Knopf 100--Day 23

85. We’ve probably written about Toni Morrison more than any other writer. Liz and I adore her. In fact, Beloved is on both of our top ten books of all time list, and it's actually my favorite novel. 

Anyway, Song of Solomon was arguably Morrison’s first great book. The Bluest Eye and Sula are very good books and the perfect start if you plan to jump into Morrison’s literary canon, but it was Song of Solomon, the epic American novel that follows a single family nearly a century, that was a hint at what Morrison would soon produce in her masterpiece, Beloved. (And apologies to Franzen devotees, but Morrison is the living master of the American landscape, the American story, and the publication of Beloved on the heals of Song of Solomon sealed that deal long ago. Before Morrison it was Twain, I suppose.) Morrison isn’t easy, and she asks us big, deep, moving questions and a reader must pay attention. Read Toni Morrison because it will make your life richer.  Don’t read her because you have to, or think you should (or you had a bad high school situation in your AP class...). Read Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula, Jazz, or The Bluest Eye, because everything you’ve heard about a book changing your life is true. End of sermon. 

86. I am going to move right on to another writer that both Liz and I love, Alice Munro. Now that I think about it, Liz and I are two peas in two very differently sized pods. Anyway, I thought I would choose a Munro book that we haven't written about at all, The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose. It's set in a small 1930's Canadian town that is filled with everything you'd want--thieves, bootleggers, prostitutes, and less exciting people like factory folk--and shopkeepers like Rose and her step mother, Flo. Although, to be fair when I say boring, Rose does date quite a bit. In fact, a good number of the stories are about Rose's love life; in one she is seduced on a long train ride by a .... that's right, a very old minister. If you had any sense at all, this is everything you would need in order to be convinced to read this book, but I will also tell you the stories are lovely, sad, and are all about the one thing that make all good stories about small towns great...they are about escape. I like to think about this collection as the one that almost got away because I didn't read it until Munro (finally!) won her 2013 Pulitzer. 

87. Listen, I am going to try and do something that simply has not been accomplished on this blog. I am going to try and convince you that the 1981 film Endless Love, which was then given a second adaptation in 2014 called, well, Endless Love ... is actually a really good book by Scott Spencer. Okay. Here is my pitch: If you've seen the 1981 version of Endless Love, unsee it. It wasn't good. Close your eyes, concentrate, and just unsee it. I know you love Brooke Shields, I know it's when you first fell in love with James Spader and Tom Cruise,  and yes I know it's hard to unsee Tom Cruise, I know this oh so well, but unsee him. Okay. Now did you see the 2014 adaptation? You did? Seek help, nothing I can do for you if you're over the age of twenty five and paid money to see that movie. The novel, the really fantastic novel, Endless Love, is about wild, erotic, dangerous, violent, crazy fucking love. Poor Scott Spencer, two shitty adaptations and then you get this theme song? That's just crappy luck.

88. I recently read Anjelica Houston's first memoir, A Story Lately Told. It concentrated on her young life and you know it was okay...a little quiet but it was fine. Now, if you want an old fashion huge loud big memoir about the Houston family, go to papa. Read, An Open Book by John Huston. It is thoroughly engaging and fun from page one. A boxer, writer, actor, philanderer (he was married five times as well), and of course great film director (Maltese Falcon, African Queen, The Misfits, The Man Who Would be King, Prizzi's Honor and of course The Dead).  He doesn't bullshit in this book, he admits his many faults and mistakes (I mentioned the marriages and cheating, yeah?). He was a huge personality, a huge talent and the book reads exactly that way.

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 21

I don’t know how I came across Grace Paley; maybe she was included in a short story anthology, or maybe I came across one of her essays in a Women’s Studies class (I will give you a minute to get over your shock that I took a women’s studies class…take your time).  However I came to know her work, I consider myself truly lucky.

Where can we can this hat?

Occasionally you come across lists of books that women or young women should read.  I don’t ever recall seeing Grace Paley on those lists, which is a travesty. Not only should she be on the list, she should be in the top five. The best way I can describe her, especially her essays (although some of her stories are semi autobiographical), is that she teaches you how to be a better, or maybe the word is, complete, a more complete person.

