Pachinko was at the top of every list for 2017, plus it dealt with the consequences of a single decision that has repercussions throughout the generations. From Korea to Japan, America and back, it follows a family that harbors a secret--unbeknownst to many of its members.
Jin Lee felt more comfortable foregoing certain scenes to simply tell the reader what happened. At first, it was strange, then refreshing. Major characters die with barely more than a cursory sentence. Something owed to V. Woolf's To the Lighthouse, perhaps.
A few things I'll be keeping in mind as I delve deeper into my own project.
1. I love how Jin Lee keeps her characters so tightly placed in the foreground and history, as it unfolds in all of its dramatic splendor, is mere backdrop.
2. The book doesn't belabor its losses. "History has failed us, but no matter," it opens. And the "no matter" deserves its own analysis.
3. Before this book, I had been struggling with the question of narration in my project. 1st person limited? 3rd person omniscient? I'm not 100% clear that 3rd is the right narrator for my book. I need that proximity to multiple characters and never complete unity with any one in particular.
Friday, February 2, 2018
Monday, January 8, 2018
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, Erich Maria Remarque
Picked it up because my next project is catalyzed by an event in the Great War and already know that AQotWF will be the definitive guide to that experience. It gives shape to my wartime hero.
"We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer....We became soldiers with an eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe."
"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men."
"No doubt his wife still thinks of him; she does not know what happened. He looks as if he would have often written to her; --she will still be getting mail from him--To-morrow, in a week's time--perhaps even a stray letter a month hence. She will read it, and in it he will be speaking to her." I think about this all the time. I can't not include this. A voice from beyond the grave. Re-animated but entirely different, other-worldly because no longer of this world.
"We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer....We became soldiers with an eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe."
"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men."
"No doubt his wife still thinks of him; she does not know what happened. He looks as if he would have often written to her; --she will still be getting mail from him--To-morrow, in a week's time--perhaps even a stray letter a month hence. She will read it, and in it he will be speaking to her." I think about this all the time. I can't not include this. A voice from beyond the grave. Re-animated but entirely different, other-worldly because no longer of this world.
Monday, December 25, 2017
SING, UNBURIED, SING - Jesmyn Ward
Among other things, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a book about closure--the desire for it, the impossibility of it, and the ultimate realization that the things we anticipate may not arrive as we expect, but that does not mean they fail to arrive altogether. The book was heavier to read than I thought it would be. Because I now have a child? Because the horizon of the book feels so bleak? ...And why shouldn't it, with this opening sentence: "I like to think I know what death is."
To steal from this one: the interruptive presence of the past in the form of ghosts. Already know who will be ghosting my next book. Waiting for more late night divinations to breathe more life into this story in my head.
Monday, November 27, 2017
LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, George Saunders
If George Saunders' humility is as genuine as it appears to be on the "Bookworm" interview with Michael Silverblatt, then I may be truly in love. Not only is he the most badass short-story writer and truly unique and experimental novelist, he's also...so....normal. Well, like a brilliant, understated, matterlightblooming version of a normal person.
So, Lincoln in the Bardo. I remember another badass influence in my life, Elissa Marder, challenging us to think about the signified in the title, Madame Bovary. In Lincoln's case, it isn't THE Lincoln, but THE Lincoln's son, Willie. And the Bardo is a word for purgatory that refuses to let the reader slip into the association-laden term we all know.
Told by ghosts and historians intermittently, the book is bizarre and amazing and worth the read. But the part that brought me to tears was the ode to life that it stages toward the end. In the voice of roger bevins iii, "Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post-June rain.....Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead" (335). It's all just so...human. So banal and ordinary and full of life.
So, Lincoln in the Bardo. I remember another badass influence in my life, Elissa Marder, challenging us to think about the signified in the title, Madame Bovary. In Lincoln's case, it isn't THE Lincoln, but THE Lincoln's son, Willie. And the Bardo is a word for purgatory that refuses to let the reader slip into the association-laden term we all know.
Told by ghosts and historians intermittently, the book is bizarre and amazing and worth the read. But the part that brought me to tears was the ode to life that it stages toward the end. In the voice of roger bevins iii, "Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post-June rain.....Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead" (335). It's all just so...human. So banal and ordinary and full of life.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Loneliness - WHITE OLEANDER
Hannah Arendt made loneliness the condition of totalitarianism, as well as its consequence. Janet Fitch knows loneliness to be the very wind that blows through existence. In Los Angeles, it goes by the name of the Santa Anas--the gust that opens White Oleander and continues to blow until you are immune to it, or it swallows you whole, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.
