2011 Reading Roundup

Yesterday, I finally made it to the end of Ulysses, James Joyce’s near-incomprehensible masterpiece, the one I’ve been trudging through since May. And with that son of a gun safely under my belt, I’m ready to take a look through  my full reading list for 2011.

First, let’s look at the best and worst of my reading year. Here’s what you should pick up on your next library visit or bookstore shopping spree:

Jessica’s Top 5:

1. Madame Bovary, by Flaubert. This novel amazed me with its vivid, real protagonist; the timelessness of the plot; and the gorgeous writing, which is both beautiful to read and performs the fantastic feat of making every word and every scene feel necessary in a 300-page book. Madame Bovary reads like music, and is a must-read for any aspiring fiction or poetry writer.
2. Disgrace, by Coetzee. This story of a professor who is exiled for having an affair with a student, and who struggles to understand his daughter’s choice of a dangerous life in the country, opened my eyes to the importance of having something to say when I write, instead of focusing only on the best way to say it. Coetzee’s keen attention to race, the complications that still exist between men and women, and even the relationship between humans and animals, will make you think about what it means to be human.
3. How to Buy a Love of Reading, by Tanya Egan Gibson. This book made me laugh, cry, and yell at the characters. It also had the unexpected bonus of putting me in contact with the author (she found my blog, read the review, and wrote me an awesome thank-you. Authors are cool peeps).
4. Poetry 180, selected by Billy Collins. One of the things I love about this man is that he shares a cause close to my heart–the desire to reconnect students with the arts. Poetry is one of those arts that unfortunately can seem less accessible and deeply enjoyable than it really is. This book is a great way to rediscover poetry if you’re new/wary, and to enjoy some fun and unexpected stuff if you’re a fan. A plus–almost all the poems are by living writers, so if you like someone in particular, you can still write them fan mail.
5. The Anti-9-5 Guide, by Michelle Goodman. This smart, handy guide is a great resource for anyone feeling a little constricted by the 9-5 grind. What I love is that besides offering freelance and self-employment tips, Goodman also talks about negotiating flexibility within a conventional position. Some people like their office gig just fine, but want to be able to walk the kids to the bus, or are willing to work 4 10-hour days to have regular long weekends. Goodman recognizes this group as well, which is a refreshing change from the all-or-nothing attitude of some career books.

And the ones you can skip:

1. The Kid, by Sapphire. This story of an abused child who becomes an abuser, then a dancer, then possibly a crazy person, is graphic in a way that feels less edgy and more shock for shock’s sake. Better: Read Push, Sapphire’s earlier (and much better) novel.
2. The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss. I suppose I got what I should have expected–this book isn’t about engaging your passions in your job, but rather how to outsource or ignore as much as possible until work functions smoothly without you. Fine if you own a company and wish you didn’t have to be around. Less fine if you’re in a lower position where your bosses may decide that since the company works well without you, maybe you shouldn’t be on payroll. Much less fine if your goal is to cultivate work that is meaningful to you, instead of hiring a personal assistant in India to take care of your mundane tasks. Better: Read The Anti-9-5 Guide, by Michelle Goodman.
3. Horns, by Joe Hill. Oh, Horns. You strange, sad, silly little book, with your predictable characters and last-minute plot shenanigans. Your story of a man who wakes up with devil horns and the ability to make others confess their darkest secrets didn’t stand a chance. Better: Read A Good and Happy Child, by Justin Evans, about a man who’s memories of being haunted by a demonic “friend” resurface with the birth of his son.
4. Thinner, by Stephen King. Joe Hill’s dad makes my naughty list this year, too, with a plotline as thin as the main character (ouch, sorry, but I couldn’t resist). A man hits a Gypsy woman and gets cursed by her father to lose weight. I’ve seen you do much better, Stephen King. Better: Want scary? Read The Shining, by Stephen King. Want an anorexia tale? Read Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson.
5. The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico. Ugh. The frickin’ Snow Goose, people! The tale is of an ugly hunchback (whose physical abilities are not hampered AT ALL by the several deformities he has) who falls in love with the young blond thing who brings him a wounded goose and yammers at him in such thick eye dialect it’s a miracle he understood a word she said. Written in 1941, this guy won the O. Henry Prize, but was also already criticized for being overly sentimental. In this age of irony, there’s so much sentiment and schmaltz that your eyes will cake over in sugar crystals halfway through. Better: For a more modern, magical love story, try The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. Or read The Snow Goose, but have Sh*t My Dad Says on hand as a chaser.

