A Literary Life

Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories (Philip Roth)

“I don’t like Philip Roth,” I said to them, the Roth-y groupies. But their teary eyes and gesturing hands drive me to change my mind, to give the man another chance after the boring travesty that was The Human Stain.

“Try his original, the award-winning, break-through, tour-de-force Goodbye, Columbus,” they told me. “Give him another chance.”

So I did. And now I come back to the teary groupies and I say: “I don’t like Philip Roth.”

He’s so topical, so timely. With Human Stain, he brought up the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. In this work of years before, it’s mostly about premarital sex and contraception and sleeping with one another versus marriage. It’s about the extended adolescence during and right after college, when we should have grown up a bit but haven’t. And it’s about the choices we make — or nearly make, and then reverse at the last moment — that change everything, from which part of town you will live in to what kind of job you’re going to have. Oh, and premarital sex.

All Roth wants is to tell the reader his point of view on current topics of interest. He couldn’t get a radio show, so he writes fiction. Ok, ok, ok. That is harsh. He’s a good writer of fiction — the use of fruit in the novel to illustrate financial success, for instance. But COME ON PEOPLE! He’s almost a John Grisham, except he tackles more than one theme and isn’t as action-oriented.

His prose touches me in no way, at least not in any way a well-written magazine article couldn’t do. I feel no spark of inspiration or empathy. I feel only coldness and method. Please? Can someone explain it for me? Is it just that Roth is a “man” writer, or what? Or is it just that he’s stumbled on some good insights about controversial issues at exactly the right times to reap all the awards?

Anyone?

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars - Mediocre vacation reading

Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)

This selection of stories centered on the Indian/Indian-American culture (dots, not feathers) was simply written yet vivid. Though I enjoyed it and read it quickly, I can’t help but shake the feeling that I could have gotten just as much out of it had I been reading it while bouncing up and down on the stair master. In other words, the book seemed to be a placeholder, something to do to keep my eyes busy that didn’t permeate much further into my head. And though I could be wrong, none of these stories will wind up haunting the corners of my mind, which makes me wonder why it received the Pulitzer. But ah well, I don’t give out the prizes. (Or maybe I’m distracted, who knows?)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Vacation reading

Jenny & the Jaws of Life (Jincy Willett)

David Sedaris apparently really liked this book. He writes a gushing introduction, reintroducing this new version of the book, which had gone out of print several years before. Well, I didn’t so much like it, and I also understand why it went out of print in the first place. It’s, well, kind of boring and full of characters I didn’t really like. In fact, they all seemed similar. Smack dab in the middle of the book, I wanted to toss it up in the air to see if it could fly like some paperback-winged bird, because that might be more exciting than the process of reading it, but I didn’t. It was a library book, after all, and we must not destroy public property, even boring, mildly inventive public property that fails to thrill, let alone genuinely entertain.

“It’s just about the funniest collection of stories I’ve ever read — really funny and perfectly sad at the same time,” says Sedaris. I had trouble finding the funny, except for a small tickle of humor near “The Best of Betty,” a story regarding a Dear Abbey type of column. But the sad was written all over it. Though I like his work immensely, perhaps Mr. Sedaris and I can just agree to disagree about this one and, hopefully, still remain close, personal friends. Right, David?

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Mediocre

Ship Fever (Andrea Barrett)

A friend is someone with whom you share the important things in your life, including books. (And if books are not an at-least-somewhat-important part of life, we will most likely not be that close of friends. No offence. Really.) Even so, friends don’t always share the same taste in fiction. When such tragedies occur, it doesn’t often come to blows — unless you insult The Hours or The Road, of course. (Just kidding, Pam!) Even better are the times a friend recommends a book, a novel you’ve never heard of before, and you find a little gem of fiction, something you can both google over as if it’s a shared experience.

