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I took down my copy of The Library of America’s collection of later Updike stories from the shelf.  Nine hundred pages.  Eighty-five stores from the mid 70’s to 2008.  Most were first published in The New Yorker, where Updike’s editor for many years was Roger Angell.  Reading the first twenty or so of the stories was like going home for me.  Some of them I remembered from their original publication; a few others I had encountered in other collections.  Some were new to me.  The collection is presented in the order in which they were written, so the ones I read were from 1974 to 1982, a time when I was a young adult.  Most take place in the eastern USA, or at least the characters are from there.  So it seems familiar.

But familiar isn’t necessarily just positive. I’ve learned a lot since then. My geographic, cultural, and personal horizons are broader now.  We’ve all grown up a bit.  But Updike is so good at depicting particular times and places.  The attitudes, norms, and trends from those times might seem antiquated now, constrained by tradition, perhaps missing the point, perhaps making too much of ordinary difficulty, maybe all to complacently accepting the paternalistic and elitist heritage from the post-war generation. 

For the most part Updike doesn’t preach, he simply reports what he sees. And the reporting is often brilliant.  These stories avoid the showy overly complex and learned language of many of the novels.  (Updike has been described by a certain feminist as ‘a penis with a thesaurus’.)  They’re simpler and more straightforward, and in each one he has clear and for the most part narrow purpose.  Often the story points to a particular moment, a subtle tipping point that the characters will only understand in retrospect. My favorites include ‘The Fairy Godfathers’ (a telling commentary on psychiatry and relationships), ‘From the Journal of a Leper’ (maybe a bit obvious but a nicely executed O. Henry-like story), ‘Morocco’ (wistful thoughts about family). 

Updike as a wonderfully graceful and telling way of shifting the tone near the end of a story.  It’s the place where we sense he’s going to stop describing and meandering.  Here he’s getting to the point of it all.  It’s not pedantic or moralistic, but it is telling.  It’s where someone reading the story aloud would change tone, slow the pace a bit, and look us in the eye.

Even if his vision was somewhat constrained by circumstance (he was very much a creature of his time and social status), he was a supremely skilled writer that genuinely loved the craft. There is much to be learned and experienced from reading him. And a visit home can warm the heart, even if I know and am in part grateful that I no longer live there.

Therapy

Philip Roth’s fiction shares many qualities with effective psychotherapy.  Both require a big leap of faith, both are self-absorbed, unconstrained by reality, seemingly unorganized, undirected, and ultimately very revealing.

I’ve read most of his fiction, and he remains one of my literary heroes. Somehow I missed The Ghost Writer (the first in the Zuckerman trilogy), and if you can place yourself on that couch, be open to his unconscious as well as your own, it’s a great read.  Who else would consider the quandary in which Anne Frank would find herself had she lived to see the publication of her diary?  Who else has so much to say on being Jewish in 20^th-century America?  Who else so effectively and simultaneously looks back to his narrow past and forward to a wholly different future?  Who else so carefully considers (obsesses about) the writer, his role, his obligations and responsibilities, his shortcomings and limitations? Who else can do this in such a short book and in such a creative way?

I’m the first to admit that Roth is not everyone’s cup of tea, but neither is Pamuk, or Yan, or Naipaul.  And Roth has serious academic credentials and literary street cred.  Can we get political correctness out of the way and just give him the Nobel already? Please.

Amateurs

I read the New York Times semi-regularly.  I find quite a few articles to be interesting and informative.  Then I come across an article about a subject I know well.  If I have a good amount of technical and factual knowledge about the subject, I’m often aghast at the inadequacies of the article, what it got wrong, what critical points were omitted, how clumsy and hodge-podge it all seems.

The same with legislation.  Yes, our lawmakers do the best they can given the limits of the system in which they work, but when I read legislation in the telecom industry (that I know fairly well) I just can’t believe how amateurish it all seems.  These people really don’t know what they’re doing.  The process of making legislation is scary, and the resulting sausage is just not very good. Where are the adults?

Paul Theroux makes a similar point about terrorism in his mid-70’s novel The Family Arsenal.  The book takes place in London and concerns the IRA terrorist bombings that plagued the city at that time.  I very much like Theroux’s travel writing, and many of his novels profit from his special ability to blend place/time with character/plot.  For him they are pleasingly inseparable.  The Family Arsenal is not so strong in this aspect, or maybe I just don’t find London in the 70’s all that interesting.

But Theroux is very effective at demonstrating that most terrorists are not professionals deeply motivated by a political cause.  Most are young people with serious unresolved issues looking for a convenient outlet for their violent tendencies.  They latch onto a cause because it’s there, for a time they lend their energy and get their thrills from the action, and then they move to other outlets, get distracted by mainstream life, or they actually find at least partial resolution for their personal issues.

