pain of the latter day

okay. let me try. first i’ll explain my feelings about goodreads. i like goodreads. i love lists. i’m a list freak. there are some people who are like this. i am like this. it’s a visceral pleasure that cannot bear the burden of an explanation. it’s the way i am.

but also i like a way of keeping track of the books i read. because i have no capacity whatsoever for remembering. i have never kept a journal in my life — i can’t, it’s an impossibility — but a few years ago i started keeping a book journal in which i’d write only the books i read and the books simon read, so i would know. now i can do it online. i love leaving all my documents online, because my paper documents litter my house in piles i don’t have the courage to begin to look at. they are everywhere, fossilizing, transforming themselves into different objects, maybe bones, maybe rocks.

i enjoy the vast online community less than mike does. i love exchanging thoughts on the books i read with my friends, but strangers, eh. and i do stress about the fact that we are leaving so many traces of ourselves in a totally searchable cyberworld. i stress about the fact that “online” offers such fake privacy and we are so thirsty for exchange with other humans that sometimes we forget this privacy is incredibly fragile.

but these are random personal thoughts.

blogs feel sometimes like a lot of responsibility. i have abandoned this for a long while because i didn’t feel very good at bearing that responsibility. apologies to my fellow bloggers, in particular to michael, who hates goodreads and lists and ratings.

i just finished sherman alexie’s flight and am knocked senseless and also incredibly exhilarated by how a YA book can be so simple and so incredibly complex at the same time. as mike points out in his goodreads review, which you can read somewhere here, the moral of the book as the narrator states it (and he does state it, in words not much dissimilar from we all hurt, we are all falling, we all carry terrible burdens, we should be kind to one another) couldn’t be more commonplace, but, well, is there any other, really? does any writer who engages with the problem of pain and suffering and the way people can either succor or damn each other to earthly hell have another message to convey?* it is a sign of alexie’s tremendous power as a writer that he can say it and not make us cringe. i, for one, did not cringe. this simple message is put on top of such a harrowing cumulative display of the horrors of history that, frankly, it seems quite inevitable, and stating it simply and straight seems the only way to state it without being coy or silly or pretentious.

* there is always “this sucks ass where is the booze,” but i guess i was thinking of a slightly more cheery approach.

flight uses the word “beautiful” a lot. i like writers who can pull that off. the language is very guileless, in some ways, direct and forthright and perfect for a kid narrator (maybe a younger kid narrator than a 15-year-old), but the astonishment at the pain humans pile on each other, at the forgetfulness of history, at the (seemingly inevitable) misery of adults’ personal interactions, and the hope that things might be different, maybe, a little, are far from guileless. they are clear-eyed and heartbreaking and make you want to put your face in your hands and cry (which i would have done, if i weren’t frozen into tearlessness by all the news that comes out of our american torture chambers and our american wars, and by feeling submerged by the untold human pain caused by centuries of out-of-control political, economical, and environmental imperialism: but let’s not go there because there isn’t anything good there).

i also read porochista khakpour’s astounding debut novel sons and other flammable objects, which also deals with the terrible pain life puts on the shoulders of kids (and parents), in this case a first-generation iranian-born called xerxes (pronounced zercsis). the magic of this particular book is partly in the exuberant, uncontainable language (khakpour is not afraid of very long paragraphs: good for her), and partly in its refusal (till the very end, but that’s a minor slip for a first novel) to name the origin of the pain. i love that, like other recent not-quite-from-here writers — i am thinking of kiran desai’s the inheritance of loss, but also, strangely, of james baldwin’s the fire next time, which i just finished teaching — khakpour spends a lot of time and a lot of thought and heart on the generational and hard-to-pin-down pain of dislocation. i’ll come right out and confess that, as someone who knows dislocation first-hand, i melt inside whenever writers find words for the pain of those who leave their countries and come to This Very Strange Place. i love it when they describe the coldness of suburbia, the aridity of fake community life, the insipidity of the food, the plastic entertainment, the cement and neon cities, the maddening freeways, the soul-destroying loneliness. i love it because i feel understood. but it’s more than that: i feel that someone is drawing attention to the fact that, here, and maybe somewhere else too, but here, all of us, almost all 300 million of us, live deeply inhuman lives. we live deeply traumatized lives. the fire next time talks to this with a soulfulness and sorrow that i haven’t seen anywhere else. our traumatized lives are the direct result of our power and the immense daily efforts we make to maintain it. in order to maintain in, in order to forget the price of maintaining it, we cut ourselves off both from pain and from pleasure (not that we could cut ourselves off from one but not the other), we numb ourselves totally and then, and then, put so much damn effort into pretending to be fine.

