Loving

Loving by Henry Green is about the goings-on between the servants and masters in a castle in Ireland during WWII. It's a pretty simple tale, but there isn't much plot. There's a sort of love triangle between the butler, Charlie, his "man" (aka assistant) Albert, and a chamber maid, Edith, a missing ring, fear of the I.R.A., a drunken cook, an affair between the master's (Mrs. Tennant) daughter-in-law and Capt. Davenport while Mr. Jack (Mrs. Tennant's son) is off doing the army thing... it's more scenes and vignettes of what's happening as opposed to any traditional plot with a climax, denouement, etc.

There were some interesting things in Loving that I don't think I've come across yet in any other novels: firstly, there are two characters named Albert - there is Charlie's man Albert, and then the drunken cook's nephew Albert comes to stay to get away from the London bombings. Secondly, there is a character, Paddy, who nobody can understand except the other chamber maid, Kate. So all the servants will be sitting at dinner, and Paddy will say something. But you only know he said something because Charlie will ask, "What did he say?" and then Kate translates. Also, some of the transition from one "scene" to the next is done almost like in a movie. There isn't any real break in the action (I don't mean literally, action - there isn't any of that); instead, it goes something like this: there is a scene of the servants doing their thing in the castle, and in order to transition to Mrs. Tennant and daughter-in-law walking the grounds, Green will say (paraphrasing here): "While this was going on, Mrs. Tennant..." as if the scene in the castle fades out and we see them walking around. Sometimes this caught me off guard (I wasn't paying attention), and I would think - now where did Mrs. Tennant come from? Why does it now seem like they're out in the yard? So I would have to go back, and then I would realize that Green had subtly transitioned from one conversation to another.

Charlie is an odd character, and you can't really tell what his motives are... in the beginning, the original butler (Eldon) is dying, and Charlie really couldn't care less (well, neither can any of the other servants, but that's beside the point). Charlie is too busy trying to take over for Eldon. He seems kind of sleazy and none of the other servants like or trust him (except Edith). So, when he first starts making passes at her, you can't really tell if he's serious. Even in the end, you can't really tell...he says things that make you think he doesn't really care about Edith, but maybe he's just playing a game to get her to like him back...or maybe he's just a player (or is that spelled playa?). Edith is equally ambiguous. She seems all right most of the time, but then she wants to keep Mrs. Tennant's ring, (which she finds, then it goes missing again). It seemed out of character. I guess most - ok all - of the characters are pretty ambiguous in that way.

An interesting synchronicity is going on with my reading right now...I am currently in the Valley of Bones part of Dance to the Music of Time, in which Nick Jenkins, enrolled in the Army, is sent with his company to Northern Ireland (this is during WWII also). All of the characters in Loving are British nationals (or almost all of the characters - I couldn't figure out if Paddy was Irish) , and there is a big to-do about the IRA, fear of the IRA, fear of the Germans invading, fear for loved ones who may be being bombed, etc. Are they better to stay in Ireland, with all the Irish thugs out to get them and the threat of the Germans invading, or should they go back to England, abandoning the castle? In Dance, as I just mentioned, we're also in Ireland, but from a different perspective...but there's still the fear there. Someone gets attacked while walking to the barracks during a military exercise and has his guns stolen, and it is suggested that it was Irish nationals. It's interesting to see this side of things...I haven't run into stories about the British in Ireland during the war before.

It turns out that Henry Green was a comtemporary, friend, and former classmate of Powell and also Evelyn Waugh. It appears that Green had a colorful life - kind of unexpected, as Loving wasn't every colorful IMO. In conversation, he preferred gossip to serious subjects (not unexpectedly), was known as a ladies man, and eventually became an alcoholic. While at Oxford, he shunned intellectual pursuits in favor of going to the movies twice a day and "scorned his tutor, the bluff, hearty C.S. Lewis." Green also apparently had a cruel streak, and a girlfriend once told him, "Hurting - that should be the title of your next novel."

He was popular among his contemporaries and later authors. W.D. Auden called him "the best English novelist alive" (though he is no longer, since he is no longer alive); Eudora Welty stated that his work had "an intenstiy greater than that of any other writer of imaginative fiction today." And John Updike: "Henry Green was a novelist of such rarity, such marvellous originality, intuition, sensuality, and finish, that every fragment of his work is precious." Really, John, I don't know about that, but to each his own. My grandma always says it's good we don't all like the same things.

Loving is a pretty harmless book - sometimes amusing, short, and easy to get through. Not sure why it made the Modern Library's Top 100, but whatever...oh wait, isn't Updike on the Board? The edition of Loving that I own also contains two other books by Green: Living and Party Going. In the coming years, I will probably read both of them as well. A NY Times reviewer wrote, (of Anthony Powell) "Like Henry Green, an even better novelist, Anthony Powell was too British to catch on [in the U.S.] at first." So, if British comedies are your thing, you'd probably love it. If they annoy the piss out of you, don't bother. I'm somewhere in between. I think the following quote sums up Loving fairly well: "None of [Green's] books illustrates a philosophy, promotes a theme, or delivers a message. With him it is the richness of the felt, heard, and seen moment, often garnished with low comedy, that is the sole point - if, indeed, there is any point at all."

