Custom Made for Me

Ever come across something -- a book, a blog, a museum exhibit -- that seems like the perfect intersection of your interests? I found such a book recently, and it's going on my birthday list for sure. The Tavern Lamps Are Burning is a literary journey through New York State since its colonization up until about the 1960s (that's when this book came out). It's edited by Carl Carmer and contains lots of interesting morsels: Rudyard Kipling's description of Buffalo's grain elevators, Charles Dickens' visit to the Shaker colony in Lebannon, NY before it became a museum, and writings by Red Jacket and Mary Jemison. There are short stories, poems, and excerpts from longer works. All in all, it's around 500 pgs long and not the type of work one reads cover to cover.

The book was published in 1964, as my graduate program was being founded. I thought I'd recognized the author's name, and I'm still not 100% sure I do, but he was a trustee of the museum my program works with, and dedicated this book to one of the founders of my program. I think it would be an excellent project for any institution in the state to update this book. Things have changed a great deal in the state since the book was published, and not always for the better. But many new writers and works would be worthy of excerption and inclusion, such as Richard Russo's Mohawk, The Risk Pool and Bridge of Sighs; Lauren Belfer's City of Light; and many, many others that I can't think of at the moment.

The book also inspired me to share some of my photos on this blog from around New York State. I have quite a few of them, after all. I'm going to be doing that all this week -- certainly not promising an update every day, but who knows?

Today's are from Camp Sagamore, in the Adirondack Mountains. Built by the Vanderbilts in 1897, today it's a tourist attraction. It's also host to overnight programs like Elderhostel and a corporate retreat. Every year, the Upstate History Alliance holds an institute there for museum professionals. I was privileged enough to attend one year. The leaves were beginning to change and it was just gorgeous. Even if the sessions had been absolute crap, it would have been worthwhile. But as it was, I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and enjoyed a truly gorgeous setting in New York State.

Symbolically Speaking

It's that time of the week again! Here's today's question:

My husband is not an avid reader, and he used to get very frustrated in college when teachers would insist discussing symbolism in a literary work when there didn’t seem to him to be any. He felt that writers often just wrote the story for the story’s sake and other people read symbolism into it.

It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

This one's a pretty challenging question. It's hard to know what to think sometimes. I do think English teachers, particularly English PhD's, sometimes go a bit too far. For example, you don't even want to know what Hermione's magically enlarged satchel from the last Harry Potter book is supposed to symbolize. There's all kinds of scholarship on it, apparently, but I'll leave the reader to Google it for him or herself. You may wish you hadn't.

At the same time, though, I always disliked those whose sole contribution to class was to assert "It don't symbolize nuthin'. It's just a story." That's not exactly the truth of it either. In graduate school, we had to read the Melville short story "Bartleby the Scrivener." I was pretty surprised to be the only one in the room who grasped that the story was about alienation and that Bartleby was a symbolic character. After classes were over for the week, a friend and I argued about that all the way to Friendly's (nearly a 40 minute drive; school was in the middle of nowhere). He was a very black-and-white sort of person and couldn't understand how to tell the difference between a symbolic character and one that's more like a real person. I just couldn't figure out how to explain it, either, though. "You can just tell, they don't act quite right," was the best I could do.

As far as symbolism in modern fiction, I would say that it's still there. It's not trendy in the popular stuff that's meant to be digested easily. But I guess it probably never was. My absolute least favorite use of symbolism is when the writer kills off an animal. I read a short story where a woman and her brother were visiting their family for a holiday. They'd grown up in a rural area that was being developed. They got drunk and rode their horse to a local Wal-Mart, where it fell in a construction pit or retention pond and drowned. They watched it, knowing there was nothing they could do.

When I read that story, I understood intellectually that the horse was supposed to represent the conflict between the rural life they'd grown up with and the development that was threatening it. I think it also symbolized something with the brother's life -- my memory's a little hazy, but I think the sister felt he was drinking too much or in some kind of trouble. But I couldn't get past the horrible image of the horse drowning like that, struggling to get its footing, to keep its head above water, and looking to its owners for some kind of help the entire time.

