tuckova

oh, Sylvia

Sometime in my early teens for a mercifully brief period of time I had the absolute delusion that my ability to take somewhat decent care of my sister totally qualified me as a babysitter and I went to work. I babysat regularly for the people across the street, who were California Jewish and that was pretty interesting, all that art and strange half-held ritual. There was another woman whose children I don't remember beyond the smell of their bedroom, sleep and urine, but I remember she called me Sarah Bernhardt. I liked it after the kids would go to sleep, wandering the rooms of the house, reading the spines of the books or flipping through the record collections, imagining I lived there.

One time I watched two children whose mother was, I think, recently divorced. She was going to a party. This was the saddest house I remember being in, not a home at all. There was a hole in the living room wall and someone had penciled above it "Sue did this when she was mad." Sue being the mother. Things went along okay until bedtime, when the boy completely snapped and decided he was going to kill me and his sister with a baseball bat. Let me tell you, you do not want a 15 year old in charge in this situation, because we are perfectly capable of making enough drama on our own and do not need help from genuine dramaticians. I tried to take the bat away a few times, got cracked on the arm pretty hard, and gave up. Using I guess hurricane logic, I locked myself and the sister in the bathroom and she fell asleep against me while he banged against the door with the bat. Eventually the boy fell asleep on the floor. I tucked the girl in bed and proceeded to think of ways to stay awake. There was a book with a black cover, with a hand seeming to rip through paper, holding or dropping a flower, which looked like it might do the trick. And it did; I stayed up all night reading.

The mother didn't come home til the next morning. The man who had driven her home drove me home, which was my first ride in an semi, which was interesting. I have absolutely no memory of what happened with the children that morning, but for 50 cents an hour I'm pretty sure that that night was the end of my babysitting relationship with that family. And that is the story of how I read "The Bell Jar".

R.I.P., D.F.W..

That a young and gifted person should be in too much pain to be asked to stay alive in the world and give it more in no way diminishes the gifts already given, what they meant, what I learned. I know that. But I still spent most of last night and this godawfully early morning picking at a wound that isn't mine in the first place, reading bits over and over, laughing again at an insight and weeping over flashes of merriment that are forever gone.

I should have rented movies this morning and permitted myself a day of escapism. Instead I thought I would work past it, as the salt of sweat is the best salt for such wounds, and wound up punching aimlessly at work that while meaningful will never mean that much, failing and flailing and finding myself at 3 p.m. eating grilled cheese with the salt of tears and a side of punch-my-face for letting the day go the way it did, wasted because I did neither what my head intended nor what my heart wanted.

I am sorry for his family; sorry for us: for the words that won't be said, for the places we might never go because he can't take us.

dammit.

The Mysterious Edge of (children's) historical fiction (and more)

Dear E.L. Konigsburg,

With all due respect to you for bringing Claudia Kincaid into the world, you need to either get a better editor or stop writing.

"The View from Saturday" had a few sloppy mistakes in it. I was mainly angry at the Newbery people for choosing the book, because it meant it would be read more than it deserves to be read. The Magical Indian thing was ridiculous; the "she knew that she knew but she didn't know how she knew but he knew that she knew before she knew that she knew" stuff was just... you know, if you can't figure out what a character's motivation is, that doesn't mean you should coat it in twinkling magic in order to get the reader to swallow it. I thought it was sloppy plotting, and I thought it was beneath you. And then on top of that, sloppy writing: "[she] was not sure how much the correct amount [of French cuff to show from beneath jacket sleeves] was, but she knew that if she put a spirit-level to his, they would be exactly right." A...spirit level (hint: not hyphenated)? To measure length? Ch-wha? And then, as a nit-picking pointy brain, it really irritated me that a piece of the story hinges on a student standing up to the adults for what he knows to be right, and the book implies that he is right, only... he's not. This sort of took the wind out of the book's sails for me.

