Straight Man by Richard Russo

At the moment, I have two wonderful books going, one at work and one at home. The problem is that my "home" book is too stimulating for before-bed reading. It has lots of ideas in it and it gets my brain going, and I can't fall asleep. So I've turned to an old favorite, Straight Man by Richard Russo.

Although the main character is a straight man, the title refers to comedy, not sexuality. And the book is pretty funny. It chronicles an unusual week in the life of Hank Devereaux, an English professor at a state school in Western Pennsylvania, and a man to whom, by his own admission, things seldom happen. They sure do this week, though. Hank is the interim chair of the most divided group of people you could imagine (one of them injures his nose in a committee meeting: having had it with his sarcastic comments, she smacks him in the face with a spiral notebook that had a loose wire. On the way home, another practically runs him off the road, just to make him get out of the car so he could take a picture.) He also has some issues in his personal life: his youngest daughter's marriage is on the rocks, and his father (a distinguished academic who walked out of his life when he was 10) is coming home to stay with his mother.

I've read all of Richard Russo's books and find him to be a somewhat uneven writer. Mohawk and The Risk Pool were not terribly good, nor was his book of short stories. Nobody's Fool and Empire Falls, by contrast, were TERRIBLY good, so good that you carried the mood of them around for days. I put off reading Straight Man for a long time, because I suspected it would be one of the bad ones. I was very pleasantly surprised.

The characters are delectable. He has a young colleague nicknamed Orshee because he's so opposed to sexism that whenever anyone uses the male pronoun generically, he pipes up with "or she". Another colleague is an alcoholic who is struggling to put his ten kids through college, and often calls up, drunk, to berate him in tirades that always start "You Judas Peckerwood..." A workshop student named Leo writes very bad, very violent and misogynistic short stories and can't be dissuaded from his belief that he's the next Hemingway. There's his mother's landlord and would-be suitor, Mr. Purty, who collects and sells junk and is given to malapropisms. There's the cynical CEO of the college, and the chief of security, who's just dying for the opportunity to call in the National Guard to quell a student rebellion.

But above it all, there's Hank. Hank is in the throes of some pretty serious stuff: aside from all the family and work stuff, there's an internal crisis there. Once, he published a novel. He hasn't written anything since, and is facing the question of who he is and what his life will ultimately mean. He's getting old and time's ticking. These issues, and the humor with which he approaches them, are what makes the book engaging, and makes it stay with you after you're done. This is one I don't get tired of.

Trust No One: The Egyptologist, by Arthur Phillips

The device of the untrustworthy narrator is an intriguing one. Among other things, it forces the narrator to become more of an active character in his or her own story. Anybody actively involved in interpreting history can tell you that it's a very similar experience to reading a book with an untrustworthy narrator. You have two written accounts of what is apparently the same event, one in a letter and one in a diary. Yet, the letter has the event occuring in 1868, and the diary has the event occuring in 1869. Why? Assuming subsequent diary entries are of no help, who's right? Are there, in fact, two separate events, or one?

In The Egyptologist, Arthur Phillips uses this device to great effect. To begin with, there are not one but two untrustworthy narrators: Ralph Trilipush, the Egyptologist to whom the title refers, and Harold Ferrell, retired and ailing private detective. Both tell their stories through letters. Ralph's letters were written in 1922 (as Howard Carter excavates King Tutankhamun's tomb) to his fiancee, Margaret Finneran. Harold's letters are written in the present, to an heir of Margaret's who has tracked him down in the course of a genealogical project.

Neither writer reveals their untrustworthiness until the story unfolds and you have already won their trust. The story is a tangled one that ranges over four continents and several decades. Briefly put, Trilipush is in Egypt, attempting to locate and excavate the tomb of Atum-Hadu, the last pharoah before the Hyksos invaded Egypt, a plan he has been trying to bring to fruition for four years. On the surface, things sound quite rosy: not only is he in the process of making his professional dream come true, but he is engaged to a beautiful, lively, wealthy woman. He is under a great deal of pressure, though: his colleagues have nothing but scorn for him, his position at Harvard is precariuous, and his fiancee's father is financing his dig and is expecting a tremendous return on his investment.

