I recently read Jon Hassler's Staggerford (1977), set in small-town Minnesota and describing a week in the life of Miles Pruitt, a 35-year-old high-school English teacher. The setup here reminds me of Anne Tyler or maybe Garrison Keillor: quiet, deadpan humor; appreciation of small-town foibles; mostly good people mostly trying hard.
Miles' life doesn't look like much. He teaches his classes of varying ability. He walks home where he boards with an elderly Catholic-school teacher (he used to be in her class). He and his librarian lady friend Imogene attend long evenings of bridge with the school superintendent and his wife.
However it might look from the outside, Miles likes his life. He's a good teacher, wrestling with the dullards and challenging the smart ones. He does what he can to help an intelligent student whose progress is threatened by poverty and a crazy mother. He likes walking, and enjoys his landlady, and gets a kick out of the school superintendent's long droning conversations. It all looks changeless, except maybe for the kiss he finally plants on Imogene, and we think maybe this is a turning point.
Except that event gets buried in a growing farce starting with two high-school boys fighting and eventually involving the local Indian tribe, fears of an AIM uprising, the National Guard, and Miles' student's crazy mother. It ends surprisingly in a way I really didn't like, although I could see that it made sense given the book as a whole.
This is Hassler's first novel, and it can be weak. The best example is an episode describing Miles's first love that aims to prove the adage "a woman grows up to become her mother." It's used uncritically and as if always true, which of course is bullshit, and on the whole the episode is a great big easy cop-out for some cheap-ass irony.
Hassler went on to write some 10 more novels, several also set in the town of Staggerford, and I want to read more of him.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin
This slim 2003 novel is part of Le Guin's Hainish cycle. Sutty, a young Earth woman who has studied with the Ekumen, is sent on her first mission to a planet called Aka. First contact reports described this planet as peaceful and static, but when she arrives 60 years later, it's changed.
Now it's controlled by a soulless, communist-like political structure that has banned the Telling, the planet's traditional Taoist-like philosophy/art/literature. It's all very much like China's Cultural Revolution, only planet-wide. Sutty must seek out remaining traces of the traditional culture and help to preserve and record it, a dangerous task not just for her but for the natives.
I enjoyed reading it; as always, Le Guin writes with simple and vivid elegance. Sutty is likeable, brave, conscientious. The actual tales told in the Telling aren't that memorable, I'm afraid, but there are some interesting themes like the importance of twins/couples/doubles, and flying. Le Guin is in trouble when she tries to make the case that stories can be a culture's entire history, science, and so on. At the end she questions this, but it feels perfunctory to me.
Le Guin isn't breaking any new ground here, however. Themes and images are deeply familiar from earlier books—the Taoist philosophy, the politics, the thinly disguised critique of our own culture. (Like how the government/corporation's ubiquitous bitter, hot drink is called Starbrew.) She has a tendency to moralize. Yes, she tries to be fair, not black and white, but the problem is you can see her trying.
I don't like Le Guin's affectation for employing British spelling and usage. Other than that, Le Guin remains one of my greatest pleasures to read, especially on the sentence level, so vivid and beautifully paced. For example, this description of a river ferry trip:
"Drastic" is the striking, perfect centerpiece of this beautifully composed scene. That's the sort of thing that keeps me coming back, decade after decade, to Ursula Le Guin.
Now it's controlled by a soulless, communist-like political structure that has banned the Telling, the planet's traditional Taoist-like philosophy/art/literature. It's all very much like China's Cultural Revolution, only planet-wide. Sutty must seek out remaining traces of the traditional culture and help to preserve and record it, a dangerous task not just for her but for the natives.
I enjoyed reading it; as always, Le Guin writes with simple and vivid elegance. Sutty is likeable, brave, conscientious. The actual tales told in the Telling aren't that memorable, I'm afraid, but there are some interesting themes like the importance of twins/couples/doubles, and flying. Le Guin is in trouble when she tries to make the case that stories can be a culture's entire history, science, and so on. At the end she questions this, but it feels perfunctory to me.
