This Blog Is On Vacation

It's time for me to go offline for a bit, time for face-to-face interactions, time for family. I plan to return to regular blogging on July 7.

Reading Communally

Some time in April, my RSS feed that imports this blog to Facebook stopped working. So, each day, I went in and did the update manually. In a way, I didn't mind, since it forced me to look at Facebook once a day. I don't want to lose too much time to Facebook, but I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to.

Yesterday, Facebook started to tell me that my blog url isn't valid. I find this interesting, because this seems to be the week where more and more of my Facebook friends are commenting back and forth on various posts I've written and photos that have been posted. Some of them who don't even know each other are talking to each other. Cool.

I've needed this interaction as I've been reading Anna Karenina. It's been great to post comments on Facebook and blog postings and to hear what other people think. It kind of reminds me of grad school.

One of the things that I miss most about grad school is that experience of a group of people reading the same book at the same time and taking it very seriously. I haven't had that experience much since I left grad school. Even in book clubs, I'm often the only one reading (the others have given up or haven't started or won't be reading this book).

I find it interesting how we can talk to people we've known in real time and people we know primarily through their blog postings and people we may not know at all. Apparently, if I bought a Kindle, I could have this experience more often. I only just now came across this Times article about the Kindle feature that lets you see what other people have underlined. That would intrigue me but only so far. Now, if we could write notes (like some of the e-textbooks I've seen let you do) and share them, that would be cool.

One big communal reading group--that's my utopian vision of the future.

And for those of you keeping track, I'm about 150 pages from the end of Anna Karenina. I'm going to finish today so that I can read more modern books during the rest of my vacation. I've written a poem in which I envision Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre meeting for coffee. And yesterday, while I waited for McDonald's to finish the dinner order that I would take to Vacation Bible School children, I read the book--surely there's a poem there.

What Would Jane Eyre Do?

I'm a good chunk of the way through Anna Karenina. On the one hand, I'm finding it delightful, like getting back to my grad school self. On the other hand, 19th century fiction is frustrating to me these days. I now know more than I ever really wanted to know about nineteenth century wedding customs, and illnesses, and high society, and farming (and the list could go on and on). Of course, I tend to skim through those passages--one of the benefits of not being in grad school!

I used to have more patience with these loose, baggy monsters (as Henry James called 19th century novels). The melodrama was not such a turn off. Now I read about Anna K/ and her complete inability to control her emotions and her sex life, and I feel the utter frustration and annoyance that I feel with modern middle class girls who don't want to get birth control because then they'd have to admit they're sexually active. Give me a break!

I find myself wishing that Anna would just throw herself under that train already.

I yearn for the sturdy pluck of a 19th century heroine like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. She wouldn't have sacrificed everything for a man. In fact, when she had that chance, she walked away, into a life of utter poverty. There's a heroine who is secure in her selfhood.

Maybe we should adopt this motto: what would Jane Eyre do?

In my between reading times yesterday, I found myself running through 19th century heroines in my head, trying to figure out any admirable ones. Could it only be Jane Eyre that I like?

O.K., I'll give grudging admiration to Jane Austen's characters. At least when the ones who lack sense are hurtling through their plotlines, there's a lesson for us all. I like them, I root for them. Why can't I do the same for Anna?

Of course, I like Kitty and Levin. Those two characters are the only ones who redeem this epic novel. Even when Kitty is having her 200 page nervous breakdown across Europe, I like her. She's not quite as self-reliant as Jane Eyre, but she'll do.

I realize that many of these 19th century novels were trying to show how constrained the lives of 19th century women were. If I paint them in the best light, these novels argue that women have the need for meaningful work, just as men do.

I no longer believe as fervently that all the 19th century male writers really had that agenda. I suspect that some of them just didn't care for women, and that's why their female characters are as unlikable as they are.

Last night I announced, "This will be the last 19th century novel I ever read." Well, now I've dared the gods, haven't I? At least I will now no longer have to feel embarrassed at not having read any of the great Russian authors. But I'm not about to slog through War and Peace, either.

Octavia Butler and the Artistry of Genre Fiction

Today is Octavia Butler's birthday. I've long been in awe of her talent. Her time travel book, Kindred, made me understand the horrors of slavery in the U.S. like nothing else ever had--until I read her book Wild Seed. Amazing stuff. My favorite of her books is Parable of the Sower, a book that I read several times a year for about a decade. She was the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur Fellowship.