In walks Ferrell. Ferrell is engaged in investigating possible heirs to a brewer's fortune. Trilipush becomes a subject of this investigation when it becomes clear that he was likely the last person to see Ferrell's quarry, a man named Paul Caldwell. Ferrell tracks Trilipush to Harvard and Boston, where of course, he is not. After an interview with Margaret Finneran and her father, he is engaged to further investigate Trilipush and see what he can dig up.

I have to confess that I saw some of the final plot twists coming, although not all of them. The ride is worth it, however, and leaves the reader with certain lingering questions about where the truth lies, perhaps a strange feeling for the non-historian, but a familiar one with those who do historical research on any kind of regular basis.

The End Is Nigh!

The End of Harry Potter, that is. And theories abound as to what Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will contain, and how JK Rowling will end the series. Hell, in my own family, there's even debate over whether the title contains an adjective or just a proper noun (I say proper noun, that the Deathly Hallows is a place, just like the Whomping Willow or Shrieking Shack. My sister thinks it's an adjective and says that titles aren't supposed to have them. I don't know why.)

Someone has even collected all of his theories and written a book. Damn, I wish I'd thought of that idea. I'd be out drinking now and sleeping in tomorrow if so. This guy's a famous writer, though, so perhaps he had a leg up. His name is David Langford, and his book is called The End of Harry Potter?. If you want to read a real review of it, I recommend GrrlScientist's. Anything she writes is usually pretty good, but since she's read the book and I haven't, it's definitely best to check with her here.

As I said in her comments, I'm a bit conflicted over whether or not to buy it. I looked at it tonight and I really, really want to read it. But I know that once I read it, I won't want it anymore. Once the 7th book comes out, I REALLY won't want it anymore.

Nah, I'm just using the existence of the book as a jumping-off point here. I'm simultaneously pleased and disappointed to see confirmation of my theory as to where one of the remaining Horcruxes is located. I kind of wanted to be the only one who'd noticed, but I'm kind of glad to see that it wasn't an out-there theory. (If you don't know where it is, I will give you a general hint. Look in Book 5. Re-read the beginning. If you haven't found it by the time school starts, you've missed it.)

Snape is the real wild card going into HP7. As Langford points out, his actions at the end of HP6 don't make much logical sense, no matter where you think his loyalties lie. It's also hard to believe any of the possibilities for Dumbledore's fate: that he's really dead but engineered it himself; that he's really dead as a result of getting caught in the trap; that he's not really dead after all.

In a few more weeks, the country will grind to a virtual stand-still as everyone calls in sick to work to stay home and read their copies of HP7, and the greatest publishing phenomenon most of us will ever witness will come to an end, and we'll know the answers to all of our questions. Until then...

It was a beautiful fall day

The sun was shining, and I settled in with my classmates for my first class with a legend of my graduate school. My graduate school is about 40 years old, and this professor had been there for nearly 30. His style was to have everyone pick a different book each week and report on it, so we'd learn from one another. His comprehensive lists of excellent books were legendary. The way some alums talked about them, it sounded like they were practically planning to get them bronzed. He only kept us for a few minutes that day, but before we left, he confided to us his desire to read every book ever written. "I keep trying," he said, "but the bastards keep gaining on me."

Two days after that, we were all at a barbeque when one of the other professors gathered us all together. She had some terrible news for us. The legendary professor had been killed in a car crash that afternoon.

Sometimes I wonder, did he waste much time on crappy books? Did he push through books he knew he wouldn't enjoy, just to get to the end? I'll never know. But in his memory, I have decided, to my great surprise, to set aside Last of the Southern Girls by Willie Morris, only 20 pages in. It's a weird book -- it doesn't sound like him. I think maybe he's at his best when he's drawing more on his own life, like in My Dog Skip or Taps. I know he had a successful career as an editor before he wrote either of those books, and I'm sure he's had experience around the Beltway, with women like Carol Hollywell, but he's failed to suck me in. I will continue to love him for the two books listed above and for My Cat Spit McGee, but I think I'll have to forego this one, in the recognition that no one's perfect, life is short, and better books await.

