The Connectedness of Everything

May 14, 2012 at 2:03 am (Flowers, Lists, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Sundays, Surprises)
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It is nearing the end of Mother’s Day.  It was a beautiful Sunday.  Bella came in, out, in, out.  And the Iceberg rose that self planted in the front yard a couple of years ago chose today to go into sudden and spectacular bloom.  Perhaps if self has more time tomorrow, she will post a picture.

She is reading these three things simultaneously:

  • The AWP Writer’s Chronicle
  • The Women’s Review of Books  (She just renewed her yearly subscription)
  • The Economist

The husband put the TV on to the J. J. Abrams “Star Trek,” and then left the vicinity.  Declared he needed to water.  When self peeked out to see what he was doing in the backyard, he was having a smoke.  A glass of red wine was next to him.  Of course, he also had the sprinkler going.  Good one, husband!  He announced that the watering would take at least “an hour.”  Self went ahead and fed Bella, and then herself.

Self knows she has enough material for a fourth collection of stories.  But how to approach it?  Should she be joining contests?  She doesn’t think she’ll ever win, her stories are too strange, too hard to categorize.  She nearly got published by Grove/Black Cat.  That is, she spoke to an editor twice.  But all came to naught.

Perhaps she should be applying to more residencies.  The very last one she applied for (Hawthornden) is coming, and after that she has nothing for 2013 and 2014.  She deliberately stopped applying because she felt she had work to do in Bacolod.  She still feels she has work to do in Bacolod, but she also needs to get another book published.  What to do, what to do?

Mark Zuckerberg is turning 28.  28!  And Facebook is going public.  But self decides not to buy the stock.

She almost bought Apple stock, she is such a believer.  She still has her 1995 Apple laptop, which she had with her in Mojacar, Spain.  Though it weighs a ton, it is still running!

As of this moment, self has three working laptops, all Apple.  She worships at the Apple Store, yes.  Even though, when she was in DC last month, one of the trio of gals she got to know said, as they passed a bar:  “All white!  Looks like an Apple Store!”

When Steve Jobs passed away, she went right away to the Mother Ship, on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto, and the plate glass windows were covered with post-it notes, in all colors of the rainbow.

Now, self hears that Eduardo Saverin, who was portrayed in “The Social Network” by a riveting Andrew Garfield (the new Spiderman), is renouncing his U.S. citizenship.  Purportedly, “for tax purposes.”  But self feels this news is connected to Facebook’s going public, in some way.  And perhaps also to Zuckerberg becoming a billionaire before he even turned 28.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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NYTBR 15 April 2012: What’s on Dave Sedaris’s Reading Shelf

May 8, 2012 at 3:56 pm (Authors, Books, Lists, Recommended, short story collections)
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The NYTBR has inaugurated a new column, “By the Book,” in which certain prominent writers are asked about the books currently on their reading shelf.  Here are the answers from Dave Sedaris:

Book on the Nightstand:   Shalom Auslander’s Hope:  A Tragedy

Last “Truly Great” Book Read:  Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy:  Ordinary Lives in North Korea; Wells Tower’s story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

Book that made him want to write:  Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

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Reviewing the Reviewers of The NYTBR 8 April 2012 and 22 April 2012

May 5, 2012 at 4:04 pm (Authors, Books, Lists, Recommended, short story collections)
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Here are the reviews self found most interesting reviews from the NYTBR of 8 April 2012:

  1. Miranda Seymour’s review of Thomas Penn’s Winter King:  Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England (Miranda’s an old hand: self adored her biography of Mary Shelley):  Seymour calls Penn’s book “an evocative portrait of this shadowy ruler.”  The review catches self at just the right time:  she’s been in serious history-reading mode, the last few weeks.
  2. Adam Liptak’s review of Ferdinand von Schirach’s new collection of legal stories, Guilt, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway:  Liptak points out an “uneasiness running through these stories,” a feeling that even though a lawyer’s “work is necessary and probably ethical . . .  it may not be moral.”

