Reading notes

I've read two interesting books lately, both semi-autobiographical books of young people starting out in life: Chicago by Brian Doyle and Either/Or by Elif Batuman. Neither of these books were quick reads, but both were engrossing, so I read them hungrily. Despite the similarity of being semi-autobiographical novels about young people finding their way in life, they are quite different novels. 

I love Brian Doyle's writing, and Chicago did not disappoint. Doyle writes so lyrically and joyfully about places and people. The book is slim on plot, but it is rich in character sketches. The main character is a young college graduate who moves to Chicago to work for a Catholic periodical (very similar to Doyle's own path).  He finds an apartment in a building near downtown, where he gets to know his fellow renters, the building owner, the caretaker who is in love with the owner, and the caretaker's dog, who is the wisest individual in the book. The book has a touch of magical realism - the dog communicates clearly, people meet and form relationships easily and raise money for each other, the building inhabitants all get along magically well.  The main character, who remains unnamed, wanders the city and its alleys, plays pick-up basketball on inner city courts, discovers bars and restaurants and helps the sisters who live nearby. He forms a friendship with the caretaker and his dog, goes to baseball games with his neighbors, and falls quietly in love.  He walks the city for miles, exploring the place but also contemplating life. As with other Doyle books, Doyle's lyrical style of writing makes Chicago almost a poem, creating an image of a particular slice of life in the city, describing the people and the place as they enlarge both the narrator's understanding of life and the reader's. The narrator transitions from a somewhat clueless young man, to a young adult who appreciates kindness and generosity, who sees the goodness/light rather than the dark.  It's a book full of wonder.

Elif Batuman's narrator considers becoming a flaneur, or a walker about town, also, but despite a few similarities in curiosity and exploration, the two narrators are very different personalities.  I had not read Elif Batuman's books before, but Either/Or kept me engaged because it was such a curious presentation of the mind of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood. The semi-autobiographical work is a follow up to her book The Idiot, which I have not read, and now I'm not sure if I will since I was able to piece together what happened in that first novel, the story of Selin's first year of college, so there would be no suspense about the outcome of the book.  

Batuman's narrator, Selin, is Turkish American, a sophomore at Harvard trying to make sense of life. She is naive, but also very book smart, and becomes cynical about her classmates' obsession with pairing off, even as she herself is recovering from heart break and interested in discovering what makes sex so fascinating. She turns to books to discover the meaning of life and Kierkegaard's Either/Or, which contrasts the moral life and the aesthetic life, is a formative book for Selin. She begins to experiment with living an aesthetic life, and continues to find insights and guidance from the books she reads for class and for pleasure that help her escape the malaise she has been in since her boyfriend form the first novel broke up with her. She chooses classes based on how interesting they sound and whether they will help her become a novelist.  Her roommates and best friend, who is also Eastern European, drag her out of her room and out and about so that she will get over her broken heart, but they are continuously pairing off with guys they meet at drunken parties, which doesn't appeal to her while she is still in mourning. But eventually she discovers someone is attracted to her, and so she decides to leave a party with him. Since she is seeking experiences while testing the aesthetic life, she barely questions the morality of what she is doing when she calls him back a week or two later so she can lose - or just get rid of - her virginity.. 

The second half of the novel follows Selin as she travels Turkey as a writer for Let's Go - which funds her visit back to visit extended family. Soon after she heads out to the locations designated by the Let's Go people, she finds herself in a relationship with a guide, who turns out to be not a decent guy, but then she falls into the clutches of several questionable characters whom she tries to shake, but doesn't always succeed. Her inability to stand up for her own feelings allows her to be victimized by some creeps - Selin talks herself into letting them have her way with her because she can't think of a reason to say no. Even though she studies Russian, she must not have come across Ivan Karamazov's rationalizing that if there is no God, everything is permitted. Or maybe that's what she is testing out. 

The novel ends in such a way that I suspect future sequels are in the works. No terrible tragedy befalls Selin in Turkey, and she should have lots of material for her own novel, or at least for a Let's Go Guide to Turkey.  As a reader, I both pitied Selin and also recognized similar twisty ways of thinking about what I was reading and how I should apply it to my life - which is the big question she is trying to decide.  A peril of reading too much is having no way or too many ways of determining a map to life. But then if someone reads too narrowly, perhaps some wisdom or insight might be overlooked. And then there's all that knowledge and potential wisdom to be found in relationships and experiences . . .  or the confusion/loss of sensitivity when one has too many experiences...