Wish You Were Here, as promised

Despite not being Notes on a Scandal, this book had several things that attracted me to it. First, it shares a title with one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs. Second, it's by Stewart O'Nan, who wrote The Circus Fire, which I liked more than was decent for a book about one of the worst civic disasters in the country's history. Third, it is set near where I grew up, in Chatauqua. Sounds like a winner to me.

The book made me terribly sad. I do try to be careful about spoiling the endings of books I write about here, but I will go out on a limb here and let everyone know in advance that the dog survives the entire book, even though he's old, and even though he ominously gets left alone several times. Don't worry. He's not a metaphor for aging and loss. He is just a dog.

The sadness centers around the rest of the family. This family, the Maxwells, have been coming to a cottage on Lake Chatauqua in the southwest corner of New York State, for decades. With the death of the father, Henry, the mother (Emily) decides to sell the cottage, but brings everyone back there for one last week. "Everyone" consists of her sister-in-law, Arlene; her daughter Meg; Meg's two children, Sarah (about 13) and Justin (about 9); her son Ken; Ken's wife Lisa and their children Ella and Sam (roughly the same age as Meg's children).

During the week, we see the complex family bonds sometimes shift subtly, and at other times get more firmly knitted into place. Ken has a separate persona for his sister, his wife, and his mother, and he never really resolves this during the week. In fact, the reader can tell that he'll continue to struggle with it until the death of at least one, if not two, of the principals. In contrast, Meg has always had a tumultous relationship with her mother, but it appears as though they are finally starting to reconcile.

The week at the cottage represents the end of a phase in their lives. For Meg and Ken, it's a realization that they really are all grown up, their dad is gone, and that their allegiances must now lie with the families they've made, not the family they grew up with. For the older generation of Emily and Arlene, it's the end of their lives itself that is staring them in the face. They've seen the area change and lose its quaint feel, they've watched their friends get old and die, they know that the new owner of the cottage may knock it down altogether.

This sense of loss throws the rest of their lives into sharp relief. Ken is a struggling photographer who works in a development lab for $8.50 an hour. Meg is a recovering alcoholic, freshly divorced, struggling financially, faced with the horrifying prospect of starting it all over. Both take long, hard looks at their lives during the week, and both come up wanting. The hopefulness is in Emily and Arlene, whose choices have been made, and who are relatively content with the way their lives have gone, even Arlene, who never married or had children.

This book could've been horribly sappy, but Stewart O'Nan has managed to avoid this trap and get to the real emotions underneath. I would imagine that most people would be able to find someone to relate to in this book. I enjoyed it and was sorry to finish it.

I'm going to visit my boyfriend this weekend, so I'm not sure when I'll start a new one. As always, I will keep you posted!

This Week's Library Haul

So this afternoon, I had a wicked headache. The Simpsons reruns people fucked up and reran the same episode they had on Friday, so I quit fighting it, took a couple of aspirin and went down for a nap around 6, to try to sleep it off. I woke up at 9. It's now almost 2 here and I'm not even tired. Which means the same thing will happen tomorrow. So, I'm posting again, this time about my library visit this weekend. Miraculously, the mean librarian didn't bark the closing time at me the minute I walked through the door, snarl at me about my overdue fines, or shut the lights off on me when I was in the stacks.

So this is what I got. I really wanted Notes on a Scandal but they didn't have it. I will have to special-order. But I did wind up with:

The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips (mostly because I wish I was one!)
The King in the Tree by Steven Millhauser
The Last of the Souther Girls by Willie Morris
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith (second time's the charm!)
Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan

The last one is the one I started with. So far, it's pretty good. I got it because I liked his book The Circus Fire, and because it was set in Chatauqua, near where I grew up.

We'll see how I do with these. Last time, I got through all but two. I started Loon Lake by E.L Doctorow shortly before it was due, and it didn't move me enough to pay the fines on. I quit Salad Days when I realized it wasn't about the Douglas Fairbanks I was thinking of (I wanted to know about the silent-screen star who married Mary Pickford and built Pickfair; this was about his son). So four out of six isn't bad. Look for something on Stewart O'Nan's book later this week.

