After Many a Book

Day 95 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and it's possible that I should not try to do this for 365 days because 1) readership has declined and/or 2) commentship has declined (where is Mike Peterson?!), but mainly because 3) I might be going a little crazy:

I have started to notice what fictional characters are reading!! Of course Franny was reading The Way of the Pilgrim, and this was crucial to the plot of Franny and Zooey, and maybe part of the hermit-style madness of J.D. Salinger (I resemble that remark), but this is something else.

I noticed that Monica Geller was reading Practical Intuition in Love by Laura Day in an old episode of Friends, as my teenage kids have discovered this series. She had the big red-orange-with-a-rose hardcover, dark yellow lettering, but I have linked you to a handy paperback copy if you, too, want to have Monica's frequently-between-boyfriends love life and then end up with the boy next door.

And George, in A Single Man, is course reading After Many a Summer, by Aldous Huxley, a kind of Hollywood fantasy satire. In the film, he is reading an elegant hardcover, evidently the very first edition of 1939, before the title changed to After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, in the very next printing later that year. I can't even find a picture of that one, except at Wikipedia, which appears to have fewer stripes than the one in the film, but there are many copies out there, ranging from $21 to over $200, and many affordable copies in later hardback and softcover editions. Even the first American edition includes this addition to the title, a quotation from a Tennyson poem, so George must have brought his copy from London!

See, it can't be a good thing that I am this wrapped up in books and their editions, so that I am speculating on the lives of fictional characters, what they are reading, and why.

But George is reading a book about a man who is afraid of death and obsessed with youth, and it's a bitterly comic novel, showing the folly of it all. And he has read it closely, which is interesting to ponder, after having seen the film. Now I am going to have to read this book.

Believe me, I already checked Babbitt's for the pulp fiction cover.

The Christ Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Day 87 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. Kim is reading Saving Jesus from the Church, by Robin R. Meyers, because she is interested in Jesus the man.

"Zooey would like it," says Kim, referring to Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger, which we recently read together in our book group. (And, yes, this is yesterday's Kim, the same Kim of Hummus Anonymous, the blog.) "I'm not sure about Willie B."

The "Willie B." Kim is referring to is William B. Irvine, author of A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, reviewed recently by James Fulcher in The Common Review. I was telling her about the book in the context of classical Stoicism as a way of making the best of life's suffering, and finding peace and equanimity with whatever is at hand.

For Jesus, of course, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. In my view, it is at hand in the present moment. (But, as I've mentioned, I don't believe in linear time...so all we have is the present moment, and that's not so far from existentialism, either. Topic for another day.)

According to Kim, in reference to Saving Jesus from the Church, "The premise of the book seems to be that followers of Jesus the man are getting it right, whereas 'believers' in Christ the Savior are not." I'm thinking followers of Jesus the man are in touch with their Stoic joy, their Buddhist suffering, and also that they understand the value and risk of practicing what you preach. But I will have to read the book to find out.

Or ask the man himself. Kim also reports that "the author Robin Meyers will likely be here in the fall to speak, sign books (a new one coming out) and lead workshops. "

Meanwhile, Amazon tells me you can now pre-order The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson, in hardcover, and/or get it in various formats (Kindle, Large Print, or imported). The movie of the first book in the series is coming to our town, before Robin Meyers comes to town, and is already playing in a nearby town, and has freaked out an area blogger, Julie, due to its violence. Here is her review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

And I think Zooey would also like the Irvine book, and understand the Stoic joy thing, because Epictetus is in it, and he was a big Stoic. But Zooey is a fictional character, and so is Biff, Jesus's childhood friend, a fellow I rely on to tell me most of what I know about Jesus the man. I'm pretty sure my research has something to be desired.

But watch out. According to some, desire is the cause of all suffering. (I think they might have it a little wrong... Desire is fine. The problem is thinking you can attain/obtain everything you desire. Ah, another topic for another day! Heh heh, leave 'em wanting more.)

Was Salinger an SOB? (RIP)

Day 72 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. Janet, Kim, Pam, Phyllis, Susan, and I just finished reading Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger, and all but one of us met last night to discuss it. At the same time, the SOBs, a self-named men's book group, met to discuss The English Major, by Jim Harrison. No doubt there was griping, moaning, and complaining, mixed with drinking, laughing, distraction, and hilarity at both gatherings.

And maybe some discussion of the actual book.

In our group, I feared we would go off track when one of us said, "Salinger was a despicable person," but another of us said she got so intrigued again by Salinger that she started to do Internet research and then respected his impulse to withdraw from the public eye and let his work be the focus, not his life. (Maybe he knew someone was bound to say he was a despicable person.)

To quote Salinger having Zooey read Marcus Aurelius, as quoted on white beaverboard on the back of his big brothers' bedroom door: "It loved to happen." Sigh...

Here are my interpretive questions about Franny and Zooey:

Why does Zooey pretend to be Buddy on the phone?
(Is it primarily for Franny’s, Bessie’s, or his own sake?)

Why is Buddy the actual narrator of “Zooey”? (Doesn’t “Franny” have an invisible narrator?)

Why does Zooey treat Bessie, his mother, the way he does?
--Why does he tease, mock, insult, etc.?
--And why does Bessie not mind, and sometimes not even notice?
--Why does Bessie converse with him in the bathroom?

Why is it important that both Franny & Zooey are actors?

Why is it important that they both had a sort of religious education from their big brothers?

Why is it important that Seymour Glass has committed suicide?

I have some ideas about and numerous possible answers for these questions, which is why they are interpretive questions. I always like to hear what other readers think, based on the book itself, not stuff about the author's biography. Generally I find there is plenty of exciting truth and paradox in good and great fiction. Curious as I am about authors' lives, I generally leave them to their privacy when interpreting the work. I interpret the work according to the work.

