Psychology – Page 2 – A Bevy of Books

pasta, meditation, nookie

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert was a huge bestseller a few years ago. Everyone seemed to be reading it or talking about it. By everyone, of course, I mean people who read. Not really everyone, since there are people who don’t read. Not that they can’t, you understand. They just don’t. Truly. They are out there.

Because of this hoopla, I didn’t read it. Too many people gushing about how it was wonderful/life-affirming/mind-altering blah blah blah.

Not that it didn’t look like a good book, you understand. I just didn’t want to be a part of the crowd, following blindly behind whoever was telling me it was a ‘must-read’. (I hear some of you laughing at my predictable reaction – stop that!).

Not that I never intended to read it, I just wasn’t going out of my way. I mean, the story of a woman who tries to find spiritual happiness by travelling the world and eating lots of pasta (among other things) – it sounds like a book I would chose to read. So, now that the furor has died – and it was on the sale rack at a certain fantastic local bookstore – I picked it up.

There are a hundred reviews out there to tell you who, what and where, and probably how fantastic/trite/incredible/mind-numbing it is. But here’s why I liked it:

It reads like a memoir, the retelling of an interesting year in the life of Elizabeth Gilbert. I love memoirs.

It’s written by a master observer of the human race, who is fearless in revealing her own failures while refusing to go for the easy shocking-anecdote.

It emphasizes the spiritual exploration as a personal journey, not a beaten path. Even if you believe (for instance) that Jesus Christ is the only path to God and salvation, you cannot argue that everyone finds/invests/believes/comes to that truth in a very particular and individual way.

It contains the perfect explanation of how I often see the world that I’d never articulated before. Gilbert talks about the differences between her and her sister, and while her sister is a master of detail, she is always only interested in the story of a person, place or thing. So – like me – she wouldn’t notice that maybe her bathroom contains 6 different colors, none of which really go together. So, while I’ll probably notice if the bathroom is decorated nicely vs. not, it won’t occur to me that it matters. I only notice if – for instance – all the sinks are hand-painted porcelain and the bathroom stalls are labeled with the names of poker hands (royal flush, full house, etc.. Real Example) – then I’ll want to know the story of why they did that. And if it’s a good story, I’ll never forget it.

It does not try to tell you that you can revamp your whole world in one year, as long as you do this, that, and the other. The book covers a particular year in Gilbert’s life, but she was laying the foundation for her experiences for years before she embarked on this adventure. And she’d done many things to heal after her painful divorce, each of which helped her get to the place where she was ready to jump in with both feet like she did. There are no quick fixes, there is no perfect answer. Pertinent quote:

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.

She’s not blind to the instances where what she experienced sounds like a cliché, but neither does she shy away from it. Rather, she treats it with both seriousness and humor.

I wish half the things I’ve read about improving your life and finding happiness were so credible and entertaining.

what I did last Saturday

I think I first saw The Summer We Fell Apart by Robin Antalek in a San Francisco book store. I was too broke to buy it (because I was already in San Francisco on a trip I couldn’t really afford). I’m sure I wanted it because it was about siblings who grew up with neglectful (but fabulous) parents and how they deal with that. I must have put it on hold at the library at some point after I got back, but I don’t remember doing it. I picked it up this morning and the day disappeared while I devoured it.

The book is impressive. Antalek takes us through the pain of each particular child, one at a time, while they spend their adult lives trying to figure out how to be happy. Every bit of it rings true. The youngest child is the most protected from the damage done by the parents, buffered by her older siblings and their solid presence, while the older kids take longer to find distance and recover from the heavy hits they took from selfish, immature parents. And even as they hurt each other, the siblings love each other and try to help each other climb out of the foxholes they’ve dug for themselves. The ending is hopeful, and some of the kids even find love and happiness. But what they have, in the end, is each other.

This family has more siblings, more drama, and more damage – but it’s not really that different from my own family (though my parents were not famous artistic people, but more Joe & Judy Average). Except in this family, you get to see how everyone feels. Everyone but the dad, who dies from a brain tumor (though even with him we get glimpses). In real life, you don’t necessarily get to see inside your parents’ heads for a glimpse of what the hell they were thinking about while your childhood went down the drain.

I think the hardest sibling to read about is the oldest, Kate. How she made excuses for the faults of her father while being a parent to her three younger siblings. How she finally took off and never looked back. How she let her need for her father’s approval destroy the only healthy, loving, romantic relationship in her life. How she still tried to make everything ok for her siblings, even as adults, and failed miserably and felt completely unappreciated by them. I saw pieces of myself and both of my sisters in this poor woman. Lucky for us, we’ve all healed a lot more than she has by the end of this book.

I find it hard to believe that Antalek might have grown up in a loving, supportive environment – that’s how realistic this book feels. I have no clue if/how much of it may be autobiographical, and I really don’t care. I just know that she has constructed a family of extraordinary veracity and complexity, and reading their story feels like witnessing a crime and its aftermath.

A book & a film by a Frenchman

I don’t remember where I heard about Brodeck by Philippe Claudel. It might have been BookBrowse.com, but could have been Powell’s. I do remember that I was broke and out of books to read, so I hit the library after work (I also remember that it was raining, and I was rushing to get there before they closed, but you probably don’t need to know that, right?). I had the name of the book in my head, and it happened to be on the New Book shelf at the Hillsdale branch, so I brought it home (with several others, I’ve never gotten out of a library with only one item. Ever.). It got great reviews, and when I went looking around the interwebs, I discovered he writes screenplays and directs films as well.

