Friday Picture Reading - The Art of Manliness

Reading, The Art of Manliness

Today is the last day to take The TBR Dare.  Since it starts on Jan. 1, all entries must be submitted by midnight Pacific time.  If you'd like to join in the fun just leave a comment below. You can get details about The TBR Dare here.  

I Triple-Dog-Dare You

It's time  to sign up for The TBR Dare. 

The idea is simple--starting January 1, 2011, read only books currently in your TBR stack.  You can sign up for one week, for one month, or you can go for the gusto and do whole enchilada--January 1 to April 1--three months of reading only books you already own. 
(The TBR Dare ends on April Fool's Day because only a fool would take this dare.)  Full details can be found on The TBR Dare page by using the tab at the top or clicking the picture in the sidebar.

You wanted to read all those books when you bought them, so now's your chance.

If you have decided not to accept challenges this year, remember, The TBR Dare is not a challenge; it's a dare.  There's a difference.  And you can modify the rules to suit yourself.  Make exceptions for book club books or just pledge to read one book from your TBR shelf.  Whatever you like.  Dakota and I believe challenges, read-a-longs and dares are all about having fun.  So have fun.

 If you'd like to join in, sign up by leaving a comment below. I'll add your blog to the links list on The TBR Dare page this weekend.  If you like, please help spread the word by posting one of the buttons to your blog.   The more the merrier. 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In my younger and more vulnerable

years my father gave me some advice

that I've been turning over in my

mind ever since.

Opening to

The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you grew up in America, there's a very good chance you read The Great Gastby by F. Scott Fitzgerald in high school.  You were probably 16 or 17 years old.  You probably grew impatient with Jay Gatsby's pining for Daisy Buchanan.  He so needs to get over her.  She's just not that into him.  What is it with rich white people anyway?

Your teacher probably tried to explain that Daisy Buchanan is more than a former fling.  She's a symbol for all that Gatsby  has dreamt of becoming since he was a boy.  She represents the life of wealth and leisure that self-made men like Gatsby aspire to.  She is the American dream.  The green light on the end of her dock that Gatsby stares at each night from his own home across the water stands for the dream every American is supposed to have. 

You probably scribbled something in your notebook and wondered if any of this would be on the test.

Green light, you wrote. Yellow car.  Women sitting on white sofas, curtains that billow like clouds represent the ocean's waves.  Ash heaps.  The eyes of Dr. Eckleberg's  billboard. A library  of unread books,  pages waiting to be cut.  An unused swimming pool.

"Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!" someone at a party says.

Maybe you're one of the lucky ones The Great Gatsby spoke to, even at age 16.  Dreamers watching their own metaphorical green light shining at the end of some metaphorical dock  night after night.  Waiting for their chance to make their grasp eqaul their reach.  Longing for something commesurate to their capacity for wonder. 

I've always loved The Great Gatsby.  The first book we read in the first class I took in graduate school, I remember a student telling me before class that now she sees she hasn't missed much by not reading the white man's cannon.  Hasn't missed much! I thought.  You've missed The Great Gatsby!  (I also thought if you don't like reading books by white men, you probaby shouldn't be an English major.)

You can see by now that I'm not capable of writing a objective review of The Great Gatsby. I'm still a  bit in love with it.  People in love cannot rationally view the object of their love.  You know what they're like.  I'm glad that I don't teach high school.  Seeing just one student reject The Great Gatsby would break my heart.  And there's always one. 

One on whom a paragraph like this one is wasted:

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.  And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world.  Its vanished trees, the tress that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

They don't write 'em like that anymore.



Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolano

At fifteen, Edelmire Thompson

published her first book, To Daddy,

which earned her a modest place in

the vast gallery of lady poets active

in Buenos Aires high society.

Opening to

Nazi Literature in the Americas

by Roberto Bolano,

translated by Chris Andrews.

Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas is an encyclopedic look at a fictional literary movement.  Novelists, poets, short story writers, magazine editors and publishers are all given detailed entries covering their lives and work.  Minor figures and publications are listed in the appendices at the back.  All down to the least significant fictional fascist author is included, lovingly, even reverently described.

Is Mr. Bolano playing a dangerous game with his readers?  For the most part, the people included seem harmless.  Their work is literature; the book about them non-political.  Most of the biographical entries don't appear fascist at all, let alone Nazi.  There is no talk of Anti-Semitism, or racial superiority, or eugenics.  The final solution is not mentioned nor is there any discussion of World War II.  The writers described in Mr. Bolano's book are concerned not with politics but with poetics.  If the cover didn't say Nazi, you'd never guess.

