Quote of the Day: From Edward P. Jones’ ALL AUNT HAGAR’S CHILDREN

Began reading Edward P. Jones’ All Aunt Hagar’s Children on the plane home from Washington (Wow, the reading was almost a week ago!  How is that possible ???).  The thing with an Edward P. Jones’ story is, you have to read it twice.  Which is the only way.  Because the narrative style is so intricate, you read and read and by the time you get to the end of the story, your head is upside down and you think, What was this story about anyway?

But when you go back and re-read, the stories bloom, they really do.  They are so beautiful.  Like prose poems.  Looong prose poems.

So, this is the reason it’s taken self a week to read 257 pages (And, as dear blog readers well know, self’s usual rate is two books a week!)

Here she is on a story, “Adam Robinson Acquires Grandparents and a Little Sister” (which self thinks is an extremely disappointing title:  because that is exactly what the story is about, how “Adam Robinson acquires . . .  ” etc etc.  But, once again, self digresses).  It’s a great story. The one before it, “Common Law,” was pretty great as well (It’s probably the most horrific story self has ever read about domestic violence).  In the Adam Robinson story, a six-year-old boy, the title character, has just been re-united with his grandparents.  The boy’s parents have disappeared.  The boy has been missing for two years, and by the time the grandfather finds him again, the boy has suffered something unspeakable.  There are scars on his back.  When the boy tells his grandmother he knows a song, it turns out the song is nothing but “a bunch of nonsense words” (How heartbreaking is that?)

Understandably, the grandfather, Noah, has a pretty bad case of insomnia, worse even than self’s:

For many nights after Adam’s arrival, Noah had managed to get some three hours of sleep.  But Tuesday night he slept for no more than two hours.  After lying with his eyes open for an hour and trying to will himself back to sleep, he got up at about two and went quietly out of the room.

Self loves the way Noah seems to think that sleeping three hours a night is a good night’s sleep!  A few paragraphs on, there is a passage that could only have been written by someone who knows intimately the sufferings of the unable-to-sleep:

About three he put his feet up on the couch.  At four he went to the refrigerator and got a slice of cheese, the throw around his shoulders.  At four-thirty he went in and saw that Adam was asleep.  At five he went back for two more slices of cheese and folded them and dipped them into the mayonnaise jar.  At a quarter to six the deliveryman dropped the newspaper at his door and Noah opened the door and stood at the threshold with the newspaper in his hand and looked at the metal stairs that led up to the roof.

Noah’s wife, on the other hand, “had always been able to fall asleep within five minutes of putting her head on the pillow.”  Which is exactly like hubby:  He will say, I’m going to sleep.  And then he does sleep.  And he is fully capable of sleeping for ten, eleven hours at a stretch.  Self has always been extremely envious of this ability.  She was even more envious when she read somewhere that people who have insomnia do not live as long as people who get healthy amounts of sleep (!!@@##)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Not Done/ Done

First, the Not Done:

1. The biggest disappointment of the day was that self did not get to watch John Travolta in “From Paris With Love.”  Self is a sucker for anything Luc Besson.  But she didn’t feel like breaking a $20 just so she could pay $6 for the movie —  BWAH HA HA!  (Neither did she get around to watching Netflix rental “Julie & Julia,” which has been sitting on her coffee table for weeks, weeks!  Sorry, Meryl:  self loves you, but she wishes you would make an action movie!  Bet you would really kick butt!)
2. Next, self did not walk the li’l crits.  After living with Dear Cuz for four days, and seeing how she walks her very own dog Flora four times a day, even in the most bitter cold (though of course she dresses up Flora in a red coat first!), self’s behavior toward li’l crits might be tantamount to animal abuse.
3. She has not yet begun to cook dinner (Let’s hope she gets an idea about what to cook before hubby gets home!)