which we are not.

khakpour is no baldwin, but maybe desai is a little baldwin, and in any case all these people are trying very hard to talk about the deadly malaise of our late late days, and make you wish for some sort of cleansing apocalypse, because, if you feel like me, you feel that nothing short of that can give us — all of us, not only those of us who can afford expensive therapists and organic food, as if that changed anything — our lives back.

hey michael, you asked.

not a particularly good reading stretch

on mike’s suggestion i read david mitchell ghostwritten, a really exceptional book, all the more so if one thinks that it is a first novel. dazzling and original and whimsical and perfectly written. a joy. but then i fell into a bad reading spell, with book after book being a disappointment and me feeling restless and unhappy, as i do when i’m not reading a book that anchors my day in looking-forwarding-to-going-back-to-itness.

i was intrigued some time ago to find that subcomandante marcos and renowned mexican mystery writer paco ignacio taibo II had teamed up to write a novel. but i found the novel, the uncomfortable dead, a disappointment and didn’t finish it. among other things, the translation is below par. anyone else?

after that i thought i’d return to the tried and true and read me a carol shields novel i hadn’t yet read, the box garden. now, carol shields is in many ways a really spectacular writer, but, really, the only book by her that has totally grabbed me is unless. the other ones leave me pleased, impressed, but a bit cold. it’s as if they failed to congeal in my imagination into compelling, forceful stories. too much set up, maybe? the fault, if fault is the right word, is, i feel, in me, not her. i do love her take on life, which is gentle and easy and wry. life is this big unruly blob and you do best by smiling and going along as easily as you can, avoiding the knots and most certainly not trying to untie them. a box garden, too, adds religion to the mix, and it’s, as everything in shields, with a sweetly skeptical take that leaves one quite impressed with her intelligence and the depth of her soul. then maybe what doesn’t talk to me is her canadian gothic. like all anglo gothic (american, english, australian/new zealand), i don’t get it. very alien.

which brings me to richard flanagan’s gould’s book of fish, which looks amazing, reads amazing, but i had to abandon after a few chapters. i can’t stand the relentless abuse of antipodean literature. when i put myself through her work, janet frame just about finished me. i’m sure some of you have read gould and know what i’m talking about. what’s interesting about it, i find, is its look at colonialism and imperialism from the point of view of the terrible abuse it brought, not only to indigenous people, but also to the colonizers themselves. kind of like a modern version of the scarlet letter. the conditions to which the prisoners that became australia/new zealand’s founding fathers are subjected, the arbitrariness of the violence, are really beyond words. read janet frame’s astounding faces in the water if this stuff talks to you. i had knots in my stomach and on occasion i felt nauseous, not because of squeamishness, but because i don’t want to believe we can be so terribly brutal to one another. i’ll admit with not a small amount of shame that the fact that the violence was white-on-white might have made it worse. it’s not that i think it’s better to abuse non-white people, godforbid. it’s that we are just not habituated to seeing such terrible abuse perpetrated on white people, and it hit very close home. evidently, i draw comfort in those other stories from thinking that it won’t happen to me.

talking of things that might happen to me, check out this story. a “little-known but common practice?” REALLY???? so now the state of virginia has a law against it. how about the rest of us? and why isn’t this widely discussed? and: why not proctological exams on men, dental exams on children, etc? i am confused, bewildered, shocked, and scared.

i then started chris abani’s latest, the virgin of flames, but at this point i needed plain and solid writing, not abani’s weird stuff. i’ll certainly return to it, though i’ve got to say that abani confounds my belief that one has to be a good stylist to write good novels. his graceland is a fabulous book, in spite of the less-than-clean writing. still, i look forward to this book, some other time.

