The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis. NY: Knopf, 2012.

You may have heard about (or of course already read) this book. It has received a lot of attention. I received this book as a Christmas gift, in part due to its Philadelphia setting, but Philadelphia has only a minor role to play in this series of tales. Hattie, at a young age, moves with her mother and sister from Georgia to Philadelphia during the great northern migration--it could have been any southern state and any cold northern city. Hattie settles in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia and marries and has children, twins, by the time she is 17. During the twins first cold, northern winter, they contract pneumonia and die. Hattie survives their deaths, but despite giving birth to nine more children, her tenderness is gone with the twins, and pragmatism directed toward bare survival is her primary parental characteristic. Mathis's novel is essentially a collection of linked stories, each chapter telling the story of one (or two) of Hattie's children at a different point of time from 1925 to 1980. Each story is moving in its own way and demonstrates the hardships of poverty, racial discrimination, gender and sexual orientation bias and the self-doubt and self-loathing that comes with living with all of these hardships.

Floyd is a jazz musician coming to terms with his sexual orientation, for which he faces violence and descrimination from whites and blacks alike. Floyd has chosen to remain away from home, working in the north and the south as a musician. He seeks out the love and comfort of his mother in his confusion and fear. In this story, Hattie maintains some of her motherlove and tenderness ... but it is far from present in the stories that follow.

Six, who has serious scars from terrible burn accident, has violently beaten another boy in retaliation for the treatment he has received from others. He is whisked away in the night to avoid punishment and enters the preaching life living primarily in the south. Although he has no sense of his religious calling, Six nonetheless undergoes a transformation in the heat of revival meetings, and evokes the spirit for others. In addition, Six is believed to have healing powers. Women are drawn to him and he does not resist them.

Ruthie, is one of Hattie's youngest children. Hattie believes her to be the child of her lover, Lawerence, not of her husband, August. Although her husband is a source of unhappiness for her, August is in his way devoted to his children. He is lost in the world he lives in, floating from job to job, woman to woman, and neglectful of his wife and fiscal responsibilities. In Ruthie's chapter, Hattie attempts to run away with Lawrence, and he is ready to care for her and their daughter, but, in the end, Hattie cannot leave her older children behind. And it is clear, from the scenes of the abandoned at home, that the household depends on her. August, her husband, takes her back gratefully and loses none of his love for Ruthie as Hattie reveals that the child is not his.

Ella is born five years after Ruthie, and August arranges for her to go to Hattie's childless and well-to-do sister Pearl who lives with her husband in Georgia. As the couple drive to Philadelphia to meet their soon to be adopted daughter they are violently harassed by white thugs at a roadside park. Escaping with their lives but having been robbed of their belongings and their dignity. As they make their way to Philadelphia, Hattie struggles with the approaching loss of her daughter and her resentment of her sister and her lifestyle.

Jumping from 1954 to 1968, daughter Alice has married into wealth. Her concerns have to do with the managing of a large home, entertaining, and looking the part. She is close to the extent of co-dependency with her younger brother Billups. It becomes clear as the story progresses that she and her brother have a dark secret about which they have never told their parents. The secret is theirs together. Billups finally succeeds in breaking free of Alice's desperate hold on him, but this is devastating for her.

Franklin is serving in Vietnam. He is writing a letter to the girl at home who he lost even before leaving for the war. If going to war is supposed to turn the boy into a man who can face responsibility, it is clear from Franklin's letter that the war is devastating and dehumanizing. Bell, in 1979, is dying of tuberculosis. As a child, from the school bus window, she had witnessed her mother out walking with her lover. Her mother looked beautiful and happy with Lawrence, and Bell wonders how this same woman could be her mother. Haunted by this, as a grown woman, she meets an older (but perhaps not wiser) Lawrence and seduces him eventually createing an impenetrable barrier between mother and daughter, that only begins to heal, when Hattie, through various twists and turns learns of her daughter's illness and comes to care for her and help her back to health and to family.