The Poisonwood Bible

Last week was such a stressful week. Although I had the book club book plus a couple of 14-day loans, I wanted comfort, not yet another mountain to climb after a long day. The size and subject matter of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver might make it seem like an odd choice under the circumstances, but not to me. I really love that book, and have read it repeatedly over the years. I recommend it to anyone who will listen. Tonight, that includes you.

To simply say that it's about an American family who travel to the Congo as missionaries and witness the end of colonial rule, the murder of the newly elected prime minister, and the installation of a ruthless and venal dictator is to strip all the meat off the bones of the book. Although that is its basic outline, it is not an "issue" novel, not set to cram lessons down your throat but to expose the facts in the intimately intertwined histories of the Price family and the Congo, and let readers decide for themselves where to lay their sympathies and blame.

The Price family has six members, and each, except for Nathan, gets the chance to tell their side. Nathan is the family's driving force, a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher determined to deliver salvation to the heathen Congolese through Jesus. His wife, Orleanna, married him at a young age, and is just trying to cope the best she can. Rachel is the eldest daughter and is what we called back in the fourth grade a "girly-girl": she frequently locked horns with her father on topics like nail polish, dating and skirt length. She is just shy of her 16th birthday at the opening of the book and her attempts to cope in the Congo, where they don't even have indoor plumbing, add levity to the more serious moments of the book.

Next in line at only 18 months younger than Rachel are twin girls, Leah and Adah. Both are extremely bright and academically oriented. Leah is outgoing and tomboyish, worshipful of her father, and religious. Adah suffers from hemiplegia. Her chapters are the most intriguing, for her affliction has freed her mind at the same time it's crippled her body. She can read and write backwards and forwards, and enjoys making up palindromes to suit the situation at hand. The book is her sole confidant; although she can speak, she elects not to, for the most part, and will write when she has something to say. Ruth May is the youngest of all, only five when the book opens, and views the world with a typical young child's perspective. As things go from bad to worse for the Price family and the Congo, she becomes a poignant symbol of sacrifice and loss of innocence.

And things do indeed, go from bad to worse. Epidemics of disease, plagues of driver ants, draught, famine and flood ravage the village of Kilanga where the Price family has set up housekeeping. Nathan is poorly suited to the work of witnessing to a foreign culture: he is a poor listener and a loud talker, and manages to alienate most everyone of influence within the village. This makes him angrier and more stubborn, harder on his family, and more determined to save every soul in Kilanga. Although most of the missionaries leave shortly after Independence, Nathan refuses to, despite the pleas of his family, even after tragedy strikes both the Prices and the new Republic of Congo, shattering the Price family and scattering them across two continents, never to reunite.

There are many, many things that are remarkable about this book. The characters are the main thing. They do pass the Maxwell Perkins test: if you were to meet Orleanna, Nathan, Leah, Adah, Rachel or Ruth May on the street, you would know them at once and know how you'd want to react. They are complex, they are "real people", defying easy judgement. You dismiss Rachel at first as merely the court jester, then condemn her as an opportunist, but ultimately come to understand her. Orleanna comes across at first as a stereotypical cowed, submissive housewife, but as her personal story unfolds, you admire her strength. Even tyrannical, cold Nathan, who hits has family and punishes his girls with The Verse (he gives them a Bible verse to start with and they have to copy that, and the next 100 verses, with the last one revealing their sin), becomes a more sympathetic figure when we learn that he was at Corregidor during World War II, and was the only man in his company to escape the Bataan Death March and to survive the war.

I also admire the technical achievements of this book. Kingsolver has done a staggering, wide-ranging amount of research into Congolese language, culture, history, and geography, and has been able to juxtapose it all with the Christian Bible. In Adah's chapters, it seems as though Kingsolver has trained several languages like you would a poodle: English, Kikongo, and French obligingly roll over, turn around backwards, shake hands and play dead in her able hands. To borrow a phrase from Rachel Price, it is a sheer tapestry of justice that Kingsolver didn't win the Pulitzer for this book. I give it my highest recommendation.