Le Guin isn't breaking any new ground here, however. Themes and images are deeply familiar from earlier books—the Taoist philosophy, the politics, the thinly disguised critique of our own culture. (Like how the government/corporation's ubiquitous bitter, hot drink is called Starbrew.) She has a tendency to moralize. Yes, she tries to be fair, not black and white, but the problem is you can see her trying.
I don't like Le Guin's affectation for employing British spelling and usage. Other than that, Le Guin remains one of my greatest pleasures to read, especially on the sentence level, so vivid and beautifully paced. For example, this description of a river ferry trip:
And Ferry Eight, now full of blatting and squawking and the quiet, intermittent voices of country people, and smelling of manure, fried bread, and sweet melons, moved slowly, her silent engines working hard against the drastic current, between wide rocky shores and treeless plains of thin, pale, plumy grass.
"Drastic" is the striking, perfect centerpiece of this beautifully composed scene. That's the sort of thing that keeps me coming back, decade after decade, to Ursula Le Guin.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons For Making it Work by Tim Gunn
As much as I was looking forward to reading this book, I was disappointed.
Now, I love Uncle Tim, and I still think that as a host and mentor on Project Runway, he's perfect. Plus, I did thoroughly enjoy all the gossipy dish, along with glimpses behind the scenes on PR. His autobiographical stuff was also quite interesting.
However, Gunn comes off surprisingly badly in this book. All his Lessons about taking the high road clash pretty badly with his obvious score-settling here. I don't mind at all someone snarking about ridiculously arrogant behavior by the rich, glamorous, and over-validated--but when it's coming from someone who keeps declaring how he's incapable of snark, my cynicism meter goes off.
You can tell it's pretty damn satisfying for Gunn, getting to tell all these revealing anecdotes about his horrible mother, his (possible closet case!) father, Anna Wintour, Emilio Sosa, and many others. He has a long list of grudges, including encounters with strangers, and he's pretty entertaining about getting back at these folks. I just wish he'd admit that that's what he's doing.
Also, when Gunn says (many many times) how he's too nice, what he really means is that he's spineless. Someone appropriates the Vogue magazine he's reading; instead of just asking for it back, he "takes the high road," says nothing, and congratulates himself for avoiding confrontation. He does say he's finally learned to say no--about some things. But I'm not ready to take life lessons from a guy who would rather buy a new Vogue than say "Hey, I was still reading that."
Now, I love Uncle Tim, and I still think that as a host and mentor on Project Runway, he's perfect. Plus, I did thoroughly enjoy all the gossipy dish, along with glimpses behind the scenes on PR. His autobiographical stuff was also quite interesting.
However, Gunn comes off surprisingly badly in this book. All his Lessons about taking the high road clash pretty badly with his obvious score-settling here. I don't mind at all someone snarking about ridiculously arrogant behavior by the rich, glamorous, and over-validated--but when it's coming from someone who keeps declaring how he's incapable of snark, my cynicism meter goes off.
You can tell it's pretty damn satisfying for Gunn, getting to tell all these revealing anecdotes about his horrible mother, his (possible closet case!) father, Anna Wintour, Emilio Sosa, and many others. He has a long list of grudges, including encounters with strangers, and he's pretty entertaining about getting back at these folks. I just wish he'd admit that that's what he's doing.
Also, when Gunn says (many many times) how he's too nice, what he really means is that he's spineless. Someone appropriates the Vogue magazine he's reading; instead of just asking for it back, he "takes the high road," says nothing, and congratulates himself for avoiding confrontation. He does say he's finally learned to say no--about some things. But I'm not ready to take life lessons from a guy who would rather buy a new Vogue than say "Hey, I was still reading that."
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 2: The Kingdom on the Waves
By M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, 2008).