Cassie suffers from severe mental illness and her parents have decided to institutionalize her and the final chapter, the twelfth in Hattie's tribe, is devoted to Cassie's daughter Sala who suffers through the deterioration of her mother's mental health and then loses her altogether when Hattie and August determine that Cassie is a danger to herself, Sala, and others.

While each story on its own is moving, it is difficult to accept that all of Hattie's nine surviving children could have such unrelentingly tragic stories. In the end Hattie recovers some of her tenderness to nurse Bell back to mental and physical health, and it is clear that she will attempt to nurture Sala. Bellup breaks away from his dark past to find a new path to wholeness. August appears to go through his difficult life without being destroyed by the pain and misery around him and he maintains a kind of loyalty to wife and children. Mathis's novel fits into the genre of expansive family sagas, as she picks up the reader and drops her in and out of individual moments within one Philadelphia family's history.

Yann Martel: Beatrice and Virgil

Yann Martel. Beatrice and Virgil. A Novel. Random House, 2011.

Beatrice and Virgil is about a couple of Henry's, a donkey, and a howler monkey. Henry, the first person narrator of the novel, is a successful author whose idea for his second novel has been politely and kindly but quite definitively rejected by his publisher and agent. In the first part of the book, he describes his rejected idea and his thinking behind it. He wants to explore the possibility of writing about the Holocaust as fiction and metaphor. He writes, "A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real. Was there not a danger to representing the Holocaust in a way always beholden to factuality? ... Other events in history, including horrifying ones, had been treated by artists, and for the greater good.... Art as suitcase, light, portable, essential--was such a treatment not possible, indeed, was it not necessary, with the greatest tragedy of Europe's Jews?" (p. 11). To explain the thinking behind his fiction, Henry decides to begin his novel with an essay, and he gives substantial thought as to how best to present the combination novel and essay. How can he make sure the reader  reads the essay and does it matter whether it is read first or last? Henry decides to turn the book into a flip book--read one way from one end, turn around and over, and begin another text from the other side. It has been done before but not often. Thus, neither the essay nor the novel is privileged and the reader can freely choose, without hierarchy, where to begin his or her sojourn through the linked works.

The rejection of this completed work of five years throws Henry into a crisis and he and his wife decide to pack up and move to an unidentified city outside of the United States. "They settled in one of those great cities of the world that is a world unto itself, a storied metropolis where all kinds of people find themselves and lose themselves. Perhaps it was New York. Perhaps it was Paris. Perhaps it was Berlin" (p 21).   His wife easily finds work and Henry is involved in theater. They adopt a cat and a dog and are expecting a child. In the midst of this seemingly settled life, Henry receives an unsolicited scene from a play, accompanied by "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitator" the striking feature of which is the young Julian's love of killing animals, in large numbers, with relish, and without regret. Although in the end he achieves sainthood Julian is apparently absolved without asking forgiveness or expressing regret. The scene from the play that arrived with the legend, involves two characters, Beatrice and Virigil, who are discussing the merits of a pear. One of them has eaten a pear, and one of them has never seen a pear. Henry is intrigued by the juxtaposition of the play and the legend, and decides to find the writer, who in his letter, has asked Henry to help him with the play. The playwright is also named Henry.

Henry's first visit to Henry the playwright who is also a taxidermist, leads to many more visits. They discuss the play, and Henry the novelist, tries to understand the motives behind the play as well as the connection to the St. Julian legend. Henry the taxidermist never gives him the entire play to read, and rather than hand him pages, insists on reading it aloud. It gradually becomes clear to the novelist through more subtle and less subtle details that the play is in fact a fiction about the Holocaust told from the perspective of Beatrice the donkey and Virgil the howler monkey, both of whom are victims of a regime of hate. It is in fact, the very thing that the novelist had hoped to accomplish. The play about, as Henry the novelist thinks of it at one point, "the abomination of animals," is never far from his mind and he works on sections of it, makes suggestions to Henry the taxidermist, and is fully engaged in its development. But as the novel progresses, Henry's views of the taxidermist as benign writer in a dying profession begin to change.

