Art and Money in Manjula Martin's Scratch

Art and commerce have been intimately intertwined throughout history, but it seems that public acknowledgment of that relationship has been scant.  For quite some time, the system of patronage was in play, where a rich individual, the church, or some other group would monetarily support artists, musicians, and other artisans in their work.  To a small degree this still happens in the US, but the more likely incantation nowadays are those artists who come from wealthy families and/or have a trust fund at their disposal.  There are also for-profit and non-profit groups like the MacArthur Foundation, who disburse sums of money for recipients who show promise in various fields.  But for those who are not artists, or working in the realm of patronage, the necessary relationship of art and money might be foreign territory.

Writers, just like any other workers, need to be able to support themselves in their craft, which means that they need to be paid enough to be able to pay rent/mortgage, healthcare, bills, necessities, etc.  But how much does a writer make on a book?  If a hardcover book costs $30, how much of that amount actually goes into the author's pocket?  Can an author really afford to live and work in America today, with writing as the only source of her/his income?  To attempt to answer this question, Manjula Martin started the online Scratch Magazine, which explored the worlds of commerce and writing.  After the magazine folded in 2015, Martin compiled some of the work in that magazine to create the collection Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living.

There are a total of 33 pieces in the book, including many well-known authors such as Roxane Gay, Jonathan Franzen, Alexander Chee, and Cheryl Strayed.  The entries are divided into three sections: Early Days, The Daily Grind, and Someday.  "Early Days" features authors at the beginning of their careers, including what would be their Big Break, and how money factored into their lives at that point.  Some of the authors were working day jobs, some were living paycheck-to-paycheck (alone or with a partner), and others were racked with credit card and/or student loan debt.  When they finally got a book deal, they received an "advance" amount of money that was paid out over the course of the publishing process.  For example, Cheryl Strayed received $100,000 when her first book, Torch, was sold.  This seems like a wildly large amount of money, until she realized how it would be paid - NOT all at once.  The first $25,000 installment was paid out initially in 2003, but after her agent took 15% for commission, that left her with $21,000 -before- taxes.  The next $25,000 (really $21,000) installment came two years later, when the revisions were completed.  The third $25,000 ($21,000) check came in 2006, when the hardcover edition of Torch was actually published.  The final $25,000 ($21,000) check came when the paperback version was published in 2007.  She admits that she was very lucky to even receive this amount of money, but is very honest with discussing that, although it's helpful, it's not enough to live off of on its own.  To support her family, she and her documentary filmmaker husband took teaching jobs, freelance journalism assignments, and any other kind of work that would pay.  Even now, after her second book Wild was commercially popular and adapted into a movie, she isn't rich.  She is able to pay her bills and "buy boots NOT in a thrift shop", but she isn't living the Scrooge McDuck kind of life.

In "The Daily Grind", authors share the realities of being a writer, and how these realities differ from romantic notions of Literary Life.  As the editor herself writes, "Any artist who produces work for public consumption must navigate a tenuous balance of ambition and pragmatism.  Ambition requires dreaming; sometimes dreams veer into fantasy...The Writing Life is one such fantasy; another is quitting your day job."  While she pursued her writing, she also worked as a waitress, in retail, as a personal assistant, a receptionist, a reporter, and various temp jobs.  She has had to find time to write, rather than making it her one and only profession.  Such is the case for most authors, the rare exceptions being mega-stars like Stephen King, John Grisham, and Joyce Carol Oats.

The final heading, "Someday", examines what happens to authors after they've had a Big Break and how their lives have or have not changed.  In particular, how the term "New York Times Bestseller" brings with it the connotation of massive wealth for an author, when it really is closer to being meaningless.  Austin Kleon, author of Show Your Work and Steal Like an Artists, among other published works, is interviewed in this collection by the editor.  Although he's been a NYT Bestselling author, he still works a day job.  Before, it was through web designing and copywriting,  Now, it's as from books, speaking engagements, and art pieces that he sells.  As Kleon puts it, he's just "swapping one day job for another".  He gets real about the advice that many people give aspiring artists, that if you do whatever it is that you love, then you'll be able to make a living at it.  He freely admits that that is horrible advice; just because you love doing something doesn't mean that you'll be able to earn any money from it.  It sounds too good to be true, because it is.  He isn't discouraging ambitious artists from pursuing their craft, just to be real about having a day job to pay the rent and put food on the table, and letting the art feed their creativity and their soul.

For anyone interested in being a writer in America, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living is an invaluable read.  It will destroy the fantasy that you can quit your job/drop out of school, write The Thing and make millions off of it and never have to work a "real job" ever.  It lays bare the realities of life as an author, and really the creative life in general.  There are fewer and fewer patrons out there in the world, so artists should be prepared to support themselves by something other than their art.  Even wildly famous, NY Times Bestselling authors may not make nearly as much money as you'd think, and have to take teaching jobs or speaking engagements to make ends meet.  This book is eye opening and speaks its truth with conviction, but is ultimately very hopeful - art must continue to be put out into the world, but artists should be prepared to scratch out a living.



Librorum annis,

Book Review - Devotion by Patti Smith

In Devotion, Patti Smith invites readers to peek behind the curtain of her creative process.  The short work is made up of three parts - "How the Mind Works", "Devotion", and "A Dream is Not a Dream" and together they form the culmination of a creative writing project from inspiration to writing, to the finished project and beyond.  It's a fascinating look at how art and life intermingle and mutually influence each other.

In "How the Mind Works", Smith takes us along on a stream of consciousness journey.  It begins with her happening upon a film called Risttuules, about the mass deportation of Estonians to Siberia during Stalin's regime.  It's a haunting film, shot in black and white with a mixture of live-action and tableau.  The camera moves through the scene while all the actors stay immobile, giving the impression of time both moving and standing still.  There are desolate forests of birch trees in winter, Soviets rounding up villagers into train cars, and crudely dug graves.  From these images, Smith visualizes a scene of a small clapboard house next to a lake in a forest, something that was entirely her creation but would have fit neatly into the movie.  As it was late night/early morning, she fell back asleep dreaming of the movie and her created scene.

When she awoke, she was still haunted by the movie, and felt compelled to head to her favorite neighborhood cafe for breakfast and to write.  However, there was so much street construction nearby that she couldn't concentrate on her writing and headed home.  She was supposed to fly to Paris that evening, but her flight was cancelled and she had to hurry to make a sooner flight.  The purpose of the trip was to talk to journalists and writers about her experiences with the craft of writing, and she muses on the fact that she's a writer who is currently having trouble coming up with an idea to write about.  In her hurry to pack, she grabs a book about French philosopher and activist Simone Weil, and the memoir of French writer and Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. 

When she arrives in Paris, she finds herself reliving a trip she and her sister took to Paris when they were young women.  The park bench near Picasso's bust of Apollinaire, the hotels and cafes, the youthful exuberance with which they took on the city.  Back in her hotel, she falls asleep reading the biography of Simone Weil, wakes and reads a different section of the book, turns on the TV, nods off, and wakes up to an ice skating competition.  The last skater to take the ice is a Russian teenager, and despite her drowsiness Smith can't take her eyes off the young woman; her skill and grace on the ice were that compelling. 

When Patti Smith meets with her French publishers, she finds that her editor's office is the same one that Albert Camus occupied.  Some of his books still sit on the shelves, including books written by Simone Weil, whom Camus published posthumously.  After their meeting, she spends time wandering around Paris before finding herself at 37 Boulevard Saint-Michel, the longtime home of Simone Weil and her family.  Camus made the same journey here, many years prior, upon publishing her late works. 

She then moves on to the south of France for another leg of her book presentations.  After a lunch in a Mediterranean cafe with her French handler, they wander to a nearby cemetery and spend time looking at the graves.  One in particular catches Smith's attention, for a young girl named Fanny who loved horses, and a much older headstone with the word "Devouement" carved into it.  When she asked her friend what the word meant, she was told "Devotion". 

The next day, before heading to the next leg of her journey, Smith wanders through a botanical garden and had such a strong feeling of excitement that she took out her pen and notebook and began to write.  She continues writing during her train journey back to Paris, and through the Chunnel into London.  She uses part of this trip to seek out Simone Weil's grave, in Bybrook Cemetery.  She notes that the date is the birthday of her late brother, who had a daughter named Simone.  When she finally locates the headstone, she left an offering, snapped a picture, and felt at peace.  In the final pages of "How the Mind Works", Smith talks about fate and its role in the creative process.  Specifically, how she began writing the story that would ultimately become the next section, and the title of the entire work, "Devotion". 

