hello friday! (150501)

May 1, 2015

happy may!

it's independent bookstore day tomorrow! check this melville house post for a sampling of events taking place!

over the last few weeks, i've been texting with a good friend of mine who always seems to end up reading bad books. the thing, though, is that she sticks with them, determined to finish them, even if she's already read the summary online and knows what's going to happen, something about holding out hope because the summary is good or there are bits of good writing here and there or there's a character she likes. i, on the other hand, have become a robot in replying back, stop reading bad books, and laughing at her misery or disappointment because apparently i'm much more brutal as a reader -- a novel gets fifty pages to convince me it's worth my time, and a short story gets five, and, if it starts flailing when i'm halfway, three-fourths of the way through, then, well ...

... and i shared this here because we've been texting back and forth about this constantly over the last month, so it's been on my mind.

in april, i read six books. it felt like a long month, so i didn't think i'd done much reading, but i feel like part of that was because i read a lot in concentrated bursts with empty days in-between. it's been a weird month, but i guess i tend to substitute the word "weird" when i mean "super super low."

six books isn't a shabby number, but april's actually been a tough reading month. i've felt largely uninspired to read, and reading actually bummed me out for a good week or so about halfway through the month, especially when i'd pick something up and find the writing mediocre at best, the story flat and uncompelling, the voice uninteresting and lacking in personality because, then, all i was left with was the same old tired question of how did this get published.

sometimes, i think about publishing and how it has to change, open up, diversify, and it bums me out. sometimes, i go to book events and look around for another person of color, and it feels like looking for unicorns. sometimes, i think about these redundant articles that have been popping up about people who've committed to reading only books by women or books by people of color, and i call them redundant because they say the same thing -- that it's an enriching experience, that it's difficult to find writing by people of color or writing in-translation, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera -- and i wonder how many of these articles need to be published for things to start shifting. sometimes, i think about how houses essentially publish riffs of the same writer, and i think about how boring that is and how, if these houses that can afford to take risks aren't, then what does that say about the state of books? we can only point at amazon for so long when the industry itself needs to change, too.

i confess to feeling a bit disheartened, and i also confess that part (not all) of that stems from being a reader of color.

and i will endeavor to have my april post up in a timely manner!

this week i've been reading ... not much. i found an ARC of mia couto's confession of the lioness (FSG, 2015, forthcoming) at housing works last week, so i started reading that earlier this week, and, while the writing is enchanting, i'm finding myself a little lost, unable to ground myself in the world or with the characters. then i started reading an ARC of erika swyler's the book of speculation (st. martin's press, 2015, forthcoming), also found at housing works a few months back, and i'm only thirty pages in, which isn't enough to form an actual opinion yet. i've also been reading amy rowland's the transcriptionist (alonquin, 2014) on my iphone via oyster books over the last month, and i've been enjoying a whole lot, even though it took me a while to stop thinking of it as taking place mid-20th century or something. i'd actually like to have this book, so i'll probably go looking for it tomorrow during independent bookstore day!

hello monday! (150427)

April 27, 2015

in his art of fiction interview with the paris review, kenzaburo oe says:

i've cultivated the first-person style as opposed to the third person. it's a problem. a really good novelist is able to write in the third person, but i have never been able to write well in the third person. in that sense, i am an amateur novelist. though i have written in the third person in the past, the character has always somehow resembled himself. the reason is that only through the first person have i been able to pinpoint the reality of my inferiority.

in an interview [also] with the paris review, rachel kushner says:

i deliberated in a tortured and endless way over what the voice was going to be, whether it was going to be first or third person. the first year I was writing this book I hadn’t decided. i would go to friends’ readings and raise my hand at the end and ask, why did you choose to tell the story in third person? and people would look at me like, why would you ask such a basic question? but to me these basic questions must be asked and answered for every single book.
at this point in my life, i’m not that interested in third person. there’s a certain falsity when a character is given a full name and a set of characteristics and can be seen from outside. to me it speaks of a kind of realism whose artifice I have a hard time shaking, as a writer, in order to get inside what i am doing and imagine it fully.