But I had no idea what it was to fall out of love with a beloved author from my childhood until I read "The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World" because... wow. And not a good "wow". First, the characters have no clear voices (one of the redeeming features of "The View from Saturday"). They have no clear voices because they have no clear characters, and I don't mean they're complicated, but that they're self-contradictory. Second, we've got the sleeping fact-checker again at the helm for the Degenerate Art facts. The book implies that the degenerate art that is in the exhibition is also the art that was in the exhibition in 1937, but Renoir was not in the Degenerate Art exhibition; neither was Braque, Picasso, or van Gogh. And... All the Impressionists had a disease of the visual cortex? Ch-wha-? See, and these are just things I KNOW are wrong. But worse, worse, is this Noble Goal to call attention to the homosexuals killed during the Holocaust. It's not a bad story, but it's better if it's told right: there is no way that Pieter came home wearing a pink triangle. Things like this are almost worse than not telling the story at all. If you want to slip a little fact into your fiction to spice it up, it is possible to find actual facts that will do that without leading people to misunderstand history any more than they are already inclined to do. As it is, you're doing the writerly equivalent of chewing scenery on your way to another children's book award show, and I loved you, I did, but you have to stop this. Sloppy writing makes the world an uglier place than it needs to be.

Please get a better editor. No, really. You owe it to the children. You owe it to yourself.

****
In other books, David Sedaris sure loves himself some David Sedaris; Polish surrealism is troubling and excellent the second time around; and Alain de Botton writes well but keeping up with the Joneses is the least of my interests and I think he's lost me here. Squire and I are plugging along through Huck Finn and loving it a lot, though it makes us talk funny.

Line of Beauty

I finished The Line of Beauty finally. Around the middle, I started thinking: Are we ever going somewhere with this? and sort of sped through the second half of the book. I decided that we were not, in fact, really ever going anywhere, Alan and I, but that I would give his sentences the attention they deserved, so I went back to the middle and started again and finished.

It was... good. I guess. I was reminded of the Penn Jillette rule of clapping for the title of a movie when it appears in the movie, and clapped dutifully every time Hollinghurst name-checked his own novel, and ovated whenever he wanted to explain the title. It happened a lot. It's true that it may have seemed worse to me for having Evelyn Wood-ed and then seriously re-read the second half, but I think this really was laid on thick and recurrent. Including, of course The Amazing Parallels (or perhaps, the Amazing Serpentine Curves, bwaha) between the title of the book, the plot, and the presentation of the plot. It was a little anvillicious for me, as was the whole "Wow, and so the character named Nick Guest turns out to be a permanent guest! Who knew?!" Uhm... the guy who wrote the book? I know, I should have been prepared after Edward Manners, but... really?

I don't know, y'all, maybe I can't read grown-up fiction anymore. I'm a little too aware of the author wanting me to go someplace and I feel the pull of the puppet strings too much and then I'm irritated. I've read precious little contemporary fiction in the last decade where it felt like I was reading something that was both True and true*, and I think that I now value the latter, the feeling of the latter, as much as the former. If you're going to give me a story set in a world I've experienced or believe is true (Thatcher's England or whatever, as opposed to, say, Prydain) I need to have it that things don't always line up, the murder isn't always solved, the object of affection is not always attained; and the misalignment and unsolved murder and unrequited love don't make everything worse--any more than coincidence leads to enlightenment or solving the murder makes it less gruesome or falling in love means your troubles are over. I like a revelation on the human condition as much as the next person, but if it's too contrived it feels like less a moment of clarity and more like smoke and mirrors.

*off the top of my head: The Crow Road, Remains of the Day, Cat's Eye, and Middlesex all did a great job of making me feel like I was in a real place and that the people were real without overdoing the reality and while simultaneously getting to a point.

So Hollinghurst: dude, I don't know. The sentences were nice, sometimes even activating that little tingly part of my brain, which is certainly a thrill. And the way he wrote dialogue, which at first made me nutty, eventually sort of got entertaining, which may have been the point in the beginning and I was too slow to catch it. He's all "Really?" said Nick, meaning to convey his confusion at the statement and also a sense of disbelief in Rachel's apparent unawareness, if she was, in fact, unaware. "Hmm," answered Rachel, and Nick understood that she was keeping herself unaware, willfully holding herself in check against the onslaught of inevitable, horrible reality.