Likewise, I don't go read what the critics say. I read the book. Or the poem, or the short story, treatise, essay, etc. What is this particular writer showing me, teaching me? After that, I love to converse with people who have read the actual book, closely and with care. And then I do sometimes read what experts say, scholars or deep readers--yes, some are critics!--who have spent many hours reading the works themselves, and, yes, about the authors' lives. I just don't read received opinion/interpretation before I do my own work. Nor do I substitute biography for interpretation. I work hard when I write a story or poem. I want somebody to read it, not me! I'm in there, just invisible. Trust me.

Never mind. And I've decided to pronounce Zooey to rhyme with "Phooey!"

Franny and Zooey

Day 52 of the “What are you reading, and why?” project. A full deck of cards.

Kim, Susan, Phyllis, Janet, and Pam are reading Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger, for a book group. Generally they read books by women authors with women as main characters, because they are all women and connect to women’s experiences, but sometimes they read books by men with main characters who are women, such as How to be Good by Nick Hornby.

They are a group of women who know each other from church, a progressive Christian church that embraces everyone, and a title like How to Be Good is of course appealing to them, even though the book itself was both hilarious and ambiguous on that particular subject, and not any kind of instruction manual.

Neither is Franny and Zooey…which I am reading, too, for the above-mentioned book group. And re-reading. I read the Franny part twice in a row at the picnic table in the sun on Wednesday, amazed, almost as if I were praying incessantly.

Now that I have finished the Zooey part, I am still amazed. I kept smiling at spots in this book—for instance, the ending. I got so excited while finishing it up at the kitchen table, that I grabbed the nearest bit of paper, an envelope, and the nearest pencil, the stub of a blue one, and began to write odd little notes on it, with page numbers:

p. 168—stonemason
p. 167—Emily Dickinson/ego
p. 170—silent when Pilate

…and down from that an arrow pointing to The Master and Margarita, a book in which I hung on the conversations of Jesus and Pontius Pilate in the intertwining novel plot, and wept and smiled at once.

My notes continue: Easter/Jesus (I am amazed at the coincidence of when I am reading this particular book, and did anyone know when we picked it that it was so much about Jesus and god-related things? Did anyone remember that? I know I didn’t! I didn’t even remember that Franny and Zooey are actors! But I did want to meet Franny again, as we had encountered her in Eileen Favorite’s book, The Heroines, when she came to stay at a bed and breakfast to think things over a bit.)

Desire. The phrase “none of your business.”

Yesterday I was complaining a little bit. And I have complained quite a bit in my longish life, stupidly and sometimes perhaps justifiably, except that what anybody else does or doesn’t do, as Zooey bluntly reminds me, is none of my business.

Anyhoo…I found this book to be a joy and a comfort. I kept laughing and wincing and almost crying, but in a silent, focused, inward way.

I got just as upset as Franny at all the people who tear down other people (literary & academic types) in the Franny part. And Zooey is the same way, judging and tearing down people in his own profession—television acting—and the both of them not able to accept someone who is talented and good but not a genius, and thus maybe not brave enough to attempt to be a genius, even if they are born for that…until, yes, they surrender to this possibility and just, uh, do it, but not in a Nike slogan way…really.

I had read Franny and Zooey when younger and completely forgotten it, but it came back with startling clarity. I remembered the patch of sunlight Franny stares at on the table in the restaurant, Zooey’s razor, the girl playing hide and seek with her dog down in the courtyard below.

Anyway, I connected with this book and with The Way of the Pilgrim book, and its “sequel,” referenced inside it. And so did David, off in North Carolina, reading this same book for reasons of his own, and in part to honor and grieve Salinger.

I will be traveling for a couple days, but I will be asking people what they are reading, and why, writing it down longhand in a notebook, and reporting back to you when I return.

French Hedgehog and American Hodgepodge

Day 42 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.

Karen is reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, along with Decoding the Human Body Field by Peter H. Fraser and Harry Massey. Ooh, French fiction with philosophy in it + new ideas in health about how body & mind work together. If I were reading these two at the same time, my brain might explode! The Hedgehog book sounds like something I should read next year, when I am 54, to match the 54-year-old residential concierge narrator. And now you know my age. But my college-student son thinks I look about 34, which is sweet. (I've linked you to a paperback of this, but it also includes the description of an audio version.)

Christina was recently reading An American Childhood by Annie Dillard and Bob has no doubt finished by now Barbara Jordan: American Hero, by Mary Beth Rogers. America and change in America are definitely on my mind today, as we watch the unfolding miracle of health care reform. Wooee! Speaking of France, remember when French fries had to be called American fries? And speaking of childhood and American icons, may Holden Caulfield and J. D. Salinger both rest in peace. And speaking of French fries, I want some.

My random, partially exploded, curlicued brain does connect something here--the 12-year-old French girl in Hedgehog, one of the narrators via her journal, is compared to Holden Caulfield in wry innocence. My own local book group is reading Franny & Zooey next, and we can never keep copies of that or Catcher in the Rye on the shelf at Babbitt's. If they come into the store, they go immediately onto the Select New Arrivals shelf by the door and soon walk back out. Those, and books by Ayn Rand. Sigh....

And speaking of Franny, she is a character in The Heroines, the novel by Eileen Favorite in which heroines from other books come to stay at a bed and breakfast run by Anne-Marie and her 13-year-old daughter Penny. See, things do connect in my hodgepodge brain! Sarah is reading The Heroines because she went to hear the author speak recently at her college. Sarah is also reading Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, who has the best middle name ever! And I am definitely linking you to the edition with the sexiest cover, and the one that most resembles Vanity Fair, the magazine, my guilty pleasure.

And that's enough of a hodgepodge for today.