Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Tags

, , ,

When Booker Prize-winning Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee was first published in 1999, reviewers focused more on the novel’s secondary plot element–racial tensions in post-apartheid South Africa–than the forefront sexual misconduct of its protagonist; they sidestepped or all but disregarded David Lurie’s ‘disgrace’, giving only token summaries of his actions sans critical commentary.  Doubtless these reviewers would present a different focus today, in the heightened awareness brought about by the #MeToo Movement.  More recent comments by readers on sites such as GoodReads indicate that such a protagonist is today less tolerable or more of a trigger to readers, although even those who hate the protagonist often still come away admiring the novel.

The novel’s protagonist, Professor David Lurie, is in many ways a modern villain of sexual misconduct.  Coetzee neither excuses nor revels in this misconduct, but rather paints the portrait of the man in all his depth, conflict, and nuance.

David Lurie is an unapologetic womanizer.  He cannot see women as anything but sex objects. When he is tried by a college board for his relationship with a student, he refuses to make an apology, but freely admits his guilt.  His only defense is that he was following his natural desires.  This makes him an odious protagonist, but he garners some grace simply by seeming somewhat disgusted by, and resigned to, his own odious nature; after losing his professorship, he works at a veterinary clinic and compares himself to the dogs that he helps euthanize, because they are slaves to this base nature and their glory days have passed.  Like the dogs, he feels he may as well be put out of his misery—not so much because he feels sorry for himself, but simply because he no longer serves any use for the world.

While he would have contented himself with living out his old age at pasture and refusing any form of rehabilitation or reconciliation with his inappropriate behavior, he is forced by violent circumstance to examine his misdeeds from another angle.  It is here that he is forced for the first time to witness the ugliness of his own nature from outside himself, as a victim and father of a victim.  This does not bring about the simple revelation and redemption that a reader might imagine.  It instead becomes a mighty struggle, but a struggle of nuance and complexity that happens beneath the surface while his actions fly in the face of this inner turmoil and he goes through the motions of trying to maintain his shameful ways, all despite new humiliations.  He becomes increasingly a pitiable recidivist figure, and not in a way that excuses his behavior.

The culmination of the inner struggle with his nature manifests itself as he begins trying–in the midst of his pitiable, penniless, and ultimately lonely retirement–to create an opera about Lord Byron and his mistress Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli.  Through this lens he begins to recognize his flaws.  He imagines himself as Byron, who he himself describes as a rapist.  He realizes his own inability to understand the feminine point of view, and so his Teresa sections fall flat.  He is self-involved along with his Byron, but comes to recognize he is trapped by his own passions toward women.  He is nothing without the women he lusts after, and even as he imagines they are his sustenance and the wellspring of his life, he realizes he knows nothing of them.

Six months ago he had thought his own ghostly place in Byron in Italy would be somewhere between Teresa’s and Byron’s: between a yearning to prolong the summer of the passionate body and a reluctant recall from the long sleep of oblivion. But he was wrong.  It is not the erotic that is calling to him after all, nor the elegiac, but the comic.  He is in the opera neither as Teresa nor as Byron nor even as some blending of the two: he is held in the music itself, in the flat, tinny slap of the banjo strings, the voice that strains to soar away from the ludicrous instrument but is continually reined back, like a fish on a line.

Coetzee accomplishes much with this novel.  The subtlety and complexity through which the main character manifests is itself remarkable.  The professor seems entirely immutable throughout the novel, except we feel the tremors of tectonic plates shifting beneath the surface, and as readers feel some inexorable force that will eventually lead him to some revelation or change.  Coetzee paints a portrait of sexual misconduct and racial tensions in South Africa with sensitivity and artistry rather than judgment.  Here is a character that must by definition be labeled an antihero, but rendered with enough depth and truth to remind us that great literature is not about likeability.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Genderqueer Hemingway

Tags

, , , , ,

Hemingway's Garden of Eden

From the Film Adaptation of Hemingway’s Garden of Eden.

