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Existential Humor? John Barth’s The Floating Opera

November 5, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

JohnBarth-CoverI know John Barth is a well-regarded American writer. Somehow I’d missed reading Barth as an English major back in college. To be fair, I’d focused on nineteenth century English literature so there were many American writers that I missed during those brief four years. So I was excited to be reading Barth for the first time as part of my journey into Maryland. Sadly, The Floating Opera, Barth’s first novel, disappointed me. Interestingly, Barth sets me up for this dissatisfaction in his “Preparatory Note to the Revised Edition.” He tells me that this novel was written in only three months and its companion piece in the following three months. He explains that this was his first novel which he wrote at age twenty-four after “writing fiction industriously for five years.” He also says that he had “deservedly—no success whatever with the publishers” until one finally agreed to publish The Floating Opera, but only after he made major changes in its construction, “notably about the stern.” He’s pleased to note that, in this edition, he has changed the novel back to its “original and correct ending,” but wants the reader to recognize it as “the very first novel of a very young man.” Not exactly a resounding recommendation, right? I feel adequately forewarned.

The story of this novel takes place on a particular day (about June 21, 1937) in the life of a then thirty seven year old lawyer, Todd Andrews, when Andrews changes his mind about ending his own life. The novel is written in a first person stream of consciousness style. At first I’m drawn in. I like the invitation the author has given me: “. . . come along with me reader, and don’t fear for your weak heart; I’ve one myself, and know the value of inserting first a toe, then a foot, next a leg, very slowly your hips and stomach, and finally your whole self into my story.”  Todd Andrews is an eccentric fellow, though he says he isn’t. He works in the law firm established by his father, lives in a single room in the Dorset Hotel, just a stone’s throw from his office on lawyer’s row and the courthouse. He describes himself as “interested in any number of things, enthusiastic about nothing.” Alas, I find myself not very enthusiastic about him.

The title of the novel is from a showboat that traveled around the Virginia and Maryland tidewaters during that time, and is a metaphor for life: FloatingOpera-handbill“our friends float past; we become involved with them; they float on, and we must rely on hearsay or lose track of them completely; they float back again, and we either renew our friendship—catch up to date—or find that they and we don’t comprehend each other anymore.” And so, this novel is structured the same way, floating “willy-nilly on the tide of my vagrant prose” where the plot “sails in and out of view.”

Let’s see if I can summarize the plot. Todd Andrews wakes up on the day in question and, as is his habit, takes a big swig of Sherbrook rye whiskey, a routine he began in college to shake a hangover. As he is splashing water on his face, he has an inspiration—today is the day he will destroy himself by suicide. He feels like he has been made no progress in life over the last eighteen years, that he’s back to where he started then, a single man who’s in love with his best friend’s wife and mistress. His friend knows about the affair, he has encouraged it actually. It is to his mistress that Andrews leaves a farewell note.

Then Andrews gives us a brief summary of his life, his first sexual experience, college, military service, law school, law practice. We learn that his father has also committed suicide and he has been trying to figure out why it happened by writing a long letter to his father over the years. He also tells us a lot about his sexual prowess, despite his chronic prostate problem he is apparently a great lover. Of course.

Okay, now I’m bored with this review. Let me just say that The Floating Opera is meant to be    humorous and I did find some snippets sort of funny. It’s also, I think, meant to be sort of  existential. Mostly, Barth’s adolescent romp through life in this short novella, his cynical  searching for meaning, and his conclusions fell flat on the page and left me cold. Here’s what he  concludes in a funny, off-hand kind of way:

  1. Nothing has intrinsic value.
  2. The reasons for which people attribute value to things are always ultimately irrational.
  3. There is, therefore, no ultimate “reason” for valuing anything.
  4. Living is action. There’s no final reason for action.
  5. There’s no final reason for living (or for suicide).

I would like to simply add one more point to Barth’s conclusion:

6.  There’s no final reason to read this novel.

 

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Coast to Coast Tagged With: John Barth, Maryland Authors, The Floating Opera

Book Launch!

