For some reason, I've always loved Hollywood tales, true or not. I've read several biographies of Marilyn Monroe, each with their own theory about how she died, from murder to a mishap involving enemas, sleeping pills, lack of fluids and overwork. I read Lillian Gish's account of the dawn of the moving picture, back when the concept of close-ups and feature-length films were new. I enjoyed Lana Turner's autobiography, as well as seamier stuff like that of Tatum O'Neal and Danny Bonaduce. In fact, I still have a booklet I received in my Easter basket as a child, published by one of the tabloid magazines and called "Hollywood Mysteries," where I first learned the stories of the Black Dahlia, the unsolved murder of Thelma Todd, the mysterious death of the first Superman (whose real name I don't remember), etc.
So when I saw Niagara Falls All Over Again, a novel by Elizabeth McCracken, I decided to check it out. This novel follows the careers of the fictional comedy team Carter and Sharp, told from the perspective of straight man Mose (or Mike, as he's known professionally) Sharp, from vaudeville to movies, radio and television.
The story makes the typical arc of any show-biz tale. There are the early years, full of struggle and optimism. The future icons have nothing but dreams and hopes. They work hard, travel a lot, sacrifice all material comfort in pursuit of their ambition. Then, the big break comes. They ride high, they get all the material comforts they want and then some. This period cannot last, though, and then there's the long fall from grace, often fueled by drugs and alcohol. If it's an autobiography, it usually ends with the main character getting clean and vowing (if not actually succeeding in) a comeback. If it's a biography, that usually means that the subject didn't survive, and died of an OD, often in a run-down hotel room, or the beat-up Chevy in which they were forced to live.
The end of Carter and Sharp's tale is free from that particular melodrama. Rather, it ends with the more mundane issues that dissolve the partnerships, careers and attachments of an average person. One person changed while the other one didn't. Committments to home and family take over committments to friends. One person starts to feel taken advantage of, which makes the other one defensive. There's alcohol and infidelity involved, but it plays a secondary role.
There aren't really a lot of novels on male relationships. I guess there's something in our culture that makes it almost impossible for straight men to admit they love one another, although women are free to declare their love for their female friends without having their sexuality questioned in the least. That was one thing I enjoyed about this book. Despite the fact that their partnership doesn't end on the best note, Mose isn't shy about proclaiming his love for his larger-than-life partner, who he still misses well into his eighties.
Vaudeville is fading from our collective memory. There aren't many performers left who got their start that way. Those that did, like Gracie Allen and George Burns, or Laurel and Hardy, belong to a whole other generation, existing in the collective subconscious (as Mose points out Carter and Sharp did) only as answers to crossword puzzles, or names on DVDs in Wal-Mart's dollar bin. The early chapters of the book introduce it to the generations like my own, whose grandparents didn't even get to see vaudeville live. You get to experience the surreal quality to the acts (like the one-legged contortionist), the sweat and hard work, the impermanence of it all (Mose goes from replacing a straight man who left the industry, to stepping in for anyone who was sick, and gets his big break stepping in for a straight man who was too drunk that night to go on -- virtually none of it under his own name).
That's always been one of my favorite things about fiction: the way it can preserve the past like nothing else can. Museums can save the material pieces of the past. Documentarians can describe what the past was like. But a good novel, like Niagara Falls all over again, can actually take you there.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
It'll make you LOL: a blogger makes it big
A few days ago, I alluded to a faboo book that I couldn't stop reading, even after I'd read it. That book? Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster.
Jen's tale is, as she describes it in the author's note, "a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture:...in which 'the central character...suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected.' In other words? The bitch had it coming." Jen is high on life and success as the book opens: she just won a corporate award for her sales presentation, and plans to spend the large cash prize on more designer everything. She's living the sweet life, in a sweet pad, with her similarly successful live-in boyfriend.