Although Henry, for various reasons leaves the play and its author behind, the characters of Beatrice and Virgil stay with him. In the end, it is the memory of these tragic charters that leads him to begin writing again.

As I started to read this novel, I was surprised at how much Beatrice and Virgil were not the subject of the novel. Yes and no.  I liked Life of Pi very much and after reading that read Martel's novella, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (no animals in this one, but it is a story about creating a story), which is an amazing piece of writing, so I was looking forward to a new novel by Yann Martel. But when I read the review of Beatrice and Virgil and what I picked up was that this was a story about a donkey and a monkey and that just didn't really excite me.  I  couldn't bring myself to read the novel. I don't know if it was a terrible review written by someone who hadn't read the novel, or if I skimmed the review so mercilessly I didn't pick up any of the important points. At any rate, this novel is so much more than a story about a donkey and a monkey although they are central to the novel, both in their theatrical representation and in their preserved form as products of the taxidermist. As I started the novel, I was immediately drawn into Martel's writing. He is thoughtful, and is not afraid to give the reader something to work with. Indeed, his novel, although not a flip book, is very much the rejected work he describes in the opening segment of the novel.

Why so important to fictionalize the Holocaust? To make it a large and universal, perhaps timeless story that goes beyond the individual stories we hear and read about, to make it part of our ancestral memory, a story that is retold, a fable, a cautionary tale, a nightmare, a horror story, something that brings all the threads and thoughts and pieces together into something that can never be forgotten or diminished. It is hard to imagine that this could happen, that we could forget or lose touch with this historical reality, but we are still within living memory of the murder of the European Jews, and one day, we won't be and in this small piece of fiction, the stage is set.

Martel's adroit use of animals in his novels makes me think of the writer, who according to Wikipedia is currently living in Philadelphia, Josh Emmons. I heard him read a short story at Grinnell College where he spent a year running the creative writing program a few years back. The story was essentially a fable with animals--it has been awhile--but it was an excellent reading and an excellent story. It looks like he has two novels published--so perhaps next on my list.

But back to Martel--read this book. It is barely 200 pages, and, while it will give you plenty to think about it, it is a beautiful novel and you will not find yourself struggling to get into it or reluctant to turn the next page.

Walter Mosely: Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

If you've read more than one novel by Walter Mosley, you know that his narrative artistry is not bound to any one genre despite his reputation for crime fiction with his long time series featuring Easy Rawlins and a newer series featuring Leonid McGill. His official Web site is not update, but it will draw your attention to the book The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2011). Ptolemy Grey is a 91 year old who lives  alone, afraid to leave his apartment, losing his mind from neglect and inactivity. He meets 17 year old Robyn at the funeral of his nephew who was killed in a drive by shooting. Between the care he receives from Robyn, a dangerous experimental drug, and his desire to find out who killed his nephew, Ptolemy Grey rediscovers a purpose to his life--it isn't over yet. Mosley's 91 year old character allows the author to weave threads of African American history into the narrative.  His 2004 novel, The Man in the Basement, features another character who lives in neglect, although it is self imposed. Living in the family house, which he no longer maintains, fired from his job, reading science fiction, and drinking Seagrams, Charles Blakey's disintegrating life takes a turn when a white man, clearly a wealthy white man used to having his own way, shows up asking to rent Blakey's basement. The rent will save the house, but it won't necessarily save Blakey. He becomes wrapped up in his new occupant's expiation or exorcism of guilt, but not necessarily finding his own redemption in the process. Both this novel and the Ptolemy Grey novel have elements of surrealism as well as mystery.