So, I liked the sentences. I thought the backthought was clever. I liked the snooty arty stuff, assuming he meant it to be both informed, informative, and a bit pedantic. But the insights were... Hey, did you know that coming of age was tricksy? Did you know that when you move outside of the social circle you were born in, there can be misunderstandings? Did you know that no matter how comfortable you are with your identity, other people may not be? Put against a backdrop of "hey, conservative politics were bad for lots of people; also, AIDS sucks" and the message I get is that Hollinghurst thinks his readers are a bit on the dumb side, and then the pedantic charm becomes a bit less charming.  Maybe I should have just seen the movie.

NOTE TO G: I did like reading it, for clarity. I think I just miss our book group.

a lot of thinking about YA fantasy fiction

We watched Star Trek: Nemesis over the weekend. Squire told Friar that it was about "how we define our humanity under different circumstances" and I thought: well, yeah. And this is, I think, one of the appeals of fantasy. It's not just looking at a different world: it's also that it's interesting to look at what's true about ourselves against a variety of backgrounds.

The Chronicles of Prydain are my favorite fantasy books. They may be my favorite children's books, hands down (although Bridge to Terabithia now looks at me with its lovely painful face and I am not sure, but.... ) Okay, definitely my favorite series. I've re-read them every year since fifth grade, which is a lot of times to read the same books. I learned about writing from those books; I learned about the subtle beauty of "not without regret". And I learned about the difficult choices, and about both sides of trust, and about saying what you're afraid to say because not saying it is worse.

The only thing I didn't like about those books was the ending. It seemed unbearably unfair to my childish hedonist heart that the choice would come down to happy oblivion or emotionally wrenching reality. Later I concluded that the happy oblivion was a metaphor for death (see also: C.S. Lewis; Tolkein), and I was irritated that this was presented as happiness. I mean: really irritated. Because in fact I think the choice is: emotionally wrenching and rewarding reality or... nothing. Do you want to go through life standing in the dank armpit of the tram and watching the light catch the snowflakes as they fall and listening to your child laughing or do you want... nothing?

And I felt like Alexander skipped the real choice, which is interesting, in exchange for a fantasy set up: You get the kingdom of happy ever after or you get the kingdom of right here right now. The first one is unreal, is blissful oblivion, is heaven, is death. And the second one is...hard. According to Alexander, a hero chooses the second; death comes to a hero only incidentally, only later. I'm not crazy about that, but at least I get it. Certainly I prefer it to the choice of deciding whether you believe you can go further up and further in whilst in a room too small to swing a dwarf, because it seems like a fairer choice. Though I don't like the choice as it is presented, at least it is a choice, and the point is clear: If we are heroes, we choose what is right, and what is right is difficult. It's like Fantasy Novels for a Young Poet or something.

Second favorite fantasy series: The Dark Is Rising. It's a child swept into a parallel world; it's time travel; it's Arthurian legend; it's beautiful You Are There writing (first time I saw the Thames, I was like: yeah); it's trust and honor and all the things I want a book to do. It's also Destiny, which I have problems with. You should have seen me try to have a reasonable discussion of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" because it induced the same sputtery anger that hits me any time I see destiny, no matter how pretty the packaging: That's not fair.

I don't mean fair like "she gets more candy than I do" because while that is not fair, it is certainly true. Some animals are more equal than others: some people will get more advantages than they deserve and they will get away with murder and they will be rewarded rather than punished. This is true, and I don't expect fantasy books, no matter how fantastic, to present me with something truer than reality can muster: I do not expect the fairness of equality. But the unfairness that I cannot handle is the unfairness conveyed by Destiny, by Fate.

So I was pretty excited to read Philip Pullman's books, because I thought he would have no truck with Because God Said So, whether we called it God or The Oracle or The Light or Dumbledore. I thought: Yay! A new children's series with free will! Characters doing what they think is right without regard for messages from higher beings. Characters stumbling in their steampunk darkness, so like our own; characters making their own choices. And then on top of that, Pullman can write his way around a sentence and through a book like nobody's business. I even thought in my naivety that perhaps the characters would not get the kingdom of hard work vs. kingdom of happy oblivion choice at the end, and wouldn't that be nice!

