Pulitzer Prize Reading List

Some time back, I set myself the challenge of reading all the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels. Over the years I have attacked this goal with more or less vigor, depending on my bandwidth at the time. And while I read several in the years before I even took on this challenge, it doesn’t “count” to me, for the purposes of this pursuit, unless I’ve written something up about it. (So there are about a dozen that I’m going to reread.)

My responses (37/99 read so far) are below. There’s usually a synopsis, maybe a few quotes, some new words, and occasionally, because I heart literary analysis: essay prompts/study questions.

PPRL: The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich

A beautiful and vibrant book that swept me away like a current with its effortless, beguiling prose. Sentences that make you shake your head in amazement. A novel for writers and would-be’s, for sure. And such a delightfully complex heroine: smart, grateful, fierce. Contradictory and forgivably flawed. So many wonderfully colorful characters and scenes, some painfully so. Notably: Erdrich conveys the horror and heartbreak of rape without ever using the word “rape”. Really masterful stuff here. My favorite things about it (other than the incredible waterjack storyline) is the sense of kinship and cooperation in the Turtle Mountain culture, community, and families that flows so beautifully throughout. It’s all so comforting and inviting; I felt like I was there, and I didn’t want to leave. Oh, and there’s an entire chapter written from the perspective of two horses who run off from a parade and mate in the woods – and it is amazing. 

Thoughts for discussion:

Inherited, shared knowledge and the passing down of traditions between generations. How even the goings-on of individuals (a coworkers getting her tonsils out, Gerard’s vision of Vera) is known by everyone, but not in a gossipy way. How does this sense of shared concern and purpose speak to the larger community’s values?

Recurring motifs. Water (wells that run pure and clean where Thomas and Patrice live, alcohol as “firewater”, the lake Patrice threw herself into to escape Bucky, bathing and swimming as purification etc). Clocks (Thomas’s punch cards, Patrice’s broken clock, the passage about time as  philosophical concept). Is time a commodity or a threat?

Barnes. What is his purpose in the story? Is the “white man foil” or is it more complicated than that? 

Sensory details. Erdrich describes things like food and clothing and the natural world with so much love and in such depth. You can truly taste, see, and feel flavors, sounds, and textures. 

The role of anger. Pixie’s “night bird” that disfigured Bucky. Her and her mother’s anger toward’s her father. Thomas finally allowing himself to feel the vastness of his resentment for the suffering of his people. 

Words!

muntin: a bar or rigid supporting strip betwen adjacent panes of glass

sinter: a hard, siliceous or calcerous deposit precipitated from mineral springs

cremello: a horse having a pale, cream-colored coat, light blue eyes, and pink skin

PPRL: The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

I was a third of the way through The Nickel Boys before I learned that it's the follow up to Whitehead's 2017 Pulitzer winner, The Underground Railroad. But by that time I was committed, and really didn't want to revisit where I'd already been. This one is tough. Reform school for boys, Florida, 1960s. Beatings, rape, racism. It's a tough read, but it goes fast, and not just because it's short. You really can't put it down after the first major plot twist, which sees a studious, rule-following boy finding his life--and plans for life--turned upside down when he has the bad luck to hitchhike in a stolen car. By the time you realize that no, Elwood is not going to get rescued from this tragic mistake, you are deep into a world of boys whose characterizations are bright, clear, delightful, and heartbreaking. Every sentence of this novel is packed with storyline, with tension or backstory or foreshadowing. And buckle in for the final plot twist. So good. And being that it's based on a true story, it's one you really should put yourself through. Everyone should know, and everyone should feel what those boys went through. 

Amazingness:

"laboratory of vice"

"a cherished grudge"

"The day was thin, winter coming down like the lid on an old pot"

"After the judge ordered him to Nickel, Elwood had three last nights at home. The state car arrived at seven o'clock Tuesday morning. The officer of the court was a good old boy with a meaty backwoods beard and a hungover wobble to his step. He'd outgrown his shirt and the pressure agains the buttons made him look upholstered. But he was a white man with a pistole so despite his dishevelment he sent a vibration."

"Even the roaches were of a noble sort, scurrying when he turned on the bathroom light instead of ignoring his presence. He took their modesty as touch of class."

Words!

palimpsest: a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain

or

something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface

PPRL: The Overstory, by Richard Powers

The Overstory is an undertaking. Six hundred-plus pages of multiple, interconnected narratives that, on their own, are plenty compelling. Weave them together and you’ve got a story which is–and I don’t use this word lightly–enthralling. The Overstory gives heart to loners and autodidacts. It’s a book that celebrates outliers, and those seeking purpose–or stumbling into it. I’ve been moved to tears by writing before; John Updike’s novels make me cry for their sheer craft of language. But this was the first time I cried over the beauty of a concept. When the full scope of The Overstory started to dawn on me and I realized how epic and genius it is, I actually got choked up. It’s such incredibly inspired and inspiring writing. An absolute well spring for deep study. I would have a field day teaching this one for sure.

study questions

The Overstory asks and answers the question: "What can we learn from trees?" So, what’s the answer?

Every species of tree in The Overstory has its own unique characteristics. Its own distinctive physical properties, protections, and purpose. Choose a tree (either considered as a variety or an individual “character”) to explore metaphorically. 

Choose one of the intergenerational storylines of the novel and explore how it upholds–or contradicts–the saying “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Discuss how the characters of The Overstory often find more truth and authenticity in their passions than in other humans. Is this a justified conclusion on their part (at least within the story)?

Which character do you most relate to, and why? 

Choose an instance of death (or near death) in the story to explore. What is learned? What is lost? What, if any, transformation occurs?

words!

achene: a small, dry one-seeded fruit that does not open to release the seed

canton: a small territorial division of a country

arhat: a Buddhist who has reached the stage of enlightenment

lassitude: a condition characterized by lack of interest, energy, or spirit; languor

caldera: a large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses

palmate: (of a leaf) having several lobes (typically 5–7) whose midribs all radiate from one point.

zoology / (of an antler) in which the angles between the tines are partly filled in to form a broad flat surface, as in fallow deer and moose

saturnalia: an ancient Roman festival and holiday in honour of the god Saturn / an occasion of wild revelry ("a saturnalia of shopping")

carillon: a stationary set of chromatically tuned bells in a tower, usually played from a keyboard; a composition written or arranged for these bells.

carrel: a small cubicle with a desk for the use of a reader or student in a library; 

a small enclosure or study in a cloister.

samlor: a three-wheeled motor vehicle in Thailand

scree: an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff; talus

talus: a slope formed especially by an accumulation of rock debris; rock debris at the base of a cliff

inflorescence: the mode of development and arrangement of flowers on an axis; a floral axis with its appendages;  a flower cluster;  the budding and unfolding of blossoms; flowering

joss: a Chinese religious statue or idol

pleach: to unite by interweaving, as (horticulture) branches of shrubs, trees, etc., to create a hedge; to interlock, to plash

plash: bend and interweave (branches and twigs) to form a hedge; make or renew (a hedge) by bending and interweaving branches and twigs.

lapidary: adj. relating to stone and gems and the work involved in engraving, cutting, or polishing / n. a person who cuts, polishes, or engraves gems.

derailleur: a bicycle mechanism that moves the chain out and up, allowing it to shift to different cogs

darshan: an opportunity or occasion of seeing a holy person or the image of a deity

glacis: A gentle slope; an incline / a slope extending down from a fortification / a  neutral area separating conflicting forces.

saurian: any of various vertebrates of the group Sauria, which includes most of the diapsids, such as the dinosaurs, lizards, snakes, crocodilians, and birds

cladistics: a biological classification system that involves the categorization of organisms based on shared traits

chronophagic: time-wasting; time-consuming (literally “time eating”)

epiphytes: a plant that grows on another plant but is not parasitic, such as the numerous ferns, bromeliads, air plants, and orchids growing on tree trunks in tropical rainforests

PPRL: Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

It's kind of wild that I randomly picked this book to read when I did. It hits on themes and questions currently crawling through my own life (I, too, am slouching towards fifty; I, too, have a kite's string of relationships unfurling behind me; I, too, look back at them with a mixture of nostalgia and horror, wondering what if anything the sum of it all means). 

I loved it so very much. It's energetic and wholeheartedly sweet, with a delightful cycle of premise to punchline that barely lets you stop smiling. The protagonist is painfully relatable in his quest to suppress, escape, or otherwise dispense with the less palatable facts of his life. An ex he can't get over. His own aging, reflected back at him, most unwelcomely, in the lined faces of old lovers. The slapstick routine that constitutes his physical and intellectual movement through the world. Arthur Less grows more and more lovable, so that by novel's end when you can barely believe the astonishingly happy ending he's about to bumble into, you cannot begrudge him one bit of it -- even if you harbor no such exquisite expectations for yourself.

Adding to the fun, Greer is an absolute poet:

On and on the plane convulses in the moonlight, like a man turning into a werewolf.

And when the plan lands at last--the windows revealing the vast nighttime circuit board of Mexico City--Less find himself, alone, applauding their survival.

A movie screen begins to unroll noisily from the ceiling like a mad relative wandering downstairs and has to be sent back into hiding.

Less feels his mind drifting away like a spaceman from an airlock, off into the asteroid belt of his own concerns.

Or how about this:

What does a camel love? I would guess nothing in the world. Not the sand that scours her, or the sun that bakes her, or the water she drinks like a teetotaler. Not sitting down, blinking her lashes like a starlet. Not standing up, moaning in indignant fury as she managers her adolescent limbs. Not her fellow camels, to whom she shows the disdain of an heiress forced to fly coach. Not the humans who have enslaved her. Not the oceanic monotony of the dunes. Not the flavorless grass she chews, then chews again, then chews again in a sullen struggle of digestion...

---

Were I to teach this novel I'd invite students to

1. Explore the role of name play in the novel, from the ridiculous H.H.H. Mandern, to Vandevander, to the rich source material in Less's own name (the chapter titles, for instance). 

2. Consider this passage:

It is, after all, almost a miracle they are here. Not because they've survived the booze, the hashish, the migraines. Not that at all. It's that they've survived everything in life, humiliations and disappointments and heartaches and missed opportunities, bad dads and bad jobs and bad sex and bad drugs, all the trips and mistakes and face-plants of life, to have made it to fifty and have made it here: to this frosted-cake landscape, these mountains of gold, the little table they can now see sitting on the dune, set with olives and pita and glasses and wine chilling on ice, with the sun waiting more patiently than any camel for their arrival.

