I really forced my way through this one and wouldn't have except that it won the Pulitzer Prize. I should have followed my instincts.
I ended up feelinI really forced my way through this one and wouldn't have except that it won the Pulitzer Prize. I should have followed my instincts.
I ended up feeling like the author came up with the joke at the end first, and couldn't let it go, and backtracked as a thought experiment to see if he could write a novel around that joke, and that is why we all ended up reading it in 2018.
A few moments made me chuckle, closer to how I react to British humor, but I'm perplexed as to the award. Perhaps the judges resonated with the mediocre career of the writer named Less. ...more
Well, I finally read it. I don't think I waited long enough because I felt like I'd read it already through all the award discussions and Oprah press Well, I finally read it. I don't think I waited long enough because I felt like I'd read it already through all the award discussions and Oprah press and review traffic. When it was also included on the Man Booker Prize Long List and I had literally tried all of the 12 other titles, I decided to finally read it.
I had picked up on the idea that it was still the south but an actual railroad. What I wasn't really expecting was that it would be a litany of all the horrors enacted on black people in America, but just told in a more creative setting. I'm not sure what I think of this concept and at what point suffering becomes gratuitous. I keep thinking of the book that got less attention, Underground Airlines, where the author Ben H. Winters is simply more successful in asking the question, "What If?"
One common theme was that of enslavement and the many ways it can repeat, perpetuate, permeate. Early on there is this passage:
The music stopped. The circle broke. Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation. In the sway of a sudden reverie among the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early-morning dream. In the middle of a song on a warm Sunday night. Then it comes, always—the overseer’s cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude.
And passages like that come up throughout the book. In many ways I felt like the same core ideas were repeating and while I agree history is like that, it made the book feel longer than it needed to, and I was ready to be done with it.
ETA: Reread in 2020 during the Tournament of Books "Super Rooster," because I was a guest commentator for the judgment between this book and Normal People in the quarterfinal rounds. I would say 4 stars is spot on, although I remembered feeling 3 stars about it....more
Winner of the Pulitzer in 1967, 10 years before Sexton took her own life, these poems are reflective of her severe depression. She seems to be questioWinner of the Pulitzer in 1967, 10 years before Sexton took her own life, these poems are reflective of her severe depression. She seems to be questioning her own existence (several poems mention being the youngest and neglected), her identity as a wife and mother, and how she will find happiness. She in fact started writing poetry after a suggestion from one of her therapists after an earlier suicide attempt. So, fair warning.
Sexton was a poet I always meant to try. I would read more of her work, but possibly position it between lighter reads.
My favorite poem was:
Consorting with Angels "I was tired of being a woman... ...I was tired of the gender of things... I'm no more a woman than Christ was a man."...more
This author is coming to my institution on Wednesday so I sped through the reading of this book, making some notes.
I think I'll start by saying how imThis author is coming to my institution on Wednesday so I sped through the reading of this book, making some notes.
I think I'll start by saying how impressed I was by how he did the research, which you don't learn about until the end of the book. He lives in Tobin's trailer park. He lives with Scott. He moves to the north side and acknowledges this weird white buffer he is given. Along the way he develops relationships with people struggling to stay in their housing, with landlords who are participating in typical practices, with social workers and cops and others in the system in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
He uses Milwaukee as an example of a large city that isn't as huge as New York, Chicago, or Detroit, to capture more of the typical experience of someone facing eviction. He tells the story through eight different families. The people and situations are complicated, and they are further complicated with each eviction.
(It's too big to write about right now, so I'll dump these facts and quotes here for a bit)
"Three in four families who qualified for assistance received nothing." (59)
"Eviction had a way of causing not one move but two: a forced move into degrading and sometimes dangerous housing and an intentional move out of it." (69)
"A single eviction could destabilize multiple city blocks." (71)
"For many landlords, it was cheaper to deal with the expense of eviction than to maintain their properties; it was possible to skimp on maintenance if tenants were perpetually behind; and many poor tenants would be perpetually behind because their rent was too high." (75)
"Screening practices that banned criminality and poverty in the same stroke drew poor families shoulder to shoulder with drug dealers, sex offenders, and other lawbreakers." (89)
70% storage from eviction gets trashed
"It was not enough simply to perceive injustice. Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things. For poor people, this required identifying with the oppressed, and counting yourself among them - which was something most trailer park residents were absolutely unwilling to do....For more residents, the goal was to leave, not to plant roots and change things. Some residents described themselves as "just passing through," even if they had been passing through nearly all their life...." (181)
The issue of facing eviction simply for calling the police or an ambulance!! ("nuisance citations")
"America is supposed to be a place where you can better yourself, your family, and your community. But this is only possible if you have as table home." (294)
I read this in Serial Reader, but I chose it because I wanted to try the LitWit podcast, and knew they were talking about Pulitzer winners from the 19I read this in Serial Reader, but I chose it because I wanted to try the LitWit podcast, and knew they were talking about Pulitzer winners from the 1920s. I'd only read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, and found I liked it so much more as a woman in her 30s than I did when I originally read it for school. So this was a good one to read.