The Half Way Point

When I knew that Ulysses was coming up, I began to prepare. I felt like Rocky getting ready to take on whoever it is that Rocky fights...Dolf Lundgren or whoever that one guy was. I don't know - I never watched Rocky. But I wanted to get it (Ulysses that is, not Rocky). I wanted to be one of those people who says, "Yeah, I read it. It was awesome." I even considered purchasing the $20 or $30 guidebooks or the Annotated edition.

I started out in earnest. If Joyce used a Latin phrase, I would look up its meaning, and write it in the margin. I read his little episode guide or whatever he called it...where it lists the title for each episode (which is not included in the books), each episodes appropriate theme, color, body organ, etc (yes, Joyce assigned each episode a body organ). I wanted to understand...I desparately wanted to come out of this feeling like I had just gone through something important. I would have dived in and come out being able to say I made it through, and yes, I got it.

That initial enthusiasm lasted, oh, I think until the third episode, where Stephen is on the beach. Oh my. All this extra stuff, the chapter summaries and analysis, the suggestions, the reviews episode by episode were only making me feel dumber. I would read what was supposed to have gone on in the episode, and go back and try to find where that actually happened...did I miss the clue? At times it felt like the summaries were written about a different edition, and I had the one for Chinese mensa members or something...or else that the summaries were written about a different book entirely.

So, I gave up. I'm still sometimes reading the chapter summaries when I feel like it, but for the most part, I've decided to do it old school. After all, those people who read it when it was first published didn't have any guidebooks, and they still got it. Right? Maybe I'm not as smart as they were. Maybe they were pretending to get it so that they wouldn't feel stupid (like I suspect everyone who has read this and considers it great may be doing). Whatever...I don't care anymore.

I've heard that a reader of this book is rewarded by multiple readings. I guess those people like a challenge. They get knocked down, but they get up again. Not me, man. Though I did say once that I would rather read Ulysses again than the Ambassadors (and I still mean it), I believe that I will only be given that horrible choice in hell, or in some unimaginably cruel future in which an evil government has decided to burn all books except those two (oh the humanities! - maybe that will be the sign of the Antichrist?)...so right now I'm not too worried about it. As of today, I am predicting that I will read Proust's In Search of Lost Time before I read Ulysses again. And I think that I have myself scheduled to read that in, oh about 2058...

But then again, I have disliked books before only to get to the last 10 pages and love it. I was wrong about Dance to the Music of Time. I was wrong about Things Fall Apart. Will I be wrong about Ulysses? Seeing as how I still have almost 400 pages left, I really hope so. It would give me much more hope for Finnegan's Wake.

The Trick is to Keep Breathing

“Time is not a healer. I have lost the ease of being inside my own skin.”

I bought The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway two years ago and have been afraid to read it. Somewhere I read - and I have no idea where - that it is such a depressing book that you have to watch your own sanity when you are reading it. In addition, there are certain books that I can't read at certain times because of plot elements. Besides the seasonal trends in my reading, I have rules. For example, I cannot read a book about someone whose boyfriend/fiance/husband dies while my own husband is away, or getting ready to go away. I'm superstitious like that. And that is exactly what happens in this book.

When the miscarriage occurred, I felt lost...where do I turn? Of course, to me, that question usually implies "What book can I read now to make myself feel better?" Feel better doesn't necessarily mean happy - as the choice of this book at this point should illustrate - but rather something to help you get through. I wasn't ready yet for Kerouac...he will come later. I immediately reached for what is probably the book that I anticipate to the most depressing on my shelf...and that would be Galloway's.

The actual events of The Trick is to Keep Breathing are fairly simple. Joy Stone, a 27-year-old drama teacher in Scotland goes on a vacation with Michael, her live-in boyfriend (who is separated from his wife Norah), where he drowns in a pool. This part of the story is only given in brief flashbacks. What actually goes on in the course of the novel is Joy struggling with coming to terms with his death, and going through a deep depression in the mean time, during which she is hospitalized briefly.

Make no mistake: this novel is bleak. What Joy is going through is real and raw. But it is the most accurate depiction of what really happens in depression that I recall coming across in a novel.

The text is fragmented, and becomes more so as Joy becomes more fragmented herself. Just how fragmented, you may ask? One morning, I thought that I would read a little before I went to work. I picked it up, opened it to the spot where the bookmark had been and started reading. After about 10 minutes, it was time to leave. I looked at what page number that I was on and realized that I couldn't have just read 30+ pages from where I had stopped the night before. It wasn't until then that I realized that I had put the bookmark in the wrong place...about 20 pages ahead of where I actually was in the novel. But that isn't a testiment to the novel itself, but Joy's state of mind: what does it matter if B happened before A, or if A happened first? Time is passing, but it doesn't matter in what order. It's all fractured and thoughts flow from one to the next without connection:

[writing letter] “The photograph you asked for is enclosed. I’m sorry it looks so terrible: polaroids never show me at my best.”