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned was published in 1998. While it has elements of the hard boiled, it is not a novel about crime or a mystery. It is a story about living beyond mere survival. As is to be expected from Mosley, it is a textured and nuanced story of living in an African American community. In these stories, the community is in Los Angeles. In these stories, Mosley features the character Socrates Fortlow, also known as Socco. As a reckless young man, he killed a man and raped and killed a woman for which he spent 27 years in an Indiana prison. Fortlow is 58 years old. Although he looks older than his years, he remains strong with a powerful vein of violence still simmering within him. He takes full responsibility for his crimes and is determined to live his life remembering what he has done. It is too simple to say that he hopes to make up for the wrong he has done with good, but he lives his life consciously, making choices that correct wrongs and make the lives of those important to him better.

The story of his crime, his time in prison, and the trajectory of his life following his release is revealed throughout the stories. Fortlow is always thinking about what it means to be a man, and more particularly what it means to be a black man, the honor of work, the necessity of honoring those you love, respecting yourself so that you can treat others with the respect they deserve. He is a man who is always thinking and considering. In the first story, Fortlow catches a young boy who has killed a neighbor's rooster. Fortlow tells the boy, that he has killed Socrates' friend. He makes the boy pluck the rooster, which Fortlow then cooks along with other dishes to create a small feast that he shares with the boy. Through force of personality and the gift of a full stomach, Fortlow coaxes the boy into telling his history. Over several stories, Fortlow becomes a mentor and protector to the boy. This is just one of the story lines, however.

Socrates doesn't let himself or others off easily. He calls them to account, but not without examining his own motivation for doing so.

Mosley's books are complex and challenging. His characters, always part of a tightly knit community in a carefully constructed and described neighborhood, have pasts through which they are working, presents to survive, and futures that may or may not materialize. Certainly good and compelling reading, Mosley's novels and stories keep you thinking and asking questions. He is a master at his craft.

Mosley has more than 30 works of fiction waiting out there for a lucky new reader to discover--so get to work!

Many thanks to my brother who gave me the two Mosley books that I've read most recently. I can't think of a better gift!

Kafka: The Man Who Disappeared

Translated by Richie Robinson.

The Man Who Disappeared (also known as America) is unfinished. It is one of Kafka's earlier writings and although dark, has some humor and even slapstick elements to it. This edition comes with "fragments," a few segments that are not connected up in an obvious way with the main body of the novel. They give the impression that the novel might go on indefinitely, one dealing with Karl's servitude to Brunelda and the other about the great theater of Oklahama (sic) and his efforts to gain employment with this great enterprise. America does not seem to be an unsuitable title, as the novel  as much about poor Karl Rossman as it is about the country of America, which Rossman travels across. At least it is Kafka's vision of America. The errors in geography and spelling seem as though they could be intentional, creating a clearly fictional or fantastic ambiance, as they could be errors. Although one wonders why, if Kafka was concerned about accuracy, he couldn't easily look up the geographical distance between Boston and New York (in the novel they are adjacent connected by a bridge), or the correct spelling of Oklahoma.

Poor Karl Rossman's story is something of a Pinnochio tale except that Rossman's moral sense is strong--in fact his moral sense is much stronger than that of anyone with whom he comes into contact. He knows right from wrong, and in fact exhibits common sense, industry, intelligence, drive, trustworthiness, and resilience. Bombarded with the haphazard, unpredictable and irrational whims of the Americans he encounters, Karl has little chance of thriving. He moves from expecting people to have rational and logical responses to situations and details, to having little hope that those with whom he interacts will behave in a reasonable manner.

Karl first was sent to America as a young boy because of his run in with a 35-year-old woman. Her seduction of him left her pregnant and Karl in trouble. The women in The Man Who Disappeared are not unanimously trouble, but are  consistently troublesome for Karl. They are sexually promiscuous, powerful, demanding, and spoiled. Two women do come to Karl's rescue, but in they end they fail him. The chief cook at the Hotel Occidental, takes him in, gets him a job, and introduces him to her protégé who becomes Karl's close friend. They are unable to save him when he is wrongfully accused of misconduct at the hotel and unceremoniously fired from his position. In fact, most of the Americans Karl encounters are undisciplined, driven by emotion rather than reason, scheming or lazy, and criminal.

