Silverman wrote. "Bedwetter" gives us just a hint of the girl she was -- a petite, hirsute, depressed, anxiety-ridden, bedwetter that managed to somehow make it through childhood -- just barely, it seems -- and come out the other side with the sensibility of a drunken frat boy. In "Bedwetter" Silverman tells of the tough times she survived, and in doing so she garners my respect and admiration (you go,girl!). Did she make me laugh? Not really.

Getting the Pretty Back, by Molly Ringwald

2010-06-24T15:12:00.001-07:00

Shoulder pads, over-sized glasses and big hair. That's how I remember Molly Ringwald, poster child of teen angst in the 80s. Come to think of it, that's how I remember me, too.

I don't know what I thought I would be getting when I picked up "Getting the Pretty Back." If I had to pin it down, I suppose I figured the book would tell women of a certain age, of my age, how we might reconnect with the idea we had of ourselves as younger women: as females whose sexiness, desires and desirability had a larger place in the landscape of our lives. And, I also thought about how fascinating it would be to read a book by this former teen star, by someone whose characters so vividly mirrored the angst I felt at attempting to navigate the world as a young adult.

But that is not what Ringwald has written. And if I sound just a teeny bit angry, it's because I am. I just expected so much more. What Molly has written -- and the bff-tone she uses in her book infers that, yes, please call her Molly -- is the lightest bit of fluff, something that might very well be featured in a series of articles in Tiger Beat, or any of the other magazines that put her on the cover about 30 years back. So, if you are dying to know Molly's favorite lipstick shades, what cheeses she recommends for her cheese plates, and her best do's and don't's of parenting, you can get that, and more, in "Getting the Pretty Back." Me? I bristle at being told the right way to do things, especially by someone who pretends she is not judging, but really is. And c'mon, Molly, enough of your perfect family; We all know there's a real story under that stack of Hermes scarves. It's just not in your book. And that's so not pretty.

Devotion, by Dani Shapiro

2010-06-23T06:26:00.000-07:00

I was so excited to see a new title out by Dani Shapiro. Years ago I read both her novel, "Family History," and her memoir, "Slow Motion." In the latter, this one-time model and actress (her stage name was Dani York) tells of her Orthodox Jewish upbringing, and her subsequent fall from grace as a young adult. There was an illicit sexual relationship with one of her father's business associates, alcohol and drugs, and the typical falling apart one sees in conjunction with these activities. And then, amidst all this, her parents suffer grave injuries in a car accident. Her father dies, and Shapiro pulls herself together to help nurse her mother -- a difficult person even when well -- back to health.

In "Devotion," we see Dani in a new stage of life, married with a baby. Shapiro is no longer observant, and like many Jews today who were raised in observant households, no longer has any spiritual life. Suddenly, her baby boy contracts a rare, potentially deadly seizure disorder and the turmoil forces Dani to revisit the difficult times of her younger life and its attendant anxiety.

It's refreshing to read a story like this, one that puts on paper a scenario that I don't think is all that uncommon. As we move through life and reach certain milestones, the challenges of the tough times of our younger days naturally resurface. I've seen this happen to friends. It has happened in my own life. In Shapiro's story, her distress pushes her to seek help, and we read about her search as she dabbles in new-age, eastern-flavored approaches (Why does it seem as though all the Buddhists are Jews? Can't we Jews access inner peace through Judaism? What's missing here?), yoga, and meditation. To be fair, she also investigates her own Jewish background, trying to find the meaning it held for her parents and what that means to her.

Shapiro's inner-struggle, and the story of how she works her way through it, makes for a thought provoking read. I related to it as a Jew who also searches to find meaning in her heritage, and I related to it as someone who, like Shapiro, has stumbled while traveling through the personal challenges that come with the roles of wife and mother.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, by Rhoda Janzen

2010-06-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

Rhoda Janzen went through a serious rough patch. Her bipolar husband became increasingly abusive and finally (and thankfully) left her. For a guy. A guy named "Bob" he met on gay.com. Then she incurred severe injuries in a car accident. Still, she survived these travails, with her razor-sharp sense of humor not only intact, but flourishing.

Who are these Mennonites, I always wondered? Are they the ladies with tight little white bonnets covering hair pulled into tight buns? Recently I met a Mennonite woman in a writing class, a lovely secular woman, who shared humorous stories of her tightly-knit people that reminded me, maybe just a little, of the insularity and short-sightedness I sometimes see in my own beloved tightly-knit people, the Jews. In "Mennonite in a Little Black Dress," Janzen tells her story, amidst the backdrop of her Mennonite heritage.

My only complaint about Janzen's memoir -- and is this even a complaint? -- is that sometimes I felt a disconnect, because -- oh my gosh, she went through so much! -- and the contrast between the tragedies that befell Janzen and the glib, deadpan humor she uses to tell her story was, at times, jarring. Still, she is so, so funny. And, when I think about it, maybe humor is the best way to recall the tragedies of our past. After all, if your husband leaves you for a guy named "Bob" from gay.com, and, post car accident, you decide to go shopping with a girlfriend while trying to conceal a "pee-bag" under your dress that ends up spilling, maybe the sanest, truest thing to do, is to simply laugh. And reading "Mennonite in a Little Black Dress," I did just that.

The Myth of You and Me, by Leah Stewart

2010-06-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

Looking for a great summer read? I got lost in "The Myth of You and Me," in that great let-me-just-finish-this-chapter before I make dinner way.

The older I get, the more I see how the meaning of the stories of our lives influences the paths our lives take. In "The Myth of You and Me" Leah Stewart looks at big issues -- forgiveness, love and family -- within the context of the relationship between two girls, and the stories they tell themselves about their lives. Cameron and Sonia meet in high school. Cameron is an army brat, now on her sixth move and still trying to find something that feels like home, and Sonia is a young girl trying to navigate the danger and despair of living with an explosive, mentally ill mother while struggling with a learning disorder that renders all numbers complete gibberish. In the closeness of their bff-type friendship, the girls become each other's life rafts. Until, one day, suddenly they're not and we are left to wonder what happened.
Stewart begins the story near the end, a great story structuring device, with Cameron as a directionless young adult. Her recently deceased elderly employer posthumously instructs her to find her estranged friend, Sonia, and deliver a package. Thus, Stewart sets us up for the suspense of finding out what will happen in the course of Cameron's quest, and what secrets will be revealed along the way.

One of Stewart's strong suits is the development of her characters; they are so layered, so mired in their own sh*t, that they ring true. Within the framework of the story of these girls, and their struggles through life, Stewart guides us through a big, complicated relationship. We see what each girl/woman gets out of her relationship with the other, and what they do to hurt each other along the way. We see why they do what they do, and the stories they tell themselves about what has happened. I loved how Stewart revealed how each of the characters' backgrounds framed how they interpreted these things, and how this interpretation determined the meaning they assigned to the story, and how, ultimately, this determined what they did next.

Honestly, the very end -- and I will not spoil it for you -- felt a teeny bit far-fetched, but Stewart's story was one so lovely and eloquently rendered that I didn't mind.