BOOKS FOR READERS is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by Meredith Sue Willis, copyright Meredith Sue Willis 2003. Write to Meredith Sue Willis at MSueWillis@aol.com. To have this Newsletter sent to you by e-mail, send a blank email to Readerbooks-subscribe@topica.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Readerbooks-unsubscribe @topica.com.
Everyone has favorite reading for relaxation, and mine is novels written between 1800 and 1900. Usually, when I really want to be sure of satisfaction, I go back to George Eliot or Jane Austen, but in the last few years I've broadened my scope. I discovered the underrated third Brontë sister, Anne, whose TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL is one of my favorites. I also enjoy Frances Trollope, the fascinating mother of Anthony. If you ever run across one of her long-out-of-print protest novels (like MICHAEL ARMSTRONG , FACTORY BOY) snap it up!
Recently I've also been reading one of Jane Austen's favorites, Maria Edgeworth. Edgeworth was born at roughly the same time as Austen and lived about twice as long. She never married, but in the latter part of her life was the head of an enormous family of sisters, half-sisters, brothers, half-brothers, nieces, and nephews. Never a supreme stylist like Austen, she instead peers into recesses and corners Austen would never dare. When Maria Edgeworth is good, she is very, very good, and when she's bad– she's still a lot of fun. Her earliest book, really a comic novella, is CASTLE RACKRENT, a hilariously hard-hearted story of the fall– and continued fall– of a family of Irish gentry. Her subsequent novels are structured more conventionally around stories of honest and innocent young women in the marriage market, but secondary characters and plot lines offer many surprises. Her male leads are engagingly flawed, and her heroines learn lessons not only about moral uprightness but also about how to get along in the world. She is ambitious enough to write a novel about ethics called PATRONAGE that examines the professions of law, politics, and medicine, and in BELINDA, she refers to breast cancer, has an incident of cross-dressing women who fight a duel, and includes an aristocratic couple running a crooked gambling den. There's a lot of what they call "event" in Maria Edgeworth's novels.
I don't want to mislead: Edgeworth, like Dickens and the Trollopes, often wrote too much too fast. She has too many long passages like one tediously detailed after-dinner conversation demonstrating how a famous wit's wit is not so witty. Sometimes she makes short work of suspense by tying up all the loose ends in half a chapter. And– this shows my prejudices–even when her ideas do gallop off into uncharted territory, they always come trotting back to the bourgeois stable in the end.
But oh those gallops! The moral heart of HELEN, written when Edgeworth was in her sixties, is not the eponymous ingénue, but a mature woman called Lady Davenant who spends her mornings writing her husband's political correspondence for him. Lady D. is cold to her daughter, who she sees as an intellectual light-weight, and has to learn some lessons, but is never less than dynamic and fully conscious. So if you are the kind of reader who feels a little shiver of delight when a novel is so heavy it takes two hands to lift it– or if you're simply in the mood for touring the early Victorian past with an intelligent and lively guide– try Maria Edgeworth.
READERS WRITE
(Unless told otherwise, I am taking the liberty of including people's responses in these Newsletters.) Sara P. says, "I also loved MOON TIGER [by Penelope Lively] and WAITING [by Ha Jin]. My grandmother is really good at picking books for me. Come April (my bday) I am sure I will have a list to share..."
Denise Mann writes: "I recently stumbled upon 1185 PARK AVENUE by Anne Roiphe (when I say stumble, I mean I quite literally found it on a bookshelf in a spa in Florida)...It's a memoir about growing up Jewish and wealthy in New York.....I liked her writing enough to read a fiction work of hers called LOVINGKINDNESS, a mother daughter story that begins in Manhattan and takes the reader to Israel where the narrator's daughter had taken up with an orthodox cult....Now I am on book No. 5 of Armistead Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY collection which I am loving."
Fairmont State College professor Barbara Rasmussen says, "I am using a book in my West Virginia History class that was written by a son of the local coal camps who ended up a professor of political science at Princeton University– Duane Lockard, COAL: A MEMOIR AND CRITIQUE, (Charlottesville: UVA Press). I think the book really speaks to the issues you raised in your next-to-last newsletter about family ties in Appalachia. Granted this book is more academic than ROCKET BOYS, but it is by no means unreadable. And my coal camp students love it, even as they struggle to understand the "global economics" he so eloquently discusses. The work is multi-disciplinary -- history, economics, political science, cultural appreciation, and , yes, poetry. Lockard, who I wrote to, said that after two years at Fairmont State, he transferred to West Virginia University, before enlisting in the army for WWII. He ended up in London and studied under a world famous political scientist and economist. When the dust settled, he was at Princeton. What I like best about his book is that he can indict the coal industry for its sins (and is really eloquent about it) while at the same time thanking his parents ‘for a good start.' This book makes me cry for its ability to put humanity and its sacrifices on the altar of economics and politics."