This book was such a find for me, lent to me a friend who swears by National Book Award winners, and is a series of somewhat-interconnected short stories and the title novella. Vivid, unique and unexpected, these stories circle and dodge around the theme of science, especially the late 19th- and early 20th-century natural sciences: the time of Darwin, of aristocratic men grabbing butterfly nets and carefully pinning new species to velvet-lined shadow boxes, of drawing-room scientists, of adventure to new continents in search of unknown species. The stories describe the thin line between a fiery passion for science and a belief in magic, telling the tales of men and women who find the world is still more complex and powerful than the flimsy tools of science, who are abandoned in dark jungles and desperate situations, betrayed by the logic they so desperately believed in.

Ship Fever is a great read, one that makes me also want to begin following National Book Award winners. I’m thankful for the recommendation, and will turn around to recommend it to other friends who’d like to share an experience.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars - Hardcover book club selection

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (Kurt Vonnegut)

It’s truly amazing that this man is still around — born in 1922, rumored to smoke unfiltered Pall Mall cigerettes (”a classy way to commit suicide,” he says). But thank the Lord that he is still here — or, because Vonnegut is a humanist, whoever the humanists would thank.

This ultra-slender book took me exactly an hour to read. No, I’m not kidding. It’s exactly 78 pages, very loosely spaced and cut into segments of 2-4 pages each. What is great is that the narrator is actually Vonnegut himself. He originally wrote most of these short spurts of pseudo journalism for a recurring NPR program wherein he was their offical reporter on the afterlife. He achieved his “scoops” by being 3/4ths killed by Dr. Kevorkian (hence the title), interviewing both famous and mundane personages outside of the holy gates, and then returning to the world of the living to transcribe their thoughts.

As with most of Vonnegut’s work, these thoughts are witty, informed, random and insightful, yet never deep. The word deep connotes a self-importance that Vonnegut lacks. For instance, the words of Adolf Hitler:

I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirect, which might have had anything to do the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course, were among those causualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million citizens of the Soviet Union and so on.

“I paid my dues along with everyone else,” he said.

It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be errected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889-1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in Germsn: “Entschuldigen Sie.”

Roughly translated into English, this comes out, “I Beg Your Pardon,” or “Excuse Me.”

And as well as this demented dictator, Vonnegut tackles Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Clarence Darrow and more. My favorite? Why Kilgore Trout, of course, Vonnegut’s famous character from Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions and more. If you’ve read Vonnegut, you know Kilgore Trout. Simply because the book is so light weight, I don’t think I can grant it a full fledged five on the rating scale. However, because it was a hilarious hour, a memorable experience and a reminder of a great author I haven’t read in a while, I give it a:

4.5 out of 5 stars: A hardcover book club selection

Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir (Joe Meno)

Okay, so I’ve been getting behind on my book reviews (I have four completed books to regurgitate for my audience in proper witty fashion) because I have been working on getting this Web site set up. Isn’t it purdy, though? So it’s been a while since I read this snappy, original and succinct collection of short stories, but I haven’t forgotten it.

It is rather difficult to foget when the opening tale features two children who drug litle forest animals in order to dress them up in doll’s clothing. Or the story of two boys/men who celebrate the anniversary of their kidnapping by visiting an amusement park. Cuban magicians, lawn ornament factory workers, men who sail into the sky with the floating power of their hats alone. These stories are definitely new and fresh, very compelling, especially because of their short length.

At the same time, however, they are a little too fresh in my opinion–a little too fashionable in a way, lacking personal meaning for the audience (and also the author, I would guess). Meno is not very close to a lot of these stories. Sure, there are exceptions, but on the whole I wouldn’t call the book passionate or heartfelt.

Still, it does make me want to pick up his previous book, titled Hairstyles of the Damned, which is aparently a reference to the punk rock hairstyles of the characters. Mohawks? Rock on.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Book club selection

Willful Creatures (Aimee Bender)

Aimee Bender’s work is excellent, unique and very hard to categorize. I suppose I would think of her stories as I do my own dreams–random, wacky and horrific while simultaneous humorous–which I then wake up from to see how symbolic and telling those sleeping visions really are. They are simple yet sharp, leaving me wondering why no one (meaning me) could have pinned down that idea before or how someone (meaning me) could take inspiration from the story to create another something just as meaningful.