HAHAHA. I should have known already in the Golden Compass, when the alethiometer gave me pause, but Lyra seemed so self-determined and Will even more so: "I may be inclined to be this sort of person but it doesn't mean I have to choose it." And so we bopped on through three books of me thinking my lofty thoughts about fairness and free will and real choices. Boy, was I pretty pissed when I finished Amber Spyglass. Philip Pullman so didn't "kill god". He pulled deux ex machina like a rabbit out of a hat. Fate? We pretend it doesn't exist only because it's too depressing to contend with. Destiny is reality, and the only reason the human characters won't be told their destinies is so that they continue existing under the apparently illusory free will they hold so dear (even though they don't have it really have it, since Destiny trumps Free Will). And so to be heroic is to acknowledge the existence and even inevitability of your fate without even asking what it is. This is... not free will. Oh, and yeah, and the final choice (which isn't a choice)? You have to give up what you want most because an angel said so. OH, ferfle.

We're totally going to see the movie still, but I am disappointed. I'm getting my Alexander books encased in gold, I guess. And I will continue living in the Star Trek world with Squire Tuck, unless somebody can recommend some fantasy books where the world is fantasy and the moral approaches something I can live with, something at least as true as reality.

SORRY THAT WAS SO LONG.

bullets grazed my brain

Things I've been thinking about but can't seem to write a whole thing on:

• I found what I believe is the first book I ever read to address the mutability of time, which is one of my top weaknesses. The book's out of print, but the magic of the internets brought it to me. I read that book in the bathtub until it was literally falling apart, and when we moved to California I left it behind, which means I hadn't seen it for nearly thirty years. It was really weirdly great to read it again and have whole sentences ring with familiarity in my head. The persistence of memory is another weakness of mine. I feel quite resonant.
• The kids in Squire's class have moved on to "faggot" as an insult. Is there no creativity in the world of ten years old or what. Talking to him about words and then I read this great Steven Pinker article, which makes me feel surrounded in a good way by the power of words. The concept of being able to fairly mock people for what they choose instead of what they can't help doesn't seem that complex and I don't understand why it doesn't get pursued more. I do understand that unfairness is part of the fun of bullying, but it seems like saying "don't bully" isn't terribly effective and maybe more clear rules about how to democratically make fun of people might be time better spent.
• Squire has fully mastered the dirty look. It is really impressive; I finally taught it to him ("finally" meaning I was finally patient enough to push through his stubbornness and he was finally bored enough to try doing it my way) during a particularly dull train ride. Even though it's my tutelage at work, I shrivel a little when I see it. It is extremely awesome. He also has a sympathy face that does not fail.
• Presently there will be a rule in the house that people who buy food that is not on the grocery list and then do not mention the purchase and possible preparation of said food to the primary cook, nor (as secondary cook) do they themselves do anything with said food... well, not to put too lawyerly a spin on it, but those people are going to be force fed moldy mystery vegetable or something. Here's what we currently have rotting in the fridge, none of which is my doing: a pot of ...looks like it wanted to be chicken soup, a greenish thing that's maybe in the eggplant family, a whiteish thing that looks like alien spawn, and corn on the cob, which I do not eat.
• I found a picture of a man about whom I was once quite serious. He's the vice president of his company now. I'm vaguely happy for him. I am more happy for myself that I am not with him, despite his meteoric rise to moderate heights, because he still looks like he borrowed his dad's jacket and tie to get dressed up, which is a particularly unappealing look after 40. I hope he finally got a pet dog and that he either learned to kiss or found a girl who didn't mind having her lips bruised; I hope he's happy.
• Friar and I were talking about condescension, which is not a deadly sin but should be. I've been told I'm arrogant prickly and some other stuff. I don't know. I don't work well with others for sure but that's generally why I avoid others. If I'm hanging out with you, it's probably because I like you. I really didn't mean to hurt your feelings.
• If you are my friend, I mean good friend, I will probably not like the person you date. This is in most cases not because the person is actually unlikeable, but because I do not think they are good enough for you. Perhaps at some later date we can discuss why it is that most of my friends like Friar, and some, including those who have not met him, will even go so far as to say I do not appreciate him enough. Compare and contrast. For the record he seems to think I appreciate him just fine. Of course I haven't told him about the forcefeeding of the alien vegetable.

Bossy!