FURTHER READING
An online review that covers books from poetry to philosophy to fiction to ecology is the ETHICAL CULTURE REVIEW OF BOOKS at http://www.ethicalculture.org/review/index.html. I have a review posted there of THE BUSINESS OF BOOKS by Andre Schiffrin that will chill the hearts of the writers among you. It is at http://www.ethicalculture.org/review/book_business.html . Another ETHICAL CULTURE REVIEW OF BOOKS reviewer is Kurt Johnson, a well-known authority on butterflies who works in association with the Florida State Collection of Arthropods. He wrote, with Steven L. Coates, a book about Vladimir Nabokov as a talented and important lepidopterist. NABOKOV'S BLUES: THE SCIENTIFIC ODYSSEY OF A LITERARY GENIUS has received stunning reviews, and is just out in paperback from McGraw-Hill.
More and more people are sharing their opinions of books on Amazon.com. Dr. Kasumu Salawu, a computer systems engineer and man of literature, reviews books on Amazon. You can get access to his reviews at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A1LBJ1UY2OQXGV/1/ref%3Dcm%5Fmp%5Frv/102-5395082-2420903
Newsletter # 7
Late April 2001A friend asked why I write this newsletter, which, she said, must take a lot of time. Actually, some issues don't take long at all. This one, for example, had much of the copy supplied by one reader. But the question still stands, and the answer is, like most things in life, not simple. Partly, I am experimenting with the Web. Topica.com manages my list for free, so start up was easy. I may eventually turn the newsletter into an online magazine, like my brother-in–law David Weinberger's Internet publication, THE JOURNAL OF THE HYPERLINKED ORGANIZATION at http://www.hyperorg.com .
On the other hand, I may never do anything so elaborate. In the meantime, I am doing this. I am playing with the possibilities. I also want to be part of the creation of interlocking networks of people sharing ways to find books beyond commercial advertising and the sweetheart deals between big corporate publishers and big bookstores. I also intend shamelessly to promote works by people I respect. Finally, I like to think and write about books, and I am not always with people who share this interest. The beauty of the e-mail format is that if you are too busy to receive ideas from me and others on books this month, you can delete the file and send it off into cyberspace. No recycling of coated four color magazine stock...
In the meantime, here are some more book ideas: Carole Rosenthal suggests DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee, and Suzanne McConnell likes a March 2001 release from Counterpoint called THE ROAD TO FEZ by Ruth Knafo Setton about a young woman seeking out her roots as a Moroccan Jew.
Another March 2001 release, mentioned by a reader several issues back, is Silas House's CLAY'S QUILT. My formal review of this novel set in modern Kentucky is in THE ETHICAL REVIEW OF BOOKS
And, returning to the Newsletter #6 theme of nineteenth century books, Greg Sanders writes: "I happen to be reading one of the best known 19th Century tomes, ANNA KARENINA. That's right, I've never read it. I'm now in a back-to-the-classics phase; I've had my fill of contemporary, experimental, obscure authors and decided that it's time to get back to the basics. What I found is that Tolstoy has an amazing knack for omniscient narration, smoothly moving from one character's thoughts to another whenever he likes. He even briefly takes us into a hunting dog's thoughts--"While they [Levin and Oblonsky] were talking, Laska, pricking up her ears, kept looking up at the sky and then reproachfully at them. 'What a time to choose to talk,' she thought. 'And here comes one...Yes, here it is. They'll miss it.'" Being that I'm working on a new novel in which the narration is omniscient, Tolstoy's seamless hops from one p.o.v. to the next has been quite instructive. "I'm also enjoying Tolstoy's incredible attention to detail--from the upper classes' obsession with French culture to Levin's dealings with his country estate. But what I appreciate most--from a writer's perspective--is the lack of sentimentality, the neutrality of tone that puts all the emphasis on the characters themselves. "Perhaps after Tolstoy (I've already read W and P), I'll venture into Eliot and Austen. My extremely hip and literary great aunt and uncle--now in their advanced 80s--have strongly suggested that I read Turgenev's FATHERS AND SONS and Eliot's DANIEL DERONDA; perhaps they are next."