When I reviewed Vol. 1, The Pox Party, I commended its "distinctly strange atmosphere, compounded of Gothic horror, Enlightenment idealism, slave memoir, and YA coming-of-age novel," and called it "brilliant, surprising, imaginative." By the novel's end, as the Revolutionary War is breaking out, Octavian is fleeing toward the King's camp, hoping for freedom. When I'd finished, I couldn't wait for the next volume. So it's with the deepest regret I must now report how disappointed I am with The Kingdom on the Waves.
As the centerpiece of his novel, Anderson has chosen a little-known episode in the American revolution, when Lord Dunsmore creates his Ethiopian Regiment by offering freedom to slaves of Rebel owners who join up. After a major defeat, Dunsmore's coalition retreats aboard a small fleet offshore, the "kingdom on the waves" of the title. Smallpox soon ravages the mostly uninoculated former slaves, and the whole thing ends in defeat.
Yes, it's an overlooked part of history, and Octavian's position offers an interestingly bitter, cynical view on "liberty" in the colonies, and there's something bracing about hearing Washington referred to as that Virginian slave-driver. But in being so fascinated by his setting, Anderson has forgotten to tell a story.
The intriguing atmosphere of suppressed horror from Vol. 1 becomes a numbing atmosphere of claustrophobic futility in Vol. 2. Bar a few entertaining scenes and Anderson's always lively dialogue, this book goes nowhere slowly. An enormous swath of its 561 pages are spent in gloom belowdecks while Octavian and his friends wait and wait and wait for something to happen while sickness rages through the fleet. Events of note tend to be sickeningly unfair or tragic or disgusting or all three.
In a strange afterword, Anderson defends his choice not to be more interesting by saying that "If this were the fantasy novel it so much resembles, there would be a third volume with gargantuan, cleansing battles" and "all people would be free, shackles would fall from every wrist, and bounty would return to the land." But, since this isn't what actually happened and slavery persisted in America for generations longer, you're out of luck, reader! I would have settled for a lot less than a big fireworks party with Ewoks, but Anderson really, really wants to rub our noses in the futility of it all. Unfortunately, futility isn't very interesting.
Nevertheless, in fairness I also have to say that I kept turning all 561 pages because M.T. Anderson is too good a writer to dismiss. His dialogue is especially good, pitch-perfect for each character's class and circumstances. I want to list a few examples to show the range:
Also, buried beneath all the novel's oppression and despair are some awfully good character portraits, the affecting story of Octavian learning more about his mother, and lovely tid-bits like fables and stories, the odd newspaper story or official proclamation, and the like. I still admire M.T. Anderson, just not this book.
When I reviewed Vol. 1, The Pox Party, I commended its "distinctly strange atmosphere, compounded of Gothic horror, Enlightenment idealism, slave memoir, and YA coming-of-age novel," and called it "brilliant, surprising, imaginative." By the novel's end, as the Revolutionary War is breaking out, Octavian is fleeing toward the King's camp, hoping for freedom. When I'd finished, I couldn't wait for the next volume. So it's with the deepest regret I must now report how disappointed I am with The Kingdom on the Waves.
As the centerpiece of his novel, Anderson has chosen a little-known episode in the American revolution, when Lord Dunsmore creates his Ethiopian Regiment by offering freedom to slaves of Rebel owners who join up. After a major defeat, Dunsmore's coalition retreats aboard a small fleet offshore, the "kingdom on the waves" of the title. Smallpox soon ravages the mostly uninoculated former slaves, and the whole thing ends in defeat.
Yes, it's an overlooked part of history, and Octavian's position offers an interestingly bitter, cynical view on "liberty" in the colonies, and there's something bracing about hearing Washington referred to as that Virginian slave-driver. But in being so fascinated by his setting, Anderson has forgotten to tell a story.