How is this conclusion both underscored repeatedly by the novel yet somehow also undermined by Arthur's ceaseless refusal to accept his own realities?

3. Choose a chapter from the novel and argue how it best encapsulates (or fundamentally establishes) Arthur's trajectory. 

4. Compare and contrast the arc of Arthur's life with that of his latest protagonist.

---

Words!

mynah: an Asian and Australasian starling that typically has dark plumage, gregarious behavior, and a loud call

amphora: a tall ancient Greek or Roman jar with two handles and a narrow neck (images)

djellaba: a loose hooded cloak, typically woolen, of a kind traditionally worn by Arabs (images)

crenellate: provide (a wall of a building) with battlements.

muezzin: a man who calls Muslims to prayer from the minaret of a mosque

weir: a low dam built across a river to raise the level of water upstream or regulate its flow (images)

madrassa: a Muslim school, college, or university that is often part of a mosque

Pantagruelian: enormous (from Pantagruel, one of a 16th century pentalogy about giants) 

PPRL: The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

I tore through this one in a single day. I'm not sure there would be any other way. It's impossible to put down, with exactly the right size chapters to keep you wanting to see just what's around the corner--at the next station stop. Cora is the heroine I needed right now, today, this weekend. Unforgiving, unflinching in the judgements she metes out. All too relatable in her heartbroken appraisal of humankind, her self-protective drive towards safety and peace. The closing line is everything: She wondered where he escaped from, how bad it was and how far he traveled before he put it behind him.

Oof. 

I didn't learn about magical realism in college. I guess it was just budding around that time. Now certain novels (and films) make a lot more sense to me. Would that I could go back and take a class on it now. 

Anyone who's ever undergone an arduous emotional journey, ever overcome the setbacks and obstacles along the way, can relive that triumph in reading this novel. That alone is enough to recommend it--and I do. I very much do. It is a powerful and vindicating, edge-of-your-seat adventure with surprises and twists and an ending to absolutely relish. 

The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Disastrously boring and dry. There's a Pulitzer Prize novel reading group on Goodreads, and I was greatly heartened by the responses there, i.e., I'm not the only one.

Big nope on this one.

All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

Not to be dramatic, but I believe language was invented so that Anthony Doerr could write All The Light We Cannot See. This book is astonishing. I cannot remember the last time I read a novel where I savored every sentence like I did this one. Just utterly captivating, start to finish; it instantly became one of my favorites of all time. Top three for sure. Forget fiction writing classes. Just read this, again and again. Perfectly cinematic, can't wait for the screen adaptation (though I have some notes about casting).

What to even say. I loved the bite-sized chapters, some as short as a few paragraphs. I loved, loved, loved the characters. And talk about the most masterful, inspiring use of language imaginable. Powerful, surprising verb choices (I am a nerd who thinks about these things). Characterization of persons, places, and things that manages to be both simple and clean and wondrously multidimensional. Scene-setting language that makes me excited to write, excited about the possibilities of expression. Doerr says so much in so little. Just look:

One February morning, the cadets are roused from their beds at 2 AM and driven out into the glitter. In the center of the quadrangle, torches burn. Keg-chested Bastian waddles out with his bar legs showing beneath his coat. 

---

Breton spring, and a great onslaught of damp invades the coast. Fog on the sea, fog in the streets, fog in the mind. Madame Manec gets sick. When Marie-Laure holds her hand over Madame's chest, heat seems to steam up out of her sternum as though she cooks from the inside. Her breathing devolves into trains of oceanic coughs. 

---

The entire procession slogs past at little more than walking speed. Both lanes are clogged--everyone staggers west, away. A woman bicycles wearing dozens of costume necklaces. A man tows a leather armchair on a handcart, a black kitten cleaning itself on the center cushion. Women push baby carriages crammed with china, birdcages, crystalware. A man in a tuxedo walks along calling, "For the love of God, let me through," though no one steps aside, and he moves no more quickly than anyone else.

Questions I'd Torment My Class With, If I Had A Class to Torment

How are both Werner and Marie-Laure themselves like "Sea of Flames" diamonds, forged through powerful, irresistible outside forces--through the crucibles of their own personal hells?

Speaking of--what do you think happened to the Sea of Flames?

The themes of light and sound. How both can be carried far and wide, how the experience of them can be shared by individuals hundreds of miles away. How they tie Werner and Marie-Laure together. 

Fate vs free will. To what degree (if any) is the tragedy of Werner's life his own fault?

Learning vs. unlearning. How Werner must unlearn the values of his childhood in order to fulfil his place in the Wehrmacht. How the engineering skills he teaches himself ironically serve this end. How Marie-Laure must "unlearn" life as a sighted person and learn an entirely new way of navigating the world.

Explore the significance of the sea, and all the creatures contained within. Marie-Laure's mollusks and whelks and snails. 20,000 leagues under the sea. Werner's fascination with the ocean. And of course, the Sea of Flames. 

How is Marie-Laure like her beloved snails, and how is Werner like his beloved radios?

Words!

corsair: a pirate ship; a privateer, especially one operating along the southern coast of the Mediterranean in the 16th–18th centuries

lintel: a horizontal support of timber, stone, concrete, or steel across the top of a door or window

ordnance: mounted guns; artillery

extirpate: to destroy completely; wipe out; to pull up by the root; to cut out by surgery

flak (as in war): antiaircraft fire

internecine: destructive to both sides in a conflict.

PPRL: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

I didn't know what I was getting myself into with The Goldfinch. Mason recommended it to me (well, "I'd be curious what you think of it" was what he actually said), and I plowed through the unrelentingly graphic opening scene without putting the iPad down once. Ah, I thought. So that's a taste of what that might be like. Horrific to know. But I wasn't actually hooked - like, claws-deep hooked - until Theo got to Vegas and I met Boris. By the end I found myself almost wishing Boris had been the protagonist.

The Goldfinch is an imperfect book, as I'm the last and least important to point out. I don't know if editing styles have changed dramatically unbeknownst to me, but repetition of an unusual, five-dollar word twice in one paragraph seems like something that shouldn't occur in Pulitzer-winning novels. And I agree with the bit of criticism quoted in the Vanity Fair article about some of the characters being rather stock, rather predictable and cliche. However, some are characters whose company I really didn't want to quit. I could have handled much, much more of Hobie and Pippa - and much less of Xandra and Kitsey.

Worst of all though, I loathed Theo by the end of the story. He was an inept, foolish, self-pitying, selfish mess whose failed attempt at suicide left me feeling nothing. As did the entire ending, which droned on and on and on to a miserable conclusion.

However, wow can Tartt tease out a theme* and keep a story moving. Lots of dialogue and fast-paced action kept me utterly intrigued (and Terence, too; he'd ask for plot updates every night) up until she lost me on the confusing, belabored, and unnecessarily complicated backstory about Horst et al. (Didn't follow. Didn't care.) Shortcomings aside, I really did find the writing strikingly beautiful at times. I highlighted many passages to revisit, per Steven Pinker's excellent advice. I do wish the novel finished more strongly - or at least on a more positive note - but I can't resent the place Tartt arrived at too badly, since I quite enjoyed the majority of the ride.

---
* BONUS CONTENT: PAPER TOPIC UP FOR GRABS 

Are you a college student who's been assigned a term paper on The Goldfinch? Did you not pay attention during class discussions, and are you now stuck for a topic? Perhaps you were fucking around on social media instead, because you are young and immature and careless with other people's money.

Well hey slacker, it's your lucky day. Below are some of my disjointed, undeveloped thoughts on the theme of provenance in The Goldfinch. Obviously I'm biased towards my own genius, but I think correctly nurtured they could make for a pretty decent essay. So feel free. I originally wrote them for my readers, but since it occurs to me that I can't stop them from being used elsehow, you have my blessing - provided you use these ideas as a starting point only. Don't copy, don't even paraphrase. (You do NOT want plagiarism on your school record, really takes the shine off an already useless English degree.)

In fact, don't actually read what I wrote below. Just give yourself the prompt: What role does provenance play in The Goldfinch? Could the concept be applied to people, too? 

Seriously, stop reading now and go back to Snapchatting or whatever your kind does these days. Godspeed, net-sourcing coed!

---

One of the foremost considerations in the acquisition and sale of art and antiques is provenance, i.e. where, and in whose hands, something has been. Determining provenance is part of the authentication process; in order to establish that, say, a painting legitimately hails from the 17th century, it helps to know who's been looking after it. Great pain is taken to track these records of ownership for the same reason great pain is taken in the care of their subjects - fine art and genuine antiques are precious. Case in point: virtually every character in the novel down to the Eurotrash thugs knows how valuable The Goldfinch is, and spares nothing to keep it safe and sound.

Now, contrast this with Theo's "provenance". Where he's been, where he goes, where he ends up. The degree to which his would-be caretakers go to avoid "acquiring" him. His grandparents want nothing to do with him, and his father is at best reluctant to accept the role himself. In what ways does Theo's journey from home to home and place to place mirror that of the painting? How is it different?

To extend the metaphor, what constitutes Theo's "verso"? What are the emotional markings he collects over the years? His mother's love? His father's indifference? Hobie's influence and friendship? Compare the nicks and imperfections of The Goldfinch with Theo's psychological scars and wounds.

PPRL: The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson

In college I had an English professor who had us do an interesting exercise on the first day of class. He gave everyone ten minutes to write down an idea for a story. Of course everyone was sweating. How the hell do you come up with a story in ten minutes? When time was up, he pointed at the first student. What's your story about, in one sentence? 

Uh, well, it's about a guy who goes to Nepal with his best friend--

Wrong, the professor cut the student off, shaking his head. Pointed at the next student.  

What's your story about, in one sentence?

It's about a girl who finds a time capsule buried in her grandfather's back yard--

Wrong.  

And so on. One after another we offered up, in increasingly succinct strokes, our ideas. One after another, we all failed the test. Eventually, the professor explained our error. He wasn't looking for a storyline. He was looking for a story. The right answer, he said, would sound something like this:

It's about what friendship can and can't survive.

or

It's about the ways in which families inherit love and loss.

I think about this exercise all the time. It may have been the single most important takeaway from my major. It has profoundly enriched both my own writing and my experience of literature. And applied to this novel, wow is it fun:

It's about a man learning the limits of his selfishness.

It's about how in the end, we become the people we didn't know we already were.

It's about a man breaking his own heart in order to understand love.

