Wednesday, November 23, 2011

White Noise

I am traveling a lot these days which means that I have a lot of time to read on planes and in hotels, but not much time to write up my thoughts. So I am moving to a simpler format. 

White Noise  by Don DeLillo is a post-modern exploration of American cultural underpinnings: What is around us, what drives us, how do we handle the sounds, scents and visuals that intrude into our space and most important, how do we handle death and our fear of it.

Non-Spoiler Summary:  The story follows a patchwork family: Jack, Babette and their kids from multiple marriages including six year old Wilder who is cognitively impaired. Jack is the department chair at a private liberal arts college and runs the country's most successful Hitler studies program. He has created a persona for himself by wearing dark glasses and copping an attitude when he teaches. At home, he is an average guy and a congenial father and husband. Babette teaches, volunteers and cares for the family. She has a big secret that she is hiding (and, it turns out, other bigger secrets, too). Everyone knows this, but no one can pry them loose from her.

Jack and Babette are both crazy-fearful of death - each afraid to die, but more afraid of being the last one alive. The plot explores the fear of death theme in a myriad ways including Jack and Babbette's denial, angst and rash decisions. When an "airborne toxic event" occurs within view of the family home, Jack and Babette deny the toxic event's danger saying that these sorts of things happen only to the under-privileged - which they are not - and so there is nothing to worry about. (Their children, meanwhile, keep up with radio reports and pack up the car.)

Jack becomes good friends with Murray, a visiting professor of cultural studies, who formally observes, writes notes and then deconstructs everything around him: children playing, people watching TV, a carton of broken eggs on a supermarket aisle floor, and, yes, the way people react to death. It is Murray, in an oracle's role, who provides most of the book's meta-insights.

Once beyond the airborne toxic event, Jack's obsession with death reaches over-the-top proportions and the plot comes along for the ride. I never-ever would have guessed the plot turns. I'm not sure that I care for them, either. Stepping back from the book, it's almost cartoon-ish in nature. Up close, I found it annoying, but truthfully, it works in this post-modern, meta-novel.

Style:  DeLillo shows more interest in his musings and meta-dialogs than in the plot. White Noise's matter-of-fact style reminds me of Camus: there is little emotional content, scant descriptions of people or scenery and no sub-plots to confuse the issue. DeLillo surfaces a few times in the middle of a paragraph to inform the reader that in keeping with post-modern traditions he will fore-go creating a new plot angle or that he will not bother to describe the vivid hues of a fabulous sunset. This all has the effect of keeping the reader at arm's distance from the story and makes for a  reading experience more akin to reading a newspaper: one watches characters rather than empathizing with them as they confront huge challenges. Did I mention that it is a parody of modern culture? Very clever, though it gets old.

Reading Experience: I truly enjoyed the first 200 pages or so. I became annoyed with the characters and plot thereafter. But in the end, I'm glad to have read it - and have enjoyed mulling it over. This is a good book for group exploration - which mean a class because very few book clubs are going to take this one on.

Gearing up for White Noise (and Next)

The little I know about White Noise by Don DeLillo comes from the book cover and the first few pages. I see a preoccupation with death in the text and there appears to be radiation or something like it in the picture on the cover. The writing draws me in.

I have been looking forward to reading White Noise for about 6 months. I've put it off because it's a post-modern book, and that made me suspect that I would need a clear head (i.e. no work projects screaming to be done) to do it justice. So as I'm cooking the Thanksgiving dinner, I plan to read the short chapters and enjoy the spaces in-between. No disgusting sexuality as in Lolita and Naked Lunch. No creepy babies or settings as in Beloved or Never Let Me Go (much as I loved both). No cryptic stream-of-consciousness as in The Sound and the Fury. Just a solid exercise in great reading. This book won the National Book Award, and DeLillo was a Pulitzer prize finalist for two other books.

Next, by James Hines
For some reason, the first few pages of White Noise remind me of a book by James Hines called Next. It is about a man living in Ann Arbor, who in a panic when he suspects his girlfriend is pregnant, decides to drastically change his life. One morning he secretly flies to Austin to apply for a job. Arriving early, he spends a few hours following a pretty woman around town as she runs errands. (She's in on the game). As he fantasizes about being with her he relives key moments in his life - especially his love life. His anxiety increases with his reminiscences and as a result his morning becomes more eventful, but he survives it intact and arrives for his interview on time. The book leads up to a big twist and so I'll stop here. Loved the book. I chewed on it for a few weeks afterward - which is my idea of a what good book should do.