Other readers' insights: 

https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/chicago-by-brian-doyle-review/

https://www.upbeacon.com/article/2016/04/brian-doyle-chats-with-us-about-chicago-his-new-novel

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/18/eitheror-by-elif-batuman-review-adventures-in-literature-and-life

https://www.wsj.com/articles/either-or-book-review-elif-batuman-finding-herself-in-books-and-life-11653057395

A recommendation

 I meant to post something, anything, before the end of August, but here is September, arriving bright and cool this morning on the West Coast. It will warm up by noon, but today a sweatshirt is needed to sit and drink coffee on the porch.

Not that I am drinking coffee on the porch, although I did carry my coffee out back to watch the puppy do his business and to ensure he did it completely.  He has been a good little guy about going to his space most days and has even rung the jingle bell I hung by the back door just for the purpose of letting us know he has to go out without using his voice. He has found his voice now, but he doesn't bark unnecessarily, just at large dogs he wants to warn away, at small, active boys he wants to run and join, and at me when he wants food or attention.  He also will bark at sleeping teenagers if they forget to close their doors at night. In the morning, if I am being boring and grading papers at the computer, he will look to see if a bedroom door open, so he can go in and ask loudly to be let into someone else's cozy bed. The six year old loves this; the sixteen year does not.

Now that it is September 1st, I have been teaching online for three weeks. If I have not posted in this space recently, it is because I have been researching essays to assign, crafting engaging discussion posts, recording boring and fuzzy grammar videos, and trying to make up quizzes and reading questions that are challenging but not too hard.  None of these are for my military class, which is already completely designed and runs with minimal revisions from me, other than grading, writing announcements, and commenting on discussion posts. But this term, only 4 students signed up and 3 didn't get funding, so that class was cancelled. 

Meanwhile, the three composition courses, one a research writing course, are full semester courses, so the course I have designed for my military students doesn't translate.  In addition, these students are just out of high school and have different abilities.  All of this is to say, planning has taken more time than I thought it would.

I accepted the third class because another teacher left and because I was pretty confident we'd be online this term, which we are, but now that Covid numbers are down in San Diego, we may return to in-person teaching. This will interrupt my home schooling schedule with the youngest. The two high schoolers are doing distance learning, but I don't like to leave them unattended too long, either, because they quickly are distracted and lose track of time during their media breaks - during which they mostly turn to other forms of media. So I partly wish to remain online this semester, even though planning needs to be more detailed.

I went to a home schooling social last night for Catholic moms, and it was heartening until talk turned to vaccines and overreaching government interventions, as well as the anticipated violence no matter who wins the election in November.  That was all disheartening, and I stayed up too late contemplating the end of the world.

But this morning my spirits were lifted, not just by the cool weather that makes my coffee taste better even though I'm drinking it in front of the computer, but because I started reading Brian Doyle essays again. I have been reading his work in preparation to write another paper that I really need to start, and because I assigned "Joyas Voladoras" to my students, and because his writing is beautiful and heartening. He was a genius at illustrating small miracles, until the tragedy of his death at age 60 in 2017.  You can read some of his short essays he called epiphanies, which are more prose poems, here at The American Scholar, and also at the University of Portland magazine, which is more difficult to navigate, and at America Magazine and Orion and The Sun.  Go read now, and have your heart enlarged, also. 

Reading in Review

Although wintry weather doesn't have us cozied up in the evenings by a fireplace reading (except in my dreams), we have spent some quiet evenings with books this month.  I've been reading The Secret Garden with the five year old, mostly because I wanted to reread it, but she is loving it. We have just a few chapters left, and then we'll watch a film version. I had forgotten how mean Mary and Colin are. I may have left out a few of their lines here and there because of their rudeness. I also skipped a bit in the Magic chapter because it becomes a bit incantatory. I can dismiss their superstitions and see it as a manifestation of a desire to believe in the power of prayer, but I'm not sure the kindergartener would understand, and she may start wishing for magic rather than praying for miracles - which at this age she doesn't do anyway. Her prayers are sweet lists of people she loves. Despite my minimal editing of the text as I read aloud, I am loving rereading it. The descriptions of the garden are beautiful, and the effect of the garden on the children fits right in line with what we talk about in our nature writing class.  (Also confirmed in the New York Times summary of this study. I'm not sure that we need these studies, except to point scientifically to the fact that we all agree with that more time outdoors is better.)

