A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Published: September 2009, Bond Street Books (@RandomHouseCa)

ISBN: 9780385668248

The Recommend:

This novel is full of voice, humour, (wry, boisterous, sometimes goofy, sometimes dark) and piercing insight.

Provokes awakenings.

The characters are as vivid as vivid can be. Lorrie Moore is, of course, a short story master, and a Moore novel just gives us more of the same: mastery.

*

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

Published: October 2009, House of Anansi Press (@HouseofAnansi)

ISBN: 9780887848384

The Recommend:

This novel is the cleanest, most spare, affecting prose I’ve read in ages.

It is about friendship between women and about illness, a blow to your heart – at the same time so full of truth, full of the preciousness of life, it feels like a gift.

Garner’s writing is like glass after Windex and elbow grease, absolutely transparent, without fingerprints or smudge, she just transports.

You are more wise.

*

Yesterday’s Weather by Anne Enright

Published: September 2009, Emblem Editions

ISBN: 9780771030703

The Recommend:

Short stories about infidelity, love, friendship, drinking, rubber, independence, cancer, motherhood, fear, love.

Enright is a beautiful stylist, every sentence crafted.

The stories engage – quick, deep.

You sink into these stories so fast you have to watch for the bends coming back up.

Beautiful, beautiful writing.

*

About Lisa Moore:

*

Lisa Moore is the author of Degrees of Nakedness, Open, Alligator, and February.

She’s also the co-editor (with Dede Crane) of Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories about Childbirth.

(All published by House of Anansi Press.)

Deanna McFadden recommends February here.

Sometimes there is enough to post a mid-week Book Review Round-Up. Today is such a day.

The New York Times likes the new biography about Patricia Highsmith. The editors at the same paper have named their Top 10 books of the year. (One of which I’m reading right now – Lorrie Moore.) The L.A. Times interviews one of the founders of the literary site The Nervous Breakdown. Letters by Vincent van Gogh.

Cory Doctorow gets reviewed in The Globe and Mail. The Telegraph looks at the bond between writer and machine. The author of Me and Orson Welles shares his thoughts on the movie. Petina Gappah wins The Guardian book award in its inaugural offering.

Gappah reads from her work:

Writer’s make their Christmas suggestions. Crime authors bring their cities to life. J.F. Powers and the short story. More poems wind up in commercials these days. Diane von Furstenberg puts work on Daily Lit. Pablo Neruda was an avid seashell collector. Ray Bradbury says Mars is man’s “destiny.” Alain de Botton has a new book out. Schott’s Almanac.

A light month for literary events as bookstores keep their calendars open to focus on the holiday shopping season. As well they should: go out of your way to do a good chunk of your spending at local independent stores.

• At Book Soup: Wed 12/2 7pm, legendary songwriters Leiber & Stoller appear with their new autobiography Hound Dog; and Thurs 12/10 7pm, the New Short Fiction Series drops in to perform stories from Tim Johnston’s Irish Girl
• Stories bookstore/cafe, which just celebrated its first birthday, has a Dear Andy Kaufman party, Fri 12/4 7:30, which includes live music and other fun; and Sat 12/5 7-10, live music on the back patio (bring a jacket) with the group Congratulations! from Olympia WA and others; finally, on Sat 12/12 they’ll be one of many shops participating in the Echo Park Shop Hop
• At UCLA’s Hammer Museum (one of the best reading venues in LA, plus they’ve got some great exhibits up now, including Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis): Thurs 12/10 7pm, poet Albert Goldbarth; and Wed 12/16 7pm, Mary Yukari Waters, one of the country’s finest short story writers (she’s been in Best American Short Stories twice)
• And finally, at Hollywood’s M Bar, Word Theatre presents “Aaaah, Christmas: Warm, Fuzzy & Dysfunctional”–holiday stories with an edge by Lorrie Moore, Augusten Burroughs and others

Geology, Sufism, Wine Tasting, British Lit., Soundtracks to War Movies.  There was a rumor that several of us were about to be thrown out of Wine Tasting, as we were underage and some computer or other — not the original one — had just noticed.  Just as well, perhaps.  A grasp of oakiness had continued to elude me.  I got citrus and buttery and chocolate, but violet, too, proved difficult.  Was it all just baloney?  The grind of the semester seemed to be taking place off to one side of me.  Still, I did try.  I would do my work at night, dive into the blue of my computer screen, which would wash on like a California pool.  Then, l after swimming in it for a while, I’d come tiredly to the surface with bits of this or that–in my hair, if not in my head.  My computer desktop indicated I was at least working on things.  I was starting, then starting over fresh without deleting the first thing: my screen looked like an aquarium where a hundred tiny square-finned fish had died, randomly frozen in place.  Except for the Sufism, taught by the Donegal don, classes marched along forgettably.

A Gate at the Stairs was my first exposure to writer Lorrie Moore.  It was an interesting book.

By shielc

This short story (‘People like that are the only people here’ from her Birds of America collection) is an indepth look at the reactions, in particular the mother’s, to the inconceivable. In this case a child with a possible death sentence.

There are 5 stages associated with the acceptance of this crisis:
1.    Denial
2.    Anger
3.    Fear
4.    Grief
5.    Acceptance
All are addressed throughout the course of the story.
The Mother’s initial reaction when she finds blood in her baby’s diaper is confused, there has to be a legitimate reason for its presence, a safe and logical reason. “In her mind, the Mother takes this away from her body and attaches it to someone else’s. There. Doesn’t that make more sense?”
Even after she has visited the doctor and been informed of the diagnosis she resists it, convinced that in some way the kidney in the scan was hers, that she stood to close to the Baby and now there has been some “treacherous, farcical mistake.” (p215)
Unable to take in what is being said, she fixates on small, insignificant details, the spelling of the disease, something commonplace in her life, something she can understand. She is confounded by the information, it seems too impossible to accept, babies don’t get cancer! She can’t escape what she is being told “His voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at once.” (p216)
It is easily every mother’s greatest fear, something she can’t understand or protect her baby from, something she can’t kiss better. She turns the blame inwards, looks to find fault in her own behaviour, combing through her conduct for the first year of her child’s life and dwelling on every minor and insignificant perceived wrong doing. She blames herself for complaining about the baby lingo, for hoping his nap will last that bit longer, for being too obsessed with his every move and boring those around her. “Now her baby, for all these reasons – lack of motherly gratitude, motherly judgement, motherly proportion – will be taken away.” (p217)

The Husband reacts with anger and frustration, fuelled by futility. Nothing has prepared them for this; nowhere in the baby books did they mention cancer. “He begins hurling the books off the night stand against the far wall.” (p224) Their helplessness is possibly the most frustrating aspect, “The Baby looks at her pleadingly” but there’s nothing she can do, she can’t lift or cuddle him.