Regardless of Karl's sincerity, desire to please, respect, and hard work, he is consistently dragged down. After his first good fortune of being recognized and taken in by his wealthy but idiosyncratic uncle, he is not long after completely rejected by him because he leaves to spend the night with one of his uncle's friends despite the uncle's reluctance to have their routine interrupted. The house he visits is one with unfinished halls, staircases unnavigable because of darkness, twists and turns that lead the uninitiated wanderer astray. People seem to take liberties with Karl, they stand too close, their hands are all over him, he is treated something like a small child or worse yet, a toy. Karl is vaguely aware that the way he is treated is inappropriate but in the early days of his American sojourn chooses to think the best of most people.

After leaving his uncle's care, Karl runs into two rascals, an Irishman and a Frenchman, who are happy to keep Karl with them to pay for their meals and lodgings. It is the chief cook at the Hotel Occidental that helps Karl escape from these two ne'er do wells. Karl lost faith in them when he realized that they had gone through his things and lost the one photograph he had of his parents.

It is these two rascals that cause him trouble at the hotel leading to his dismissal, and that then take him captive and force him into servitude. The antics of these two men (also reminiscent of the rascals that lead Pinnochio astray) are not unlike unsavory but comic characters of Dickens, or the absurdist antics of, to be anachronistic, a Samuel Beckett play or characters found in Alice in Wonderland. One scene features a chaotic political demonstration that reminded me of both the political scenes from the Pickwick Papers and generally, Dickens' description of the United States in Martin Chuzzlewit.

The novel ends, not including the fragments, with Karl ingeniously putting together a breakfast of left over scraps for his demanding but madly delusional captors. As they enjoy the food he has scavanged for them, he is rewarded with a handful of biscuits.

Karl, unlike the Americans, always does his utmost. He answers questions fully and succinctly to a suprising detail. He is perceptive and knows what is futile and what is not. He becomes less naive as the novel progresses. His difficulties make him wiser and more cautious. In one of the fragments, his captors seem to have disappeared but Karl is still responsible for their employer/lover Brunelda. In the fragment, Karl is transporting the very large Brunelda who is hiding beneath a blanket, in a hand pulled carriage. Karl is able to follow a very intricate path to their destination. "He went very cautiously; before turning a corner he would scrutinize the next street . . . if he foresaw what could be a disagreeable encounter he would wait till it could be avoided or would even choose a route through a quite different street. Even then, as he had carefully studied all the possible routes in advance, he never ran the risk of making a substantial detour" (192). So despite his distaste for Brunelda and his involuntary servitude, Karl puts his all into the task.

Because Karl's story is unfinished we can't know what lessons there are to be learned from the culmination of his life events. In the introduction there is some suggestion that Karl would meet his end through execution, innocently, but gently (xxii). It is certainly a cautionary tale for the would-be immigrant, and perhaps also a joke at the expense of the uncivilized American. For my part, I'd like to think that Karl achieves the "American dream," and finds a place to call home, a good book, a good friend, and food on the table.

Giersbach on O'Reilly and Lincoln

After a long hiatus, the review is pleased to post this insightful look at Bill O'Reilly's book on Lincoln. Inadvertently it may be good timing, coinciding with a new film on Lincoln, and following not too far on the heals of that great biopic, "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter." Many thanks to Mr. Giersbach. If you enjoy his writing, please visit his Web site Allotropic Lucubrations to find and read his short fiction.

Score: Lincoln Loses, So Does O’Reilly

Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 was as shocking as President Kennedy’s almost a century later, but reflected a country still polarized by war.  Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (2011) unrolls the drama leading up to John Wilkes Booth’s infamous act while unveiling the band of amateur conspirators.  In fact, history classes tend to skip over the widespread rabid hatred of Lincoln and the motley group that conspired to murder the President.  Perhaps it’s good to be reminded of such things.  O’Reilly more recently wrote Killing Kennedy (2012), so let’s hope there are no more presidential assassinations.