And more of the same from the NYTBR of 22 April 2012:

  1. The interview of Lena Dunham, conducted by xxxx (Go online to nytimes.com/books to find out).  Dunham is the creator and star of the new HBO series “Girls” (which shows once and for all time that despite not looking like Sarah Jessica Parker and not being able to afford Christian Loboutins, New York City girls can have exciting hook-ups).  Along with answers to fairly standard questions (“What was the last truly great book you read?”) the interview has Dunham responding to “What’s the best book about girls you’ve ever read?”
  2. Rachel Nolan ‘s review of a novel by Mexican writer Daniel Sada, Almost Never, translated by Katherine Silver: Nolan’s review mentions the other two titans of Mexican fiction –  Roberto Bolaño and Juan Rulfo (Pity no women.  Perhaps if Rosario Castellanos had not been electrocuted while stepping out of the shower in — self would like to say Tel Aviv, but isn’t sure).  Nolan possesses a shrewd sense of irony. (“It is 1945:  modernity and Hiroshima try to elbow in on Demetrio’s consciousness, but he’s busy pursuing the ladies.”)
  3. Jan Stuart’s short reviews in the Fiction Chronicle.  Thank you, Mr. Stuart, for injecting into self’s easygoing Saturday morning a mention of “ominous preludes” and “chilling aftermaths.”  To wit:  “This is a book of ominous preludes and chilling aftermaths:  the incantatory account of a vacationer at a war-ravaged resort in the minutes before he drowns; the Pinter-esque power play of a vicar’s wife whose husband offers shelter to a gallingly manipulative stranger.” (in a review of Jon McGregor’s This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You:  Stories).  Stuart also succeeds in making reference to Monopoly, as in:  “Few prizes await the orphans, whose trajectory suggests some nightmarish virtual Monopoly game for refugees, stacked with Go to Jail cards.” (in a review of Caroline Brothers’ first novel, Hinterland)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Most Helpful Reviews: NYTBR 29 January and 5 February 2012

April 8, 2012 at 1:08 am (Authors, Books, Lists, Recommended, short story collections, television)
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Such a beautiful day in the San Francisco Bay Area!  Self and the husband met up with Niece G and we were able to see the exhibit at the Asian Art Museum:  Maharajah, the Splendor of India’s Royal Courts, which closes tomorrow.  Then we walked to Brenda’s, and enjoyed the following:

  1. the beignet sampler (plain, chocolate, apple, and crawfish)
  2. fried catfish
  3. pulled pork belly sandwich with grits
  4. crispy pork belly with grits

And now self is home, and perusing back issues of The New York Times Book Review, specifically those of 29 January 2012 (!!!) and 5 February 2012.

Self’s backlog of stuff to read has certainly exploded to humongous proportions, these past few months.

Here is a list of the reviews self found most helpful in perusing The New York Times Book Review of 29 January 2012:

  • Sarah Wheeler’s review of Alec Wilkinson’s The Ice Balloon:  S. A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration:

Andrée was tall and handsome, with a big nose (a feature that, according to Alec Wilkinson, “people in Sweden regard as an augury of success.”)

  • Samuel G. Freedman’s review of Cullen Murphy’s God’s Jury:  The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World:

. . .  for the goal of this lucid, learned and ultimately predictable book is to present the Inquisition as the template for America during the “global war on terror” declared by President George W. Bush and still being fought.

  • Michael Washburn’s review of Paul M. Barrett’s Glock:  The Rise of America’s Gun:

As Barrett writes, the Glock is “the Google of modern civilian handguns:  the pioneer brand that defines its product category.”

*          *          *

And here is a list of the reviews self found most helpful in perusing The New York Times Book Review of 5 February 2012:

  • Olen Steinhauer’s review of Elmore Leonard’s newest novel, Raylan:

Jazzy prose that occasionally lets go of “proper usage” is Leonard’s trademark.