When I finished The Orphan Master's Son, I set it aside and spent a moment just being sad for a character I'd fallen in love with. Just aching in the melancholic grip of an ending I really, really, really did not want. But there was no other possible way. Ineluctable: that's the word for this novel's conclusion. I can't think of anything else I've ever read where the ending feels like it's happening both in slow motion and in triple time. Just incredible. This book is under my skin in the best way, and I'm so glad I read it slowly. It thickened inside me, in my brain and my heart, like a slow-cooking soup (if you've read it, you'll get the reference). Getting richer and ever more robust; giving me more and more to savor. 

interesting themes

Fate: why some people accept their fates and others do not.

Day vs. night and the motif of darkness (the sea, the tunnels, the prison mines).

Art in all forms: Gil's watercolors, the chest tattoos, the "biographies", Mangnan's photographs, Sun Moon's movies--even the Senator's wife's quilt. 

PPRL: Tinkers, by Paul Harding

Synopsis

Clock repairman George Crosby lays in his death bed and reflects on life, while his family keeps vigil and comforts him in his final, hallucination-filled days. His memories are intermingled with those of his father Howard, an epileptic traveling salesman with a poetic soul. Howard's long-suffering wife plans to have him committed; learning of this, Howard runs away (leaving George and his siblings) to start a new life. The story weaves together narration from two time periods, dream sequences, snippets of a clock repair manual, and even bits of Howard's own writing to describe a world of intergenerational love and loss.

My Thoughts

I'm not typically a big fan of existentialist drama, and the whole dad-dying-in-a-hospital-bed-in-the-middle-of-the-living-room bit cut a little too close to home for me (I felt myself mentally distancing from the more graphic and painfully familiar passages). But I got sucked in to Howard's story, and I found the depictions of his epileptic fits fascinating and beautifully written. And while I wasn't exactly captivated by the plot as a whole, I admired the novel's consistency of mood: dark, slightly tense, and occasionally delirious.

Selected Excerpts

And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.

---

Her stern manner and her humorless regime mask bitterness far deeper than any of her children or her husband imagine. She has never recovered from the shock of becoming a wife and then a mother. She is still dismayed every morning when she first sees her children, peaceful, sleeping, in their beds when she goes to wake them, that as often as not the feeling she has is one of resentment, of loss. These feelings frighten her so much that she has buried them under layer upon layer of domestic strictness. She has managed, in the dozen years since becoming a wife and a mother, to half convince herself that this nearly martial ordering of her household is, in fact, the love that she is so terrified she does not have.


Werds I Lerned (or Had Fergotten)*

dolce far niente - pleasant relaxation in carefree idleness
vastation - a laying waste; waste; depopulation; devastation
tintinnabulation - the ringing or sounding of bells
balky - given to stopping, and refusing to go on; difficult to operate or start
horology - the art of science of measuring time
capstan - rotating spindles used to move recording tape through the mechanism of a tape recorder (example)
imbricate - having regularly arranged, overlapping edges, as roof tiles or fish scales (example)
craquelure - a network of fine cracks or crackles on the surface of a painting (examples)
ogee - a curve, shaped somewhat like an S, consisting of two arcs that curve in opposite senses, so that the ends are parallel (example)
gnomon - the projecting piece on a sundial that shows the time by the position of its shadow (example)
clepsydra - an ancient device that measured time by marking the regulated flow of water through a small opening (looked like this)
anneal - to subject (glass or metal) to a process of heating and slow cooling in order to toughen and reduce brittleness
finitude - the quality or condition of being finite
vitreous - of, relating to, resembling, or having the nature of glass; glassy
fugue - a pathelogical amnesiac condition during which one is apparently conscious of one's actions but has no recollection of them after returning to a normal state
columbine - a perennial herb (examples)
ossuary - a container or receptacle, such as an urn or a vault, for holding the bones of the dead (example)
dun - a dull, grayish brown color

PPRL: Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

Synopsis

Retired schoolteacher Olive Kitteridge is the common denominator (at varying degrees of remove) in the lives of several townspeople in modern day Crosby, Maine. As her own story unfolds and she struggles to come to terms with her own long-fought (or long-suppressed) demons, she moves simultaneously through the lives of her neighbors, bringing with her as she does variously kindness or cruelty, grace or disgust, anger or love.

My Thoughts

There are thirteen chapters in the book. Thirteen times, I found myself reeled in immediately, captivated by these interlacing stories; I absolutely loved this novel. The prose is simple and clean, and the characters wonderfully, tragically relatable. The construction and pacing of the novel itself is brilliant: building in intensity, then waning, then ratcheting back up to the final, heartbreaking chapters. Olive is an extremely compelling protagonist: terrifying, pitiable, admirable, lovable, and just plain fascinating. I could have happily followed her for another thirteen chapters.

Selected Excerpts

Walking back to his car at the marina on those mornings, he was sometimes surprised to feel that the earth was altered, the crisp air a nice thing to move through, the rustle of the oak leaves like a murmuring friend. For the first time in years he thought about God, who seemed a piggy bank Harmon had stuck up on a shelf and had now brought down to look at with a new considering eye.

---

What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't choose it. 

Werds I Lerned (Or Had Fergotten)

digitalis - the dried leaves of the foxglove, used in medicine as a heart stimulant
rugosa - a widely cultivated Southeast Asian rose, with dark green wrinkled leaves and deep pink flowers
impatiens - a plant having irregular flowers in which the calyx and corolla are not clearly distinguishable and bearing fruits that burst open to scatter the seeds
hackmatack - an American larch of the pine family 
glial - the delicate web of connective tissue that surrounds and supports nerve cells
asseverate - to assert or declare emphatically or solemnly
grange - a farm, with its farmhouse and nearby buildings

PPRL: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I tore through The Road in two nights. It's less than two hundred pages, plus there's a swiftness to the story, a feeling of momentum that is surprising considering how ploddingly the characters actually move along. The writing is stunning, pure poetry:

The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond. 

Despite passages like the above, the novel has an economy of language - seen particularly in the dialogue - that perfectly reflects the austerity of its post-apocalyptic world. There's little to spare, even in conversation. McCarthy accomplishes some other interesting things, like finding ways to keep an otherwise unchanging, monotonous landscape from feeling boring. The word "grey" must appear over a hundred times in the novel, along with "ash" and "dark" - but the reader isn't aware of the repetition. He does this in part by coining new words, usually involving descriptive geological elements. These become a helpful vernacular for characterizing The Road's otherwise unimaginably decayed world.*

Subjects for consideration:

• the legacy of self-sustainment, as passed from father to son

• the significance of dreams, and the ghosts that inhabit them (the ghost of love, for the man, and the ghost of childhood for the boy)

• the metaphor of the shopping cart; the irony that something once symbolizing homelessness and destitution now represents wealth and plenitude 

• the role of god, and the question of whether god is friend or foe; is god loved? feared? hated? is he a "good guy" or a "bad guy"

• the way in which father and son merge; how they become, in a sense, a single being; the complicity of their choices, and how that has enabled them to survive

• the meaning of being saved, one last time, by a shipwreck

• the tenderness of the love between the man and the boy, despite (because of?) such horrifying circumstances 

---

* Gah, when I went back through trying to find an example of this I couldn't, but it would be something like combining "river" with "dregs" to form "riverdregs", something unique to and intensely illustrative of a post-cataclysmic environment. 

PPRL: March, by Geraldine Brooks

 I didn't set out to have a Southern-themed summer of reading to coincide with my recent traveling. It just sorta happened that way. The Road takes place partly in the very area I was in (there's even a reference to a 'See Rock City' sign!), and from one Civil War-era novel (The Killer Angels) I've gone on to another with March.

March is the retelling of The Little Women family's story, but from the perspective of the father. Not quite as feel-good as its inspiration though:

From a burlap sack the man drew out a braided leather whip almost as tall as he was. Then, moving to a spot about six feet from where Grace lay, he made a swift, running skip, raising the lash and bringing it down with a crack. The stroke peeled away a narrow strip of skin, which lifted on the whip, dangled for a moment, and then fell to the leaf-littered floor. A bright band of blood sprang up in its place. Her whole body quivered. 

PPRL: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

I wasn't thrilled by Gilead, or even greatly entertained - but I was moved by it, in a way. It's a thoughtful and thought-provoking novel, full of gentle humor and graceful characterization. It made me miss my friend Bill, written as it is from the perspective of an elderly man reflecting on the life lessons he's accumulated over his many years. Bill is as wise as Gilead's protagonist, as patient and generous of spirit. Many of the book's best lines reminded me of things I've heard him say. Even Bill's conversational tic of ending with Well, anyway... came to mind as I read; the narrator has a similar style of punctuating his thoughts with the same sort of humble, verbal shrug.

Some excerpts I found particularly poignant, beautiful, or relatable:

A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine.

You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension. 

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible. life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it. 

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation.

Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. 

Material things are so vulnerable to the humiliations of decay. 

It was as though there were a hoard of quiet in that room, as if any silence that ever entered that room stayed in it. 

It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity.

...we all do live in the ruins of the lives of other generations...

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

Ideas for discussion:

Compare the Christ-like qualities of the narrator with those of his grandfather.

How are the narrator's efforts to be closer to God manifested in his words and his choices?

How is this a book about finding one's father - literally, figuratively, and spiritually? (think fathers as gods, fathers as teachers, fathers as equals...)

The narrator is particularly preoccupied with his volumes of written sermons. At times he seems proud of them; at others, humility trumps and he considers o having them burned. Other material items from the church - as well as the church's structure itself - seem to concern him, too. What makes a thing holy, in his eyes? Mere ownership, or something more? What is the role of pride in all of this? Of ego?

Explore how Gilead is a meditation on the difference between the way things look and how they really are.

Discuss how the novel expresses that sometimes it is the things we've lost that actually stay closest to us.

Paper topic: water as metaphor (baptism, rain, the thunderstorm that shut down the baseball game, sprinklers, etc).

In what sense is Gliead itself a sermon? What could be considered its central message?

Much of the book's action takes place in another time, and is only relayed through remembrance and flashback. How does this structuring affect the mood and tone? How does it limit or enhance what Robinson seems to want to convey?

PPRL: The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

Well, what started out as an accidental journey through all of the Civil War-era themed Pulitzer Prize-winning novels is officially no longer accidental. Cool way to move through the list, and now I've got a much better understanding of antebellum plantation life (for better or for worse). Terence even promised he'd take me to the Civil War exhibition at The Autry Museum, and the fact that I'm excited about that is quite a compliment to these writers. History and I have not, historically speaking, been fast friends.