one of jonathan franzen's 10 rules for writing as posted in the guardian is:

write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.

ishiguro, in talking about his recent novel, the buried giant (knopf, 2015), told the huffington post:

i did something i've been wanting to do for at least 15 years, which was to write a novel about that same question -- when is it better to remember, when is it better to forget -- but applied on a larger scale, to society, to a nation, to a community. i couldn't keep it as a first-personal narrative. this book wouldn't be appropriate as something that stays within the confines of just one mind. i had to somehow have a way of portraying a kind of a community as a crucial point of its development.

i'm curious about writers and voice, why they choose to write in the voices they do, and it's even more curious to me when i read books and find myself in opposition to the authors' intention/thoughts re: voice. like, for instance, i've never been that keen on kushner's first-person, whether in telex from cuba (scribner, 2008) or the flamethrowers (scribner, 2013) -- i loved her third-person in telex (which uses both first- and third-person) because i found it so much richer and vibrant, whereas i found the first-person in the flamethrowers to be rather flat, distancing, and impersonal, which made for an apathetic reading experience. while i didn't necessarily disagree with what she was saying about the kind of falsity of the third-person, i found that interview a little surprising, particularly because i couldn't ever quite get a grasp of who reno (the narrator of the flamethrowers) really was, in the frustrating way of a character (and, in connection, a first-person voice) who has not been fully inhabited.

the quote from ishiguro about the buried giant makes me wonder if the book would have fared better if written in the plural "we." now that i'm thinking about it, i really wish ishiguro had gone for the plural first-person because his singular first-person is extraordinary -- how much more (or how much differently) could he do with the plural? i thought the lack of first-person actually did the buried giant a disservice because the third-person lost all the nuanced, complicated richness of ishiguro's first-person, and the third-person felt so scattered and superficial, the questions of memory given a very literal, very flat study.

also, speaking about authors trying out different voices, i am massively curious about franzen's purity (FSG, 2015, forthcoming) because apparently part of it is written in first-person, which [i'm pretty sure] franzen has never done before. or, well, at least, the part he read at colgate university last autumn was in the first-person, though i suppose we'll see if it were edited out -- which i hope it wasn't because i really liked what he read -- given how natural franzen's dialogue reads, i wasn't surprised that his first-person would read with such ease as well.

that said, though -- i've said for a while that i think there are many authors who are good at first-person but very few who are great at it (ishiguro being one of the first authors who pop immediately to mind as one who is great), so i tend to be wary of them. i also wonder if i'm more critical with first-person voices? because i find that a weak first-person voice can seriously affect my engagement with the book -- and, maybe given my appreciation for great first-person, i'm not quite sure i agree with oe that a good novelist has to be good in third-person. give me the novelists who only write in first-person and do so brilliantly! but also give me the novelists who only write in third-person and do so brilliantly! and the novelists who do all the voices brilliantly! just give me all the brilliant writing!

a friend of mine has been developing a site-specific art called "graft art," in which art is created for an apartment and grafted into the space, so the apartment itself informs the piece. it's obvious to see how visual or performance art might be used in such ways, but, as a writer, it made me think how writing and places work, how you might create a piece of writing that is built upon and grafted into a specific space.

in some ways, writing and place integrate seamlessly because setting is a big part of writing. stories are situated somewhere, take place somewhere, and, sometimes, place largely informs a story, becomes a character almost, like how 1970s new york city and italy are integral parts of kushner's the flamethrowers or how the natural wildness of florida becomes area x in jeff vandermeer's area x (FSG, 2014). it also isn't uncommon for writers to inhabit a specific space over their bodies of work, like paul auster's new york or marilynne robinson's [fictional] gilead, so i wonder if writing isn't naturally an act of creating art in places, of weaving art into the metaphorical fabric of spaces, because we are the places we come from or, even, the places we long for. we write about the places that capture us; we revisit and recreate the homes we've lived in, the streets we've walked, the offices we've worked in; and we reinvent them in some ways, try to be faithful to life in others -- and it isn't that other art forms can't or don't do similarly, but, like i said, stories are situated somewhere, take place somewhere, and it's hard to separate that from writing.

