November 20, 2006
Happy about the Sad Cafe
There are so many books (and authors) that I mean to read, and mean to read, but never get around to reading until . . . what? What is it that finally tips me?
Last week I visited, for the first time, the West Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library, a stately old building that warmed my bookworm's heart. Browsing in the stacks, I found a beautiful early-1960's edition of Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Immediately I fell in love: the thick, almost meaty yellowed pages; the slightly jumpy print that made me picture actual type being set. It was a book I wanted to hold in my hands for hours. (Can't say that about many books published these days.)
The novella more than lived up to the beauty of its packaging. It's too easy to call it Southern Gothic, because despite the outlandish-seeming characters and situations, the emotions McCullers delineates -- companionship, loneliness, loss -- are all-too-devastating in their realistic precision. But the prose is also bitingly funny, an aspect that most descriptions I've read of the book seem to miss.
As someone who is used to reading (and, alas, writing) stories that take an extremely limited third-person point of view, I was thrilled by McCullers's wide-ranging, authoritative, omniscient voice, that of an anonymous capital-N Narrator who is not afraid to narrate. It's the kind of old-fashioned storytelling voice that can say something like, "So do not forget this Marvin Macy, as he is to act a terrible part in the story which is yet to come."
Here's to omniscience!
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 06:34 PM
November 18, 2006
Heady, Hearty
I subscribe to the New Yorker, and usually I read it cover to cover . . . except for the fiction. I'm not sure why. I think it has something to do with accepting the real world as it comes (i.e., nonfiction articles) but wanting to exert control over which dream-worlds I enter or don't.
I did, however, read this week's short story, "Night Train to Frankfurt," by Marisa Silver, and I'm very glad I did. The story is about an adult daughter accompanying her elderly mother, dying of cancer, to a German clinic for an alternative treatment. Silver's prose is heady but humorous and full of heart (hearty?), with an almost Philip Rothian (and yet distinctly female) fluidity. Here's an exchange between Helen, the daughter, and her mother, Dorothy:
"Would you like me to read to you?" Helen asked, once they were back in their seats.
"What have you got?"
Helen dug eagerly in her bag. "Vogue. People. Neruda."
Dorothy smirked. "That's cheap, sweetheart."
"You love Neruda."
"Are we searching for my epitaph?" Dorothy said.
"That's unfair," Helen said, with the requisite amount of hurt in her tone. The truth was that she had thought about what to read at her mother's funeral and had made the private decision that it would be Neruda.
I wasn't aware of Marisa Silver's work before this, but now I will look for her two books, No Direction Home and Babe in Paradise.
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 11:01 AM
November 12, 2006
High on Long
A note to book lovers: Write fan letters to your favorite authors! If you're lucky, you just might spark a friendship like the one I'm privileged to enjoy with David Long, the dizzyingly talented novelist who has been my faithful correspondent and fellow-traveler for nearly a decade, ever since I wrote him a mash note after reading his book The Falling Boy.
David was kind enough to write me with his current Word of Mouth choices:
"I'm hyping The Road [by Cormac McCarthy] and Winter's Bone [by Daniel Woodrell]. McCarthy doesn't need my help, but Woodrell's work is pretty hard to lay hands on. Winter's Bone is a very fine reminder of the power of character to lock a read in. I read it in two sittings. Same with The Road. I think people will be reading it a hundred, two hundred years from now--unless its scenario comes to pass."
In response to David, let me say:
I have loved what I've read of early Cormac McCarthy, but have skipped the last four or five books. But if David says the new one is a keeper, it's a keeper, so I went out and bought it, happily, in hardcover.
Daniel Woodrell is easily one of the best contemporary American fiction writers--an utterly sui generis genius with a voice like a banjo on crystal meth--so why haven't my bookfiend friends (except for smart David) gotten hip to him? I, too, whipped through Winter's Bone in a couple of sittings, and it's great -- but I still think my favorite Woodrell book is The Death of Sweet Mister, followed closely by Tomato Red.
Finally, David is too modest to have recommended his own new novel, The Inhabited World, but dang, it's a gorgeous one. How could a novel narrated by a suicide victim be so tender, beautiful, and, well, inspiring? If you don't want to take my word for it, read Terrence Rafferty's standing ovation of a review in the New York Times.
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 04:59 PM
November 08, 2006
Infected by David Leavitt
First things first: After a long night of election watching, I am hazy with the same sort of stupefied vindication that clouded my thoughts so deliciously two years ago, when the Red Sox finally won the World Series. I had tears in my eyes as I watched my monument of a senator, Teddy Kennedy, introduce Deval Patrick, who, in a landslide victory for his uplifting, fair-minded, progressive campaign, became the nation's second-ever African American governor. Fingers crossed now for the remaining undecided races.
Yesterday, I was too nervous about the election to do any work, so I spent much of the afternoon reading. These days, I tend to reread more than I read, looking to old standbys for inspiration. What a delight it was to grab David Leavitt's The Marble Quilt from my shelf, eager to steep myself again in some of his almost preternaturally fluid prose, and to find that I had not, as I had thought, already read the entire book. In fact, I had somehow skipped two of its most important stories, "The Infection Scene" and "Black Box," and so I had the pleasure of discovering them yesterday.
I was especially impressed by "The Infection Scene," which alternates an historical narrative about Lord Alfred Douglas, the tease of a man who ruined Oscar Wilde, with the story of Christopher, a twentysomething gay man in 1990's San Francisco, who is driven to contract his boyfriend's HIV. Leavitt cannily gives us access to the cringe-inducing honesty of the characters' thoughts, as in a scene in which an HIV counselor stands outside his office (which he thinks of, privately, as "the doom room" or "the fate gate"), delaying his meeting with Christopher. Leavitt writes: "About five feet from him stands a door, behind which the young man sits, waiting, having no idea that the counselor, who is not in the least thirsty, has decided to drink another coneful of water instead of going in and ending the agony of his suspense. And why? Because he can. Nor will anyone (his colleagues, for instance) ever know that this little cruelty is intentional. That's the pleasure of the thing. He is palpating, caressing his own power. For a few minutes, the young man is his slave, and as in certain sadomasochistic sex rituals in which the counselor has also taken part, he's not going to be allowed relief until his master is good and ready."
Leavitt has often been accused of not being "edgy" -- and his style certainly isn't -- but zam!, if that's not a true edge of emotion, I don't know what is.
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 12:02 PM
November 04, 2006
Patriotism
Fellow Americans: If you love your country as much as I do, please watch the recent commentary by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, who should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for so courageously and patriotically standing up for the American values of truth and fairness.
And please, please vote your conscience on November 7.
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 08:22 AM
Squirmy Genius
Last night I went to a wonderfully raucous sold-out opening-night screening of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, quite possibly the funniest movie I've ever seen. But "funny" doesn't begin to explain the squirmy genius of Cohen's social commentary. Never before have I watched a comedy from which I literally had to shield my eyes. The night had a thrilling, historic feel to it; I kept thinking: Was this what it was like to attend the opening night of Dr. Strangelove, or Blazing Saddles, or any of the other tiny number of films immediately destined to become comedy classics?
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 07:51 AM