Edith Wharton apparently wrote this as a tribute to the end of the America that disappeared, the class system, the endlessly wealthy, the old society days. It starts out feeling like it will just be a diorama of high society but ends up being a quite intense story of love vs. "society-appropriate" marriage.
And then there are lines that make me think of 21st century YA novels, but then I realized that it also harkens back to E.M. Forster and similar authors. Lines like this: “Each time you happen to me all over again.”
Worth reading, probably more there than I'm giving credit to, and I'm ready for another Wharton now!...more
I read this book for many reasons - Pulitzer winner, and a book club pick for my in-person group. We discussed it last night, and I wanted to wait to I read this book for many reasons - Pulitzer winner, and a book club pick for my in-person group. We discussed it last night, and I wanted to wait to weigh in until that discussion, but also until I had finished reading the author's non-fiction book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (on the long list for the National Book Award as we speak.)
When you read the two books back to back, it is easy to see how the eleven years of research that went into the non-fiction academic treatment of a book on war and memory also provided the natural breeding grounds for a biting novel about the Vietnam War. Or, should I clarify, the war we refer to as the Vietnam War, or even more often, just "Vietnam." And I need to clarify because Nguyen is writing this novel from the Vietnamese perspective, not necessarily catering to what white Americans want to hear. The author claims status as a forever refugee, a product of war, his entire life trajectory a result of having to leave his home as a child. (A curious person can learn even more about the author's perspective in this illuminating interview.)
In case it sounds like I am saying this is a didactic novel, I would beg to differ. The different point of view is very effective, but also necessary. Why are we only seeing the story of a war in a country not our own through the lens of war movies we make? (If this topic interests you, definitely read his non-fiction work.) But the entire novel is also slowly revealed as a confession, written by a central unnamed character (I'm guessing his name is Viet) during his time in a Reeducation camp. These camps were real things, and the last 100 pages are a brutal account of psychological and physical torture and brainwashing.
So there is the point of view (powerful), the approach (confession), but the greatest element of the novel for me is the writing. Nguyen plays with the English language in a way I haven't seen. I don't think he would claim his background as the reason because he has been in the United States for most of his life, in fact is an English professor, among other duties. But I was constantly amused/surprised by his use of words, taking a word like perineum that is almost inclusively a body part and using it to refer to a time of day that is hidden from view, gross, and better slept through:
"...We followed our usual routine and drank with joyless discipline until we both passed out. I woke up in the perineum of time between the very late hours of the evening and the very early hours of the morning, grotty sponge in my mouth..."
That is an example of me stopping, putting the book aside, looking up the word, asking, "Do we use that word that way?", finding we don't, but deciding we should because obviously it works. It is this clever crafting of words that kept me reading, more than the events, more than the unnamed agent antics of the central character ("a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces....")
I really love the last three pages, but I will leave those for the reader to mull over....more
I had a strange reading experience with this book. I'd read a chapter, not connect with it at all, set it aside on my bedside table for a while until I had a strange reading experience with this book. I'd read a chapter, not connect with it at all, set it aside on my bedside table for a while until I finished the other books sitting around.
Somewhere around page 70, several months later, something clicked. I think it was the description of the funeral and really hooking into Welty's understanding of the intricacies of southern etiquette, spoken but more importantly unspoken (yet expected.) It really solidified it for me when she describes books and how they connected her to her father, who has just died.
The neighbors respect her father for his strength while dying of cancer, while his young second wife is silly and has spurts of dramatic mourning that are not what people want to see.
"There's no telling when she last had a decent home-cooked meal with honest vegetables," said Miss Tennyson Bullock. "That goes a long way toward explaining everything."