but, then, i wonder how this would work physically -- how would you take a story and physically integrate it into a space? other than the obvious ways of prints or wallpaper or curated shelves and tables. it makes me think even of the title of my blog (and the story i wrote with the same title) because "the toilet papers" comes from the idea of reading on the toilet, which is a specific place in the home that serves a specific purpose. i know i'm not the only one who reads on the toilet; people keep magazines, papers, books in bathrooms to be read during toilet time; but we don't read for long periods of time on the toilet, hence the format of the story (a series of notes written from one lover to the other) and the title of this site (maybe a blog post is the perfect length for toilet time!).

today is the last monday of april, which makes this the last poem. today's part of a poem comes again from ted hughes' birthday letters (FSG, 1998), this time from "the lodger" (125).

efforts to make my whole
body a conduit of beethoven,
to reconduct that music through my aorta
so he could run me clean and unconstrained
and release me. i could not reach the music.
all the music told me
was that i was a reject, belonged no longer
in the intact, creating, resounding realm
where music poured. i was already a discard,
my momentum merely the inertias
of what i had been, while i disintegrated.
i was already posthumous.

hello friday! (150424)

April 24, 2015

i was up and awake at 2 a.m., thinking, hm, what shall i talk about this friday?, when i looked to my right (not very far to my right) to the pile of books stacked rather perilously on the corner of my desk -- or, rather, the pile of things stacked rather perilously -- and, because the books in this pile are usually what i've been reading (or intending to read) currently, i think maybe we'll dive right in.

meg wolitzer, the interestings (riverhead, 2013): it's been an extraordinarily shitty few weeks, and i know it's been extraordinarily shitty because i've been having a difficult time reading. when i'm having a difficult time reading, i tend to reread because the familiar is assuring and comforting, none of that nervousness or anxiety that comes with starting something new, so i picked up the interestings again because i loved the interestings for the friendships, the banalities, the exploration of talent and potential, although the last maybe stings a little, given my current crisis in my own writing. (i stepped away from writing fiction last week.)

a mango: because i love mangoes. this needs to ripen a little more, but i cannot wait to eat it. i hope it's good, but, to be honest, fruit isn't as good in new york as it is in california. maybe all that goddamn sunshine's good for something.

jonathan franzen, farther away (FSG, 2012): i pulled this out because i went to see the documentary, emptying the skies, this week. it's based on the essay franzen wrote for the new yorker (published in farther away under the title, "the ugly mediterranean"), so i wanted to give the essay another read after seeing the documentary (on earth day, when it was released). it's a great essay -- one of my favorites of franzen's non-fiction -- and the book is just so pretty and well-designed all the way through.

betty halbreich, i'll drink to that (penguin press, 2014): this was my response to "i need some light, frothy reading," and what a riveting look into privilege this was. i'm fascinated by money, not gonna lie, mostly because i'm rather amused by the indulgence and entitlement and sheer ego that accompany it, all while the privilege and, again, entitlement are off-putting and repellent. halbreich has a measure of self-awareness, though, and acknowledges the unnecessary luxuries of her clients and of clothes, and, in the end, i'll drink to that was exactly what i wanted and needed during the week -- light, frothy reading.

ted hughes, birthday letters (FSG, 1998): i pulled this out to find a poem for my hello monday post and kept it out because this may be my favorite poetry collection. heh, i say that like i read a whole lot of poetry, but does that matter? this collection still means a lot to me and warms my cold, cold heart, and i love having it nearby.

rebecca solnit, a field guide to getting lost (penguin, 2005): like i said, extraordinarily shitty week means i'm stalled on this book, not because it's bad but because i'm stalled. i'd love for my heart to heal so i can read without feeling twinges again.

marilynne robinson, housekeeping (FSG, 1980): i started reading this last friday on my way out to coney island, but, wow, i'm already depressed as fuck, so i set it aside for lighter reading.

timothy keller, prayer (dutton, 2014): sometimes, i read theological books, too.