There's some bit of nonsense at the end of some of Squire's latest audiobooks that just burns me up. It says that it's important for kids to be read to... and that in today's busy world, blahblahblah, audiobooks are just as good as a parent reading to a child. In today's busy world on what planet, I'd like to know. Audiobooks are great --and I certainly appreciate Jim Dale for his ability to read Harry Potter and the Gobbledygook over and over again, because once was fine, but once was enough-- but they're not the same as reading aloud.

Now, I understand that not everyone is the fantastic reader I am. I am to reading what Jules Winnfield is to a foot massage: I don't be ticklin' or nothing! But I do not read to my son because I love the sound of my own voice (shut up!). I read to him because:

1. It's fun to do things together. It's fun to watch movies together, learn things together, go on trips together, because we can talk about it afterwards. How cool was it when Will got his wish of snow for his birthday? It wasn't what we expected at all, was it?

2. It's good to see how he thinks. I think it's important for me as a parent to observe how information gets processed, and to guide the processing when it's tangled, and sit back and relish it when it is as clear as only a child's processing can be. I get more out of a book when I read it to him because I see it in his eyes and mine at the same time.

3. It is good for me as a reader to read aloud. Words sound different, and sentences sing or they don't, and it's different than reading in my head. I would have missed some of the magic of "The Subtle Knife" if I'd read it to myself, and I'm glad I've had someone to read to.

4. If he has questions while I'm reading to him, he can ask. This might not be As True for girls as for boys, but it's been my observation that it's easier to talk about something if you stumble over it together. It's true for vocabulary definitely, and also for storytelling.

5. It is fun to experience things that are generally solitary together. So much of what we experience is solitary, even if we're all in it together-- reading together is like watching a television show where both people are watching the same show at the same moment, and both people can hit the pause button whenever they want to be witty or insightful or confused. I like the remote control in the middle of the couch, and I like reading as a companionable activity.

Please understand: I like audiobooks. Kids have the ability to listen to the same thing over and over again (CrazyFrog, I hate you so much) and it's been great for Squire to have that available to him, because I wouldn't do it. I understand that in "today's busy world" we sometimes can't take time for everything that we feel we ought to do for our kids. I really do get that and I also understand that I am privileged to have the time to read to my kid. But I think that if you don't, you're hurting... not so much the kid, because whatevs, kids are tough. But you're hurting yourself. And I'm angry that these audiobooks, in the interest of marketing audiobooks, imply that they're more able to do your job than you are. Delegate the housekeeping, delegate the lice removal. But really, why delegate the fun stuff? And reading is fun.

what I read

I finished "The Golden Compass" over the weekend. I had started reading it to Squire Tuck and then apparently wasn't reading it fast enough, because he started reading it alone. Since I hadn't already read it, I hopped to so we could talk about it.

I liked it a lot. It takes a certain amount of thinking for granted, which I particularly like in a children/YA book. It was well-written, and there was a decent flow to the plot. I liked that the end of a chapter was really the end of a chapter, and not always a cliffhanger. I liked how things progressed in a way that was exciting and possible to follow.

I also thought Pullman did a good job of telling you things about characters in a way that revealed his thoughts about them. For example, there's a part when he says that Lyra has no imagination. This is hard to fathom because she's a great on-the-spot liar, which to me requires an active imagination, but Pullman explains that in fact she is a good liar because she believes what she says... in a way, he presents something and explains it away at the same time. I wasn't sure I agreed with him but it's clear he thought about what he wrote.

He has a way of describing people through their behavior that I thought was really powerful. Mrs. Coulter only has a few complete scenes in the book, and each scene revealed more about her than a page of adjectives. I wish that he had spent less time using the adjectives later, because it felt a little screenplay to me, a little "stay with my visuals!" but he did so well describing action to reveal character that if he wants to be sure you see HIS character, that's fair.