I seem to have this irrational fear of scarcity when it comes to great novels.  I keep worrying I will run out.  Obviously (and thankfully!) this will never happen, but then again there are certain authors I really love reading almost without fail… and so I parcel out their books to myself very sparingly, because I dread that day when I will have read the author’s last book.  I should get over this habit because it has prevented me from reading a lot of great books.  I should remind myself that if a book is truly awesome, I can read it more than once. But, for now, there are a few authors I have faith in and I take some comfort in knowing that a few of their books are waiting for me.  Donna Tartt, for instance—I loved The Little Friend and The Goldfinch, but keep saving The Secret History for a rainy day.  Haruki Murakami, who is thankfully prolific, and I’ve read at least a half dozen of his novels, but need to prevent myself from always going straight to his shelf when it’s time to choose a new book.  Virginia Woolf, because wow.  Michael Ondaatje, for the same reason.  And then there is Ernest Hemingway…

I often run into resistance when I mention Hemingway. I see different reasons why not everybody loves his writing; some people think his vocabulary is too small, his words aren’t big enough, or his sentence structures are too simple.  Others are fine with all that, but think his characters aren’t fleshed out enough or that the plots aren’t thick enough.  Many different reasons, and you could say there is some literal truth to all of these statements… except really all that is missing the bigger picture.  Hemingway does a ton of amazing things that happen beneath the surface.  You might see three or four short, simple sentences and be unimpressed, but it’s only because you’ve neglected to notice the subtle friction arising between them.  Lamenting the lack of bigger words, you fail to realize that bigger words would only stilt or water down the narrative drive.  And you might think a character or plot are flat and nondescript, but then you are failing to read between the lines.

All of that is only preface to my saying that this artistry fails in The Garden of Eden.  The simple sentences and simple words have nothing behind them here, and no friction between them.  The straightforward language seems blunt and empty.  The characters have no life off the page and fall flat even when they are taking actions that should be evocative.

This is a terrible shame, because I picked up the novel with high hopes, seeing that its focus was bisexuality, which I didn’t know Hemingway had written about so openly.  So I was curious.  Coupled with that was an upbeat blurb on the novel from James Salter (one of the writers whose books I’ve exhausted and wish there were more of).  But what happens in The Garden of Eden is that the words fail. I had a hard time identifying the story and engaging the characters.  I couldn’t detect the friction below the surface and between the sentences.  It was a very hollow read, almost like reading some novice trying to mimic Hemingway.  The short words and sentence structures were there, but they all failed. Even the sweeping, multiple compounded simple sentence landscape descriptions felt hollow and evoked no images. And with all that failing, the bisexuality and gender fluidity scenes felt like a farce.  Catherine tells David that she will be the boy and he will be the girl.  Other times they are both boys.  They get identical bob haircuts, and Catherine dresses like a man.

As I was reading, my impression was that Catherine was a true genderqueer and David was just sort of going along for the ride. But Catherine had no real depth. She was a flat character.  They both fell flat.  Her actions were simple and straightforward, mostly via dialogue, and lacked meaning and complexity.  Then another woman comes into the picture and they both fall in love with her.  In some ways, she is more interesting than both David and Catherine.  She seems very much alive and her character jumps off the page more than the main characters, which is probably how most writers convey falling in love.  Then the slow three-way romance begins, but it is very spare and hollow.  Catherine enjoys being the man for this new woman, but also shows some trepidation and excitement to be the woman for her also. Somewhere along the line, I just couldn’t go on reading.  I discovered a film version and decided to try it, but it was a faithful adaptation—meaning that it, too, seemed hollow and untrue.

It is said that Hemingway worked on this story for 15 years and couldn’t get it to meet his expectations.  I’d like to believe that Hemingway was expressing his sensitivity and personal interest in bisexuality and gender fluidity.  I’d like to believe he wanted to express a part of himself that remained unwritten.  I’d like to believe that he was struggling not only against the confines of what was acceptable in his era, but also the confines of his personal experience as a writer and the gender roles that he had always previously employed.  But I can only speculate at his motivation because this novel is simply not fully realized.  Here is a writer known for plunging under icebergs barely dipping his toes with trepidation beneath the surface.  Decades after his death, they cobbled this book together and released it as a novel.  Knowing this, I feel the criticism is more justly directed not at Hemingway, but at this book’s editor and publisher.  I choose to believe that if Hemingway had lived another ten years, this might have become something brilliant.

A Million Fragile Bones by Connie May Fowler

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

A Million Fragile Bones by Connie May Fowler guides the reader, with love and compassion, into the environmental catastrophe caused by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  The facts, chronology, and images are here in horrific detail, all made personal through Connie’s engagement with nature.  This balance between memoir and non-fiction enable a close attachment to the historical events, allowing us to witness firsthand the true horror and scope of this tragedy.