Mr. Bolano's characters are a self-important, delusional bunch.  Relegated to obscurity by history, they still consider themselves a vital literary movement.  Mr. Bolano's "narrator" does nothing to subvert this notion.  His tone recognizes the importance of the writers and publications described.  He could easily be a university professor documenting a lifetime's worth of research.  But while the writers included in Nazi Literature in the Americas interact with some of the canonical authors of their day--Borges, Ginsberg to name a few--they do not make an impact on either them or the literary world of their time.  In the end, to this reader's relief,  Mr. Bolano's Nazis are a pathetic bunch. 

But just how hard is Mr. Bolano pulling our leg?  Had history taken a different course, would a Nazi poetics have emerged?  Would the authors described in Nazi Literature in the Americas be the ones occupying center stage while Borges and Ginsberg struggled in obscurity?   These are not easy questions for those of us who value literature.  We hope there is something about literature that places it above politics.  We don't like to think about how literature is also determined by politics.  They say the winners write the history books, but don't they also write the poetry?

Reading Nazi Literature in the Americas is much like reading an encyclopedia.  That is both a compliment and a complaint.   Mr. Bolano maintains the objective voice commonly found in good encyclopedias throughout most of his novel.  This objectivity serves to present his fictional characters in a non-judgemental manner that underscores how feeble their efforts are while it makes the reader uneasy by invoking our sympathy.  We chuckle at their absurdity, feel guilty about it, then feel guilty for feeling guilty. 

But reading an encyclopedia, even a very well written one, becomes a tedious experience at some point.  Encyclopedias are not meant to be read cover to cover. Novels are.  Mr. Bolano's narrator himself falls victim to the same tedium his readers begin to experience.  Towards the end of Nazi Literature in the Americas he loses his objective, encyclopedia writer voice, and becomes a story teller.  The last few entries in the book are really short stories, not biographical essays.  Perhaps that makes Mr. Bolano's experiment a failure, since he couldn't keep it up all the way to the finish.  Perhaps it simply recognizes the needs of his reader and the needs of his narrator who just can't help himself anymore.  He's a fan, he wants to tell the story with all its inherent drama. Objectivity be damned. 



There is still time, brother.

If you haven't already signed up for The TBR Dare you have a few days left to build up your courage and go for it. For details about how it works go here. To sign up just leave a comment below.  You can go for the gold and pledge to read only books on your TBR shelves from Jan. 1 until April 1, or you can pledge to read just one book, or any number in between. Go ahead and make your own rules.  If you dare.

Stories: All New Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

He grew up in the Dracula's city.

Opening to

"Blood"

by Roddy Doyle

I wish I liked Neil Gaimon.  He seems like a genuinely nice guy, worthy of the large following he has throughout the English speaking world. Probably beyond by now.  I've tried to read three of his books; made it to the end of one, The Graveyard Book.  It was okay.  But I remain ambivilent.  Lukewarm in my priase.

Three selections into Stories, a collection of new fiction by a wide range of authors edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, I'm still lukewarm.  I loved one, liked a second, did not like the third.  (I don't read more than three stories from a single anthology at a time. That's my rule.)

The one I loved was "Blood" by Roddy Doyle.  I love Roddy Doyle.

Join Short Story Monday at The Book Mine Set

"Blood" is a story of modern people facing a dark primal force they don't quite believe in.  Instead of becoming emotional, they face the darkness with an urban sense of detachment.  If you've ever lived in a large city, you know that strange things happen there all the time.  One learns not to react, certainly not to over-react.  So you wake up one morning with an unexpected craving for blood.  Nothing one can't handle. 



Roddy Doyle
Image from Wikipedia



Mr. Doyle's story reminded me of another favorite, Peter S. Beagle's "Lila the Werewolf."  In Mr. Beagle's story a man wants to break-up with his girlfriend, not because she's a werewolf, but for various other reasons.   Her being a werewolf just complicates things.  Mr. Doyle's hero doesn't think he's becoming a vampire, he just craves blood.  And he has to find some way to get it without his wife and kids finding out what he's doing.

The story is a twisted delight. 

Should one out of three stories in the rest of Mr. Gaimon and Mr. Sarrantonio's book be this good, I'll be pleased which ranks as better than lukewarm.