Greg recently had his walking tour of New York's East Village published in THE TIME OUT BOOK OF NEW YORK WALKS (Penguin, 2000). He has fiction in the BLUE CATHEDRAL fiction anthology (Red Hen Press: 2000) and online in the MISSISSIPPI REVIEW Dec. 1997, Fall 1998, and Fall 1999 issues.
MORE SOURCES FOR READING SUGGESTIONS:
FRIGATEZINE is an online magazine with an emphasis on reviews and book discussions.
Marylaine Block, a librarian and reviewer for LIBRARY JOURNAL, has online reviews at: http://marylaine.com/bookbyte/index.html.
A book catalog called BAS BLEU has genuinely enthusiastic write-ups about the books they're selling. You can request a catalog from Bas Bleu, 515 Means Street NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30318.
I was scheduled to teach a course in Appalachian Literature this summer at New York University's School of Professional and Continuing Studies, but the course was cancelled because too few people signed up. I was both disappointed and relieved: I had been very pressed for time this spring, so I welcomed less work, but it seemed sad that so few people in the New York region wanted to be introduced to Appalachian writing. This newsletter will NOT be my introductory lecture, but I do want to tell you about the book that would have been the centerpiece of the class, Harriette Simpson Arnow's HUNTER'S HORN.
Those of you who aren't Appalachian have probably only heard of Arnow because of her justly honored novel, THE DOLLMAKER. I love THE DOLLMAKER, but to my taste, it doesn't have the breadth and dense layers of HUNTER'S HORN. Arnow was born in Kentucky, but even though she is identified with the mountains, she never fit anyone's stereotype of a hillbilly. Her mother was a teacher, and her father was a factory worker. She was drawn to cities and spent crucial periods of her life in Cincinnati and Detroit; indeed, she married a city man, the son of Jewish immigrants. Much of her adult life was spent in Michigan, and she is now claimed by both Michigan and Kentucky as a native daughter.
HUNTER'S HORN, originally published in 1949, was reasonably well received, perhaps because it is full of local color and appears to be in the tradition of the American hunting novel: the most obvious plot thread is a real and symbolic hunt for the great fox known as King Devil. There are also lots of set pieces of mountain life, but the novel is much thicker and fuller than that. The hunting story is the warp thread for a tapestry of an American social milieu. The set pieces evoke a way of life that is ending. Individual hopes are often dashed on historical, economic, social, and sexual shoals. The book captures conflicts and interplay among industrialization and farming, old folkways, popular culture, and the aspiration to join the larger culture. But for all of its big themes and wonderful flavor of mountain life, the book never strays from the powerful central story of how all this affects the members of one particular family. HUNTER'S HORN is a great accomplishment: a broad, deep, and very full reading experience. There are characters you identify with completely as well as the wonderful dip into mountain life. The writing style is sometimes leisurely, but always vigorous. It ends with the resounding close of a trap, but it is an earned ending, one that is rich and evocative. Try to make a space on your Books to Read list for this one– my nominee for Great American Novel of the Twentieth Century.
HUNTER'S HORN is available from Michigan State University Press .
If you want to support a union of bookstore employees when you shop online, buy books through http://www.powellsunion.com/Bookstore.html.
READERS WRITE Kathy Flaxman responds to Greg Sanders in Newsletter # 7 on his experience of reading ANNA KARENINA: "I read most of it in10th grade but never finished it! At the moment I'm reading THE BOOK OF DANIEL, E.L. Doctorow's fictionalized account of the Rosenberg spy case in the 50's, as seen mostly from the point of view of their children. Makes it seem like a total frame-up– quite chilling."
Irene Tiersten recommends "an astonishing novel," THE GIRL WHO TROD ON A LOAF by Kathryn Davis, published in 1993 by Knopf. She quotes from the jacket copy: "‘The story of two very different women contending with themselves and with each other, this is as well a short course in the opera, a kind of sexual history of the twentieth century, and a philosophical - even religious passage from despair toward redemption. In the perfection of its language, in its dignity and wit, a novel at once sophisticated, humane, and wholly remarkable.'"
Shelley Ettinger writes that she just read a hilarious, very Jewish book by Allegra Goodman called PARADISE PARK. Shelley also recommends THE RINGS OF SATURN by W.G. Sebald. This one is about a walking tour of a region of England that prompts all sorts of reflections on all sorts of subjects.