"Devotion" is a short story, about 45 pages, that features a young Estonian girl named Eugenia.  She was sent away to live with her sister and her husband, because her parents feared their fate under Stalin.  Eugenia was a precocious and wildly intelligent girl, becoming fluent in many languages and scoring some of the highest marks in school.  However, her one true passion was ice skating.  She leaves school for good, and focuses only her skill and proficiency as a skater on the little pond near the house she lives at in the woods.  After she is abandoned by her sister, a wealthy man happens upon her and becomes infatuated and obsessed.  He buys her whatever she wants and provides her with a dedicated skating coach.  He only asks that she devote herself to him above all else.  When the skating coach encourages Eugenia to travel with her for competitions, it creates a deep and life-altering conflict for her and her devotion to her art. 

The final section, called "A Dream Is Not a Dream", explores what role dreams, both sleeping and "the dream" of creating great work, play in art and craft.  Channeling future events, incorporating imagined pasts, all these things serve to add depth and richness to what one is writing.  She finishes the section with a reminiscence of a side trip she took, when in France, to visit the home of Albert Camus, an estate purchased with his Nobel prize money and where his descendants still live.  She met his daughter Catherine, and was able to spend time with an unpublished manuscript of his, THE FIRST MAN, which he had been intending to publish when he was killed in a car crash.  She writes that the power of this encounter was like a call to action, and that is what great writing often is. 

It's interesting to know that this work was created as an expansion of the keynote lecture she gave to the Windham-Campbell Book Festival at Yale University, and published by their in-house press.  It is the first installment in the Why I Write series, delivered during the Festival.  Karl Ove Knausgaard's lecture will be next in the series, because he delivered the keynote address to this year's festival.  These lectures feature prominent and highly creative writers discussing the craft and art of their writing, in particular the creative process.  Smith essentially provides the background information the lead to her story "Devotion", and the story itself, so that readers can bear witness to her method.  I can certainly imagine a creative writing course that might include Devotion as a tool for reflection and discussion about the nature of inspiration and creativity. 

Patti Smith is one of the most prolific and interesting creative forces in our time.  From music to art, memoir and poetry, she is highly respected and regarded.   That's why it was such a thrill to be able to take a small step into her world, even for just a few pages.  Devotion works to demystify how artistic work can happen, and the roles that observation and reflection pay in inspiration.  That's not to say that, after reading this book, you're going to be able to go out and create something that would be equal to what Smith does - her life and experiences are her own - but it gives hope to those of us who fear that artistry might be the domain of a select, chosen few.  This deeply insightful book could be the gateway for the rest of us to take on a creative project, whether it's writing or a craft of some other ilk.  And for that, and Smith's devotion, we are grateful.



Librorum annis,

Stamped From the Beginning

What Ibram X. Kendi accomplishes in Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America is threefold: To present a biography of worldwide racism and its associated ideas from the earliest recorded history; to thoroughly and systematically demonstrate how those ideas have invaded all levels of American social, political, and cultural spheres; and to illustrate the disastrous consequences of those racist ideas.  Throughout the history of racist ideas, Kendi masterfully weaves in the perspectives of five prominent black figures throughout history, including W.E.B. DuBois and Angela Y. Davis, acting as tour guides for the reader from the early 1600's into the early moments of the presidency of Barack Obama. 

Kendi presents there as being three sides to any perspective on race: Assimilation, segregation, and anti-racism.  Assimilationists believe that non-whites would be better off if they just became more like white people in their appearance, behaviors, beliefs, and so on.  Segregationists want to separate non-white people from the rest of white society.  Subscribers to either of these two perspectives inherently believe that non-white people are inherently lesser than white people, and need the benevolence of white society to improve them.  The anti-racist perspective holds that there are no inherent differences between white folk and non-white folk, and that they should be treated in complete equality; any differences are entirely a product of the racist policies and beliefs that have been imposed on non-white people by those in power (who are not always 100% white people). 

In fact, Kendi reveals that there is a long history of racist ideas being internalized by non-whites and then leveled back on their own people.  This makes racism a very complicated issue to try and untwin from the history and identity of America itself.  In each of the five "tour guides" who lead us through the history of racist ideas, as well as the many philosophers/writers/activists/politicians/etc., the author is unafraid to expose the racist ideas that they themselves believed.  There are some true surprises, including that some black figures, whom are generally regarded as non-racists, in fact internalized and spread horrible racist ideas.  In the introduction, Kendi, himself, admits to harboring racist ideas as he researched Stamped from the Beginning.  As I was reading the book, I recognized a few positions that I could recall myself or friends/family espousing.  The desire for people of all classes to want to have someone to look down on, therefore uplifting themselves (whether only in their imaginations or not), is a pervasive and highly damaging aspect of American society. 

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America is a groundbreaking work of scholarship and social criticism.  The author's exploration of racist ideas, and how they function in partnership with discrimination, will hopefully open eyes, minds, and hearts to how America has become the highly racially charged nation that it is today.  With this information, hopefully the readership will be inspired to make positive changes in their own spheres and the larger American culture to inform about the nonsense that racist ideas truly are, and to move toward empathy and equality.

The Art of Failing: Notes from the Underdog by Anthony McGowan

The Art of Failing is a humorous glance into daily life in West Hampstead, London, with the author, Anthony McGowan.  Structured as a diary and organized by season, there are daily-ish entries outlining something humorous/bizarre/unexpected that happened to the author that day, or at least a noteworthy observation.  Sometimes it's a mundane activity where the author has an awkward encounter, other times it's something monumental.  It's the author's employment of sarcastic and neurotic internal monologue mixed with his dry wit that makes The Art of Failing highly entertaining to read.

In one entry, dated September 6th, the author is working on a writing project in a reading room of the British Library. Possible titles for his new book are "The Constituents of Glass, The Deaf and Dumb Sex Machine, Handlebar, Nigel's Adventures in Nymphland" so you can tell he's got the beginnings of a winning story. The library has a strict no-food policy, but McGowan sneaks a banana in with him for a snack. He talks about his banana-neutral feelings up until that point, but it became a symbol of the progress he was making in his writing, even if that progress was just coming up with more book titles.  It was a well-deserved break, and he now relished that banana.  He also relished the act of writing on the banana with a ballpoint pen, because of how the pressure allows the pen to sink into the peel in a satisfying way. 

On this particular day, he was in the reading room as normal when he felt an oncoming sneeze.  In a hurry to empty his pockets, to locate his handkerchief, he absentmindedly set the banana on the table near to the man seated beside him, working.  Just as he located the handkerchief, his urge to sneeze subsided.  The man next to McGowan gave him a strange look, "an extreme wariness bordering on hostility", and that's when the author looked down at the banana on the table between them.  That day, he had written "I love you" on its peel, because that piece of fruit had become a central figure in his daily work life.  However, the stranger beside him assumed that the message on the banana was for him, and reacted as you might react if a strange man put a "banana love bomb" in your general direction.  At this embarrassment, McGowan packed up his things and resolved to work in a different reading room for the foreseeable future. 

Other entries involve encounters with possible-transsexuals at paint counters, musing on quantum physics via holey socks, and reading student reviews of his teaching courses.  There's a lot of diversity in the topics that he selects, so it never feels like you're reading about the same things over and over and over.  The strength of this book is its language; it's really the way that the author selects and employs his phrasing that makes the writing so good.

The narration has a strong neurotic and self-conscious vein, putting the author in good company with the characters on the TV show Seinfeld.  That was known as the "Show About Nothing", and I would argue that The Art of Failing could be a "Book About Nothing".  Further, McGowan's plentiful dry humor lends itself to close comparisons to David Sedaris' writing.  In particular, Sedaris' most recent book, Theft By Finding, was a collection of his diary entries for I suspect that, like Sedaris, the work would be lifted to a whole new level by listening it in audio...if it's narrated by the author.  There's something about humor authors that just enhance the whole experience, like taking a giggle to a belly-laugh. 

Overall, I really enjoyed spending time with Anthony McGowan and his West Hampstead escapades and awkward encounters.  His humor and self-consciousness play well within each story, and his wide variety of story topics keep the reading experience fresh.  Because many of the diary entries are a full page or less in length, it's an easy book to pick up and put down at will.  In fact, it would be great to keep by  your bedside to read before nodding off to sleep, or when waking up.  If you're a fan of the author David Sedaris, the TV show Seinfeld, or just humorous outlooks on life in general, you should check out The Art of Failing by Anthony McGowan.