Full Disclosure: I received and advanced review copy of Stories from the publisher.

 There is still time to join The TBR Dare.  Pledge to read only books from your "To Be Read" shelf from January 1 until April 1 or as long as you dare.  For more information go here.  To join the fun simply leave a comment below.  If you can, post a button with a link on your own blog to help spread the word. 

Remember, it's not a readling challenge. It's a dare!

TSS: What would you do if letters to Santa began to arrive at your home?

This happened to a New York City couple.




As of this posting, they still have no idea why the letters were sent to their apartment.

Dakota's Favorites: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin



I'll make my report as if I told

 a story, for I was taught as a

child on my homework that

 Truth is a matter of the

 imagination.

Opening to

The Left Hand of Darkness

by Ursula K. Le Guin

 Dakota's Favorites are selections from the review archive here at Ready When You Are, C.B.  Dakota's Favorites all come with my highest recommendation.

 
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is rightly considered a seminal work of science fiction. In Ms. Le Guin's work the human race has long spread out across the universe. Various groups of people have inhabited different planets for so long that they have physically and culturally adapted to their specific worlds, forgetting where they came from and evolving new species of humanity.

On the planet know as Winter, due to its extreme cold climate, humanity has evolved by eliminating gender altogether. There is one ambisexual gender on Winter. Most of the time it is male but once each cycle people on Winter enter a sexual phase during which they may become female or they may remain male for the purposes of copulation and reproduction. It is common for one person to take both roles alternatively throughout their lifetime. Anyone who takes only one role exclusively is considered a sexual pervert.

Genly Ai, representative from the Ekumen of Known Worlds, arrives on Winter to make first contact with the people there. He is able to adapt to the culture on Winter though he never really gets used to the cold or completely used to the asexual inhabitants. He finds himself in the middle of a political struggle between the two leading nations on Winter. Once he is able to convince them that his story is true, they each try to use him as a pawn in their geo-political struggles against the other.

Genly forms an attachment with Estraven, a leader of one of the nations on Winter. He is not certain that he can trust Estraven who is later exiled from his home nation as a traitor. Genly is forced to flee to a rival nation only to find himself sentenced as mentally suspect to a prison farm where he is subjected to regular interrogations that leave him physically weaker and weaker. Estraven arrives, helps Genly escape and leads him on a journey across Winter's frozen north lands to his home nation and safety.

It is on this journey that The Left Hand of Darkness is strongest. Each character must overcome the clash of cultures, their evolutionary differences and their own suspicions of the other in order to survive. Genly has to deal with a man who is also a woman, while Estraven must deal with a man his society considers a perversion. That the bond these two form is so moving speaks volumes for Ms. Le Guin's artistry. She creates a people and a culture that is fundamentally alien to our own, and then leads us to understand it well enough to see ourselves in it.

I'm giving The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin five out of five stars. I don't know if Maria Doria Russell gives Ms. Le Guin a special thank you in the preface to The Sparrow, but she ought to. Her novel owes a great debt to The Left Hand of Darkness. If you enjoyed The Sparrow I think you will find much to enjoy here.

Welcome to Hard Times by E.L. Doctorow



The Man from Bodie drank down

a half bottle of the Silver Sun's best;

 that cleared the dust from his throat

 and then when Florence, who was a

 red-head, moved along the bar to

 him, he turned and grinned down at her.

Opening to

Welcome to Hard Times

by E.L. Doctorow

A western without a hero.

In High Noon Gary Cooper stands alone against a gang of outlaws, the town sheriff acting the classic role of hero.  This is what audiences expect of westerns, especially westerns starring the likes of Gary Cooper.

But what if the small western town, alone on the prairie, has no hero to defend it?  What if the bad man rides into a town with no one brave enough or able enough to stop him having his way?  What damage could he do?

Welcome to Hard Times by E.L. Doctorow opens with the arrival of a Bad Man from Bodie, a loner who single-handedly destroys the small town of Hard Times, burning down two buildings, killing half its citizens.   When the men of the town realize they are no match for the bad man, they hide out on the prairie waiting for him to leave. 

Afterwards, the survivors try to rebuild.  The narrator, Will Blue,  takes in a now orphaned 10-year-old boy, Jimmy Fee.  Together they nurse Molly, a prostitute and the sole survivor of the local saloon, back to health.  Will becomes the de facto town mayor in his attempt to bring Hard Times back from oblivion.  The nearby mine is still active, workers still come into town on Saturday nights looking for fun.  Soon a new saloon opens, a shopkeeper arrives, a banner is hung across main street in the hopes that the state governor will build a  road through town up to the mine.  Things are looking good.