Rebecca Kavaler is reading and enjoying the same book, but she says it isn't for those with short attention spans.
SHORT STORY RECOMMENDATIONS
If you are a fan of short stories, the web is rapidly becoming the place to read the latest. Halvard Johnson writes about an online magazine called BARCELONA REVIEW. It has stories by Pinckney Benedict and an author with the delightful name Pagan Kennedy, as well as many others. Hal says, "BARCELONA REVIEW is celebrating its fourth anniversary, and, while I don't often plug websites, this one has a lot of good reading matter salted away in its archives. If you've not read Irvine Welsh, get acquainted by rummaging around in the archives here and finding ‘Fault on the Line.' Work up a Glaswegian accent and read it aloud to someone with a sense of humor. This is also a good place to practice your Spanish and/or Catalan."You can find the BARCELONA REVIEW at.
Ingrid Hughes recommends "a fascinating collection called the OXFORD BOOK OF JEWISH STORIES, a huge volume with many famous stories and more I've never heard of by writers I barely know of." And Kasumu Salawu has been rereading Chekov. "Yes," he says, "Chekhov's story ‘The Lady with the [lap, little, pet] Dog' exemplifies his poetics in many keys. His genius for unforgettable conclusions, without pointing to a moral as Tolstoy would have done, is unsurpassed. Without presuming to answer them himself, Chekhov invites the percipient reader to respond to the questions he expounds in his stories. As in his own life, he despaired that true love and complete happiness are impossible! Neither Bunin nor Gorky could match his elusiveness; Katherine Mansfield and Raymond Carver gave it a good shot but both fell short." You can find Chekov on the Web.
Books for Readers Newsletter # 9 has three objectives: (1) to restate the purpose of this publication for folks who have signed on recently (or been signed on by someone else!); (2) to request suggestions for two upcoming newsletters; and (3) to suggest more books to read. First, to those who don't know what this is all about: BOOKS FOR READERS is an independent newsletter written and produced by Meredith Sue Willis and sent to a mailing list of between 150 and 200 people. This is not a Listserv (that is, if you want to respond, you have to email me personally– you can't reply to the whole list). It is not a book review, but rather a personal selection from my reading and the reading of friends and colleagues. I like to think and write about books, and I like to get ideas from other people for books to read. Also, I want to be part of what is happening on the World Wide Web, where people are creating interlocking networks of talk outside the more commerce-driven media.
To read past Newsletters, go online to http://www.topica.com/lists/Readerbooks (or to these archives.) If you have friends you think might like to be included, they can subscribe by sending a blank email to Readerbooks-subscribe@topica.com. To be removed from the list, simply send a blank email to Readerbooks-unsubscribe@topica.com.
I am soliciting suggestions for two types of books. First, what do you recommend for summer reading? For some people, summer is the time for light and easy reading; for others, it's a chance to take on a big project. Which do you do? What is your project for this year, or what have you read recently that seems perfect for the hammock between the white pines? Email me at MSueWillis@aol.com.
I'm also looking for political fiction. By political fiction I mean fiction that uses political issues, movements, ideas, and ideals either as background or as the actual thematic center of the work. Do I have to go back sixty years to find this stuff?
SHELLEY ETTINGER PICKS
Shelley Ettinger reports the welcome news that the New York University library has HUNTER'S HORN, by Harriette Arnow (see NEWSLETTER # 8), but that nobody has signed it out! She also offers these recommendations: "Recent fiction that I've liked includes LOCAS by Yxta Maya Murray, grim and powerful, set in the Chicano community in Echo Park, Los Angeles; THE WHITE BONE by Barbara Gowdy, which I hadn't expected to like but found very moving; WILD LIFE by Molly Gloss, a fascinating rumination on civilization, women's role and more; HEADLONG by Michael Frayne, hilarious and erudite; LIFE ISN'T ALL HA HA HEE HEE by Myra Sebal, about immigration, colonialism, racism, sexism, set among the South Asian community in London....TIPPING THE VELVET and AFFINITY by Sarah Waters, both set in Victorian England and dealing with a lot of social issues in the most gripping, compelling, keep-you-up-all-night-caring-about-the-characters way; THE HISTORY OF THE SIEGE OF LISBON by Jose Saramago, the Portuguese Communist Nobel Prize winner--it blew me away so much I remember thinking it's as if this guy has reinvented the English language, and then I realized what I'd read was a translation from the Portuguese; and, yes, WHITE TEETH by Zaydie Smith which I did think lived up to the hooplah."