October 15, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

podiumOn August 21, 2014,  I launched my first mystery novel, Leap of Faith, at The Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle and I’m just now coming down off the high of that awesome dream-come-true experience. Here’s how it played out. I invited all my friends to come and help me celebrate the publishing of my first mystery novel and everyone showed up! And friends brought other friends. One friend of mine brought his mother, wife, daughter and his daughter’s friend. Wow! I greeted people and watched nervously as more and more chairs were lined up in the room— we packed the house! There were introductions and then my publisher, Waverly Fitzgerald of Rat City Publishing, raffled off tickets to a Rat City Roller Girl bout – tickets collected by a member of the Junior Roller Girl “Brats” rolling around the room on skates. Finally I got up on the podium and faced the crowd.Reading-RatLaunch

I’d been nervous all day. I’m not used to public speaking. Having spent some years teaching middle school language arts and writing, I’m especially not used to getting up in front of a group and having their immediate attention. It felt like an out of body experience. But once I looked around the room at all the smiling and expectant faces of my family and friends, I could really feel the love. That sounds corny but it’s exactly what I felt – love and good wishes for my success beaming from every person in that room. My nerves settled then and I was able to give a brief introduction about writing mysteries in general and about the Ann Dexter series in particular. I read the Prologue and first chapter of Leap of Faith. There were some questions: Why did I decide to write about a psychic medium? Why did I choose to set the mystery in Seattle? Was I thinking of a particular suicide I had witnessed off the Aurora Avenue Bridge? Would I be going on a book tour?

signingbooksAnd after the Q & A I made my way to the back of the room to sign books. That’s when I really felt strange. I mean, real authors do this, right? And my nerves flared up again. I faced the first person in line and my mind went blank – his name would simply not come to me. I couldn’t remember his name! One of my writer friends had told me about a book signing where the author provided sticky notes for those in line and on the white board had written: “Even if I’ve known you since kindergarten, please write your name down in case my mind goes blank.” I should have heeded that warning. But Andy just chuckled and reminded me of his name. He’s a writer too and I think, I hope, he understood about nerves.

And here’s another fabulous thing that happened that night: the book sold out! The common EBay-crowdwisdom is that only about fifty percent of those invited will actually show up at a book launch so Elliott Bay ordered books accordingly. Ha! I guess they didn’t know that I have the best friends and family in the world. You all packed the house and rocked my universe that night! Thanks to Elliott Bay and to all my lovely friends who helped me celebrate.

And over the past week I’ve had many readers tell me that they’ve finished Leap of Faith and enjoyed it. Phew. Because the only thing more nerve-wracking than facing a room full of people and reading from my novel was knowing that now those friends would actually read it themselves. So thanks to all of you who’ve read the book, bought copies for your friends and even told your local independent bookstores about it. Because of you Leap of Faith is on the shelves at Phinney Books and may well make its way to the Edmonds Bookshop too. My publisher, Rat City Publishing, assures me that Seattle Mystery Bookshop will stock it and also, perhaps, Third Place Books. Of course, it’s also available from Amazon:

I had a lovely experience sending Leap of Faith out into the world. Thanks to everyone!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