"Welcome to Hard Times."

But Molly holds a grudge.  She blames Will for failing to stand up to the Bad Man from Bodie.  Though he presents himself to the world as her husband, though he probably does love her and he wants to be a father to Jimmy Fee, she cannot hide her venom.  He knows that she hates him in spite of everything, that she's waiting for the bad man to return so she can take her revenge, that she has convinced Jimmy Fee he should do the same.

Welcome to Hard Times is a meditation on evil, cowardice and revenge, all themes common to westerns, common to literature in general.  This is Mr. Doctorow's first novel.  It's scope is narrower in space and time than his later novels; the cast of characters is small, but the town of Hard Times and its handful of citizens provide room enough to keep the reader enthralled.  They are a classic western cast: a reluctant hero, a former saloon-girl, an orphaned boy looking for a father figure.  Mr. Doctorow takes this cast and subverts them: the hero is racked with guilt and cowardice, the saloon-girl has a heart of stone, the boy turns against the father figure.  However, this subversion serves to make them all much more human than the classic tropes they are based on.  They are more like us than we want to admit.

If you're thinking about joining the Western Read-a-long Challenge, Welcome to Hard Times makes a good introduction to the modern, "serious" western.  I've several other titles I'm hoping to get to before May.  Maybe one of them will entice you to join me.  To sign-up go here.  You can read any western you'd like, or you can join me in reading Thomas Berger's novel, Little Big Man, starting May 1, 2011.

TSS: Double Dog Dare!!!

Image found on Nice Girls TV

I'm blogging today from Starbucks instead of my usual coffee house because my students gave me 110.00 dollars worth of gift cards.  That's 30 double-tall mochas with whipped cream, in case you were wondering.

While I prefer my usual coffee house, I'm not opposed to Starbucks.   With 30 double-tall mochas in my future, I'll be blogging from here for a while.

The Little Drummer Boy is playing on the sound system.  The Little Drummer Boy will not leave me alone!!!

People think The Little Drummer Boy is cool since David Bowie and Bing Crosby sang it as a duet, but it's not.  It's obnoxious.  A child beating on a drum in front of a mother with a sleeping newborn!  Even the christ-child must have been a bit cranky by the end.

School got out for winter break Friday, not a moment too soon. Since my classroom is across from the band room, I've spent every day for weeks listening to the 6th grade rehearse The Little Drummer Boy. 

Bah Rump-a Pum Pum!!!! 

The jazz band has been going at Frosty the Snowman with an intensity that suggests a devoted belief in global warming.  Early last week, I went over and told them they sounded great.  So great that they didn't  need to practice Frosty the Snowman anymore.  You don't want to sound over-rehearsed if you're a jazz band.  The music teacher and I are good pals, fortunately.  And they did sound great.  Even The Little Drummer Boy sounded great in the end.

And...and...and....

I've decided to start a movement against the use of the word and on this blog.   I've noticed that I over use it which makes Ready When You Are, C.B. look like a vast collection of compound sentences.  20 years of reading middle school writing has rubbed off on me.  Ever listen to a child tell a story.  They do go on and on.   Time to move up to complex sentences.  Banish the coordinating conjunction in favor of  the subordinating. 

Let's see if I can make it through the rest of this post without using a coordinating conjunction.

Don't Ask...

As of this writing it looks like gay and lesbian people will be allowed to serve openly in the United States military.   Don't think I'm not aware of the irony in an old lefty such as myself celebrating a chance to join the army.  I am.  But I'm celebrating anyway.  Happy Christmas. Thank you Senator Lieberman.  I take back 75% of the bad things I've said about you. 

Reading Recently...

I'm over a two-week-long reading slump.  This week I finished Roberto Bolano's, Nazi Literature in the Americas, E.L. Doctorow's, Welcome to Hard Times, and American Uprising by Daniel Rasmussen. All three will be reviewed here later this week.

I picked up Welcome to Hard Times with the intention of doing a review pushing my Western Read-a-long Challenge.  If you're shy about reading westerns, I hope you'll join.  Welcome to Hard Times was terrific.  There are a lot of terrific westerns out there.  It's too bad that so many people are reluctant to give the genre a try.  If you'd like to join, you can sign-up here.

