Tag: best of the best

Fangirl Post: Michael Chabon

First, I should probably apologize for letting almost A MONTH go by with no posts.  I have no excuse for ignoring all (two) of you fine people for that long.  I have, maybe, one-week’s worth of excuse – I wrote my first official book review for Bookbrowse.com two weeks ago!  I will blog about The Children’s Book after that review is published, and put a link up so you all can check it out.  With any luck, my bio on their site will encourage two more people to find me out here in the interwebs.  Won’t I be special then?  Now, to business.

Michael Chabon (pronounced Shay-bon, as I learned this week) is a crazy good writer.  I first saw the name after watching the film, Wonder Boys (starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, and the ever-fabulous Robert Downey, Jr.), which was based on his second (published) novel (which is about the experience of writing his second [unpublished] novel, which sucked hard-core).  I loved the movie and (as usual) went looking for more quality entertainment by the same guy.  His first novel (Mysteries of Pittsburgh) was good, but it was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay that made me a die-hard fan.  Not only great writing and superb story-telling, but a comic-book-history theme and the obligatory gay sub-plot!  But don’t take my word for it – he won a Pulitzer for that one.  I’ve since read all his novels and a few of his short stories, eagerly awaiting each new gem.

This is a writer who just gets better and better.  Some of his latest stuff (The Final Solution, Gentlemen of the Road) has been short novellas  with great story – but the language is better than great, it is extraordinary.  I just want to dive in and swim around in the words and phrases and sentences forever and ever.  And he’s only two years older than me (and apparently happily married <sigh>).  He should have a few more decades to be cranking this stuff out.

One of the dozens of reasons I moved to Portland was because there was so much cool stuff going on here.  Case in point – a reading by Michael Chabon! Free at Powell’s!  His new book!  Book-geek heaven hosts book-geek-idol extraordinaire! And did I mention it was free?  And less than five miles from my house? At the coolest bookstore on the planet? (sorry Title Wave,  but it’s true).   Of course, I was going.  But, I must admit I was worried. What if he was lame in person? What if he spoke like that guy on the Clear-Eyes commercials?  What if he was stiff and boring and ruined my future reading pleasure with his lameness?  I shudder to think.

Thankfully, he was everything I hoped he would be.  I’d seen photos, so I knew he was reasonably attractive (one worry down, dozens to go).   But he was funny and humble and sexy and teasing and witty, and human while being utterly adorable.  And he really did look a lot like Michael Douglas did in the film.  He read two essays from his new book which were marvelously written and slyly thought-provoking while making us laugh out loud (me and my 200 best book-geek friends).  All in all, a perfect first-run of the author visit circuit at Powell’s, and confirmation that my author-love is not misplaced.

This week – Barbara Ehrenreich comes to town.

Why can’t they all be this good?

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields is the story of one person’s life as she experiences the 20th century (primarily) in North America. There are wars, depression, children, love, work, illness, death and everything else in-between.   One of the first books I discussed here was Happenstance, also by Shields.  I liked it, but had expected more.  TSD was everything I expected from a Shields novel – well-written, surprising, technically impressive and full of interesting commentary on the human condition.    Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it – it won a Pulitzer Prize, the Governor General’s Award (Canada) and National Book Critics Circle Award.

This is the good stuff.  Every detail speaks to every other detail, and there are layers underneath the layers.   One example: the title – The Stone Diaries – works on several levels.  The book is a ‘diary’ of Daisy’s life – and her mother’s maiden name is Stone (though we know nothing about Mercy Stone’s family).  Daisy’s father and father-in-law were both stone cutters in rural Canada in the early 1900s, and her father eventually made his fortune selling a popular limestone in Indiana.  After Daisy’s mother dies, her father constructs a tower of stone around her grave.  The tower becomes so big that it attracts tourists to the area.  He also starts a stone pyramid in Bloomington after returning from a trip to Egypt, but never finishes it.  These are only the references to stone I can immediately recall – there are dozens more.

The book has an interesting structure.  It is written as a biography or journal – including letters from relatives and supposed family pictures – but is a work of fiction.  The book is separated into different sections – Childhood, Love, Ease, Death, etc.  Each section is presented differently.  For instance, the section where we learn of the unusual circumstances of Daisy’s birth is narrated by an omniscient Daisy.  Daisy tells how she imagines her birth (and the mother she never knew) based on the facts she’s been given.  This is the only section where we truly get a first-person account of Daisy’s life – the part she had no personal recollection of.

After her husband dies, she writes a column for the local newspaper. This section is presented via letters written to Daisy – nothing written by Daisy herself or even any events narrated in a third-person.  She is writing for a living, but we don’t see any of her writing.  I am certain this is a deliberate attempt to illustrate her powerlessness, she has a ‘voice’ in her writing, but in the end she is ‘let go’ so a man could have the job.

There is a different form for each section, but it is never choppy or a case of style interfering with story-telling.  I never lost interest and was always wondering what was coming on the next page.  Shields is a master at conveying not just events, but experiences.  This one goes in the permanent collection.

Ain’t she a beauty…

I think the best literature is that which attempts to bring the basic human experience to light.  I know that there is a different story for every individual person on this big ball of dirt, but the inner workings of all 6.5 million of them are not terribly different – only the circumstances.  We all love, hate, cry, laugh, eat, sleep and struggle.  The best writers can tell you things about yourself and your fellow human beings that you didn’t know you already knew.  On Beauty by Zadie Smith is one of those.

On Beauty is the story of a family.   There are lots of details about this family I could tell you – the mother is a black Americanwoman from the south and the father is a white Englishman.  The husband is a professor of Art Criticism who is very cerebral, the wife is a hospital administrator who is very emotional. They have three children who are smart and funny and very, very different.  They live in the Boston area.  The children are all in their late teens-early 20s.  The marriage is going through a rough patch.

But those are just facts.  They are sharply depicted but merely the backdrop on which this novel is painted.  The title is On Beauty, and that beauty comes in lots of flavors here, but they ultimately lead back to the central beauty – love.  Not sappy romantic love – real-life, hard-core, everyday all day love.  Husbands, wives, children, siblings, parents, family, friends.  The love that ties them together, causes them pain and heals their wounds.  It wrenches the heart and makes it new.  Smith shows us how love looks – how it cannot exist without pain and forgiveness and clarity and commitment.

In case I’ve been unclear up to this point, let me just state for the record – I love this book. I love it for a dozen reasons – the writing is fabulous, the family dynamics are powerfully and painfully accurate in detail and texture.  It takes place on a college campus full of over-educated brainiacs who use the ‘cancer of their intellect’ to avoid facing their emotions (as I did for much of my life).  All its characters are beautifully flawed human beings.  But the reason this book will remain on my shelf forever (now that I finally own it) is because of one passage.

I read this book several years ago (it was published in 2005) and wrote this passages down in a journal I have for quotes that resonate powerfully within me.  This one is a favorite out of those – one that, while I can’t quote it word-for-word, I never forget is in there.

The three siblings in the book (aged 16 to 22) have just bumped into each other serendipitously on a street corner, and to celebrate they go have coffee together.  The oldest brother, Jerome – just back from college for the holidays – is basking in the happy glow of being with his siblings:

Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel – before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets.  After a few years, Levi arrived: space was made for him; it was as if he had always been.  Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth.  He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

Makes me tear up every time I read it.  This passage made me feel guilty for not giving my son siblings.  It makes me want to pick up the phone and call my sisters and tell them I love them.  I’ve never read anything that comes close to portraying how being a sibling feels to me.  And I want to thank Zadie Smith for that gift, and share it with all of you.