A Little Sunday Reading v. 16 Short Story Edition

I have read a couple beautifully written short story collections in the last week or so. I'm working my way through a couple dense books, so the short stories provided a nice relief. I read Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You. And I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The thing about July is that she is quirky. While I normally love quirky, I often feel she is a bit too quirky for me. Like maybe I'm not getting everything that I should be getting out of her work. Take her movie, You, Me and Everyone We Know, for example. Just didn't *get* it. Spent more time scratching my head and less time laughing. But I found her unbelievably charming despite my discomfort with the movie. Her short stories were much of the same. She is charming. Her stories are just a little bit off. But I enjoyed myself. In fact, I would probably be waxing eloquent about the collection had I not read one of the best collection of short stories EVER around the same time.

Sorry, Miranda, you're getting the bump. I need to take a moment and regale my good readers with excerpts from Simon Van Booy's The Secret Lives of People in Love. I read this book as part of the Dangerous Reading Challenge
(http://dangerouslychallenge.bl... and I thought I would read a couple stories yesterday and scatter the rest throughout the month. But! I started reading and could. not. stop. Seriously. I couldn't. I stayed up way past my bedtime and read all the stories last night. The whole time I was moving toward the end, I was begging myself to stop and savor all the ...more I read this book as part of the Dangerous Reading Challenge and I thought I would read a couple stories one day and scatter the rest throughout the month. But! I started reading and could. not. stop. Seriously. I couldn't. I stayed up way past my bedtime and read all the stories in one night. The whole time I was moving toward the end, I was begging myself to stop and savor all the stories. I devoured it all while wanting it to never end. This collection of short stories is fantastic. FANTASTIC. It is both romantic and bleak--often times both in the same story. The language choices are always appropriate and moving. Characters perfectly developed. And the flow between stories could not have been more smooth. I wish I could type in all the gems in this book but I'd be typing the entire collection.

Here is a sample of Van Booy's fantastic style:

A filthy homeless man is squatting with the American tourists and telling jokes in broken English. He is not looking at the girls' shaved legs but at the unfinished bottle of wine and sullen wedge of cheese. The Americans seem good-natured and pretend to laugh; I suppose the key to a good life is to gently overlook the truth and hope that at any moment we can all be reborn.

We walk arm in arm through twilight. Paris never gets too dark, because when natural light dissolves, you're never too far from a street lamp--and they're often beautiful--set upon tall black stalks, each lamp a glowing pair of white balls in love with its very own length of street. Sometimes, they all flicker to life at the same time, as if together they can hold off darkness.

Some daydreams seemed to want to swallow him up for good. Like wild horses, they would follow him in the day and then wander the plains of his dream life, but always upon him--until he would barely remember his own name.

Gabriel wonders how many people occupy one seat in a day, and if the seat could record the thoughts of the occupants, what it would say about human beings.

Dangerously Reading v. 7

My selection for July was Jane Austen's Persuasion. I always wax eloquent about how much I love Austen. But when it comes down to it, I haven't really read that much of her. So this challenge gave me the opportunity to change that. From page one, I was in love.

How does Austen manage to be so subtle yet tackle so much in each work? This book has it all: romance, sibling rivalry, sharp critique of class-based discrimination, and a strong female lead. I adored it.

When I began the book, Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice) was firmly entrenched in my number one spot of endearing heroines. But Anne Elliot now rivals her. She has the strength, wit and independence of Bennet but is a bit more open. Austen's understated writing gave me just the right bit of emotion and romance from Elliot. It was never too much or cliche. Rather, her monologues and inner thoughts were moving and real.

Persuasion is Austen's last work. And I can't help but notice it is also her most mature and the one most marked with regret. Makes you wonder if Austen had made peace with all her decisions as she neared the end of her life.

Dangerously Reading v. 6

I finished my June selection on the last day of June. We were returning home from vacation and I spent a majority of the car trip reading. Before you go jumping to conclusions about how I procrastinated, let me just say that I started reading Jane Eyre in May. May. I know. Jane is a beast.

It took me over a month to plow through this dense work of (feminist) art. It was worth the labor and time.

Published in 1847, Jane Eyre can probably best be described as a proto-feminist piece. The protagonist and title character is an independent, educated and self sufficient woman. She works as a governess for a wealth family and when she falls in love with her employer, refuses to become his mistress and dependent. Instead, she sets off--penniless and alone--to discover herself and all that she is capable of.

The story was intense and some of the old English distracting. But the development and evolution of Jane was magical.

I suppose it is possible and useful to question the proto-feminism in the story. Mr. Rochester is very mean (almost abusive) to Eyre and at a time in the story, I was uncomfortable with how easy she overlooked the mistreatment for the benefit of "love."