  • Patrick McGrath’s review of Dan Chaon’s new story collection, Stay Awake: Stories:

A man loses a finger in a fall from a ladder.  Someone glimpses through a window a figure not of this world.  A parent commits suicide.  Children are deformed, abducted, sent away to foster families . . .

  • Caryn James’ review of Neil Jordan’s new novel, Mistaken:

“I grew up . . . under the shadow of a vampire,” says the narrator, a man whose childhood home in Dublin was next door to a house where Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, once lived.

  • Judith Newman’s review of three new Downton Abbey books:  Jessica Fellowes’ The World of Downton Abbey, the Countess of Carnarvon’s Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, and Margaret Powell’s Below Stairs:  The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey:

Until Downton Abbey, I never realized how many of my deepest desires involved ironing.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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A Wakako Yamauchi Turtle

April 2, 2012 at 5:31 am (Authors, Relatives, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers)
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Any animal that appears in a Wakako Yamauchi story is no ordinary animal. Self knows this because she is currently reading the Yamauchi short story, “Dogs I Owe To” (Self posted about the story three hours ago and — fortunately or unfortunately — she has still not yet arrived at the end. That is, in three hours, self has only managed to advance a further two pages.  In fairness, self did cook dinner and also successfully revised a 28-page short story).

In a Wakako Yamauchi story, an animal becomes a vessel for unbounded humor and pathos.  Here, for example, is a passage about a turtle:

In our twenty-five years of marriage, we had one child, Joy.

My husband was a kind and indulgent father.  He gave Joy anything she asked for:  goldfish, chicks, hamsters, a turtle who fell out of his dish and disappeared.  Years later I found him under a dresser.  He had died silently in our bedroom, dehydrating in agony while we slept, made love, made war.

Which brings to self’s mind a memory of the following animal, encountered on her most recent trip to Bacolod:

This turtle lives with Manong Freddie and Manang Marilou on GV & Sons Street in Bacolod City.

Whenever self visited Manong Freddie and Manang Marilou, she could never resist bending down to have a closer look at this fabulous creature, who struggled valiantly against the sides of his red plastic tub, slipping and scrabbling, in a vain effort to reach self (as if he had fallen in love.  Whether with self’s face or with her voice, self truly cannot say.  She rarely elicits reactions of this sort, from animals or humans.  But she was always flattered by the turtle’s affection)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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That Wakako Yamauchi Dog Story

April 2, 2012 at 1:44 am (Books, Family, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers)
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So here is self, settled back home, and able to resume reading the Wakako Yamauchi story (“Dogs I Owe To”) she began reading in Bacolod.  She still hasn’t gotten to the end, but can feel it coming.

This is such a beautiful story.  The language is restrained and yet painfully wrenching.  A Japanese American family adopts a pet, a dog named Dickie.  Many things happen to the family after they adopt Dickie: a baby dies, the family is forced to move out of the Imperial Valley, bankrupted by debt and just general bad luck.  There is a tremendous earthquake, which they all survive, but not much else does.

The narrator’s parents tells her that she must be Dickie’s “executioner.”  That is, it is up to the narrator and her brother to figure out a humane solution to getting rid of this dog, this extra mouth to feed, one that this impoverished family can ill afford.

They decide to leave Dickie in the place where they had last moved from, where nothing remains of their former hopes and dreams:

I said good-bye in my heart because it seemed hypocritical to say it out loud.  I couldn’t speak to my brother, who was dealing with his own emotions.  I watched Dickie run after us until the road turned.  I prayed he would find his way back to the Augustas and that they, with kinder hearts than ours, would feed him, give him a drink, and pat him now and then.

That wasn’t the last time I saw Dickie.  For years he came to me in my dreams, always running, running to me.  Sometimes I’m on a bus, sometimes in a stranger’s car.  Once his back appeared to be broken, but he continued to run.  I am always watching him from a window, on a moving vehicle, my heart cut out of me.

