Death with Interruptions, José Saramago

More enjoyable than his Seeing, with a lighter tone. The intrusive narrator is more knowingly, self-deprecatingly intrusive, rather than taking the tone of someone making profound philosophical comments. There was serious commentary, but, despite the subject matter--“death” withholding her services in one country for a while, then changing tactics by giving people one week’s notice, via mail--the tone was less dark. Most striking was how the book shifted from broad strokes to increasingly human and humane interests, till it narrowed down to the relationship between death and a cellist who--for reasons that remained unclear--simply declined to die. Slow early on, with its broad approach, but increasingly of interest once it allows characters to emerge. Quite a bit about the book is “meta,” as death’s stylistic choices--lowercasing her name, idiosyncratic use of punctuation, loose sentence structure--are actually Saramago’s choices, and the movement of the book’s plot is meant, I suppose, to mirror Saramago’s shift in interest from the largely philosophical questions posed by his initial conceit to the more finite issues posed once he’s introduced a more novelistic plot. A fair bit of that early idea seems half-cocked, so it’s as if Saramago only stumbles upon a better story once he’s halfway along.

Following the lead of Livejournal's wendigomountain and selfavowedgeek, I'm listing 15 books that have had a huge impact. Tough to whittle it down, and some major influences have been left off. The more interesting part, I'd say, is explaining each of these (not that I'll be doing that just now). In general, it strikes me that each book does something that, until I read that book, I didn't realize you could do.

In no order:

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
The Endurance, Caroline Alexander (non-fiction)
Middlemarcha, George Eliot
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquz
The Hamlet, William Faulkner
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor (stories)
Dr. Fischer of Geneva; or, The Bomb Party, Graham Greene
Nickel Mountain, John Gardner
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard (non-fiction)
Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Plague, Albert Camus
Fun House, Alison Bechdel (graphic novel)
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

. . . rather absurdly leaving out any Shakespeare (Hamlet) or a book of the Bible (Gospel of Luke) or a book of poetry (maybe Louise Glück's Wild Iris).

"Helping Them Take the Old Man Down" came back from F&SF in less than a week. After some changes it went out to Asimov's, where, in truth, I'd imagined it being published the whole time I wrote it. Waiting to hear back.

Today I finished Norwood, Charles Portis's first novel (1966). Previously, I've read True Grit and Masters of Atlantis, both very funny and odd books. Norwood is unpretentious and skillful, one character's jaunt from Ralph, Texas, to New York City and back again to Ralph. Much fun is had. Perhaps my favorite line described a woman wearing open-toed shoes that "exploded with toes."

Fly, my wingèd monkey! Fly!

"Helping Them Take the Old Man Down" submitted to F&SF.

Presently reading:
Geoff Dyer, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It
Annie Liebovits, At Work
David Eagleman, Sum
Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

Finished and ready to send: "Helping Them Take the Old Man Down"

Begun, barely: "Bathrooms I Have Known"

"A more complex ordering system appears in what is known as the largest encyclopedia ever printed: the Qinding Gujin Tushu Jicheng, or Great Illustrated Imperial Encyclopedia of Past and Present Times, of 1726, a gigantic biographical library divided into more than ten thousand sections. The work was attributed to Jiang Tingxi, a court proofreader who used wooden blocks with cut-out pictures and movable characters specially designed for the enterprise. Each section of the encyclopedia covers one specific realm of human concern, such as Science or Travel, and is divided into subsections containing biographical entries. The section on Human Relations, for instance, lists the biographies of thousands of men and women according to their occupation or position in society, among them sages, slaves, playboys, tyrants, doctors, calligraphers, supernatural beings, great drinkers, notable archers and widows who did not marry again."
—Manguel, The Library at Night, p. 49

" . . . [M]y books know infinitely more than I do, and I'm grateful that they even tolerate my presence."
—Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night, p. 4

"'Why need I even speak of it, since it is imperishably held in the memory of all men?' wrote Athenaeus of Naucratis, barely a century and a half after [the library of Alexandria's] destruction."
—The Library at Night, p. 27

[Athenaeus hadn't seen it, nor had anyone alive. He made it vivid through insistance, not recollection, like people's ideas of a better decade, a perfect past, a moment that wasn't.]

"In any of the pages in any of my books may lie a perfect account of my secret experience of the world."
—The Library at Night, p. 29

"My Story of Us Looking for My Comic Strip, by Franklin James Nemeth" sent to GUD.

"Rufus T. Firefly was accordingly made president and at once began to rule in his characteristically flamboyant manner. Although Firefly was immediately popular with the people of Freedonia, his behaviour and attitude led to the resignation of some of his ministers.

"Nor was his appointment to the taste of neighbouring Sylvania or its ambassador Trentino. For some years Sylvania had been trying to subvert the economy and politics of Freedonia and Firefly's appointment was seen as an obstacle to these plans, as well as to Trentino's marrying Mrs. Teasdale, as Rufus T. Firefly had offered her a roofus over her head if she became his wife."