The intriguing atmosphere of suppressed horror from Vol. 1 becomes a numbing atmosphere of claustrophobic futility in Vol. 2. Bar a few entertaining scenes and Anderson's always lively dialogue, this book goes nowhere slowly. An enormous swath of its 561 pages are spent in gloom belowdecks while Octavian and his friends wait and wait and wait for something to happen while sickness rages through the fleet. Events of note tend to be sickeningly unfair or tragic or disgusting or all three.
In a strange afterword, Anderson defends his choice not to be more interesting by saying that "If this were the fantasy novel it so much resembles, there would be a third volume with gargantuan, cleansing battles" and "all people would be free, shackles would fall from every wrist, and bounty would return to the land." But, since this isn't what actually happened and slavery persisted in America for generations longer, you're out of luck, reader! I would have settled for a lot less than a big fireworks party with Ewoks, but Anderson really, really wants to rub our noses in the futility of it all. Unfortunately, futility isn't very interesting.
Nevertheless, in fairness I also have to say that I kept turning all 561 pages because M.T. Anderson is too good a writer to dismiss. His dialogue is especially good, pitch-perfect for each character's class and circumstances. I want to list a few examples to show the range:
A Royalist of Lord Dunsmore's set: "Sirs, while I would liefer commend the nobility of restraint, here must I endorse rather the vigor of lively opposition… "(p. 201)
Pro Bono, a house slave: "I can't even say how deep that skunk smell is. You can keep falling through parts of that smell and there are other parts, whole other rooms and wings you ain't known about. That is one devilish power of a smell." (p. 228-229)
Octavian, sui generis: "Did you need speak of Dunmore's doubts? Did you need tell us he was foolish and uncertain? . . . You spake thus, sir, to vent wit, so that you might regale us with the acuity of your observations." (p. 208)
Also, buried beneath all the novel's oppression and despair are some awfully good character portraits, the affecting story of Octavian learning more about his mother, and lovely tid-bits like fables and stories, the odd newspaper story or official proclamation, and the like. I still admire M.T. Anderson, just not this book.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party
By M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, 2006).
I've never read a book with such a distinctly strange atmosphere, compounded of Gothic horror, Enlightenment idealism, slave memoir, and YA coming-of-age novel. Octavian and his mother are slaves in 18th-century America, and subjects of an ongoing experiment by a group of natural philosophers calling themselves the Novanglian College of Lucidity. The College is studying the effects of European education and culture on Africans. Octavian narrates most of the novel, sounding very convincingly like a well-educated man of his time.
The effects of the Novanglians' pseudoscientific experiment are bizarre and cruel. (Be warned: I almost stopped reading this book after a few chapters because I found the early descriptions of nasty experiments on cats and dogs so upsetting.) Octavian learns Latin, Greek, the violin; he also must weigh his faeces daily on a golden plate. That grotesque yoking of the crude and the refined is an image in little of the kind of mind that gets to be in charge of Octavian and his mother.
When the revolutionary war starts to break out--at the same time Octavian undergoes terrible loss and betrayal following the pox party--he escapes. Octavian then faces another set of cruel ironies: fighting on behalf of Liberty when he has none; fighting for Property when he is some. The almost unrelenting tone of suppressed, enraged horror gets some relief as the narrative turns to letters home from a rebel private who befriends Octavian, and who is as open and talkative as Octavian is closed in and silent. Other forms of narrative include advertisements, scientific reports, and passages crossed out in ink.
Brilliant, surprising, imaginative, brave enough to challenge YA readers with big words and big ideas, this is the most interesting novel for young readers—for any readers—I've come across in a long time.
I've never read a book with such a distinctly strange atmosphere, compounded of Gothic horror, Enlightenment idealism, slave memoir, and YA coming-of-age novel. Octavian and his mother are slaves in 18th-century America, and subjects of an ongoing experiment by a group of natural philosophers calling themselves the Novanglian College of Lucidity. The College is studying the effects of European education and culture on Africans. Octavian narrates most of the novel, sounding very convincingly like a well-educated man of his time.