The parents are all tense and stressed, quick to anger, bound together by their experiences and yet alone in their individual struggles. Each is fiercely protective of their own child, as demonstrated by Ned’s mother who pushed the Baby away from her son when she felt he was being endangered.
The anger is directed in many directions, against God for trying to take back all the “Total, sweet, bald little angels.” Against the cancer itself “a clump of nothing and its mad, ambitious desire to be something” a living entity with thoughts and intent. She turns an old school mate into the cancer, giving it a form she can understand. “All Right! Claudia Osk must die!” Essentially she’s is rebelling against anything and everything, the universe as a whole, “Poor me a drink so I can refuse to toast.”
I think my favourite example of the anger felt at losing a child is conveyed when she contemplates the donation given for the Tiny Tim Lounge – “Part gratitude, part generosity, part fuck you.” It’s such a contradiction and yet gives total clarity to the feelings involved.
The Tiny Tim lounge has become a place for the parents to congregate, sharing their horror stories and feeding off the general air of depression and imminent defeat, misery loves company. Not that they rejoice in one another’s pain, simply that they can’t stomach the happy stories “”They are the only situations that can join hand with her own, everything else bounces off her shiny shield of resentment and unsympathy” (242)
The Mother expresses strong feelings of inadequacy throughout the text, she feels she can’t play the role assigned to her, can’t become one of those “large cheerful mothers”. “In her mind she is scathing, acid-tongued, wraith-thin…” (p225) She masks her fear and worry with sarcasm, hiding her nerves and ignorance “Eine Kleine Dactinomycin” but behind the scenes she is terrified, turning to a higher power she never even believed existed, begging and bargaining, in the vain hope of improving her baby’s chances of survival.
The Mother’s confusion of thoughts and emotions is followed throughout the whole affair, “Feeling of relief and rage simultaneously”. When told that the Baby does not necessarily have to undergo chemo her relief is total, she hears nothing else, nothing of the risks that accompany that course of action. She is driven by a fierce determination to be free of the place, peed onk, and all the people there.

The piece also highlights how quickly everything can change, “Life has been taken and broken quickly, like a stick”. Life becomes inconceivably altered and what’s left? “Like a mashed flower saved from a dance”, all you’re left with are the reminders of what it was like to live for something other than to hold onto life itself and remnants of the things that mattered before something, that was “in your blind spot all along” changes things forever.
The Mother’s perceptions change, her baby becomes insubstantial, already slipping away from her “Where’s baby? Where did baby go?” Her view of the world becomes warped and cynical, Carol of Bells sounds to her like the theme tune from The Exorcist and the Midwest disgusts her with its polluted waters and poison potatoes!
The sacrifices that the parents have made and the pains they have endured have reduced them to little more than robots. They take each day as it comes and feel they have no choice in the matter “Courage requires options” until they acquire a “currentless, flatlined look”. But what happens when the child dies? What happens when they are left with no money, no career, no friends and no marriage? They are leaving themselves without any reason to go on. As the Mother sits watching Star Wars she sees the characters “not as robots at all but as human beings that have had terrible things happen to them.” (p242) It is almost like the cease to feel anything “There are no more tears.” Life has beaten it out of them.  Though there are moments of collateral beauty, nothing is lasting in the face of all the darkness and despair.
“Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O. When may it suffice?” – Yeats

There are comparison’s drawn between the different kinds of people she and her husband would choose as friends, her friends are artsy, different, they go against the grain and they’re genuine people who understand her and say what they are really thinking not what social etiquette dictates they should say. They also highlight the fact that everyone seems to be playing a role “airy scripted optimism”, pulling on a costume and assuming their part. While her husband’s friends act in a way that only serves to make her feel more isolated from society “How exiling and estranging are everybody’s Sympathetic Expressions”. Their behaviour says I’m sorry for what you’re going through but thank God it’s you and not me, in a tone laced with pity. I think this touches on an issue we discussed in a previous week of empathy vs. pity vs. sympathy.
The Husband draws comfort from being “in the club”, being surrounded by people in “the same boat” but the Mother is determined to jump ship. The Mother has no interest in being in a club of this nature, one that separates you from society, makes you unapproachable because people no longer know what to say to you and you no longer care for the other things in life. She describes herself at one point “like a celebrity widow” alluding to the dark glamour associated with loss.

The doctors in this piece are presented in an unsavoury light, they are cold clinical and detached. “He is a skilled manual labourer.” (p218) The Surgeon “speaks quickly, he knows a lot of studies” but the language is not colloquial, he bombards them with terms they can’t possibly understand and predictably enough the mother drifts. He shows no understanding of their plight.
The Social Worker again displays a complete ignorance of their situation, asking did her video help the Mother in her preparation for the surgery “what an absurd and amazing little courtesy”. The surgery however is nothing like the video, the anaesthiologist is more concerned for his own welfare than that of the child, he is rough and unfeeling to the point of causing later psychological trauma to the child. The Social Worker’s job then changes “her role no longer misinformational but janitorial.” There is a suggestion that she knew what was to happen and was there to clean up the mess as such.
The hospital staff, too, seem to be playing their own little scripted roles, “her voice is standard hospital saint voice: an infuriating, pharmaceutical calm. It says everything is normal here. Death is normal. Pain is normal. Nothing is abnormal.” Everything is structured to ensure calm and a repression of emotions.
Then of course the doctors make a mistake, the N-G tube is set too high and the Mother is forced to deal with a young doctor. “The authority he attempts to convey, he cannot remotely inhabit.” He strokes his chin, no doubt a habit gleaned from watching and imitating his superiors.
I think the worst instance of insensitivity by the hospital staff occurs when the Surgeon asks to speak to the Mother alone, he leads her to believe, perhaps unintentionally, that there is something further wrong. He fails to recognise her terror as she stands beside him her heart pounding and a lump in her throat. It comes across as a cruel joke!
In general the doctors are presented as unhelpful, disinterested and desensitised. “What casual gestures these doctors are permitted” as he shrugs off their questions. “Of course I’m nervous. Shrugs and doesn’t look too nervous.”

Lorrie Moore’s style of writing is very effective; she plays well with words (Mort and Tod), plaiting humour and sorrow together beautifully. I think her one fault may be that at times she becomes more concerned with showcasing her intelligence than writing the story. At times some of her analogies seem forced and poorly articulated such as the one about “the fierce little country” (p220) and that about the Mother as “a string of empty cans”, though there was a suggestion in class that the author maybe doing this purposely.
Some of her comparisons are terribly effective “his mouth open like the sweetest of poppies”, very Sylvia Plath, and my personal favourite “he begins to cry, but cry silently, without motion or noise. She has never seen a baby cry without motion or noise. It is the crying of an old person: silent, beyond opinion, shattered. In someone so tiny, it is frightening and unnatural.”
The author has a certain inclination towards philosophical passages, “What makes humans human….” (p221). I don’t know whether I would consider them necessary. Do they add to the effect? Increase the impact of the story? I’m not convinced that they do.
She also writes a passage in which she seems to be saying that the narrator of a story should be objective and uninvolved, that the people with experience are incapable of formulating what they want to say. “All that unsayable life.” But surely at some point someone must say it…..right?
Moore uses some recurring themes in the piece, particularly light/dark, moments when the Mother is calm, controlled, focusing on small details, the lights come on but then the doctor says something incomprehensible that throws her into the dark again. The Baby is also thrown into darkness by the anaesthiologist, he inhales the gas and lights go out!
At first I thought Moore called her characters the Mother, the Baby, the Husband to create a sense of distance from the characters however she blurs the line between the Mother’s thoughts and descriptions and those of the narrator too often for that to be the case. I then thought it was to give the impression that they could be any of us, our baby, mother or doctor. However in class I was informed that applying these titles to patients and their families is common practice in hospitals.