The early part of this book is memoir.  Connie shares glimpses of her childhood in a pointillist manner, such that we come to understand her deep and meaningful connection to her natural surroundings.  She lost her father at a young age, but remembers him as close to nature, and loving the sea and fishing.  When she is torn from her home as a child, she gains solace from written words. When alcoholism makes it hard for her mother to show affection, she finds unconditional love from her dog. When Connie sees birds, she sees freedom and strength and grace.  Ultimately she begins telling her stories and the memoir includes Oprah Winfrey discovering and producing for television her novel Before Women Had Wings.

Ultimately, Connie is seeking a home, and she finds one on Alligator Point, on the gulf coast of Florida.  She immerses us in the passion she has for the wildlife of her surroundings.  Every living being is sacred to her.  Even the snakes and spiders are welcome to share her home.  She studies the plants and birds and sea creatures sharing her world. In her free time, she works to protect the animals from land development by spreading the word and engaging with local politicians.

By the time we learn of the Deepwater Horizon’s explosion, we have shared Connie’s life and endeavors; we’ve become stakeholders.  We have come to love this place she calls home, after all we’ve seen through her eyes.  Suddenly what we begin seeing becomes tinted dark with dread.  Oil is pluming into the ocean.  BP executives and politicians are trying to cover up the disaster.  Toxic chemicals are dumped into the ocean to hide the oil and a mixture of airborne pollutants blowing in from the sea.  Connie’s health suffers.  After the polluted air come the dead and dying sea creatures.  Connie takes classes to become certified to save the living, scrub them of oil.  Her home has turned from paradise to hellscape.

A Million Fragile Bones is a compelling read.  Both the memoir and non-fiction tug at our heartstrings.  Even after having read about the oil spill and watched it unfold daily on television, there are many facts that have escaped our attention, swept under the rug by the industry and our leaders.  Here you learn the cold, hard truth.  The horror of what happened, and the damage from which the gulf (and the world beyond) has still not recovered.  And, living vicariously through Connie’s love of nature, everything becomes more beautiful, poignant, and tragic.

The world needs this book.

Connie May Fowler Cover

A Million Fragile Bones by Connie May Fowler

Old School by Tobias Wolff

Tags

, , ,

Literature lovers can wrap themselves up in Old School by Tobias Wolff like it’s a cozy blanket by a fire.  Novels with a writer protagonist may be an overused trope, but then again what better hero can a literati hope for?  Wolff draws us into this world with characters many readers can empathize with because they share our love of books.  Wolff’s protagonist enjoys, and aspires to create, remarkable fiction. At the same time, this novel is a coming of age tale of a boy struggling to define himself through his writing, and encountering the flaws of his own character.

The narrator of Old School is a student at an all-boy prep school in 1960.  During the course of his senior year, several literary masters will visit the school, and the winner of the poetry and fiction contests will get to spend time with them.  During the course of the novel, the protagonist strives to win these contests, and must face his failings, which become increasingly severe.

I’m refraining from elaborating on the substance of Old School to prevent spoilers, but this was a deeply enjoyable reading experience.  The atmosphere can’t help but evoke Dead Poet’s Society, but Old School is a deeply personal tale of one boy, rather than the situation of all the students and their teacher.  The plot is engaging and builds toward a powerful and unexpected resolution.  I took great pleasure reading it.  I’ll leave you with a couple passages I enjoyed:

“Rhyme is bullshit. Rhyme says that everything works out in the end.  All harmony and order.  When I see a rhyme in a poem, I know I’m being lied to.  Go ahead, laugh!  It’s true—rhyme’s a completely bankrupt device.  It’s just wishful thinking.  Nostalgia.”

“The life that produces writing can’t be written about.  It is a life carried on without the knowledge even of the writer, below the mind’s business and noise, in deep unlit shafts where phantom messengers struggle toward us, killing one another along the way; and when a few survivors break through to our attention they are received as blandly as waiters bringing more coffee.”