Paley is compassionate, thoughtful, and wise.  She was a feminist, an anti war activist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. I met her once at the Miami Book Festival; I don’t know for sure but she must have been in her 70’s at the time. She was a very tiny woman but sort of fierce looking, like she knew things. Anyway, she signed my books and I told her what her work meant to me, she stood up and hugged me.

Basically this entire blog is so I can brag and say I once hugged Grace Paley and it was a highlight of my life.

I will recommend two books that will be a good introduction to Paley. First, The Collected Stories. For me this collection is a bible of sorts, it combines her three volumes of stories into one book.  Not that you’re the type to be impressed by these things, but this collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer and National Book Award.

The second book you should have will you give you a sense of who Grace Paley was as a person, as a humanist. Just as I Thought collects her essays, articles, and some talks she gave over the years (she was one of the most inspiring speakers I’ve ever seen).

Grace Paley in Miami

One last note: I thought of Grace Paley today after reading about the devastating tornado damage in Oklahoma. When things like this happen, the danger is that it can paralyze you, make you feel useless or powerless. You resort to just shaking your head. For me, Paley is a writer who I go to for solace, for direction, and for inspiration. She was an activist in every sense of the word.  Every day was a call to action for her; just knowing that inspires me to be a better person, to be an activist.  

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 13

The Pulitzer Prizes are announced tomorrow, crowning a new book (or not, should they repeat last year's crazy insulting ridiculous interesting decision not to give a prize for fiction). Want to place bets on a winner? I think an odds favorite could be Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, but I also relish the dark horse winners that spring from nowhere. No doubt a Pulitzer Prize makes a career. Unless you're already dead, John Kennedy Toole, you overrated hack. (Please send your outraged "I loved Confederacy of Dunces" messages to Gianna. She loves the attention.)

Today I'd like to call out the youngest person (thus far) to win a Pulitzer Prize, Jhumpa Lahiri. It's hard to believe that she won 13 years ago for The Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of short stories about the lives of Indians moving to America. She followed up Interpreter with a novel, The Namesake, and she has a new novel coming this fall, The Lowland. It's really good.

The book I like best, though, is another story collection, Unaccustomed Earth. These aren't just stories dealing with the cultural differences between India and the United States. Lahiri also writes about the gulf between generations, of children and parents trying to communicate from vastly different locations and eras. In the title story, an adult daughter, Ruma, has moved from Brooklyn to Seattle, and she's stressed out about the presumed obligation that she bring her elderly father to live in her home, as is customary in India. The final three stories in the collection follow two people, a boy and a girl, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood in Italy, to the horror of the tsunami.

What Lahiri does best is capture the subtleties of relationships and emotions. Her characters feel like real people living real lives and facing real difficulties and experiencing real joys, and yet she manages to pull off these portraits in just a few pages. I will read everything Jhumpa Lahiri writes.

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

What Elizabeth Strout does well is fill her books with fully realized, interesting, yet flawed characters. That’s my nice way of saying she writes one hell of an unlikable unsympathetic character. Just as Olive Kitteridge remains so vivid several years after first reading it, The Burgess Boys will resonate as well.

Olive Kitteridge

The Burgess family meets tragedy early in life when Bobby, just a toddler playing in the front seat of the family car, accidently backs over and kills his father. Yeah, from that point on you’re going to be the odd man out. But Bobby goes to law school just as his older brother Jim does, although Bobby will never excel the way Jim has in life, and Jim reminds him of that fact often. While the brothers move to New York, their sister Susan stays behind in Maine, marries, has a son, and divorces. Their lives rattle on. 

The Burgess Boys

Jim becomes somewhat of a celebrity lawyer with political aspirations, Jim’s career and marriage have not really panned out, and Susan finds that her little hometown is being overrun by “Somalian” refugees, whom she has no real understanding or sympathy for. It annoys her that they don’t try to fit in more. It is no real surprise when her now teenage son Zach throws a pig’s head through the window of a mosque during a Ramadan prayer service.

The Burgess family is pretty confident that this crime, which they consider to be a joke gone bad, a misdemeanor at best, will blow over. It isn’t until the prosecutor wants to charge Zach with a hate crime that they realize the severity of what’s happening, and then…Zach disappears.

Elizabeth Strout

The Burgess Boys will certainly be compared to Olive Kitteridge, and that’s understandable to some extent, but they really are two drastically different books, each of which stands on its own.