What is it about White Noise that reminds me of Next? There is a sense of calm before the storm. Here's to a Happy Thanksgiving and to some relaxing reading time!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Inbetween Book: The Lace Reader

This Sunday, after a rough work week, I laid on the couch and inhaled The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. It's a suspense/mystery story with some big twists. The plot has a number of similarities to Beloved although it is not in any way to be mistaken for that great book.

The story takes place in Salem, MA, against a backdrop of tourists visiting modern-day witches while a (Christian) cultist sect exorcises demons. The mystery involves two missing women who are connected to the head of the cult. The main character, Towner, is the great niece of one of those women and the niece of the cult leader. She and her family are psychic and able to see the future in patterns of hand made lace - kindof a fancy crystal ball.We are thrown in and out of psychic phenomenon as Towner tries to understand her dreams and elements of her past and future. The mysteries themselves do some shape-shifting which keep the reader on his-or-her toes. And there is a handsome detective to lend the story some romantic interest.

The Lace Reader is a solid read. I never looked to see how far along I'd gotten (are we there, yet?). I spent time at the end rereading earlier parts to make the mystery's dots connect. They all connected. Another great pallet cleanser after a few hard-to-read Time 100 books.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Lolita - Banning Vs Condoning

Today I got the energy to finish Lolita. A few months ago when I read most of the book, I used the following ploy: I started at the beginning and read until it got disgusting. Then I moved to the last page and read sections backwards until I hit the end of the disgusting part in the middle. I thought I'd missed 20 pages, but the disgusting part was much longer than that. It was also a lot more than disgusting. But I'll get to that.

Before today, I honestly did not know what the middle part contained. When I stopped reading, Humbert Humbert had attempted to drug 12-year-old Lolita to sleep and had joined her in bed expecting to "take advantage" of her as she slept. But she kept waking up. I stopped here and turned to the last pages where he is about to be executed for murdering a man. Safe enough, I turned back further towards the middle... Humbert and Lolita meet when she is older (17?)and she tells him that he ruined her life. She is engaged, pregnant and broke and needs money. He gives her some. I read all of that, and stopped there.

I put the book down - thankfully in the dark - about what may or may not have happened in those middle pages. I noted that Humbart was a fool, that the writing was spectacular, but the material was questionable at best. Several people on a blog I follow mentioned that nothing much happens in that middle section. So I figured that Lolita made a cuckold of Humbert and scampered away unscathed. Today I discovered that "nothing much happens" means that the sex is not explicit, that is, it's not hard-core pornography. Nabokov does, in fact, write about enough details to make scenes come alive.

What a surprise. The nothing much in the middle includes him seducing her (this is statutory rape) on the morning of the sleeping pill and implying that this thirteen year old was fair game because she had had sex with a boy at summer camp. This scene was followed by a year of raping her all across the country. He cajoled her, threatened her and sometimes simply raped her. He paid her money to do "special favors" for him. And then, worried that she might use the money to run away, stole the it back from her.

Whoa.

Academically, this book may be a jewel. Nabakov poured his heart into it. I can see that. It is a treasure of wit and prose. But why would anyone recommend that the general public read it? Why would critics put it on the best-books lists? This is prurient material about children. We should not be recommending prurient material about children to the general public (or our best friends, either!). It even appears on the Radcliffe 100 best books. This is a perverse book in which horrible things happen to a beautiful, pubescent girl. Let's not glamorize this as great literature to be read by all. I don't want us to become so jaded that a book like Lolita doesn't make us squeamish any more.

One critic argued that the book is not erotic because the sexually suggestive material in the first three chapters becomes boring  and so the reader is not aroused by the later material. I am not sure if this commentator reads a lot of pornography and so found Lolita boring or if he keeps his genitals buttoned up very tight and is therefore not affected. My guess is that if it were not erotic - even slightly - it would not have sold 100,000 copies in three weeks.

Others say that Nabokov distances himself from Humbert at the end of the book and makes it clear that Humbert's behavior is despicable. What that says at best is that Nabokov is redeemed at the end, not that Humbert is. Humbert never sees himself for the monster that he is. A large amount of sexually titillating material about a child has been read by the time the reader reaches the end. It's a bit late by then to be distancing oneself.

I am not a prude. I am simply noting that this book about a foolish pedophile has prurient material about a child and we should not put it on our best-books lists. I think that someone has missed the difference between objecting to censorship (which I do) and condoning a sexual book about children (which I don't).

I did not finish reading the book. I won't bother. I hope you don't either.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Truman Capote

Our local book club is reading the trio of holiday stories written by Truman Capote. I found two of the stories each in their own book at the library. But one of them, A Christmas Memory was also part of a collection that included Breakfast at Tiffany's. I had forgotten that Capote had written it. I couldn't resist.