I have to admit, though, that I'm not usually on a very sharp lookout for symbolism while I'm reading. I mostly read for enjoyment, or in the case of nonfiction, to learn something specific as well. The best writers will write on both levels, so that readers can enjoy the story without getting all the symbols. And at some point, maybe it stops mattering whether the reader makes symbols out of nothing or whether the writer put them there. One of the members of Pink Floyd was once asked about the meaning behind his songs. He replied that it no longer mattered, that now that they were out in the world, it was what the listener took from them that counted, not what he put there. Perhaps that's true of books to an extent, as well.

Gone a Bit Flat

Image from amazon.com


I just finished another Laurie Graham, Gone With the Windsors, and am clearly in a minority with this one. I didn't like it much, which surprised me. I've liked the other four books I've read by her. But this one just didn't do it for me.

As you can read in numerous effervescent reviews, this book is the diary of one Maybell Brumby, young widow and childhood frined of the infamous Wallis Simpson. She comes to London after her husband's death, to catch up with her old friend and also with her sister Violet, married to another, minor royal. Maybell and Wallis resume their old friendship immediately, giving Maybell a front-row seat for the whole divorce/abdication drama.

If you were to line up all the characters in this novel, you could fill a minor-league ballpark with them. Maybell's social circle is wide-ranging and inconsistent. She has large numbers of shallow acquaintances, and they're hard to track as they're never really developed. Maybell herself? The people who enjoy this book are laughing at her, not with her. They commonly cite her many malapropisms and misstatements of fact. Only one got a real laugh out of me: the piano-playing "coal porter," inexplicably invited to one of the upper-crust events. The book's full of this sort of thing if you get a kick out of them. After a while, it started to feel like the "backseat of a Volkswagen" joke from the movie Mallrats. Funny the first time, less so the second time. By its tenth appearance, you're gritting your teeth every time someone tees it up with the phrase "uncomfortable position."

So, I didn't like Maybell much. There just wasn't much to her, actually. Nora in The Importance of Being Kennedy led an interesting life all her own. Poppy of The Great Husband Hunt was a constant challenge, as you initially rooted for her, then saw your feelings towards her complicate as she took her life in strange directions and rarely softened towards those who'd been less lucky. And it was a joy to see Peg and her friends successfully remake their lives and change with the changing times in Future Homemakers. Maybell inspires few feelings at all.

The ones who interested me got less and less stage time as the book wore on: Maybell's own family. Violet and her traditionalist husband. Her mischevious older son and her untameable daughter. And Maybell's other sister, Doopie, which is short for stupid, the nickname Maybell gave her after a childhood illness took her hearing (and, the family thought, her intelligence too. They were wrong). Wallis and the King are not presented in a very good light. Wallis struck me throughout as a craven materialistic social climber. The King was a strange sort of man-child, easily tired out by any sort of duty, desirous merely of a quiet life of golfing and dogs and Wallis. Strange that a novel about one of the biggest scandals of the twentieth century, let alone one written by the wonderful Laurie Graham, should seem dull to me. But there it is.

Made in the U.S.A

image from Amazon.com


At the beginning of Made in the U.S.A, Billie Letts thanks circus performers, medical professionals, people who guided her through Las Vegas, people who taught her about the survival strategies of the homeless; people knowledgeable about gymnastics, construction sites, golf balls and teenagers; the author of a trivia book; and the people at a piercing and tatoo parlor. You can tell that it's going to be an exciting read.

However, it wasn't quite what I expected. The two protagonists of the book are Lutie and Fate McFee, brother and sister. They've had very rough lives, and it gets worse during the first half of the novel. Their mother's dead, their father was an alcoholic who abandoned them to the care of his most recent girlfriend, who dies at the start of the book. Fleeing the spectre of foster homes, they light out to Las Vegas with less than $200 and only Lutie's learner's permit, in hopes of tracking down their father.