Librorum annis,

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America

For those who don't experience it, the concept of "passing" might sound like a foreign concept.  Brando Skyhorse, editor and contributor of We Wear the Mask: 15 Stories of Passing in America, defines passing is "when someone tries to get something tangible to improve their daily quality of life by occupying a space meant for someone else".  But how does this work?

Perhaps you remember Rachel Dolezal, civil rights activist, graduate of a historically black university, instructor of Africana studies, and past president of the Spokane, WA chapter of the NAACP.  She was believed to be African-American because of her appearance: A lightly tanned skin color, voice, and dark textured hair.  In 2015, she applied to be appointed as the Chair of the Police Ombudsman Commission in Spokane, listing her ethnicity as multi, including "black".  During an investigation into her application, it was discovered that she was not African-American at all.  In fact, her ancestry was almost exclusively European for the past four centuries, as corroborated by her parents who admitted that she was a white woman passing as black.  Rachel Dolezal, who legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo in 2016, chose to pass as black, for reasons that have not been fully explained.  In We Wear the Mask, the reader learns of many other situations of passing, and the reasons why it was necessary for the writer to present her/himself as someone else.

Out of the 15 essays, there are three that I found particularly illustrative.  In the editor's essay, "College Application Essay #2", he ruminates on the college application process, and what ethnicity he should select on the application form and what he should write about for the essay portion.  Brando was born to Mexican parents, but after his father abandoned the family, when the author was a toddler, his mother reinvented herself as Native American - calling herself Running Deer Skyhorse, and Brando Ulloa became Brando Skyhorse.  He was raised as if he was from a Native American ancestry, and both he and his mother passed as Native American to those they encountered.  It wasn't until the author was 13 that he learned the truth of his background, and from then on he struggled with what racial group he identified and who he believed he was.

Patrick Rosal's essay is written in epistolary form, addressed to "Lady at Table 24".  He is a published poet and writer, and winner of the Asian American Studies Book Award, Global Filipino Literacy Award, the Asian American Writers Workshop Members' Choice Award, and a Fulbright scholarship.  Patrick was attending that year's National Book Awards ceremony to support some fellow writers, who were nominated. Dressed in the required black tie, enjoying the fine food and drink, he's having a grand time.  That is, until he is intercepted by an unknown woman, when he is on his way across the ballroom to speak to a friend.  This unknown woman, the "Lady at Table 24", blocks his path and for a second Patrick thinks he knows her from somewhere, because otherwise why would someone interrupt him?  That is, until she asks him for more napkins and silverware.  From this, the author reflects on how clothing can be used to identify people, to change people's identities, and how sometimes those things get mixed and muddled.  How you can wear an expensive suit, attend a fancy party, and still be confused for the help.

In a divergence from the deeply individualistic essays about passing in America, Dolen Perkins-Valdez presents a compelling essay about how America itself passes.  In "On Historical Passing and Erasure", the author argues that the USA, through the way it selectively idolizes historical figures, the history it chooses to teach to its students, and the ways in which it rewards its citizens,  it tries to pass as a democratic country that is truly devoted to "liberty and justice for all", not just a select few.

Other essays discuss religious passing - for example having Jewish heritage and surname, but none of the stereotypical physical markers that others identify with Jews, so that you are almost always treated as a gentile and have to explain why those antisemitic jokes aren't funny.  Other essays explore the complications of passing as a cis-gendered heterosexual, when you truly identify as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.  There is a wealth of diverse experiences here, but they certainly do not compose the entirety of what it is like to pass in America.

I would highly recommend We Wear the Mask: 15 Stories of Passing in America, especially if you're interested in the concept of "passing", and what it's like from a personal perspective.  Each of the contributors offers a glimpse into what it is like to live in America, when your identity is in flux.  Who you are, and how you present yourself can be an easy choice, or it can be a lifelong struggle.  Whatever your experience, you will probably find some essays that will speak to you.



Librorum annis,

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

A loaf of sourdough, baked from my own starter named Doughlilah

Having lived on the East Coast my whole life, all I knew of San Francisco was what I saw on Full House reruns as a young child.  I knew that there were cable cars, steep hills, and a park where the whole Tanner clan ate picnics every week.  And I wanted to join them.  It wouldn't be another 20 years until I would actually set foot in SF.  I was completely enamored by the city, its neighborhoods, the people, and the food.  In fact, one of my favorite food experiences was sharing some sourdough bread, cheese, and prosciutto with my partner on a picnic in Alamo Square (the park from Full House!).  I've since visited the city numerous times, and I love it more and more each time.  That's why I was so excited to read Robin Sloan's Sourdough, a story set amongst the San Francisco of foodies, tech, and startups.

Sourdough is really the story of Lois, who is lured to San Francisco by a representative of the company General Dexterity.  She's so pleased at being headhunted, saying "Here's the thing I believe about people my age: we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted" (pg.5).  General Dexterity is solely focused on robot arms - developing them to be able to perform all kinds of repetitive gestures, in place of humans.  The company is headquartered on a sprawling compound, and staffed primarily by tech bros, who drink tetra pak meal replacement smoothies, called Slurry.  In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine these bros being interested in these robot arms with something more *pleasurable* in mind...

It's part of the General Dexterity culture that people come to work late, work long into the night, and even sleep overnight in the office.  Lois, although she is able to afford a nice apartment in the city, ends up following in her coworkers' footsteps and practically living at the office.  On those nights that she spends in her apartment, she orders from a restaurant called Clement Street Soup and Sourdough.  She always orders the double spicy - a spicy sandwich and a cup of the spicy soup, with an extra hunk of sourdough bread to soak up the remaining soup. 

Clement Street Soup and Sourdough is run by two brothers, Beoreg and Chaiman.  Beoreg is the cook and takes the orders, while Chaiman delivers them.  They had been in business just over a year when Lois places her first order with them.  She loves their double spicy so much that she orders it from them almost daily, so much so that they lovingly nickname her their Number One Eater.  It was the soup, and especially the bread, that seemed to revive her when she was stressed out at work.  That special sourdough bread was baked daily, and had the most incredible flavor. 

Lois was happily enjoying this delicious manna until one day, they announced that it would be the last time they would be able to deliver to their Number One Eater.  There were problems with their visas, and Clement Street Soup and Sourdough would have to close down.  Because she had been such a loyal customer, the brothers decided to entrust her with the cultured starter that they fed and baked from to make their amazing sourdough bread.  However, it wasn't like any normal starter, it was high maintenance.  Yes, there were regular feedings with flour and water, but it also had to be played a CD of very specific music.  Lois also had to bake bread from it regularly, and she found that loaves emerged from the oven with distinguishable faces on them.  If Lois didn't remember to feed the starter for a few days, when she baked from it the faces would look sad or upset.  However, when the starter was regularly fed, the resulting loaves would have faces with clear smiles on them.  The  contented starter would sometimes even sing or glow.  The flavor was so good, that Lois started sharing loaves with neighbors and coworkers, including Kate, the chef at General Dexterity's cafeteria. 

It was Chef Kate who recommended that Lois apply for a spot at a farmer's market.  But because San Francisco takes its locavore food very seriously, this wasn't as easy as it might seem.  Potential vendors were allowed to "audition" before a farmer's market governing board once every season, and depending on how your product was rated, you were offered a spot at one of the various SF-area markets.  Lois' sourdough was good, but not good enough for any of the markets in San Francisco.  Instead, she was invited to attend an underground, alt-farmers market on Alameda Island, that seeks to meld food and technology.  The location is a decommissioned nuclear weapon storage hangar, and the vendors operate stalls in its main area.  In addition to Lois' oven and bake stand, there's a lemon grove, a seller of honey harvested from Chernobyl, a coffee bar, a cricket flour baker, and many more. There was even a herd of goats grazing on nearby fields whose milk was used to make interesting cheeses.  Funded by the mysterious Mr. Marrow, the market was in the development stages and would be opening to the public in the near future. 

As Lois continued to bake, she began to discover that she enjoyed it more than the robot arms.  She felt healthier and more relaxed, still challenged to solve problems like in her day job, but without the intense stress.  Prior to discovering the power of sourdough, she lived an isolated and solitary existence.  Afterward, she finds more connections between herself and the world around her.  Lois has to make a decision - stay with the high-paying but unduly stressful job, or strike out on a bread-baking adventure.