But at the heart of the story, I argue, is a sense of female empowerment. One of my favorite passages can provide the proof:

Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people the earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

Additional passages of note:
You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not; I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience; your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

Lovely, lovely novel. I would recommend it to all but I know not all would enjoy. Proceed at your own risk.

Dangerously Reading v. 5

This month's selection was Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms. I went through a bit of a Capote phase obsession a couple years ago so I've already read this one. I enjoyed it but didn't need to revisit it. Instead, I substituted a Virginia Woolf selection. I decided upon A Room of One's Own. Even though I finished it yesterday, I still can't decide how I feel about it.

On one hand, it was very poignant and ahead of its time. Written in 1928, the book is a combination of lectures given by Woolf about art, fiction, intellectualism and sexism. In particular, I enjoyed her discussion about who controls "knowledge" and who has access to it. Her observations were true then and still ring correct today. I also enjoyed how applicable her words were to all writers and thinkers. I know the book is specifically about fiction but I found a lot of richness about writing in general.

However, the book was so boring. I hate to say it but I found my mind wandering constantly. She used so many examples that her argument got redundant after a while.

Of course, it is only a 2008 world that allows me this critique. I cannot imagine reading this work in 1928. It would have been groundbreaking and controversial.

Despite my boredom, I found lots of words of wisdom:

Pg. 5 "At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial--and any question about sex is that--one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. "

Pg. 30 "The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt i another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

Pg. 40 "...and I thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and case it into the hedge. "

Pg. 152 "It would be a thousand pities of women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with only one?"

Pg. 188 "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things."

A Little Sunday Reading v. 12 Summer Reading Edition

The semester is winding down. My grading is done. My grades will be turned in momentarily. Summer fever has begun to set in. We'll be in Michigan for the month of June. It will be a busy month filled with a class reunion, wedding, bachelorette party weekend, family/friend bonding, Drew's birthday celebration and dissertation writing.

But there will also be time for reading for pleasure! I always get a lot of reading done in Michigan. Something about the porch, the water, and the sunset makes it seem criminal to watch television.

I've been browsing some summer reading lists and my Dangerous Reading challenge list to get my reading wits about me. I've checked the library stacks. I think I have a pretty good list.

Books that I'll be reading this summer:

A Room of One's Own
Jane Eyre
Persuasion
The Secret of Lost Things
The Senator's Wife
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Beginner's Geek
A Wolf At the Table: A Memoir of my Father
When You are Engulfed in Flames

I'll also be reading some academic books for my dissertation but I don't count those. I'm excited about the list. It seems appropriately ambitious and fluffy. I'm beyond excited that both Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris have and will have new books out.

What will you be reading on those lazy summer evenings?

Dangerously Reading v. 4

I'm trucking right along on my dangerously reading challenge. Because I don't get down with poetry, I chose to substitute a feminist classic that I've yet to read. The Color Purple and I set off on a journey to celebrate the month of April. And it was glorious.

I'm embarrassed that I've never read any Alice Walker. I'm not sure why. This book was so heartbreaking. There were quite a few times I thought about stopping. Many times I thought I couldn't take anymore. But that's kinda the point of the book.

An explicitly feminist story, I enjoyed the main character, Celie. She suffered much at the hands of patriarchy and misogyny. Her story is an explicit critique of these systems.

My favorite part of the story was one that is overlooked by mos...more I'm embarrassed to say but I've never read any Alice Walker. I'm not sure why. I teach her in my women's studies classes. I admire her. And, based on this book, she is a fantastic writer. This book is so heartbreaking. There were quite a few times I thought about stopping. Many times I thought I couldn't take any more sadness and violence. But that's kinda the point of the book.

An explicitly feminist story, I enjoyed the main character, Celie. She suffered much at the hands of patriarchy and misogyny. Her story is an explicit critique of these systems.

My favorite part of the story was one that is overlooked by most reviews that I've seen and that is the familial bond in Celie's family. To me, all families should be as free and accepting. All family members should work together to raise the children. All the women should be supportive of one another. And that is a huge component of the book that I adored.

I recommend this book for anyone. It is fantastic. I'm thinking about adding it to my reading list for all students.

Dangerously Reading v. 3

I'm plugging right along in my Dangerously Reading Challenge. I loved this month's selection--Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood.

Even though the book took me forever to get through, I loved it. I wish I had been able to devote more consistent reading time to the book as I fear I missed subtle things here and there. And at 400+ pages, I won't be reading it again any time soon.

As you might suspect, 400 pages allows for lots of material to be covered. This book is a feminist land mine. Atwood takes on bullying, mother/daughter relationships, motherhood, marriage, depression and problems with the second wave feminist movement. WOW. You will think hard throughout this book. You will feel both sympathy with and anger at, Elaine, the narrator. You will struggle with the biases you bring to the story. But mostly, you'll ponder gender expectations and the pressure they place on women. The social criticism is so poignant that, at times, you forget that you're reading a beautifully written novel.