same with muriel spark’s the mandelbaum gate. fine book, but i really, really need some honest-to-goodness, dyed-in-the-wool americana right now to clean my palate and settle my stomach. terrible image. i don’t mean it that way.

what memorable books have you read recently?

i still can’t believe the miracle that is cloud atlas, one of the best books i’ve ever read. wow. why did this book lose to the line of beauty for the booker prize? how can anyone not give this book laurel and fame?

also impressive, or at least very interesting: surveillance.

and, again, maxine hong kingston’s the fifth book of peace, which, at its third reading, and after two weeks of going through it with my students, shines more and more luminous in my pantheon.

three asian writers

i reread, because i’ll be teaching it, maxine hong kingston’s the fifth book of peace, which was published in 2003 and is about (inspired by, prompted by, gesturing towards) 9/11 without ever mentioning 9/11. this is a book i admire tremendously. it’s divided in sections — fire, paper, water, earth — and, apart from the water section, which is a) a continuation of tripmaster monkey and b) the rewriting of the manuscript kingston lost in the 1991 oakland fire, it is a memoir or sorts. the fire and the loss of the manuscript are the subjects of the fire section. in the paper section, kingston talks about the mythical chinese three books of peace, which may or may not have existed, which people may or may not know about, which may or may not be part of chinese mythology. by asking people and through personal research, kingston tries to hunt them down, reconstructing their content, rebuilding their existence (don’t remember the result, not sure it matters). water is the only section i couldn’t get through. i read only part of tripmaster monkey and maybe one day i’ll read more, but i’m not sure it’s up my alley. i found this section boring. i think kingston tries to create a fictional world of achieved harmony, and, well, it’s boring. i found it boring. i don’t claim to be objective in any way. it just didn’t work for me. in the last part, earth, kingston tells the story of a series of writing workshops she held with vietnam vets in the 90s. they are great — great inspiration, among other things, for teaching, and i’m using her techniques, not in the sense that i’m copying her but in the sense that i’m trying to be her, in the classes i’m teaching now.

i really wanted to end my semester on horror and atrocity with this book about peace by one of the greatest writers of our times. it’s hard for me to define the endless fascination this book has for me. kingston is one of those people i don’t want to meet. her writerly self is such a close friend of mine, i want to preserve her intact, uncontaminated by real encounters and the accidents of space and time. she writes like someone who knows — who knows pain and loss and tragedy but also that there is more and better and more basic. i couldn’t say what this more and better is. maybe it’s just her, her writing, the words effortlessly and powerfully strung together, the stories, the simplicity of her persona, her vulnerability and candor, her command of language and ideas coupled with her astounding humility. i really dig her. every time i read this book i feel that the world is manageable. maybe, as i said, it’s manageable only because i can go back to the words of great writers and drink copiously from them — but that’s something (after a self-imposed news blackout, the violence of bush’s words sneaked into my headphones this morning and a dark dark cloud covered up the strong miami sun. if maxine hong kingston can make me feel better, just thinking of her, now, well, that’s something indeed).

there is a point in which kingston, with self-conscious oversimplification, says that asian women always write about peace. well, my students and i are reading ota yoko’s city of corpses, written in the two months following the hiroshima and nagasaki bombing by a writer who was also a hiroshima victim, and it’s a powerful book which contains some of the measuredness, the great focus and centeredness of kingston’s book. i think this book should be mandatory reading in the united states. i may have said it before. i felt the same when, a long time ago, i read primo levi’s if this is a man: that book should be mandatory reading in europe, certainly in italy. this vastly overdue (it was published in 1990) english language collection of the three preeminent (sole?) writers who survived the hiroshima bombing should be read by everyone who wishes to say “ground zero” in any context at any time. or “soft nuke,” or “tactical nuke,” or “civilian casualties.” ota’s narrative is astounding. she knows she may well be the only writer who survived the first nuclear holocaust in human history and gives it all she’s got. at the same time, like kingston’s, her writing is strangely relaxed, unchecked, easy, free. it is a truly memorable read.