Sourdough reads like a love letter to San Francisco, and playfully poked fun at some of its most well-known icons.  General Dexterity is a stand-in for any of the major tech companies located in the SF area, but I suspect it most closely resembles Apple.  The rise of "California Cuisine" as a food philosophy, including locavorism and an obsession with organic/free range/non-GMO/etc. was pioneered by a Berkeley restaurant called Chez Panisse and its founder, Alice Waters.  She appears in the form of a thinly-veiled character, and plays a significant role in all of the later action of the story.

All of this makes for a completely delightful reading experience.  There's nothing horribly triggering at all in this book, and it's a surprisingly quick read; I finished it in two sittings.  I'm a long-time sourdough feeder/baker, and I thoroughly enjoyed a novel that so heavily explored the art and science of bread baking.  I expect that, the more people read this book, the more may be inspired to try their hand at baking some of their own.  If you like San Francisco, kooky characters, food, and technology, then Sourdough should be at the top of your TBR.



Librorum annis,

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, by Michael Eric Dyson

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America is a truly remarkable and poignant book.  As a member of the titular congregation, I found this work to be a tender, loving gut punch.  Michael Eric Dyson holds back nothing in his portrayal of what it means to be a black person in America today.  He draws from his own experiences, those of his family, and people he has encountered throughout his life to illustrate how deeply and subconsciously racism has shaped this country. 

Dyson talks about growing up in crushing poverty in Detroit, his family's struggles to bring themselves out of that poverty, and the ways that they encouraged their children to rise above them.  Dyson, himself, was accepted into a prestigious private school, in a wealthy suburb of Detroit, where he was one student of color amongst a sea of white, upper-class classmates.  He ended up leaving that school, finishing his high school education at a public school in Detroit.  He became an ordained minister at 19, then working in manufacturing as a way to support his family.  He went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Carson-Newman University, a private, conservative, Baptist university, and ultimately a Doctorate from Princeton University.  He is now an esteemed faculty member at Georgetown University.  Dyson's contentious relationship with the President of Carson-Newman is a recurring theme and something to which he returns regularly as an example of the blatant and unapologetic bigotry that he has faced in his life.


As mentioned earlier, Dyson has a background in preaching, and the book is written as a kind of worship service; there are religious references sprinkled throughout.  He refers to the reader often as "beloved" which is a term one hears often in religious services ("dearly beloved, we are gathered here today" as just one example) but every time I encountered it I thought of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, about the evils of slavery and how far a mother would be driven in order to save a child from enslavement.  Dyson was certainly not writing this book for a fictional character (although he does reference Morrison's book a time or two) but I couldn't help my brain making that connection.

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America is divided into nine parts, each meant to correspond to a section of a Protestant church service:

1. Call to Worship - The author's introduction to the text

2. Hymns of Praise - Leading with an ominous, but unfortunately not unique, encounter the author had with police, one where he ends up blasting N.W.A.'s "Fuck tha Police" to express his frustration about rcism and police brutality, Dyson likens Christian hymns to the truths that black people speak through their music.  His featured hymnists include KRS-One, Jay-Z, and Tupac Shakur.
 
3. Invocation - As Christian worship uses an invocation to invite God into the metaphysical space, so Dyson uses this section to lift up the many and varied ways that black people have suffered, and continue to suffer, to God.  He specifically calls out to God on behalf of his (now adult) children, and grandchildren, whom he was unable to protect from the evils of racism even when they were very young.  He beseeches God to provide reason and clarity to those who fear and loathe based on the color of skin, and to give strength and courage to those who speak their truth of life as a black person in America.

4. Scripture Reading - Rather than reciting Biblical passages, the author refers to the holy text "Book of Martin Luther King Jr." and how his life and works are just as applicable today as they were in his lifetime.

5. Sermon - As is the case in a Christian worship service, this sermon is where the author really expounds upon his main points to enlighten and inspire the congregation.  Here, Dyson presents a sharp, concentrated overview of the many avenues into which racism has seeped and spread in American, white society, and how that racism has manifested itself on the black body and the black mind.  Within, the author encourages white America to truly see what the effect of imposing its centuries-long "white as right" campaign has brought about.  Through illustrating the ways that systematic racism has been at work, Dyson encourages white America to make specific changes and to generally move towards empathy.
 
6. Benediction - In Christian worship, the benediction is the bestowal of a blessing on the congregation before the end of the service. Dyson uses this section of his book to summarize his previous points, using the acronym R.E.S.P.O.N.S.I.V.E. as a call to action. He offers suggestions of ways whites can implement these changes, to help move America towards true, racial equality.

7. Offering Plate - As a congregation is called to make an offering to its church, Dyson here discusses how Georgetown University, in the autumn of 2016, made baby steps towards racial reparation.  The president of the university made an official statement about how Georgetown had profited from the sale of 272 enslaved humans, as a way to keep the school from going bankrupt in 1838.  The university offered wanted to atone for this, through offering a formal apology, forming an institute to study slavery, and create a public memorial to enslaved persons who worked on Georgetown's campus throughout history.  Although no one had made efforts to reach out to them, some direct descendants of those 272 persons were in attendance at this announcement and they also spoke to the crowd.  They were not asking for financial contributions from the university, but wanted to form a partnership with Georgetown going forward.

8. Prelude to Service - As a final way to inspire his congregation, before this service comes to an end, Dyson explains his position that, although America is in a dire place right now, there is hope that people can and will fight for the rights of EVERYONE to be treated equal.

9. Closing Prayer - The last page is a prayer that the author offers up to God, that black people will not surrender to white supremacy and racism, because they are irrevocably intertwined in Americanness.  As Dyson says - "We are going nowhere. We are your children too. We will survive. We are America."

In his acronym in the "Benediction" section, one of the E's stands for "Educate", that white America must educate itself about black life and culture, especially the written word.  He goes on to provide a black reading list, the breadth and depth of which is very exciting for those of us who love books, reading, and equality.  He recommends starting with James Baldwin, whose "words drip with the searing eloquence of an evangelist of race determined to get to the brutal bottom of America's original sin" (pg. 199). 

Dyson then goes on to recommend over 50 individual books and scores of authors on topics of African slavery and all its complicated facets; the intersection of slavery, politics, and economics; the American Civil War and the failed Reconstruction period that followed; the modern civil rights movement; black freedom and black power struggles; and the intersection of racism, gender, and sexual identity.  I think it would be a fascinating project to make a personal reading list from the books that Dyson recommends.

So what was it like, you may ask, to read this book as a white person in America?  Not easy.  Whenever the author described a situation where he was treated with hostility and distrust by people in power, I tried to imagine myself in that situation.  Would I have behaved in the same way as the author, and would I have been treated the same way by those in power?  As Dyson expounded upon the varied ways that white people have benefited from black repression and subjugation, I had to consider how often in my life I may have received similar benefits because of the color of my skin.  I have heard many people in my life complain about how unfair affirmative action is, because they think it gives black people an unfair advantage, but after reading this book and considering that most black people have the deck stacked against them in life, affirmative action seems like just a small step.

Michael Eric Dyson's Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America could be classified as a memoir, an essay collection, or a cultural criticism and you wouldn't be wrong.  It contains parts of each of those things, blended to tell an exacting and poignant story. Especially if you're NOT an American person of color, this book will make you think, make you see your basic societal interactions in more clarity, and bring you toward a more empathetic and realistic worldview.  Structured as a religious worship service, and with Dyson as the pastor, you'll finish this book with an "Amen"!




Librorum annis,

Why Poetry? by Matthew Zapruder

How many of us were forced to study poetry in school, possibly by teachers who, themselves, were forced to study it and therefore weren't very enthusiastic or knowledgeable?  Has this impacted your reading life...how much poetry have you read in the past few years?  This has certainly been the case with me.  Sure, we studied poets from centuries gone by - Whitman, Dickinson, Byron, Dante, etc. - but we were so bogged down by the analysis of the poet's use of techniques and forms that "reading poetry" was never a pleasurable experience. 

Flash forward quite a few years, to 2015, and I had a poetry renaissance.  I think it was when I randomly picked up a copy of Robin Coste Lewis' collection Voyage of the Sable Venus that I began to see what poetry could really do.  This masterwork is divided into three main sections, in one of which all of the poems are made up solely "of the titles, catalog entries, or exhibit descriptions of Western art objects in which a black female figure is present, dating from 38,000 BCE to the present" (pg. 35).  The poems are crafted in such a way that, if you had not the background information on the work, you most likely never would have guessed that they weren't directly from the poet's mind to the paper.  Not only the creativity is remarkable, but the breadth and depth of research that would be required to undertake such a project is gobsmacking.  Lewis is insightful, playful, and unafraid to confront the ugliness of the world's treatment of the female, black body throughout time. Voyage of the Sable Venus was one of my favorite books of 2015, and it set me on a trajectory that has only increased my poetic reading since then.

