Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers

BOOKS FOR READERS is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by Meredith Sue Willis, copyright Meredith Sue Willis 2006. 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. Write to Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. Unless you specifically request otherwise, your responses or selections from them may be included in future Newsletters.

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Newsletter # 83
May 6, 2006

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. I’M TEACHING A SUMMER ONLINE CLASS CALLED TECHNIQUES FROM FILM
FOR FICTION AND MEMOIR WRITERS See http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/techniques2006.html or http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/mswclasses.html .

2. FOR THOSE IN THE NEW YORK AREA, I’M TEACHING ADVANCED NOVEL WRITING THIS SUMMER AT NYU STARTING MAY 24 . SEE THE CATALOG AT http://www.scps.nyu.edu/docs/pdf/SCPS_Writing.pdf .

3. IF YOU”RE IN NEW JERSEY ON MAY 13 THE DAY BEFORE MOTHER’S DAY, COME TO MY SPECIAL READING FOR KIDS AND ADULTS AT THE GOAT CAFÉ AT 4:00 P.M. 21 SOUTH ORANGE AVENUE IN SOUTH ORANGE.

4. THERE’S AN INTERVIEW OF ME BY NATHAN LESLIE IN THE NEWEST ISSUE OF MAIN STREET RAG.

And now, a little less about my activities and a little more about books and reading. I think I am reading with less and less skill, or is it less and less attention? I was aware (21 years ago, to be exact) that I was reading less when my son was born and I was pressed for time. But I think there are more pressures on reading than mere time management. There are the other media, of course: television never particularly bothered me, or movies. But the Internet has affected how I read, especially as I have become a small-time web master. I think I’ve developed a nervous eye–as if the physiology of reading had changed. I also find myself sometimes wanting to “click” on a phrase in a book to get more information. Obviously I DO read, although not a lot compared to some of my friends and colleagues. Indeed, one of the reasons I began this newsletter was to get suggestions that would help me choose my reading better. From my personal point of view, the newsletter has been highly successful: a lot of my reading now comes directly from what people suggest to me here.

Meanwhile, I’ve been engaged in conversations in my two spring writing classes at NYU about what is literature– including the inevitable discussion about whether the Da Vinci Code is readable (no one really claims it is worth reading!) The problem seems to me to be that literary art and entertaining reading have become ever-more-separated. Some writers, centered often but not always around university writing programs, seem to write challenging work that demands to be studied. This kind of writing is not for relaxing at the end of a long day. What is valued most is a kind of beautiful, thickly layered, self-conscious language that often makes heavy, indirect references to other literature. At the opposite end of the continuum is entertaining schlock, written for nothing but relaxation and sensation and easy transference to the movies. In the old days, when novels were the major entertainment game in town, there was more opportunity for work that was both entertaining and literary as well as perhaps striving for an ethical apprehension of life.

Here’s where I reveal myself: I yearn to read and write like a twenty-first century George Eliot– to be at once layered and dense but also readable by the many. I find myself impatient with some of our finest writing, especially when I realize that all the complexities and carefully balanced sentences often center on the experiences (here comes Madame Curmudgeon) of brilliant young people whose sharpest adult experiences are about sex and alcohol and drugs. Where is the great literature that also tells me how to live my next thirty or forty years? Some recent popular literature that comes close, in my opinion, to being all these things includes MIDDLESEX and ATONEMENT, a lot of Pat Barker’s work, occasional work of Phillip Roth. Toni Morrison does the balancing act. You’ll send me more, I hope.

Meanwhile, I made the sacrifice and read the DA VINCI CODE, a book that is WAY over at the fast food end of the book buffet. A lot of people I know who take literature seriously couldn’t finish it, and the people who did are apologetic: “I know it’s really badly written but...” I rationalized my ability to finish it by deciding it isn’t a novel at all but a puzzle. That is to say, it’s more like one of the elaborate Role Playing Game computer programs in which you pick a “role” to be and then go through many adventures trying to figure out the path to the prize. The only person who is remotely like a character in the DA VINCI CODE is the albino monk, who has a backstory and wears a leather strap with spikes aimed in at his flesh of his thigh. If he feels a little low, he tightens the strap. The rest of the alleged characters simply say the lines that take us one step closer to solving the puzzle. There are chases and mild surprises and red herrings, but everything is superficial, and the fun is simply what happens. Period. The trick is to read it very, very rapidly.

And now for something completely different: I read THE THREE CORNERED WORLD by Natsume Sōseki because my sister Christine Willis told me that my nephew Alex Kato-Willis, a musician and composition major in college, admires it enormously. He says of the novel, “THE THREE CORNERED WORLD represents the epitome of gestalt. Its aesthetic is based on an objective purity and makes no effort to coerce the reader into feeling or understanding. THE THREE CORNERED WORLD is the pinnacle of literature and exists in an effortless conversation with those open to experiencing it.”

Also of interest, says my sister, is that THE THREE CORNERED WORLD was one of Glenn Gould's favorite books. According to Peter Ostwald's GLENN GOULD: THE ECSTASY AND TRAGEDY OF GENIUS, Gould in 1981 devoted a radio program to reading passages from the book.