Class Comments
“Are people like that the only people here?”
-    The author draws a contrast between people who do what they do instinctively and those that have to think about what they’re doing in order to act how they do.
-    Suggestion that the Mother is an anomaly, perhaps she feels things more?
-    This is a story about a child who is sick and a mother who puts his care before her own.
-    Humans are the only species that actively protect their weak.
-    Sometimes two lives are lost, the child’s and the parent’s (Frank – totally self-destructive vs. Heather – self preservation.)
-    Is this behaviour something socially or genetically encoded in our make up?
-    Human beings are complex and sentimental. To a fault?

So I haven’t bought a book since the end of October when I had a bit of a haul that I reported to you guys on a week later. I have to say that I can’t really moan about how difficult it has been because the main way through the issue so far has been being very busy and most of all… Avoidance!!!

Yes I admit I have not really been in many bookshops or charity shops (I know, it’s not normal) but there have been opportunities such as a visit to Foyle’s waiting for a late friend. Then there is the weekly Sainsbury’s shop with its tempting best sellers section (though one was bought for me while we were in there the other day) yes the answer for me has been avoidance. What has been promising though, if I do give up buying books for charity next year, has been that still books have been arriving (despite the woes of the flood) in some abundance in the last week or so thanks to the library, swapping and publishers.

Despite the fact that I have been reading some corkers and then been sulking at having to give them back I am still using the library much, much more than I was. It’s the perfect way of trying out authors or publishers (as you will see) that I am interested in and getting my mitts on books you have recommended.

• The Boat by Nam Le – So many of you recommended this how could I not pick this up? I think I am going to love it.
• The Tragedy of the Korosko by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – I am the biggest Sherlock Holmes fan but had never heard of this, not that it’s Holmes, and it’s a Hesperus book which is a publisher I must read more of since Lady Into Fox.
• A Dog’s Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov – Want to read some of this author, never have and like the idea of a beast created by mixing a stray dog and a criminal. Sounds gothic and dark and is also Hesperus Press.
• Betrayal by Marquis de Sade – Another author I want to try and a short Hesperus I can dip into.
• Girl in the Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold – Long listed for the Man Booker and sounds a little sensational.
• The Drivers Seat by Muriel Spark – After reading The Girls of Slender Means lots of you recommended this.
• Wedlock by Wendy Moore – Some non fiction about ‘how Georgian Britain’s worst husband met his match’, sounds fabulous.
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter – Loads of you have said I should try this and after Atwood’s Good Bones I want to try some more twisted fairy tales.
• Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym – Again many of you have raved about Pym and I have not tried one of her books.
• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri – Yet again through your recommendations of the author. So all these are basically your fault, and if you are getting bored of lists it’s your fault too.

I have also re-activated my Read It Swap It account again and used my unwanted books to get books I really wanted. Ok it costs a bit for postal… that’s not buying books though is it and I have got some gems.

• The Spy Game by Georgina Harding – Has been on my wish list an age.
• Birds of America by Lorrie Moore – As am trying my hand at shorter fiction and short stories have heard Moore is the queen of this. Is that so?
• Perfect Happiness by Penelope Lively – After the review at Other Stories how could I not want to read this?
• Hotel World by Ali Smith – I actually gave this one away on Read It Swap It ages ago… why?
• A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis De Bernieres – After loving Notwithstanding I am keen to read much more from this author.
• Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian – So many of you told me this was a must read when I asked about Asian fiction.
• The Little White Car by Danuta de Rhodes – Or actually by Dan Rhodes who’s Gold I love, love, loved and this sounds a wonderful tale of some crazy capers of two ladies.
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt – After swapping this I realised already had it but this is actually a much nicer copy with bigger type and that can matter can it not?
• Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xialong – Another Asian author recommended after I read the latest Xiaolu Guo novel.
• The Provincial Daughter by R.M. Dashwood – I am about to read The Provincial Lady and so reading about the daughter after might be fun, have heard great things about both from you all.
• The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie – Well I like reading books in order and this was the one I was missing and one which Eva said was one of her favourites.

Phew, that’s a bit of a barrage of book titles and some of my Read It Swap It’s haven’t arrived yet. I was going to add in the books received from publishers but think you might all be asleep if I do that so will follow up with part two later in the week. As ever your thoughts on my latest arrivals are most welcome and I will be delighted to hear what you think.

Esta é uma matéria do Jornal The New York Times por Tomás Eloy Martinez

Tradução: Eloise De Vylder

Há pouco mais de meio século, a força de transformação da literatura da América Latina assombrava os países centrais, que haviam alcançado a modernidade graças ao desenvolvimento de suas indústrias, suas descobertas tecnológicas, suas redes de comunicação, seus trens e aviões. Mas sua linguagem e sua capacidade de narrar a sociedade estavam apergaminhadas, cansadas, e supriam a falta de ideias e sangue novos com jogos teóricos que não levavam a lugar nenhum. Na América Latina, o afã de criar esse mundo novo expresso pela revolução cubana parece ter se concentrado na literatura.

Enquanto os países do Rio da Prata, México e Colômbia respiravam a plenos pulmões os novos ares, o gigante Brasil mantinha-se impermeável a tudo o que não vinha de si mesmo. O Brasil mudava de pele, mas se alimentava de sua própria música e de sua própria herança literária. Certa vez perguntaram a João Gilberto por que ele fazia tão poucos shows no estrangeiro, onde sua música tinha um sucesso clamoroso.

“Para quê?”, respondeu. “No Brasil meu público é tão numeroso como no resto do mundo e, além disso, ele me escuta com mais felicidade”.

Em meados do século 20, o grande nome da literatura brasileira continuava sendo o de Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), que escreveu uma sucessão de obras mestras mediante o simples recurso de observar atentamente a paisagem interior dos pensamentos e dos sentimentos para contá-los de uma maneira incomum, inesperada. Um de seus maiores herdeiros é João Guimarães Rosa, que impressiona mais do que tudo por seu virtuosismo verbal e pelo ouvido finíssimo com que capta a música das vozes do sertão, no nordeste profundo de seu gigantesco país.

Entretanto, a única filha direta e legítima de Machado de Assis é Clarice Lispector, cuja obra misteriosa começa a difundir-se nos Estados Unidos com tanto ímpeto quanto a de Roberto Bolaño. O chileno foi consagrado pela revista The New Yorker, e o influente The New York Review of Books rendeu tributo a Lispector com um ensaio extenso de Lorrie Moore, a jovem deusa do minimalismo.

Moore adverte que a fama magnética de Lispector se deve em parte aos estudos sobre sua obra reunidos por Hélène Cixous, a quem as universidades francesas devem o apogeu dos estudos sobre a mulher. Na França, recorda Cixous, a extraordinária abstração da prosa de Lispector fez com que a vissem como uma filósofa. Quando ela assistiu a um encontro de teóricos sobre sua obra, abandonou a sala na metade da homenagem, dizendo que não entendia uma só palavra do jargão.

Uma das primeiras vezes que se ouviu falar de Lispector em Buenos Aires foi no final dos anos 70, quando circulou a lenda de que ela havia se queimado viva em sua casa no Rio de Janeiro.

Em 1969 o mítico editor argentino Paco Porrúa havia publicado na editora Sudamericana alguns de seus livros: os romances “A Maçã no Escuro”, “A Paixão Segundo G.H.” e “Uma Aprendizagem ou o Livro dos Prazeres”, assim como os admiráveis contos de “Laços de Família”. Lispector rompia com todas as convenções da arte de narrar e arrancava de cada palavra um tremor secreto, enigmático. Suas revelações eram como as de um teólogo oriental participando de uma dança ritual africana.

