April books

Late, I know, but I’m going to try to start doing this monthly. Starting now.

Snow – Orhan Pamuk

This book won the 2006 Nobel for Literature but several people advised me to read one of Pamuk’s other books instead. This is the only novel of his that I have read, so I can’t say whether they were right or wrong, but the book is very impressive. The narrator is retracing a week or so that his friend, a poet named Ka, spent in a small town in Turkey during a political revolution. The action and characters are sometimes confusing, and a teeny tiny primer on Turkish history and politics would be helpful. I, for one, had never heard of Ataturk, and my understanding of the Turkish system of government was pretty much nonexistant. (If you are going to read Snow, you might want to know that Ataturk is the founder of modern Turkey, and in the 1920’s put together a bunch of secular reforms – making Turkey [at least officially] less “Islamic” and more “European.” It will also be handy to know that “Bey” is a title, not a last name – everyone in the book is Turget Bey, Ka Bey, etc. – I thought the town was wildly inbred but it turns out that “Bey” is a word that used to be the word for “chieftain” and is now used like “Mister.”)

Confusion aside, the book is very entertaining. The revolution in Kars brings new meaning to the term “political theater” when the army takes over the town during a play. Pamuk gets to a lot of interesting issues – the role of suicide in Islam, what it means for a Turkish person to try to be “Western,” how people feel about the labels of “fanatic,” “European,” etc. The personal relationships are also very interesting, though somewhat confusing. The main character falls in love with a beautiful woman, her sister is having a secret affair with a famous terrorist, their father never leaves the house, two young boys from the religious highschool have a connection that borders on the supernatural. There are political assassinations, debates about women wearing headscarves, conversations with terrorists, violent interrogations, poetic inspirations that come from nowhere – so much goes on that it is hard to remember that the main action of the book takes place over the course of just a few days. I found it hard to understand some of the characters and why they were doing the things they were, but I was definitely always interested.

This book is dense. It took me several weeks to finish it, reading a little every day. But it is worth it if you are in the mood for something that’s a little bit of challenge and feel like pondering East/West type thoughts.

Mating – Norman Rush

This might be my favorite book ever. The narrator is a woman who has been living in Botswana for several years, doing research for her failing thesis in Nutritional Anthropology. The action follows her through several minor relationships during her time in the capital city, which are touching and sometimes really hilarious. And because the character is so smart and funny, even these chronicles of her love affairs are somehow intellectual – there are no scenes where the lovers gaze into each others’ eyes across a candlelit table – she falls in love with people for their politics and ideas, which is totally refreshing and really well done. Unlike with Snow, you don’t have to know anything about Botswana to fully enjoy the book and understand the characters and plot. This is largely because most of the main characters are American expats, but it is also because Rush goes out of his way to explain Botswana’s history and politics. The exposition is artfully done though, and woven into the story so you will never feel like you have arrived at the Social Studies Chapter.

Eventually the narrator meets a famous development specialist who is working on a secret project in the middle of the desert (if this sounds stupid, don’t worry – Norman Rush is a much better writer than I am and it doesn’t sounds stupid in his hands). She falls for the guy, and follows him out to the town in the desert. The chapter that deals with her solo trek through the desert is especially interesting. She arrives in the development experiment/town to find that the city’s population is almost entirely women. The rest of the book has great explorations of relationships, feminism, and international development. And while you are pondering these big issues, you also get to read a really engaging story; the plot just thickens and thickens. I won’t say anything more because you should really just read it yourself. Like now.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace

This book of essays is completely smart and hilarious. In the title essay, DFW is sent by Harper’s magazine to go on a luxury cruise and report his experience. The result is this totally on-point, hysterical, manically detailed observation of how silly people are in pursuit of Relaxation And Pampering. David Foster Wallace is so flipping smart and funny that he can go anywhere (a luxury cruise, the Illinois State Fair, a tennis tournament) and or explore any topic (contemporary television, literary criticism) then tell you about it in such a way that you will have no choice but to cringe and/or laugh, or both.

There is, as usual, the enormous vocabulary, extensive use of footnotes, and the great changes of voice going from erudite to cuss words in a single paragraph, like,

“This is related to the phenomenon of the Professional Smile, a national pandemic in the service industry; and no place in my experience have I been on the receiving end of as many Professional Smiles as I am on the [cruise ship] Nadir: maitre d’s, Chief Stewards, Hotel Managers’ minions, Cruise Director — their PS’s all come on like switches at my approach… Anybody who has ever bought a pack of gum at a Manhattan cigar store or asked for something to be stamped FRAGILE at a Chicago post office or tried to obtain a glass of water from a South Boston waitress knows well the soul-crushing effect of a service workers scowl, ie. the humiliation and resentment of being denied the Professional Smile. And the Professional Smile has by now skewed even my resentment at the dreaded Professional Scowl: I walk away from the Manhattan tobacconist resenting not the counterman’s character or absence of good will but his lack of professionalism in denying me the Smile. What a fucking mess.”

The Best American Essays of 2006

It’s hard to summarize a book of essays, so I won’t. I will say that if you like essays, you will like this book. I will also say that one of the essays, Michele Morano’s piece about learning the subjunctive voice and the principles of uncertainty that it encapsulates, is one of the best short pieces of writing I’ve ever read and prompted me to buy her full book, Grammar Lessons, which we can get into when we talk about books I read in May.

The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss starts off breathtakingly. It has everything. The motley cast of characters includes a closeted priest, aging Anglophile twins, and pair of young lovers. The action takes place in two well-rendered settings – a Indian tiny village perched on the slope of a Himalayan mountains near the Nepali border, and the underbelly of New York City, a global village inhabited by illegal and semi-legal immigrants from around the world. The tangled plot covers love, politics, abandonment – even disasters on the Russian space station. From the blurb on the back through the first 300 pages, this book is completely engrossing. And then it ends.