Then, the unthinkable happens. Two weeks after September 11th, she's laid off. Her job hunt starts out confident, then grows increasingly desperate as her unemployment runs out and her boyfriend (husband by then) gets laid off too. Many people who've hunted for jobs recently will recognize her misadventures: there's the startup that asks her to prepare a business plan to help them make their decision, takes notes a little too ardently when she presents it, then never contacts her again. There are the offers taht mysteriously and inexplicably vanish like fireworks. There are the mind-dulling temp jobs, the Nordstrom managers who won't hire you because you don't have enough experience. For some reason I've never understood, tales of the working world interest me a great deal, so I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the book.
The best part about it, though, was Jen herself. Judging from the description on the back, I'd expected to hate her and cheer when she failed, but I didn't. She has such a forceful, charismatic personality that it reaches right through the page at you. Her intimate tone (which I suspect may come partly from all the blogging) makes you root for her. Even when she's at her most shallow and materialistic, you know that she's also a human with feelings and admirable characteristics too. She's able to laugh at herself throughout the book, which (like I said in the title) will also make you LOL at some of the stuff she does (I loved the drunken Big Lebowski story). At the same time, however, she's clearly an intelligent woman who deserved her past success, which made me respect her.
Another great thing about this book is that she learns something. One thing that made the horrid Citizen Girl and the Plum Sykes books so annoying, is that the protagonists (and I use that word loosely) fail to learn anything. This despite the fact that blindingly obvious lessons are repeatedly shoved in their faces throughout the tale (The kind most of us learn in junior high, too: Don't Date Men Only Because They're Rich or Good-Looking, It's Not All About You, Success Doesn't Happen Instantly, etc.). Jen changes a lot throughout her journey. As she admits, she was defined by her job and her possessions. When she was stripped of both, she had to find new things to define her. And yes, I know that this is a true story, whereas Citizen Girl and the Plum Sykes books are more fanciful than your average JRR Tolkien tale. But the point is that a reader can get something out of Bitter is the New Black. The ending is much more satisfying than CG's continued martyrdom, or seeing a Plum Sykes protagonist rewarded for behaving like a stupid bitch. It gives you hope for people.
As a big animal person, I'd also like to mention an aspect of the story that I loved: Jen's work with rescue dogs. Desperate for a way to occupy her days, she volunteers at an animal rescue. She starts out terrified of the pit bulls, and only stays after the volunteer coordinator challenges her committment. But she grows to love it, and states flat-out that all the crap in the media about vicious pit bulls is that, exactly: crap. She even takes in two dogs from the shelter. I hope that the pit bull advocacy people have taken note of this. With these dogs being overrepresented in shelters and vilified in the media, they need all the good publicity they can get. Her chapters on Maisy and Loki may have just saved a life or two.
A final note: if all of this intrigues you and you want to test her out, she also maintains a blog. She too is doing NaBloPoMo (that's where I heard about it, actually). If you like, you can visit her at www.jennsylvania.com. The URL is also on my sidebar. I recommend it, she's a good writer, and probably a fun person too!
Jen's tale is, as she describes it in the author's note, "a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture:...in which 'the central character...suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected.' In other words? The bitch had it coming." Jen is high on life and success as the book opens: she just won a corporate award for her sales presentation, and plans to spend the large cash prize on more designer everything. She's living the sweet life, in a sweet pad, with her similarly successful live-in boyfriend.
Then, the unthinkable happens. Two weeks after September 11th, she's laid off. Her job hunt starts out confident, then grows increasingly desperate as her unemployment runs out and her boyfriend (husband by then) gets laid off too. Many people who've hunted for jobs recently will recognize her misadventures: there's the startup that asks her to prepare a business plan to help them make their decision, takes notes a little too ardently when she presents it, then never contacts her again. There are the offers taht mysteriously and inexplicably vanish like fireworks. There are the mind-dulling temp jobs, the Nordstrom managers who won't hire you because you don't have enough experience. For some reason I've never understood, tales of the working world interest me a great deal, so I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the book.