But how true is the fictionalized treatment?  A seven-page index offers no sources, nor does the prologue, but O’Reilly fills his work with interior thoughts and imaginary conversations the way an éclair is puffed up with cream filling: light and airy, but not nutritionally good.  This is history for non-history buffs, delivering a quick back story of the Civil War generals and their final battles, the political animosities blocking the generosity of our “greatest President,” the nationwide chase to find the assassin, and the tragic aftermath of hanging a possibly innocent Southern woman sympathizer.  It’s a fast read and will deliver information you never learned in school.

This is not a bad book, but somewhat thin after wading through Drew Gilpin Faust** and Bruce Catton.*  By the middle of June, the book has spent 36 weeks on The New York Times list and is in fourth place among non-fiction works.  This may say more about American reading tastes and Bill O'Reilly's popularity among a certain demographic than it being an original contribution to history.

Historical novels are an enchanting genre that lead readers into the dark corridors of the past.  We walk unseen next to characters — some we’ve heard of and some fictional — who are explorers and adventurers, romantic lovers and nefarious brigands.  Politicians are exposed, the self-righteous are quashed, and the meek inherit the earth before everyone goes home for the day.

Killing Lincoln is a non-fiction adventure set against a historical backdrop.  Can we dare imagine the tall, gaunt President walking alone through the cheering throngs at war’s end, heedless to the warnings that he might be assassinated?  Do we gasp seeing General Grant show up at the peace table in Appomattox with mud on his boots to remind the impeccably dressed General Lee how Grant was upbraided for sloppiness during the Mexican War?  Do we titter to hear the conversation between Lincoln and his wife in the closed carriage en route to Ford’s Theatre?

Killing Lincoln is populist literary drama for our times, in which the past and the present exist contemporaneous with each other.  It’s branded as “history” that really isn’t history.  The drawing-room drama of Mary Todd’s spiteful resentment and state-room drama of Lincoln casually dropping in on Secretary of War Stanton could be played out today in a soap opera or on a cable channel.

Artist and writer Douglas Coupland calls this new literary genre Translit:  “Translit novels cross history without being historical; they span geography without changing psychic place.”  The contemporary reader is tossed into the past without having to leave the present.  It’s almost as if, Coupland says, one “can travel back to Victorian England — only with vaccinations, a wad of cash and a clean set of ruling-class garb.”

In this case, we’re given gripping moment-by-moment drama.  O’Reilly and his partner Dugard adopt the narrative tricks of short writing sections and quick cutting worthy of “breaking news” on CNN.

 *Bruce Catton is author of the Civil War Trilogy
**Drew Gilpin Faust is known, for among other works The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War and Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slave Holding South in the American Civil War

Kafka: The Man Who Disappeared

Also known as America. This edition is newly translated by Ritchie Robertson. This is my first foray into Kafka in some time. The first thing that strikes me is that The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, a wonderful novel by a versatile writer, is not merely Kafkaesque, it is very much written using Kafka's techniques, maybe even an homage to Kafka. Some of these characteristics include the announcement that you are a related to an individual you seem to have met randomly and yet you are expected (you are surprised, the relative is not), a character's long, confident pronouncement seemingly out of nowhere--with no signs to the reader that the character should have that knowledge or the confidence to deliver it, unexplained attachments, and, of course, the inability to find one's way.  In The Unconsoled, Ishiguro's main character, a concert pianist, is looking for a place to practice. Try as he might, he never finds the practice room, but winds (an appropriate descriptive term) up somewhere else where people know and perhaps even expect him. At the very beginning of Ishiguro's novel, the protagonist finds out that he is related to the elderly bell hop. Kafka's main character, Karl Rossman, arrives in America via ship after having been sent away from his German home. He loses himself on board at the time of disembarkation, losing his suitcase while looking for his umbrella.  In the process, he is taken in by the surly and disgruntled "stoker," who Karl confidently helps to make a case to the Captain of the ship, despite having met him minutes earlier, for better treatment and pay. While engaging with the captain and the stoker, another man who has been waiting about, asks Karl who he is and then pronounces himself to be Karl's uncle. The uncle knows every detail of Karl's story, and despite the fact that his name does not fit Karl's recollection or logical expectations, he accepts the fact although he heart broken at having to leave the stoker.

to be serially reviewed ... 