So, more slavery. But this time - black slave masters. Racism, violence, heartbreak, all the horrors of trafficking in human beings - but some breathtakingly beautiful scenes, as well. One of my favorites takes place between Celeste and Elias, two slaves belonging to Henry Townsend of Manchester, Virginia (himself a freed former slave). Celeste has a bad leg and suffers from a limp; she's self-conscious and defensive about her affliction. Elias has recently had part of his ear cut off for attempting to run away. Though at first the two didn't like one another, they've come together to care for Luke, an orphaned slave child.

A week later he was at her door again and she was in the doorway and he opened a little piece of a rag and presented a comb he had carved out of a piece of wood. The comb was rough, certainly one of the crudest and ugliest instruments in the history of the world. Not one tooth looked like another; some of the teeth were far too thick, but most of them were very thin, the result of his whittling away with the hope that he was approaching some kind of perfection. “Oh,” Celeste said. “Oh, my.” She took it and smiled. “My goodness gracious.”
     ”It ain’t much.”
     “It be the whole world. You givin it to me?”
     “I am.”
     “Well, my goodness gracious.” She tried to run the comb through her hair but the comb failed in its duty. “Oh, my,” Celeste said as she struggled with it. Several teeth broke off. “Oh, my.”
     He reached up and taking her hand with the comb, they extricated it from her hair. “I done broke it,” she said when they had pulled it away. “Dear Lord, I done broke it.”
     “Pay it no mind,” Elias said.
     “But you gave it to me, Elias." Aside from the food in her stomach and the clothes on her back and a little of nothing in a corner of her cabin, the comb was all she had. A child of three could have toted around all she owned all day long and not gotten tired.
     “We can do another one.” He reached up and picked out the comb’s teeth that had broken off in her hair.
     “But . . .”
     “I’ll make you a comb for every hair on your head.”
     She began to cry. “Thas easy to say today cause the sun be shinin. Tomorrow, maybe next week, there won’t be no sun, and you won’t be studyin no comb.”
     He said again, “I’ll make you a comb for every hair on your head.” He dropped the broken teeth onto the ground and she closed her hand tight over what was left of the comb.
     She put her face into her other hand and cried. There had been a slave on the plantation she had come from who had come upon her in a field of corn and told her that a woman like her should be shot, like a horse with a broken leg. And she had cried then as well.
     Elias put his arms around her, tentative, for this was the first time. He trembled and the trembling increased the closer she got to his body. He kissed the side of her head, near the hairline, and his legs met not only her skin and hair but a tooth from the comb that he had somehow missed. 

Something else, right?

At times The Known World can be feel a little meandering, but that's only because it's so ambitious, encompassing the intertwined lives of several generations of blacks and whites connected through experience, blood, money. But there are plenty of passages like the above to keep you turning pages, no worries there.

Things to think about:

• unrequited love; satisfactions denied (Robbin's wife being passed over for a lover, Henry rejecting his parents in favor of Robbins, Fern Elston pointlessly being a "dutiful wife"...)

• human beings as commodities, as disposable chattel and marks in a tally book, reduced to their utilitarian value

• complicated relationships and how the ties that bind aren't always made of blood

• the significance of dreams, superstition, and spells (Robbins' "storms", root work, Alice...)

• the idea of duty; what does dutifulness require? what are its boundaries and exceptions?

• the whims and capriciousness of fate; how everything can change in an instant since the slaves have no control over their lives

• the ways in which a sort of roundabout justice is served to various characters throughout the novel; karma and come-uppance (Broussard losing his wife, Robbins' suffering of headaches, etc)

• the role of longing, of imagined paradises (Richmond for Philomene, Philadelphia for Gwendolyn, NY for Calvin, etc)

• the role of hospitality; the significance of host vs. master (invited, free guests vs. those in chains) - what are the responsibilities and consider the dark ironies behind them?

PPRL: Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

Synopsis

Small town Empire Falls, Maine and its inhabitants struggle to survive a depressed economy and the political, social, and romantic machinations of one another. Protagonist Miles Roby, who runs the local diner, fights various external battles - with his eccentric, troublesome father, with his self-absorbed, immature ex-wife, with the vengeance-obsessed and shrewd town matriarch, with the antagonistic, jealous town cop - while coming to terms with his life choices, his familial history, and his place in Empire Falls.

My Thoughts

While I enjoyed it, and found the characters compelling and beautifully developed (teenage daughter Tick was my favorite), something about the novel felt inorganic - almost self-conscious, as if it was written with an eye to dramatic adaptation. I didn't always believe action and dialogue that I was asked to believe. Still, I found the story mostly absorbing, even if the tragic ending totally blindsided me.

Selected Excerpts

Though Miles didn't think of himself as a man up to no good, he did prefer the notion of an all-loving God to that of an all-knowing one. It pleased him to imagine God as someone like his mother, someone beleaguered by too many responsibilities, too dog-tired to monitor an energetic boy every minute of the day, but who, out of love and fear for his safety, checked in on him whenever she could.

---

One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

---

After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their hearts' impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble? 

Werds I Lerned (Or Had Fergotten)

aegis - the protection, backing, or support of a particular person or organization
venal - showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery
codger - an elderly man, esp. one who is old-fashioned or eccentric 
strafe - attack repeatedly with bombs or machine-gun fire from low-flying aircraft
offing - the more distant part of the sea in view
scofflaw - a person who flouts the law, esp. by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively 
"Coals to Newcastle" - a foolhardy or pointless action 

PPRL: The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

The Hours is a novel about women who spend too much time thinking about themselves, and are arguably the worse for it. I couldn't relate to it at all.

*cough*

But they are also women who closely consider the lives of others: their needs, fears, probable desires... As such, The Hours hums with emotion - relentless, sometimes thrilling, but often exhausting emotion. Cunningham weaves elements through all three narratives (writer, socialite, wife) in a way that builds momentum while it unravels the mystery of who these women really are. Physical objects, motifs, thoughts, impressions, behaviors - all are used as common reference points over and again in The Hours, until the reader begins to understand that the most complicated relationship each of the women has is, in fact, with herself.

I was awed by the entire, masterful novel, but here are a few passages I found particularly striking:

There she is, thinks Willie Bass, who passes her some mornings just about here. The old beauty, the old hippie, hair still long and defiantly gray, out on her morning rounds in jeans and a man's cotton shirt, some sort of ethnic slippers (India? Central America?) on her feet. She still has a certain sexiness; a certain bohemian, good-witch sort of charm; and yet this morning she makes a tragic sight, standing so straight in her big shirt and exotic shoes, resisting the pull of gravity, a female mammoth already up to its knees in the tar, taking a rest between efforts, standing bulky and proud, almost nonchalant, pretending to contemplate the tender grasses waiting on the far bank when it is beginning to know for certain that it will remain here, trapped and alone, after dark, when the jackals come out. 

You respect Mary Krull, she really gives you no choice, living as she does on the verge of poverty, going to jail for her various causes, lecturing passionately at NYU about the sorry masquerade known as gender. You want to like her, you struggle to, but she is finally too despotic in her intellectual and moral intensity, her endless demonstration of cutting-edge, leather-jacketed righteousness. You know she mocks, you, privately, for your comforts and your quaint (she must consider them quaint) notions about lesbian identity. You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally. You want to scream at Mary Krull that it doesn't make that much difference; you want her to come inside your head for a few days and feel the worries and sorrows, the nameless fear. 

...brilliant and indefatigable Leonard, who refuses to distinguish between setback and catastrophe; who worships accomplishment above all else and makes himself unbearable to others because he genuinely believes he can root out and reform every incidence of human fecklessness and mediocrity. 

Study / discussion points:

• Discuss the overlap of character experiences or behaviors (such as avoidance of mirrors, hearing of voices, etc), and how it compels the action forward.  

• How does illness break down the boundaries between characters? (Consider Laura and Kitty, Richard and Clarissa, Virginia and Vanessa...) How does it loosen underlying issues and allow them to surface? How does their mortality permit characters to more clearly see the whole of their lives, their place in the world?

• Laura's cake (and cake-making) as a metaphor for her life itself. Discuss.

• Explore the idea of "crossing over" in The Hours (consider literal moments such as the multiple street-crossing scenes, and figurative ones such as suicidal ideation or even the anticipation of a natural death).

• Suicide is a recurring theme in the novel, both as an abstract thought and as an actual plan of action. Compare and contrast two character's perceptions/experiences of it. 

• Consider how a brush with death (or even the thought of it) affects character motivation and relationships. (Is it invigorating? Relieving? Terrifying? Clarifying? All of the above?)

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth

Took me a hard minute to get through this one. Took me so long, in fact, that somewhere along the way I forgot that it was written in 1998. And I spent the entire time blaming what I felt to be some overlong, abstruse passages on it being stylistically dated. Shows how much my English degree is worth. (Zero dollars. It is worth zero dollars.)

Anyway, the brilliance of this novel did not synthesize for me until the last chapter, where just a surreal level of storytelling takes shape. Everything comes together in a tidal wave of tragedy that the preceding narration - often chronologically exhausting, with unapologetically meandering prose - does not foretell. But again, clearly I know fuck-all.

It was a surprisingly timely choice on my part, set against a backdrop of racial tension and rioting, political violence, and extreme governmental corruption (Nixon era). And I have deep respect for this novel even if I think I might not be running back to Philip Roth anytime soon.

quick bits that got me:

...there was an almost girlish softness to her flesh, indicating that perhaps she hadn't partaken of every last one of the varied forms of suffering available to a woman over a lifetime.

A body that looks quickly put on after having just been freshly ironed-no folds anywhere.

margin notes/paper topics:

How isolated we ultimately are in our experience of the world, and how devastating to learn the things we love most might mean not a whit to others.

The juxtaposition of how unsuccessfully Seymour raised his family vs. how perfectly Dawn raised her "family" (the cattle). What is that difference rooted in? Is it because of how much control Seymour tried to exert? Or, in fact, how little? (how hands-off he is with Merry) Note that Dawn's bull is more tractable, more docile than their own daughter. 

What's the significance of gloves, as a theme? A sort of insulation against the word? A layer of protection? Or are they in fact the ultimate symbol of the doomed classism that Merry rails against? Is Seymour the bad guy after all?