The news is not good, and the book gets very grim indeed at this point, as both tough, independent Lutie and sweet, quirky Fate are forced to grow up in a hurry. Utterly alone, they fend for themselves as best as two homeless children with no identification or permanent address can. You can probably imagine how, but Letts doesn't require you to.

Their luck miraculously turns at the moment when things can't get much worse. A guardian angel in the shape of a broken-down wire walker spirits them away, to the family he's been avoiding for more than fifteen years and to a reckoning for all three of them.

There's something I liked about this book, but it's hard to put my finger on what. The first half was utterly unrelenting. With each turn of the plot, you wonder how things could get worse for Lutie and Fate, only to find out the answer a few pages later. The second, happier half was a bit draggy, though. The ending seemed like a foregone conclusion pretty early on in the second half. The meaning of the title, too, still eludes me.

I'm guessing that what I liked about the book lies somewhere in Lutie and Fate. Lutie's not particularly likeable at first. She's snappish with her little brother, selfish, and constantly angry. But there's also something there that makes you root for her to turn it around. And Fate's just adorable, with his earnestness, his deep well of love and forgiveness, and his encyclopedic knowlege of all things trivial ("Did you know rats can have sex twenty times a day?").

This is my first Billie Letts book, although I've seen some of her others. I feel funny about saying I "enjoyed" a book with such vivid, graphic descriptions of what can become of homeless children, but I would definitely give another one of hers a try, and would reccomend this one.

Splurges

Yesterday, April 15th, was Tax Day here in the U.S., which means lots of lucky people will get refunds of over-paid taxes.

Whether you’re one of them or not, what would you spend an unexpected windfall on? Say … $50? How about $500?

(And, this is a reading meme, so by rights the answer should be book-related, but hey, feel free to go wild and splurge on anything you like.)


Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

As an unemployed person, I think about this issue a lot. I start many sentences with, "When I get a job, I'm going to buy..." At the moment, there are so many things that fall into that category of "lesser need" that I've had to let go. So today, none of my answers will be book-related. Here, instead, is a list of things I'd buy:

1. A washing machine. Due to some stupid drama with my upstairs neighbor, I can't use the one that's here anymore (because it's suddenly "his," never mind that he didn't care about us using it for a solid year until the one he was using broke). My landlord's going to help us pay for a used one. I've been on the lookout for someone selling a decent used one for a reasonable price that can deliver, but those sell as fast as they're posted.

2. A vet visit for my cat Molly. Why does she hiss and growl whenever we have people over? How come she frequently chooses to pee on the floor? How bad is her vision, anyway, and is there anything I should be doing for her? A vet may hold the answers to some of these questions.

3. New clothes. I'm so sick of all of mine.

4. New rims for my car, so my tires don't keep going flat and I can actually drive the stupid thing. Or new tires, or whatever it actually needs.

5. A dentist visit to get my teeth cleaned. Been a while. I promise to never, ever slack on that again when I'm employed. Ever.

6. A video card for my computer. When I play World of Warcraft, I like to raid, but getting in there with 24 other people just makes my computer cry. Raids would be less aggravating if they didn't look like slideshows.

7. A new couch. The one I'm using was cool in the 80s when my grandparents bought it. Less cool these days. Plus, it has wood on it that doesn't match any of the rest of my furniture, and it's only a loveseat.

8. A new chair. Ooooooohhhhhhh. Right now, I've got one that I purchased at Amvets several years ago. It wasn't all that great then. Now that it's faded further and the cats have clawed it up, I doubt even the bums in my neighborhood would be interested in it. I have it covered with a throw but it still offends the eyes. To make it even better, it's starting to fall apart. One of the "legs" (I guess they're more like supports, they're only about 3 inches tall) snapped off so it's a little wobbly. When you sit in it, you can hear every joint in it strain. I'm convinced it will just snap right in half someday soon. Why is it still around? My significant other absolutely loves it. He sits in it all the time. I can't get rid of it, I don't know what he'd do without it. So I need a new one that's less hideous and in better shape. I'm convinced I could get a better one for free on most trash days, but I have no way of getting it home.

