In this Issue:
For a Free Email subscription to this newsletter:
I want to
reommend two books by Pearl S. Buck about her mother and her father
(image to left: Buck on the far left with father, little sister,
mother, and beloved nurse).
I've been reading Buck's work for several
months in preparation for a talk at Buck's birthplace in June, and I
want to acknowledge the direction given to me by Eddy Pendarvis and
Phyllis Moore in choosing the core Buck works to read. I've featured
some reviews of her work and of books about her (see Eddy Pendarvis on a
rediscovered Buck novel and Dreama Frisk on a
Buck biography .
Few few people associate Buck, the first
woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, with my home state of West
Virginia, largely because she is tied so closely with China where she
grew up. Her parents were dedicated missionaries, and she grew up
bilingual in English and Chinese, experiencing revolution and war at a
very early age. She witnessed the results of terrible famine and the
abandoned corpses of baby girls. Her Pulitzer prize winning early novel
The Good Earth--under-valued today though often greatly
loved-- was all most Americans knew about China in the first half of the
twentieth century. Buck was highly successful as a popular writer and
speaker and founded organizations for giving homes to orphans here in
the States. She was a woman of great power and political activism as
well as being the major interpreter of Chinese life to Americans.
Much of her good work, however, was
supported by a string of old-fashioned B-grade pot boilers. The two
books I want to talk about are among her best. The memoir/biography
of her mother is called
The Exile, and it is a document of
love and praise. She calls Carie Sydenstricker the most human person
she ever knew, by which she means not dedicated to abstractions like her
father with his god-driven life, but rather warm and caring and giving
practical aid to everyone around her, while remaining humorous and
playful and sometimes angry-- in spite of the
deaths of children and political turmoil that endangered her family.
Buck makes Carie an amazingly gallant and
attractive person. She died in her early sixties, so she was very much
herself at the end, still grabbing for and loving life– maybe more
openly in her final years than during her youth, when she when she
always seemed to think she was somehow bad or faulty for not being more
"spiritual" and "saintly" like her husband. I've never read such a
convincing love letter to a mother– also full of incidents in the
peculiar lives of the American protestant missionary community in
China in the late 1800's.
Pearl Buck's father, on the other hand, is clearly much
more difficult for her to write about. Yet here too she manages to
create a full and wryly loving portrait, even though the man caused much
harm and pain to his family. Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul
is a struggle-- ultimately successful-- to understand someone whose
strengths are all dispassionate and in many ways inhuman. Had he not
been her father, she probably would never have been able to be so kind
to him. The story is of a quintessentially nineteenth century American
mind spoiled by religious certainty. He believes in submitting himself
fully to his religion, about which he appears to have no doubts. He
also operates under a fully developed patriarchal system of values: as
he submits to God, he expects the women in his family to submit to him.
Buck writes of the missionaries as a group that "Religion in their
case, as in so many another, has hardened their hearts and made it
impossible for them so see, except through the dark glass of their own
creed, what life is or ought to be."
And yet Absalom or "Andrew" as she calls him,
apparently had a great deal of a kind of distant charm. He was also
anti-racist (stood up for Chinese preachers when the Europeans and
other Americans were deeply contemptuous of them), and was much loved,
especially in his later years, by many Chinese who called him "The Old
Teacher." He was also physically courageous, staying put during
revolutions when other missionaries fled. She sums him up at the end by
saying, "But Andrew never touched the fringe of human life, he never
knew its stuff, he never felt its doubt nor shared its pain. And so he
lived, a happy soul, and never knew he died."
Whew. What a great line. She makes a powerful case for
the happiness of a man who is completely sure of his direction, of his
end, of his work.
Meredith Sue Willis
SHORT TAKES (by MSW Unless Otherwise Noted)
Phyllis Moore on Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz:
I just read Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne
Fowler, one of the latest Zelda novels, and gave it an "I Like It" on
Goodreads. One book does lead to another.
After years of avoiding it, I'm listening to Zelda's only published novel Save Me the Waltz (it
was dumped on by USA critics but lauded in Europe). I'd assumed it
was 2nd rate but now find I I like it very much, perhaps because it is
so autobiographical, and partly because it opens in
Montgomery. Montgomery is one of those glittering white small southern
towns and she describes it so well. Plus, Jim and I visited the house
she and Scott rented there and walked on the wooden floor in her
"ballet" room.