Fox and Heti: Western Coast and How Should a Person Be

Paula Fox. The Western Coast (Norton, 2001) and Sheila Heti. How Should a Person Be: A Novel from Life (Henry Holt, 2012).


I'm back after months and months of hiatus. I hope this signals some return of energy and renewed desire to communicate at the very least, me with my blog! Both of these novels are first person narratives and at least in Sheila Heti's novel--autobiographical. But that is neither here nor there. These are both novels, and it shouldn't matter one way or the other whether they true to life since they are both written in a way to go beyond just the telling of a life. I stumbled on Western Coast, when I was looking for Fox's News of the World, which is perennially checked out or missing from my library.  I am not sure if I liked this book or not and I wondered about it this the whole time I read it. At some point during my reading I read a quote about reading in general. Something like, what is important in reading is working through a text. Enjoying it or understanding it is secondary. It is the struggle or the working out of complexities that is central. I kept this in mind when I wasn't so sure about how I felt about it. So, I finally decided that it was sort of an innocent abroad or Alice in Wonderland kind of tale. Annie, a very young girl, has been left much too much to her own devices with an absent mother and an essentially absent (alcoholic, artist, serial marrying) father. Having had enough of living on her own and art high school, Annie heads out to California before the onset of WW II but not before the European wars had started and rumors of the plight of European Jews had begun to spread. She drives West with a chaotic woman and has plans to meet up with her merchant marine boyfriend. He is a young man, but older than she (everyone is because she is still high school age), who is one of many men who is attracted to Annie so that they can educate her--and have their way with her. Before he leaves on another ship he introduces Annie to his California acquaintances, most of whom are involved to some degree with the Communist Party. Even the people Annie meets on her own seem to have connections to the party.  So, men meet her and want her love and want to educate her. She is prone to do what people expect of her--mostly men. In the end, she leaves a very decadent and confused (Southern) California and returns to New York. When she is asked what happened, she says she was kidnapped, but got away. Part of the difficulty of this book is the grinding life that Annie lives; her naivete combined with her anger and listlessness make for an enervating mix.


As when I was reading Paula Fox's Western Coast, I had to think about whether I was liking Sheila Heti's book. I was reading it during a week when I lacked my own resiliency, and the character Sheila's inability to cope, make progress, to just do the right thing by herself or anyone else, wore on me. Yet, interspersed with her annoying self absorption were little dialogues with her best friend Margaux, and every now and then a beautiful sentence or thought would jump out of the page. Sheila, the main character, is trying to write a play and has spent her life looking for models of being to emulate--in the animate and inanimate. Her friends are artists and friends of artists, she has an abusive boyfriend, and she is unable to write her play. In the end presumably, she writes this book instead of the play.  She does this for Margaux who wants her to finish what she started even if it isn't the play (its more complicated than that but you'll have to read for yourself...). What didn't I like about this book? The intense introspection and self-absorption of it. What did I like about it? Sheila finding her way out of intense introspection and into the light of, I don't know, a clearer vision. There is excellent writing in this book, and the final chapters or segments should be read several times. I'm not sure I completely understand the two final parables, but I am looking forward to talking with Helen (my daughter who alerted me to this book) about it when I have the chance, and, perhaps, learning more.

Back to Paula Fox, I was startled when I read in Heti's book: he was just another man trying teach me something. I'm not quoting exactly, but this exact (or nearly exact) sentence and certainly this theme fills Fox's book. There are other aspects of the novel that are similar. It would be interesting to know if Heti has read this book. Hmmm. The style of writing is completely different in the two books and Fox writes for someone like me whose youth was some time ago; Heti's book is reflective of today's recently post college generation. It is set in Toronto. I kept forgetting that and thinking it was set in New York. When Sheila takes a bus from Atlantic City to Toronto, I'm convinced that she is returning to New York.  The bus trip was 14 hours, and I wondered who the writer thought she was fooling. The bus trip from Atlantic City couldn't be much more than an hour or two. Anyway, Toronto, not New York (although it does figure into the novel).