I write HAHA so she knows it’s a joke to be on the safe side then look at the photo near the edge of the table. I took it facing the mirror because I couldn’t work the self-timer. The camera bludgeons off half my face and the flash whites out the rest. My arms are looped over my head to reach the shutter and hold the thing in place. It looks like a spider devouring a light bulb. The only visible eye is shut from the glare. It doesn’t look like anybody. It doesn’t look like

Outside there is scaffolding and a strip of moon. Pockmarks of rain on the glass. Alter the focus and you see eyes. They blink when I do but it proves nothing. There’s no of telling if it’s really
Last Sunday night…

But that's the way things are when you're in this place - nothing is connected. Trivial things become the focus, because what else is there? When the trivial things aren't the center, you realize nothing is in the center:

What will I do while I’m lasting, Marianne? What will I do?

The day Marianne left, I found a note pinned to the kitchen wall. It was there when I came back from the station without her along with some books of poems, addresses, a foreign phone number, money and a bottle of gin. The gin and the money went long since. The note is still there.

THINGS YOU CAN DO IN THE EVENING
Listen to the radio
Watch TV
Have a bath
Listen to records
Read
Write letters or visit
Go for a walk
Sew
Go out for a meal
Phone someone nice

I hear every radio programme at least twice. I can recite the news by the time I go to bed. Besides I have to move around while I’m listening. This is not an occupation on its own.

TV is tricky: the news is depressing and the programmes sometimes worse. I hate adverts. They are full of thin women doing exercises and smiling all the time. They make me guilty.

The water takes ages for a bath. I hate waiting.

It’s asking for trouble to listen to music alone.

I already read everything. I read poems and plays and novels and newspapers and comic books and magazines. I read tins in supermarkets and leaflets that come through the door, unsolicited mail. None of it lasts long and it doesn’t give me answers. Reading too fast is not soothing.

Writing is problematic. I cover paper with words as fast as painting. Sometimes it’s indecipherable and I throw it away.

Visiting is awkward. The place I live is an annexe of nowhere and besides, I don’t like to wish myself on anyone.

Walking is awful. I do that when I want to feel worse. I always run.

Sewing and going for a meal. Tricky juxtaposition.

and:

I’m getting worried though. Some of the things I do worry me. I want things I can’t have, trivial things. I want cards. I want cartoon characters and trite verses wishing me well. I see Michael in buses and cars and walks past the road outside the window. Visiting times are terrible. I can’t get the hang of not wondering what to knit him for Christmas.

also:

The difference is minding. I mind the resultant moral dilemma of having no answers. I never forget the f*&%$*g questions. They’re always there, accusing me of having no answers yet. If there are no answers there is no point: a terror of absurdity.

This is exactly what depression is. You can't escape from inside your own head - something that is repeated again and again in the novel. In the end, Joy realizes (in the midst of a potential suicide attempt), that though she doesn't particularly want to live, she also doesn't want to die. So, what can you do? You have to figure out how to live, and that usually starts with the simple things: Listen to the radio, Watch TV, Have a bath, listen to records, etc. Somewhere, after a serach of the internet for anything written about this book, I came across someone who reviewed it on their blog and wondered what it is that makes Joy bother to get up in the morning at all. In the text, Joy states at one time: "No matter how often I think I can't stand it anymore, I always do. There is no alternative. I don't fall, I don't foam at the mouth, faint, collapse or die. It's the same for all of us. You can't get out of the inside of your own head. Soemthing keeps you going. Something always does." I've been there, at that point, many times in my life. More and more burdens, more and more shitty things happening, and I think: I'm at the end of my rope. I can't take anything more. And then, more comes and you take it. You don't particularly want to live, but you don't want the alternative either.

As I mentioned, I haven't been able to find many articles or reviews of this book...not in the NY Times, the London Times Literary Supplement, etc. Most of what comes up from a search has to do with the Garbage song of the same name. This is surprising because it won some awards in Scotland (Galloway's homeland) and was shortlisted for some more internationally known awards. It's also a damn good book about a woman's experience with depression and is just as relevant, insteresting, distressing, whatnot as Girl, Interupted, which obviously deals with a similar (though true) experience. I have often returned to Girl, Interupted when I find myself in a hole...I've read it at least three or four times. When you're down in it, it's best to have someone with you - and not someone who is going to tell you "oh I've been there, it'll get better" or "just get over it," or whatever else people might say. With books, you are able to find your own thoughts in a text...which is good because often depression takes away your thoughts, or your ability to articulate them, even in your own head. All you have is an emotion without words.

Personally, I didn't find the book overly depressing, but then again I read Holocaust literature for "fun" so my opinion might be skewed. Others with more cheerful dispositions might have a completely different experience. But it was definately exactly what I needed. The trick is to keep breathing. Everything else will come when it's time.

August Update

I'm at a strange place in my life. Sometimes I'm torn on this blog as to how much of my personal life to post...on the one hand, I feel like it has no real relevance here and it's best to keep those to spheres completely separate...or as separate as possible. On the other hand, what is going on in my life greatly influences what I read and my general reading habits.