July 29, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

BreathingLessonsHow does Anne Tyler do it? How does she create these wonderfully quirky characters who say and do cringe-worthy things in their daily lives yet share qualities that strike uncomfortably resonant chords in her readers? In Breathing Lessons, we meet Maggie and Ira Moran, a long-married couple who, as the novel opens, are on their way to the funeral of Maggie’s best friend’s husband. The action of the novel takes place in one day and much of it on their road trip from Baltimore to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania. Of course, I had to Google “Deer Lick” to see if it really exists. It does. It’s just southwest of Pittsburg and more than a three-hour drive from Baltimore, an interminably long time to be stuck in the car with these two characters. Maggie is a busy-body. But she is also good-natured – the kind of person who strikes up conversations with strangers and then divulges the most personal information. While stopped at a convenience store along the road, Maggie tells the clerk her family troubles: her son can’t keep a steady job, has once been arrested, pretends to be a rock star and is divorced with a young daughter. In fact, Maggie is certain she has heard her ex-daughter-in-law, Fiona, on a talk show this very morning as she was driving their car out of the auto shop. She’s so surprised to her Fiona’s voice that she slams straight into a truck. Here is another of Maggie’s characteristics: She’s accident prone. And Maggie takes the notion of “wishful thinking” to a whole new level. While she doesn’t exactly lie to her friends and loved ones, she habitually tells what Mark Twain would call “stretchers.” She frequently creates elaborate scenarios in her head in which she can change things, to make them better, with little regard for the real impact on other people’s lives. The most audacious example of Maggie’s “meddling” here is her plan to stop in on her ex-daughter-in-law and granddaughter and convince them to drive back to Baltimore with her and Ira — a thinly-veiled attempt to get Fiona and Leroy back together with the Morans’ immature and irresponsible son. We also learn, through Maggie’s conversation with the stranger at the diner, that their daughter, Daisy is leaving for college the next morning with a full scholarship to an Ivy League school. The girl has become “unrecognizable” to Maggie who, with tears in her eyes, tells the clerk that Daisy recently asked her this chilling question: “Mom? Was there a certain conscious point in your life when you decided to settle for being ordinary?” Ouch. Later Ira suggests that Maggie’s hare-brained idea to stop bring Fiona and Leroy home with them is her way of replacing Daisy with Leroy. Maggie wants an opportunity to start anew with her granddaughter, to do things right this time. This, it seems to me is what Anne Tyler is examining in this novel – the wish we all have to turn back the clock, to get one more chance to dosomething better the next time around. That said, there are some lovely moments between Maggie and Ira, moments which only happen between long-married couples who have known and loved each other for many years.  And while Maggie has, no doubt, settled for being “ordinary,” Anne Tyler reminds us that, in the final analysis, it’s what we all have in common.

Courtesy Cherie Clark
Courtesy Cherie Clark

Breathing Lessons is a beautifully written novel which highlights poignant moments in a couple’s ordinary life. Though sometimes painful and close to home, there were also times when Maggie’s reflections had me laughing out loud. And for me, looking for a sense of the State of Maryland in this novel, I got a great feel for the countryside on the road between Maryland and Pennsylvania. I particularly liked this description of driving out of Baltimore: The scenery grew choppy. Stretches of playgrounds and cemeteries were broken suddenly by clumps of small business – liquor stores pizza parlors, dark little bars and taverns dwarfed by the giant dish antennas on their roofs. Then another playground would open out. And once they cross into Pennsylvania: They entered Pennsylvania and the road grew smooth for a few hundred yards, like a good intention, before settling back to the same old scabby, stippled surface. The views were long and curved and green – a small child’s drawing of farm country. Distinct black cows grazed on the hillsides. MarylandCountrysideAnd when they return to Maryland after their adventure: They were in Maryland now, and Maggie imagined that the country here looked different —more luxurious. The hillsides emptied of livestock, had turned a deep, perfect green, and in the faded light the long white fences gave off a moony glimmer. Yes, I have a sense of Maggie Moran’s world now, both the physical landscape and the emotional turmoil inherent in any ordinary, long-lived life, beginning with youthful hope, taking the bumps and disappointments as they come but never losing sight of the possibility for positive change, and maybe a little well-intended meddling.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons, Maryland

The Ivy Bookshop

July 10, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

Courtesy http://cdn.baltimore.org/
Courtesy http://cdn.baltimore.org/

On to Maryland! My initial internet search for bookstores in Maryland worried me: are all Maryland bookstores in shopping centers? Is all of Maryland merely a suburb of Washington, D.C.? Wait, wait! That can’t be true. There’s Annapolis, which I’ve visited. I found a lovely bookstore there, but it specializes in maritime books, not for me. Their page featured a lovely Robert Frost poem: The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day. Despite the fact that I was reading this on a very warm summer day, I appreciated the poem nonetheless.