The best part about it, though, was Jen herself. Judging from the description on the back, I'd expected to hate her and cheer when she failed, but I didn't. She has such a forceful, charismatic personality that it reaches right through the page at you. Her intimate tone (which I suspect may come partly from all the blogging) makes you root for her. Even when she's at her most shallow and materialistic, you know that she's also a human with feelings and admirable characteristics too. She's able to laugh at herself throughout the book, which (like I said in the title) will also make you LOL at some of the stuff she does (I loved the drunken Big Lebowski story). At the same time, however, she's clearly an intelligent woman who deserved her past success, which made me respect her.
Another great thing about this book is that she learns something. One thing that made the horrid Citizen Girl and the Plum Sykes books so annoying, is that the protagonists (and I use that word loosely) fail to learn anything. This despite the fact that blindingly obvious lessons are repeatedly shoved in their faces throughout the tale (The kind most of us learn in junior high, too: Don't Date Men Only Because They're Rich or Good-Looking, It's Not All About You, Success Doesn't Happen Instantly, etc.). Jen changes a lot throughout her journey. As she admits, she was defined by her job and her possessions. When she was stripped of both, she had to find new things to define her. And yes, I know that this is a true story, whereas Citizen Girl and the Plum Sykes books are more fanciful than your average JRR Tolkien tale. But the point is that a reader can get something out of Bitter is the New Black. The ending is much more satisfying than CG's continued martyrdom, or seeing a Plum Sykes protagonist rewarded for behaving like a stupid bitch. It gives you hope for people.
As a big animal person, I'd also like to mention an aspect of the story that I loved: Jen's work with rescue dogs. Desperate for a way to occupy her days, she volunteers at an animal rescue. She starts out terrified of the pit bulls, and only stays after the volunteer coordinator challenges her committment. But she grows to love it, and states flat-out that all the crap in the media about vicious pit bulls is that, exactly: crap. She even takes in two dogs from the shelter. I hope that the pit bull advocacy people have taken note of this. With these dogs being overrepresented in shelters and vilified in the media, they need all the good publicity they can get. Her chapters on Maisy and Loki may have just saved a life or two.
A final note: if all of this intrigues you and you want to test her out, she also maintains a blog. She too is doing NaBloPoMo (that's where I heard about it, actually). If you like, you can visit her at www.jennsylvania.com. The URL is also on my sidebar. I recommend it, she's a good writer, and probably a fun person too!
Monday, November 5, 2007
Gone Underground
After languishing for over a decade on my TBR list,I'd enjoyed Bastard out of Carolina. Seeing that Dorothy Allison had written several other books, I was determined to give one of them a whirl. I wound up with Cavedweller. I'm still not sure what to make of it.
I loved Bastard out of Carolina for its honest, unflinching look at both childhood and poverty, and for its vivid, complex characters. Cavedweller's characters were outstanding, but its aim less focused, its purpose less clear. It promises at first to be somewhat of a darker and more white trash version of the Reese Witherspoon movie Sweet Home Alabama: the main character, Delia, had run off to L.A. over a decade ago to seek her fortune as a singer and escape an abusive marriage. After the man she left home with dies in a motorcycle crash, she takes their daughter home to Georgia to reconcile with the two daughters she left behind when fleeing her marriage, and to face the rest of her old demons.
However, the tale doesn't stop there. I've read books that I felt took way too long to get to the point, 1000-page tales that could've been told in less than half of that. This is one of the only books I've read where the tale itself seems to spin out for far too long. Somewhere, the story stops belonging to Delia, and the disparate tales of her three daughters take over: Amanda, the religious fanatic who chooses early marriage and motherhood; the rebellious Dede, who sluts around and works a variety of jobs before settling down with someone most unexpected; and Cissy, the daughter from L.A., who finds herself at the bottom of the town's network of caves. Delia becomes barely a secondary character in her own story. Everything from her tale fades: her daughters grown, her abusive husband dead, the grandfather who raised her barely making an appearance.
If this was meant to be an epic, there's not enough "epic" here: barely any struggle in the lives of the girls, including the struggle to find themselves (they all seem pretty damn sure) or become a family (which they never really achieve: Dede and Cissy have a more friendlike relationship, while Amanda rejects the sinful duo in favor of her more godly church pals). It's a rather long denouement to what starts as an exciting tale, and only Allison's skill as a writer keeps you intrigued.
