Just Shelved

The Rings of Saturn by Winfried Georg Sebald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The past year has been my year of reading European travelogues--Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, Rebecca West, Lawrence Durrell, and now W.G. Sebald. Except none of these books are actually travelogues, any more than a novel is simply a story. They are compendiums. They are philosophical treatises. They are everything. Only--the writers have composed them while rambling. Place looms down into the works. Place catalyzes.

The Rings of Saturn is one of the most beautiful of all. Temporally, the author walks through an area that I myself have seen, so my love wells a little from nostalgia. Even without a familiarity with the Anglian countryside, however, there is no doubt this book is a masterpiece. I don't use that word lightly, but if a work of art can make one see the beauty and inscrutability and humor and cruelty and cravenness and mechanization of human beings side by side with the mysterious things they have built and created, and condemn the darkness of our souls, while still wanting to live, while still, in fact, loving that most tenuous of gifts--well, then isn't that work of art doing all that it is possible to do? Along the way, I learned about the last Chinese empress, silkworms, abandoned missile silos, crumbling country estates, Joseph Conrad, Chateaubriand, Rembrandt's painting of a dissection...I learned so much. Each section ended with a note of pleasure, like a cello string being plucked deep inside the sternum. I dreamed all kinds of beautiful dreams when I finished the book. I was changed by it.

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Just Shelved

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As in The Blue Flower, her masterpiece, Penelope Fitzgerald excels at thumbnail portraits. Both novels struck me as exquisite miniatures, with plots that seem to turn on incremental accretions of consequence and opinion that can yet turn the tide of a life. They also abound in aphoristic and eminently quotable dialogue. For a peep into a small bookshop in the Anglian fens, do read. I didn't have my peacock feathers blown back the way I did with The Blue Flower, but The Bookshop is still a good little novella to spend the day with.

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Just Shelved

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A master class in saying everything in just a few words.


The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you've read this book, tell me if you wouldn't rather it be called The Deathless Man. I resisted the neat tie-up at the end. I like my packages messier these days, with lots of loose ribbon.


Louise in Love by Mary Jo Bang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading: participation in the construction of an artifice; the construction of a dream.


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Story Up At Wigleaf!

My short short, "Praying," is the featured short at Wigleaf today. Go take a look! This is my first real short short (now one of my favorite genres to work in) and has always remained a favorite of mine. Happy to see it in print at last. Do yourself a favor and browse some of the other Featured Shorts and Postcards up at Wigleaf while you're at it--they all pack a punch. I particularly loved "After the Flood" by Susannah Felts.

Verse & Reverse: A Daily Poetry and Friendship Project

Yesterday, my dear friend Maggie and I hatched a scheme over Gchat (known font of inspiration for schemes of all kinds) to trade a photograph and poem with each other every day. She will snap the photo; I will compose the poem. Our goal in all of this is to have fun, commit to a simple artistic (and low stress) exercise each day, and to emulate the Donne quote that "letters mingle souls." Below is our inaugural poem and photo pairing. Sometimes the two may inform each other, and sometimes not. You can check out Maggie's own blog and tracking of Verse & Reverse here.

Thank goodness for friends;

they make this blargish epoch

more palatable.

Holiday Writing News

November and December have been good months for writing news. This evening I will be reading at the Release Party for HOARSE Quarterly, a locally produced literary magazine in Seattle. The theme is "Professor," and I will be reading a very short piece, plumbing the term, while wearing the most professory get-up I can assemble from the contents of my closet. My short piece, "I Am the Professor," will be featured in Issue 5 of the magazine. You can check out HOARSE and order a copy here. It's a beautifully produced magazine.

Another short piece of mine, "Praying," has recently been accepted by Wigleaf, a journal that publishes very short fiction. "Praying" is probably the first true short short I ever wrote, and I have remained fond of it. I'm quite excited that it is finally finding a home somewhere, especially among the fine company of so many other dynamic short shorts. I will keep you posted when "Praying" is up on their site.

Happy Holidays, blog readers! Stay tuned for more big writing news in the 2012...

(image: http://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/h/holly-28.html)

Just Shelved

The White Album by Joan Didion

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Joan Didion has the same rare and inimitable style as Dame Rebecca West. She coolly observes the scene around her, and when she makes a pronouncement on anything--whether it be Jim Morrison, the Hoover Dam, shopping centers, or her own neuroses--she does so like someone ringing a clear, pure bell. It sounds, and it seems final; it seems bare and essential. I don't know how she manages to do this in such an economy of words, but she does. This collection of micro-essays comes together and does more than simply sketch the end of the sixties in Southern California; it does something more rare, imparts a flavor, a re-animation. One imagines Didion slipping into the background of any scene wearing huge glasses, able to seem both invisible and authoritative. I hope this bell continues to sound.

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Great House by Nicole Krauss

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book very quickly--it has one of those puzzlebox plots, where one awaits a conclusion that ties the intersecting storylines together. I would say it's enjoyable to read, and the prose is very smooth (lots of periodic sentences...don't fear the semi-colon or the dash, Nicole). Somewhere deep down, however, I didn't entirely buy it. The objects and personal failings/obsessions that catalyzed so much repetitive sorrow for the characters didn't seem believable to me. The voices of the characters themselves were engrossing--some more than others--and I believed in the grief of their pasts (except for the lady novelist who writes successfully from her ivory tower but bemoans her ability to connect with others). I don't believe in grief that's entirely organized around an object or destructive fixation, however. By the end of the book, the poor desk of Great House groaned beneath the weight of so much symbolic significance. I would still be interested to read other work by Krauss, however.

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