My continued search brought up several bookstores in Baltimore, so I decided to go IvyStorefrontthere. Turns out, my favorite is The Ivy Bookshop. Here’s a place I’d love to visit. The website describes the ideal bookseller as “literate personal shoppers, mind readers, therapists, and bartenders (non-judgmental advice without the booze)” I loved that! Especially a quote from a customer which said, “I stop in at the Ivy after work for my happy hour.” I’m pretty sure there’s no bar or bartender at the Ivy, but I can certainly understand the idea of getting buzzed on great literature.

Turns out the Ivy was voted “Baltimore’s Best Bookstore” by Baltimore Magazine and Baltimore City Paper. Its owner, Ann Berlin, has been in publishing since 1975, with all very impressive credentials including editing a publication for the Smithsonian. But, more than that, I’m interested that their booksellers are described as knowledgeable and friendly individuals who make a point of getting to know their customers’ personal preferences and recommending books based on that. I spend a little time cruising the book blog, the book recommendation of the day (both fiction and non-fiction) and then I’m definitely ready to make the call.

Courtesy JeanV-viaYelp!
Courtesy JeanV-viaYelp!

My call is answered by bookseller Nancy Chambers, who definitely fits the bill of “knowledgeable and friendly.” After I explain my project and ask for a recommendation (or two) of Maryland authors she likes, she immediately suggests Anne Tyler. Now, I have read several of Anne Tyler’s books, The Accidental Tourist being one of my all-time favorites. I’m charmed to learn that the author lives in the bookstore neighborhood, and that Nancy has been reading her for years, speaks of her like a friend. Nancy recommends Breathing Lessons which I have not read. She asks if she can call me back in a couple of hours after she has spent some time thinking over other possible recommendations and talking to her colleagues. Yes! This is great—I love it when booksellers are enthusiastic about my project and take the time to consider their recommendations.

Nancy and I chatted a bit about Baltimore before ending our call. I tell her I’ve never visited but have watched a few episodes of The Wire. She laughs and tells me that she hears that a lot but assures me that Baltimore is a great place to live and work – no more dangerous than any other city. Nancy is also tickled that I want to order books from The Ivy Bookshop when I could probably find the same books in Seattle. I explain that this is part of my quest – reading books from each state and supporting the independent bookstores in those states as I go along – and that I’m having as much fun talking to booksellers as I am reading the books they recommend. “It feels like my birthday whenever those packages of books arrive in my mailbox.” I say. She laughs, tells me she’ll call me back at three.

Nancy is right on time in calling me back. She still recommends her first choice – Anne Tyler, and she has added John Barth as her other suggestion, The Floating Opera and The End of the Road. Great! Send them to me, I say.

When the package from The Ivy Bookshop arrives a week later, I can’t help but smile. Nancy has taken the trouble to wrap each book in ivy paper with gold ribbon around. It truly does feel like my birthday now. There’s also a hand-written note: “Thank you! ENJOY!” I can’t wait to tear the wrapping off and get reading.

Ivy-2

 

Filed Under: Coast to Coast Tagged With: Anne Tyler, Baltimore Maryland, Breathing Lessons, independent bookstores, John Barth, The Ivy Bookshop

I Thought You Were Dead!

July 3, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

IThoughtYouWereDeadI’m a dog lover. That’s probably why I chose to read Pete Nelson’s book, I Thought You Were Dead as my second Massachusetts book. I loved The Art of Racing in the Rain by Seattle’s own rock star author Garth Stein, but had to wait a couple of years to read it since its publication date followed too closely after the death of my precious Golden Retriever, Maddy.

I loved the beginning of the book. The protagonist, Paul Gustavson, getting home late one night, fairly drunk, fumbling with his keys by the light of his front porch, as the snow falls heavily around him. His dog, Stella, greets him with “I thought you were dead!”  Paul explains that since dogs have no sense of permanence, Stella believes he’s dead whenever he’s not around. Okay, must get this off my chest early. If one believes this about dogs, one cannot also believe that dogs are as intelligent, philosophical and conversational as Stella proves to be throughout this book. I know it’s a nit-pick, but it bothered me from page one.