I have been sick for the last month. Of course it comes during Ulysses. It was supposed to be a happy time...my husband and I were expecting. But they lie when they tell it's "morning sickness" because I was sick ALL THE TIME, and for a week survived on chocolate poptarts, macaroni and cheese and baked potatoes. Then, mac & cheese started to make me sick so I switched to spaghetti. I couldn't read at all. This is why I needed something comforting, something easy. I finished Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit last Friday while sitting in my doctor's waiting room. An hour later, I knew that I had had a miscarriage. The next day, I spent a few hours in bed and finished the second movement of Dance to the Music of Time...so now I'm officially half way through it. Over the weekend I picked up Loving by Henry Green, which is ok so far and Once and Future King, which I don't really care for yet (I'm only on Chapter 2), but we'll see where it goes. On Wednesday I had a medical procedure done at the hospital, so for right now other than the big purple bruise on my wrist from the IV, I'm physically recovered or recovering. But I think that it will take a long time to recover emotionally. This has been a rough month, and now it's over, but I don't want it to be.

Yesterday, I picked up The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway. I bought this book two years ago and have been afraid to read it. Somewhere, I read or heard someone say that it's not a book to read when you're at all feeling down, because it is A DEPRESSING BOOK. But seriously, do they expect someone to read such a book when they're happy? I like it thus far. I can tell it will be bleak. But bleak is a place where I am at right now, and I'm sure it will be nice to have Galloway for company.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

I adore Jeanette Winterson. I came to her through an interview I had seen on a Bill Moyers' PBS special called "Faith and Reason." The program wasn't really about either faith or reason...at least the episodes I saw, which focused a lot on mythology and the role that it can play in our lives today. This was probably around the same time that I had become interested in Joseph Campbell. Winterson had recently written a retelling of the Atlas myth called Weight (which I own but have not yet read). I immediately fell in love with Winterson. I printed out the transcript for the show and kept it on my kitchen table for a long time. What a life she had! Winterson is someone who understands the importance of reading...she understands what it can mean in a person's life, and that was evident in the Moyers interview:

My mother was terrified of any secular influences entering our lives. My father is illiterate and every day my mother used to read to us from the King James Bible and only six books were allowed in the house. The Bible was one, and the other five were books about the Bible.

Although in our house books weren't allowed, because I had a job on the market stool I began to buy books with the money that I was earning and smuggle them in secretly and hide them under the bed. Now anybody with a single bed, standard size, and a collection of paperbacks, standard size, will know that 77 per layer can be accommodated under the mattress. And this is what I did. And over time, my bed began to rise visibly. And it was rather like The Princess & The Pea.

And one night when I was sleeping closer to the ceiling than to the floor, my mother came in, because she had a suspicious nature. And she saw a corner of the book poking out from under the counter pen. And she tugged at it, and this was a disastrous choice, because it was by D.H. Lawrence and it was WOMEN IN LOVE. She knew that Lawrence was a Satanist and a pornographer, because my mother was an intelligent woman. She had simply barricaded books out of her life, and they had to be barricaded out of our lives. And when challenged with her defense, she always used to say, "Well, the trouble with a book is that you never know what's in it until it's too late." How true.

The books came tumbling down and me on the top of them onto the floor. Mrs. Winterson gathered up the piles of books, and she threw them out of my bedroom window and into the back yard. And then she went and got the paraffin stove, emptied the contents onto the pile of books and set fire to them.

And I learned then that whatever is on the outside can be taken away. Whatever it is that you think of as precious can be destroyed by somebody else. That none of it is safe. That there is always a moment when the things that we love, the things where we put our trust can be taken away, unless they're on the inside. And that's why I still memorize text, because if it's on the inside, they can't take it away from you, because nobody knows what's there. And I think that one of the reasons that tyrants hate books, ban them, burn them is not simply what they contain though that's often the obvious reason, but what they represent. Because reading is an act of free will, and it's a private act. It's an intimate dialogue between you and the text. And in there is all kinds of possibility.

I knew that this was an author I had to seek out.

My first encounter with Winterson's writing was Written on the Body. I was completely blown away by the power of that novel and the author's writing. It was like a punch in face. Winterson is known for being arrogant and confident about herself and her writing. She has declared herself heir to Virginia Woolf. She has nominated her own books for literary prizes and she has declared herself her favorite living author. Usually, that would get on my nerves. But I believe that Winterson has good reason to be so confident. She is a very powerful, gifted writer, and one of my favorites that is currently writing.


So, when this not feeling well thing came around, and the only book that I had to read was Ulysses, which gives me headaches on its own, I knew that I needed something in between... something that wouldn't be too difficult to read, but something that I could enjoy...something comforting, that I could curl up with in bed and not feel overwhelmed or lonely. And there is Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, starting up at me from the pile. I picked it up, took it into bed, read the first paragraph and thought, yes...this is what I needed.

Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that.

She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window.

She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies.

Enemies were: The Devil (in his many forms); Next Door; Sex (in its many forms); Slugs

Friends were: God; Our dog; Auntie Madge; The Novels of Charlotte Bronte; Slug pellets

and me, at first. I had been brought in to join her in a tag match against the Rest of the World. She had a mysterious attitude towards the begetting of children; it wasn't that she couldn't do it, more that she didn't want to do it. She was very bitter about the Virgin Mary getting there first. So she did the next est thing and arranged for a foundling. That was me.

For some reason, Oranges evoked for me the same landscape as Charlie Bucket's house in Willy Wonka. This poor, industrial wasteland, where the streets are nothing but mud, and the sky is always gray or orange-ish. It is always fall or winter, and the Winterson's live in a shack at the end of the road. There is nothing in the book that describes the place as that (except for the outdoor plumbing), but that is what it evoked for me. Bleakness. And on top of this bleakness is Jeanette, like a fireball.