9. A vacation. It would be so nice to get away from all this stupid crap listed above, too. While I have fantasies of making the trip to Hawaii or Egypt, I'd really just settle for somewhere I've never been before. Somewhere natural, like Maine or Arches National Park in Utah.

I guess there's no book-related stuff on this list, just because I don't buy them often. I've mentioned before that the Barnes and Noble giftcards tend to be a bit of a double-edged sword for me. I like getting them, but they also paralyze me and panic me. It's so rare that I buy books that I tend to give my purchases too much thought. Do I really want this book? Will I be glad I have it five years from now? How many times do I think I'll re-read it? Should I maybe just borrow it from the library first, because even though I've liked most of this author's other books, this one might suck? With an unexpected windfall, I'd rather get the rest of this stuff in my life taken care of first.

Elementary? Not so much.

I've been putting off writing about The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls by John King for about a week now, I guess because I'm still not sure what to say about it. While I was looking for the cover image on Amazon, I checked out some of the reviews. And I'm beginning to think that reading this book without having re-visited the Sherlock Holmes stories in years is a little like reading a Harry Potter fanfic after having only seen the movie, or knowing the most basic outline of the plot. You may have enjoyed it, or hated it, but you don't really have the necessary context to evaluate it.

There is a whole world of Sherlock Holmes out there. There are conferences, societies, listservs, fan pages, and podcasts. There are magazines, meetups and those who write their own Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlockian.net helps Sherlock Holmes fans find their own kind on the web and in real life. This novel is most likely aimed more at them than at me, who read many of these stories in childhood and has only the dimmest recollection of them.

Coming from that perspective, Reichenbach was enjoyable enough. It's extremely fast-paced and only took me a couple of days to blow through all 352 pages. King introduced two (I assume) new characters: a young, educated drifter named Thomas Carnacki, and Professor Moriarty's daughter, Anna, who loved her father but hated and feared what he had become. They are both present when Holmes topples over the Reichenbach Falls, and help fish him out, protect him from the mystery man he was fighting with and escape from his clutches while he regains his memory. Along the way, of course, they fall in love.

Watson makes an appearance, of course, and we learn Professor Moriarty's backstory. One Amazon reviewer was very scathing on this aspect of the story, as it introduces an element of the occult, which is (I guess) not in keeping with the logic and reason Holmes generally employs. The thing that irked this non-Sherlockian most in the book was an anachronistic reference to an icepick leucotomy, a procedure not developed until the 1930s (even then, I don't believe they had an "icepick" version. I'd have to re-read The Lobotomist more closely, and that just ain't happening tonight).

The book did make me want to re-read some of the old Sherlock Holmes stories, though. They're available on the web, but I hate reading lengthy stuff that way. I may check them out from the library, but I don't ever see myself becoming a "Sherlockian". It's waaaaay too geeky for me. Now, if you readers will excuse me, I have to go do some quests on my blood elf mage.

Hoppy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! Whether today represents the cornerstone of your religion, or simply a day to get the family together for a ham, I hope you're enjoying it. My Easter present to you is a flea market find from this summer!



This is a very neat old package of Easter egg dyes. I love the graphic on it, and it's one of those times where I'm glad to have come up with this feature on my blog, because I really don't know what else to do with this guy!

In case you're curious, I found this article online about the Fleck's company and the Easter Egg dyes. They were in business from 1889 (as the package states) all the way until 1997, when the company was sold at auction. They also sold a variety of medicinesThat article dates my egg dye package from 1950-1960.



Dyeing eggs with my grandmother and sister is my main memory of Easter. When I hear the word, I smell the vinegar and hear the fizzing of the egg dyes dissolving in half a dozen different Corelle bowls. My grandmother would help my sister and I dye the eggs the night before Easter. When we woke up, they'd been hidden by the Easter Bunny, along with little gifts, all throughout my grandparents' house. We'd get our Easter baskets after we found all the eggs and presents, and then later on, all of my cousins and aunts and uncles would come over to my grandparents' house for a big dinner. But mostly it's the eggs, and my grandmother, that I remember.