I'm not sure what to make of Nazi Literature in the Americas.  I'm not sure what to make of Roberto Bolano at all.   Is he serious or is he playing a prank on us?   A very accomplished prank, but still a prank.

American Uprising is a non-fiction account of a slave revolt outside New Orleans in the early part of the 19th century.  Although it both prefigured and exceeded the later Nat Turner led revolt, it has been largely forgotten.  One of many events the history books leave out.   Most Americans have very little idea just how awful and how pervasive slavery was. 

Double Dog TBR Dare...

27 people have taken The TBR Dare so far.  If you'd like to join you can still sign-up here.  Make a resolution this year to read only books from your TBR stack until April 1 or for as long as you like.  You can make whatever exceptions for book clubs and audio books you need to.  I'll be making exceptions for book club books and for David Mitchell's new novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  I've been on the waiting list at my local library ever since it came out.  I'm currently number 17 on the holds list which means I should get a crack at it sometime in mid-January.

Make the Yuletide Gay...

The music here at Starbucks is now playing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas for the second time since my arrival.  Not the same cover--just the same song.  While it's one of the few Christmas songs that can stand up as a decent tune, it's  really depressing.  There's nothing like sitting in Starbucks listening to a really depressing Christmas song.

I could use a strong egg-nog or two.

Double-tall egg-nog, please.



Meantime, what's your favorite Christmas song? 

Dakota Eats Two

First day of winter break I wake up to find Dakota has struck.  My apologies to Janet Lee Carey who generously send me an autographed copy of her new book.




Additional regrets go out to the P.T.A. who purchased Al Capone Shines My Shoes for my 7th grade book clubs.  At least now I know what to buy with the Border's gift card I received.

In my defense, both of these books were inside my book bag.  True, I did leave my book bag on the floor in the living room, but still.

Friday Picture Reading with Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Favorite Reads of 2010: The Long List

Since starting this blog back in the summer of  I've posted a year end list of favorite reads.   These are not necessarily the best books I read that year, but the ones I enjoyed reading most, listed in no particular order.  I do not choose a top book--I just can't bring myself to do it.   You can see the lists from previous years in the sidebar. 

This year, I thought I'd post a long list before selecting my "top ten."  These are the books I'm considering for this year's list:

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson.   A flawed ending, but a haunting story of recovery.  This was not what I expected, nor like anything I've read before. 

Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim.  A guilty pleasure, but I had such fun reading the author's dishy commentary on the great American songwriters. 

Butcher's Crossing by John Williams.  This one inspired me to create the Hop-a-long, Git-a-long, Read-a-long Western Reading Challenge.  See sidebar to join.

School for Love by Olivia Manning.  I've yet to read a book by Olivia Manning that I didn't love.  Her characters always seem stuck in some sort of stasis, but I find myself enjoying the time I spend with them.

Firmim by Sam Savage.  A book about obsessive reading and the heavy toll it can bring.

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious.  So much better than we've been led to believe. 

Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare.  It's just what the title says it is. 

Cheri by Collette.  Despicable people portrayed in a most enjoyable way.

Flush: A Biography by Virginia Woolf.  I still hate Virginia Woolf, but I enjoyed this book.

The Exception by Christian Jungerson.  A thriller unlike any other.  Very little happens, but it happens in such a way that the book becomes very hard to put down.

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.  After spending the summer reading Chaucer at Yale, Canterbury Tales is a book I'll always treasure. 

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.  This was at least my second reading of this book. It holds up quite well.  I just saw the movie and am happy to report that it's terrific.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann  This year I started getting ARC's that I loved on a regular basis.  This one is sure to make the top ten.

The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham  My first time with Mr. Maugham.  Won't be my last.

Wild Boy by Jill Dawson  A wonderful imagining of the Wild Boy of Averyon.

Caucasia by Danzy Senna  I so wish Danzy Senna would write more.  Two terrific novels so far.  My book club loved Caucasia.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan  My favorite Zombie apocalypse novel to date.

The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin  Gay life in Buenos Aires.  I read it for the setting initially and found a wonderful book, too.

Benediction by Jim Arnold  Another ARC that I loved.  This one goes where few novelists dare to go.

The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler  Laugh, laugh, cry a bit, laugh some more.

The Moment of Pyscho by David Thomson  A fascinating look at Alfred Hitchock's great movie and its place in American film history.