My goal was to read 52 books, although I more or less read at the same speed I would have anyway. Fortunately, my baseline is a good one, and I’m closing the year with 60. Here’s the list, starting with the first book I read this year:

1. The Mendacity of Hope (Roger D. Hodge)
2. Lovecraft Unbound (Ellen Datlow, ed.)
3. Blood Roses (Francesca Lia Block)
4. The Elephant’s Journey (Jose Saramago)
5. Push (Sapphire)
6. Sh*t My Dad Says
7. Best American Short Stories 2008
8. The House of Discarded Dreams (Ekaterina Sedia)
9. Mudhouse Sabbath (Lauren F. Winner)
10. The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)
11. Animal’s People (Indra Sinha)
12. More Tales of the Unexpected (Roald Dahl)
13. Eunoia (Christian Bok)
14. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (Michael Ondaatje)
15. The Year of Living Biblically (A.J. Jacobs)
16. Equus (Peter Shaffer)
17. Drinking Closer to Home (Jessica Anya Blau)
18. Eric (Terry Pratchett)
19. Machine of Death (Ryan North, ed.)
20. The Snow Goose (Paul Gallico)
21. The Importance of Being Ernest (Oscar Wilde)
22. How to Buy a Love of Reading (Tanya Egan Gibson)
23. Fanny, Herself (Edna Ferber)
24. Attachments (Rainbow Rowell)
25. Poetry 180 (Billy Collins, ed.)
26. Cheerful By Request (Edna Ferber)
27. Horns (Joe Hill)
28. The Help (Kathryn Stockett)
29. Love Lyrics (James Riley)
30. Kiss & Tell (MariNaomi)
31. Orientation (Daniel Orozco)
32. Knock Your Socks Off Service (Performance Review Associates)
33. Witches Abroad (Terry Pratchett)
34. Feet of Clay (Terry Pratchett)
35. Games to Play After Dark (Sarah Gardner Borden)
36. The Fiction Class (Susan Breen)
37. A Good and Happy Child (Justin Evans)
38. Oedipus the King (Sophocles)
39. 20 Under 40 (Deborah Treisman, ed.)
40. The 4-Hour Workweek (Timothy Ferriss)
41. Coraline (Neil Gaiman)
42. Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee)
43. Malina (Ingeborg Bachmann)
44. Miracles, Inc. (T.J. Forrester)
45. The Anti-9-5 Guide (Michelle Goodman)
46. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Peter Handke)
47. Tsing (David Albahari)
48. The Kid (Sapphire)
49. Your Wildest Dreams (Within Reason) (Mike Sacks)
50. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (Danzy Senna)
51. Thinner (Stephen King)
52. Light in August (William Faulkner)
53. Nanny Returns (Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus)
54. The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (Christina Hopkinson)
55. Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (Zadie Smith)
56. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)
57. Snuff (Terry Pratchett)
58. The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
59. Madame Bovary’s Daughter (Linda Urbach)
60. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Madame Bovary’s Daughter

Tags

gustave flaubert, linda urbach, madame bovary, madame bovary's daughter, what I'm reading

The literature seminar that I loved last fall culminated with a translation thesis on Gustave Flaubert’s marvelous novel, Madame Bovary. Madame Bovary is one of those novels that gets put on the best-of-the-best lists; it’s been called unapproachable, the perfect novel. It’s amazing to read it–the characters (especially Emma Bovary) and their problems have carried remarkably well to present day, and the novel itself is a masterpiece of writing style. Nothing is wasted; it reads more like a poem in terms of its beauty and efficiency than a 300-page book.