We never returned to Imperial.

Self wishes to thank Lillian Howan, from the very bottom of her heart, for putting this collection of Wakako Yamauchi’s stories together.  Self feels so lucky:  she gets to read this collection in dribs and drabs, usually when she is flying to or leaving Bacolod.  She’ll always think of the book this way:  bookends to the brief periods when she is out of herself.  When she ceases to be a mother, or a wife, or a teacher or even a writer.  In Bacolod, she is nothing, simply her father’s daughter.

It’s funny how, in the story excerpt above, the narrator mentions seeing Dickie in her dreams.  For some reason, self’s dream life expanded considerably on this last trip.  She dreamt when she was on the airplane, both going to and coming from Bacolod.  She dreamt every single night of her trip, except for the one week where Zack joined her.  The dreams were usually nightmares, involving family members she hadn’t seen or spoken to in a while.  Once (on the plane to Bacolod), she dreamt about being attacked by a bunch of ferocious gorillas who had escaped from a zoo.  Another time, she dreamt that Dearest Mum was knocking on the front door of her house in Redwood City.  Knocking and knocking and knocking.

Self dreamt about her brother-in-law, Richard, and about her husband.  She dreamt about lizards and about losing her way in the intricacies of an unfamiliar house.  Each dream was long and complicated and always ended ambiguously.

When self got back to Redwood City, the dreams vanished.  What does this mean?

Stay tuned.

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A Dog and a Girl: Wakako Yamauchi’s “Dogs I Owe To” in ROSEBUD AND OTHER STORIES

March 22, 2012 at 10:23 pm (Authors, Books, Conversations, Family, Food and Drink, Relatives, short story collections, Women Writers)
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“Dogs I Owe To” is a wonderful story from Wakako Yamauchi’s collection Rosebud and Other Stories (University of Hawai’i Press), edited by the fabulous Lillian Howan.  Here’s an excerpt from the Foreword:

Secret desires, unfulfilled longing and irrepressible humor flow through his stories, writings that depict the life of Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans.  Through the medium of her storytelling, the reader enters the world of desert farmers, factory workers, gamblers, housewives, con artists and dreamers, the bitter and the ever-hopeful.

And an excerpt from “Dogs I Owe To” :

The Great American Depression was winding down, but there was little money on the average farm.  We recycled our clothes and ate off the land.  Meat was not a staple at our house.  We didn’t keep animals on the farm because it wasn’t practical.  At that time in America, noncitizens weren’t permitted to own land, and Japanese, by law, were denied citizenship.  Again, by law, land leases to Asian immigrants were limited to three years, so every two or three years, Japanese farmers loaded houses and farm gear on trucks to move to yet another barren patch of land.  We were nomads; there was no hunkering down with large animals.  It was too hard to herd them from place to place.  We even stopped keeping chickens.

It was also before the advent of dry or canned pet food –  not that we could have bought Dickie any.  He was happy to eat leftover rice drenched in soy sauce.  In spring he gnawed on yellow crookneck squash.  He didn’t like eggplant or tomatoes.  He had on occasion mutton or lamb discarded by shepherds who passed through.  He woke up happy to be alive, jumping and bounding in the sharp morning air.  I didn’t allow him to touch me with his dusty paws, especially when I was dressed for school, so he pranced parallel to me, leaping and dancing, happy with even this tiny space in the grand scheme of things.

It’s a beautiful collection.

*     *     *

And, three days after beginning the Yamauchi story, self still hasn’t gotten to the end.  Last night was big shebang at Tita Lily’s house on Sixth Street, in honor of Tita Lily’s 93rd birthday.  There was:

  • ballroom dancing
  • chicken relleno
  • father of execrable Ida, who delivered the biggest snub (to self) a few days ago at the  Balay Daku, which only serves to prove how fierce a father’s love can be (And self heard that he himself doesn’t even get along with Ida!  But blood is always thicker than water, even when that water belongs to the family that has hired not only this man, but his daughter, and his son, and kept them all well-fed for 50 years)
  • leche flan
  • lechon
  • live music
  • mass
  • seafood paella with black rice
  • Zack

Self left early and found that she missed the slide show.  There was a picture of her as a toddler, sitting on the lap of Dearest Mum.  If self had been there to see it, she might very well be in a different place this morning.  She might be at the Balay Daku, attending the annual meeting of the GV & Sons stockholders.