The end of American innocence; how is Merry's emotional and physical trajectory an encapsulation of America's own story?

vocabulary alert!

insentient, flak, chiropodist, cordovan, scuttlebutt, anapest, munificence, jeroboam, fourchette, zabaglione, piker, rotogravure, rebarbative, acculturating, isomorphism, etiology, inveigle, fecund, gambrel, panacea, ganglion, polonaise, uxorious, mullein

PPRL: Martin Dressler: The Tale of An American Dreamer, by Steven Millhauser

Not at all sure what I think about this one. Starts delightfully enough, and I fully expected a charming bildungsroman. I love me a bildungsroman. But it's not that. It's magical realism. And friends, I still do not know what I think about magical realism. Magical realism keeps pulling the rug out from under me, and though I can find my bearings well enough again, these novels are just not the same when the rules have changed to...no rules. I need an anchor of reality. There is no anchor of reality, when you're inhabiting a fantasy land of architecture and design that does not adhere to basic laws of, like, the physical world. When I caught on to Millhauser and realized that no, I'm not actually supposed to believe in a hotel that somehow has the room to house entire villages, forests, gardens, museums and other impossibilities, then I realized I'm supposed to be absorbing the metaphor. The lesson.

I just think it's an awfully exhausting journey to get to that lesson. 

But -- it's wonderfully imaginative, sensually evocative, fast-paced, and engaging. I absolutely loved every word of description, and felt very much present in turn of the century New York. And some of Martin's encounters with women are startlingly brilliant. Coded or not, they are uncomfortable in the best way. 

---

How Caroline represents the antithesis of everything Martin needs: energy, forward motion, excitement challenge.

How Martin's properties reflect his inability to decide what he wants, to choose a lane and stay in it. 

---

meerschaum - a soft white claylike material consisting of hydrated magnesium silicate, used for making pipes

panatela - a long thin cigar

dummkopf - a stupid person; a blockhead

ormolu - golden or gilded brass or bronzed used for decorative purposes

PPRL: Independence Day, by Richard Ford

I'm about a third of the way through the Pulitzer novels (most of which I've written about here, though a few I'd read several years ago). And far and away my favorite remains Rabbit is Rich, followed closely by Rabbit At Rest. I've just not encountered anything as darkly funny, as rich in character, or as artistically taut as Updike.

Richard Ford, however, comes close. Very close. I got the buzzy, butterfly feeling I get when I read really, really good writing early on Independence Day. The novel is considered part of the "dirty realism" genre, which I explained to a friend--at least in this instance--as "difficult people in difficult relationships, sometimes doing shitty things to one another. Usually in the suburbs." In other words, very Updike-esque. (It's also hard to not suspect that certain elements of Independence Day aren't a nod to Updike--specifically basketball and the parade at the end--though here's Ford responding to that charge in a New Yorker interview.)

Ford has an unbelievably keen eye for what makes people memorable, for the details that bring an environment to life. It's the kind of book I think would-be writers should read, slowly, taking lots of notes. Some passages and snippets I marked:

A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all new great advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, though we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: "The way we miss our lives are life.

The pistol was big and black, looked well oiled and completely bursting with bullets

For some reason she puts her palm flat on top of her bobbed red hair and blinks, as though she were holding something down inside her skull.

Every age of life has its own little pennant to fly.

Karl gives the Times a good snapping as though to get the words lined up straighter.

---

What makes (to me, anyway) Independence Day Pulitzer-caliber is how Ford takes the simple theme of independence (emotional, romantic, financial...) and makes a kind of vehicle out of it, in which the protagonist travels over the course of his holiday weekend. Each encounter he has, each experience he moves through brings him closer to understanding himself--and precisely how independent he really is (often to his surprise or disappointment). At moments Frank's self-absorption becomes tiresome, but one can never fault him for not seeking self-awareness.

Again this time around I neglected to jot down specific discussion questions/paper topics, but here are two quotes I think would make great jumping-off points:

Today, after all, is not only the fourth, but the Fourth. And as with the stolid, unpromising, unlikable Markhams, real independence must sometimes be shoved down your throat.

Independence Day, at least for the daylight hours, confers upon us the opportunity to act as independently as we know how.

PPRL: The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields

I consider myself a decent enough writer, but man do I ever freeze up in the face of a book review. I just cannot distill several plot points down into a few paragraphs that also summarize a novel's writing style, narrative structure, etc. Doing so bores me to tears, and I'm sure it bores everyone else, too. I know I'm not saying anything different than anyone else has on, say, Goodreads.

What I can do is identify themes, big juicy themes best suited to deeper academic exploration essays - that's still a lot of fun for me. Vive la English major I guess. So in the interest of better enjoying my Pulitzer Prize Reading List Challenge (and no longer having to dread writing the concomitant reviews), I'm changing things up! From now on my responses to the novels will just be a few writing prompts - whatever jumped out at me during my reading, as subjects that might be interesting to write about, longform. And now without further ado, I present

Ellie's Suggested Discussion Topics For The Stone Diaries, Gladly Offered To Anyone For Whom They May Be of Use

1. Explore the role of the natural world in the novel. Discuss the interplay of stone vs. flower, and what each represents (hard vs. soft? dead vs. living? masculine vs. feminine?). Compare and contrast the qualities of resiliency/permanency (such as with Cuyler's stone, his quarrying and carving) and transience/renewal (such as with Daisy's garden and flowering perennials). What are the implications of mining vs. planting, both literally and figuratively? Consider the "planting" of family roots, and the "mining" of genealogical history, such as when Daisy and Victoria visit the Orkney Islands. How do their respective desires to "dig up" bones (actual fossils, in Victoria's case, and to find the grave of Magnus Flett, in Daisy's case) reflect the novel's theme of growth vs. decay?

2. Discuss the theme of sexuality in The Stone Diaries. What are some of the ways it is expressed (or repressed) by the novel's characters? Consider Barker's brief flash of pedophiliac attraction to young Daisy (note the Lolita allusion re: using the tip of the tongue to remove something from her eye), or the sensual attraction Clarentine Flett feels towards Mercy Goodwill, or even Daisy's limited, Ladies Home Journal-guided experience of sex (and what her incuriosity/apathy means). How do the images of stone and flower play into the theme of sexuality? (Consider for example Cuyler's marital ardor, and the tower he later constructs as a dedication to his dead wife. What are the implications of redirecting that sexual energy into a phallic but coldly impotent structure?)

PPRL: The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx

It took a while for The Shipping News to get its hooks in me. I was thrown off by Proulx's linguistic style, choppy and fragmented (and wonderful, once I got used to it); her powerful but challenging vocabulary choices (Petal Bear was crosshatched with longings, but not, after they were married, for Quoyle). But then the story took off, darkly comic, shocking but somehow charming, and I was happily sucked into the frigid Newfoundland landscape.

Give me an underdog any day. Give me someone lost and unsure and stumbling through life. The older the better. Give me the Quoyles of the world, trampled by the cruelty of others, sabotaged by their own poor choices. Give me quirky townspeople, big hearts who've bloomed to fullness in small places. Give me late-in-life, last-chance love. I'll take all of them in real life, any day, and sure enough in my novels. I absolutely loved The Shipping News, for all its forgivably flawed humanness. Proulx's use of metaphor on a grand scheme is absolutely stunning; volumes could be written about her iceberg-ridden, treacherous northern seascape. It's a book to curl up with right now, in the dead of winter, and be comforted by characters who've been to hell and back and are stronger for it.

A handful of topics for consideration:

the role of misfits (social, romantic, professional...)
stagnancy vs. movement
sons and fathers; the rejection of one's ancestry and/or the upholding of legacy
water - as escape, as home, as grave, as passageway...
the threat of the sea vs. its allure
the hardships of orphaned children
the role of wives tales and superstition
an unstable home (literally and figuratively)
life as a series of headlines

PPRL: A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, by Robert Olen Butler

The minute I finished A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, I looked to see if Robert Olen Butler's email address is listed online. It is. I haven't written to him yet, but when I do, it will be to tell him which of his stories made me cry, and why. Not because they are sad, I'll say, but because they feature endings so cutting, so poignant and powerful I am left in awe and gratitude for the experience of reading them. So thank you. 

Or maybe I'll chicken out and just hope he stumbles across this.

A Good Scent is a collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants who've resettled in Louisiana after the end of the Vietnam War (a location chosen for its similar climate). Cultural assimilation is of course a central theme of the collection but Butler delves much deeper, digging into the ways the social and cultural roots of America and Vietnam cross, and become entwined--or remain at odds. Loneliness. Nostalgia. Tribalism. Legacy. Huge concepts Butler injects effortlessly into short stories, peopled by the seemingly common. Only they're not that common. Not at all. They have outsized hearts, curious minds, and sorrowful souls. And you will love them. I definitely recommend this one.

And if I were to write a long-form analysis of something from A Good Scent, the natural choice would be "The American Couple", which is a colorful and wholly absorbing portrait of middle-age marriage. Two marriages, actually, brought under examination when a pair of game show-winning wives bring their husbands on the prize trip to Puerto Vallarta. One couple is Vietnamese; the other, American. Both husbands served in the Vietnam War.

Loads to dissect there, and I only wish I had a captive audience of high schoolers I could point at papers launched from the following line:

This is what's good about America. There is always some improvisation, something new, and when things get strained, you don't fall back on tradition but you make up something new.

PPRL: A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley

A Thousand Acres (a reimagining of King Lear, set in the 1970s midwest) creeps up on you. You think it's plodding, you think it's your typically even-paced, multi-generational farm story. Then boom, you've got incest, extramarital affairs, attempted murder, suicide, and other family fun. What I enjoyed most about the story was the protagonist Ginny's range of emotion, action, and reaction. And I loved that, depending where you stand, you'll either admire her or pity her at novel's end. If I had a complaint, it's that Smiley lobs such massive plot bombs at the reader one after another without letting them fully detonate before throwing another. It's hard to absorb, and hard to believe, after a while, without sufficiently explored fallout. 

Essay topics: appearances vs reality, trading / bargains struck, things that grow and bear fruit vs. things which are barren, interrupted, abandoned etc.

PPRL: Rabbit at Rest, by John Updike

I actually finished this one back in April, but then it was Coachella this and mind-altering drugs that, and really, I can't be expected to pursue goals on odd-numbered years as well as even ones.
Anyway, it was with great sadness that I said goodbye to Rabbit. As I sorabidly frothedonce before, with this series John Updike coasted to the top of my favorite authors list. This last installment secured his place there, I expect, quite permanently.

There is one particularly unforgettable moment inRabbit at RestI'm going to share in hopes of backing up my Updike idolatry. There's tons more context and background than I can condense quickly but I'll do my best.