The only problem of reading books like this is that they make me yearn for a garden to grow bulbs and roses and snowdrops and delphinium. I wonder if there is a study that relates wellbeing and the amount of time spent reading: a certain amount makes you feel good, another amount unearths unfulfilled desires... How often does what we read get put into practice? If we read too many competing visions of life, do we become incapacitated?)

To avoid that situation, I forget a good deal of what I read, so instead here is a list of what I've consumed and passed back to the library:
 First, a collection of essays: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 edited by Deborah Blum.
This was a library book I picked up on a whim. The articles were mostly published in 2013 but still seem relatively timely, albeit familiar - a couple on extinction and hybrids, one about genetic engineering to prevent crop disease, one about a female college professor who spent her career writing about end of life issues who is now caring for her husband after he broke his neck in a bike crash and became quadriplegic. Their regular brushes with death and the ethical debate about ending his life was a fascinating read. To see the wife move from writing about ideas about dying to experiencing what it meant to love someone struggling to live revealed how strong the will to live can be.  That essay was "A Life or Death Situation" by Robin Marantz Henig originally published in The New York Times Magazine. The husband died around the time the article was published when he asked that the machines that kept him alive be unplugged.

Ethical issues were at the heart of an essay about a woman seeking family after taking a DNA test. Less controversial were articles about how the brain prefers reading and writing on paper, an encomium to wool by Barbara Kingsolver, and an essay about combating boredom on long expeditions by having celebrations. I only skimmed a long essay about paleontology but read with fascination one about waking up from anesthesia while in surgery and another about Hansen's disease, or leprosy, by Rebecca Solnit, whose writing I usually love. E. O. Wilson's essay about mountains was hard to get interested in, as was an essay about fire ants.  Essays about the fear of antibiotics failing and the return of measles were a bit sensationalized. "Learning to die in the Anthropocene" by Roy Scranton is an essay I see referenced in some of the reading I do for my nature writing class.  The author published a book by the same title. Drawing on realizations he had as a soldier in Iraq in 2003, Scranton suggests that the end of our era is already here, and we need to learn to confront death.

I read this collection on a car trip - and it's the perfect kind of read for a journey because you can dip in and out of it, and look up every once in a while to discuss the ideas with others.

For book club, I read Mist of Mercy by Anne the Lay Apostle. I was reluctant to read this one, but I had a free copy from the church library liquidation. It was not what I was expecting - which was something more "mystical" I guess. Based on the cover copy, I thought there might be more discussion of demons and sin and describing different visions.  Rather, the beginning gave a short history of "Anne's" visions and how she came to transcribe them. The middle section is basically short dramatic anecdotes about how sin is manifest in different ways in different lives and how guardian angels might intervene. Then a section about purgatory follows. The way she describes souls in purgatory as being in a "mist" reminded me a lot of  C. S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. It was more narrative than I expected. The next section was transcriptions of Jesus's messages to Anne. Here is where I become more skeptical because the language is so sentimental. The final section is a short compendium of prayers and brief advice for incorporating more prayer and good works in your life. I'm interested to hear the response of my book club, but I wonder if those who did not connect to the book will be more guarded because the person who recommended it LOVES it.  I struggle to articulate my feelings about this book and its style of writing - amateurish but sincere - and subject matter: personal visions and advice for holiness.  After reading it, I do feel convicted about steps I could take to live a more holy life, and it helped me identify thoughts and attitudes that distance me from God and weaken my ability to respond with love to those around me. I know the weed of selfishness is rooted deep in my soul and needs some major work of excavation, but I have a skeptical side that withholds affection from this type of book. For instance, I have never been able to finish Story of Soul and the book about Fatima through the eyes of Lucia. Here again is where reading widely prevents me from being enthused about a book that is good for me - a little like eating raw vegetables.