On the downside: He doesn't always describe how people interact and how they got to feel the way they do about each other very well. Some relationships are clear in a sentence or two ("Ma Costa had clouted Lyra dizzy on two occasions but fed her hot gingerbread on three") but many of them fell short, for me. Lyra explains that she loves Iorek because he was kicked out of a country for murder, as was her father, except that no loving relationship ever seems clear between her and her father. Her quick affection for Iorek seems reasonably placed but the reasons given don't line up. I had problems with her relationship with Lord Asriel, too, who spends quite a few pages threatening to kill her in the beginning, but is described later as always treating her as "an adult engaging a child in a pretty trick." Wha--? Her parents' relationship was particularly difficult for me to understand: so passionate and so dead at the same time. Maybe I've never had relationships like these, so it doesn't make sense to me, but I think the problem is that Pullman doesn't really know how to describe these relationships himself. A relationship that should be key, Lyra's parents are fierce and infinitely sad and passionate and dizzy and they don't make sense, and it hurts the book that they don't.

And... the alethiometer seemed a little too handy. It was not as handy as "because Dumbledore thinks so" (glargh!) but it really did seem almost too much. As if the book got written and then there were holes in the plot that had to be mended, and boom! they were. This is a minor complaint, though. It's just -- he did so well at describing other otherworldly things to a degree that made them seem really possible that I'm sorry he didn't spend more time making the alethiometer seem as real, at least not to me. I finished and wanted to think for days about what form my daemon would take, but I never once considered what I would ask the alethiometer, if I could. Do you see what I mean?

Anyway. Good book, glad I read it, want to read the rest. Next up will be some non-fiction, I think. By the way, when people tell you Nora Ephron's latest book ("I Feel Bad About My Neck") is "funny" what they mean is that they have never read a decent blog post, because there are at least 20 writers out there who make my ribs hurt, but Nora Ephron never even made me smile.

what i'm reading

I'm still reading Love in the Time of Cholera. I was going to finish it before I went to Greece but then I took on this textbook editing project (editing by hand! Totally quaint! Fortunately I remember most of the proofreader's marks so it's okay... but it does interfere with my pleasure reading).

Anyway. I thought I didn't like Marquez because I really didn't much like 100 Years of Solitude; I've never really been able to get behind magic realism. I love long meandering stories, I like a touch of the absurd, I like the idea that reality is in fact pretty flexible, but magic realism is the potato salad of literature: I love all the ingredients, I hate the result. Other than a weak spot for Tom Robbins, which he's doing his level best to eliminate, I really have never gotten the point of magic realism.

So I never bothered to read any more of Marquez's work, because, you know, why. You don't keep picking up Raymond Chandler if you don't like hardboiled detective stories. But then here I am with  ...Cholera and I'm reading it and I'm enjoying it and yet there is something in it that nags at me and I tried to explain this over beer last night and I thought I'd try again over coffee.

I really don't do well with adjectives deployed to describe characters. I need to be given actions and allowed to locate my own adjectives. And I've noticed this with Kundera, too, and it's why I have trouble with him, and why I have trouble with Klima, and why so many books that are otherwise delightful to me wind up flung across the room as if they were Hemingway clones (really, really hate Hemingway clones. Not a big fan of Hemingway either, but glah, the clones). I do not want to hear "she was a fierce woman" or "he was a man of firm principles" -- I want to know how she's fierce, what principles are firm. I think that this is why, ultimately, I find Kundera's characters (and am now finding the ones in Cholera) to be so unbelievable: because it seems these adjectives mean something different to me than they do to the authors, and so then the actions that are shown make no sense. I have noticed this problem with my friends, too, that the ones who tell me stories of "he did this and this" are the ones I can listen to for hours, but the ones who tell me "he is cruel" are the phone calls I have trouble returning.

I also have, and I realize this is a personal thing, trouble liking characters who leave their children. I will never, ever like Anna Karenina, although I've given it almost as many attempts as I have Lolita (another book I can never like, I finally realized after several miserable rides through Nabokov's hideous sea. I concede that the man can write words, sentences, paragraphs, but I can't stay in a boat with someone who hates his main character) and my conclusion is the same: I don't like Anna and I can't like that book. And I can't like Fermina now and I don't know if that's going to ruin the book for me, but between the adjectives, which are on a steady rise here at page 270, and the fact that things appear to be boarding a hot air balloon of unreality without showing any signs of actually cutting the ropes and soaring away... well, I don't know. You don't get a lot of first sentences better than "The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love," and it's not as if I'm not going to finish or that I'm going to hurl the book from me or anything but I'm a little frustrated.

And I wanted to talk about something other than my shameful craving for Ronald McDonald and the Deathly Hallows.