Old School by Tobias Wolff

Old School by Tobias Wolff

 

John Knowles’ A Separate Peace by Kirby Gann

Tags

, , , , , ,

John Knowles’ A Separate Peace by Kirby Gann is the latest in the Bookmarked series by ig Publishing. What makes this an enjoyable read is that it crosses several genres—memoir, literary criticism, and biography. Personally, I tend to read each of these for different reasons (emotional engagement, illumination, and research, respectively). Gann touches on all of these simultaneously, which results in a more compelling reading experience. At its heart, though, Gann’s book is a very personal story and exactly what it proclaims of itself on the cover: “…a no-holds barred personal narrative detailing how a particular novel influenced an author on their journey to becoming a writer…”

Early on, Gann sets out to provide the context in which he first encountered Knowles’ book. We see the young author (Gann) in his formative years as he becomes a writer and a musician. As Gann turns the microscope back on his childhood, we witness the author grappling with and discovering the formative events that helped make him who he is. This personal engagement (as opposed to a mere re-telling of events) is the hallmark of a successful memoir. This is a heartfelt, unflinching study of self, and especially appealing to me (as a reader) because it is the story of how a reader’s life can be affected by the books he reads.

Gann demonstrates how A Separate Peace became the right book at the right time for him—how he came to see himself as one of the book’s characters in the midst of personal childhood conflicts, and how it influenced his actions and friendship. He also shows how the book empowered him in the midst of difficulties. He contrasts what he gained from Knowles’ novel with the way other works affected his artistic sensibilities.

After studying the power of A Separate Peace and how time altered his re-reading of it, Gann gives us a thumbnail sketch of the life of John Knowles and his literary career. Now we see Gann turning the microscope from his own formative years to the later years of the writer who had inspired him, and this also strikes some poignant chords.

“Honest novelists will admit that although their work might originate in personal experience—narrative ideas informed by the author’s exposure to life—it is equally and as importantly true that books are born from other books.” –Kirby Gann, page 110.

Kirby Gann's book with lizard tracks.

Lizard tracks around John Knowles’ A Separate Peace by Kirby Gann

Blue Territory by Robin Lippincott

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

BLUE TERRITORY: a meditation on the life and art of Joan Mitchell, by Robin Lippincott. Tidal Press. Blue Territory immerses the reader in the journey of abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), from child figure skater to art student to impoverished expat in Paris to female painter in a male-dominated art world. And while all the ingredients of a strong biography are present—her formative years; her artistic influences; her methodologies; her friendships and lovers—Blue Territory is no mere biography. Blue Territory is itself a gallery of literary artwork—lovingly crafted images that form an artist’s study of Joan Mitchell.

Robin Lippincott’s work has always been strongly informed by his love of and keen observation of art. For ten years, he wrote reviews of art and photography books for The New York Times Book Review. His novel Our Arcadia—crafted like an impressionist painting with its short, deftly stroked chapters—portrayed the lives of a group of friends who set out to share their lives and essentially create a tiny artist’s colony called True House; “What’s important about life at True House is not necessarily birth and death, but art: painting, gardening and finding the Muse in between.” (—Publishers Weekly). Lippincott’s first novel, Mr. Dalloway, was an homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway; Lippincott not only imagined a secret, untold life for the husband of Woolf’s protagonist, he told the story in a voice and style akin to Woolf’s. In Blue Territory, he brings this same keen observational acumen and artistic agility to the work and life of Joan Mitchell.

As she works, legs apart, her extended hands and arms become a part of the very air. From a distance (the other end of the studio) she resembles a dark starfish splayed against the canvas, always reaching, stretching—and like a starfish, she cannot be easily pried away from whatever she attaches herself to, in this case painting: for she is finally free, freely creating, and regardless of the source emotion, it is almost impossible not to feel joy in the act.

—Robin Lippincott, Blue Territory

Blue Territory is at once a cohesive and passionate narrative spanning Joan’s life, and simultaneously a gallery of more than thirty short literary works of art inspired by Joan’s style—in several instances including poems that are direct artistic renditions of specific paintings. The Tidal Press print version includes titles in blue ink and makes use of white space much like a gallery or art book, and the cover image is of a blank canvas. Lippincott divides Joan’s life into a triptych—beginning with the unique perceptions of her childhood and the formative influence of her parents and sister, followed by the establishment of her own voice and career with the influences of friends, writers, contemporaries, and predecessors (Frank O’Hara, Samuel Beckett, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Matisse, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Barney Rosset, Orozco, Siqueiros, Gorky, Philip Guston and Sam Francis to name a few), and ultimately the third panel of the triptych portrays her mature and self-assured efforts amidst the physical challenges of her latter years. Blue Territory evokes a deep understanding and connection with the artist, notably focused around specific moments of her creations.