Oranges isn't exactly autobiography. It's a way of using yourself and the past to create a fiction around all of that. She is telling stories...but there's no reason for us to believe that they are entirely true, even in a book cast as a memoir. (Winterson's mother was mad about her portrayal in Oranges because she said it wasn't true. Wintersons' response was, "Who said it was supposed to be true?"). The story is interspersed with fairy tales to show how Jeanette is dealing with her problem: her family is crazy Pentecostal religious, and she is a lesbian.

Winterson is fabulous in this book, as she was with Written on the Body. She is forceful and aggressive, both personally and in her writing. A quotation:

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me...Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have...

There is just something about the prose that knocks you over. The punch in the face.

Winterson takes her work very seriously. It's not just writing to her...you can tell by the way that she talks about the importance of reading and the role that books played in her life that she has reason to take her craft seriously. I will leave you with some Winterson quotes, from her website:

"Opening a book often opens a door."

"The books we love say something about us, and about our friends. Scanning someone's bookshelf can tell you as much as reading their diary. The quickest way to intimacy is not to share a bed or a holiday, but to share a book."

"What is certain is that we could no more be parted from the books we love than be parted from ourselves. It's not even a question of re-reading them often. I like to touch their spines from time to time, or pull out a page here and there, and just look at it for pleasure. When I'm in a mess, I go to my books, and out of the fairly large number I like to have around me, there are a few that are as close as any living friend. "What shall I do?" I ask, and there is always an answer, though not always the answer I want."

"The best comfort, as ever, is wide reading, so that when you need that poem, it is already there."

Eat, Pray, Love

I'll be honest - I'm skeptical of other people's "spiritual journeys" and the books they write about them. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. And not only do I not give a damn, I think that more often than not, they're filled with half-baked of ideas that feed into people's need to believe that there is some grand scheme for their life...that if they only could figure out what it is that they're supposed to be doing, they'd be happy. As in, "If only I could meet a Balinese medicine man...maybe he would know what my job is supposed to be here." I'm too much of a cynical existentialist to be able to stand that stuff. When I was 13 years old, I had a dream that I was walking in a floating hallway...I asked out loud, "what is the meaning of life?" A voice answered me and said, "There is none." It took me another two years to figure it out - oh, right...there isn't an externally prescribed meaning to anyone's life...you have to make your own meaning. That epiphany was two years before the beginning of my love for Sartre and Camus and nine years before I ran into Joseph Campbell who said, "Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be." Give me Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotions and Campbell's Myths to Live By and Reflections on the Art of Living and that's about all the spiritual journey stuff I need.

There has been buzz around Eat, Pray, Love...but not buzz in the circles that I frequent. I'm talking about buzz in the Oprah book club crowd. At least, I think that's where it was. Anyway, it was out there, in spiritual journey book-land, and I only heard mumblings...like feeling a slight tremor from an earthquake 10,000 miles away. I saw it at the bookstore, and rolled my eyes. "I'm not reading that crap," I thought to myself. And then, of course, my book club chooses it for the July reading. I had already "scheduled" Ulysses for July, so the choice of books was odd in a few ways. Firstly, I was glad that it wasn't a thicker, denser book that was chosen. I could not have sloshed through both Ulysses and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I knew that EPL would be light reading, so in that sense I wasn't too upset. But secondly, I knew that it would create this weird force...to read two books so dichotomously opposed to each other...maybe there would be an explosion - but hopefully not in my head.

I'll start out by saying that by page 40, most of this review had already begun spewing - yes, spewing - out, like a volcano out of control. The basic plot is the following: Gilbert has gone through a messy divorce and decides to embark on a year long journey (paid for by the book advance she gets to write a story about trip) to explore pleasure and devotion (or something like that) in three countries. She will eat in Italy, live in a guru-following community in India, and visit a Balinese medicine man and fall in love in Indonesia. I don’t think that I need to say that I disliked this book. In fact, I have so many things to criticize about it, that I don’t know where to start. Within the first five pages of this book, I compulsively began to roll my eyes. Oh geez, I thought, 300+ pages of this?

Firstly, Gilbert needed an editor. If she had an editor, s/he should have been fired immediately. The amount of unnecessary bullshit and description was distracting. For example, Gilbert decides that she wants to learn Italian. She’s in this self-discovery mode in which she realizes for the first time in her life (so she says) the idea that she can pursue her own interests. Rather than just say, I always wanted to learn Italian, she has to go into the following description:

“For years, I wished I could speak Italian – a language I find more beautiful than roses – but I could never make the practical justification for studying it…What was I going to do with Italian? It’s not like I was going to move there. It would be more practical to learn how to play the accordion. But why must everything always have a practical application? I’d been such a diligent soldier for years – working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now? And it wasn’t that outrageous a goal, anyway, to want to study a language. It’s not like I was saying, at age thirty-two, ‘I want to become the principal ballerina for the New York City Ballet.’ Studying a language is something you can actually do.” (pg 23-24).

She then goes on to explain the pleasure of learning Italian:

“Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me…I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it’s an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Son oil suo schiavo! Meaning: “I am your slave!”) Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again.”