I loved Bastard out of Carolina for its honest, unflinching look at both childhood and poverty, and for its vivid, complex characters. Cavedweller's characters were outstanding, but its aim less focused, its purpose less clear. It promises at first to be somewhat of a darker and more white trash version of the Reese Witherspoon movie Sweet Home Alabama: the main character, Delia, had run off to L.A. over a decade ago to seek her fortune as a singer and escape an abusive marriage. After the man she left home with dies in a motorcycle crash, she takes their daughter home to Georgia to reconcile with the two daughters she left behind when fleeing her marriage, and to face the rest of her old demons.
However, the tale doesn't stop there. I've read books that I felt took way too long to get to the point, 1000-page tales that could've been told in less than half of that. This is one of the only books I've read where the tale itself seems to spin out for far too long. Somewhere, the story stops belonging to Delia, and the disparate tales of her three daughters take over: Amanda, the religious fanatic who chooses early marriage and motherhood; the rebellious Dede, who sluts around and works a variety of jobs before settling down with someone most unexpected; and Cissy, the daughter from L.A., who finds herself at the bottom of the town's network of caves. Delia becomes barely a secondary character in her own story. Everything from her tale fades: her daughters grown, her abusive husband dead, the grandfather who raised her barely making an appearance.
If this was meant to be an epic, there's not enough "epic" here: barely any struggle in the lives of the girls, including the struggle to find themselves (they all seem pretty damn sure) or become a family (which they never really achieve: Dede and Cissy have a more friendlike relationship, while Amanda rejects the sinful duo in favor of her more godly church pals). It's a rather long denouement to what starts as an exciting tale, and only Allison's skill as a writer keeps you intrigued.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Ahhh...domestic bliss
I'm pleased to report that the first 24 hours with my guy have been fantastic, in a very ordinary sort of way. It wasn't so much what we did, because we haven't done anything super-special. We had a nice dinner at a neighborhood restaurant last night, we worked on unpacking stuff, I worked today, and tonight we went grocery shopping and reconfigured the computers. He cooked dinner while I did the laundry, and then we watched a movie while we ate. It's boring as hell, but it feels so good to have someone to come home to, and to not have to do all that stuff alone.
He also assembled my pretty new computer desk! I'd been in the market virtually ever since I bought my Wal-Mart POS. It didn't hold up well to the multiple moves I made with it, and it was ugly and too small to begin with. I finally got a new one for my birthday this summer. It has a tempered-glass top, a gray keyboard tray, and side shelves for my tower and printer. I wish my work desk was this nice!
I am concerned that with everything going on, I'm going to run out of steam before NaBloPoMo is even a week old. I have two books "in the pipeline" right now, and I'm reading a third. Still, if I write about one tomorrow and one Tuesday, I will have had to finish my current book by Wednesday in order to have something for that night, and even if I do, what about Thursday? My sister still hasn't called me back, so I don't know how the party went. We'll see, though. I'm going to make a real effort to find new topics and stretch myself, because isn't this what NaBloPoMo is supposed to be about?
He also assembled my pretty new computer desk! I'd been in the market virtually ever since I bought my Wal-Mart POS. It didn't hold up well to the multiple moves I made with it, and it was ugly and too small to begin with. I finally got a new one for my birthday this summer. It has a tempered-glass top, a gray keyboard tray, and side shelves for my tower and printer. I wish my work desk was this nice!
I am concerned that with everything going on, I'm going to run out of steam before NaBloPoMo is even a week old. I have two books "in the pipeline" right now, and I'm reading a third. Still, if I write about one tomorrow and one Tuesday, I will have had to finish my current book by Wednesday in order to have something for that night, and even if I do, what about Thursday? My sister still hasn't called me back, so I don't know how the party went. We'll see, though. I'm going to make a real effort to find new topics and stretch myself, because isn't this what NaBloPoMo is supposed to be about?