The effects of the Novanglians' pseudoscientific experiment are bizarre and cruel. (Be warned: I almost stopped reading this book after a few chapters because I found the early descriptions of nasty experiments on cats and dogs so upsetting.) Octavian learns Latin, Greek, the violin; he also must weigh his faeces daily on a golden plate. That grotesque yoking of the crude and the refined is an image in little of the kind of mind that gets to be in charge of Octavian and his mother.
When the revolutionary war starts to break out--at the same time Octavian undergoes terrible loss and betrayal following the pox party--he escapes. Octavian then faces another set of cruel ironies: fighting on behalf of Liberty when he has none; fighting for Property when he is some. The almost unrelenting tone of suppressed, enraged horror gets some relief as the narrative turns to letters home from a rebel private who befriends Octavian, and who is as open and talkative as Octavian is closed in and silent. Other forms of narrative include advertisements, scientific reports, and passages crossed out in ink.
Brilliant, surprising, imaginative, brave enough to challenge YA readers with big words and big ideas, this is the most interesting novel for young readers—for any readers—I've come across in a long time.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett
After reading the final pages of Scales of Gold, if it hadn't been from the library I'd have thrown it across the room, beaten it with a fireplace poker, and buried it in the cat box.
Not about animals this time. No, Dunnett has moved on from that, and achieved cruelty to readers. Her specialty is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, over and over, in more and more finely honed ways, taking care to lull the reader into a false sense of security, the better to deliver the biggest most hobnailed-boot kick in the gut she can possibly manage. She achieves a tour de force, cleverly arranging the two biggest gut kicks in the very last pages.
And she does this by making people behave in ways they never do: holding petty grudges for years and years despite, through those years, working together with the grudged person in harmony to achieve common goals, performed with great courage, fortitude, and strength of character--all abandoned in a moment just for scorekeeping.
That would be enough to cross her off my list, but this book also suffers from longeurs of "I'm coming with you." "No, you're not." "Yes, I am." "No, you're--OK, I guess you can." "I will NEVER come with you!" and many, many, many variations of same.
I'm done with Dunnett. Never again. No amount of colorful adventure is worth that.
Not about animals this time. No, Dunnett has moved on from that, and achieved cruelty to readers. Her specialty is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, over and over, in more and more finely honed ways, taking care to lull the reader into a false sense of security, the better to deliver the biggest most hobnailed-boot kick in the gut she can possibly manage. She achieves a tour de force, cleverly arranging the two biggest gut kicks in the very last pages.
And she does this by making people behave in ways they never do: holding petty grudges for years and years despite, through those years, working together with the grudged person in harmony to achieve common goals, performed with great courage, fortitude, and strength of character--all abandoned in a moment just for scorekeeping.
That would be enough to cross her off my list, but this book also suffers from longeurs of "I'm coming with you." "No, you're not." "Yes, I am." "No, you're--OK, I guess you can." "I will NEVER come with you!" and many, many, many variations of same.
I'm done with Dunnett. Never again. No amount of colorful adventure is worth that.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu (1864)
I'd never read Le Fanu but had often heard him mentioned as a contributor to the mystery/suspense/sensation novel, and Harriet Vane publishes a monograph on him, which made me curious.
The narrator is Maud Ruthyn, only 17 when the novel begins, and she's grown up isolated in a spooky dark house with her distant, uncommunicative father. He's obsessed with the blight on family honor, many years ago, when his brother Silas was accused of a terrible crime--never proved, but scandalous. Although Maud is heiress to a great fortune, and Silas has an early reputation as a spendthrift rake, the father believes in his Christian reformation and wants Maud to live with him after the father's death--even though Silas is heir after Maud. This, you see, will convince the world of how truly trustworthy Silas is.