Have I ever read Capote before? Surely I must have. I can almost remember the well-shaped sentences and honey-like descriptions in the holiday stories. But I never read Breakfast at Tiffany's and in fact, barely remembered that Capote had written it. What a delight. The book has all of the same gay, madcap fun and underlying sorrow as the movie. Capote's Holly Golightly is absolute kin to Audrey Hepburn's portrayal of her. But the similarity ends there, the movie was Hollywood-ized and tells a different story. Capote was the master of the "and then he/she went away and I never saw him/her again" ending. And Hollywood? Well you know that the guy gets the girl.

Which is better? I loved them both. Who can resist Audrey Heburn's charm. Who can resist Truman Capote's prose.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart is the most widely read novel in Africa. Written by Nigerian national, Chinua Achebe, it details tribal life of a small village both before and during colonization. We see the world through the eyes of yam farmer, warrior and wrestling legend, Okonkwo, a short-tempered, perfectionist with little sympathy for his drunkard father or his sensitive son. Okonkwo is by current-day descriptions, a brute, but he is prosperous and well-respected in his village. He lives a happy life for many years before things begin to fall apart - first within his life in the village and later for the village as a whole as white missionaries and the colonialist government that follows change village cultural ways forever.

Prior to the arrival of the white colonialists, Okonkwo accidentally kills a man during a sacred ritual and is forced out of his village for seven years. He and his three wives and children find refuge in the village of his mother and receive little news from his home village. When he returns, he sees that his people have learned to live peacefully, if not happily, with white (and black) newcomers even to the degree of tolerating a new missionary church and its rituals. But Okonkwo is not adept at negotiating this sort of change. He thinks of his fellow-tribesmen as "soft women" for not fighting the white men. Conflicts arise and tragedy ensues.

Sound like a typical Greek Tragedy? It is. Likewise, it is a classic tale of conflicting cultures.The book is written straight-up and we learn many of the intricacies of life in the Lgbo tribe: the day-to-day events, rites, cultural values and taboos. Achebe writes of a life that existed in the 1890s - around the time his father was growing up. Achebe himself converted to Christianity as a young man and so he sees both sides with a clarity that would be hard to reproduce by a younger writer. The book is chock-full of short folk tales, adages and explanations for the natural world. Here is an example:
When the moon rose late in the night, people said it was refusing food, as a sullen husband refuses his wife's food when they have quarreled.
The matter-of-fact writing prevents it from being a page-turning read, but it's a book one is glad to have read.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Beloved

I made it through Toni Morrison's, Beloved. Whew, what a scary tale! It is a dense story with multiple layers: the historical tale of slavery, the story of a powerful, vengeful ghost with a sad, sad history, and the interesting human story of an extended family who lived through it all.The book opens with a poltergeist shaking the house. Add to that, the dread of the unfolding, brutal story of the characters' escape from slavery and it becomes a book that's both hard to read and hard to put down. In terms of mood, I was reminded occasionally of Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson, which is quite eerie and is populated with characters that evaporate if you look at them too hard. But Housekeeping lacks the powerful storyline of Beloved which gives us a potent history lesson in slavery: how slaves were treated, what it took for them to get away, and what getting away meant.

The writing is dense and sometimes purposefully choppy. I got used to it after about 50 pages, but sections toward the end of the book required 2-3 readings just to make sense of the words. There are 3-4 chapters with stream-of-consciousness writing that hover between poetry and obscurity. Here is a sample:
Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile   her smiling face is the place for me     it is the face I lost   she is my face smiling at me   doing it at last    a hot thing   now we can join   a hot thing
Characterization is fabulous and in 3-D. You can see the characters clearly and understand what drives them. I did not guess how the story would unfold or how it would end, and so it kept me enthralled (while it scared me). I'm not big on scary or creepy books, but Beloved is an amazing book that is worth the effort of the reading.


Friday, November 4, 2011

Never Let Me Go

I surprised myself when I picked up Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro to take on a recent trip. It was a great choice. I read it in a day and digested it in the days that followed. It's a "chewy" book - a startling, sad tale that makes you think of times yet to play out for humankind. The tale speaks of an alternate world in which questionable, ethical decisions have been made that affect thousands of young people in England. The book holds its own on the bookshelf of great futuristic books such as 1984 and Brave New World.  Newsweek called it the best book of the decade. It is the most recently published book on the Time 100 list.

Never Let Me Go is a complex tale and Ishiguro is a master of weaving multiple time periods into a cogent whole. We follow Kathy H., a 31 year old "carer", as she drives around the countryside visiting her clients and reminiscing about her life and her friends and muses on the special fate that she and her friends were prepared for.