Saturday, November 3, 2007
About me, as a reader
Thomas McGuane's The Cadence of Grass taught me something about myself as a reader: I have to be able to either empathize with or laugh at the main character (or one of the main characters) or I can't sustain interest. Which is exactly what happened to this book.
The book opens as Paul Whitelaw walks into his father-in-law's wake. He's estranged from his wife Evelyn, never got along with her family, and immediately gets into a confrontation with his sister-in-law, Natalie. The conversation consists mostly of her baiting him in a very stitled and not-terribly-subtle way ("But all that water under the bridge! The otherwise admirable but nonmeshing complexities of character, the lack of the children, the -- evidently! -- dimming prospects of a nonstarter in the workplace!"). The book started to lose me there. My interest perked up again briefly when the primary driver of the plot was revealed: old man Whitelaw's will. The Whitelaw family owned a bottling plant, and old man Whitelaw made Paul the CEO of it, denied everyone else an income from it except for matriarch Mrs. Whitelaw, and decreed that the plant could be sold only if Paul reconciled with Evelyn.
But I couldn't bring myself to care. Initially, I felt sympathy for Paul. What must it be like to be attacked by page upon page of stilted dialogue at your father-in-law's wake? He was just trying to be nice in that scene. Well, actually, that turned out to be the only time. Paul's an asshole. And not a complex, brilliant-but-troubled asshole like Dr. Gregory House. Not even a spoiled, egomanical, almost comical asshole like the characters in Plum Sykes' novels. Just a garden-variety asshole. He probably does park his car in handicapped spaces while handicapped people make handicapped faces, or use public toilets and piss on the seat and walk around in summertime saying "How 'bout that heat?" He's sleeping with his probation officer (long, boring story) and treating her like shit. He's hitting on Natalie when her husband's not around, despite the evisceration she gave him. His first order of business as CEO is to walk into the bottling plant and start treating everyone like shit. He's just an asshole, and the rest of them weren't sufficiently interesting enough to me to bother.
Before I committed my slamming of this book to the internets, I checked out what others had to say. The book jacket, not that you can trust them, makes McGuane out to be a distinguished writer. I'd never heard of him and wanted to do a bit of research before I sounded like the high-school student complaining in his final paper about what a shitty writer Shakespeare was. I noticed that this book got extremely mixed reviews, in the sense that the reviewer (whether a pro writing for an established magazine or "420lulubelle" writing for Amazon) either loved the book or hated it. There wasn't much middle ground, very few "This one was sort of OK" opinions. You can put me firmly in the "hate" camp.
The book opens as Paul Whitelaw walks into his father-in-law's wake. He's estranged from his wife Evelyn, never got along with her family, and immediately gets into a confrontation with his sister-in-law, Natalie. The conversation consists mostly of her baiting him in a very stitled and not-terribly-subtle way ("But all that water under the bridge! The otherwise admirable but nonmeshing complexities of character, the lack of the children, the -- evidently! -- dimming prospects of a nonstarter in the workplace!"). The book started to lose me there. My interest perked up again briefly when the primary driver of the plot was revealed: old man Whitelaw's will. The Whitelaw family owned a bottling plant, and old man Whitelaw made Paul the CEO of it, denied everyone else an income from it except for matriarch Mrs. Whitelaw, and decreed that the plant could be sold only if Paul reconciled with Evelyn.
But I couldn't bring myself to care. Initially, I felt sympathy for Paul. What must it be like to be attacked by page upon page of stilted dialogue at your father-in-law's wake? He was just trying to be nice in that scene. Well, actually, that turned out to be the only time. Paul's an asshole. And not a complex, brilliant-but-troubled asshole like Dr. Gregory House. Not even a spoiled, egomanical, almost comical asshole like the characters in Plum Sykes' novels. Just a garden-variety asshole. He probably does park his car in handicapped spaces while handicapped people make handicapped faces, or use public toilets and piss on the seat and walk around in summertime saying "How 'bout that heat?" He's sleeping with his probation officer (long, boring story) and treating her like shit. He's hitting on Natalie when her husband's not around, despite the evisceration she gave him. His first order of business as CEO is to walk into the bottling plant and start treating everyone like shit. He's just an asshole, and the rest of them weren't sufficiently interesting enough to me to bother.