I'm always interested in writers who try to infuse some artistic qualities into so-called genre fiction, like science fiction or the romance novel. I think that Stephen King has been able to do that with some of his books, and I look forward to seeing what Justin Cronin will do in the same vein (pun intended, the vampire vein) with The Passage, a book that I'll be reading in the next few weeks.

I just finished Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin. I What a chilling, yet compelling book.wanted to read more of her work after reading The Post-Birthday World. In some ways, We Need to Talk about Kevin also seemed like a time travel book, since it takes us back to the days of the late 90's, when it seemed like every other week, some teen-age boy was shooting up his school.

I tried to read You Are Not a Gadget, but frankly Jaron Lanier could stand to take some writing lessons from Octavia Butler or someone like her (someone who is still alive, obviously). He had some interesting ideas, but his prose was just too deadly. Perhaps it's because he's writing nonfiction. The ideas about machines taking on human characteristics, while humans become more machine like is just more fascinating when explored in fiction. Octavia Butler had real skill in taking something that we'd have thought we already knew all about, like the slave trade, and turning our understanding upside down and inside out. I remember reading Wild Seed on the Tri-Rail as I commuted down to teach American Lit survey classes at the University of Miami. I was like some deranged convert, as I went to class and implored my students to read the book. I said, "This book will teach you more about American Literature than most of what's in this Norton Anthology!" I was always gratified when several students wrote down the title and author when I'd make book recommendations.

So, here's my startling admission. I'm trying to get through Anna Karenina in the next few days (I figure that's about 200 pages a day, which I think I can do). I want to be free and clear to read whatever I want on my vacation, my vacation where I plan to read The Passage, One Day by David Nicholls, and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I'm actually enjoying Anna Karenina, although I find myself skimming over some of the extravagant description. Even if I didn't know the basic plotline, I'd be saying, "Well, this cannot end well." It's one of those books that makes me happy to be born when I was. I'm happy to have work and art to keep me from the enormous boredom that seems to afflict the women in this novel.

In fact, most novels make me happy to be living my life, and not the life that I find in novels. Much as I like the apocalyptic plotline, I don't really want to live it. I like reading books about modern life that convince me that we're all struggling with our various demons. I like reading books about the past that make me grateful to be living right now. But most of all, I like having novels, so that I'm not forced to rely on the plotlines that translate into film or television. I'm happy to have novels that make me rethink the way I see the world, which is something that film so rarely does, and television almost never does. I'm happy to have books with which to pass the time during lazy days of summer.

Happy Summer Solstice

Well, we've reached that strange time of the year when the rest of the Northern Hemisphere is generally hotter than we are. My in-laws in Memphis told us of heat over 100 degrees--that's the actual temperature, not the heat index. Likewise for my family in the D.C. area and my friends in South Carolina.

Our record breaking summer highs down here in South Florida are in the neighborhood of 96 degrees. It certainly feels hot, with brilliant, searing sunshine, but it's simply not the same as the swampy heat that I've experienced in other Southern states. There's usually a sea breeze down here which cuts down on the humidity.

Don't get me wrong, I don't go out for a walk or a jog in the middle of the day. I hide out in my cool, air conditioned house. I get a lot of reading done. This year, since we haven't had much in the way of thunderstorms (or rain at all, a very dry rainy season thus far, which makes me fretful), I also find myself writing more.

I've been enjoying Sandy Longhorn's blog posts where she's been writing a draft a day. I especially find her experiments with other media for inspiration to be similarly inspiring. Here she talks about the poem she composes after looking at a book of photographs of the great plains. Here and here, here and here she talks about how she uses other books of poems for inspiration. Here and here she talks about the inspiration cards that she's crafted, and how they inspire the day's writing. Here and here she talks about the catalogue of an art show and the art show itself as the starting place for work. Her blog postings offer fascinating insight into the world of creativity. She gives us just enough from the work to whet my appetite. Plus, I found them inspiring. Some of my own lines from the last two weeks have come from reading about her varied approaches.

I often find the blogsite How a Poem Happens offering inspiration, but the interview with Roger Mitchell has kept me turning lines around in my head for weeks now. He references Vallejo (" I will die in Paris in the rain") and Donald Justice (“I will die in Miami in the sun”), and I have found that pattern intriguing: I will ____________ in _______in the _____________. I haven't come up with much more than first lines, but some day, one of them will zoom off.