Recently, collections like Patricia Lockwood's Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, Juan Felipe Herrera's Notes on the Assemblage, Spring and All by William Carlos Williams, The After Party by Jana Prikryl, and Najwan Darwish's Nothing More to Lose have challenged my poetry-reading skills.  They play with forms, subject matter, and style to such a degree that, at times, I felt like the poetry was "too smart" for me, or that I just didn't "get it".  This shouldn't be the case, but I know that it was mostly due to the poor poetry studies in my youth.  So, I was genuinely pleased when I found Why Poetry, by Matthew Zapruder.  

Zapruder is an award-winning poet, teacher, and general Johnny Appleseed of poetry.  In his book, he is on a mission to spread the love of poetry through an increased understanding of its aims, forms, styles, and other major components.  He is most interested in investigating how great poetry uses language to create a poetic state of mind in the reader. As a young child, he was enraptured by poems like Henry Wordsworth Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha" and W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" but never seriously considered poetry as a career path until he had almost finished a PhD in Russian.  So, he understands his students' apprehension or disinterest in poetry, but is full of techniques and insights that he shares in Why Poetry.  Each chapter features a different component of poetry that he wants to communicate, then he provides some personal anecdotes or historical facts surrounding its use, and then breaks down a few poems, or fragments of large poems, to illustrate how that component was utilized.  This analysis is something I found most helpful, especially when it comes to matters of form, which is the area in which I feel the most uncertain. 

In the first chapter, Zapruder brings the reader into his history and early experiences with poetry.  He analyzes a fragment of Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" and talks about how reading that poem was a watershed moment for him.  At the time, he didn't understand exactly why he connected so much with the poem, but over time and re-reads, as well as with his growing education in poetry, he was able to talk more coherently and specifically about what Auden was doing in the work, and why it was so engaging. 

Chapter 2 talks about one of the most important parts of poetry, really of language itself - the use of words.  The author emphasizes that readers of poetry should take the poet's words at face value, at least initially.  Think about why the poet chose the words that she/he did, and all the possible literal meanings those words might have.  Sometimes this takes a little dictionary/internet research, but if it enhances your understanding and appreciation of the poem, then it's time well spent.  Chapter 3 builds on this topic, with the author deeply analyzing a portion of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself", Wallace Stevens' "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon", and a section of Brenda Hillman's "Death Tractates".  Most of the language is used literally, and any figurative associations are coincidental to the main idea of the poem.  It's only through close and thorough review, guided here by Zapruder, that you can begin to see significant examples of non-figurative language used to great poetic effect.

The fourth chapter moves into the more figurative and less straightforward aspects of poetry.  Once you have a good grasp on how to read the literality of poetry, you're ready to move into the odd.  As a student of the Russian language, the author references a not-easily-translatable Russian word "ostraneniye" which means something like "defamiliarization" or (my personal favorite) "strangeifying".  This is in contrast to those aspects of daily life we go about in almost a robotic fashion, where everything is habitual and routine.  Poets strangeify the world through paying attention to those things, and not letting them become too automatic, and seeing them in ways the rest of us might not expect.  In this chapter, the author looks at the poems "Suicide's Note" by Langston Hughes, an unnamed poem of Emily Dickinson, and Antonia Machado's "At a Friend's Burial". 

Chapter 5 looks at how poems are structured, and some of the reasoning for using a rhyming scheme or not.  The author, early in his poetry-writing life, bought one of those massive The Norton Anthology of Poetry collections, and discusses what the experience was like of reading it.  For him, it felt that the act of writing poetry "can be a kind of seemingly impossible communion, with someone far away in time and space" which is kind of a beautiful thing to think about.  Even after the poet is long gone, if her/his poetry speaks to something that means something to someone, it's like that poet is living on in concert with the reader.  One of the poems that Zapruder dissects is William Carlos Williams' short, untitled poem about the "red wheel barrow".  The author writes that "The line breaks and filmic way this ordinary scene is parceled out to our consciousness by the mechanism of the poem slows us down long enough for us to see once again what has become too familiar.  That is the 'message' of the poem"; it's such a complicated yet simple work, because there is nothing of significance, but in the end everything is of significance because it is noticed.  He also talks about how it is far less common for modern day poets to work in a rhyming structure, partially because it feels quaint and outdated, and partially because it affects the emotions and perceptions of the reader in ways the poet might not intend. 

The sixth chapter focuses on the frustrations that many readers have with trying to "get" the meaning or intention of poems.  Chapter 7 examines the tendency of modern poetry to jump around seemingly at any moment and without cause but, upon reflection and analysis, those jumps might not be so random at all.  It's also highly unlikely that poems have only one specific message to convey.  As the author writes, "the poem places us in a state of heightened importance, with a sense that everything matters intensely at the moment it is being experienced".  Internal consistency isn't of much importance across the entirety of the poem, as long as the essence of the work is so.  Neither are the other conventions of literature, such as plot, logic, characters, settings, etc.  These are of only slight interest to the poet.  With poetry, embrace the strangeness.

Chapter 8 explores the subsection of poetry that focuses on politics and/or political themes.  The author contends that, if you are a person who cares deeply about issues like gender, the economy, race, and environment, then the poetry you write, if you allow it to flow naturally onto the page, those topics will find themselves in your poetry without having to try to hard to fit them in.  Because the political world is almost always a strange place, poets should not be afraid to defamiliarize terms that politicians regularly toss around, in their work.

Chapter 9 extends the author's analysis and explanation around the "jumping" that can happen in poetry.   In particular interest is poetry that reads almost like stream of consciousness or dreams in that there are tenuous or thin threads connecting the poem's content from one line to the next, but over the entirety of the work there is seemingly nothing in common - called "associative movement".  The author uses Robert Hass' poem "Meditation at Lagunitas" to explore this kind of poetic movement. 

The tenth and eleventh chapters dive deeply into the use of symbolic language in poetry, and the different occasions where one might choose to employ it or not.  Chapter 12 shares in the author's coming to realize that just as clay is a medium for a sculptor, or watercolors are for a painter, that words and language are the medium in which a poet works. 

The thirteenth and final chapter explores the ways that poetry moves and changes us, sometimes without us being able to articulate exactly why or how it happens.  The author explains that, "a poem is like a person.  the more you know someone, the more you realize there is always something more to know and understand".  So that sense of not quite understanding a poem just means that there is more and more to come back to and make meaning and connection.

As someone who has read some poetry and wondered what the heck was happening, or if I just wasn't smart enough to understand it, I found Why Poetry extremely comforting and helpful.  It's a crash course in poetics, led by a professor who is kind, knowledgeable, and funny.  I feel more of a sense of confidence in now when I read poetry collections, that however I'm feeling is appropriate and valuable.  It also instilled a deeper sense of analysis that will allow me to see more deeply into some of the constructs and construction of poetry.  If you are interested in trying some poetry reading of your own, but have a bad taste in your mouth from poetry lessons in your school days, I would highly recommend giving Matthew Zapruder's Why Poetry a try. 



Librorum annis,

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast

Think back to the last book you read that featured aged or elderly main characters.  How were they portrayed?  Perhaps there was a doting and docile grandmother, knitting something and sitting in her rocking chair?  Maybe there was a grandfather, telling stories to anyone who would listen.  How were their lives portrayed?  What meaning did they have?  Often, the aged aren't given a lot of agency in their own lives - whether because of being patronized by younger generations or no longer being able to live independently - which imbues them with childishness.  What illustrator and author Roz Chast has done, to brilliant effect, in her graphic memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant is present her elderly parents as fully-formed, complicated, human beings.  Here, there is no stereotyping and no shying away from the realities of life - for her and her parents - as they navigate what will be their final years together.

Roz was born in Brooklyn, to parents who were much older than her friends' parents.  Her parents were the children of immigrants, who came to America with nothing and lived tremendously difficult, bitter, tragic lives.  They met in elementary school, never dated anyone else but each other, and were completely co-dependent for the entirety of their marriage.  Chast often brings up how she felt like an outsider in their family.  As an only child, it was just her and her parents, and she felt like the third wheel in that relationship instead of a valued member of the family.  Interspersed between the illustrations are facsimiles of some family photos; in almost none of them is Chast smiling.