But, as she told cousin Baby Par last night, she is an outsider:  an annoying one, to be sure, yet in the end completely irrelevant.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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2nd Weekend of February (2012)

February 10, 2012 at 11:03 pm (anthologies, Books, Filipino Writers, Movies, short story collections, Weather)
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This morning was chilly and overcast (although, after experiencing the frigid nights of Dharamsala in January, self thinks she will never complain about her unheated house, ever again), but now the sun’s come out.  It is Friday!  Oh happy happy joy joy.

The Grammys are this weekend, though self is not as excited as she was for the Golden Globes.  Adele will clean up, that’s all she knows.  Maybe Lady Gaga will delight with a particularly outré outfit.

They caught Madonna’s stalker.  Apparently, he was an escaped inmate from a mental asylum — ?

No rejections yet today (though she hasn’t checked all of her e-mail).

The husband thinks the Ancient One is on her last legs.  Self sees the deterioration.  Her pet doesn’t even react to a piece of bacon put right under her nose.  It seemed to have gotten worse while self was in India.  One more stretch of not seeing self, and Bella will keel over.  Self prays it doesn’t happen when she is home.  One dog’s expiring (April 2011, Gracie) was awful enough.  Perhaps the husband can do death duties this time.

One thing that always made self curious was why “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy” was nowhere in evidence in the last Golden Globes.  She thought Gary Oldman’s and Tom Hardy’s performances were very fine.  Did the omission have something to do with cut-off dates?

The Denzel Washington/ Ryan Reynolds thriller opened today.  Self still wants to see Liam Neeson punch out wolves in “The Grey.”

Want to know something?  Self is really, really, disproportionately happy today.  She has decided to finish The Best Philippine Short Stories of the Twentieth Century (in English), which she started reading years –  this is truly pathetic –  ago.  Currently, she is on p. 448, which means she is right in the middle of the Cirilo F. Bautista story, “Ritual” (Nice title, that!).  Here’s a short excerpt:

There was a knock on the door followed by the entrance of a dark-skinned man carrying several books.  His white trousers and white shirt were spotless; the electric bulb was reflected on his shoes.

“Carlos Dayleg, in charge of the fourth class,” Father Van Noort said to me by way of introducing the newcomer.

“I think we’ve already met,” Dayleg said, extending his hand.  It was only then that I realized he was the man I asked directions from a few hours ago.  He must have noticed my surprise.  “Yes, we met this morning.  In this place it is not uncommon for natives to change to more civilized attire.  As for me, I do it only on special occasions.”

Here are a few thoughts that occurred to self while she was reading the above:

  • It is very hard to keep a white shirt and white trousers clean, especially in the tropics.  But that’s what characters always seem to wear in the tropics, even the ones in Somerset Maugham.
  • Self has already completely forgotten where this story is supposed to be taking place (though the name “Dayleg” sounds vaguely Igorot — ?)
  • The presence of the word “native” is excusable because the “native” is calling himself “the native.”

Here’s yet another passage, from several pages later:

Three school terms I had worked with him but I knew nothing about him, except his preference for canned food, his indifference to women, his love for the rice terraces.  Not that he was reserved or aloof –  he was sociable — but his sociability revealed merely the outer encumbrances of his personality, much as the sphinx revealed merely the outer characteristics of its animalism, but the mystery that shrouded it amidst the burning desert sands few could untangle.  Perhaps the metaphor was far-fetched; perhaps he was enigmatic, not because I could not understand him, but because I was analyzing him from an irrelevant angle.  Luisa had told me that I was always inclined to be poetic.