The novel is like Zelda: Over the top and beautiful. I can see and smell the flowers and watch the flirty deb. I'd
hoped to read along as a I listened. Unfortunately, no local library
has a copy! I guess they were discarded in prior sales. It really is a
listeners novel. Her flowery language comes across well in speech and
I might have skipped some of it as I speed along. It is said she
wrote it in six weeks but she must have thought about it for years.
Scott objected to its publication but finally agree to "allow" it to
be published. He had struggled with writing TENDER IS THE NIGHT for
about three years and would not finish it for four more. The two
novels are basically about their marriage.
#specialcharacters by Larissa Shmailo
I thought this was going to be all poetry, but it is much more
experimental than that, ending with a wonderful piece about a woman who
is close to the end of the line with aging, mental illness, and poverty.
It's called "
MIRROR,
or a Flash in the Pan." It is very close to fiction, although it
certainly has passages of poetry. It's an excellent piece, crystal
clear and shockingly honest. The collection also includes what is
rightfully maybe Shmailo's most famous (popular?) poem, available to
read on line, "The Other Woman's Cunt". This one is angry, raunchy, vicious and -- by the way! -- hilarious.
There is a fair amount of typographical experimentation and deep
connections to literature and mythology, but at its heart, as a whole,
the book has the remarkable quality of being extremely moving even when
you aren't sure what's going on.
That's a serious statement, too, because you have the feeling that
things that look like games on the surface – for example, a short poem
called " t(his), (he)re" – are in fact the only way Shmailo could have
written what she wanted to write. This is highly recommended as both
interesting experimental work and for its powerful emotional
connections.
Learn more about Larissa Shmailo here.
Rama: Gaze in My Direction by Liz Lewinson
This biography of Frederick Philip Lenz, III, Ph.D., also known as
Rama and Atmananda, is written by a woman whose spiritual practice was
profoundly formed by him. It traces the first part of his life,
including his youth and his time as a follower of Sri Chinmoy as well as
the founding of his own institutions.
Rama taught what he termed American Buddhism with a mix of Zen,
Tibetan, Vedanta, and other forms of mysticism. Among other things,
Lewinson recounts miracles witnessed by various individuals and has
interviewed many people for their take on Rama.
There was controversy surrounding Rama, but you can find that easily
enough on the web. Essentially, this is a biography of a fascinating
human being who claimed–and is believed by many – to have been both an
enlightened teacher and the culmination of many past lives.
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup
As of this writing, I haven't yet seen the movie, but the book is
thoroughly worth reading on its own. it is an excellent example of the
slave narratives that were published in the 19th century. This one came
out just after Uncle Tom's Cabin (Twelve Years in 1853, Uncle Tom 
in
1852), and Northrup dedicated his book to Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is
an as-told-to book (edited by David Wilson), written to some large
extent as propaganda, with a trajectory (like Uncle Tom's Cabin)
of increasingly evil slaveholders, geographically deeper into the
South. In this case, there is the happy ending of Northrup's release.
He is, as I assume most people know at this point, a free man who
was kidnapped and sold into slavery The book is clearly and simply
told, gripping for its witness. It doesn't spend a lot of time on the
despair that Northrup must have felt during those twelve years– it
narrates the despair but doesn't dramatize it– focusing on the facts,
which are damning enough without any melodrama at all.
One of the interesting points is how impossible it would have been
for Northrup to run away and get home from the bayous of Louisiana on
his own. Much of the fascination is learning about the everyday lives
of the enslaved-- details, for example, of their diet and how they
supplemented it
Don't forget you can get this free from Project Gutenberg and elsewhere. Also, take a look at the article in the New Yorker
about the historian who got a shout out from Steve McQueen at the
Oscars– a Louisiana woman whose historical work centered on Northrup:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/03/the-historian-who-unearthed-twelve-years-a-slave.html .