Before I committed my slamming of this book to the internets, I checked out what others had to say. The book jacket, not that you can trust them, makes McGuane out to be a distinguished writer. I'd never heard of him and wanted to do a bit of research before I sounded like the high-school student complaining in his final paper about what a shitty writer Shakespeare was. I noticed that this book got extremely mixed reviews, in the sense that the reviewer (whether a pro writing for an established magazine or "420lulubelle" writing for Amazon) either loved the book or hated it. There wasn't much middle ground, very few "This one was sort of OK" opinions. You can put me firmly in the "hate" camp.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Through Another's Eyes at the Public Library
During my first few weeks of college, I had a very eye-opening experience. I came from a suburban town where everyone was white. I mean, EVERYONE. I remember my initial reaction to The Cosby Show as one of surprise: where did they find that many black people, all of whom wanted to be actors? By college, I was worldly enough to know that most towns had more black people than my own, and had made my very first black friend before school even started, during orientation. LeSean joined an organization called Women of Ethnicity and invited everyone from our orientation clique to come on the overnight trip to the university's retreat that they were hosting.
I was hesitant to go, but didn't really know why. I asked LeSean if she was sure it was OK that I went. She assured me I'd be totally welcome, it was a great group of people, and I'd totally fit in. She was right on all but the last count. I was totally welcome, and they were a great group of people, but I so did not fit in. They played Monopoly with totally different rules. They used slang I'd never head before. We played a campfire game where someone would hum a theme to a TV show and everyone had to guess what show it was, and I thought, well, we all watch the same stuff, I can totally do this one. Guess what, it turns out that white people even watch different TV shows! I started thinking about the one black girl in my graduating class of over 200, and wondered, was this what it was like for her all the time? Did she go to school and find that no one liked any of the same stuff she did, and that she had no real way to connect with anyone, despite everyone being friendly enough? I learned that weekend that there were more ways to live than the one I'd been raised with. I'd never questioned that basic assumption the same way most of us generally don't sit and wonder if there are other colors than the ones we're familiar with. It was one of the most valuable learning experiences I've ever had.
My visit to the nearby library branch last week reminded me a bit of that. The closest one is within walking distance, although I didn't walk there. There are bigger and better ones a few miles away, but I needed to return my books pronto, and I also wanted to see this one because it's known for its collection of books in Spanish. So I went, and it was like the reverse of a library that serves primarily English-speaking patrons. The Spanish sections, even twenty minutes from closing time, were packed with everyone you typically see at a library: moms with little kids, high school students doing papers, little old ladies and old men. It appeared to be well-stocked, however, and well-maintained. The English section was shoved in a too-hot corner. The shelves were half-empty. The "New Books" section featured books that had been out in paperback for years now. Things were misplaced left and right, and oh yeah, I was the only one over there. This is what it must be like to speak Spanish as a first language and try to go check out a book anywhere else in the region.
There's a huge debate in this country over the Spanish language. The common line is (everyone say it with me now) "If they're going to come to our country, they should learn to speak English!" Setting aside the undercurrent of racism that I feel is present in this debate (I used to live near a huge Bosnian population and I'm sure they didn't all speak English, but I never heard a word about it), this is just not practical. As a Craigslist friend pointed out, learning a whole language can take years, and in the meantime, you will need to rent an apartment, get your utilities switched on, buy groceries, get a job, etc. Even if you were fluent in English, I'd imagine you'd want to be able to be yourself once in a while, to just be able to chill out with a book in your own language, written by an author who's well-known to you, and that references things you're familiar with. I'd also imagine that's especially important to Spanish speakers whose children know only life in America.