Brodeck was one of those books I really should have written about when it was still fresh in my mind. I’m sure I read this book in 2009, so it’s been several months. I remember it being really good, and melancholy without being sad, exactly. I remember being impressed with his first-person narrative (a difficult style to do well, in my opinion) and how strongly the emotional character of Brodeck was portrayed. But all of the other terribly learned and intelligent things I’m sure I meant to say about it completely escape me at this point. I know that I voted for it as ‘best book of the year’ on some poll, based on the fact that it was the best of the books on the list they had (that I had read).

The story is set in post-WWII Europe (somewhere around the Poland/Germany border, the story is deliberately vague on this point). A stranger comes to town and is so curious and strange and inquisitive and happy, that this beaten-down little hamlet is completely defensive and immediately suspicious of him. They end up killing him out of fear and guilt. It is a great story about how guilt can eat you alive, and how painful it can be to face your own conscience. It’s also a great story about ‘the truth’ and how hard it can be to tell it, or recognize it.

The book is supposed to be a ‘report’ the town leaders have asked Brodeck to write to explain what they did to some nebulous government authority in the distance, in case there are any questions. But of course, writing this is dangerous – look what happened to the last guy! – and so Brodeck ends up writing two versions, one for the town elders and one for himself – and us. The layers of story and viewpoint are impressive and well-executed.

I picked up a film at the video store a few weeks ago (was in the foreign film $1 section, had Kristin Scott Thomas on it) and it was one of his (at this point, having totally forgotten that he did films), so I rented it (I’ve Loved You So Long) and it was great as well. Also sad, about how loss can make you do crazy things, and how love really can heal you, even if it can also destroy you.

So there ya go – a book and a movie recommendation. Next time you’re looking for pathos and enlightenment, Philippe Claudel is your guy. Tell him you heard it here first.

(only one more book on the ugly list – yay!)

so very NSFW

You may have heard of Mary Roach. She’s the woman who wrote Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (of which I have heard great things but have not read). It became a best seller – so clearly this woman knows how to make the strange accessible to the masses. I found Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex on the sale table at Borders and grabbed it.

I don’t remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book. Bonk is not a book about sex, it’s a book about the ridiculous situations that arise when you are trying to study sex scientifically. Hamsters are wearing polyester pants. People are having intercourse inside MRI machines. Roach has a fine sense of the ridiculous, and the skills to let all of us in on the joke. Roach travels the world to witness first-hand (whenever possible) the studies that tells us what we know about bumping uglies.

One of the most interesting things in the book was finding out how little is really understood about the physical realities of human sexual intercourse. And the most interesting stuff seems… well, rather explicit for an open forum such as this. Instead, I’ve decided to share the topics of a few of the footnotes, to give you an idea of the randomness of the world and the breadth of her topic.

In no particular order (I can see my spam folder filling up now):

the sale of soiled panties in Japan
premature and retarded ejaculation
copulation rates of primates
the maternal fastidiousness of earwigs
the passage of flatus at coitus
artificial insemination of dogs in the 18^th century
boar odor spray
the odor of the flowers of the Spanish chestnut tree
the great-grandniece of Napoleon and her gay husband
the Masturbate-athon
the Personal Pelvic Viewer (PPV for short).

Seriously, how can you not read this book?

my apples and their tomatoes

I picked up Apples & Oranges: My Brother & Me, Lost and Found by Marie Brenner because it implied that it could answer the question of how you get along with people with opposing ideologies, i.e. your rabidly Republican uncle who thinks your gay friends should be shot, or your disgustingly liberal cousin who thinks that all the rich people should be placed in work camps. You have to see them on holidays, you genuinely like them as people, but how do you get around these sometimes-insurmountable obstacles to polite conversation?

Well, the book had no answers. And I don’t blame the author, I blame the idiots who created the sales pitch and tag lines and whatnot. What the author was writing was a very personal book about trying to be close to her brother as an adult, after years of aggravation and fighting. Yes, they had differing political views, but that was not the core of their disconnect, it was merely another symptom, a hot-button to blame for the anger and lack of communication. Brenner does a decent job of exploring their childhood and their extended family relations, trying to figure out exactly where the pattern originated and maybe find a clue as to how to overcome it.

I thought the book was good, but not great. Brenner is a journalist and can clearly write a good sentence, but I didn’t think the book was all that interesting. I love memoirs, but this one didn’t hold my interest. It seemed like the kind of book that was therapy for the author rather than something meaningful to be shared with readers. On the plus side, I now have a favorite kind of apple – Honeycrisp.

Living in Portland means that I live in apple country. And being a conscious shopper, I try to buy local as much as possible. I am also trying to eat healthier – more fresh fruits and vegetables, for example. The problem is, I’m not a big fan of apples, at least not the uncooked kind (give me a baked apple pie with caramel and ice cream and I’m yours forever). In A&O, the brother grows specialty fruits – mostly apples and pears (much of the book takes place in Washington state). Learning about the fruit-growing business was one of the ways that Brenner reconnected with her brother. So there was a lot of talk about apples, and he often rhapsodized about the Honeycrisp, so I picked one up at New Seasons on my next shopping trip. To my surprise, it was significantly different than your basic Granny Smith or Red Delicious – and yummy. Who says reading isn’t good for ya?