The book is a little writerly for my taste. Theroux takes himself seriously, and sometimes he misses the mark. But there is much to appreciate here.  Especially these days when young people from Europe and America are travelling to the Middle East to fight for ISIS, we would do well to consider what their motivation might be.  Do they really believe in the cause, or are they just unhappy in their own personal way, frustrated, and looking for acceptance, excitement, and an outlet for their anger?

I guess we’re all amateurs at the game of life, though it is possible to gain real professional expertise in specific areas.  And when we do, we realize how much we’ve differentiated ourselves from others. I’d like to think that there really are no professional terrorists, but rather just amateurs dabbling at destruction.  That would at least give law enforcement a small leg up.  But that may just my own lack of expertise talking.

Downton Abbey in a More Revealing Light

I saw the movie of The Remains of the Day in the mid 90’s and was very impressed by the performances of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.  Something about that film has haunted me ever since. Having read and much appreciated Ishiguro’s more recent NeverLet me Go, I thought I really should read The Remains of the Day.  Booker Prize in 1989.

Two damned good actors.

So glad I did.  Ishiguro is a master of tone and nuance.  Nothing much happens. Recollections of the past and small but telling moments in the present. The book is written in the first person from the point of view of an aging British butler, Mr. Stevens is struggling to keep together a postwar 'aristocratic' household whose past is being called into question, and whose future is at best uncertain. He's stuck in the past and ill-suited to the demands of the postwar present.  But he is also severely limited in the emotional realm, and much of the fascination of the book is that his limitations are revealed only gradually. We come to know him bit by bit through his account of the present and his recollections of the past.  Always it’s the tone that is paramount, and that is constricted by Stevens’s limitations.  There’s much talk of ‘dignity’, and lots of derision of ‘banter’, a modern form of repartee that Stevens finds foreign and repugnant.  But it turns out that 'dignity' can be a way to justify crippling emotional limitations, and 'banter' is a way of representing spontaneity and freedom of expression.

It’s been many years since I saw the film, but memory tells me that it is a faithful expression of the novel’s essential message.  That’s not so common in these days of film adaptations that veer off into Hollywood themes that have little to do with the original text. I’ll revisit the film soon.  Gladly.

For now, I’ll say that Ishiguro is a master prose poet. The writing emits an aura that perfectly describes Stevens’s state of mind.  It’s a chance to enter another’s world, a chance to feel what another feels (or doesn't feel).

Such is good fiction.

Detachment

Nicholson Baker: one strange dude.  Undeniably and proudly male. Also unarguably odd.

I have many reactions to The Fermata, his novel about a young adult male who has the power to stop time (he can act while the rest of the world is paused), and uses that power almost exclusively to kindly and lovingly undress women, to masturbate to the sights, and to indulge his sexual fantasies.  He is for the most part harmless and perhaps even loving in his way, but also tellingly irrelevant in a social connective sense.  Nobody knows what he’s up to, and he seems to prefer it that way … at least for most of the book
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A knowing look, isn't it? Et tu?

We’ve all experienced the feeling of existing outside of time.  We’re so completely absorbed in what we’re doing that when we finally look up we don’t know if five minutes have passed or five hours.  And we don’t really care.  I often have that feeling in doing musical work.  I also remember it distinctly when emerging from a movie theater by myself after seeing Bergman’s The Seventh Seal for the first time.  I had no idea where I was, what time it was, or who was around me, and that was just fine.  I wanted to stay in the Bergman movie world.  I was experiencing a sort of cultural/social version of the bends as I gradually and somewhat painfully adjusted to being back in reality.

Baker’s protagonist regularly experience this kind of displacement when he stops time. He considers the ability to be a great gift, but the resulting isolation is stifling.  Only at the end does he realize that he might be better of being more honest with those around him, even if that means sacrificing his special powers.  The need for real connection does, in the long run, trump all.

But for 95% of the book, the protagonist is stuck in a powerful but lonely place, a spot where he can manipulate, he can fondle, he can masturbate, he can fantasize, but he can’t truly connect.  He recognizes the powers are irresistibly attractive to him but he also knows on some level that in accepting the devil’s bargain he is condemning himself to a life sentence of isolation, endless striving, and perhaps despair.

But the language is so rational, so reasonable, intellectual and compelling. Also funny, and sharply insightful. Who wouldn’t want that protected and special perspective?