I simply love this woman’s writing with the same passion as I did when first introduced to it through The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Though I love and idolize it, I think it may be impossible to ever recreate. If anything, the inspiration a writer can glean from Bender is to treat all their ideas with the utmost seriousness, to never leave a small inspiriation by the wayside. Want to write a story about a woman with potatoes for children? Do it, it could be poignant and touching. Want to tell the story of a husband and wife who kill each other solely for their preference in food spice? Go for it, that tale could symbolize the contradictory nature of love, as in opposites attract and also drive each other bonkers.

In order to give you an idea of what this Incredible Ms. Bender is all about, let me quote you the first paragraph of the collection of stories, from a tale called Death Watch:

“Ten men go to ten doctors. All the doctors tell all the men that they only have two weeks left to live. Five men cry. Three men rage. One man smiles. The last man is silent, meditative. Okay, he says. He has no reaction. The raging men, upon meeting in the lobby, don’t know what to do with the man of no reaction. They fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands. The doctor comes out of his office and apologizes, to the dead man.

Dang it, he says sheepishly, to his collegues. Looks like I got the day wrong again.

One can’t account for murder or accidents, says another doctor in his bright white coat.”

I looked at this book the same way I would a tasty dessert–a cheesecake, a box of sorbet or anything chocolate. The moment I had opened it, I wanted to devour it completely and yet I forced myself to pace it, unwilling to let the experience end too quickly. The moment I closed the cover, I mourned that there are not more Aimee Bender books I could lay my hands on ASAP. In the end, I am thankful for the sweet experience and also that books aren’t high in calories or fat. It’s just that the truly delicious ones often appear to be few and far between.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the hard cover

Pricksongs and Descants (Robert Coover)

Robert Coover is a significant figure in the history of writing as the father of metafiction. Everyone who studies modern American literature will–or should–have studied his work, especially his quintessential story, The Babysitter, which is included in this anthology. How to explain Coover… hmmm.

Well, there are second-person narrated game show scenes where the object of the game is to avoid death. There is a magician who pulls more than rabbits out of his hat and, tragically, fails to pull out a sexy, protruding ass from the black brim. There is a magic poker, a little red riding hood remake and much much more. Be prepared for anything and for short paragraphs with alternating points of view, realities and voices. Confusion is the beauty, don’t you see? No? Well, you will when you get the hang of it.

Read, live, love. Coover–my hero–was essential in the development of the curriculum at Brown, where I would attend school if sheer will were the only necessary component.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the hard cover

Arranged Marriage: Stories (Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni)

Being a woman of average American roots (meaning that I’m a mixed-breed, European mutt), I really enjoy sneak peaks into the lives and thoughts of other cultures. That experience of the sneak peak is the definition of this book. Divakaruna chronicles the stories of various women of Indian descent and their experiences within or regarding arranged marriage. Light, easy and very plot-driven, it is a fun little read.

That said, let’s get to the criticism. Sure, I would love to find our more about what it is really like to be in an arranged marriage. Most of these short stories, however, only relayed stereotypical events and attitudes that I could have pulled out of my own American head. Things like chauvinism, the preference for male children over female, the difficulty of obeying your (or your husband’s) elders, the disparity between the old country and the new life in America, the debate over educating women… I like some of the small sensory details like the feel and delicate pattern of a sari and the smells of India that make a native nostalgic. These details, however, were few and often repeated—in different stories, from supposedly different women’s lips. Both of these facts made the book, sure, interesting but flat. Predictable.

I believe a lot of these feeling come stem from the fact that the book was published in 1996. Much of the content would probably have felt newer then. As it stands, Arranged Marriage is simply a readable but not laudable collection of tales geared toward a female audience.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars = Vacation reading

Civilwarland In Bad Decline (George Saunders)

Second time reading this collection of short stories and am just as impressed. The title story is the jewel of the whole, I think, and is the tale of the second-in-command at a local amusement park/tourist attraction. Which has come under attack by local gangs. Darkly funny without losing any dramatic impact. A modern Southern writer of talent.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars = Book club selection