Picture a middle aged man, a former basketball star whose teenage athleticism remains for him his greatest source of pride. But now he's packing on the pounds, an incessant snacker whose lack of self-control causes him shame and frustration. He's losing his sex appeal, and that stings, too. Harry greatly relies on the respect of others - his friends, his wife, even his young grandchildren - to help keep his ego healthy. But he's losing steam, and his lust for life. Today he's at Jungle Gardens animal park with his wife Janice and their grandkids Roy and Judy.

After the flamingos, the path takes them to a snack bar in a pavilion, and a shell-and-butterfly exhibit, and a goldfish pond, and a cage of black leopards just as Harry had promised Roy. The black-eyed child stares at the animals’ noiseless pacing as if into the heart of a whirlpool that might suck him down. A small machine such as those that in Harry’s youth supplied a handful of peanuts or pistachio nuts in almost every gas station and grocery store is fixed to a pavilion post near an area where peacocks restlessly drag their extravagant feathers across the dust. Here he makes his historic blunder. As his three kin move ahead he fishes in his pocket for a dime, inserts it, receives a handful of brown dry objects, and begins to eat them. They are not exactly peanuts, but perhaps some Florida delicacy, and taste so dry and stale as to be bitter; but who knows how long these machines wait for customers? When he offers some to Judy, though, she looks at them, smells them, and stares up into his face with pure wonderment. “Grandpa!” she cries. “That’s to feed the birds! Grandma! He’s been eating birdfood! Little brown things like rabbit turds!” 

Janice and Roy gather around to see, and Harry holds open his hand to display the shaming evidence. “I didn’t know,” he weakly says. “There’s no sign or anything.” He is suffused with a curious sensation; he feels faintly numb and sick but beyond that, beyond the warm volume enclosed by his skin, the air is swept by a universal devaluation; for one flash he sees his life as a silly thing it will be a relief to discard.

I know. You probably have to be there, at that instant when everything has led to Harry's existential crisis - but I had to try.

And now for today's round of No One Asked For 'Em, and No One Needs 'Em discussion questions!

1. How are birds totemic in the novel? Sparrows, starlings, hawks, buzzards, flamingos...what do they represent, in the story and to Harry personally?

2. Discuss the significance of old cars vs. the new, modern models. What's being sacrificed and what's being gained? Widen this view to the relationship between Harry and his son, old guard vs. new etc.

3. Consider Harry's (blatant? latent?) racism. How does it serve him? What does it protect him from?

4. How does the state Florida become a character of the story? How does it comfort him? How does it antagonize him?

5. SUPER BIG THESIS MATERIAL - compare the interplay of sex and money inRabbit is Richwith the interplay of sex and death inRabbit at Rest.

6. Unpack the parade scene. How is the parade a representation of Harry's own life? (hint: short, ridiculous, desperately trying to own a character he's deemed important...)

PPRL: Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler

Synopsis

Breathing Lessons spans a day in the life of middle-aged couple Maggie and Ira Moran, with flashbacks to various watershed moments in their lives and their marriage. After attending the funeral of Maggie's childhood friend's husband, they are briefly detoured by an encounter with a fellow motorist, then spend the evening reuniting their grown son with his estranged ex-wife and young daughter.

My Thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I was blown away by how well Tyler handles flashback (which constitutes a good half of the story). She leads the reader deep into the past, skipping lightly into the memory of a character before careening suddenly back to the present day, on a ride that isn't jarring so much as exhilarating. She handles theme and metaphor with grace and just the right touch of poignancy: disappointment, loss, reality v. unreality (as expressed through dreams, soap operas - even lies), connection v. solitude, miscommunication and misunderstanding... Characters are gloriously flawed, petty, and as relatable it gets. Breathing Lessons is about an imperfect family in an imperfect world; I came away understanding them completely and loving them fully.

Selected Excerpts

With just a little stretch of the imagination, Maggie thought, this could be Mr. Alden's civics class. (You had to overlook the old lady, who had remained contentedly seated with her tinkling cup of tea.) She glanced around and saw a semicircle of graying men and women, and there was something so worn down about them, so benign and unassuming, that she felt at that moment they were as close to her as family. She wondered how she could have failed to realize that they would have been aging along with her all these years, going through more or less the same stages--rearing their children and saying goodbye to them, marveling at the wrinkles they discovered in the mirror, watching their parents turn fragile and uncertain. Somehow, she had pictured them still fretting over Prom Night.

---

She seemed to have fallen in love again. In love with her own husband! The convenience of it pleased her--like finding right in her own pantry all the fixings she needed for a new recipe.

---

He loved even his worn-down, defeated father, even the memory of his poor mother who had always been so pretty and never realized it because anytime she approached a mirror she had her mouth drawn up lopsided with shyness. 

Werds I Lerned (Or Had Fergotten)

mawkish - sentimental in a feeble or sickly way
fulsom - complimentary or flattering to an excessive degree
gimcrack - flimsy or poorly made but deceptively attractive
diffident - modest or shy because of a lack of self-confidence
Next Up

The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields 

PPRL: Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Hoo boy, did it take me a while to get through the ghost slave baby book. And that is an abridgment I bestow with respect, not derision, because I can't imagine many writers having the literary prowess to pull off a novel about a slain infant coming back to life to haunt her murderous mother. Far-fetched, phantasmal, gruesome, and incredibly poetic, Beloved visits the horrors of slavery only in flashbacks and memories. But these scenes taking the reader back to "Sweet Home" plantation (and its related locations) are so nightmarish, they overshadow the baby-haunting plot line for sheer horror. I didn't love this book; I was too disturbed by it to love it. But that's probably the point, and if so, kudos to Morrison for driving that point unflinchingly, unforgivingly home. So perhaps unsurprisingly, the passage I liked best comes from the final pages, when the heartbreaking story is all but finished. Paul D and Sethe, two former slaves who've bonded through the brutality of their shared background, are feeling their way through a rekindled relationship. Sethe has once again lost her daughter (an unsettled ghost who'd returned for a while, in human form, to visit the mother who'd killed her); Paul D is coming to terms with his role in Sethe's life, and his mixed emotions about her.

     "Paul D?"
     “What, baby?”
     “She left me.”
     “Aw, girl. Don’t cry.”
     “She was my best thing.”
     Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt patched in carnival colors. His hands are limp between his knees. There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”
     He is staring at the quilt but he is thinking about her wrought-iron back; the delicious mouth still puffy at the corner from Ella’s fist. The mean black eyes. The wet dress steaming before the fire. Her tenderness about his neck jewelry—its three wands, like attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet into the air. How she never mentioned or looked at it, so he did not have to feel the shame of being collared like a beast. Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers.
     “Sethe,” he says, “me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
     He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. “You your best thing, Sethe. You are.”

discussion/paper topics:

• What is the significance of water in Beloved's story? Consider her rebirth from the pond (and her thirst afterward), how Sethe's "water broke" that day, the afternoon ice-skating, etc.

• Explore some possible reasons for Baby Sugg's fascination with color. 

• Each of Beloved's characters experiences some shift of perspective over the course of the novel. Choose one to discuss. Was the shift caused by the passage of time alone, or was there some notable event/watershed moment that lent to it?

• Discuss the nature of Beloved and Sethe's relationship. Is it symbiotic? Parasitic? Healing or toxic - or both?

• Beloved is a deeply mythological novel. What are these mythical elements and how do they serve to anchor the real-life narrative? (Think superstition, archetype, etc.)

• Discuss the theme of justice in Beloved, and the many forms it takes (retribution, karmic balance...). 

PPRL: A Summons to Memphis, by Peter Taylor

There's not much to criticize about A Summons To Memphis. But there's not much to get too excited about, either. Reading it is like listening to your favorite middle-aged, genteel Southern friend pontificate at length over a limoncello. Tone and themes are thoroughly, decidedly Southern. Class (division), manners and etiquette, race, intergenerational angst. It starts plodding, then gets interesting, then turns plodding again, then gets real interesting for a strong finish. The blurb on the cover really says it best:

"We finish the novel feeling we've not only come to know his characters, but also come to share their inner truths."

Whether or not I want it to, every novel has some element that I find deeply relatable. Often I find it heartening, and encouraging. Sometimes it's to my chagrin. Sometimes it just makes me say, "Huh. How about that." In this one, it's the degree of relief Philip feels in having (mostly) escaped the drama of his family of origin. Also the joy of his simple, sweet, two-person life in New York with Holly:

"As for Holly and me, I don't know what the end is to be for two people like us. We have our serenity of course and we have Memphis and Cleveland out of our lives. Those places mean nothing to us nowadays. And surely there is nothing in the world that can interfere with the peace and quiet of life in our tenth-floor apartment. I have the fantasy that when we get too old to continue in the magazine and book trade the two of us, white-haired and with trembly hands, will go on puttering amongst our papers and books until when the dusk of some winter day fades into darkness we'll fail to put on the lights in these rooms of ours, and when the sun shines in the next morning there will be simply no trace of us."

That doesn't sound so bad.

Also relatable: the way in which Philip's father loomed larger than life for the whole of his, until in his dotage the man revealed himself to be, simply, a human being wanting to be understood and loved.

study/paper questions

Pick a relationship in the novel and present a case for why it's the strongest/most noble/truest (the sisters, Philip and his father, George and Alex, Holly and Philip, etc.)

Consider Georgie's (minor) role in the novel. He comprises so little of the story that Taylor could well enough have left the character out. So why didn't he? What does Georgie have to teach us? How does he provide context and depth to the rest of the family?

Explore the constant contrasting of Memphis and Nashville. What (or who) could the two cities be said to represent? 