That said, the book is great.  At the outset, Paul is a mess. He drinks too much, his job—writing a series called, Nature for Morons— is not fulfilling, he’s been unlucky in love, and his father has just had a stroke. Could things possibly get worse?  Not really. But over the course of the novel, we get to know Paul and root for him as he works his way through a new (difficult and possibly doomed) relationship, struggles with  impotency, maneuvers through the family dynamics of dealing with aging parents and finally comes to terms with himself. I Thought You Were Dead is a coming of age sort of novel where the main character’s best friend, confessor and confidant, is a dog.

Paul and Stella have conversations about love, sex and impotency, drinking and stress. WatchingTheir witty repartee had me laughing out loud. Like this conversation about drinking and impotency. Stella has just explained what everyone who has ever slept with a dog in their bedroom understands: she has been watching. From Stella’s point of view, here is Paul’s problem:  And what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, as a noninvolved observer, is first you get sad or stressed and then you don’t get a boner, or first you get happy, and then you do. And drinking makes you sad. That’s my observation. So Paul sets out to drink less and exercise more.

But the poignant parts of the story involve Paul trying to connect with his father after his stroke. Paul’s job is to communicate with his father through computer chatting because Paul lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and the rest of his family is in Minnesota. His father can hit a yes or no key on the keyboard so Paul’s sessions with his dad become like therapy — Paul does the talking and his father can only agree or disagree. Through these intimate sessions, we get inside Paul’s head and learn his deepest thoughts.  We discover how confused and frightened they both are at these different stages of life:  Paul, at the thought of losing his father and the grim trajectory of his personal life, and Paul’s father, at the thought of losing his memory and control of himself.

I Thought You Were Dead is a very good read. The writing is sharp and intelligent, sometimes funny and often moving. The themes here are universal, and exploring them through Stella’s eyes is a bonus.

Main Street From: http://www.massvacation.com/blog
Main Street From: http://www.massvacation.com/blog

What about the sense of Massachusetts that comes through the narrative? Well, it seems this story could take place in just about Anywhere, USA. However, when Paul first takes up running, we get a very thorough feel for Northampton as he runs down Main Street past a furniture store, a high-end clothing shop, a lingerie shop, a diner, several used book stores, importers of third-world knickknacks, a dozen ice cream parlors “dairy being the last vice the local Birkenstockers allowed themselves,” He passed a laundromat, the “Healing Cooperative” complete with homeopathic remedies and “a pamphlet rack by the door offering flyers for all the various local shamans and magical practitioners and caregivers.” Typically, he tells us, he would run past “petitioners getting signatures . . . girls’ soccer teams collecting donations, and New Age people offering incense or poetry, and disturbed zanies  . . .  Main Street was generally alive, seven  days a week and year-round with trust fund mendicants, panhandlers and mooches, crow babies and white Rasta kids in Jamaican black, yellow, green, and red knit caps, Goth waifs and death punks who asked for spare change to make ‘phone calls,’ and one-time, a kid squatting on the sidewalk with a sign that read, PARENTS SLAIN BY NINJAS — NEED MONEY FOR KUNG FU LESSONS!”

Now I get the picture. Here’s a fairly typical New England college town—

Smith campus, Northampton  http://www.collegiatevideo.com/Smith.html
Smith campus, Northampton 

though Northampton’s website would beg to differ. There, the town’s mayor describes Northampton as a slice of paradise. And it looks lovely to me—the Connecticut River on one side and Mt. Holyoke on the other, home of Smith College, former home of Amelia Earhart, Calvin Coolidge and Sylvia Plath, among others.  I’d love to visit.