which brings me to my third asian writer, another woman, monique truong, and her book of salt. i read this some time ago and was meant to read it again for our book club but didn’t get round to reading more than 50 pages. it’s about the vietnamese cook of gertrude stein and alice toklas and it’s a touching, interesting, and deeply thought-provoking book. i wonder if you guys are familiar with it. it was a hit at the book club.

the war on islam

i heard louise richardson on the radio this morning and i really want to read her book. she sounded really great. first, though, i have to finish this. which, in practical terms, means that i may be able to read richardson in, maybe, ten years.

the test: living in the shadow of huntington disease

i’m endlessly fascinated by the idea of reading this book, but held back by the one strongly negative review posted on amazon.com. what do you think?

also, i’m this very moment listening to “this american life,” where this book, touching on a subject i’m also endlessly fascinated by, is discussed. to read or not to read?

note: if they were fiction, i wouldn’t think twice. but i just don’t read nonfiction, not really. so my inner resistance is strong. please advise!

the death of che guevara

on july 5th we visited the kendall bookshelf, a fine used bookstore which is only one of five in miami-dade — yup, there are only five in the whole wide county, and shrinking even as i type. we bought two volumes of cormac mccarthy’s border trilogy, which were being sold in a cart outside for a dollar each, in hardback and perfect shape, one battered copy of gourevitch’s we wish to inform, and a very good copy of manette ansey’s vinegar hill. the mccarthy books are for simon: i’ve had enough of mccarthy to last me a lifetime with blood meridian, an(other) exploration of masculinity that got me bored to my eyeballs. the ansey is for me, because ansey teaches in my department and i make a point of reading the books of the creative writing faculty and published graduate students in my department. thanks to this policy, i discovered the amazing poetry of maureen seaton, whose furious cooking was transformative for me.

and i’m inching my way through the terrific (so far) but slow-moving the death of che guevara, by jay cantor. this is my first exploration of cantor territory and i’m impressed. cantor is a manic writer. here he is, writing the che’s story in the first person, and the book is so ripe with details, small moments, and a feel for the places and the times, that one cannot but bow to cantor’s explosive imagination. the narrative goes back and forth between the che’s youthful political explorations (i am now at the point in which he travels with a bunch of good friends up the andes in the 50s to see what’s going on with the various revolutions taking place in latin american countries) and a present-day (60s) account of a sort of self-imposed retreat in which he’s writing his autobiography (which is what we read in the other part) and tries to figure out where to go to next, politically and ideologically. i suspect this rethinking has something to do with mixed feelings about castro, but i don’t know for sure yet.

cantor spends as much time in the places the che visits as in his head, exploring his idealism, the evolution of his political yearning, his feelings about his mother and father, and, captivatingly, his constant interaction with asthma and the rarefied world it engenders. i am truly captivated by cantor’s style, which is both mesmerizing and intense to the point of unbearability. there’s a lot to take in, and the book just cannot be read fast — hence the inching.

the strongest dilemma the books presents in the first 200 pages is the dilemma about how to go about political change. che is clearly inspired by ghandi and his ascetic nonviolence to a religious extent, feeling that ghandi’s willingness to put himself, his body, on the line is the way to go in order to create the powerful leadership he craves, not for himself, but in someone he can devote himself to. at the same time, the revolutions he witnesses (in argentina and expecially in bolivia) are marred by class and ethnic disconnect, compromise, and ultimately corruption. so he’s constantly disapppointed and also brought up against reality, not sure whether what he sees is the best one can hope for or a betrayal of the poor and downtrodden. guevara’s search for authenticity and purity, which cantor casts at least partly as a consequence of his asthma, feels fanatical even to him, and his dilemmas and mental perambulations are fascinating to follow. what i think i like most, though, are the terse, raw, unsentimental descriptions of the places and people he encounters, from american bureaucrats infliltrating and controlling change on the ground to impenetrable indian peasants. guevara’s middle class (he was a doctor) background is never out of the picture, and that add to the complexity and to the honesty of this book.