I just wanted to shout: LIZ! You like Italian? You want to learn Italian? SFW!-Just get to it already! After all, was it really that impractical anyway? She’s a writer who travels often to cover stories, etc. And since it was her idea to write this book before setting off on the journey, her decision to learn Italian probably influenced her decision to go to Italy. If she had pursued Russian or Chinese or Swahili, this book might not have had an Italy chapter.

This brings us to my second criticism: the fact that the book was conceived of before the journey. Isn’t it convenient that EVERYTHING that happens to her is so PERFECT that it fit right into the story. Seriously: do people like Richard from Texas in the Ashram (with his "down-home" wisdom) and "Luca Spaghetti" really exist in the real world? I doubt it. Another example (again, with too much description): “Later in the day, I found a library. Dear me, how I love a library. Because we are in Rome, this library is a beautiful old thing, and within it there is a courtyard garden which you’d never have guessed existed if you’d only looked at the place from the street. The garden is a perfect square [Kristin’s Question: is there any square which isn’t perfect? I mean, if something was an imperfect square, wouldn’t it, by definition, not be a square, but rather a rectangle? Just asking], dotted with orange trees and, in the center, a fountain…I found a seat under an orange tree and opened one of the poetry books I’d purchased yesterday. Louise Glück. I read the first poem in Italian, then in English, and stopped short at this line: Dal cento della mia venne una grande Fontana… ‘From the center of my life, there came a great fountain…’ I set the book down in my lap, shaking with relief.” (pg. 39). Isn’t that just perfect? Isn’t it just perfect that in Bali a few years before her trip, she met the medicine man that she would visit again, and he read her fortune and said that she would come back. Now, if I was STUPID, I would say (in trippy, spaced out, new-age voice) “Wow. Like, he was totally right. He completely saw what was going to happen to her. Isn’t that such a miracle?” No, it wasn’t. The medicine man told her she was going to come back, so she pitched a book to some publishers about her taking a trip back to Indonesia. Not a miracle. Gilbert is also hyper-aware of the reader and the fact that she is writing a book. She interjects alternative titles, stops in the middle of thoughts and says, “I know this is going to sound x, but…” This is confused and complicated as the book is written in the present tense, as if she actually wrote the thing during her travels, and then came back afterwards and put in stuff that could only have been known after the fact.

Throughout the book, it seemed that she was trying to deliberately be cute and endearing, which only aggravated me. Almost every other sentence seemed like she was trying to make friends with the reader, to have childish enthusiasm for everything, which only came across as lame and ridiculous. A friend recommends a pizzeria in Naples that he considers the best pizza in town. What is Gilbert’s reaction? “I found this a wildly exciting prospect, given that the best pizza in Italy is from Naples, and the best pizza in the world is from Italy, which means that is pizzeria must offer…I’m almost too superstitious to say it…the best pizza in the world? …I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair.” Really? I’m going to be honest – at that point I thought to myself, Liz, maybe you really do need to start taking your medicine again, because this is getting on my nerves – YOU are getting on my nerves. Is there a medication for being excessively hyperbolic? Because if there is, will someone please get her a prescription?

In the beginning of the book, when she is having a breakdown because she hates being married, and she is sobbing on the bathroom floor at 3 a.m. (as all reviews of this book are obligated to tell you), she decides to pray. “What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: ‘Hello God. How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you.’ That’s right – I was speaking to the creator of the universe as though we’d just been introduced at a cocktail party…In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, ‘I’ve always been a big fan of your work.’” Oh, aren’t you sooo cute Gilbert? ARRRGGGHHH! Just writing this review is making me infuriated at this poppycock!

On top of attempting to be endearing, she is also extremely apologetic. The easiest example I can give is the following: “What happened was that I started to pray. You know – like, to God. Now, this was a first for me. And since this is the first time I have introduced that loaded word – GOD – into my book, and since this is a work which will appear many times again throughout these pages, it seems only fair that I pause here for a moment to explain exactly what I mean when I say that word, just so people can decide right away how offended they need to get. Saving for later the argument about whether God exists at all (no-here’s a better idea: let’s skip that argument completely), let me first explain why I use the word God, when I could just as easily use the work Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu or Zeus…For some reason why I pray, I do not address my prayers to The Universe, The Great Void, The Force, The Supreme Self, The Whole, The Creator (etc.)…I have nothing against any of those terms. I feel they are all equal because they are all equally adequate and inadequate descriptions of the indescribable. But we each do need a functional name for this indescribably, and “God” is the name that feels the most warm to me, so that’s what I use. I should also confess that I generally refer to God as “Him,” which doesn’t bother me because, to my mind, it’s just a convenient personalizing pronoun, not a precise anatomical description or a cause for revolution. Of course, I don’t mind if people call God “Her,” and I understand the urge to do so. Again – to me, these are both equal terms, equally adequate and inadequate.” (pg 12-13). She is clearly going out of her way not to offend any of her readers. This contriteness crops up occasionally throughout EPL, and as always, I just want to shout, GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!