PPRL: Foreign Affairs, by Alison Lurie

Yet again, the universe has passed me the right book at the right time. Foreign Affairs is not typical Pulitzer material. It's lighthearted--borderline frivolous in fact, and centers mainly on romance. Characters that are utterly relatable and lovable, experiencing the universal aches and pains of relationships--messy, riddled with pitfalls, occasionally glorious but more often just awfully complicated. Vinnie Miner is the heroine whose shoes I didn't know I needed to step into, for a wonderfully clarifying perspective on late-in-life love. I am her and she is me in more ways than are comfortable to admit. At other moments, I was Rosemary Radley--rather a weaker, less confident and self-loving version of her. Rosemary is the example I have erstwhile needed, of a woman refusing to be the temporary gratification of a man who has no intention of making her "his life's work", as Edwin calls it. I got so, so much out of this one. Such a rich reading experience it made for, and with what incredibly serendipitous timing. I am, as ever, so grateful to fiction for the ways it saves me again and again. No study questions for this one, but one excerpt, because wow does Lurie have an incredible talent for scene setting:

May in Kensington Gardens. The broad lawns are as velvet-smooth as the artificial turf of a football field, and ranked tulips sway on their stems like squads of colored birds. Above them brisk sudden breezes pass kites about a sky suffused with light. As Fred Turner crosses the park, one landscaped vista after another fans out before him, each complete with appropriate figures: strolling couples, children suspended from red and blue balloons, well-bred dogs on leash, and joggers in shorts and jerseys.

meretricious: tawdry, falsely attractive

anomie: lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group.

foxed: (of the paper of old books or prints) discolored with brown spots

PPRL: Ironweed, by William Kennedy

This one was painful. I wouldn't wish this one on any teenager, and I really hope there aren't too many sadistic high school English teachers inflicting it on their classes. Heavy, plodding, and meandering, broken up mostly by brutally graphic violence. One nods in reverence to its narrative structure, its use of motif, and the classically Pulitzer exploration of societal evil and individual redemption. But one plows through it as fast as one can to get it over with. Really hoping none of it stays lodged in my brain for too long. Doesn't help that I had the images of Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep (who starred in the film adaptation) to bring it to life in my head. 

Excerpts:

...as he stood looking at Annie's mouth with its store teeth, he perceived that a kiss is as expressive of a way of life as a smile, or a scarred hand. Kisses that come up from below, or down from above. They come from the brain sometimes, sometimes from the heart, and sometimes just from the crotch. Kisses that taper off after a while come only from the heart and leave the taste of sweetness. Kisses that come from the brain tend to try to work things out inside other folks' mouths and don't hardly register. And kisses from the crotch and brain put together, with maybe a little bit of heart, like Katrina's, well they are kisses that can send you right around the bend for your whole life.

The empyrean, which is not spatial at all, does not move and has no poles. It girds, with light and love, the primum mobile, the utmost and swiftest of material heavens. Angels are manifested in the primum mobile. 

Themes to consider:

Juxtaposition of the supernatural and earthly. What does each have to teach Francis? What does each hold in retribution for his sins? Will his redemption be of this world or the next?

Self-loathing and self-sabotage. After Gerald's death, Francis seems set almost on a course of self-destruction. Is this him punishing himself or acting out his anger at his lot in life?

The turning of fortunes. The destitution of the "bums" as contrasted with the wealth and prestige of Helen's brother -- and all shades in between. Where does Francis belong in all of this? What is his true station and destiny? And what roles do (bad) luck and providence play?

Sin as a "junk" burden. How Francis labored under Rosskam for only a day before shrugging off the work load, literally and figuratively. Meanwhile he accumulated a junk load of guilt-tripping ghosts. What is the meaning of this? Is Kennedy suggesting that one's past can never be shrugged off? Or that it must be?

Sex as death and vice versa.

Words!

cenotaph: a monument to someone buried elsewhere, especially one commemorating people who died in a war

gravid: pregnant; carrying eggs or young

gandy dancer: a laborer in a railroad maintenance gang

semaphore: a system of sending messages by holding the arms or two flags or poles in certain positions according to an alphabetic code.

expiation: the act of making amends or reparation for guilt or wrongdoing; atonement

tonsorial: relating to hairdressing.

contumacious: (especially of a defendant's behavior) stubbornly or willfully disobedient to authority

suspire: to breathe

tremolo: a wavering effect in a musical tone, produced either by rapid reiteration of a note, by rapid repeated slight variation in the pitch of a note, or by sounding two notes of slightly different pitches to produce prominent overtones

arriviste: an ambitious or ruthlessly self-seeking person, especially one who has recently acquired wealth or social status

erubescent: becoming red or reddish; blushing

fontanel: a space between the bones of the skull in an infant or fetus, where ossification is not complete and the sutures not fully formed. The main one is between the frontal and parietal bones

PPRL: Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike

The good thing about Rabbit Is Rich is that it excited the writerly part of my brain in a way it's never been excited before. There's a forty page section in the middle of the book that I feel confident in declaring the best forty pages of fiction I have ever read. That's not hyperbole. Writing so taut, so seamless that it's like a wall where every brick was meticulously chosen and sealed with the exact right amount of mortar. A talent clearly at the very top of his game. Laugh at me: I actually cried when I was telling Terence about a few of my favorite passages. Granted I was a bit hormonal that day, but for real, the sheer craftmanship of this book moved me like nothing I've ever experienced in literature. I want to find a list of Updike's favorite authors (poets in particular) because I need to know how he learned to think like he did.

The bad thing about Rabbit Is Rich is that I'm scared I never will. Think like he did, I mean. It's given me a wretched case of What's the fucking point?? writer's block. I'm throttled by my own sense of inspiration and wonder. For fuck's sake, there is anal sex in this book. And it still won the Pulitzer Prize. That's how magnificent the writing is. 

Ugh, anyway, we soldier on in our mediocrity, amiright? (Speak for yourself, Ellie, wtf?) I would barely know where to start with this novel had I an actual classroom to torture with my fangirling, but I think the most interesting discussions fall under one of three main headings (though with plenty of overlap): Harry + Money, Harry + Women, and Harry + Harry.

Harry + Money

Forget country club memberships, gold and silver coins, and trips to the Caribbean; Harry's wealth affords him non-tangibles that are more integral to his sense of self than anything he can buy. Arrogance, hubris, cynicism, (male, white) privilege... How is Harry's perception of his personal power accurate, and how it is flawed?

Discuss Harry's enthusiasm for Consumer Reports. Does Harry feel empowered by it? Unnerved? How do his fears about the economy, about material wealth and financial solvency factor in?

Harry + Women

Harry is spectacularly sexist, jawdroppingly patronizing, disturbingly predatory, and intolerably condescending towards women. And yet it's impossible to hate him. How does Updike accomplish this?

Explore the subtext and metaphor of the (simultaneously triumphant and pathetic) Kruggerand sex scene between Harry and Janice. In what ways is his wife an extension of Harry's wealth?

The other women in the novel (Ruth, Cindy, Thelma, Melanie, Pru, etc) also manifest as a kind of currency in Harry's life. In what ways do they compliment or challenge his ego?

Harry + Harry

Harry is preoccupied with death, and the dead as a whole in particular. Some quotes:

He is treading on [the dead], they are resilient, they are cheering him on, his lungs are burning, his heart hurts, he is a membrane removed from the hosts below, their filaments caress his ankles, he loves the earth, he will never make their mistake and die.

Now the dead are so many he feels for the living around him the camaraderie of survivors.

Why does he feel compelled to "keep track" of the dead, of who's joining their ranks and why? How do the dead serve him? How do they threaten him?

Compare Harry's treatment of his progeny - the rejection of his son vs. the obsession with his possible daughter. How does the legacy of family relate to Harry's beliefs about himself?

PPRL: The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara

I had to read The Killer Angels with my phone on hand, as I constantly needed to look things up I hadn't thought about since grade school. It's historical fiction, an account of the Battle of Gettysburg. So, actual people, factual dates and events, plus lots of dialogue lifted straight from documents written at the time - but much of the characterization and interaction comes from Shaara's imagination.

My Civil War history game was pretty weak before this book. Still is. But every night I'd share something I'd re-learned with Terence, and by the end he decided I was ready to film an episode of Drunk History. Not so sure about that, but at least I've been refreshed on Dred Scott. And I have to say that while history is not typically my jam, I was wholly sucked in, even emotionally invested, by the time the battle actually started.

Questions for consideration:

• Discuss the commentary on the evolving nature of war. What kind of war is "better", if any?

• What does war do for the character of men who fight it? (Improve it? Reveal it? Worsen it?)

• How does a sense of exceptionalism fortify Lee for the barbarism of war? How does he see himself as a god-like figure?

• Consider the politics and morality behind the choice to invade or only fight defensively.

• How much does Shaara romanticize war in general? How much is the past used to calibrate expectations for the future?

• Discuss the personal "wars" that run parallel to the actual battle (inner and interpersonal conflicts, etc).

• What role does divine providence play?

• What is the significance of Fremont? Why the frivolity and shortsightedness? Comment on the larger relationship between southerners and the English.

• How prescient is Longstreet's discussion of modern warfare?

• Compare Lee's faith in god to his faith in the army. 

• Comment on the role of morale, and the momentum of previous battle wins. How much do these factor into Gettysburg's outcome?

PPRL: The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty

The Optimist's Daughter is about, among other things, the ghosts that rise up when someone dies. (Hint: there's more than one.) It's about the reverence we hold for the dead, especially when we share their blood, and to what degree that reverence is justified. And it's about what loss can teach us about our ourselves.

Laurel, the novel's protagonist, has lost both of her parents and a husband, and has come to rely on her friends--and herself--for validation and emotional support. (I'm just having a really hard time finding books that speak to me these days...) And while she's certainly admirable for being the very picture of forbearance, at times I couldn't help finding her frustratingly spineless.

The plot I think is better suited to a short story than a novel (which, at 140 pages, it essentially is), and the final chapters feel like a sudden storm of nostalgia and melancholy disrupting an otherwise placid day. There was just something incongruent to me about it. All the same, the writing is of course fantastic and Welty's talent for character development is remarkable. Some loathsome personalities in this one for sure.

A resonant passage:

A flood of feeling descended on Laurel. She let the papers slide from her hand and the books from her knees, and put her head down on the open lid of the desk and wept in grief for love and for the dead. She lay there with all that was adamant in her yielding to this night, yielding at last. Now all she had found had found her. The deepest spring in her heart had uncovered itself, and it began to flow again.

Were I to do any long form writing on The Optimist's Daughter it would be on the theme of grief as crucible. Groundbreaking, I know.

PPRL: The Fixer, by Bernard Malamud

Remember the over the top satirical anti-Semitism in Borat? Jews as egg-laying, shapeshifting cockroaches? It's brilliant and satisfying to watch, because it so ruthlessly skewers the grossly bigoted, the xenophobic and the racist. But what it's easy to forget when the film ends and the lights come back on is the fact that such notions (Jews are evil, Jews are monsters, Jews are inferior) are deeply rooted in terrifying pockets of actual, living history.

The Fixer gives a glimpse of one such pocket. So if you're shopping for a good tsarist Russia-era novel about the horrors of early twentieth century anti-Semitism, pick it up!

** end general interest portion of post **

Some Quotes As Jumping-Off Points for Discussion, Paper-Writing, and General Consideration

"She had stopped before a huge wooden crucifix at the side of the road, crossed herself, and then slowly sinking to her knees, began to hit her head against the dark ground."