Now, the Done:

1. Swept up doggie hair, after spending almost an entire day watching them waft from one end of the house to the other.
2. Boiled linguini.  Ate.  This is just about the easiest task imaginable, at least in self’s list of tasks.
3. Called Dearest Mum.  She has gotten in touch with everyone self has ever written about in a story.  Primarily the help.  This is pretty amazing.
4. Went to Wegman’s.  Bought anemone “Jerusalem Red”; Salvia “Forest Fire”; blue forget-me-nots.
5. Read an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous story by Roberto Bolaño (“William Burns”) in a back issue of The New Yorker.  Again wondered why it is not possible to honor writers while they are still alive.  (Well, self liked everything about the story except for the very last paragraph, which she thought was pretty banal.  But banal Roberto Bolaño is still way better than top-notch everyone else)
6. Dragged in from the porch two huge boxes (from mail-order catalogues) addressed to hubby.  House is gradually filling up with the most surprising gew-gaws (battery-powered helicopters, lime green silicon egg poachers, motorized potato slicers:  you name it, hubby has ordered it)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

What Self Is Currently Writing (She Thinks)

The monthly blood was strong again.  It doubled her over:  she couldn’t speak, could barely move.  She thought of the one inside her, the stillborn creature who, her mother said, was angry because she had never been given life.  She came every month and tormented Ella, jumping up and down, kicking against her navel, and screaming, “I’m here!  I’m here!  I’m here!”

New to Literary Magazines Links

Necessary Fiction

The featured story is Robert Kloss’ fantastic “The Man Who Lived Amongst the Cannibals.”  With a title like that, how can a story not be fab?  The main character is the redoubtable Herman Melville.  It is so very, very different from any story self has read before.

Check it out here.

Self’s short short, “Witness,” will be up tomorrow!

Re-Reading Self’s Own Work

As self is trying to decide what to read at next week’s Stereo/Story performance at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, she thinks it would be wise to go over a few of her stories, especially the ones from her second collection, Mayor of the Roses.  There’s a story she wrote, “Extinction,” which was first published in ZYZZYVA.  It’s about the mythical land of P________  .  The story is divided into sections, each with their own sub-titles.  Here’s a section called “Symbiosis” :

SYMBIOSIS from Mayor of the Roses:  Stories (Miami University Press)

In P_________, as in all countries, there was a ruling class.  But the rulers of P_________ were more than extraordinarily dependent on a lower class.  And the lower class liked very much to go to the movies.  Consequently, the movie stars  —  the male ones, at least  —  became the ruling class.

These movies were generally of very poor quality.  Curiously, the female stars were named after soft drinks:  that is, they had names like Pepsi and Sarsi, and they liked to take all their clothes off.  Later, Pepsi hung herself, and Sarsi went mad.  After a few years, no one even remembered them.

One movie star became very famous for his roles as an aggressive policeman.  He was constantly karate-chopping a gang of robbers or mowing down thugs with an Armalite.  He is now the President of the country.  The people have a special name for him, only two syllables.  They don’t bother calling him “Mr. President.”  They know him by the two-syllable name.  Such a country!

Pace, Brillante Mendoza.  “Extinction” is still one of self’s favorite stories.

More Reading: A Review of Trevor Carolan’s ANOTHER KIND OF PARADISE: SHORT STORIES FROM THE NEW ASIA-PACIFIC

The first thing self learns from Joseph Blake’s review of Another Kind of Paradise, published in the Fall/ Winter 2009 issue of the Pacific Rim Review of Books, is that “I couldn’t name a dozen writers from the countries included in Another Kind of Paradise.”

Ah, so this is precisely the kind of reader that the anthology aims at.

Blake then goes on to say that “the vast Asia-Pacific region that Carolan’s book reflects and its myriad neighborhoods of religion and culture share a history of village storytelling.”  Blake says his favorite stories from the collection are “written by women.” (Thank you, thank you so much Mr. Blake!)