Not only do I not like the book itself, I do not like Gilbert. Because of the nature of this book, I’m not sure if I should say that I don’t like Gilbert as a narrator, or that I don’t like Gilbert the person. It’s a tough call. But whichever, I can’t stand her. She is obviously the type of person who thinks she is cute, endearing, that everyone likes her – the type of person who believes that she is the kindest, nicest, funniest, sweetest person you could ever meet. She tells us straight out, (again, in typical over-detailed fashion) “I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. I once made friends with a war criminal in Serbia, and he invited me to go on a mountain holiday with his family. Not that I’m proud to list Serbian mass murderers amongst my nearest and dearest (I had to befriend him for a story, and also so he wouldn’t punch me)…but I’m just saying, I can do it. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of Sheetrock.” (pg. 41) She is probably also the type of person who needs everyone to like her…the type of person who will obsess over why one particular person doesn’t think that she’s the greatest person on earth. I’ve known people like her, and in case you couldn’t guess, THEY REALLY GET ON MY NERVES. And I’m not trying to be rude when I say this, but is Gilbert as ‘learned’ as she tries to project? She is constantly quoting gurus, yogi masters, Sufi texts, Catholic saints and mystics, etc. etc., but instead of it coming across as someone who is intimately acquainted with the texts of various world religions (like the Joseph Campbell was), she comes across as someone who got a book of Religious Quotations and Anecdotes from Around the World and used it generously. It just didn’t feel genuine. And that, I would say, is in contrast to the rest of the book. As much as she thoroughly annoyed me, she did seem genuine in all her exuberance and exaggeration…lame and ridiculous, yes, but it didn’t seem like a put-on. And that at least made her less frustrating than if it had come across as fake. Because if there is any type of person who would probably get on my nerves more than someone like Gilbert is someone who pretends to be someone like Gilbert.

One last comment on Gilbert/EPL: regarding her marriage/divorce, on page 12, she tells us: “The many reasons I don’t want to be this man’s wife anymore are too personal and too sad to share here. (pg. 12). Really, Liz – you tell us about your masturbating (pg 287 for those who are into that sort of stuff), but the reasons you want a divorce are too personal? I’m just saying…

While sifting through the reviews at amazon.com, I was amazed that while the negative reviewers criticized Gilbert and the book (self-absorbed, annoying, aggravating, “relentless drivel,” immature, etc.), the positive reviews almost always included an attack on the negative reviewers: they're just jealous, they're just traditional soccer moms who couldn't understand, they're religious nuts who are offended by Gilbert's not searching for Jesus, etc. etc. The positive reviewers also seem to take offense that the haters are dissing Gilbert personally by not liking her book. As in, "Nobody forced you to pick up the book! Good for Gilbert in finding happiness! You shouldn't knock that." So, here's my disclaimer: I'm not criticizing Gilbert's journey, her decisions, her emotional state, her depression, divorce, whatever. I'm criticizing the book she was paid to write. Ok, maybe I'm a little jealous of the all-expenses-paid trip around the world - I'd take one of them if someone wanted to give it to me. But that had nothing to do with why I didn't like the book.

Additionally, these positive reviewers seem to think that because it's a personal story, no one has a right to criticize it. Here is an analogy: if I drew circles on the wall with marker and called it a work of art and tried to sell it to a museum, and you said my artwork was a piece of crap, well, that's your prerogative, as I put my spiritual circle drawing in the public sphere. You put something out in the public realm, you are open to criticism about the merits of your work. (As in, if you hate my blog and think that I'm stupid, you're permitted to think that, to tell me so, and to write about how and why I'm stupid on your own blog...so long as you're not misrepresenting what I said, or lying about me, or defaming my character, etc. - and I have the right to delete any of your nasty comments from my blog should you choose to leave any.) I am permitted to say that Denise Richards is a horrible actress who ruins every movie that I have ever seen her in. I don't care if her acting is a spiritual expression. Maybe she's a nice person (she seems relatively normal on her reality show), but I can still say she's a bad actress.

In the same way that Denise Richards utterly annoys me, Elizabeth Gilbert utterly annoys me. Maybe she's a nice person. She says she can make friends with anyone, and maybe if I knew her she would make friends with me. I'll be the first to admit that I am easily annoyed by people. This is a character trait that I recognize and probably should work on with my therapist. But there are certain types of people that I just have no patience with. I recognized Gilbert as one of those people (at least her narrative and writing style) by, oh, page 10.

I promised that I would come to this book with an open mind. I tried - I really, honestly did. But before the end of my first day of reading, I knew keeping an open mind would be more challenging than Gilbert's meditating with mosquitoes. I kept saying to Shawn, "Maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental. Maybe I'm just being an Oscar the Grouch about this thing." But you know what? Sometimes Oscar the Grouch was right (he really was the critical thinker in the bunch). For a long time, it was difficult for me to write on this blog about books I didn't like, and to be honest and vocal about the fact that I didn't like them. I didn't want to offend someone who might genuinely have enjoyed the book. But I'm so over that now. If you liked this book - good for you. I don't understand, but good for you.

And p.s. – I did NOT appreciate the pathetic attempt at an R.E.M. joke on page 208 of EPL. It was so bad, in fact, that I will not repeat it here.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

I read this book for the first time about two or three years ago, and I thought that it was just ho-hum. Later, I came across Doug Shaw's review and got it. Oh, that's what it was about! It went on my "To Be Re-read" list, and I was excited when my book club chose it to be June' read. I definately liked it much more the second time around.