After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation by Giles MacDonogh  A disturbing, thorough look at what happened to the losing side in World War II.
 
Dead Souls by Nicolai Gogol  This is the second year in a row that I've got a Russian classic heading in to my top ten list.  The second funny one as well.

Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF by Stefen Aust  An entertaining investigation of the group that terrorized Europe in the 1970's.

I'm looking forward to starting winter vacation so I can begin trimming this list down to the final ten. 

It's going to be fun.

TSS: The Hop-a-long, Git-a-long, Read-a-long Western Reading Challenge

Introducing the Hop-a-long, Git-a-long, Read-a-long Western Reading Challenge.

Some folks consider the western a genre of ill-repute, a place for people who buy their books in supermarkets far away from the home of serious literature. But those of us who love them know that the American western is much more than escapist entertainment. 

Love them, hate them, or never read one, join me this May in an exploration of this very American genre.

The rules are simple--read one or more westerns during May.  If you like you can join me in a read-a-long of Thomas Berger's novel Little Big Man. 

To register leave a comment below.  I'll post a running list of participants on the official page which you can find here or by using the tab at the top of this page.  If you leave a link to your blog, I'll post that as well.

If you can, please post on of the buttons on your blog to help spread the word. 

If you've never read a western before, consider giving them a try.  They're not what most people think they are.  You could open up a whole new genre of unexplored, unread, fun.

 

Dakota's Favorites: The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt

The Wednesday Wars has not become the runaway hit it deserves to be.  I think it's just as good as The Schwa Was Here and Al Capone Does My Shirts but The Wednesday Wars has not reached their level of popularity.  At least not around the middle school where I work.  So far, I've only ever been able to convince one reading group to give it a try.  They liked it.  I still think it's the cover art.  Covers are very important.  Covers are a deal breaker with middle school students.  Unfortunately, The Wednesday Wars has been saddled with a deal breaker of a cover.


" Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun.

Me."

The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt presents a humorous look at a year in the life of seventh grader Holling Hoodhood. The year is 1967; social turmoil rages across America, the war in Vietnam is reaching a turning point, but back home Holling Hoodhood has to face the venom of his English teacher, Mrs. Baker. Holling is the only Presbyterian in his class. This means that on Wednesdays when the Jewish students leave for Hebrew school and the Catholic students leave for Catechism he has to spend the last few hours of the day alone with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, who would clearly rather have the time for herself. That's why she hates him, or so Holling thinks.

In what Holling suspects is an attempt to torment him, Mrs. Baker decides that since they have the time together they will study the works of Shakespeare and gives him a copy of The Merchant of Venice. Much to Holling's surprise, he likes the play. It's full of great insults like 'pied ninny' that he can use on his family and friends and on the school bullies who won't even know they've been insulted. Over the course of the year Holling and Mrs. Baker form a close bond as he grows to see how much she really cares for her students in spite of her gruff way with them.

Holling faces many of the typical problems seventh grade boys face. He tries out for the track team. He has to deal with a very stern father. He has an older sister who constantly belittles him. There are the school bullies mentioned above and a girl he has an interest in. The world outside intrudes when the cafeteria cook's husband is killed in Vietnam and when Mrs. Baker's husband is listed as missing in action. Holling faces all of these events with such a winning, caring personality and good sense of humor that the book never loses it's lighthearted tone for long.

It took me a while to get into the story, but once I did there was much to enjoy. Holling's classmates provide many scenes of Tom Sawyer like hi-jinks. There are two escaped pet rats who take months to catch and make several very comic scenes possible. The Wednesdays Holling spends working through Shakespeare show that he is an exceptional student, but they do not leave the realm of the possible. Holling reacts to the plays like you'd expect a 12/13-year-old boy to. He thinks Romeo and Juliet are both stupid, for example. (I quite agree with him here.) He likes the curses as I mentioned earlier, he doesn't really see the point of Hamlet until a family crises make it hit close to home and he re-reads it. Holling is telling us about the entire school year, so events are kept moving at an entertianing brisk pace. Each chapter is a blend of humorous scenes and food for thought and each leaves you wanting more until a very satisfying ending.