Newsletter # 10
Early July 2001I want to send this newsletter out before too many people leave for their hammocks and beach umbrellas without any reading ideas! I'm planning to read more Chekov short stories (their sad, cool qualities seem a good balance for summer weather), and science fiction seems to be my entertainment of the moment. I absolutely gobbled up Octavia Butler's WILD SEED. This one has no bug-eyed monsters and not much science, but rather is a meditation on the meaning of slavery.
Another gripping reading experience is Nancy Kress's BEGGARS IN SPAIN. Like much of the best science fiction, this one is strongest in ideas and narrative energy, but the style is clean and serviceable. BEGGARS was suggested to me by my son, Joel Weinberger, who heard about it from his friend Jacob Winkler. In response to my question about whether you do projects or have fun with summer reading, Jacob wrote, "For me, reading over the summer (and always) is both. I like to have some heavy ‘projects' and some casual, fun, interesting stuff. The best political work probably IS from 60 years ago."
Another science fiction fan is Boe Meyerson, also likes adventure nonfiction for summer.
Ardian Gill says that he takes on a project every summer: "For years I've picked an author or group of authors (e.g. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Morley Callahan) and tried to read everything written by and about them. (It's the only way to get through Proust.) This summer it's Steinbeck; I'm already through THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT and THE LONG VALLEY (contains the wonderful Red Pony). Steinbeck won the Nobel, of course, but I'd forgotten how wonderful a writer he was, and it's a pleasure to revisit."
Barbara Rasmussen writes, "This summer I am chowing down on the new McCullough Biography of John Adams, and the new single volume bio of Benjamin Franklin. Being a historian, the ‘founders' always intrigue me. The Adams bio is unlike any story of John Adams that I have read so far, and I find the prose to be spellbinding, as is the story. Since this political story is true, alas it doesn't fit your request for political fiction, but for a political thriller, I maintain nothing beats the American Revolution and the intrigues that surrounded it. I never grow tired of the story."
And Sandra Ballard recommends Barbara Kingsolver as deserving a place both on summer reading lists and political lists. "Her most recent novel, PRODIGAL SUMMER, is a wonderful novel that essentially tells the story of three women of different generations and circumstances--a young ‘city girl' biologist who marries into a farm family and moves to eastern Kentucky, a forest service worker who lives in a cabin in the woods after her marriage fell apart, and an independent older woman who tends an orchard and a farm and battles her ‘weedkilling' neighbor. It's a compelling story with well-drawn, humane and passionate characters, well-written enough to be the focus of serious study (there's enough there for a Master's thesis and more). It's an excellent environmental novel that asks readers to consider lots of big questions, like which is more important, an individual or a species? And at the same time, it's a well-paced, beautifully intertwined set of stories that makes us care about the characters and what happens to them. A real treat is to listen to this book on tape--Barbara Kingsolver reads it herself, unabridged (perfect for a summer car trip). I'd describe all of Kingsolver's fiction as ‘political' in one way or another--and she's a truly impressive writer.
Another book I'd recommend for summer reading is by a new writer, Silas House. His first novel CLAY'S QUILT is just out this spring from Algonquin. It tells the story of a young man from eastern Kentucky whose mother died when he was very young (we learn about this death in a brilliant opening sequence that occurs during an ice storm), and then he ‘pieces' her life together as his experiences trigger memories and people share stories and bits of their memories of her. This book is one of the most honest, straightforward, and powerful stories I've read in a long time."
And finally, Suzanne McConnell writes, "A good fun fast engrossing summer read is Norris Church Mailer's WINDCHILL SUMMER, which is about a small town in Arkansas in 1969, the boys who went to Vietnam and the girls they left behind, with My Lai figuring in. It's both entertaining, a mystery and humorous, and a serious anti-war book." And just to remind everyone one more time, I'm looking for novels (and poetry!) that use political issues, movements, ideas, and ideals either as background or as the actual thematic center. Of course, as Barbara Rasmussen points out above, some of the best stories turn out to be nonfiction.
The Reading Divas have more reviews up at http://www.readingdivas.com/chicklit/chicklit.html and some interesting fiction as well.
Or, on the other hand, if you're in a mood for a downer, I have a brand new short short story called "How She Chose the Day" online at a new periodical called BIGCITYLIT at http://www.nycBIgCityLit.com/contents/Fiction.html. I mean it about the story, though: it's short but depressing.