Maybe it’s a bit like walking out on that glass-floored space over the Grand Canyon.  You should be falling.  You feel so very strongly you should be falling.  But the colors are beautiful, and you look down and think of certain impressionist paintings you love.  You’re isolated in your wonder as you at least temporarily“don’t fall”.

Or maybe like a doctor who operates on himself.  He makes the incision and pulls back the tissue to reveal a beautiful tumor.  He can’t help admire the sight, like looking at clouds in the sky and finding first a dog, then seconds later a flower, then a tree … all in the shifting cloud shapes.  But he’s really looking at his own disease, his own demise. But it’s still beautiful.

Or maybe it's just a fun and fanciful metaphor for hard won male wisdom

Is there a female in the world that can appreciate Nicholson Baker?  Doubt it.

I was so relieved that in the last twenty pages the protagonist takes a step toward an honest relationship, and learns to sacrifice the privileges granted by his special powers.  If he can learn, maybe there’s hope for us all.

There’s chick lit.  Then there’s Nicholson Baker.

Worlds Colliding

Inventory of my life realms (in no particular order): partner and lover, father, friend, extended family member, professional IT developer, musician, tennis player, cook, reader, consumer of popular culture, etc.

Each one of the above has its own concerns, contacts, and ambitions.  The Venn diagram that would include them all would show significant but limited overlaps. I don’t think it’s uncommon to have so many spheres, but I’m not sure what the implications are.  Enrichment from any source is a good thing, so there may be a gain from each. But I can only function optimally in one realm at a given moment.  And the inevitable intersections and collisions can be awkward; yet unanticipated connections are also so rewarding. To the extent that life is divided into separate spheres we risk losing ourselves in a maze of multitasking.  And the keeping any secrets, anything that is known in one realm and kept from another is a recipe for psycho-disaster.

 

Charles D’Ambrosio shows us in his essay collection, Loitering, that language is a strain that runs through all of our worlds.  How I address my partner, my daughter, my friends, my colleagues, my friends on the tennis court, how I read … language runs through it all.  And looking carefully at language can teach us quite a bit about ourselves.

D’Ambrosio is a complicated man with a messed up family history and lots of personal issues, but he’s managing to sort it all out through writing, through language, through careful thinking about words.  This rewarding but uneven collection covers lots of territory.  My favorites include “Casting Stones”, about a famous trial and all of the personal, legal, and cultural implications of the outcome, and “Hell House”, a telling essay on the contrast between true horror and political propaganda.

D’Ambrosio is a serious thinker and an even more careful writer.  He slices very thin, very thin indeed.  His observations are keen, thought provoking, sometimes controversial, and even at times infuriating.  But his careful prose is alive, breathing, and needs to be taken seriously.

Is there some Utopia in which each of us can live a truly united life, where it all fits together seamlessly and we don’t have to keep explaining parts of ourselves to those outside that particular circle, or just keep sucking up the tension created by the collision and staying quiet?  Maybe there once was a way to do it, but probably there is no longer.  But applying the same kind of rigor to our use of language in all spheres will help us understand the commonality.  It’s literally a kind of verbal psychoanalysis.  It is both paralyzing and liberating. A double edged sword, and a sharp one at that.

Sex and the Anglo Saxon

I remember riding a crowded bus in London in the 1970’s and noticing a seated young adult male who was holding a small dark wooden box in his hands.  After a while he opened it and just stared at the contents for several minutes.  I thought it might be a special piece of jewelry or a religious icon of some sort.  I moved a little so I could see over his shoulder.  It was a simulated human rear end lovingly mounted in burgundy velvet, a small doll’s ass, realistically colored, just there to be admired.  He was fascinated by it, and didn't care who observed him enjoying the sight and feel.  It struck me then that yes, it really is true.  The Brits have their own strangeness about sex.

 

There's a movie version with Haley Mills. I dare you.

Kingsley Amis’s Take A Girl Like You is a comedy of manners that satirizes class, academics, marriage, and even a little politics.  But it’s mostly (actually pretty obsessively) about the social aspects of sex, pure and simple.  Yes it moves to a typical Kingsley Amis climax (sic).  In Lucky Jim it was a speech, here it’s the main character losing her virginity (willingly … sort of).  It’s all so very upper class British.  So many inside jokes, so much snobbishness and conceit.  On the whole, not very attractive, and more importantly not all that insightful about sex and intimacy.  I’ll take James Salter on this topic any day.  A Sport and A Pastime is marvelous.  As for Amis, his traditional British reserve, ultra-sophisticated understated and indirect language, and his satirical intentions don’t combine for me to produce insight about physical intimacy, or at least not in this case.  There’s some fun along the way, but for me anyway not the kind of ‘happy ending’ I hoped for.