papers, notepad, etcetera: i'm not undoing my tower of books and crap to see what these papers are. i think there's a printed receipt in there, maybe a story draft, drafts of résumés and cover letters -- not very interesting, eh? moving on!

jonathan franzen, strong motion (FSG, 1992): damn, i have two franzens in the same pile? i started reading this a few weeks ago because i miss having fiction by franzen to read, but, see, i have this habit of reading, like, seven books at any given time, and it's always a gamble to see which book sticks and which one is temporarily set aside for a later day. this one, too, was put aside for something lighter.

flannery o'connor, the complete stories (FSG, 1971): recently, i went on this buying spree of o'connor books -- got the complete stories then the habit of being then mystery and manners -- but o'connor is someone i seem to be able to take only in morsels because she has this intensity that requires digesting. maybe it's just me, but, sometimes, i wonder if i'm "getting" her stories because i'm oftentimes left a little unsure at the end, wondering if i "got it" or if i missed something along the way. this isn't necessarily bad, though, because it makes me slow down -- actually, over the last two years, i've been trying to be a more careful reader instead of simply flying through books. i've always been a fast reader, so it's been a good exercise to slow down a little and rest on the page, in the story, with the characters and absorb more of everything. also, i'm not allowing myself to buy any more books until i find a job ... but i am horribly weak when it comes to books, and the CLMP lit mag fair at housing works is this sunday, in which case, shit, well, lit mags aren't books, right?

and that is the pile! as it goes, though, tonight, i'll be finishing a book that isn't in this stack, kazuo ishiguro's an artist of the floating world (penguin, 2013) (drop caps edition), for book club tomorrow, which also means i get to bake strawberry cream scones because it's book club + brunch because what's a book club meeting without food?

have a great weekend, all! enjoy this battle between winter and spring if you're in nyc!

hello monday! (150420)

April 21, 2015

i was looking through the photos on my iphone, and, as it turns out, i had several of the melville house tote bag lying around, so here are three photos of the melville house tote because tonight was the game of totes at housing works and melville house was eliminated in the first round despite a rousing speech.

(tin house won.)

(also, and maybe most importantly, i got me one of the shiny new lit hub totes. :D)

sometimes, i'm surprised by the disconnect between faith and comfort, how, oftentimes, the common immediate response to an admission of suffering or pain runs along the lines of you should pray about it; trust in God; i'll pray for you. it isn't that i don't understand where that comes from because, as a christian, i get it -- there is a need and a place for exhortation -- but that's the thing -- there's a place for it, a time for it, and, sometimes, it's the wrong initial response.

michel faber captured this religious instinct accurately in his novel, the book of strange new things (hogarth, 2014), so much so that i wanted to reach in and shake peter (the main character) for his inability to comfort his wife, to sympathize with her first as her husband, to tap into human understanding for their situation -- he's away on another planet, ministering to aliens, and she's alone at home, dealing with a world that's falling to pieces. she's having an understandably difficult time coping because everything's seriously gone to hell on earth, and, finally, she cracks in one of their communications (done via writing, kinda like e-mail), pouring out her frustrations and vulnerabilities to her husband, only for him to reply with religion.

one might argue that someone's spiritual well-being is top priority, and i'm not here to argue about that because that doesn't negate the fact that part of this thing of being human (and, even, on a religious level, of ministering to each other) is that we have a variety of needs that require tending. and that, sometimes, all someone needs is comfort or assurance or solace. that, sometimes, it's enough to give a hug or ask, are you okay?, and listen -- the spiritual exhortations and appeals can wait for later after the heart has been soothed, the pain abated, but, often times, there's a tendency to skip the heart and go straight to the religion and expect that that is enough and, if it isn't, ooo, bad christian, how small is your faith.

that said, i did deeply appreciate that faber didn't simply stop there but also explored the struggle for peter, too, in being confused and frustrated that his exhortations only further angered bea. religion is his default; he has to wrestle with bea's continued irritation with him because he thinks he's saying the appropriate things; and i appreciated that because, for some people, myself included, sympathy isn't something that comes naturally. sometimes, for some of us, it's a struggle to know how to act or respond in the face of great emotional need, and peter has to try and try again before he finally understands what it is bea needs, and it isn't religious exhortations or rebuke but simply comfort and understanding on a human level from heart to heart, from husband to wife.