But maybe it's all too cerebral. Maybe I should try something else. Joanie Stangeland offers this interesting, multi-day approach to writing here. It sounds like something that might loosen the grip that narrative retains over me. It sounds like it would make me experiment with line breaks.

I think of previous summer solstices, and all the parties I used to throw. Once, before a party, a friend and I went to have wings. We got the atomic variety. What were we thinking? My friend, who really likes hot food, looked at me halfway through and said, "This is killing me, so I know it must be killing you." All night, as my friends arrived with their favorite summer foods, and we watched the soft dark take over the yard, I found that I couldn't really taste anything. It took me days to recover.

My days of throwing big parties are over. I prefer a quiet time to write and read. The Summer Solstice makes a good time to pause and consider what we wanted to accomplish this year. I yearn for a book length publication, and I've been doing a fairly good job of sending out manuscripts. I need to keep doing that.

I also need to keep working on writing new work. Like Sandy Longhorn, I wonder if I'm pushing myself enough. Summer Solstice is a good time to make some assessments and adjustments.

Cape Magic Beach Read or Analysis of a Mid-Life Crisis?

I spent the last few days reading Richard Russo's That Old Cape Magic, which I thought would be perfect for summer. In some ways, with its depictions of weddings and beach vacations, it is. In other ways, with its dissections of all the ways a perfectly ordered life can come unravelled, it's not.

For those of you who love skewering satires of academic life, this book will satisfy. For those of you interested in family dynamics and the way they run through generations, this book provides a good primer, but at 272 pages, it's not an intergenerational book the way that other books are. It doesn't have that depth.

Russo is a masterful storyteller, and right until the last page, I couldn't tell where the novel would be taking me as a reader. Yet in retrospect, the plot moved in ways that the characterization set in motion: nothing in this novel strained my faith or broke the spell.

Some have said that the characters are unlikable, but I didn't find them so. Bumbling, yes. Flawed, yes. What kind of book would we have without flawed characters?

So, for people who want reading that's lighter than, say, Anna Karenina, but not quite as fluffy as some beach reads, this book will fit the bill. Pour yourself a lemonade (or a gin and tonic) and enjoy!

Gorging on Books

Yesterday, I got a huge shipment of books from Amazon. Yes, I buy from Amazon, even as I also support local, independent bookstores--and chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders; I'll buy books from anyone who has what I'm seeking. I got 5 or 6 volumes of poetry, which I'll write about in the weeks to come.

My husband and I fell under the spell of Daniel Amen, who seems to be on the air nonstop when our PBS station does fundraising, so I bought us a copy of Amen's Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted. After hearing William Alexander on this installment of The Diane Rehm Show, I got 52 Loaves:One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust and Justin Cronin's The Passage, which I'm almost afraid to read whilst on vacation on my sister's sailboat, since several reviewers have mentioned how the book left them afraid of the dark. I remember in high school reading Stephen King's Salem's Lot, which left me scared to sleep--what if I invited a vampire into the house because I was talking in my sleep?

Last night, as we watched The Simpsons, I read (out loud) a poem from a different volume at each commercial break. It was an interesting approach, both to old reruns, the commercials that dissect them, and to poetry.

I flipped through my stack of books and was reminded of my adolescent practice. I used to save up all my allowance and birthday money and babysitting money, and every so often, I'd go to B. Dalton Bookstore and buy whatever I wanted. For the most part, I was buying those young adult novels, where a teen is in trouble (pregnancy, drug abuse, hit and run driving, paranormal experiences of all kinds) and can't rely on the adults for help. I loved not having to choose between them. I loved gorging on books.

I still love gorging on books. Now I tend to buy them and put them on the shelf while I wait for a chance to read them. But I love going to a bookstore and telling myself I can buy whatever I want. I love loading books into the Amazon cart and waiting for the right time in the credit card cycle to place the order--that wonderful anticipation! I love being surrounded by stacks of books--the books which wait patiently for me and the books which I read long ago, but can't quite surrender yet.

I've already bought my dad a Father's Day present (a book--shh! don't tell), but if I hadn't, I'd contribute to one of the social justice organizations suggested in this piece by Nicolas Kristof. He tells us some of the stats of what we'll spend on Father's Day cards and gifts, and then he suggests some amazing social justice organizations which could make better use of that money. Most of us have dads who have more stuff than they can use in any one lifetime. Why not give to organizations which help the kids who don't have dads in their lives?