Welty uses a lot of southernisms that are very familiar to those of us living in the region - saying someone "liked-to" like "He liked-to bled to death a mile from home." "Fixing to _____." This is most definitely a southern tale.
A few other bits that stood out in my first reading:
"The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much."
"She was sent to sleep under a velvety cloak of words, richly patterned and stitched with gold, straight out of a fairy tale, while they went reading on into her dreams."
"For every book here she had heard their voices, father's and mother's. And perhaps it didn't matter to them, not always, what they read aloud; it was the breath of life flowing between them, and the words of the moment riding on it that held them in delight. Between some two people every word is beautiful."...more
You think Annie Dillard is talking about parasitic wasps and then WHAM she's talking about God or humanity. That's what the journey of reading this boYou think Annie Dillard is talking about parasitic wasps and then WHAM she's talking about God or humanity. That's what the journey of reading this book is like. She writes throughout one year at Tinker Creek in Virginia, observing and pondering in a way only she can.
Between this book and Holy the Firm, I suspect Dillard considers herself a bit of an anchorite. She specifically mentions that while she is writing this book, she is reading the Apophthegmata, and I think I'm learning that it is the way she limits herself to a small place - a writing room, a creek - that allows her to see more in it than others would.
Near the end, she instructs the reader:
"Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have 'not gone up into the gaps.' The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clifts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; They are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you."
That pretty much sums up what she does throughout the book - every snake, every tree, every egg sac. I have far deeper to go for my own study, but don't want to bog the review down too much. ...more
This book was selected for two of my book clubs this year - one for August and one for September. Since it seems like everyone I know has read this boThis book was selected for two of my book clubs this year - one for August and one for September. Since it seems like everyone I know has read this book, it must be time! I actually wouldn't have read it otherwise, unless I'd gone on a Pulitzer Prize Winners spree, which could happen. I've never had so many comments prior to writing a review as I have with this book.
I feel similarly to this book as I felt about The Goldfinch, but at least Donna Tartt told a story I hadn't heard before - the pacing, the storytelling, the fast pace that moves the reader quickly through hundreds and hundreds of pages. I read the book in two days, along with other things I was reading.
It's confusing why so many authors write novels about World War Two. I keep waiting for one of these novels with so much hype to have something unique to it. This is a well researched story, very placed in a specific city or two, with at least one interesting character (Werner, the German kid who is good with radios), but the overarching story is the same old thing - the same villains, the same outcome, the same deterioration of daily life. It might be that historical fiction is not my favorite, but just last year I read a WW2 novel that felt fresh - The Undertaking by Audrey Magee. So I know it can be done.
The Pulitzer judges referred to it as a "page turner." Any author can turn a book into a "page turner" by writing short chapters, as Doerr has done. He also moves backwards and forwards between a period before the war, the two main characters' childhoods (even farther back), and during the war. As a reader, I kept reading because there was not a good place to stop and I didn't know what to expect to come next. In Anthony Marra's great book A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, the author does this because of something important that is only revealed near the end of the book, but not the chronological end. It was an important storytelling approach in that case. In this novel, I think the story is the same either way, and would have preferred alternating chapters between Werner and Marie-Laure from their childhood into the future. This would have allowed for a more cohesive story, but also the author could have better developed the other characters, who are rather shallow and serve more as props throughout the novel.
The end of the book moves to 1974 for one chapter and 2014 for another, in an unnecessary epilogue. I think maybe it is to leave the reader feeling okay about the characters, but it may have been more poignant to leave certain storylines unresolved. That is the reality of war, particularly a war so far-reaching as this one....more
Half the time I didn't know who was telling the story since the narrator shifted each chapter, heck, half the time I didn't know what decade I was in.Half the time I didn't know who was telling the story since the narrator shifted each chapter, heck, half the time I didn't know what decade I was in. But I didn't mind. That was part of the journey. I loved the related characters moving in and out of the lives of two messy people, and how the styles shifted along with the characters. I journeyed from somewhat typical narrative to a David Foster Wallace-esque chapter from an imprisoned journalist, to a middleschooler telling a story through a slide journal, and I was completely absorbed.
It isn't the cheeriest of messages. You get old, things don't always work out, the glory days are past, not just for the individual characters but for the society that used to make it possible for a janitor to become a rock star. But I enjoyed it regardless. ...more
Jenny (Reading Envy)
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