The story begins in a southern mill town. Mr. Singer and Spiros Antonapoulus are deaf mutes who live together. Spiros is mentally unstable, and his cousin/guardian has him committed to an asylum. This completely breaks Mr. Singer’s heart. (Were they just friends? Were they lovers? I don’t know…I think it’s kind of irrelevant). Anyhoo, Spiros is institutionalized and Singer moves into a boarding house owned by the Kelly family.

The book then follows four town misfits (Mick Kelly, Dr. Copeland, Jake, and Biff) who believe they have found their bosom buddy in Mr. Singer. While Dr. Copeland believes that Mr. Singer is the only white man he has ever met who understands the plight of the “negro race,” Jake thinks that Singer understands the hardship of the worker in a capitalist society. Perhaps strangest of all is Mick, who believes that Singer understands music. Other people in the town believe that Singer is like them as well: the Turks think that he is a Turk, the union members believe that he is a CIO organizer or something, etc. Somehow, this deaf mute became the screen on which everyone projected themselves. They all are seeking understanding amidst frustration, disappointment and unfairness and they find in Singer exactly what they are looking for.

Singer, however, really has no clue what's up with all these crazy people...they think that he "gets" them, but in reality he doesn't. At one point in the novel, these four accidentally all find themselves in Singer's room at the same time, and while they will talk Singer's ear off when they are alone, they have nothing to say to each other - they are completely unable to relate to one another. Singer is the only one who understands them, even though he doesn't really.

Singer, of course, does the same thing with Spiros that the others do with him: he believes that Spiros understands, even though he couldn't care less about Singer unless food is involved. Singer does elaborate things to please Spiros, including buying him a movie projection machine to use in asylum and writing him letters (Spiros is illiterate). But Spiros probably even more removed from Singer than Singer is from his disciples. That's the sad part: Singer needs Spiros more pitifully than the gang of four need him.

What makes this whole thing even more tragic is that none of the four who love Singer realize what's going on with him regarding Spiros. He will disappear for a week or so at a time to visit his friend, but leaves no explanation, never tells anyone he's going away. When he returns, his "friends" will ask him where he was, but when he pretends not to understand their question, they just go on as if nothing had happened. They don't realize the depth of Singer's pain, while he sits and actively listens to all their problems. One day, Singer goes to visit Spiros to discover that he has died. Singer comes home and kills himself, and of course no one knows or understands why. The four others pretty much look at it as if Singer betrayed them.

At the book club, the discussion focused in large part on the nature of misfits and why those in the book could not "accept other people's acceptance..."; in other words, why are these misfits misfits? This is really something I've been hearing my entire life and it's very frustrating. I'm sure that while most people have felt out of place at some time or other, to be a misfit is to essentially feel out of place almost all of the time, even amongst other people who don't fit in. And no matter how hard one tries, you can never really feel part of the group...you're always separate, somehow...outside...like constantly being at a party where you don't know anyone and no one will talk to you. It's a search for understanding, like the characters in the book, and boils down to a fundamental question: can any of us really, truly be understood by someone else? The answer is probably not.

There was also a mention of whether these characters are "not right" because of the Southern Gothic style. Frankly, the characters in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter are some of the most normal characters that I have encountered in Southern literature. Compare this to Flannery O'Connor's crazy religious nuts, and I think you'll know what I mean. My favorite thing that was mentioned was by someone else who vocalized her feelings of misfit-ness, who said, "I was reading this book thinking, wow, McCullers really gets what it's like to be an outsider. And then in the end, there is no redemption, no hope for these characters. Come on Carson, I thought we were friends here!" That is really true...the book gives such life to these characters that don't fit in, but in the end they are trapped by their circumstances. No matter how talented Mick is musically, she's never going to write that symphony. Is that sad? Of course, but it's reality. It's what one would expect to happen given the circumstances of her life. McCullers doesn't include any sentimentality or emotion in the book...not for the characters, not for their situations, and dooms them all to the fates that they should be expected to have, not the ones that they should have. It's as if McCullers is saying, "oh well, such is life!" to anyone who desires to find hope in her book. But as I was writing the quote above, about the feeling of camaraderie with McCullers, I realized that to say that of the author - that she fundamentally understands - is to do the same thing that the characters did to Singer - she believed that the author really understood her life, and then realized that there was no understanding, and there is a sense of betrayal that comes with that...which is exactly what the characters felt after Singer shot himself.

I’m finding a trend in book club: when we read books that are dark and bleak, such as The Heart… and The Road, I LOVE them (or at least like them more than average), but the reactions of the others tends towards opposition and non-understanding of the book. With the happier books (Water for Elephants), I can’t stand them, but the consensus is, “what a great book!” July’s book is Eat, Pray, Love. I’m going into it with an open mind, but let’s just say I don’t have high hopes.

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Right now, I’m winding down The Odyssey (about 80 pages to go) and gearing up for Ulysses. I’ll be honest – Joyce scars me, and I’m expecting my experience with Ulysses to be like being an athlete at the Olympics. Maybe it won’t be so bad…it’s just got such a horrible reputation. Seriously, it feels like getting ready for an athletic event – I’m preparing and I'm imagining people are patting me on the back saying “Good luck"...jumping around like a boxer ready for a fight. But it really can't be that difficult, right?