- Discuss the intersection of superstition and religion in the novel. Consider the racist mythologies invented and disseminated by anti-Semitic, Christian Russians. How do they reflect on their perpetuators and what are the consequences of those wives tales?

"Yakov considered dismounting, knocking on a strange door and begging for a night's lodging."

- In what ways does The Fixer resemble a fable or folkloric tale? Consider stock characters and tropes such as old men/women, the stubborn horse, the ferryman, the ghosts who visit Yakov in his dreams, never-ending misfortune and the miscarriage of justice, etc. 

"Nobody can burn an idea even if they burn the man." 

- How does self-education and reflection help Yakov transcend limitations (of the shtetl, of his socioeconomic class, and later, in prison, of his anguished mental state)? How much can knowledge be his salvation and how much does it curse him?

"Something that unexpectedly bothered him was that he was no longer using his tools." 

- Consider the concept of tools in the story, both as literal devices and metaphorical representations. How do they reflect Yakov's very strong value of self-reliance? How have they helped him build his life and how have they constrained him?

"Being born a Jew meant being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors."

- How does the idea of fate play into Yakov's story? What about free will? Consider this quote: "We're all in history, that's sure, but some are more than others. Jews more than some." How does history inform the future, and shape it? At what point is a man's destiny out of his hands thanks to the actions of other men who've gone before him?

"Those who persecute the innocent were themselves never free."

"Well good luck and no hard feelings, Berezhinsky said uneasily. 'Duty is duty. The prisoner's the prisoner and the guard's the guard.'"

- Explain how the antagonists of The Fixer aren't any more free than Yakov. Consider the very limiting hierarchal structures of both his country and the jail he languishes in. How is the macrocosm of Russia's class system mirrored by the microcosm of the prison?

"What it amounts to, Little Father, is that whether you wanted it or not you had your chance; in fact many chances, but the best you could give us with all good intentions is the poorest and most reactionary state in Europe."

- What is the significance of the ending scene between Yakov and Nicholas the Second? What is the subtext of their discussion, and of their relationship? (Man to man? ruler to subject? Christian to Jew? Christian to freethinker?)

"Your poor boy is a hemophiliac, something missing in the blood."

- Malamud deliberately includes this bit of history in the scene between Yakov and the tsar. Unpack the declaration, considering what implications Yakov could be making about Nicholas's politics, his character, his religion, etc.

PPRL: In This Our Life, by Ellen Glasgow

In This Our Life veers back and forth between soap opera-worthy drama and stultifying existential meditation. The drama is compelling, and the reason I blasted through the second half of the novel in a day or two. The existential meditation - on the nature of happiness, on what it means to grow old and out of touch, on beauty vs. character - well, it's stultifying. There's an intriguing, depressingly timely secondary plot about racism which I think could have elevated the story immensely had it been further fleshed out. But (perhaps due to the book predating the Civil Rights Movement) the subject was only marginally, if poignantly, explored.

The novel was adapted into a film starring Bette Davis as the shallow, spoiled, selfish, husband-stealing Stanley* (odd choice of names, right? her sister is named Roy and I could find no explanation either in the book or online as to why the girls have traditionally male names). But other than the Davis connection it doesn't seem like In This Our Life is particularly well-known or popular. HOWEVER I'm still going to throw down some super basic questions for discussion/papers because those who can't teach, blog. Or something. (Shut up okay it's just fun for me.)

Again and again Glasgow stresses the dichotomy of young vs. old, old-fashioned vs. modern. How does this polarity manifest in the novel's characters? (Consider the handwringing and hindsight of the "old guard" vs. the naiveté and caprice of youth.) Conversely, what challenges are shared by both young and old alike? 

There are four major parent-child relationships in the novel (Asa-Stanley, Asa-Roy, Lavinia-Stanley, Lavinia-Roy). Choose two to compare and contrast. 

Explore the upstairs/downstairs (family/servants) element of the story. What do we learn about the characters from how one set perceives the other? What do their respective prejudices and notions say about themselves?

Discuss the theme of "do overs" in the novel (i.e., second chances, vicarious pleasures and living through one's children, etc). Compare it to the theme of regret / roads not taken.

Birds are a recurring visual motif in the novel. What do they represent? Freedom, obviously, but what about beyond that? Think migration (Stanley), nesting behavior (Lavinia), a sparing quality of consumption (Asa)...

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*Fun fact: apparently Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro, was named after Davis's character (source).

PPRL: The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Chaucer and I have been reading The Yearling.

I started it before going to Lake Burton, but Jody hadn't yet found the fawn, so neither Chaucer nor I were hooked yet. But I picked it back up when I got home, and Flag made his appearance soon afterward. It was a cold, bright night, perfect for nestling down under a fleece throw with a good book. Chaucer was stretched out along the end of the bed, warming my feet and keeping me company. When I finished the chapter, I closed my iPad and lay beside him. I stroked his ears and the crown of his head, and told him about the baby deer. He's the same color as you, and just as soft. I understood the boy's delight completely. Any animal lover would. Chaucer could live a hundred years and I'd never get over my joy and wonder at getting to care for him, hold him, play with him. I've been Jody in a million other lifetimes. And in this lifetime, Chaucer is my Flag.

Later, I told Chaucer about the hunts. About Ol' Slewfoot, and the bravery of Julia and Rip, the dogs who would eventually bring him down. He especially liked the parts about the hounds scenting their prey, and Penny's skill at tracking game through the wilderness. I told him about all the animals on Baxter's Island - the varmints and "creeturs", big and small. He blinked at me and I pictured him in another world completely: the scrublands of northern Florida, trusty guard dog of humble country folk some three-quarters of a century ago. Would he love that life more than the one I've given him? Maybe. Would he have been loved more? Impossible.

Tonight Terence and I walked him to Grand Park, which a pretty good trek for him these days. He started to lose steam about where he always does, hanging his head and panting hard. We saw a small black cat on the walk ahead of us, poised to dash off into the bushes. Knowing she'd easily get away, knowing Chaucer can barely catch his own shadow, I unclipped his leash. He tensed up, understanding, waiting for my direction. I knelt down beside him and pointed. "Kitty, Chauc!" I whispered, and he was off like a shot.

The cat was gone in an instant, and Chaucer, as usual, stood helplessly at the edge of the brush she'd disappeared into. Normally at this point he walks back to me, sheepishly defeated, to be clipped back into his leash. But tonight when he heard my laughing "Good boy!" he did something neither Terence nor I expected, nor could believe afterward. He clambered onward, into brambling bushes that came up to his shoulder. Bushes even a true hound dog would have trouble navigating. He scrambled for footing, peering over the top of the greenery as he tried to find the cat. Alarmed he might trip and hurt himself, we quickly called him back.

Terence and I frowned at one another, amazed. So, so unlike him to do that. "He's trying to impress me," I joked. "He knows I'm reading The Yearling with all these hunting dog scenes, and he's trying to prove he's a good hunter, too."

Not five minutes later we were further up in the park, in a wide, grassy area divided by landscaped cement partitions. Terence spotted a small dark shape silhouetted one on of the partitions. At first we thought it was a cat, but it was slinky and crouched-down, and I gaped in horror at what I assumed was a massive rat. "It's a possum!" said Terence, who with better eyes could make it out clearly. Scared Chaucer would give chase and get himself god knows what disease, I handed off the leash so I could inch closer alone. I'd never seen a possum in the wild.

Again, it was like something from The Yearling. Chaucer caught the animal's scent and pulled forward. He sensed my excitement and strained at his leash to see. The possum had crawled along the low wall and frozen. He was playing dead. We snapped a quick, blurry photo more to briefly illuminate it than anything and then moved on, happy that Chaucer got to smell something new and exotic.

About an hour ago, Chaucer long since having ditched me in the chilly living room for the warmth of his bed, I finished the novel. The final twenty pages devastated me; I cried three times. Just as surely as I know some of Updike's passages are the best fiction I've ever read, the final paragraph of The Yearling is the best ending I have ever read. It took my breath away and I had to clasp my hand over my mouth, to stifle the sobs. It's a paragraph to launch the writing careers of a thousand would-be novelists. Raw and unforgettable and perfect.

I don't have any discussion questions this time around. I have only awe. And my Flag to go cuddle.

PPRL: The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a blazingly smart and utterly absorbing little book; I only put it down once. Reading it is like descending an ornate spiral staircase, alongside which runs a wall filled with alcoves containing tiny, curious treasures. These artifacts call to you, so you pick them up and turn them over in your hands for a moment - but the lure of what lays at the bottom of the stairs is too great, so you keep going down, down, down. And when you reach the cellar you find yourself in a place that's at once totally strange but somehow comforting. You don't want to leave. You know you could learn a lot here.

It's just delightful. Wise, colorful, simple in scope but grand in effect, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a goldmine for existentialist inquiry but never mind that - it's also just a really fun ride. No discussion questions this time, just a handful of annotated quotes:

"...authors always live in the noble weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable to us are little better than a day's routine to them." (Oh to be such, to live and write as such.)

"She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires." (This was written in 1927. Nineteen twenty-seven. Prescient much, Thornton? #socialmedia)

"The glazed eyes moved to the girl's face. Pepita shook her gently. With great effort Dona Maria tried to fix her mind on what was being said to her. Twice she lay back, refusing to seize the meaning, but at last, like a general calling together in a rain and by night the dispersed division of his army she assembled memory and attention and a few other faculties and painfully pressing her hand to her forehead she asked for a bowl of snow." (Best description of a hangover ever.)

"Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but may never be two that love one another equally well." (Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Wilder, New Era romance columnist)

"He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer--a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon."

"He respected the slight nervous shadow that crossed her face when he came too near her. But there arose out of this denial itself the perfume of a tenderness, that ghost of passion which, in the most unexpected relationship, can make even a whole lifetime devoted to irksome duty pass like a gracious dream." (Nuanced, true, relatable, perfect.)

"He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living."

"Like all solitary persons he had invested friendship with a divine glamour; he imagined that the people he passed on the street, laughing together and embracing when they parted, the people who dined together with so many smiles--you will scarcely believe me, but he imagined that they were extracting from all that congeniality great store of satisfaction."

"She had accepted the fact that it was of no importance whether her work went on or not; it was enough to work. She was the nurse who tends the sick who never recover; she was the priest who perpetually renews the office before an altar to which no worshippers come." (She was the blogger who continued to publish even in the face of an ever more dismal Alexa-ranking...)

"But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." (I told you - wise and delightful, and you won't want to leave.)