So this is the mindset that I brought when I saw that Linda Urbach had picked up the thread of the story at the end of the novel, following the death of Emma and her husband, Charles, to tell the story of their forgotten daughter, Berthe. Sadly, even though I managed to talk myself out of expecting a masterpiece, I was still disappointed in the watered-down story and ugly interpretation Urbach takes of the selfish, tragic heroine of the original.

There’s a bit too much sex in Madame Bovary’s Daughter to describe it as a cross between Dickens and an American Girl story, but I’m going to go ahead and draw that comparison anyway. You can make the call later as to whether I was wrong. Berthe is orphaned at thirteen and sent to live with her grandmother, a cold, austere woman who makes Berthe take over all the household chores. Berthe, a spunky girl who dreams of being a fashion designer, chafes under both the manual labor and rough, homespun cloth she’s forced to wear. When Grand-mere catches Berthe fooling around with the stable boy in the barn, the shock is too great for the old woman to bear, and she dies of a heart attack, leaving Berthe penniless once again. She decides to move to the city, and ends up working in a cotton mill and living in a boarding house under the watch of a cruel woman who feeds the children the same disgusting slop of a soup every day.

Berthe’s dreams aren’t forgotten, however. She still cherishes the thought of designing the gowns her mother longed for, and hopes in some way to earn the love and attention her mother never showed her in life. She’s praised for her beauty, forthrightness, and eye for fashion, and soon makes her way to (say it with me) Paris. After some minor and some more serious obstacles, Berthe does become a respected fashion designer, partnering with one of the greats and earning piles of money, but the question remains of whether she will find the true treasure that her mother lacked–someone to love who loves her back.

And I wince a bit just typing all this out. The Cinderella story in place here is so overt that one of the parts is named “Rags.” (Mercifully, we are spared “Riches.”) Where Flaubert beautifully balanced description, plot, and insight into the inner workings of Emma’s mind and emotions, Urbach tries to cram everything into one passage, resulting in achingly obvious taglines to scenes in which we are told explicitly that Berthe doesn’t like work on the farm, or that she  wants to make beautiful gowns. Her sore muscles in the first case and the drool she all but leaves on the windows of fancy stores in the second is plenty of information, and those extra sentences feel like the author second-guessing either her own ability to tell a story or the reader’s intelligence.

Finally, I took issue with Urbach’s portrayal of Emma Bovary, Berthe’s mother. In the author interview in the back of the book, Urbach says her first impression of Emma was like mine–that her story was tragic, and that she was a relatable character in her desire to escape the boring life she led. It was only when Urbach became a mother, she said, that Emma’s neglect of her daughter became a demonizing trait. So perhaps, as a childless woman in my twenties, I’ll change my mind someday as well. In the meantime, though, Emma comes across as too mean. I remember her ignoring Berthe in the book, but I don’t remember the little jabs and barbs. I had understood Emma to be so preoccupied with trying to capture glimpses of luxury that she forgot her child, not that she resented her daughter so much. Emma was selfish, no question, but she wanted the same things Berthe does–to be surrounded by beauty, to choose a life for herself, to find love that is passionate and remarkable, instead of placid and convenient. That doesn’t sound like a monster to me, and if Berthe is fortunate enough to have the strength/courage/persistence/spunk that her mother lacked, I would have hoped that she would also have the sympathy to understand Emma.

It might have been a different case if I had been able to come to the book with an open mind, instead of having Flaubert’s masterpiece echoing in the back of my head. Then again, without being familiar with the original, I don’t know if I even would have picked up Madame Bovary’s Daughter.

What’s your take on reinterpretations/continuations of classic books?