This was my first interaction with Margaret Atwood. It was fantastic. I can't wait to read her other fiction. She is a must-read for feminists. Perhaps my favorite part of her style is how flawed her characters are but her writing is free from judgment. She relays stories of failed marriages, bullying, poor mothering and does it without deeming actions good/bad or right/wrong. Rather, she opens up our minds and allows us to contemplate the *why* behind individual choices. That contemplation reveals that often people are limited in the choices they *can* make.

Some notable passages:

I am very curious about the BOYS door. How is going in through a door different if you're a boy?...The boys don't have a separate classroom, they're in with us. They go in the BOYS door and end up the same place we do. I can see the point of the boys' washroom, because they pee differently, and also the boys' yard, because of all the kicking and punching that goes on among them. But the door baffles me. I would like to have a look inside.

Now that I'm more or less safe from him, and him from me, I can recall him with fondness and even in some detail, which is more than I can say for several others. Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings, then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines. What will be left of them when I'm seventy? None of the baroque ecstasy, none of the grotesque compulsion. A word or two, hovering in the inner emptiness. Maybe a toe here, a nostril there, or a mustache, floating like a little curl of seaweed among the other flotsam.

"What's with her?" says the painter. "She's mad because she's a woman." Jon says. This is something I haven't heard for years, not since high school. Once it was a shaming thing to say, and crushing to have it said about you, by a man. It implied oddness, deformity, sexual malfunction. I go to the living room doorway. "I'm not mad because I'm a woman," I say. "I'm mad because you're an asshole."

Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is not the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.

Dangerously Reading v. 2

This month's selection was Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. I was nervous to pick up the book as I had tried it before and didn't enjoy the experience. And the book started off a bit slow this time as well. But by 50 pages in, I was hooked and chiding myself for not reading it earlier. It is a beautiful but sad story filled with sharp social critique. The book narrates the story of Pecola, a poor, African-American, girl who suffers abuse at the hands of her father and (white) society. She prays for beauty and attention.

"Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her."

While Morrison doesn't identify as a "feminist" writer, her books certainly keep the plight of African American women at the center. As such, I would argue that she resists patriarchy, sexism and racism. At the very least, her very style is resistant to hegemonic literary rules. The plot, choice of narrator, and language are all examples of Morrison pushing the literary envelope. Her discussion of the impact of abuse, racism and patriarchy is pointed and necessary. While I know Morrison has received a lot of flack about her female characters, I found the self-loathing of the African American women and children in this book to be heartbreakingly accurate.

You have to be in the right mood for the book. To. Be. Sure. It is not a light and fluffy read. But it is a commendable work. My edition had an epilogue from Morrison at the end that was excellent. She talked about how the book was received in 1970 and her rationale behind the characters. She writes, "With very few exceptions, the initial publication of The Bluest Eye was like Pecola's life: dismissed, trivialized, mis-read. And it has taken twenty-five years to gain for her the respectful publication this edition is."

Dangerously Reading v. 1

As I mentioned last month, one of my favorite books in 2007 was Mister Pip. In particular, I liked the charming relationship the young narrator had with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Because I had never even glanced at a Dickens' work I was feeling a tad left out. Shortly after reading the book, I came across the Year of Reading Dangerously challenge. The first book? Great Expectations! Convenient. I signed up. Picked up the most "classically" looking edition from the library and set off.

Despite the authentic aesthetic appeal of the book, the reading experience fell short of the romantic version I had imagined.

Imagined [romantic] reading experience:
Me. Classical looking book. Cups of tea. Reading journal. Lots of scribbling down intense passages that I loved. Late night reading affair with Dickens'. Experience capped off with thoughtful reflection about how much I learned about literature from Dickens. *slight reading glow*

Actual reading experience:
Me. Classical looking book. Cups of tea. No reading journal. No scribbling. No passages. No late night reading affair. Instead, I participated in the reading equivalent of watching paint dry. I shrugged off encouragement from my husband to "try something else." I was determined to find the beauty. I was determined to finish. Who doesn't like Dickens? Really. Who? Me. I found the story laborious, the language distracting and the characters unlovable. Especially Pip. Unbearable. Truly. Whine, whine, whine. I felt as though I was babysitting a naughty 6th grader. Am I allowed to complain about Dickens? Am I allowed to note that his characters exhibited the type of self-indulgence that only a very self-indulgent writer would know? Am I allowed to cry out for a steady plot with less ebbs and flows? And, for the love of god, am I allowed to ask for ONE good female character? Dickens clearly was wronged by all the women in his life. Hell hath no fury like a greedy, woman hating author.

Here's to next month. At least I can say I've experienced Dickens.