On the other hand, I can gush over Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks, although admittedly I skipped right over what he might say is the essence of the book - the glossary of forgotten words. His essays describing different terrains of the islands around the UK are luminous, a real delight to read. Despite apparent similarities in these places, he gives them each a personality.  He is an author I have only recently discovered, and I want to read more from him, as I love his essays. Here is an hour-long talk he gave about landscape and the heart, based on one of his earlier books, The Old Ways, which is a model for what I am trying to say so inadequately in my class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q1IK-O5Ypg  (And for my own notes, I want to return to this: Macfarlane and Barry Lopez at Powells Book Store last summer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyCFGPlLjbE -- Macfarlane makes a very genuine and moving tribute to Lopez at the beginning. Love it!)

I was looking forward to reading Brian Doyle's The Journey of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World because I have always enjoyed Doyle's essays, and his death last year was a real loss to the literary world.  He wrote in a natural and conversational way that made him seem a friend across the miles.  I wanted to love this novel about a period in the life of Robert Louis Stevenson when he was living in a boarding house in San Francisco while he waited for his fiancee's divorce to be finalized, but I had trouble staying focused.  The book is mostly about the adventures of the landlord, John Carson, which serve as an inspiration to some of Stevenson's stories.  While Stevenson lives at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Carson, he writes furiously during the day, and then sits down to enjoy a drink and the storytelling prowess of Mr. Carson. Mr. Carson was a sailor who had many adventures familiar to readers of RLS.  I have not been an avid RLS reader, so I likely did not catch all of the allusions and am just assuming that Carson's adventures translate into models for many of Stevenson's heroes' adventures.  The book is charming, but there are almost too many tales. And though I enjoy reflections on the power of storytelling/writing, some seemed shoehorned in.  Interspersed between the tales are letters exchanged by Robert and Fanny, his fiancee, which also seem to need more context or perhaps are too sweet or too contemporary?  I can't quite put my finger on it. I did warm up to it and enjoy it more as it went along, but I kept putting it down and forgetting to pick it back up. Doyle's gifts as an essayist are not dimmed in my opinion, but perhaps do not translate to novels.

Nonetheless, there are some especially good passages. This may be my favorite:: "We do not acknowledge enough, I think, the clan and tribe of our friends, who are not assigned to us by blood, or given to us to love by a merciful Creator, but come to us by grace and gift from the mass of men, stepping forth unannounced from the passing multitudes, and into our lives, and so very often stepping right into the inner chambers of our hearts. In so many ways we celebrate those we love as wife or husband, father and mother, brother and sister, daughter and son, but it is our friends whom we choose, and who choose us; it is our friends we turn to abashed, when we are bruised and broken by love and pain; it is our friends whose affection and kindness are food and drink to our spirits, and sustain and invigorate us when we are worn and weary."

A sadder line: "I did not know then, and only can imagine now, the pain of realizing that the child you love with all your heart and soul is a stranger, and perhaps always will be, no matter how many years you both shall live."  Substitute child with spouse or sibling or friend or parent - any soul we think we know who surprises us with a distance we did not know existed, but is inevitable between embodied souls.

On storytelling: "There is a story in every thing, and every being, and every moment, were we alert to catch it, were we ready with our tender nets; indeed there are a  hundred, a thousand stories, uncountable stories, could they only be lured out and appreciated; and more and more now I realize that what I thought was a skill only for authors and pastors and doctors and dream -diviners is the greatest of all human skills, the one that allows us into the heart and soul and deepest layers of our companions on the brief sunlit road between great dark wildernesses. We are here to witness, to apprehend, to see and hear, to plumb, with patience and humility, the shy stories of others; and in some cases, like mine, then shape and share them; so that they might sometimes, like inky arrows, sink into the depths of other men and women and children, and cause pleasure, or empathy, or a sort of delicious pain, as you realize that someone somewhere else, even perhaps in a time long ago, felt just as you did. Stories, among their many virtues, are messages from friends you did not know you had; and while you may well never meet the friend, you feel the better, with one more companion by your side, than you thought you knew."

Finally: "Always it is thus, I suppose, hat the sharpest savor is the last, and we finally understand what we have, when we no longer have it. A deep delight, married to a deep throb of sadness -- perhaps that is the quintessential human condition."

And that is it for now.  Classes have started so I am reading along in my packets for those, too, and reviewing Walden again - still trying to jam in too much in a short time.  How can I leave out voices like Brian Doyle/s?