Quando a lemos, deslumbrados, na revista “Primera Plana”, pensamos que era imperativo viajar para o Rio de Janeiro para decifrar seus segredos. Sara Porrúa, que na época era mulher de Paco, quis ser a primeira nessa busca.

As primeiras notícias que enviou dissipavam a fábula de que Lispector fora queimada viva. Sua cama havia se incendiado acidentalmente quando dormiu com um cigarro aceso. Mas a haviam resgatado a tempo. Sua estranha beleza tártara (os olhos amendoados e rasgados, as maçãs do rosto salientes, a constante expressão de angústia de seu rosto) havia desaparecido quando queimou o lado direito do corpo, imobilizando-lhe o braço. Nada, entretanto, apagava sua paixão por narrar o mundo.

Sara a encontrou mais algumas vezes e, com sua imagem intensa, inesquecível, perdeu-se nas selvas da Guatemala e transformou-se em personagem de Cortázar.

Dar uma ideia de sua imaginação só é possível através de algumas citações. O começo do romance “Uma Aprendizagem…” (1969) é uma frase que vem do nada. A porta de entrada desse livro é uma vírgula: “, estando tão ocupada, viera das compras de casa que a empregada fizera às pressas porque cada vez mais matava o serviço, embora só viesse para deixar almoço e jantar prontos…”.

Antes desse comentário doméstico e trivial, Lispector surpreendeu o leitor com uma advertência que é também uma afirmação de seu ser:

“Este livro se pediu uma liberdade maior que tive medo de dar. Ele está muito acima de mim. Humildemente tentei escrevê-lo. Eu sou mais forte que eu. C.L.”

E no final de “Água Viva”, ergue a voz: “Não vou morrer, ouviu, Deus? Não tenho coragem, ouviu? Não me mate, ouviu? Porque é uma infâmia nascer para morrer não se sabe quando nem onde. Vou ficar muito alegre, ouviu? Como resposta, como insulto”.

Seu desmedido desafio à morte impregna muitas das crônicas reunidas em “Revelación del Mundo”, que incluem todas as que escreveu para o Jornal do Brasil entre 1967 e 1973. Outras, inéditas, serão publicadas no ano que vem em espanhol sob o título de “Descubrimientos”.

Lispector continua sendo um enigma velado que assombra em cada frase, em cada desvio da vida. Morreu aos 57 anos de um câncer nos ovários, depois de ter passado os últimos anos fechada na solidão de sua casa do Leme, perto das areias de Copacabana.

Seu autorretrato cabe em uma frase: “Olhar-se ao espelho e dizer-se deslumbrada: Como sou misteriosa”.

Tomás Eloy Martínez

Analista político e escritor, o argentino Tomás Eloy Martínez é autor de livros como “Vôo da Rainha” e “O Cantor de Tango”.

Fonte: http://noticias.uol.com.br/blogs-colunas/colunas-do-new-york-times/tomaz-eloy-martinez/2009/11/16/ult7201u13.jhtm

Que Clarice Lispector me alimenta a alma todos sabem. Tenho paixão singular por ela. E acreditem eu já vi Clarice Lispector.

Certa vez eu estava na casa de um caso meu. Muito bêbado após uma balada eu me peguei abraçando o vaso sanitário, estava fora do corpo de tanto álcool, olhei para o lado tive uma visão, a sobriedade mental me tomou. Era Clarice, parada, encostada na parede, fumando e observando a cena.

Era tão real que hoje encho a boca pra falar, EU SINTO CLARICE LISPECTOR. EU VI CLARICE LISPECTOR.

Até cortar os próprios defeitos pode ser perigoso. Nunca se sabe qual é o defeito que sustenta nosso edifício inteiro.

Clarice Lispector

I’ve been a bit on hold recently as I’ve been waiting for something. It hasn’t happened yet.

In the Meantime:

A really excellent post about a reading epiphany (if that’s an adequate description) from This Space; quite disarming.

A very good piece by Boyd Tonkin about some new and re translations of German novels; he’s often a resoundingly lone voice when discussing translated fiction. It’s telling that these are only published because of the brief week’s window provided by there being lots of pretty pictures of oversized dominoes falling on top of each other – imagine the gargantuan effort of translating, editing and marketing an already published book like The Tin-Drum, months of work of up to twenty intelligent, underpayed people coordinated for such a small window. The idea presumably being that ‘Germany’ is on lots of people’s minds so they will be more likely to buy books by ‘German’ writers. One can but hope that next week, when another word is big on the news and there are other pretty pictures, and once the books are moved off the tables back towards the nether-regions of the shop, enough copies have been sold so as not to have put everyone involved off publishing another book in translation for a while.  Also, I didn’t know that Nick Hornby doesn’t read fiction in translation. It’s no big loss to literary criticism (although no serious literary publication should ever let him on its pages until he agrees to stop being…xenophobic or racist? both?) but it’s a surprising position for an Arsenal fan, what would Arsene think?

Now that I’ve started I don’t seem to be able to stop…

An article by Lorrie Moore on Clarice Lispector. As a friend said to me; why do American writers always have to take a survey? More worryingly, and annoyingly, the week after it was published in the NYRB, La Nacion published an article by Tomas Eloy Mártinez basically saying ‘look, the Americans are talking about a South American writer! She’s quite importan, you know.’

And speaking of La Nacion..

Angry bolañomyth bashing by Horacio Castellanos Moya. I was a bit annoyed with myself when I saw that this came out in English because I had read it in the Saturday paper when it came out and it didn’t occur to me that it might be something worth pitching for translation. I didn’t take it particularly seriously for the following reasons: One, in explicitly claiming the writer as a friend Castellanos Moya undermines his argument – he is effectively trying to construct his own myth. Two, it’s too angry; when faced with the conversation in the café you would pointedly ask the waiter to make it a decaf and try to change the subject. Three, for all the ‘North American’  (a bad slip for a Latin American writer as he’s included Mexico and Canada in the mix) angrying-at, the article is in response to an article by a North American (another friend.) Four, as the writer of a recently translated work into English that was exceptionally well-received but perhaps did not sell quite as many copies there is the danger that the grapes in the Castellanos Moya household might be accused of having gone sour. Five, The article came amidst a whole bunch of other articles in La Nacion about the Bolañomyth. And six, of course bo0ks are marketed!

It’s a fun read though.

“En su crujiente compañía, Moore recuerda que ganó a los 19 años un concurso de cuentos en la revista Seventeen. Y cómo ahora, 33 años después, ha publicado tres libros de relatos, acaba de editar su tercera novela y es miembro de la Academia de las Artes y las Letras de América desde 2006. No sabe muy bien qué ha cambiado en la literatura, ni en la suya en particular, en todo este tiempo. Lo único claro es que ahora tiene un hijo adolescente, se ha divorciado y se han mudado del Este al Oeste, a la mitad de Estados Unidos. “Aquí hay un muy buen resumen de la sociedad estadounidense. Al principio no era consciente de eso, de todo lo que había aquí, y ahora estoy tratando de reflejarlo. Éste es un micromundo del país con todos sus microambientes políticos, culturales, sociales y de sueños”. Calla un instante y su voz pausada encuentra un punto de cambio como narradora: “Antes, cuando era más joven, escribí mis dos novelas, Anagramas y El hospital de ranas, sobre mujeres mayores, y ahora que ya soy mayor escribo sobre una mujer joven”, y se interrumpe con una risa clara y dosificada. “Eso quería hacer en esta novela. Quería contar estas cosas como un resumen de Estados Unidos”.