New Directions

Tags

2012, blogging, goals, inspiration, virtual studio

It’s been quite the learning year for blogging! When I made this blog as my midterm project for my E-Pub class, I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I’d ever use it for. In 2011, I resolved to post at least once a week, using the blog as a reminder to myself to take writing seriously and make progress toward my personal writing goals. I didn’t expect anyone to read it, but while I am far from well-read on the ethersphere (blogonet? i have no idea what the universe where people read blogs is called), I have a few dozen followers, and got enough attention to land me a spot on the Canary Review as well!

What this means, of course, is that I clearly need to step things up here. Through careful research, I have determined that one of the things all the cool bloggers do is write for audiences–as in, act like there actually are people reading this thing that you have posted to the entire internet. Writing myself little pep talks isn’t going to cut it anymore.

So here’s what I propose: since literature and writing are the things that make me feel happy and inspired, and sometimes tangentially related or even seemingly unrelated creative things do, too, I want to make this blog-space that I have a virtual studio, dedicated to stories and inspiration, both in traditional and a bit more unconventional form. Posting goes like this:

Once a week: What I’m Reading, because I want to read 75 books in 2012 and I like talking about them (and, without getting too braggy, I’ve read a shelf or two in my lifetime and I think I can pick some good ones)

Another day in the week: Writing/inspiration. Something I’ve found or that’s occurred to me that is good for creativity, that I think you might think is cool, too.

As many Fridays as I can: Flash fiction. Because writing crappy short-short stories is a good way to shake out my brain, which I will need given how much editing I have to do in 2012 (see: NaNoWriMo).

I don’t want to put down specific days, because I am still doing the 2-jobs-and-grad-school thing and I don’t always know what good writing days my schedule will allow, but that’s the plan for next year. And if you are one of the couple dozen people who stop by sometimes, and you see something really cool, send it my way! Let’s make creative inspiration a community thing.

Getting Consumed by Writing

Tags

quality versus quantity, writing, writing life

I took a breather for the last two weeks from the frenetic pace of NaNoWriMo writing. The second week was a break, at any rate. I spent the first week tackling my somewhat-neglected final project for my Seminar in Literature and Writing. The project was a translation thesis on Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert: we had to read at least two translated versions, select a passage, and put together a composite translation that we felt was best. I spent more hours than I thought a 350-word excerpt would require poring over editions, looking up the French using two dictionaries, and agonizing over word choice. This project was the anti-NaNo–quality is the only thing that matters, and a day’s work might be a paragraph.

Flaubert apparently wrote Madame Bovary much the same way. He talked about “composing” the book, rather than writing it, and lavished months of attention on individual scenes to balance the tone he wanted with the plot points he needed to convey. The result was that everything in the book connects. There isn’t a wasted sentence. When I think that, after 12 drafts, an editor still pointed out a fairly glaring factual error in one of the stories I’d been considering my best, the effect is discouraging, but also a kick in the pants.

Both NaNo and my Lit seminar are about being consumed, in different ways. NaNo is famous for its cavalier attitude toward the shitty first draft. “No plot? No problem!” is the unofficial motto. In order to hit 50,000 words in a month, you need to get consumed by writing, in its most gritty, basic, physical form. Butt in seat, fingers on keys. And for those who find 50,000 in a month too easy, I’ve seen anywhere from 75,000 to half a million posted as individual alternate goals. If there is a spare moment in your day, it should be spent writing, and all the rest should be spent thinking about what you will write next, so that when the next spare moment comes, the only limitation to how many words get down is how fast you can type.

The problem is the obvious one: in a 5,000-word story I write during NaNo, I am lucky to find 1,000 words’ worth of good or even usable text.

On the last night of class, we talked about how inhumanly good the writers we’ve been reading are. Faulkner, Flaubert, Coetzee, Peter Handke, Ingeborg Bachmann. They do things with words that are unapproachable. It’s not even talent anymore, it is actual genius, and it is both brilliant and frightening to think about a person who buys groceries and gets a stiff neck after sleeping wrong and pays bills making books like theirs. It’s impossible. The mastery of language, depth of thought, and fresh approaches in their writing is the kind of perfection that has to come from consuming yourself in how language and story works. That means reading books that challenge and inspire you instead of reading Hogfather for the ninth time, and being patient enough sometimes to understand why you’re struggling with a difficult scene and fix it, instead of using the NaNo trick of skipping ahead to the scene you’d rather be writing and leaving a messy hole behind.