Here are his favorites:

• Seiko Tanabe’s “The Innocent,” a “soul-wrenching, ash-dry portrait of a single, urban female office-worker’s relationships with men and girl friends” (Self really liked this story as well!)
• Vietnamese writer Pham Thi Hoai’s “Nine Down Makes Ten,” in which “nine men representing different facets of Vietnam’s workers’ paradise are portrayed with a sadly bitter and mocking tone limed with a dash of weary self-deprecation.”

The book is published by Boston’s Cheng & Tsui.  Not sure whether local chain bookstores will have it, but dear blog readers can certainly order direct from the publisher!

Here’s a little about the book’s editor, Trevor Carolan:

Trevor Carolan was born in Yorkshire and began writing professionally at age seventeen, filing dispatches from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury music scene. He is widely published as a journalist, literary critic, anthologist, poet, and translator and has also worked as a media advocate for international human rights, Canadian Aboriginal land claims, and Pacific Coast watershed issues.

Stay tuned.

Quote of the Day: Antonya Nelson Reviews Robert Stone for The NYTBR

Self was going to go to the Post Office but then son called with an urgent request and then self decided that the only way to fulfill the request was to go painstakingly through her “pile of stuff” (which is huge and probably contains six months worth of back correspondence) and then the weather started to change and turn cloudy, and the day was not so nice, so self decided to give herself a break and eat the cheesecake she was going to surprise hubby with tonight …

Suffice it to say that it seems unlikely self will get to the post office today. Instead, she’s reading The New York Times Book Review of 31 January 2010 (which, come to think of it, was just yesterday) and there is a review by

2nd Most Gorgeous Day of 2010

Self simply cannot describe her emotions today:  it is so overwhelming, the sight of actual sun.  Tonight is the Maxine Hong Kingston reading at Stanford.  Ah, another trip down memory lane.  Looking up the reading venue on the Stanford map, she sees that it is quite close to something called the “New Guinea Garden.” Also, it is a short walk from White Plaza.  Perhaps self will head over a little early so she can drop by the Stanford Bookstore.

The magnolia tree she planted in her backyard a few weeks ago is leaning very far to the side, but hubby claims that it “looks OK,” self suspects because he is reluctant to do his manly duty and prop it up with a stick or something.  Come to think of it, he’s been making himself extremely scarce in the garden of late, there must be all manner of exciting things going on in the sports world:  NFL playoffs, and so forth and so on.  Self still can’t believe Roddick flamed out of the Australian Open.  He should have won that game, that game against Cilic.

Anyhoo, at least self is probably having a better day than Roddick.  She was driving home from her morning stint at the Writing Center when she saw that —  Hallelujah! —  the building they are erecting on the site of the old Kentucky Fried Chicken place on El Camino near Whipple is:  another KFC!  Considering that KFC is self’s faaavorite fastfood, this discovery made self go all happy happy joy joy, happy happy joy joy.

Let’s see, in honor of this gorgeous day, self treated herself to a solitary lunch at Higuma.  And  —  goodness gracious! —  what has happened to that place since she was last there, over a year ago?  It was so crowded, she was lucky to find a seat!  Most of the tables were occupied by groups of office people, predominantly men.  The table directly in front of self were all men, and they talked about their wives in fondly semi-derogatory terms.  Self glanced studiously at her New York Times Book Review.

Then, in the mail today, a copy of Michelle Cruz Skinner’s new collection, from Bamboo Ridge Press.  Self contributed a blurb:  she sees now that Zack did, too, as well as one of her favorite short story writers, Ron Carlson.  Here’s what Ron Carlson had to say about Michelle’s collection, In the Company of Strangers (very nice title, that!):

Michelle Cruz Skinner shows us again that exile sometimes captures the body and sometimes the heart; she writes closely about love and life in a family, and we see that distance, longing, and desire all can contribute to the things misplaced in translation.

Very nice.  And now self becomes extremely graceful to the people who blurbed her books:  Zack, David Henry Hwang (though he probably doesn’t remember, it was so long ago), fellow Stanford classmate Ehud Havazelet (Ehud remembers!) and Jessica, the wondrous Jessica.