I too admired the book, but I had my own reading experience with it. I thought there was irony and humor going on – a distance between the author and the narrator’s views. The premise is that a young man leaves the city hoping to live as an artist, to be cool and distant and dispassionate. He goes to an isolated inn, where there is a mysterious divorced woman who fascinates him. She seems to be reaching out to him. There is also a lot of quite wonderful writing about spring and mist and flowers, which the narrator sometimes criticizes for being too colorful and thus vulgar, just as he would criticize a painting (that HAS to be ironic, doesn’t it?). People appear and disappear in the dim night light and mist and behind screens. The narrator does not respond to the woman, he continues to keep his distance, thinking he might paint her, except that a particular quality is missing from her face. This is where I can’t tell how much distance there is between the writer and the narrator– to me, it is funny that the guy is trying so hard to be an objective artist, but never quite makes his painting. What is missing, it turns out, is that most Buddhist of qualities, compassion. At the end, all the main characters go to the train to see a young man off to war, and suddenly, in the narrator’s mind. thoughts of war become paramount, and simultaneously, he finally sees compassion in the woman’s face as her husband leaves on the train too. So, one realizes, the narrator, is also feeling compassion. Is he now really an artist? It’s a most interesting, book. I wish the translation was better– and that it had good notes.

Maybe hyperlinks?

–Meredith Sue Willis

SOLICITATIONS

I’m working on a summer reading list. I am earnestly soliciting examples of good books of any genre that are (a) published by small presses, (b) under-published by big presses (that is, essentially given no publicity, (3) out-of-print, or (d)otherwise in need of a small boost. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO INCLUDE YOUR OWN BOOKS, although I especially like little notes of recommendation for the books.

MORE RECOMMENDATIONS

Kasumu Salawu recommends THE FAMISHED ROAD by Ben Okri as a powerful example of non-Aristotelean magical realism with reference to the Yoruba culture of Nigeria. You may read Dr. Salawu’s very interesting full review of the book at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0385425139 .

Students in my Spring 2006 “Making Your Novel Happen” course at NYU suggested two Booker Prize winners as having a lot of narrative drive– that is, their stories grab you and don’t let you go: IF NOBODY SPEAKS OF REMARKABLE THINGS by Jon McGregor and VERNON GOD LITTLE by DBC Pierre.

THE WHITE by Deborah Larsen is a fictionalized version of one of the endlessly fascinating narratives of the female captives of native Americans. This one fictionalizes the story of Mary Jemison, who eventually chose to marry into and stay with the Seneca tribe of New York. It’s a part of American history that I’d like to know more about: especially the realization by some of the captive women that being a woman in the Iroquois federation is probably a better state than living European style. This book didn’t give me the information I wanted– it is small and more poetical than historical, but it is quite lovely by its own lights.

IRIS SCHWARTZ NEWS

Iris Schwartz is half of a new book of poetry, AWAKENED: POETRY BY MADELINE ARTENBERG, POETRY BY IRIS N. SCHWARTZ. The book is now available from Rogue Scholars Press. See http://www.roguescholars.com . There will be a book party—with musical accompaniment & special guests for AWAKENED on Sunday, June 18, 2006, 6 p.m., at the Cornelia St. Café. Also, Iris’s poems “Insufficient” and “More than the Sum” will be forthcoming in the September 2006 issue of MOBIUS.

THE LITERARY SCENE IN BROOKLYN:

The almost-independent state of Brooklyn has a lot going on. First, there is The Stain Bar, an arts lounge dedicated to local products and talent at 766 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 – http://www.stainbar.com 718/387-7840 . The owner is novelist Krista Madsen.

Night and Day Bar has an excellent reading series, especially Sunday, May 21, 2006, at 6 p.m. when readers are Pamela Harrison, Gary Lenhart, and Steven Schrader will be presenting. NIGHT AND DAY is at 230 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn. Fine food & fine writing from the folks who bring you The Cornelia Street Café. Take the M or R Train to Union Street.

WRITERS CONFERENCE FOR WOMEN

Shelley Ettinger points us to what sounds like an interesting upcoming writers’ conference for women: http://www.flanked.org/conference.html .

DEE RIMBAUD LEAVING FOR THE ITINERANT LIFE! FREE BOOKS

Dee Rimbaud is relocating to Spain where he’ll be living with his family in a camper without regular internet access. He is presently giving away PDF copies of his novel STEALING HEAVEN FROM THE LIPS OF GOD as well as his award-winning poetry collection, DROPPING ECSTASY WITH THE ANGELS. If you would like to order a free PDF copy of either book (or both) email him at dee@thunderburst.co.uk . Follow his progress at his website and blogs at
http://aaron-aardvark.blogspot.com/ , and http://deerimbaud.blogspot.com/ .

ADAM SEXTON”S NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS

Adam Sexton is blogging a satiric novel, and invites responses from potential readers:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1ZM4UT77J4BXU/ref=cm_blog_dp_pdp/102-8945424-3852952 .

EVENTS FOR FOLKS IN VIRGINIA (THAT’S THE OLD DOMINION STATE, NOT TO BE MISTAKEN FOR WEST-BY-GOSH-VIRGINIA)

Here’s a calendar of literary events in Old Virginia: http://www.vabook.org/calendar/index.cfm.