—"Freedonia," from The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi


"I can't get the thumb tack in the wall. I've got the saddest life."
—Little Edie Beale, Grey Gardens (film)

"My body is a very precious place. It's concentrated ground."
—Big Edie Beale

"Everything's good that you didn't do."
—Big Edie Beale

When exactly does someone cross the line between viewing cat piss and feces as problematic and seeing it as part of what one expects in a household? For the Beales, when did raccoons tearing through the walls seem merely a natural event like wind? How could they not attach their feeding of the raccoons—Little Edie's moment of leaving the loaf of Wonder Bread sprinkled with cat chow—with the encroachment of the creatures into their living quarters? These are the questions I'm left with.

"Are You Looking At" sent to Virginia Quarterly Review.

"Coleridge, it's often claimed, was the last person to have read everything. This voracious appetite for reading was matched, in his writing, by a chronic inability to finish anything. Walter Benjamin, an obsessive collector of books, thought that the most satisfying way to acquire volumes was to write them, but he, too, was able to bring only a few of his most cherished projects to anything like completion.

"It is a trait they share with Gedney. Although he reproached himself on occasions, for not making the best use of his time, this inability to bring any of his varied projects to completion was not the result of laziness but, paradoxically, of immersing himself so thoroughly in his work."

—Geoff Dyer, What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney


The Kentucky photos are the most striking. The Benares photos possess some of the same qualities—the appreciation for the beauty of a human body in need, an eye for how people shape—unconsciously and unselfconsciously—their bodies against a background, a love of naturalism that carries no overt statement about its subject—but the KY photos hit me more. First, there's continuity—the same family viewed and reviewed, aging. The way people interact with each other. Their interactions with objects—often cars, but also parts of cars, cigarettes, their clothing (men's pants). And, too, I somewhat recognize these people. They remind me of my Frostburg relatives and childhood friends, or Nan's relatives out in Deer Park, with their rural isolation, the tales of violence and illness, the lack of forward momentum. They have no expectation of being remembered by the world. Gedney has remembered them (they seem aware of this in the letters to him, as if he summoned them). He gives those of us who deceive ourselves in regards to our importance—or who inhabit a world in which change is not only possible but expected—the opportunity to recollect how most humans live. His camera doesn't pull these subjects into the limelight. Somehow, they remain where they are.

Highly highly highly recommended

Hie thee hither!

Wait! Not that close . . .

OK. That's good.

You should read How Fiction Works, by James Wood. He writes wonderful critical pieces for the New Yorker. Bright guy. This book walks briskly through a host of idea about how narrative achieves what it achieves, though the book also slows to browse through many well-phrased examples to make its points. Wood cuts through the brush of decades (centuries, even) of rancor to point out what should be obvious, if one sets aside ideological fixedness. Really a fine work.

Wingèd Rejection

I don't know why it's wingèd; it just is.

It flapped my way today from Ninth Letter, which had rejected something else but enticingly requested something more. This moved through the system pretty quickly, one month, but to no avail. And so I seek another venue for "You Have No Idea What I've Forgotten."

Sample paragraph, sans context:

Ron said, “Curb.” He passed the sofa from hand to hand behind him as he swung his end to face the street. His grandmother was talking across the driveway to an old man on the next porch, Sam Timmons, who wore a beige newsboy cap on his bald head. He had no lips and nostrils that appeared to let you peer too far inside him.

A topographical map of reading matter

Lying exposed on the sofa, The Art of Teaching, by Jay Parini. One third of the way through, I'm finding rich striations on how Parini became inspired in his schooling and how various teachers affected him. Nearby, atop fanned pages of my latest story and sandwiched between loose layers of New Yorkers, Elizabeth Gilbert's collection of short stories, Pilgrims. I'll not read her Eat, Pray, Love (are those the verbs?), no I won't, but a look at her biography put me on to her fiction. The first story in the collection was wonderful in voice and characters; it felt authentic. Wedged unexplored just above the Gilbert collection is Sarah Vowell's set of essays, The Partly Cloudy Patriot. Oh, I keep it for another day.

At comparatively stratospheric elevations, the books upstairs receive, at present, less attention. To name those stacked, like ancient water-stranded stones, atop my writing desk would be to merely namedrop; retrieved from the library, they've now become part of the landscape. Those beside my bed, where the Parini book is remoored each night, at least see some activity: Barry Hannah's odd short story collection Airships, faded blue-and-orange letters on the cover, is topmost. Lower, and delved into for odd gems on odd occasions, is the most recent Pushcart annual. And somewhat forgotten, in a second stack, lies Terry Pratchett's non-Discworld Nation; several chapters have yielded their wares, but I don't know whether I'll continue--I'd taken it from the library thinking it might work for my eighth-graders, but now I think not.

Dear Dennis Brutus,

I took your course in African literature at Northwestern. I know I didn't read the Mongo Beti novel. But I read the Armah. I read the Ngugi. And the hilarious Salih. And . . . I thought I'd read the Achebe. But there I sat this morning, reading this old book from my shelves, and nothing of it seemed familiar. Not a word. Did I skim? Did I read it on the edge of sleep and thus retain nothing but what might return to me whenever I slide near the twilight of consciousness? Or did I simply not read it?