Her mother, Elizabeth, was domineering and angry, often giving "a blast from Chast" to anyone who upset her.  She was the assistant principal in an elementary school most of her life, and was perfectly suited to that authoritative role which allowed her to tell other people what to do.  She was a rigid perfectionist.  She was a classically-trained pianist and writer of poetry, but not what you might call a nurturer.  Late in the book, Elizabeth relates a story that Roz had completely blocked from her memory - as a very young child, Roz wandered away from her mother in a department store once and, when the frantic Elizabeth found her, she beat Roz violently.  Elizabeth expressed some remorse at her behavior only now, which was many decades after the event happened.  Needless to say, they did not share an idyllic mother-daughter relationship, or have much of a relationship at all.  She did, however, treasure her relationship with her father, George.  George, a high school teacher, was very similar to Roz in personality and temperament.  They were both only children, given to anxiety, ambivalent about many things, and lovers of language.  He wasn't good at fixing things, or making decisions about anything.  Her father never was able to stand up to Elizabeth during her rages, but Roz knew that he cared for her very much.

The story's plot involves her parents' decline, from old age and assorted health issues, and how the characters cope.  Spoiler alert - not very well.  At the beginning of the story, Elizabeth and George are in their late 80's and still living in the same "deep Brooklyn" (Flatiron) apartment where they spent their entire married lives.  They had piles of papers and magazines everywhere, and an entire life's worth of stuff hoarded into this small apartment.  Where they had once been fastidious, they were now too frail and proud to be concerned with tidying up or letting anyone else do it for them.

After trying to use a step-stool to get into a tall closet, Roz's mother experiences a bad fall, causing her a lot of pain.  Her father calls Roz, who is living with her own family in Connecticut, asking for help because Elizabeth was obviously in pain but being too stubborn to admit that she needed to go to the hospital.  It was only after the pain was too severe for her, even when just laying in bed, that she let George, who didn't drive, call an ambulance to take them.

She drove out to the hospital to be with her parents then, when her mother was finally admitted, she and her father drove back to the apartment, then they both went back to her house in Connecticut.  George was in the middle stages of senile dementia, and had trouble with his short-term memory.  He was forgetful about things, and had difficulty with tasks like how to open a bag of breakfast cereal.  He would ask Roz where Elizabeth was, and each time was shocked when she told him that his wife was in the hospital.  During all of this, Roz was racked with guilt about what she could have done, if she's being a terrible daughter, what she should do, and how she could possibly deal with this.

It's at this point that there is a shift in the distinction between who's the "parent" and who is the "child".  She had to be in charge of all her parents' major life decisions, from their living situation to their medications, from their insurance to their finances.  When her mother was at last discharged from the hospital, Roz at first wanted to believe that they were ok back in Brooklyn.  There were neighbors who were willing to help out, it was a long trip back and forth to Connecticut, and her parents were driving her bonkers.  But these were just excuses, and she knew it.  They were frail, they weren't leaving the apartment, and Elizabeth refused to wear her Life Alert pendant because she was afraid of having to go back into hospital.  This compounded in Roz the feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and worry.  Although her mother fought kicking and screaming all the way, Roz  found a qualified assisted-living facility 10 minutes away from her home, and they were placed there.  In fact, they all referred to it as "The Place".

An entire section of the book is devoted to the process of cleaning out her parents' apartment.  Not only are scenes drawn, but Roz also includes copies of photographs, showing the collection of handbags, razors, writing implements, and books/papers that had accumulated.  It's mind-boggling just how much can be crammed into a small apartment over decades and decades.  It actually felt like an episode of the TV show "Hoarders" because there were drawers containing jar lids, empty egg cartons left in the fridge, and kitchen appliances that had long-since stopped working but were still on the counter - just in case.

The Place was about a home-like as could be expected for assisted living.  There were norms that Roz's parents bristled at, including unofficial "assigned seating" at mealtimes and door decorations on the front door of the apartments.  They were a unit, George and Elizabeth, and weren't interested in making friends or getting involved in groups or activities.  Elizabeth was still very weak from her hospitalization, and how needed a walker to get around.  But, their personalities hadn't changed one bit, especially Elizabeth's bossiness, which made them somewhat unpopular with the other residents.  They resented the rules and the forced socialization, and complained of feeling like inmates in The Place.

When George had a bad fall, after getting up from the sofa in their apartment, and was rushed to the hospital, thing began to deteriorate quickly.  He was eventually transferred to a nursing home, then back to The Place when he began hospice care.  George died in 2007.  Elizabeth lived in The Place, with extra hired nursing assistance and, eventually, hospice, until she passed away in 2009.

While Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant explores the aging process, it also focuses on the caregivers.  Being responsible for the well-being of aging family members comes at a great cost.  First, there's the financial cost - housing, food, living, and medical bills.  All of this costs money, which isn't something that you are really prepared to deal with until you're confronted with it head on.  Roz's parents had saved a sizable amount of money over their lives, but the cost of their care was eroding it quickly.  Then, there's the emotional cost.  It's not easy to be the child in the family, and then suddenly have to be the parent.  Assuming that role opens up the potential for resentment and anger on the part of the aged, who -for any number of reasons- don't want to admit that they need assistance with basic needs.  It's not uncommon for stress and anxiety to build up, to the point that the caretaker can easily become burnt out.

I actively sought out this book, because it's subject matter is relevant to my situation at current.  It's not my parents who are near the end of their lives, as was the case with Roz, but it's my grandmother.  Born during the great depression, she married a WW2 veteran right after high school, was a homemaker, and raised two sons - my father and his brother - before being widowed in the 1970's.  At 85, she's been suffering from some chronic health problems that are becoming more serious, including infections and dementia.  She has poor vision, but refuses to wear corrective lenses.  Because of this, she is unable to bathe properly or maintain her home.  She leaves burners on because she can't see the flames and just assumes they're turned off.  She can't drive, and is dependent on my father (my uncle lives many hours away) for just about everything.  Within the past 2 years, it's become painfully obvious that she is unable to live on her own, because it's unsafe and unsanitary.

The scenario that Roz illustrates about her parents being in The Place is instantly recognizable in that of my grandmother being moved to her senior community.  It's not even assisted living, technically, but an apartment complex geared specifically towards those over 55.  However, she was absolutely resistant to the idea.  She complains that she feels like a prisoner there.  Yet, there are plentiful activities, social groups, religious services, and off-site activities (with transportation) which she simply refuses to join.  She hasn't fallen, but there have been emergency situations where she's had to go into hospital, and just like Roz's mother, she wants nothing to do with them.  She refuses to follow medical advice, and then complains that she doesn't feel well.  All of this is especially taxing on my father, who is her primary caretaker.  He is the quintessential dutiful son, and has gone to great lengths to make sure that my grandmother is well cared for.  However, just like Roz, he gets burnt out.  He's got a great support system in myself and his wife, but another thing that helps is just to remember to laugh when you can.

My grandmother's dementia makes conversation a bit frustrating, like when she was convinced that the staff at her apartment complex were stealing from her (they weren't), but sometimes it makes her stories - and she's always been a storyteller - hilariously bizarre.  Oh how I wish I had written down some of the things that she's said.  One of her favorite phrases was that her side of the family were "good, German, peasant stock".  That's why it made me laugh when I read about Elizabeth saying "I'm built like a peasant".  Even though Roz's parents were the same age as my grandmother's parents, they were incredibly similar in their outlook and the things they would say.

Overall, it was really helpful reading Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant.  It's helpful to know that what you're experiencing isn't unusual or strange.  It's beneficial to see other people struggling with the same things as you, even if those things are really difficult.  The aging/dying process is generally something that our Western society avoids at all costs, so it was helpful to get a realistic representation of aging in a wider context, like literature.

There is a tremendously raw honesty and truth to what Roz Chast presents in Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant.  There's no sugarcoating or averting one's gaze from the aging process, and just how treacherous it can be to those who are the most vulnerable.  Roz is a dutiful daughter who, after many years of avoiding her parents, takes on the critical responsibility of caretaker for them in their last years.  There is also a warning in here, for those of us who aren't yet in our "golden years" - be prepared.  Have those difficult conversations about what you want your last years to be like.  Plan and prepare, setting aside as much money as you can, so that you can maintain a good quality of life for you and your loved ones.  This is advice for all of us to heed, which we can hopefully do with the humility and hilarity that Roz Chast has done.



Librorum,

The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt

Samantha Hunt's short story collection The Dark Dark is a masterpiece of weird normalcy.  Each of the stories are so dark, engaging, and different from each other in tone, topic, and style...with the exception being the first and last stories.  She takes the everydayness of life and twists it a bit; holding a fun-house mirror up to the bizarrity we all experience. 