Though I suspect there may be some wish-fulfillment going on in The Wednesday Wars, but Mr. Schmidt does bring all of his characters to life. Hollings classmates are all individual personalities, a few of them are even complicated. There is an innocence to them that would be hard for me to believe if the story wasn't set in 1967 but the students never become saccharine. There are several adults in the school, all of whom are fully developed characters. YA books like this often have only one or two school employees and those are often stock figures, but here we get several teachers, two principals, one custodian and the cafeteria cook who are all fully portrayed characters all acting like adults. I'm not completely sure that I believe a teacher like Mrs. Baker could really exist, but I want her to. That may be wish fulfillment on my part, but I think that's okay as long as the author and the reader are both in on the wish fulfillment together.

The adults Holling's school are not perfect, they do learn from their students, but they are actually wiser than their students, which is nice to see in a YA book. Holling's parents are not so wise. To say that his father does not understand his son or his daughter greatly understates the situation. There are several points in the book when Holling's father is portrayed as a bad parent, frankly. I'm not sure he is a bad parent, but he does make several serious mistakes; he lets his children down, at least twice, in my view and he is never brought to terms with this. Holling's mother is the only significant adult character who is poorly portrayed. She is a basic wet blanket, completely under the control of her husband. This may be true to the times and the situation, but I was disappointed that we never got any insight into her like we did with most of the other adult characters.

So, is there enough here to make this a good book for younger readers? I think so. I suspect The Wednesday Wars would appeal to anyone who enjoyed The Schwa Was Here or Al Capone Does My Shirts. It has just as much humor in it as those two do, with quite a bit more meat on its literary bones. I'm giving The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt five out of five stars.

The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd

"So, what are you taking?"

Opening to The Cheese Monkeys

 by Chip Kidd

If you read a novel or watch a movie about going to art school this is what you will find:

• A fish-out-of-water protagonist who doesn't quite know what to make of the other students who are more creative/intense/interesting than the folks back home.
•  An attraction to a girl or boy who appears creative, maybe even genius, but is actually damaged somehow.
•  A scene wherein above mentioned boy or girl trashes the work of a canonical artist such as Picasso.
•  A benevolently incompetent teacher of an introductory class the students view as a waste of time.
•  An abusive teacher who was once an enfant terrible but has had to settle on teaching in a second tier art school after failing to live up to early potential.  This teacher will drive some students away in tears, but he will also inspire others to do their best work. 
•  A revelation that the girl or boy the protagonist was attracted to has had an inappropriately intimate relationship with above mentioned abusive/genius teacher.
•  A series of events that will lead the protagonist to learn the personal history of the abusive/genius teacher.
•  The disappearance of the abusive/genius teacher prior to the end of the semester under a cloud of scandal.

This is what happens in the movie Art School Confidential, in the art school plot arc of Six Feet Under and in Chip Kidd's novel The Cheese Monkeys.  I enjoyed all three, in spite of their strict adherence to the first year art school formula, but none of them have convinced me that what they have to say about art school is to be taken seriously at all.

Sorry, Mr. Kidd, I just don't buy it.  Too many details just don't ring true.  The novel's protagonist attends classes with under 20 students during his first year of college, one of them with well under 20.  Even in 1958 I'm guessing classes were much larger at state universities.  The abusive/genius teacher drives students away even though he doesn't have a tenured position.  I doubt he'd keep his job past the second week.  I speak as someone who once taught at a state university.  All these college co-eds sleeping with their professors novel after novel has always struck me as more wish fulfillment than reality.  It's such an over-used plot device than I wouldnt' believe it even if you backed it up with pages of documented research.  Needless to say, it never happened to me.

Les Demoiselles d' Avignon by Pablo Picasso



Your attractive but damaged romantic interest attacks Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon as the work of a misogynist in her art history class.  I hate the work of Picasso, really hate it, but even I can come up with a counter argument to this charge.  Certainly an art professor could.  By 1958 he must have heard this charge more than once.  You portray him as flabbergasted by the suggestion.  Try what my Yale professor says, are you reading the work of art or is it reading you?  Or how about misogyny, like beauty, can  be in the eye of the beholder.  See, I just came up with two good comebacks and I'm not even an art professor. 

I enjoyed the assignments your abusive/genius teacher gave his students.  Those I can believe even if the critique scenes later were ridiculous.  I was once a creative writing major, my spouse was once an art major, neither of us can recall a professor ever saying anything remotely as mean and derogatory about student work as your abusive/genius teacher does.  In fact, I once saw a professor offer words of praise for a student who had assembled a jigsaw puzzle as her final project.   