Oh Dennis, it was not my aim to thwart your aims. I was young. And how fondly I recall the way you evoked each writer's alien world merely by the speaking of each name. Your high voice, your South African accent emerging from the halo of hair and beard. So you summon them for me still, these writers of other lands.

I will read the Achebe now. It is so good.

But do not expect a paper.

Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!: Writers on Comics, ed. Sean Howe

Riveting, the subject line! (My only falsehood!) Fine work, the book! Especial praise: Aimee Bender on the value of graphic narrative! Geoff Dyer on how comics shaped his aesthetic sense! Geoffrey O'Brien on the wildness of Jim Steranko's art and our world's strangeness (I simplify, I simply . . . )! Glen David Gold on the obsessiveness of collecting (an involving story)! Chris Offutt (sing of his short fiction!) on the marginal comic character with which he connected! Myla Goldberg on Renée French (my thanks for the introduction; her blog now gives me daily weirdness) and Chris Ware! and Andrew Hultkrans's mental excursions prompted by artist Steve Ditko!

Worth noting for meanderingness: Jonathan Lethem's piece. This reader does not find himself charmed when a writer says, in effect, "Actually, I meant to say--" or "Wow, I got off track," as if the essay were spontaneously stepping full-bodied from said writer's skull and could not be altered rather than being a thing the writer actually spent time crafting and was paid to provide. Bogosity!

And whither Krazy Kat!?

Barthelme's The Dead Father, Praising of

So you finished it.

Did. Did indeed. That section, the one I balked at? Turned out, there's where the book kicked into high gear.

These clichés . . . 

The book umped the umpdoodle. It flang me. I was kerflanged. "The Dead Father" himself becomes secondary to the concept of father, or at least an Overfather, the big boss. One--

You.

--gets the sense that Barthelme's own father was a bruiser, thick of word and hand, a man to be, with much difficulty, processed and put behind. And so in the novel they drag his brobdingnagian carcass and take his power bit by bit. I relaxed with the book when I realized I didn't have to parse it all or even figure out who was talking in its non sequitur–packed conversations. The end was beautiful, just beautiful. A fine thing.

You've spoken your speaking.

Unfinished work

Give me a sample.

Of the latest work?

The thing you're planning to work on today.

All right. I'll give you the opening paragraph.

What's it called again?

"Helping Them Take the Old Man Down."

Some sort of metaphor?

Well, I don't want to--

Allegory?

I wouldn't--

Metonymy?

I forget which one that is.

 . . .

In any case, here's the opening:

When I married, late and surprised, I hadn’t heard from the old man for about two years. I knew his assistants went through fallow periods, only to be summoned back into service from out of the blue. Having heard nothing formal, I considered myself retired rather than dismissed, but in truth I didn’t know what to think. No contact was possible between me and my former peers. From my own time with the old man, I sensed some people had simply aged out of service; others died, of course, and not only because the old man’s career had spanned decades.

What kind of thing is this?

Again, I'd rather not say too much.

How about a line at random.

“No. If he’d died, we’d know. The world,” she said, and waited so long I thought the call had been cut off, but then she concluded, “wouldn’t make as much sense.”

That was at random?

Well. Random . . . . I went to a section that was in decent shape.

So now choose something you quite like. Less random.

It’s true that he never used a gun. For a while there, I carried one. So did Jean. Balder kept a tiny pistol up his sleeve, not the sort of weapon for doing much damage, but that was in keeping with the ethic of the Work The old man didn’t want us killing people, not if we could help it. A master of disabling the most solidly built enemy with a single blow, the old man believed in the nobility of the human spirit but saw the human body as a machine rife with “off” switches. 

That'll do. Now get to work.

Narrative as cake

Will you finish reading it?

This? Barthelme's The Dead Father? I haven't decided.

You're stalled.

I'm stalled. It's true. There's a 30-page section, two-thirds of the way through--and it's not a long book--in which the characters read from another book. It's like one of those chapters in Moby Dick where Melville peels off to talk, inaccurately, about cetaceans. 

You thought about jumping over this section.

True. It's not that long. But the book is like cake. It's turning out to be like cake.

Cake.

Cake. You eat one portion of it, one decent-sized bite, and you'd know all you need to know about the entire cake. This book is like that. The narrative doesn't have progression. It just seems comprised of the same substance throughout. I could move parts around to no ill effect. It'll end. Something will happen. But it's . . . a riff. I could walk out in the middle of some long jazz improv number and come back in ten minutes later, right? Okay, maybe I'd have missed the greatest improv ever improvved. That's possible. But what if it's the same guy diddling about on a riff, and he's not showing me something new moment to moment? 

Just finish the book. It's short.

My keyboard needs cleaning . . .

Don't change the subject.

I'm growing fond of you.

Don't change the subject.

I'll be better

Really, I'll be better about this than I've been. My old livejournal blog lost its focus. Here I'll talk about what I'm reading and writing. 

Largely.

And with more consistency.