Last night self attempted to inveigh sole fruit of her loins to visit Bacolod with his girlfriend.  An idea which son does not seem to find particularly attractive, self knows not why.  But one cannot have everything, in this world!  One can simply live, as best as one knows how to.  Back to her reading.

Stay tuned.

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From Self’s Story “Picture” (in Her 2005 Collection, MAYOR OF THE ROSES)

November 18, 2011 at 4:58 pm (Books, Conversations, Dearest Mum, Family, Filipino Writers, short story collections, Women Writers)
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This is a story about self’s parents.  It was in Mayor of the Roses, her second collection, published by Miami University Press:

The woman leaning forward is self’s mother.

She’s leaning forward, as if to kiss him.  There’s a mark on his cheek; perhaps she’s done it already.  They are both smiling.

These were my parents in Manila, circa 1956.  They were happy:  they had always been happy.  The happiness of their marriage was like a reproach.

I didn’t think he looked that ugly, but I hear a voice saying, over and over, La unica problema es que no es guapo. It’s a woman speaking, her voice is thick with fury.  It was probably my grandmother.  This, at least, was what my mother led me to believe.

*     *     *     *     *

I am collecting old pictures now.  I don’t know what this tells me about this stage of my life.

Here’s a picture self drew when she was about five.  Who is that woman and why did self draw her wearing a green kimono?  Who knows.  Dearest Mum had the picture framed.

The 5-Year-Old Artist

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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NYTBR, May 8, 2011: Book Reviews Worthy of Clipping

June 8, 2011 at 3:57 am (Authors, Books, Lists, short story collections)
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It’s another Tuesday evening, and self is winding down for the day.  As usual, she reaches into her handy pile of stuff and pulls out the first thing that comes to hand:  This time it’s the New York Times Book Review of 8 May 2011.

This one has a lot of really outstanding, well-written book reviews.  Here are the ones that seem the most interesting:

  1. Kevin Brockmeier’s review of Graham Joyce’s novel, The Silent Lamb.  The review addresses “the architecture” of Joyce’s prose:  “This was the sort of book,” Brockmeier writes, “. . .  that would build its meanings sentence by sentence, pausing to gather itself together again after every period.”
  2. Leslie H. Gelb’s review of Mohamed ElBaradei’s The Age of Deception:  Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.  “Baradei,” Gelb writes, “was an intimate participant in dramatic nuclear proliferation confrontations that dominated headlines.  He served as a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog and inspection arm, for 13 years (1984- 1997) before rising to its director-generalship in 1997.”  This was a very dry review but, nevertheless, it was informative:  like a history lesson packaged in the form of a review.  Which is simply excellent for multi-taskers like self.
  3. Marilyn Stasio’s regular column on “Crime” books.  Among the books she reviews:  a “great comeback” by Thomas Perry, The Informant; Belinda Bauer’s Dark Side, “a plausible whodunit about an undetected serial killer running amok in an English village”; and Chris Knopf’s Black Swan, in which the “beach bum hero” engages in “banter with imperfect strangers” that “is a cut above the norm” (Self loves the “beach bum hero” thang, perhaps they could get Owen Wilson for the movie.  Seriously:  Marilyn Stasio is the reason behind self’s flowering of interest in mysteries of all descriptions:  from John Burdett to Karin Fossum to Arnaldur Indridason)
  4. J. Courtney Sullivan’s immensely entertaining end-paper essay, “Don’t I Know You From the Dust Jacket?” which cites several published authors who continue to work their day jobs in “good independent bookstores,” even after having achieved fame and/or financial independence.  Among these:  Ellen Meeropol (Her first novel, House Arrest, was just published February), Jennifer Close (whose novel Girls in White Dresses is due out in August), and Famous Bestselling Author of Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, who loved working in bookstores so much that he started his own, Booked Up, in his hometown of Archer City, Texas.

Stay tuned.

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