And now self begins to wonder what might have happened to the short story she submitted to Bamboo Ridge, almost a year ago?  Has it been lost?  Rejected without her knowledge?  Who knows?  It is embarrassing to have to follow up.  Never mind!  The day is simply too gorgeous to dwell on possible rejections.

(Did anyone see “Caprica” last night?  Woo-hoo, the birth of AI!  Not to mention Eric Stoltz.  How very, very fab.)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Perusing the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Best Books of 2009”

Books self is interested in reading after perusing the San Francisco Chronicle’s list of “100 best books of 2009”:

Fiction

• The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker
• Don’t Cry:  Stories, by Mary Gaitskill
• Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned:  Stories, by Wells Tower
• A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Also in The Economist’s list of Best Books of 2009)
• Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
• Little Bird of Heaven, by Joyce Carol Oates
• Lowboy, by John Wray
• Nothing Right:  Short Stories, by Antonya Nelson
• Once the Shore:  Stories, by Paul Yoon
• The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y. K. Lee
• Spoiled:  Stories, by Caitlin Macy
• The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamande Ngozi Adichie
• The Way Through Doors, by Jesse Ball

Nonfiction

• The Invisible Hook:  The Hidden Economics of Pirates, by Peter T. Leeson
• The Slippery Year:  A Meditation on Happily Ever After, by Melanie Gideon
• Somewhere Towards the End:  A Memoir, by Diana Athill

*          *          *          *

Books self is interested in reading after perusing the San Francisco Chronicle’s list of “Notable Bay Area Books of 2009”:

Fiction

• All That Work and Still No Boys, by Kathryn Ma
• Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazel
• The Enthusiast, by Charlie Haas
• Revenge of the Spellmans, by Lisa Lutz
• The Tricking of Freya, by Christina Sunley

Nonfiction

• Righteous Dopefiend, by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg

Perusing THE ECONOMIST’S Best Books of the Year 2009

Books self is interested in reading after perusing The Economist’s Books of the Year 2009:

Politics and Current Affairs

• It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower, by Michela Wrong, a “down-to-earth yet sophisticated exposé of how an entire country can be munched in the clammy claws of corruption and tribalism”

Biography and memoirs

• The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham, by Selina Hastings, about “one of the finest short-story stylists Britain has ever produced”
• Constable in Love:  Love, Landscape, Money and the Making of a Great Painter, by Martin Gayford, about how “John Constable, disapproved of by his wife’s relatives, his own family and his painting peers, was buoyed by the support of his wife, Maria Bicknell, and triumphed in the end”
• William Golding:  The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies, by John Carey, “the first authorised biography”

History

• Poorly Made in China:  An Insider’s Account of the Tactics Behind China’s Production Game, by Paul Midler, a “useful analysis by a consultant who advises Western companies on what to do about China’s manufacturing problems”

Science and technology

• Catching Fire:  How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham, a “persuasive analysis of the evolutionary role of cookery”

Culture and society

• A Jury of Her Peers:  American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, by Elaine Showalter, a blend of “academic respect and robust judgment with humour and a common touch”
• The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Vol. 1, 1929 – 1940, “letters from Samuel Beckett’s most prolific decade”
• Outside of a Dog:  A Bibliomemoir, by Rick Gekoski, “a roly-poly book dealer with a passion for Groucho Marx’s motto:  Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.“

Fiction

• Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, “a deserved winner of the Man Booker prize”
• Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro, “the Canadian winner of the 2009 Man Booker International prize”
• Love and Summer, by William Trevor, “an elegant collection”
• The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer, “a novelist who has an inquisitive, and quite un-English, interest in history and science”
• Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, by Geoff Dyer, “this is by far his best”
• Your Face Tomorrow:  Poison, Shadow and Farewell, by Javier Marias, transl. by Margaret Jull Costa, a spy thriller that is also “a novel of ideas”
• In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin, “a remarkable debut”
• The Winter Vault, by Anne Michaels, a novel “of violence, death and bereavement, and about survivors who are also mourners”