But first things first. The book opens with the story of a young orphan growing up in the care of nuns. If this ensemble novel has a main character, it is her – Sai. Sai’s parents died in Russia years ago. When she is expelled from the convent school because she cannot pay, she is sent to live with her ancient grandfather, who even after 350 pages we will know only as “the judge.” The judge lives in a musty, decaying mansion, with only his cook (who we know only as “the cook”) and an Irish setter to keep him company.

Although admittedly the lovely young girl going to live with the creepy old relative thing has been done before, Desai’s imaginative and detail-heavy prose somehow keeps the opening sections from feeling formulaic. The other characters help with this as well. There is a pair of sisters who live together in the mountain village, talking to one another in fake English accents and hoarding marmalade for special occasions. There are young Nepali guerillas with a political agenda, brutal police officers, and Sai’s awkward science tutor, Gian. Sai and Gian inevitably fall in love, which is fine, but the real romance is between Gian and the town’s band of young revolutionaries, whose aims are vaguely socialist and hinge on creating a separate state for the ethnically Nepali population in the region. As Gian (who is very poor) falls under the spell of the Gorkhaland Army, he falls out of love with Sai (whose family is – or was – very rich). Through this chain of events, Desai explores some interesting territory about the effects of colonialism, the realities of class warfare, and what history might mean to two confused and lonely teenagers.

Meanwhile, another central character emerges. This one, Biju, the cook’s young son, is trying to make it in America. We meet a similarly eccentric cast of characters in Biju’s New York: devout Muslims who work side by side with devout Hindus in the restaurant kitchens of devout capitalists. His various encounters get Biju thinking about religion and philosophy. In one particularly memorable passage, a new friendship forces Biju to ask himself if he really hates all Muslims or all Pakistanis, or if it’s supposed to be only Pakistani Muslims, or both, or neither, and why that might be so. Desai handles difficult topics honestly and gracefully, and Biju’s aloneness in America contrasts starkly with the busy, interconnected lives of those he left behind in the village.

Then Biju comes back home; Gian and Sai have a major argument; the judge’s Irish setter is kidnapped. The book ends.

It’s not that every book needs a happy ending. The Inheritance of Loss was never going to end with all the characters entering promising love affairs and the political tension in the region cathartically resolved. An unhappy ending would have been fine, but the book ended with its major plot points totally unresolved. What happens between the Gorkhaland Army and the people of the village? Is Biju glad to be home? Does Gian ultimately choose Sai or the band of revolutionaries? Will the judge ever find his dog? The book simply drops off before these questions are answered, as if Desai had a page limit that she had fulfilled or she had simply gotten bored of her characters and their problems. If it was the latter, it’s a shame; I could have read on until the stories were over.

Save Money – Watch TV!

This week’s New Yorker devoted their “Shouts & Murmurs” section to the high price of books, and how it’s causing a problem for American readers’ finances.  Good point – books are expensive, especially if you must have the It Novel as soon as it comes out, in hardcover.

The feature included quotes from various people who spend too much buying books.  And there were some decent points made.  For example, if you buy just two new hardcovers a month (at $25 a pop), that’s $600 a year.  And with that kind of liquid cash, you could fill up your gas tank probably 3 or 4 times!

OK, books are expensive.  And it’s particularly hard to justify spending money on them when they are available to all of us for free at the public library.  But here’s a quote from Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R), that I think is just a bit much:

“If every American back in 1950 had quit buying novels and invested money in high-yield bonds, today we would be looking at a savings surplus of several trillion dollars, and Social Security would not be in the mess it’s in…  I would ask every American, before you lavish your next paycheck on expensive novels you may not need, consider the other spending choices available. You could expand your cable service, visit a casino, make a political donation, or give to a faith-based concern.  I think we all know a little bit better how our earnings should be spent than the average novel-writer does.”

Thanks, Jeff.  When I spend $50 bucks at the Strand and keep myself in entertainment and information for a good month or so, I do sometimes feel the sting of frivolity.  But you know what, that’s because I hadn’t thought of spending that money on something more useful, like cable tv or gambling. 

This kind of talk makes me feel the need to defend book-buying against competing spending choices, and so I shall:

REASONS YOU SHOULD CONTINUE TO BUY BOOKS, DESPITE JOE’S ANTI-BOOK FINANCIAL ADVICE

*  High yield bonds look terrible on a bookshelf.  Let’s admit it people – we all love it when guests wander over to our bookcases and start to browse their contents and judge us.  “Oh, you like Jonathan Lethem?  I loved Fortress of Solitude, how is Motherless Brooklyn?”  That’s a conversation starter.  “So, I see you’re into 15-year certificates of deposit?  I’m more of a high yield mutual fund man myself.”  Not so much.

*  Books are enjoyable in a way that gambling just isn’t.  Don’t get me wrong, I like throwing money away while hanging out in a tacky hotel casino with ladies in stretch-pants thinking I’m coming out ahead because of the free cocktails they’re feeding me as much as the next guy.  Reading books?  Different, but still a pretty great time.

* Expanding your cable package is a bad idea.  TV is fun.  I get it.  But seriously, how many varieties of reality show and home-makeover extravaganza do we need to be happy?  I realize that with eleventy-one-thousand channels you could have just hours and hours of ever-changing motion-free entertainment, and with that novel it’s just over when it’s over.  But your cable won’t fit nicely in your purse to read on the subway, and when was the last time you saw something on Spike TV or the Country Music Network that you really had to watch?