As you might imagine, this doesn't go well. Innocent Maud, taught to be silent and compliant, wants to believe the best of her uncle, ignoring all kinds of warning signs--for example, he's charged with educating her, and given a substantial sum to do it, but blandly says that wandering around outside in the fresh air will be better for her. Little by little, he removes her freedoms, and tries to engineer a marriage between his no-good son Dudley and Maud.
The novel has plenty of spooky touches like a frightening bully of a governess, an enormous decaying old house which has had a suicide (or is murder?), religious weirdness, laudanum, rough and scary servants, and so on. Little by little Uncle Silas separates Maud from any friend, including his own daughter Milly.
For me though the feeling of suspense was watered down because the book is, I think, too long. It needs more compression to sustain the right pitch of tension; too often, events extend rather than develop the plot.
Also, I was bothered by a lapse in the storytelling. Early on, one of his Maud's few reliable older friends, whom she trusts--a Dr. Bryerly, a friend of her father's--is alarmed by her circumstances, and tells her very seriously to secretly scratch his London address with a pin on the inside of her clothes chest, leaving out his name, and to burn the paper on which the address is written. He tells her to fly to him if she's ever in serious danger. She follows his instructions to scratch in the address.
Throughout the novel, I kept expecting the tock to follow this tick, wondering when on earth she was going to remember this escape route--especially when Uncle Silas's machinations take her to London. But no, it's as if this never happened. Chekhov's gun on the mantelpiece never goes off. I found this loose end very unsatisfying.
Still, I enjoyed reading this; Le Fanu is a lively writer and some of his scenes are quite funny, especially a fight between Dudley and one of Maud's would-be suitors, with an onlooker encouraging Dudley to knock him in the "dinner-service" again.
The narrator is Maud Ruthyn, only 17 when the novel begins, and she's grown up isolated in a spooky dark house with her distant, uncommunicative father. He's obsessed with the blight on family honor, many years ago, when his brother Silas was accused of a terrible crime--never proved, but scandalous. Although Maud is heiress to a great fortune, and Silas has an early reputation as a spendthrift rake, the father believes in his Christian reformation and wants Maud to live with him after the father's death--even though Silas is heir after Maud. This, you see, will convince the world of how truly trustworthy Silas is.
As you might imagine, this doesn't go well. Innocent Maud, taught to be silent and compliant, wants to believe the best of her uncle, ignoring all kinds of warning signs--for example, he's charged with educating her, and given a substantial sum to do it, but blandly says that wandering around outside in the fresh air will be better for her. Little by little, he removes her freedoms, and tries to engineer a marriage between his no-good son Dudley and Maud.
The novel has plenty of spooky touches like a frightening bully of a governess, an enormous decaying old house which has had a suicide (or is murder?), religious weirdness, laudanum, rough and scary servants, and so on. Little by little Uncle Silas separates Maud from any friend, including his own daughter Milly.
For me though the feeling of suspense was watered down because the book is, I think, too long. It needs more compression to sustain the right pitch of tension; too often, events extend rather than develop the plot.
Also, I was bothered by a lapse in the storytelling. Early on, one of his Maud's few reliable older friends, whom she trusts--a Dr. Bryerly, a friend of her father's--is alarmed by her circumstances, and tells her very seriously to secretly scratch his London address with a pin on the inside of her clothes chest, leaving out his name, and to burn the paper on which the address is written. He tells her to fly to him if she's ever in serious danger. She follows his instructions to scratch in the address.
Throughout the novel, I kept expecting the tock to follow this tick, wondering when on earth she was going to remember this escape route--especially when Uncle Silas's machinations take her to London. But no, it's as if this never happened. Chekhov's gun on the mantelpiece never goes off. I found this loose end very unsatisfying.
Still, I enjoyed reading this; Le Fanu is a lively writer and some of his scenes are quite funny, especially a fight between Dudley and one of Maud's would-be suitors, with an onlooker encouraging Dudley to knock him in the "dinner-service" again.
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