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Sunday, August 22, 2010
Living up (or down) to the name
I just finished reading The Imperfectionists by
Tom Rachnman, and I am reminded of what someone once said about Wagnerian operas: “moments of brilliance interspersed
by hours of tedium.” (Loosely quoted.) On the whole, however, I enjoyed Rachman’s novel about an
English language newspaper trying to survive in Rome. The story is told in chapters chronicling the lives of various
people connected with the paper -- publisher, reporters, editors and one reader. Each chapter heading is a headline,
and functions similar to the way the knots do in The Shipping News. The stories are sometimes funny, sometimes
bitter, and usually entertaining in a ho hum way. In spite of Rachman’s polished writing style and eye
for detail, the characters are more like cardboard cutouts or caricatures than real people. The book does have “moments
of brilliance” but, although I have read many glowing reviews, I felt like it just missed the mark. I would be interested in hearing what other people have to
say about it.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Guest Post
Guest post Anita Bruckner is a writer whose work I trust absolutely--she has never
disappointed me, and though some think her small landscapes present little for the reader, to me, they are close-worked tapestries
that reveal deeper layers the more you inspect them. Though Penelope Lively is a writer in much the same vein as Bruckner,
she does disappoint. So I am always careful when I recommend one of her novels. Like many present day English
novelists, Lively uses incredibly written descriptions to draw us into her characters' world. No mere set pieces, these
are the work of a fine writer. And, like many present day English novelists, her plot lines are often one-line, with
few if any sub-plots. I have sometimes wondered if the famous British reserve accounts for this, since sub-plots can
be the sub rosa parts of characters' lives. HEAT WAVE has a more or less one line plot, but the tensions are carefully
wrought to build toward the climax, that, again like many present day English novels, such as ATONEMENT and THE SEA, at one
and the same time surprise and yet seem absolutely right. By the way,
I literally could not stand ATONEMENT. I found it astonishing and not at all credible that adults could see a young
girl in a disheveled and bruised state and not inquire past her excuses to the truth. Nor could I believe that adults
who had trusted that young man as they did would have taken the word of an imaginative child without a great deal of investigation
into the truth. To ruin a man's name for life may not be serious in an age when, at least in this country, people
appear to care more about the attention their name gets than what it stands for, but at that time in England, to ruin
a man's name lightly simply WAS NOT DONE. And the end I found nauseating. That horrible woman, writing the
truth as she lay dying! Elizabeth Nell Dubus
Friday, August 6, 2010
A word about nonfiction
A friend of mine sent me the following link
to a NY Times essay. He said it reminded him of an E. B White essay that we used to have in our freshman reader.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/opinion/05stanton.html?hp
That made me recall how much I like to read
E. B. White’s essays. He writes beautifully and, although his essays are personal in nature, he manages to strike
a universal chord. I have been reading quite a bit of fiction lately (summer always makes me want to escape),
but I decided it might be time to go back to some of the nonfiction on my shelves. I think of some of my favorites --Dandelion
Wine by Ray Bradbury, West With the Night by Beryl Markham. I can pick those books up anytime and enjoy them again and
again. But the writer whose books unfold with more richness every time I read them is Loren Eiseley. He
is a naturalist, an anthropologist who looks at the mysteries of existence and poses more questions than answers. Non-fiction is for
robots. I jest, of course, but isn't Dandelion Wine sort of a fictional autobiography? It's been so long since I read it....And
E.B. White ought to write beautifully, he wrote the book. But also in the nonfiction realm, I like Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
Outstanding writer of a sort of pop-sociological nature. I haven't read Blink yet, but I will soon. I am reading LIFE OF THE SKIES by Jonathan Rosen. He uses birds he has seen
as a springboard for meditations on the big questions. As with any collection of essays, some resonate more than others with
me, but I find him an empathetic writer, and though one doesn't need to be a birdwatcher to enjoy this book, many of the things
in it remind me of the conversations my long-time birding partner and I have on our birding adventures in Baldwin County,
Alabama. By the way, I wrote an "opinion" about Penelope Lively's HEAT WAVE the other day, but I don't think it
got posted? Re essays: when I taught English at a Catholic girls' school in Lake Charles, the librarian told me she had never
had students coming in and checking out essays voluntarily, "How do you get them to do that?" she asked. I told
her I had told my students that essays were written from the heart as well as the mind, and in many ways, were a diary of
the writer's life. I suppose daily blogs have taken their place. Dandelion WIne is a fictional autobiography, but my guess is that is the case with many autobiographies. I know what you mean about re-reading things on the bookshelf. With all my
books out of the bookshelves and on the floor (as I re-do the den) I'm seeing some titles that I'm thinking about picking
up again. But I do feel guilty about the stacks of half-read books that still lie around the house. I'm currently reading
"Napoleon's Buttons," (subtitle is something like "17 molecules that changed the world"). It's part chemistry,
part historical analysis.
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