In "All Hands", we follow 3 characters - two Coast Guard officers and a high school secretary in Galveston, TX.  One of the officers is in a relationship with the secretary, and the other falls overboard after issuing a citation to a drilling company and drops multiple stories into the Gulf of Mexico.  The secretary is involved in the political fallout from 13 students who all got pregnant around the same time.  She encounters the other officer when he make it back to the ship after his fall.  The officers would respond to the order "all hands on deck", the officer who fell was "all hands" (clumsy) in handing the citation, and the pregnant teens spend time talking about their hands. 

In "Beast", a woman may or may not be turning into a deer at night.  Her hands and feet harden into hooves, fur grows on her body, her arms and legs thin, a tail appears, her face lengthen and her lips shrink.  It only happens at night; by the morning she's human again.  She isn't sure how to tell her husband - because how would anyone tell such a thing? - so every night she just asks him to inspect her for ticks.  Until one fateful night.

In "The Yellow", a 40-something man, living with his parents, hits another family's beloved dog when it runs into the road in front of his car.  For most of the story, as he gets acquainted (physically and otherwise) with the wife of the family, the dog is dead.  However, unexpected things happen and the dog revives.  Throughout, there are references to yellow in the color of his bedroom walls, the lines on the road, and his soul. 

In "Cortes the Killer", a girl returns home from the city to her family's farm for Thanksgiving, in the wake of her father's death from lung cancer.  The land around her family's home has been developed into strip malls and offices, however, her family has held onto their land.  Their mother worked for a company that sold myth retellings, and an amusement park bought the mother's myth about Montezuma and Cortes' first meeting.  She and her brother decide to ride their horse to Walmart for something to do, with devastating consequences. 

In "The House Began to Pitch", Ada, a new transplant to Miami, decides to weather her first hurricane without any preparations.  She fled her home in Rhode Island for reasons, and has made a new life in rural, Southern Florida.  Her neighbor Chuck, a beer-drinking conspiracy theorist, lives with his sister, a right-wing conservative lawyer.  In this story, the hurricane's overt rage and power is contrasted with that of Ada's which is quiet and internalized - bubbling just below the surface until it explodes. 

In "Love Machine", an FBI surveillance expert develops a realistic, humanoid robot (called Operation Bombshell) to use as a remote-detonation explosives carrier.  She's anatomically correct (full digestive, excretory systems, sex organs), and has some AI capabilities, so that she can converse with her target before setting off her explosives.  Essentially, she's a fully-functioning sex robot with a bomb.  Her target is Ted, a Unabomber-like hermit fellow out in the Montana wilderness, who has mailed bombs to scientists he dislikes.  He and the robot share cups of coffee and he tells her stories.  He sees his bombs as masterpieces of storytelling, actually.  They debate the inevitability of modern society, returning to pre-industrial life, and beauty.  It's this last topic that changes the course of the robot's mission forever.

In "A Love Story", the reader is contained within the mind of a stay-at-home mom who deals drugs and spends a lot of time worrying about all the bad things that could possibly happen to the people she loves.  She wonders why she and her husband haven't had sex in eight months.  At night, she pours over motherhood-based websites, reading about hormones and their effects on a fetus.  The stream of consciousness style of this story feels neurotic and obsessive, with the narrative bobbing and weaving around so many topics that are only tangentially connected to each other.  This sense of unease and worry stems from the motherly love that the narrator feels but is challenged with how to express it in a healthy way. 

In "Wampum", a teenage girl keeps a handbag full of treasures - rare currency, a stick with unusual  patterns on it, a deflated balloon, and things that were touched by her much-older crush, Trey.  She's left alone when her mother goes on a church retreat to meet men, and she invites Trey over.  Many things are traded back and forth as currency between them: Looks, items from her purse, and bodily fluids.

The very first story in the collection is called "The Story Of", and the final story is called "The Story Of Of".  They function as bookends, informing each other in a way that is reminiscent of the movies Inception and Memento.  There's a cyclical, deterministic relationship between Norma, her husband Ted (is he the same Ted from "Love Machine"?  I don't think so, but I can't be sure either), and Ted's half-sister who also happens to be named Norma.  In "The Story Of",  sister-Norma is pregnant, drug-addicted, and filthy.  Narrator Norma distinguishes herself by referring to the other as Dirty Norma.  Norma and Dirty Norma also appear in "The Story Of Of", but this time, there is also Ted's brother's wife and her baby.  And a gaggle of schoolgirl/lawyers, a notebook, and an abandoned mental hospital.  Norma and Dirty Norma end up meeting at the hospital, finding a notebook, and reading their own story in its page.  "The Story Of" and "The Story Of Of" are so similar that I felt some serious deja vu, yet they differ in significant ways.  To quote Norma, "It's never the same; it changes a tiny bit every time" - our memories

There are some definite themes running through The Dark Dark.  The first is, surprisingly enough, darkness.  It takes the form of literal darkness at night, dark moods, dark skies during storms, dark depths of water.  The stories themselves have a metaphysical darkness that pervades them.  The second theme is uncertainty.  All of the characters struggle with the choices they have made in their lives, whether they know themselves, know their own bodies.  Are they really just a combination of chemicals?  Can they trust their own minds?  What do they know and how do they know it?  What happens when how you're living your life goes against societal expectations?  The third theme is pregnancy/motherhood.  In every story there are instances of characters who are pregnant (unplanned and otherwise), trying to conceive, suffering miscarriages, giving birth, and having sex.  The desire for children is so great a presence that there is an image of a child on the cover of The Dark Dark...the image may be of a skeletal torso, and in the center/womb there is a void space that appears to be a small child. 

Another feature of the cover design is that it is evocative of a Rorschach test, with the addition of a barely-visible image of a deer superimposed on the lower-right side.  The main focus of "Beast" involves deer.  In the first line of "All Hands", the narrator mentions back sweat making a Rorschach blot on his Coast Guard uniform.  The Rorschach test was designed to analyze people's perceptions and to draw conclusions about personality traits and emotional health.  How a person interacts with the ambiguous pattern is just as important as the ultimate interpretation of the pattern that is given.  It seems that Samantha Hunt is testing her readers with their interpretations of not only the cover but of her stories.  Perhaps we can draw clues about our own selves in the world through the ways we make sense of The Dark Dark.

If you like stories that aren't afraid of getting a little weird, are beautifully written, and hold a mirror to our own lives, then I would heartily recommend The Dark Dark.  Each story creates a fully-formed world, with deep and intriguing characters.  There may be some stories that grab you more strongly than others, but each one provides a rich and interesting reading experience that I've never found in another short story collection.  The stories are dark dark, but the work is great great!



Librorum annis,

Reading Ella Minnow Pea for the First Time (in 2017)

As someone who loves reading and language, and teaches both writing and grammar, I have often been recommended Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea.  Many of the bookish podcasts I listen to discuss it as a silly, feel-good story.  I came upon it for a song at a recent book sale, so I decided that it was finally time to give it a read.  What I found on the pages was something darker and more applicable to the current political climate than I expected, and more relevant than I could have imagined.

Are you a lover of words and language?  Is freedom of expression important to you?  Do you value critical thinking and rationality over blind adherence to dogma?  Would you be willing to sacrifice your principles and better judgment in order to gain acceptance?  These are questions that I didn't expect to be asking myself while reading Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, but they became very pertinent very quickly.

The island nation of Nollop is located a few miles off the coast of South Carolina.  Once called Utopianna, it was renamed in honor of the man, a native of the island, who penned the famous pangram sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", Nevin Nollop.  His influence is everywhere on the island.  People live either in Nollopton or Nollopville.  There was a massive statue erected in his honor, upon which were glued letter-tiles that spell out his famous sentence.  It is this statue which becomes the source of so much suffering for the residents of Nollop.

One day, a lettered tile falls from the statue and breaks on the ground.  It's discovered by a little girl and brought before the island's governing body, the 5-member High Island Council.  The Council convenes an emergency meeting to discuss the meaning and implications of what has happened.  In their unanimous decision, they proclaim that the tile's detachment is an "Act of Nollop" - a symbol that Nollop himself no longer wants the residents to use that letter of the alphabet any longer.

Furthermore, the Council sets very strict rules around the adherence to the letter's prohibition.  If someone is found to have spoken or written a word containing the restricted letter, or possesses any written/typed material containing that letter, the first offense will be a public reprimand.  The punishment for a second offense is either flogging or spending time in the stocks - violator's choice.  The third offense results in immediate banishment from the island.  If a violator refuses to leave, or returns after being exiled, he/she will be killed.  There is no appeal process.  These punishment are carried out by the island's police force or their deputized auxiliary.  The only exception is that children under the age of 8 are still allowed to speak, write, and read the letter.