Extracto de la entrevista publicada en Babelia. Leer completa.

Ver además:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorrie_Moore

http://notasmoleskine.blogspot.com/2009/10/fresan-sobre-lorrie-moore.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/27/lorrie-moore-us-literary-world

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/books/02moore.html

A view from the bottom of the stairs

As an admirer of Lorrie Moore’s short stories, I’ve long looked forward to the publication of The Gate at the Stairs, her first novel in fourteen years.

Tassie Keltjin, a naïve student at a university in the Midwest, takes a job as a babysitter for a couple in the process of adopting a child.  The time she spends with them and with their little girl, Mary-Emma, gives her a view outside her own restricted upbringing.  She gets glimpses of a sophisticated but dark adult world with complicated relationships and deep sorrows.  She also becomes increasingly aware of a new, bewildering America—one born on 9/11, a country now full of suspicion, racial profiling, and preparations for war.

There is much about this book to love:  Moore is verbally dexterous, capable of spinning vivid passages that are comedic and poignant at once, scenes–in Moore’s own words–full of “idle spirals and desperate verbal coils”.  As a whole, however, the work flounders.  Innovations that are fresh and effective in a short story, when stretched to fit the dimensions of a novel, begin to feel gimmicky.  This is off-putting, drawing the reader out of the story to puzzle over technique.

Then, it’s never clear what the story is about.  Even Moore seems confused.  The opening mother-daughter thread quickly frays.  The theme of immanent war flashes, replaced quickly by a succession of others: insolvable race-relations, implacable jihad, the complexities of a rotten marriage.  Tangled asides on food, flowers, music, politics, and religion appear, but none are woven into any pattern.  The Gate at the Stairs is less a novel than several mismatched short stories masquerading as a novel.  Not only is this disappointing from a writer of Moore’s flair and expertise, it’s devastating.

.

A version of this review first appeared in The Courier-Mail in October 2009.

Jonathan Lethem is an author whose work, at least that portion I have read, impresses me. He wrote a review for this book which heavily influenced my purchase and choice to read. Not least convincing was his reference to another of her works as “Nabokovian.” His review indicated that A Gate at the Stairs, Moore’s first full-length novel, “should spell the end” of Moore being counted as “a miniaturist”. In other words, Lethem gushed.

My take is not like Lethem’s. This story of college student and narrator Tassie Keltjin did not have me turning to anyone to press it on them. Well, to be fair, for the first 100 pages, I had started mentally composing a list of people to whom I would strongly recommend the book. Slowly, the list dwindled until there were none. This is not to say the book is no good, only that I am no booster.

I was impressed by Moore’s sense of humor, her seeming ease in crafting a sentence, her vivid portrayals of people young and old, and even her many puns. As an example of Moore’s talent, I offer Tassie’s description of her mother and their relationship:

[S]he was a Jewish woman married to a Lutheran farmer named Bo and perhaps because of that had the same indifferent reserve the mothers of my friends had. Halfway through my childhood I came to guess that she was practically blind as well. It was the only explanation for the thick glasses she failed often even to find. Or for the kaleidoscope of blood vessels burst, petunia-like, in her eyes, scarlet blasting into the white from mere eyestrain, or a careless swipe with her hand. It explained the strange way she never quite looked at me when we were speaking, staring at a table or down at a tile of a floor, as if halfheartedly plotting its disinfection while my scarcely controlled rage flew from my mouht in sentences I hoped would be, perhaps not then but perhaps later, like knives to her brain.

Even so, the ingredients, though fresh and original, made the casserole too busy for my taste by about half. Of course, I was one of those children who did not like my peas to touch my carrots, so casseroles are generally suspect.

Among the themes and issues that seem paramount at one point or another are: class, race, power, relationships, subterfuge, birth, death, rebirth, growing up, bureaucracy, and identity. And it is self-consciously “post 9/11″, though, as Lethem notes, this aspect is managed “with a deft sleight of hand.”

Very likely, most of these issues would be touched on in any serious American novel set between 2001 and now. Possibly, someone will manage to take on each of these aspects and say something new about them each. Moore, in my opinion, does not. Each time I felt she was on the cusp of an interesting revelation on race or Kafka-esque bureaucracy or the malleability of identity or death, she seemed to run out of steam or interest or both.

The most prominent example of this comes early. Tassie is looking for a job as a childcare provider. A busy professional couple, Sarah and Edward Brink, hires her. The Brinks plan to adopt, but have not yet found a child. Through an adoption agency, they ultimately locate and are able to adopt a delightful child whose biological mother is white and whose biological father is black. The hiring of Tassie, the looking for a baby, the couple’s dynamics, the adoption process are all handled with warranted aplomb by Moore.

Before the Brinks find their baby, Moore manages some excellent shots at racism-light. The most memorable and sharpest is when Sarah Brinks goes on a rant after being told by an adoption agency:

We’ve had a lot of luck with South America. Paraguay has opened up again, and other countries, too. And they’re not all brown there, either. There’s been a lot of German influence, and some of these kids are beautiful, very blond, or blue-eyed, or both.

Sarah’s biting comments in response are immediately gratifying, but lack either the depth or the nuance to give satisfaction. And this was my problem: Moore’s best shots are at easy targets.

The spectre of race feels a little clumsy in Moore’s hands. At first, I discounted the simplistic discussions of race on the grounds that Tassie was relating the thoughts and statements of other characters and that the point was that we, as a nation, tend to think and talk on such a shallow level about race. For instance, early on we get this from an adoption agent with a “biracial” son while showing Sarah Brinks pictures of a child up for adoption:

“…And he has been raised with a sense of total racial blindness. It’s a beautiful thing. He knows his adoption story by heart, how mommy’s tummy didn’t work, and he has completely embraced it.” The adoption business seemed to be full of women’s “broken tummies.” “When he was ten years old he was watching Gregory Hines dance on TV, and he said, ‘Look, Mom, that dancing man is adopted.’ It was the cutest thing.”

It didn’t sound that cute. It sounded odd. It sounded like it had the sharp edge of a weird lie poking into it….I glanced over at Sarah, who was remaining tight-lipped and nodding….Although later I would hear her say, repeatedly, “Racial blindness — now there’s a very white idea,” right then she merely asked, “When were these pictures taken?”

Moore seems to circle closer and closer to some sort of statement or revelation, but, all at once, race disappears as a significant issue in the novel. Moore has provided glimpses of people saying and doing stupid things regarding race and witty, clueless, or bleeding obvious responses to those stupid things, but Moore never manages to get through the surface of any racial issues.

Other aspects of the book also seemed to fall apart. I found Moore’s descriptions of farming alternately charming and unconvincing. Granted, Tassie describes her father as practicing “Dadaist agriculture”, i.e. “He farms nothing.” Still, when Tassie puts on a hawk costume, specially designed by her father, to scare mice from in front of his thresher, the “farming” aspect becomes ridiculous.