you know what phrase i hate? like deeply, passionately hate? "make love." it's so ... prissy ... why not just say "have sex" or go for the wonderfully carnal, visceral, aggressive "fuck"?

anthony doerr's all the light we cannot see won the pulitzer for fiction, and i'm not surprised. i also don't have much in reaction to it? i didn't read it; it wasn't on my list of TBRs; and the pulitzer honestly doesn't further incline me to pick it up. i'm not side-eyeing this one like i side-eyed donna tartt's the goldfinch last year, though, so hey there's that!

this week's poem! or part of a poem! though it feels odd to "excerpt" poems, but what can you do. this is from ted hughes' birthday letters (FSG, 1998), from a poem called "the 59th bear." have a good week, all!

that was our fifty-ninth bear. i saw, well enough,
the peril that see-saws opposite
a curious impulse -- what slight flicker
in a beast's brain electrifies tonnage
and turns life to paper. i did not see
what flicker in yours, what need later
transformed our dud scenario into a fiction --
or what self-salvation
squeezed the possible blood out of it
through your typewriter ribbon.
at that time
i had not understood
how the death hurtling to and fro
inside your head, had to alight somewhere
and again somewhere, and had to be kept moving,
and had to be rested
temporarily somewhere.

hello friday! (150417)

April 18, 2015

truth? there is something so soothing about sitting and staring out at the ocean. whenever i'm having a really hard time or going through a bout of really bad depression, i hie myself out to the ocean and just sit and sit until i start feeling like i can breathe a little easier. i couldn't live anywhere that doesn't have easy access to an ocean.

but books! in bullet points this time just because.

finished rebecca solnit's the faraway nearby (penguin, 2014, paperback) then immediately picked up a field guide to getting lost (penguin, 2006, paperback). conclusion: solnit is wonderful. i'm going to pick up wanderlust: a history of walking (penguin, 2001) next.
started writing a post about the faraway nearby and losing my grandmother to alzheimer's, but then the post became an essay that also wove in my travels in japan (i went to japan a few weeks after my grandmother passed away) and the books i read there and about solitude and place and dislocation and memory. as of now, i'm unsure what it'll be, but i think that's one of the cool things about writing (or about creating in general), that you have no clue where you'll end up. you could have a destination point or an end goal in mind, but that doesn't mean you'll actually get there, but it's all right because you end up somewhere better, if only because the journey there is revealing and eye-opening.
the 2015 pulitzers are announced on april 20, and i'm all ready to side-eye the hell out of it again. (i've been side-eyeing the pulitzer since 2011.)
- who do i want to win the pulitzer? marilynne robinson's lila (FSG, 2014)!
speaking of whom -- i started reading housekeeping (FSG, 1980) on the subway (in an empty car, no less) today, and i'm enthralled with her descriptions. like this passage:
- "it is true that one is always aware of the lake in fingerbone, or the deeps of the lake, the lightless, airless waters below. when the ground is plowed in the spring, cut and laid open, what exhales from the furrows but that same, sharp, watery smell." (9)
- there's something so rich and visceral in that -- you can just imagine the earth exhaling, the smell it gives off.
- i don't know if other readers are like this, but i find myself reading debut novels (in this case, of long-established authors) with a slightly different eye. i'm not sure how to describe how my reading eye is different, but maybe it's a little more probing, a little more examining, not in a critical way but in a way that seeks to see the places authors came from, where they originated, how their work has progressed through their body of work. i love seeing growth, how authors have matured, and i think it's fun because it's usually a very organic progression because change is natural -- we're constantly growing, reshaping, metamorphosing as people, so, of course, that ought to be reflected in the writing.
- and, of course, this is relevant here because i've read robinson's later novels and housekeeping was her debut.

have a good weekend, all! happy reading!