Joan Mitchell’s paintings are inspired by her emotions and the poetry she loves. Robin Lippincott, in turn, creates poetry and prose inspired by her paintings, thus furthering the critical dialogue without which, art becomes meaningless.

Blue Territory by Robin Lippincott

New Memorial for Galaxy Flight 203 Crash Victims

Tags

, , ,

Wednesday marked 30 years since the loss of my parents. Remembrance and grief and healing come in different forms each year. It’s hard to believe I’m older now than they were when they died. This year, I’m focusing on what beautiful people they were, and how much energy they had and how much joy they spread. I’m noticing especially that I can feel them with me when I’m grateful and when I’m feeling good energy. Yesterday I attended the unveiling of a new memorial in Reno, and I met the sole survivor of the crash, George Lamson. I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid anything having to do with the accident, and my grief was all focused inward. Meeting George and feeling a sense of community with him and the people who’ve worked to rededicate the memorial was a calming and rewarding experience. Guy Clifton wrote a nice article about the day, with this photo by Andy Barron.

http://www.rgj.com/…/new-memorial-galaxy-airlines…/22120481/

Troy at Galaxy Plane Crash Victims Memorial

Troy at Galaxy Memorial Grove

“Glimmering Places” in Love Free or Die

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Love Free or Die

Love Free or Die, New Hampshire Pulp Fiction, featuring fiction by Troy Ehlers. Elaine Isaak, editor.

My latest story, “Glimmering Places” is now available to order!  Love Free or Die (titled after the NH state motto “Live Free or Die”) is the 4th installment of Plaidswede’s New Hampshire Pulp Fiction anthology series.  This is the romance volume, available just in time for Valentine’s Day!  (ORDER HERE) My story is a modern paranormal romance about a recently widowed father and his young daughter, who claims to see her mother’s spirit.

Edited by Elaine Isaak, this anthology also features:

”Come Live With Me and Be My Love” by Michael Samuels

“Canobie Kisses” by Kari Lemor

“The Republic’s Last Revolution” by S. J. Cahill

“Hate Everybody” by Robin Small

“I Fall in Love with a Dog on Elm Street” by Judi Calhoun

“A Second Chance” by Shana Chartier

“Closure” by Anna Boghigian

“Summer Portrait” by Jessie Salisbury

“Portsmouth Propriety” by Susan E. Kennedy

“Psychodrome and Skyway” by Abby Goldsmith

“Casualties” by Sylvia Beaupre

“Eyre & Earp” by James Isaak

“When Autumn Leaves Fall” by David O’Keefe

“Catch” by Leah Brent

“Unbranding” by Justine Graykin

“K-Force” by Timothy Boudreau

“Deeply in Love” by Norman Klein

“Lambent Insularity” by B. K. Rakhra

“Rescued” by KJ Montgomery

“Lost and Found” by Melva Michaelian

“The Hike” by Robert E. Owen

“All’s Fair” by Amy Ray

“Five Deaths of Ellie Marsh”

Tags

, , ,

My story “Five Deaths of Ellie Marsh” won Crab Orchard Review’s 2014 Jack Dyer Fiction Prize and a $2,000 award.  Synopsis: When Michael learns of the suicide of his former girlfriend–whom he’d met volunteering in Venezuela–he must come to grips with the horror of her loss and fight through his grief.  Published in Volume 19, Issue 1.

Crab Orchard Review, Vol. 19, 1

Crab Orchard Review, Vol. 19, 1

Billie Girl by Vickie Weaver

Tags

, ,

Billie Girl by Vickie Weaver is a powerful debut novel that spans the life of a southern woman born in 1900. Billie Girl is born on Easter Sunday, is abandoned, and winds up being raised by two women she later discovers to be brothers. Summarizing the plot in a sentence or two might give the impression that the novel is sensationalist, but in fact, many remarkable things occur in Billie’s life and they are taken as a matter of course rather than hyped, and experienced through a storytelling voice that is both strong and gentle; gripping and placid. The result is that we vicariously experience some controversial topics like gender identity, euthanasia, and bigamy in a natural, disarming manner. These things are just parts of her life, not exploited or sensationalized, and because of that, they feel genuine and honest. Billie’s tale is evocative not just because of her life events, but because of her strong and impressive character. This novel is thoroughly engaging and original. It’s the kind of book you can’t put down, and Billie Girl is the kind of character you wish you could spend more time with.

Billie Girl by Vickie Weaver

Billie Girl by Vickie Weaver