The story unraveled for me right about the same time as the plastic hawk costume for scaring mice was donned by Tassie. Previously unimportant aspects become important, some obvious developments develop, previously important characters disappear, secrets are revealed, and many a pun are deployed. Unfortunately, among all this activity, the coherence of the book devolved from promise to disappointment.

I should not end negatively because I can say the Lorrie Moore is a very good writer and, importantly, quite funny when she wants to be. For instance, her description of one of Tassie’s neighbors is delightful:

Kay, who lived in the largest flat, was middle-aged and the only tenant not a student; she was always in some skirmish with the landlord about the building. “He has no idea what he’s up against letting this building go the way he has,” Kay said to me once. “When something’s off here I have nothing else to think about. I mean, I have no other life. I can make this my life. He doesn’t appreciate what he’s up against. He’s up against someone with no life.”

On the strength of her humor and her set pieces, I will search out some of Moore’s other work. I will not recommend this novel, though. It has Jonathan Lethem’s impimatur, if you feel you want to read it, so mine is unnecessary. But do not go in with too high expectations.

Books I Completed This Week Are

Tempted All Night, by Liz Carlyle. (Click for review.)

If His Kiss is Wicked, by Jo Goodman. Lovely, compelling book. (Click for review.)

Secrets of the Highwayman, by Sara MacKenzie. Another time-travel-ish romance from MacKenzie. A little too meh for me, not enough romance. Too much external plot-tage, a pity. (Review forthcoming.)

Penelope, by Marilyn Kaye. A novelization of the movie. Just watch the movie. But the novel served its purpose–after Niffenegger, it was a salve. (Click for review.)

Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger. I admit, I jumped the bandwagon. So much hype, so much rabid publicity. Unfortunately, this novel is one of the most craptastic books I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. (Review forthcoming, as soon as the Post-Traumatic Stress isn’t so numbing. Okay, mind-numbing review’s up.)

Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore. One of the best short story collections EVER.

Devil of the Highlands, by Lynsay Sands. I would like to thank Miss Sands for restoring dignity to the name Cullen. For that alone, I’d tell everyone to read this novel. (Review forthcoming.)

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel-in-stories. The title character is such a character. It took me a while to finish this book. But it was worth it.

*

Books I’m Currently Reading

The Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver. It’s going okay. A little slow, though, and a little faux-British. And I don’t mind being given a crash course on snooker. I’m just at Ramsay and Irina’s first dinner. Yep. That dinner. I like that I’m reading this, though — I can~relate~ oh haha, saaaaahd.

Wild and Wicked in Scotland, by Melody Thomas.

New Selected Poems, by Mark Strand. I feel like I’m always currently reading this. Mark Strand is one of my most most most mostest favorite poets. And this is a stunning book.

*

Up Next

Change Baby, by June Spence. I love her collection, Missing Women and Others, and I can’t wait to peel off the protective plastic from this book.

Tolstoy Lied, by Rachel Kadish.

A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, by Amy Bloom. This was a birthday gift to me, and typical of my experience with short story collections, I haven’t finished it, haha. I like my stories in sips. But I’ll get to this. Promise.

[This all began over here: http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com/. Other bloggers have signed up for the meme, so go ahead and read it, get!]

I can’t tell you the number of students who have moaned to me over rewriting. They’re disappointed that their stories aren’t perfect first “vomit draft” out of the bag, and then they don’t want to do the work of rewriting. As Philip Roth told Tina Brown (www.thedailybeast.com), “the book really comes to life in the rewriting.” He rewrites each novel many times. Saul Bellow, Nobel prize winner, was known to rewrite a story 50 times or more. In an interview with Lorrie Moore in www.narrativemagazine.com, she tells how she rewrites as she goes, “every single sentence. Hence the slowness.” Writing is not fast. Writing is work. Writing is rewriting. Period.

.. det här var ju inte så aktivt. Jag borde kanske gå tillbaka till den väl beprövade läsdagboken, trots allt. Internet kanske inte är för mig? Nå, jag ger det ett nytt försök. Imorgon ska här uppdateras. En av sakerna jag ska skriva om äri alla fall fina Lorrie Moore och en mening som jag fastnat för i hennes ljuvliga novellsamling Like life som jag läser just nu. Så det så.

I love getting my quarterly journals, so imagine my happiness when I saw the sunny cover of my new Tin House (Volume 11, Number 1) smiling up at me from the stack in my mailbox. With a big, blue HOPE boldly positioned on the front, I “hoped” its innards would match the margarine sun steadily smiling at me from the cover.

From a literary standpoint, its been a rough few days for me. After the unsettling news about Walmart’s retail of online books (not acceptable), topped by Target’s more recent name in the price-drop game (more acceptable than Walmart/still not acceptable), I desperately needed some of that emblazoned HOPE. So, consider my joy as I tore off the plastic and  found this awaiting me…

Editor’s (Hope) Note

The clouds are parting. We have escaped global economic disaster. It’s a bright day; across the globe, people are cleaning up and cooling down, and wars over oil, land, and tribe are so overrated…for culture, it is a time to rejoice, as the internet has gifted us with the ability to transcend the borders of race, politics, and religion that have always divided us. We are now recognizing each other’s humanity, are connected and transformed by each other’s experiences.

A shot in the arm, this reassuring little paragraph at least convinced me that there was much to rejoice over, regardless of what I fear will be the armageddon of literary retail. But I digress…

My Tin luck continued when I scanned the Fiction contents and spotted senior editor Michelle Wildgen’s interview with author Lorrie Moore. Eagerly anticipating my e-notice for Moore’s new title, A Gate at the Stairs (queued up at #2, public library style), I tossed all else to the side and got down to reading this fine journalistic endeavor. Upon finishing the piece, I realized it was really, really good. Notably so. Quite colorful and enjoyable, in fact.

With a nod to Tin House (no, I’m not affiliated with them in any way), I tackled the rest of my day with optimistic gusto. I ticked off my “to do” list with an extra step in my stride, inwardly content knowing that the world of fine literature would continue in spite of corporate competition.

As the day wore down, I put my feet up and began my scan of blog favorites, startling at the title of the day’s post on NYT’s Paper Cuts. Like some sort of Tin House Twilight Zone, I see Stray Questions for: Michelle Wildgen, the very same crafty senior editor Wildgen of Moore’s interview. With that, I decided to call it a day by tossing my Tin House talisman to the side.

Now as we all know, life is a heads or tails kind of affair. A world of chance and opposing forces. So as I got up to turn out the light, I noticed my Tin House was staring back at me, not with a HOPEful sun, but with a bedeviled DREAD written in Infernal red. Unbeknownst to me, my mailman had inadvertently saved my day. Had he put my Tin House in the box on the flipside, life would have taken on a much more fatalistic tone: dual covers offering dual perspectives. Chalking it up to fate, I flipped it back to the sunny side, switched off the light, and went to bed while pondering the potent powers of persuasion.

-Post by Megan Shaffer

SOUNDTRACK: FIONA APPLE-When the Pawn… (1999).

I learned about Fiona Apple from CMJ New Music Monthly before her debut came out.  I was convinced she was just another pretty thing with little talent. But then I heard “Shadowboxer” and I was really impressed by the depth of her voice.  When I got the album, I was pretty much blown away.

When When the Pawn came out it was mocked for its absurdly long title.  (Even Janine Garofalo got in on the mocking, for which, shame on her because even if Fiona made some bad decisions, she was still a young woman who was fighting for the causes of good).

