A Return to Dick Lit + Poisonous Berries

Day 151 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and the women's book group is reading The Wishbones, by Tom Perrotta, because Suzie had the excellent idea of reading the first sentence from each of a stack of books under consideration, and Tom won.

So we return to dick lit.

Here is the first line: "Buzzy, the bass player, had a suspended license, so Dave swung by his house on the way to the Wednesday-night showcase."

That was definitely more appealing as a quick summer read, if the group is to meet again in July, on a pontoon boat, than this:

"The Ettrick Valley lies about fifty miles due south of Edinburgh, and thirty or so miles north of the English border, which runs close to the wall Hadrian built to keep out the wild people from the north."

Sorry, Alice Munro, but I promise I will get back to The View from Castle Rock eventually. Likewise, Marilynne Robinson, I will read Home, which we didn't pick because Kim has already read it. You too, Carol Shields, and Unless, which Kim and Janet had both already read.

Most of us want to read something we haven't read before, unless 1) we tend to fall asleep reading at night, and find it hard to finish a book in the time allotted and/or 2) we are a very, very busy pastor off at a big wheely-deal, telling the Presbyterians to ordain gays and allow clergy to perform gay marriages. (The pastor is reading my old, used copy, which was at hand, and I am reading her new, orange copy, which arrived miraculously quickly from Amazon, in a small bulk order, and was left, by Kim, at my front door, between the glass and wood doors, on the 4th of July! So I am reading it now, cringing and laughing.)

Hmm, I wonder if I will think of us now as the "small bulk" book group, the way I think of the local men's book group as the SOBs, because that's what they call themselves. One of the SOBs, conveniently named Dick, came into the bookshop yesterday, but he was not looking for dick lit. He was not looking for anything. He was waiting for his Polish sausages to cook down the street. But he bought a cool book on symbols.

Anyway, Dick asked if I had read Olive Kitteridge yet because he wanted to discuss it with me, having just read it with the SOBs. I said I'd been waiting for a copy to come in, and he said a bunch would come in now, now that the SOBs are done with it. He's right!

And Mary tells us, in a comment here (on perimenopause), that she has "just started reading Jim Harrison's new collection of novellas called The Farmer's Daughter and it's wonderful. I read a review that described his protagonists as 'lusty' and that's exactly right! They are smart and capable and sexually charged. And the rural western landscape is lovely to imagine. Great summer read." (The SOBs also recently read some Harrison.)

As I was telling Kim the other day, I like the idea of short stories or novellas for book group summer reading. People can read what pulls them, turn away from what doesn't, and we can discuss the one(s) we all have in common! Maybe in August!

And now, since you are all waiting, my lantana is blooming and making its tiny blue-black poisonous berries, and re-blooming, thanks to the early rain, the long, hot week without rain, and its own life cycle. Don't worry, I am not going to make any tiny poisonous lantana berry pies.

These are not my lantanas, by the way, but mine look a lot like them. So do the lantana along Linden Street, which used to have a lot of linden trees, including the one I grew up climbing, out on Linden Street Road, the rural extension of Linden Street, now, unromantically given an impossible-to-remember number, for emergency-services reasons. Linden trees are called lime trees in Isak Dinesen....

No links today. I am cranky and lazy, thanks to terminal perimenopause.

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!"

The English Major

Day 28 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.

Dick (yes, really, Dick), who is one of the SOBs, reports that he took The English Major to bed last night. It's possible, from the descriptions/reviews I read at Amazon, that Jim Harrison writes "dick lit," but I'm hoping we'll drop that line of conversation pretty soon! Just couldn't resist it here.

Nor can I resist another mention of Philip K. Dick, thanks to Douglas Robillard's most recent comment (to previous blog entry) about the new Library of America editions of his work, and the fact that he wrote the book on which the movie Bladerunner was based. "Ohhhhh!" I said to myself, "that's right! I'd heard that."

In fact, one of our recent customers who was buying some Dick, in paperback, was telling me that most of the films based on his work have not been nearly as good as the books themselves. So I will get around to reading him someday.

And yes, Doug, I join your wife in recommending that you read the Sparrow and then its sequel, Children of God, by Mary Doria Russell. Powerful stuff that puts human history in context by looking at misunderstandings with devastating consequences on another planet! Our twin cities also read her book Thread of Grace, historical fiction, for our Tale for Two Cities program a couple years ago.

So...The English Major seems to be a middle-aged On the Road sort of thing, or exiting middle age, as the main character is 60. And a former English major.

Susan and aka Simone have pursued intended audience (and less incendiary labels, like "women's fiction" and "men's fiction" to help identify book by its intended audience, although the other categories also remain, primarily as marketing tools, as Julie notes) as a guide to reading experience, and The English Major may be intended for a male readership, and an exiting-middle-age male readership at that.

But I find I am willing to read just about anything to find out more about the various ways of being human. As my reading impulse is mostly that--not to be entertained, but to learn about being human, and how to handle it--I do find that I learn stuff from just about anything I read.

Of course, I have set books aside.... In some cases, I come back to them, as it was just not the right time to read that book. In some cases, I never come back to them.