Geek Love By Katherine Dunn
This is one of those books known as a cult classic-- the story of a
carnival sideshow family that creates its own side show children. It's
engaging in its satisfyingly weird way. The ending is a little
contrived, but I can't imagine anything better--warm-hearted in spite of
all the ugliness of creating handicapped children and exploitation all
around.. Artie, the boy who is all torso, smokes cigars and takes over
the Binewski family. He's essentially a sleazy little godfather, sexy
in his perverted way. There are a couple of pulled punches--incest is
never quite acted out, although it was obviously in the air and would
have simplified some of the complicated plot stresses. Published in
1989, it was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Dunn has not written a novel since Geek Love, but is an accomplished writer about boxing!
Forever Sad the Hearts by Patricia L. Walsh
This Vietnam war novel was Phyllis Moore's suggestion while I was
looking for books by nurses. I now find that it has been repackaged as a
memoir, River City. As far as I can tell, it's the same book
with a new cover and some photos. Walsh also has a memoir of PTSD and a
movie called The Other Angels about going to a celebration of nurses in Vietnam back in '93 or so.
This novel, which I always assumed was mostly a memoir, is
structured around the experience of a civilian nurse in Vietnam during
the intensifying attacks from the North Vietnam/Viet Cong forces. It is
totally gripping, and amazingly real: the extreme American desire to
"do something," and how half the time or more that turns out to be a
failure. The insanity of bombing villages and then bringing the
wounded into the civilian hospitals for treatment. The horror of
patients choking on their own worms, the inability to tell who is on
whose side.
This is the first in-country Vietnam story that made real emotional
sense to me: the soldier stories have always mostly made me want to
flee. But this story is about women, twenty-something nurses, who want
to help and also want adventure. They save babies, take them to
orphanages (run by half-French nuns), then have to run from bombs. They
sleep with loaded pistols beside their beds. They drink a lot.
There are only a few glances at politics when the nurses and their
friends comment on the irony of giving medical care to the people the
soldiers and shooting and bombing and burning, always returning to how
evil the communists must be. The soldiers themselves bring the victims
in. There is a constant scramble to borrow supplies as the supplies sent
to the civilian hospitals are usually stolen before they arrive.
Not great literature, but powerful witness.
Books on War From a Non-Eurocentric or American Perspective
Joydeep Roy-Battacharya, author of the excellent The Watch (reviewed in Issue #163), suggests three books about war from a non-Eurocentric perspective:
1. Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War (about the Vietnam war)
2. Hassan Blasim, The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq (about the war in Iraq)
3. Tahar ben Jelloun, This Blinding Absence of Light
He also reminded us of the great religious-philosophical classic The Bhagavad Gita, which takes place in the middle of a war.
THE E-READER REPORT WITH JOHN BIRCH: YOU MAY HAVE SOME MONEY COMING TO YOU...
... but it may not be much, and it's complicated! You'll probably
remember last year's e-book price fixing scandal, in which Apple was
found to be a guilty party. Five major publishers involved in the debate
reached a federal court settlement, as a result of which you may be
entitled to a modest payout. The settlement dictates that people may
get a retrospective benefit from the deal. If you bought an e-book from
one of the publishers between April 1st 2010 and May 21st 2012, you
could be eligible for a $3.06 pay-out for each book you bought. But –
and it's quite a big but -- there's an unexpected condition, it turns
out that these amounts are only for books that appeared on the New York
Times best seller list. Books that weren't in that list will only get a
payment of 73 cents. The payback will apply to e-books purchased
through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple, and reach you in
the form of a credit with whichever seller you bought them from.
Furthermore, these sums are, still tentative. Macmillan and Penguin have
approved the settlement, but still "need to finalize their stance."
But it looks certain that, providing that you satisfy all the
conditions, you'll get at least a few bucks back!
John Birch's latest post is a wonderful essay on that most quintessentially British food product, Marmite. Check it out at www.JohnBirchLive.blogspot.com.
RESPONSES FROM READERS
John Van Kirk writes that he just read the note at the
bottom of the newsletter about where to buy books. He said, "I wondered
if you were aware of Indiebound, a website that allows shoppers to
locate and link to their nearest independent bookstore. It's a great
way to support independent bookstores. And thank you for the link to
Powell's via the union—great resource."
Thank you for the suggestion, John! Here's a link to Indiebound so readers may find their nearest local bookstores.
TO READ ONLINE
Check out Susan Rabin's page with information about her new book, The Summer Train!