Read these books and tell me what you think!

The Year M

Robert Lacey and  Danny Danziger. The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium. Little, Brown & Company, 2000.

A good straight forward overview that sets a context for the years surrounding the year M (1000). Lacey and Danziger use a manuscript of the Julius Work Calendar for a month by month look at the life in Anglo-Saxon England. It was written in anticipation of the 2nd millennium, and ends on the one hand with a jab at nostalgia and on the other with an endorsement of the hard work, cooperation, and tolerance that was necessary for survival at the time of the first millennium. The authors indirectly suggest that we should keep these qualities in mind as we go forward into the current millennium without knowing about the degree of our current lack of cooperation and tolerance in the second decade of the second millennium. Broadly speaking, the authors look at religion and the transition to Christianity, technology and craftsmanship, agriculture, trade, commerce, and war.

The History of Coffee Houses in England

Ellis, Aytoun. The Penny Universities: A History of Coffee Houses. London: Secker & Warburg, 1956. 

The coffee houses of England served multiple purposes, and this book is written to recognize their contributions and to observe three hundred years of coffee house history. Although written in many ways like a catalog, which makes progress through its pages a bit tedious, the book's author, Ellis, devotes each chapter to a specific aspect of the coffee house. Much of the history is documented although some of it is based on historical legend. From the origins of the first intoxicating sip of coffee in England, the coffee houses served as an early alternative to too much beer--the drink of choice that was destroying the health and well being of many in England. In its early days, the coffee house was open to (primarily) men from all walks of life--the poor mingling with the rich. Coffee Houses served as a safe haven for political discussion, became centers for the exchange of ideas and for civil debate--Dryden held court at a coffee house were the homes for the earliest journals--Addison and Steele were among those who brought their publications to life through coffee house debate (also see Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere on the role of coffee houses and the rise of the early journal and development of cultural critique). Alcohol slowly found its way back into the coffee shop as did the charlatan in the form of quacks and highway men, but in our current times, the coffee house is a solid fixture as a community space conducive to both those seeking solitude and those preferring society.

If you have any doubt about the important cultural role of the coffee shop, find this book in a library near you (I came across this browsing the DA's at Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania).

How it All Began

Lively, Penelope. How it All Began. NY:Viking, 2012.

Lively's latest novel picks up a theme explored in one of her recent novels, Consequences--that is, the importance of a random event or action to shape the future course of multiple lives. The novel opens with Charlotte, an older but still very active woman, coming to consciousness after having been mugged and having her purse stolen. Because of her injuries she must move in with her married daughter, who in turn must cancel her plans to accompany her employer on a speaking engagement. Because of her cancellation, her employer asks his niece to accompany him. The niece sends a text to the married man she is having a casual affair with which is seen by his wife. The niece, in addition, neglects to bring tickets for her uncle's trip or the manuscript from which he plans to speak leading to his deep humiliation. Not all of the fall out from Charlotte's accident is negative but it is disruptive and life changing.

This novel, while exploring a weighty idea is also very funny. The niece's married man is a selfish, hapless man who is in the habit of having his cake and eating it too. The uncle/employer is a well known academic whose glory days are behind him. He is hopelessly out of touch with current scholarship but blithely carries on writing his memoirs and enjoying the self-serving attentions of a young disciple.  Lively also takes a stab at investment bankers and their easy way with other people's money.  Some of the characters move on, and some consider moving on but step back.

The narrator steps into the story as the novel concludes to consider the far reaching effects of the random actions of Charlotte's mugger, concluding simply that no man is an island.

If you haven't read any Penelope Lively novels, you might consider picking up Cleopatra's Sister, City of the Mind, and, most especially, Passing On.