Somehow I missed this book in 1999 when it came out. So, belatedly...like most good things in my life. Everything is steal-able in this book. But two lines I dog-eared:
"Save your poet's sympathy and find some better believer. Just because a poet said something didn't mean it was true, only that it sounded good" (349).
And,
"I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'd have had to change his whole philosophy.
The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain....The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am" (401).
Finally, back to my own writing after such a long hiatus...
Somehow I missed this book in 1999 when it came out. So, belatedly...like most good things in my life. Everything is steal-able in this book. But two lines I dog-eared:
"Save your poet's sympathy and find some better believer. Just because a poet said something didn't mean it was true, only that it sounded good" (349).
And,
"I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'd have had to change his whole philosophy.
The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain....The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am" (401).
Finally, back to my own writing after such a long hiatus...
Monday, September 26, 2016
Origin Stories - AND I DARKEN
Besides the addictive opening hook to this story--a gender-bending tale of Vlad the Impaler's history, re-imagined as the female badass, Lada the Impaler--the book does so many things well. Kiersten White is just a solid writer who tells a layered story. And neither the strong female protagonist or her brother, who questions his own sexuality as he discovers his love for another man, feel gimmicky. In fact, all the characters seem completely authentic, and their development is slow--in a good way--and considered.
But what I most want to steal from this book, besides the feel of something epic and gathering, like a storm, is the haunting presence of origin stories. Mehmed, heir to the Ottoman sultan's throne, explains to Lada why he must conquer Constantinople.
He says, "My whole country was founded on a dream. Less than two hundred years ago we were nothing but a tribe, running from the Mongols, with no home of our own. But our leader--my ancestor--Osman Gazi dreamed we could be more. He saw a moon rise from the breast of a great sheikh and descend into his own. From his navel grew a tree, and its branches spread to cover the world" (370).
I want the entire tone of my next work to be that lush mythological imagining.
But what I most want to steal from this book, besides the feel of something epic and gathering, like a storm, is the haunting presence of origin stories. Mehmed, heir to the Ottoman sultan's throne, explains to Lada why he must conquer Constantinople.
He says, "My whole country was founded on a dream. Less than two hundred years ago we were nothing but a tribe, running from the Mongols, with no home of our own. But our leader--my ancestor--Osman Gazi dreamed we could be more. He saw a moon rise from the breast of a great sheikh and descend into his own. From his navel grew a tree, and its branches spread to cover the world" (370).
I want the entire tone of my next work to be that lush mythological imagining.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Confessions - TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Ok, this is not something to admit out loud, but I'm in a confessional mood, so here goes... I never read Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird in school. Either we weren't assigned it, or I cliff-noted my way through it. In any case, I'm so happy I didn't, because I just got the chance to experience it for the first time--as an adult and an aspiring writer--and I'm just blown away. Besides amazing dialogue and a protagonist to make you weep, laugh out loud, and actually give a shit about the story, there are a few things I want to steal from this book.
1. Few adverbs. Maybe it's because I recently finished Stephen King's On Writing, which should be required reading for every writer (and he loathes the adverb with a kind of religious fervor), it's hard not to be indoctrinated. So I was on the hunt for adverbs in this book, and happy to find that they didn't clutter up the sentences like they're wont to do.
2. Bookends. The beginning and ending of this novel are in perfect communication with one another. Go back and re-read the opening after you finish the book, and you can see the work of a skilled storyteller. Everything feels necessary without being heavy-handed.
I have a feeling I'll be plundering the gems of this book for a while.
1. Few adverbs. Maybe it's because I recently finished Stephen King's On Writing, which should be required reading for every writer (and he loathes the adverb with a kind of religious fervor), it's hard not to be indoctrinated. So I was on the hunt for adverbs in this book, and happy to find that they didn't clutter up the sentences like they're wont to do.
2. Bookends. The beginning and ending of this novel are in perfect communication with one another. Go back and re-read the opening after you finish the book, and you can see the work of a skilled storyteller. Everything feels necessary without being heavy-handed.
I have a feeling I'll be plundering the gems of this book for a while.
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