That first fallen tile contains the letter Z, and Council sets the effective date of restriction for that letter as August 7 (today!).  At first, Nollop residents don't think it's such a big deal, because Z isn't a frequently-used letter.  Although they think the Council's edict is silly, Nollopians are willing to go along with it because they don't see it as too burdensome.  But then things get really dark, really fast. 

Schools, libraries, and residents' homes are required to be rid all of their novels, textbooks, correspondence, etc...because what are the chances that any printed materials don't contain the letter Z?  Reading materials are banned en masse.  People who have a Z in their names must change their names.  Residents have to self-censor what they say, so that they don't accidentally utter a word with the restricted letter.  They also have to be careful because their fellow Nollopians are encouraged to report each other if they are aware of infractions. 

Some residents are quick to buy into this culture of secrecy and policing, willingly changing their own behaviors and tattling on their peers.  Others fly in the face of the regulations and feel the wrath of the punishments; they are eventually expelled from Nollop.  Still others make the conscious choice to remove themselves the island, before they have committed three offenses, clearly seeing the ludicrousness of the situation.  They leave behind their homes, possessions, livelihoods, and loved ones.  News of what is happening is spread via correspondence smuggled out by these immigrants.  Once it becomes clear to the islanders that all of their writing is being intercepted and read by government officials, looking for violations, this spread of information becomes a dear priority.

Meanwhile, more tiles continue to fall from the statue, forcing more and more restrictions.  As language becomes more arduous and pitfall-ridden, many more Nollop residents decide that it's no longer worth it to stay on the island.  Whole neighborhoods grow deserted.  In response to this, the Council rules that they now have the authority to reclaim abandoned properties for their own use.  Later on, they declare that they also have the power to evict current residents from their homes, without due process.  Council members, their families, and the police force are encouraged to take up residence in the recouped houses.

The Council believes strongly that Nevin Nollop is worthy of reverence, because he performed a miracle in crafting his pangram.  They pray around his cenotaph, and refuse to allow worship of any other Supreme Being except for the Almighty Nollop...Nollop eternal.  Some of the reclaimed properties are intended to be razed in order to build a Church of Nollop.

All of this gets the attention of Nate Warren, a graduate student in Georgia, who writes to one of the residents of Nollop that he would like to visit the island and talk with the Council.  A former Nollopian had absconded with some shards of a fallen letter-tile before he left the island.  A scientific analysis was run on the tile bits, and it was found that the adhesive, which attached the tiles to the monument of Nollop, had dried and grown brittle over time.  That, not some kind of divine intervention, was the reason behind the falling tiles.  Nate wished to discuss these findings with a Council member, in hopes that it might change their course of action.  He is able to come to Nollop, but even after he discusses the contents of the report, and how summarily they explain away the "phenomenon" of the falling letters, it has no impact.  In fact, the Council member with whom he meets argues that Nevin Nollop must have influenced the decision to use that adhesive, since it would eventually dry up and allow Nollop's will to be done through the falling tiles.  There was no scientific proof that would sway the Council away from their belief system.

The only success Nate has is in proposing a challenge, to see if anyone on the island can craft a pangram using fewer characters than Nollop did.  This is important, because the crux of the Council's system of belief is that Nollop is a god.  The Council believes wholly that it is impossible for the challenge to be successful, but they allow the residents to toil at it for the next 6 weeks, until Nollop's birthday.  It's called Challenge 32, as the winner will have to be able to craft a new pangram in 32 characters or less.  The only way they can work on this challenge, without invoking penalties on themselves for using outlawed letters, is to have young children do the writing for them.

While the first half of the novel gets us to this point, the second half is focused primarily on the progress that the residents make toward Challenge 32.  All the while, more letters continue to fall, making communication that much more difficult.  There are continually more people who are subject to the reprimands, physical punishments, and expulsions.  One resident is even killed by the island's police force.  This motivates many of the remaining people to flee, but the very few who stay on the island are singularly focused on meeting Challenge 32 by its deadline.  If they are unsuccessful, the result will be the eventual discontinuation of all communication and complete isolation.  Either Nollop will return to its prior utopian glory, or it will regress to a state of absolute censorship and total silence.

I found it rather serendipitous that I came to Ella Minnow Pea now, at this time in the world.  Although the novel was published back in 2001, it could easily be an allegory for the modern political climate.  After an event, that the Nollopians ultimately brought upon themselves from their shoddy construction of Nollop's cenotaph, the government seizes upon the opportunity to quickly enact a broad campaign of censorship and brutality.  This could be a criticism of the US government's actions in the Middle East, and against Muslims in general, after 9/11...the "War on Terror".

The prominent theme throughout the novel is censorship.  In the US, there is a strong desire amongst some groups to censor the media.  The White House press corps are censored from being able to record or transmit the briefings that they witness.  Books are regularly challenged and banned.  Truth is being pushed aside, by political leadership, in favor of "alternative facts" and "fake news" that reinforce narrow and deeply harmful ideology.

Even when presented with factual evidence that disputes their beliefs, and that should bring about positive changes, the island's High Council denies and resists.  It's almost like the steadfast convictions about the realities of climate change.  In spite of the plentiful scientific evidence that humanity is directly responsible for the rising temperatures on Earth, and the dire consequences that will come as a result, many politicians refuse to acknowledge that climate change is real, and reject any proposed changes or programs to counteract it.

There's the recurring image of Nollopian citizens being harshly punished and even evicted from the island, because they refuse to conform to the government's demands.  Could this speak forward to the US administration's current immigration policies?  Deportations are happening with shocking frequency, and the targets are often the most vulnerable populations.  The rallying cry of "send them back", even when the "them" are citizens of this country, rings loud.

That image also speaks to the desire of some in power to enforce conformity to their particular ideas of what is right.  Do you dress differently, worship differently, look differently, act differently, love differently, have a different skin color, read differently, communicate differently?  Any of these things make you a target for systematic repression and violence, in the service of enforcing same-ness. The Nollopians must endure this in their way, and so do many Americans.

The High Council makes it legal, at their discretion, for citizens' homes and businesses to be confiscated.  No legal recourse is available.  While there has been some flavor of this legislated in the US for a long time, a US Department of Justice Policy Directive 17-1 was released a few weeks ago, which allows the federal government to seize a person's assets, even if doing so is illegal by the relevant state's laws, without having to charge the person with any crime.

With each tile that vacates, correspondence becomes more and more lipographic. Near the end, there are so few letters left at the Nollopians' disposal that writing and speaking becomes unbelievably tedious.  At this point, grammar and syntax having little meaning or application.  Some people decide to stop communicating altogether and become silent.  They are like those of us who are insulated by our societal privilege.  They turn their backs to the widespread injustices happening all around them, until they can't do so any longer.

One Nollopian woman, Georgeanne, had been a ready tattler to the Council when they first passed their restrictive laws.  Once her husband was sanctioned and forced to leave Nollop, she awoke to the reality of what was happening.  She become so frustrated by the restrictions on language that she turned to art.  She obtained leftover house paint from abandoned homes and used it to create expressive canvases, which she gave to her neighbors.  In an act of desperate protest, Georgeanne decided to paint on her own body. Her artistic expression functions in direct contradiction to the legislated campaign of censorship.  Unbekownst to her, however, there was lead in the paint, which poisons her.  She eventually dies of lead poisoning, symbolic of the protesters who are killed or arrested (a symbolic killing of their freedom) as a result of their political activity.

From these observations, it really felt like Mark Dunn could have published Ella Minnow Pea in the past year, not 16 years ago.  The symbols that appear throughout the novel are entirely relevant now, and speak directly to the current, American, political leadership.  With this in mind, it wasn't surprising at all to read that Gold Leaf Films is working on a movie version of the book, with a tentative release date of 2018.  I look forward to seeing how the directive team treats the story.

In Ella Minnow Pea, the governmental actions are based on an arbitrary belief system that blinds the Council to any other explanations of the world around them.  They are so devout in this belief that they are willing to sacrifice the welfare of the entire island for it.  As today's date, August 7th, was the implementation of the first banning of a letter, it seemed entirely serendipitous to have read the novel, for the first time, now.  It's not the silly, happy-go-lucky story that I had been recommended, but is so much more than that.  It's relevant to our lives now, and speaks a truth that we all can benefit from.



Librorum annis,