But looking beyond the title, For When the Pawn, shows Fiona’s voice getting stronger and more subtle, and her songwriting is truly amazing.  She used the assistance of Jon Brion, multi-instrumentalist and all around dabbler in fun sounds.  And he creates a soundscape of weird instruments, crazy sounds and an enveloping sounds that keep the album an item unto itself.

I haven’t listened to the disc in quite a while, but playing it again, i was impressed by the audacity of some of the musical choices, especially for a “pretty young thing” with a successful (and disturbing) video on the charts (“Criminal“).

The crazy noises that start off the disc (carnival-like keyboards, electronic squeals) sound a mile away from the jazzy sounds of “Shadowboxer” but Fiona’s voice comes in and you know that she’s still her, and her voice sounds even richer.  There’s a wild disconnect on “To Your Love” with the delicate vibes (!) that fill the bridge and the rough sounds in the chorus (not to mention the crazy wordplay: “My derring-do allows me to dance the rigadoon Around you But by the time I’m close to you, I lose my desideratum and now you”‘).  And then “Limp,” an amazing musical concoction:  more delicate jazzy openings followed by a raucous chorus with the wonderful put down: “So call me crazy, hold me down / Make me cry; get off now, baby- / It wont be long till you’ll be / Lying limp in your own hand.”

And that’s just the first three songs.  The rest of the disc sways between mellow jazzy numbers, beautiful ballads, and rocking scorchers, but it is always fueled by a dissonance that counters Apple’s voice perfectly.

Another can’t miss track is “Fast as You Can,” a wonderfully propelled track that bounces along jauntily until it hits an amazingly fast syncopated chorus.  And the production is so clean, the drum clap before the bridge is striking.  The disc ends with a couple of delicate songs.  “Get Gone” is  delightful jazzy song (complete with brushed drums).  It remains pretty mellow until Fiona breaks from a pause with a brutal “fucking go!”  And finally, the delicate ending of “I Know” brings the disc to a close.

Ten years later, this disc is still a gem.  One can only hope it gets rediscovered so a new legion of fans can enjoy its masterful music.  And for the full title of the disc, check the bottom the post….

[READ: October 16, 2009] “Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young”

This article opens with a note that Evan Martin found this article but noticed that it wasn’t online.  It was mentioned in Steven Moore’s essay “The First Draft Version of Infinite Jest.“  So he retyped it and it is now hosted on theknowe.net.  Here’s the write-up & link from The Howling Fantods:

“Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young”. The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. 8, No. 3, 1988. [NOTES: Read it here.]

This is a fascinating article in which DFW looks at the state of fiction circa 1987.  Specifically, he is responding to criticisms that the popular authors of the day, collectively Conspicuously Young, all fall into three very basic and uninspired cliche-filled boxes:

• Neiman-Marcus Nihilism
• Catatonic Realism
• Workshop Hermeticism

And the authors in question are Bret Easton Ellis, David Leavitt, Jay McInerney and these authors whom he mentions by last name only: Janowitz, Simpson and Minot.  Janowitz I assume is Tama Janowitz, but (Mona) Simpson and (Susan) Minot were unknown to me. I was surprised that later in the article Lorrie Moore appears to be included in this group of young writers (along with Amy Hempel who I’ve heard of) and Debra Spark (who I’ve not heard of). Although they seem to be contrasted with this group as examples of  “good” writers.

Anyhow, back to the article.  DFW does not disagree that the worst of  these Conspicuously Young (CY) authors do fall into these easy cliches.  However, he also criticizes the critics for bemoaning this new generational fiction.  DFW’s argument is that these critics complain that young authors spend too much time in the Now, while real literature should not date itself so much, or rely on pop culture as a signifier.  While DFW agrees that pop culture should not be a crutch, he also states that these critics are coming from a different reality.  They didn’t grow up with television as an unavoidable presence.  They weren’t saturated with media.  References to pop culture are such a part of these authors’ (of which he includes himself) lives that they can’t imagine it not being part of their fiction.

However, that’s still no excuse for lazy writing.  And for that, he is also very critical of fiction writing programs.  He notes the explosion of these programs in the last two dozen years or so.  And his main criticism of them is that the authors who teach in the programs (for they are largely authors) would rather be writing their books, not teaching others to write (which is understandable, yet unfortunate for the students).

Further, these programs tend to be unfailingly “safe” with regard to writing.  Like in most classes, students are taught to do what the teacher says (and mimic it back).  And this is something of a death knell for creative fiction.

And yet, he also comments that these authors should be aspiring to more than nihilistic comments about society.  Late 80’s American society, post Watergate and smack in the heart of Reaganism, is a confusing place for an artist.  So the above three groups make sense.

• Neiman-Marcus Nihilism because the mass culture the Yuppie inhabits and instantiates is itself at best empty and at worst evil.
• Catatonic Realism because in confusing times the bare minimal seems easy.
• Workshop Hermeticism because in confusing times caution seems prudent.

And yet.  And yet, “The state of general affairs that explains a nihilistic artistic outlook makes it imperative that art not be nihilistic.”  But fear not DFW suggests, there are up and coming writers who are not conspicuous yet but who are on the verge, ready to make great art.

The whole article is thoughtful; its simultaneously depressing and yet uplifting.  Of course, it being 20 years old does make some of the points no longer relevant.  I wonder if he thought Fiction Writing Programs had changed (for better or worse) in the last 20 years.

And yes, this confirms my contention that DFW was a great non-fiction writer.

—————————————————————————-

The full title of Fiona’s disc is:

When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
And he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring
There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might
So when you go solo, you hold your own hand
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land
And if you fall it won’t matter, cuz you’ll know that you’re right

from the author of The Believers

Paperback: 182 pages

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2007

ISBN-13: 978-1555974732

Trade Paperback: 6.9 x 5 x 0.6 inches

Available, click here from amazon.com

     The master short-story writer, Charles Baxter, provides a complex read on something  poet Marianne Moore once expressed this way, “The power of the visible, is in the invisible.” Here Baxter examines stories “with a magnifying glass, looking for the secret panel, the hidden stairway, the lovingly concealed dungeon and the ghost moaning from beneath the floor.”

     He shares his conclusions about staging scenes. In real life, he says, good families (i.e. normal, boring ones) don’t have them, but these are the building blocks of drama. And that’s the point. We want to see things played out on the page or on the screen that for one reason or another we are hesitant about in our everyday exchanges. To capture that contradictory process great stories, “don’t depend so much on what the characters say they want as what they actually want but can’t own up to.” The author has us reconsider classics from Ahab’s obsession in Moby Dick to a rather profound observation about the power of fantasy in The Great Gatsby. Then of course there is John Cheever’s “The Simmer,” Franz Kafka, and Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog.” But what of the dark night of the soul lit by Dostoyevsky, the world’s foremost “psychologist of rage?” That comes later under “Staging a Desire.”

     In terms of dynamics between characters—in these scenes genteel people so fear—Baxter uses one of my favorite examples, Frost’s “Home Burial.” In describing the camera shots of Citizen Kane Orson Welles once said he wanted each character to have his or her own unique angle so that even if a viewer didn’t know the plot the viewer would be able to understand the story. We’re always looking up at Kane (Welles even built a trapdoor on the set to get the camera at a very low angle) and looking down at Susan Alexander, the singer who is his less-than-talented protégé. Remember the camera shot that comes down through the skylight of a nightclub where she’s performing? Well, here we have the same thing, but it’s even better because the man and woman in the Frost poem change position as the emotional advantage swings from one to the other. The man begins at the foot of the stairs and rises to eventually tower over her, however they are both upstaged by an unknown presence outside, which they glance at through the window.           