How to Collaborate on Writing a book from Laura Treacy Bentley's
blog:
http://www.lauratreacybentley.com/apps/blog/entries/show/41980432-spotlight-jane-congdon
SPECIAL FOR WRITERS
ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.
If you're near Yellow Springs, Ohio-- Epic Bookshop is
newly-reopened at 229 Xenia Avenue between the Senior Citizens Center
and the Emporium/Underdog Cafe. Celebrate National Poetry Month on
Sunday, April 27 at 2:30 p.m. for an afternoon of poetry at Epic with Julie L. Moore, Rita Coleman, and Ed Davis. More info at www.davised.com/2014/03/epic-poetry-in-april/
Coming in June: The North Wildwood Beach Writers' Conference (http://www.nwbwc.com/)
Mobius, The Poetry Magazine for Sale:
Juanita Torrence-Thompson, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher/Owner of
internationally acclaimed Mobius, The Poetry Magazine, seeks poets,
editors, colleges, or organizations interested in purchasing and
publishing 32 year-old print magazine. Serious buyers only. Previous
contributors include Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Marge
Piercy, Robert Bly, Sonia Sanchez, Naomi Shihab Nye, Charles Simic,
Cornelius Eady, Elizabeth Alexander, Colette Inez, Yusef Komunyakaa,
Diane Wakoski, Samuel Menashe, Maurice Kenny, Simon Perchik, Lyn
Lifshin, Duane Niatum, Joseph Bruchac, Ed Galing, Daniela Gioseffi,
Louis Reyes Rivera, Hal Sirowitz, Stephen Stepanchev, Tammy
Nuzzo-Morgan, Daniel Thomas Moran, A.D. Winans, etc.
www.mobiuspoetry.com. For more information, email poetrytownjtt@gmail.com.
William Luvaas's book has been called Book of the Year! Ashes Rain Down..
Ross Ballard writes: "We're doing the Happy Dance around the studio here at MountainWhispers.com
Audiobooks. (Thank God, cuz I just spend a fortune building a new
studio. No really...near $300k) Our production of Lee Maynard's
'Screaming with the Cannibals' has grabbed a coveted Audie Nomination
for Best Audio Drama from the Audio Publishers Association. (www.theaudies.com)
I'm guessing with the first WV studio to be nominated for an Audie.
Win, lose, or draw we'll be partying with a Hollywood 'A' list in NYC on
May 29th. Some other nominees are Meryl Steep, Donald Sutherland,
Billy Crystal, Neil Gaiman, they're all coming. etc. etc… woohoo…."
Congratulations Ross & Mountain Whispers!
The indefatigable folks at CROPPS keep on sending us places to
submit! Get on their list for regular notices about open submissions at
various literary journals and presses: CRWROPPS-B@yahoogroups.com
If you are in Northern New Jersey, learn about regular, excellent, free
programs and peer workshops, many at the Montclair Library and
environs. To get the monthly announcements, send an e-mail request to
Carl Selinger at selinger99@aol.com .
ABOUT AMAZON.COM
The largest unionized bookstore in America has a webstore at Powells Books. Some people prefer shopping online there to shopping at Amazon.com. An alternative way to reach Powell's site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund.
For a discussion of Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .
WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER
If a book discussed in this newsletter has
no source mentioned, don’t forget that you may be able to borrow it from
your public library as either a hard copy or a digital copy. You may also buy or order from your local independent bookstore. (To find a bricks-and-mortar store, click the "shop indie" logo left).
To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder gives the price with shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.
A lot of people whose political instincts I respect
prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About
Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com.
Another source for used and out-of-print books is All Book Stores. Also consider Paperback Book Swap, a postage only way to trade books with other readers.
If you are using an electronic reader like Kindle, Nook, or Kobo, don't forget free books at the Gutenberg Project—mostly classics, but other things as well.
Kobobooks.com sells books for independent brick-and-mortar bookstores.
RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER
Please send responses to this newsletter and suggestions directly to Meredith Sue Willis . Unless you instruct otherwise, your responses may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.
BACK ISSUES click here.
LICENSE
To subscribe and unsubscribe, use the form below.
Books for Readers Newsletter by Meredith Sue Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com. Some individual contributors may have other licenses.
No comments:
Post a Comment