Everything else that I say about the book is going to be a spoiler, so if you have not read it, please do so - it is literally a great book.

**SPOILERS FOLLOW***

You can read a good plot summary and some related material on Book Drum. Below is my commentary on the book.

Kathy H. and her friends are clones who are raised solely to provide organs for "real" humans with cancer. The book looks at the issue of cloning humans as a way to grow organs, just as one would grow crops. Clones in this world are typically raised in warehouse-like settings, but Kathy H. and her friends have had better treatment at a boarding school that teaches them the arts and encourages them to showcase their creative talents. Ishiguro lets the story about the group of friends and their teachers play out, and is not overly-focused on the ethical issues surrounding cloning until the end of the book where he shares a few details of the program. Ishiguro instead looks at the sorrow of the cloned beings who give their lives in service and the ways in which they come to terms with their limited lives.

It is indeed a sad book. The student/protagonists have no parents and no friends outside of their community. Adults in their lives, even those championing them, find them repulsive. Once the students are in their early twenties, they become carers who help other slightly older clones recover from a series of surgeries to remove organs. They watch these same people die at a young age once their organs are harvested. We watch Kathy H. care for her best friend, Ruth, and her lover, Tommy, as they proceed along their fated paths.

Is there a way out? In their 2-3 years of freedom after school, the students learn of others before them who have disappeared into the world of humans and thus avoided the role of carer and donor. Kathy H. and her friends, now adults, whisper about this, but they never consider running themselves. Ishiguro leaves us to infer that it would be out of character for them to go. They are deep into their own social world and they have been systematically indoctrinated into their roles, like kidnapped children, who are sympathetic to and obedient to their kidnappers.

What Kathy H. and Tommy attempt to get instead is a stay of leave. They request a few extra years time to spend together before they meet their fates. However, there is no room in the clone organ-harvest system for this kind of leeway. It is during this part of the tale that Ishiguro gives us the few details about the cloning program that he is willing to share as he wraps up a lot of small plot details.

Ishiguro said in an interview that he used the cloning theme as a medium to explore the relationships of a group of young people who were fated to die young. His concern was the relationships of the characters not the scientific or sociological underpinnings of cloning.

And so we are left hanging with questions about the history, politics and ethics of cloning. We do not know to what degree the clones were genetically modified. Were they created as a new species? Who were they cloned from and how were those people selected? Did those who were cloned belong to wealthy families who want to have organs available for their use should they need them? We are also not given details about the warehousing of clone children or of the political struggle to give them better lives. What is the public debate? How does the public manage to ignore the beings who are raised to be donors?

I miss these details, but it is not a lesser book without them. The intimate look at Kathy H, Ruth and Tommy is all the story we need. The writing is superb, the story rich and haunting. It has what feels like a timeless appeal even though, like 1984, it's alternate view of the future is unlikely to play out.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Reading Beloved

I just hit the 100-page mark in Toni Morrison's, Beloved. Had I written this post last night where I left off at page 86, I would have started out with something like, "What a creepy book." In fact, I went up to bed last night hoping not to have ghost-mares. But today the sun was out and the ghosts were at peace as I read daughter, Denver's, heart-warming - or as heart warming as this book is going to get - telling of her own birth story in a boat on the Ohio River.

I'm not the first to say that this book is not at all what you expect from a story of run-away slaves. Not at all. There is a ghost who haunts the house that our heroes live in. They are mostly okay with the ghost, even though it does things like put baby hand prints into birthday cakes. It's certainly a convenient way for three women to live alone without anyone bothering them.

It took a bit of work to get the hang of Morrison's writing style. It's rough. You have to chew on sentences, climb through them. Me, I prefer to chew on the whole book, not a sentence. (That, by the way, is kind-of how she writes.) She moves from past to present without a lot of notice - the reader has to take care to not get tripped up. Morrison's style is quite a contrast to the smooth flowing prose in the last two books I read, Eugenide's, Middlesex and Ishiguro's, Never Let Me Go. Both of these weave the past and present fairly seamlessly. But although both of those tales take on difficult topics, nothing can compare to the outright horror the characters in Beloved have lived through. Rough prose makes sense in that context.

The book is a short 300+ pages long - it reads quickly once you get the hang of it. The good news is that I didn't have any ghost-mares last night, so I can read this as late in the evening as I choose to. Morrison has me hooked wondering why all of this ghost-business is happening and where this tale is going.

By the way, I still plan to write up my thoughts on Never Let Me Go at some point. That book has not yet let me go, and I'm not quite ready to commit my thoughts to the blog entry.