And then there's the faculty art exhibit.  You abusive/genius teacher exhibits a sealed cooler full of feces knowing that someone will fail to resist the "DO NOT OPEN" sign thereby releasing an odoriferous comment on the entire exhibit.  In a world where artists must get teaching jobs to make ends meet, not crapping where you eat is a good motto to live by.  Even self-destructive types know a good meal ticket when they find one.  I am afraid you are sacrificing truth for a cheap laugh.  It's funny, but it's not real.

However, it turns out the use of human feces as an artistic medium in 1959 is a bit prescient.  In 1960 Italian artist Piero Manzoni produced 90 tin cans said to be full of his own excrement.  He wanted to sell them for their weight in gold.  These cans have accrued in value since the artist's death in 1963.  In 2008 Sootheby's sold one at auction for just over 97,000 pounds.  However, it has been discovered that the cans were actually filled with plaster.  That strikes me as a wonderful critique of modern art--even cans of human excrement are fakes.

Genius.

Sunday Salon: The TBR Dare. Are You Brave Enough to Take the Dare?

The TBR Dare is open for registration.

This is not a reading challenge.  It's a dare. 

I dare you to pledge you will read only the books in your TBR (To Be Read) stack for as long as you dare starting January 1, 2011. 

One hour, one day, one book, one week, one month, or until the dare ends on April 1.  (I never make open-ended New Year's Resolutions.  Every goal should have a end date.)

For complete information about the TBR Dare, I've set up a page here.  Unfortunately, if there's a way to leave comments on Blogger pages, I have not figured it out here.  So, this will be the official registration page. 

To register for The TBR Dare leave a comment below.  Let us all know what your TBR resolution is in your comment--one hour, one day, one book, one week, one month, or the full enchilada.  The TBR Dare ends on April 1.  Because we're all fools for taking a dare like this one, we know it and we celebrate it.

If you can, please post one of the pictures/buttons with a link on your blog to help spread the word. 

The winner gets a trip to Cancun* and the losers get to read whatever they want to.

*Not really.  But it's more fun with a cool vacation get-a-way as a prize.


Coming later this week: The Hop-a-long, Git-a-long, Read-a-long, Western Challenge. (See page tabs for details.)

Friday Picture Reading

Frank Duvenek - A Girl Reading, 1877

The Square by Marguerite Duras

The child came over quietly from the

 far side of the Square and stood

 behind the girl.

Opening of The Square

 by Marguerite Duras,

 translated by Sonia Pitt-Rivers

 and Irina Murdoch.

All Paris parks are the Luxembourg Gardens. 

C.J. and I arrived early for the matinee.  (Everything David Sedaris says about going to the movies in Paris is true.) Time to kill and no money to spend, the Luxembourg Gardens just up the street. Thirty minutes later and both of us are tempted to skip the movie in exchange for an afternoon on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens.  As if Paris wasn't wonderful enough to begin with.  Now, whenever the words "Paris" and "park" are mention together, I think of the Luxembourg Gardens.  Just can't help it.

Marguerite Duras novella, The Square, takes place in an un-named Paris park.  It's probably one of the many small parks we found in every part of the city we walked through from Place d'Italie to St. Denis.  But it can be the Luxembourg Gardens if I choose.
In The Square a young woman and  an older man share a bench in the park one afternoon.  A maid for a weathly family, she watches the child she is in charge of and dreams of the marriage she hopes Saturday evenings at the local dance hall will someday lead to. A travelling salesman,  he has never been more than an observer, immersed in his newspapers and watching the people who pass by.  He  does not make enough money to settle down or support a wife.

The two discuss their lives, share the views, in what should produce an adolescent piece of writing full of forced attempts at the profound.  Instead, I found two lonely people sharing an afternoon.  People I believed in and who had something to say about life. 


Luxembourg Gardens.  See what I mean?



Here's the young woman talking about happiness:

"I don't know if it is that people are not good at happiness or if they don't understand what it is. Perhaps they don't really know what it is they want or how to make use of it when they have it. They may even get tired of trying to keep it.  I really don't know. What I do know is that the word exists ant that it was not invented for nothing.  And just because I know that women, even those who appear to be happy, often start wondering towards evening why they are leading the lives they do, I am not going to start wondering if the word is meaningless. That is all I can say on the subject."

I hope the stilted nature of this dialogue is the result of mediocre translation, not of mediocre writing.  If the dialogue in the original sounds stilted, is a translator honor bound to preserve this quality?