Filed Under: Coast to Coast

The Celestials

May 4, 2014 by admin Leave a Comment

celestialsThe Celestials by Karen Shepard takes place in the town of North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1870.  It’s the story of Julia and Calvin Sampson —she, a childless woman in her early forties grieving the recent loss of her thirteenth pregnancy, he the wealthy owner of the town’s shoe factory responsible for bringing seventy-five Chinese young men “the Celestials” to town to work in his factory.  The Celestials are strikebreakers but don’t understand that until after they arrive. Three hundred members of the largest labor union in the country, The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin “a force to be reckoned with” await the Chinese workers on the train platform as the book opens.  Surprisingly, an altercation is avoided between the two groups. Sampson has paid a large contingent of constables to keep the peace and the Chinese foreman, Charlie Sing, has proven quite capable of protecting his charges during the train ride east.

At the end of the nineteenth century, North Adams was “the largest manufacturing thecelestials1center in the Berkshires, boasting thirty-eight factories and two hundred cotton mills.”  According to a local historian of the time, it was “the smartest village in the smartest nation in all creation: The concentrated essential oil of Yankeedom.” But, of course, one third of the town’s citizens were foreign workers:  Irish, French Canadian and Welsh. The Chinese though, proved to be the most “foreign” of all. Shepard’s novel portrays the difficulties inherent in cultural assimilation, but especially for the Chinese.  She reminds us that the Chinese Exclusion Act effectively stopped Chinese Immigration into the United States after 1882.

Immediately I am drawn into the world of the novel. Shepard paints a clear and nuanced picture of this place in this time.  And, too, I am drawn into the unlikely love triangle which develops between Julia Sampson, Calvin Sampson and the Chinese factory foreman, Charlie Sing. Charlie is caught between two cultures from the outset.  He wears the traditional Chinese braid and embroidered silk shoes at home, but Western clothes in public and has converted to Methodism.  And, although Charlie claims to be descended from a European Duke and taken in by missionaries in California, he was more likely a son of poor peasants who made their way to California seeking a better life. And while Calvin

http://explorewmass.blogspot.com/2009/04/map-birds-eye-view-of-north-adams-1881.html
http://explorewmass.blogspot.com/2009/04/map-birds-eye-view-of-north-adams-1881.html

and Julia Sampson have never been able to have children of their own, these Chinese workers seem to bring out the paternal instincts in Sampson. He asks his wife to help organize a school for them — Sunday school to teach English, but also the teachings of the Methodist bible. Ironic, of course, that Calvin has to coax Julia into a relationship with the man who becomes her lover and sad that she will abandon her Celestial once she has the one thing she has been longing for all of her married life – a child.

The baby is born with clearly Asian features and Julia returns to North Adams (from an extended trip to visit relatives in Michigan during her pregnancy) with her new baby in her arms and proudly refuses to hear any gossip about the child’s paternity.  In fact, Julia manages to silence the gossips and convinces her husband to accept the child as his own – no small feat at any time, but astonishing in a small town in nineteenth century New England. Charlie Sing, of course, is confused and bereft but powerless to claim his paternity under the circumstances.  There is a scene late in the book where the girl goes into her father’s shop and they spend time together.  The moment is lovely, but it is brief.

Along side of the story of Julia, Calvin and Charlie is the parallel narrative of Alfred Robinson, his sister Lucy and her friend Ida – their stories of love and loss. They come toChineseHistorical North Adams from Virginia looking for work and a better life where their lives become intertwined with the Sampsons’ in an Upstairs, Downstairs kind of way.  Alfred is a former employee of Sampson’s factory, a union man; Lucy eventually goes to work in the Sampson’s home as a servant and Ida ends up with Charlie Sing. For me, their stories are not always as compelling as the Sampsons’.  Maybe that’s just my nature –more fascinated by the lives of the rich than the lives of the poor. I found the stories of Alfred, Lucy and Ida sometimes confusing – possibly because it is the framework on which Shepard hangs much of the history embedded in the narrative.

The Celestials is a novel of a cultural prejudice and assimilation. It is also a love story and a convincing tale of life in a factory town in New England in the late nineteenth century.

Filed Under: Coast to Coast

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