I can do the speed-writing thing. I finished NaNo fairly easily this year, skipping a day here or there and making up with extra later. I can push myself into the 500-words-per-day routine, pound out a few blog articles a week, whatever. But I’ve been complaining for months about how the daily 500 elude me, and the blog’s been dry for weeks. I’m missing the other half of being consumed, the kind that makes it a worthwhile endeavor to hit whatever arbitrary quota I’ve set. It’s really scary to imagine letting myself get consumed with quality. With word count, I know how fast I type, and I know how long it takes to come up with the minimum creative threshold to fill seven pages with roughly coherent text. And I know how much time it eats. In November I barely exercised, I didn’t cook, I spent the minimum time I could on work and school without getting myself into trouble. It’s scary to think about what I would have to give up in order to give energy and concentration to quality. Would I stop caring about exercise and my appearance, like I did in college, and gain 20 pounds? Would I get cranky about doing wedding planning, since my creative energy is blown by the time I finish writing? Would I put less effort into the quality time I spend with Andrew? What if I put my energy in only to discover that even if I try my hardest for years, I’ll never turn out anything really good?

It’s sobering stuff. But it’s also smoke and mirrors. Of course I am going to spend time with my fiance. If I stop taking care of my body, eventually the people who love me will tactfully remind me that I feel better when I exercise, and I will find some way to work it back in. I can sacrifice an hour of sleep twice a week if I need to and hit the gym early, to leave my evenings free. The only thing on my list of fears that is a real possibility is that I’ll find out I’m not any good, but if I’m not putting energy into writing, that’s going to be a certainty anyway. So I’m reconsidering my fallback resolution of “Revise 15 stories for my MFA thesis,” which would necessitate my churning out a completely revised story every 3.4 weeks for the whole year. I might need more time than that. The new plan is to allow myself in 2012 to get consumed by quality in my writing (while still making time for wedding planning, of course!). I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, but I’m interested to find out.

TGIO!!

Tags

making time to write, nanowrimo, tgio, writing

NaNoWriMo is done! I validated yesterday with 50,240 words–and still had enough work done on my final project that I didn’t embarrass myself in my Skype conference with my professor!

What I love about doing National Novel Writing Month is that it’s an exceptional writer’s boot camp, and utterly puts me to shame when I complain the rest of the year about “not having time” to spit out 500 words a day. I cranked out an average of 1674 words a day for a month, and did schoolwork, and job work, and  went to the gym, and took a long weekend trip with the fiance.

Granted, some things slip a little when words are such a focus. Andrew’s been cooking me dinner for much of the last month so I wouldn’t live on frozen pizza and Triscuits. My apartment is cluttered. Blogging, as you may have noticed, went completely out the window. My words aren’t of high enough quality to justify me trying to make a steady practice of 1,667. But it can be done, life and writing together, and I love that NaNo reminds me that I can make time for outstanding productivity in terms of output, and that my creative imagination will not poop out on me.

I also love that I’ve got about 10 new stories! Combined with the drafts I have written already, I’d say I have around 20 pieces to polish and prep for the MFA thesis next fall. Not too shabby!

Well, reasonably shabby at this point (I think only three or four have been through any kind of revision), but the real point is that for right now I’ve got the chance to dive into what I have and see what I can revise into something usable for a book, which is pretty cool. Plus, I am excited to get back to fiddling around on the blog after the month hiatus.

TGIO, in NaNo slang, means “Thank God it’s over,” by the way, which of course for any kind of serious writer is far from being the case. I’ve got my work cut out for me. But the tough slog of churning out rough material, plots and characters and settings, is over. The fun part, of reshaping these story lumps into something someone else can enjoy, is just about to begin.