     We can observe these things in life or in examples of contemporary writers, such as Richard Bausch and Edward Jones. Baxter, the writer, is ever the teacher: “Dialogue, instead of bringing people together, instead tends to define their differences and then cast those differences in stone.” This is a book like Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, forty years ago, that turns things on their head. One important point I learned is what Baxter calls a “fallacy of dialogue today,” that all characters are, in fact listening to what is said. In reality there is an inattentiveness, not only in the best works of Eugene O’Neil, Tony Kushner and Lorrie Moore, but in our society outside of plays and books. The same is true about facial expression, though I have to admit he loses me a bit with this. It may be , as a student of Baxter’s claims, no one is interested in faces anymore (this is the age of texting and twittering, after all), but isn’t this something we seek (or should seek) for exactly that reason. To compensate for the lack of it in our lives? We watch close-ups of faces on big screens, stare at tabloid pages featuring paparazzi-stolen glimpses at celebrities. We even buy books, such as this one, to better see the Other. The strong must see the weak, if we are to count ourselves civilized. The healthy, the sick; the rich, the impoverished. Good literature helps us do that, and books like this one by Charles Baxter, help us understand why and how.    

φ φ φ φ φ (five roses out of five)                      -  John Lehman

Anoche, en la madrugada del otoño que tanto espero, encontré esta pasmosa descripción en Al pie de la escalera, la novela de Lorrie Moore que me tiene subyugado:

Alguien tarareaba a la vez que interpretaba el suave lamento de Bach. Más adelante sería dueña de todas las descabelladas grabaciones de Glenn Gould, de todas las que estaban a la venta, pero aquel día, en el coche, era la primera vez que lo oía tocar. La pieza era como un elegante signo de interrogación hecho con una maraña de hilos, como una pregunta formulada por un hombre bien vestido desde un ataúd, todavía vivo. Avanzaba lentamente, como una ecuación meticulosa, sólo que de repente dejaba de serlo: si x es igual a y, si mayor es igual a menor, si la muerte es igual a parte de la vida y la vida a parte de la muerte, entonces ¿qué resulta de sumar las infinitas notas de esta particular frase? La pieza preguntaba, respondía, volvía a preguntar, su taciturno preguntar como una sublñimación de la desgana o la aversión.

Los improbables visitantes de esta bitácora saben que Glenn Gould es uno de mis destinos concéntricos. Encontrarlo en el libro, a las tres de la madrugada, fue saber que el camino es siempre el mismo camino.

The nominees for the National Book Award were announced earlier this week. I can recommend two of books in the fiction category: Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a carefully turned collection of stories that focus on class divisions in Pakistan, and Jayne Anne Phillips‘ Lark and Termite, a novel about the intersection of the Korean War and a broken family back in America. It’s harder for me to recommend Colum McCann’s ambitious Let the Great World Spin a novel that seemed to foreground its bigness at the expense of its characters. My review of the book in the Chicago Sun-Times wraps up this way: “There’s plenty to admire in Let the Great World Spin, especially for anybody predisposed to the widescreen style of Don DeLillo’s Underworld. But the magic of Petit’s wirewalk was that it seemed so effortless, like walking on air. McCann too often lets the reader know just how difficult a balancing act he’s trying to pull off.” The rest of the nominees? Your guess is as good as mine.

The typewriter that Cormac McCarthy has used to write all his novels until now is going up for auction.

The pleasures of reading To Kill a Mockingbird aloud.

Perhaps Lorrie Moore is trying too hard to be funny? (I haven’t gotten to A Gate at the Stairs, but the “jokes” in Self-Help do do a lot of the work. But they’re often anti-jokes, planted to show how sad or despairing or resentful a character is. She jokes a lot, but she’s not trying to get you to laugh.)

Cynthia Ozick on the Kindle: “A robot!” “A foreign object!”

Willa Cather’s development as a novelist.

Junot Diaz in Oprah magazine: “[A] writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”

Will Ferrell will star in a film based on a Raymond Carver short story (“Why Don’t You Dance?”, I think).

Lastly, this from the Department of Condescending Media: When a football player reads books, it’s news.

Just a reminder: The shortlist for the 2009 National Book Awards will be announced at noon Eastern Time tomorrow. The list will consist of five finalists in each of four categories — fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature – and should be posted by early afternoon on the site for the sponsor of the prizes, the National Book Foundation, and on www.twitter.com/nationalbook.

The winners will be announced on Nov. 18, well before those for the Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Critics Circle Awards, both of which will be handed out in 2010. Some finalists for the young people’s literature award may also be considered for American Library Association’s Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children, which will be given out in January. Only Americans are eligible for the National Book Awards, the Pulitzer Prizes, and Newbery Medal, but authors of any nationality may win NBCC awards.

I haven’t read enough of the candidates predict who might turn up on tomorrow’s list. But two of the 2009 books that I read are as strong as many past National Book Awards finalists — Aleksandar Hemon’s short story collection, Love and Obstacles, and Brad Gooch’s biography, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see them on list. And Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs – which I hope to review soon – seems to have gained the kind of unstoppable momentum that, rightly or wrongly, often precedes major awards.

Jacqueline Woodson’s novel for ages 12 and under, Peace, Locomotion – which I’ll review Saturday, Oct. 17 or Oct. 24 — isn’t as strong in its category as Hemon’s and Gooch’s books are in theirs. But it’s a sequel to Locomotion, which was a National Book Awards finalist. And Woodson also made the shortlist for Hush. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see her among the finalists, either.

Whom would you like to see win in November?

www.twitter.com/janiceharayda

Knopf, 2009 ISBN: 9780375409288

Tassie Keltjin has been freed from her roots as a Midwestern daughter of a specialty organic potato farmer, by getting into college in a town not all that far from home, but intellectually worlds away from her high school class mates, who either marry young, join the army, like her brother does, or go to the “Dellacrosse Diesel Driving School.”

To make ends meet, Tassie decides to look for work as a part-time nanny. She is quickly hired by Sarah, the owner of a fancy restaurant, and her husband Edward, some kind of scientist, to take care of the child they plan to adopt. Sarah, especially, tries to draw Tassie into the family in ways that feel strange to her: taking her to meet birth mothers, and the daughter they ultimately adopt.

Tassie’s classes go largely unmentioned, except for the wine-tasting class that she is under-age for, and the Intro to Sufism in which she meets her mysterious boyfriend, Reynaldo.

Instead, the novel focuses largely on Tassie’s job as a nanny, her feelings about Sarah and Edward, and toddler Emmy. Wednesday evenings she agrees to babysit and entertain a larger group of children, mostly children of color, who have been adopted by white parents, who are meeting downstairs to discuss the “race issue.” Tassie, perhaps somewhat less than the reader, is appalled at the liberal platitudes that get spouted during these meetings.

The gate at the top of the stairs is literally and symbolically the baby gate meant to keep Emmy safe from the dangers of the world, but is also symbolic of Sarah’s attempts to reach for a state of grace that will continually elude her. Yet it is Tassie who seems to suffer the two ultimate tragedies the most.