So while I'm sure that there are people in my fair county who work themselves up into a lather at the thought of their tax dollars going to support a library with a Spanish collection, I think it's an important service. I'm glad it exists, and if the night I was there is fairly typical, it's certainly getting the traffic to justify its continued existence. I probably will even continue to go on occasion, although I'm hoping to spend more time at the Wal-Mart-sized Central Branch now that I'm so much closer to it. I'm also hoping to learn the nuances of parking down there -- I used to get a ticket every time I went! Still, as I learned again this week, it's good to go someplace you don't really belong every once in a while.
I was hesitant to go, but didn't really know why. I asked LeSean if she was sure it was OK that I went. She assured me I'd be totally welcome, it was a great group of people, and I'd totally fit in. She was right on all but the last count. I was totally welcome, and they were a great group of people, but I so did not fit in. They played Monopoly with totally different rules. They used slang I'd never head before. We played a campfire game where someone would hum a theme to a TV show and everyone had to guess what show it was, and I thought, well, we all watch the same stuff, I can totally do this one. Guess what, it turns out that white people even watch different TV shows! I started thinking about the one black girl in my graduating class of over 200, and wondered, was this what it was like for her all the time? Did she go to school and find that no one liked any of the same stuff she did, and that she had no real way to connect with anyone, despite everyone being friendly enough? I learned that weekend that there were more ways to live than the one I'd been raised with. I'd never questioned that basic assumption the same way most of us generally don't sit and wonder if there are other colors than the ones we're familiar with. It was one of the most valuable learning experiences I've ever had.
My visit to the nearby library branch last week reminded me a bit of that. The closest one is within walking distance, although I didn't walk there. There are bigger and better ones a few miles away, but I needed to return my books pronto, and I also wanted to see this one because it's known for its collection of books in Spanish. So I went, and it was like the reverse of a library that serves primarily English-speaking patrons. The Spanish sections, even twenty minutes from closing time, were packed with everyone you typically see at a library: moms with little kids, high school students doing papers, little old ladies and old men. It appeared to be well-stocked, however, and well-maintained. The English section was shoved in a too-hot corner. The shelves were half-empty. The "New Books" section featured books that had been out in paperback for years now. Things were misplaced left and right, and oh yeah, I was the only one over there. This is what it must be like to speak Spanish as a first language and try to go check out a book anywhere else in the region.
There's a huge debate in this country over the Spanish language. The common line is (everyone say it with me now) "If they're going to come to our country, they should learn to speak English!" Setting aside the undercurrent of racism that I feel is present in this debate (I used to live near a huge Bosnian population and I'm sure they didn't all speak English, but I never heard a word about it), this is just not practical. As a Craigslist friend pointed out, learning a whole language can take years, and in the meantime, you will need to rent an apartment, get your utilities switched on, buy groceries, get a job, etc. Even if you were fluent in English, I'd imagine you'd want to be able to be yourself once in a while, to just be able to chill out with a book in your own language, written by an author who's well-known to you, and that references things you're familiar with. I'd also imagine that's especially important to Spanish speakers whose children know only life in America.
So while I'm sure that there are people in my fair county who work themselves up into a lather at the thought of their tax dollars going to support a library with a Spanish collection, I think it's an important service. I'm glad it exists, and if the night I was there is fairly typical, it's certainly getting the traffic to justify its continued existence. I probably will even continue to go on occasion, although I'm hoping to spend more time at the Wal-Mart-sized Central Branch now that I'm so much closer to it. I'm also hoping to learn the nuances of parking down there -- I used to get a ticket every time I went! Still, as I learned again this week, it's good to go someplace you don't really belong every once in a while.
The Countdown is On!
In just an estimated 30 hours, I will be living with my guy! I'm so excited. We've been in a long-distance relationship for five years, and have been together for seven. I can't wait. No more phone calls at night. No more long drives after a full day of work for less than 48 hours together. We'll be a real couple and I'm just so excited that I don't even mind that he's coming with a list of relationship issues that we need to discuss in person. I'm going to post during the day tomorrow because I want to celebrate with him tomorrow night. I found a cool restaurant in my neighborhood that I think he'll like and maybe later we'll hit some of the neighborhood bars as well, or go see a movie or something. Did I mention I can't wait?!
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