We The Animals

We the Animals, by Justin Torres, was fantastic.

I read it because V and I were going to the Grub Street book club / author q&a, and I am so glad I did - actually, so glad I did all of those things. The Grub Street book club was a new experience, but overall I liked it. Naturally, there were a few people I wanted to murder, since they just kept talking about themselves, or talking about the book but monopolizing the conversation, but for the most part it was really interesting. I very much appreciated the approach, which was looking at the writing of the book - the language, the images, the character development, what decisions the author made and why we thought he made them - as opposed to just talking about the story, which I imagine would have been the focus of a "regular" book club, or one not meant to be filled with aspiring (or realized) authors. The craft was definitely the main point here, which was an engaging way into the book, as well as an interesting conversation on it's own.

The leader of the session, one of Grub Street's instructors, had us start by talking to the person next to us about one scene we really loved, and then we all said them to the group and she put them on the board. I was skeptical at first, but just that alone ended up being cool, because there were some that I had already thought of, some that were like "oh, of COURSE, had to be up there, can't believe I forgot that," and other scenes or lines I seriously didn't remember (but in one case - a scene at Niagara Falls - I thought "I need to go back and read that right now!"). I think starting by talking just to our neighbors before speaking to the whole circle was a good way of breaking the ice. I actually didn't talk much or at all in the larger group, in part because I was getting testy at some of the others, but I think I would have felt comfortable doing so, after having come in, not being sure what was going on, but then having a really animated conversation (well, on my side) with the woman next to me (didn't turn to V, who was on the other side, since it seemed like cheating - we already knew each other, and had already discussed our favorite scenes over the wine we chugged before heading into the meeting).

The rest of the first hour was the group discussion, pretty well moderated, although some people could have been shut up more, and then the author of the book came in to speak with us, answer questions, and then finally do a brief reading. Hearing Torres speak about the book, and, more importantly, the process of writing the book, was great. I was a little disappointed in the reading; someone suggested the scene that was my favorite in the whole book (when they're dancing in the kitchen), but the way he read it just seemed wrong. It wasn't at all the way it went in my head. I know that's dumb, since he wrote it and all, but V felt the same way. It was just...it's a really intimate, strong, gentle/brutal, vivid book. And that scene was all of those things and then some, full of love with danger and uncertainty looming over it, but he read it in this very hushed, polite, friendly, sing-song-y kind of voice, more like a poem about birds or daffodils or something. But maybe that's the way the scene is in his head, I don't know...

As far as the book itself...yeah. Just amazing. It's nominally the "story" of a young boy and his brothers, and their life when they were children. It's hard to say more than that without spoiling one of the main strengths of the story which is how the characters, and their backgrounds, are slowly and very deliberately revealed.

Slim, a quick read, but packed with fantastic images and languages; characters, too, but less so. This isn't really as much a story, I don't think, as it is a series of heart-wrenching (not necessarily in a bad way), gorgeously honed scenes. I remember thinking as I read that he either is or had - or both - an amazing editor, because the book is so very pared down, lean like some sort of ridiculous athlete, just muscles and sinews and a little skin on top, no fat, nothing extraneous, and so very, very strong.

There was one scene with the mother and a co-worker that I didn't understand; that is, I thought it was going to lead to something more (no thoughts on what, just more), but it sort of drifted around by itself. Kind of that, if you show us a gun, someone should get shot thing. A small nit-pick, though.

Most of it, I loved. I loved the way the story starts off with a collective narrator, in a sense - the "we" of the title - and how and why that evolves, I thought he did a fantastic job of parceling out information so it unfolds in a totally organic way but also surprises you and makes you re-evaluate what you've already read... Love :)

Catch-up: The Imperfectionists

The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman

As I recall, got great press when it came out. Definitely enjoyed this tale of an English-language newspaper in Italy...although by the time I got around to reading it, I thought it was about editors...possibly at a publishing house? In any case, I did really enjoy it. It was a while ago, though, so I don't totally remember why. Good writing, basically. Wasn't totally in love with all of the stories (wasn't expecting a series of somewhat interlocking stories) or all the characters (I don't mean that I didn't like them all - wasn't supposed to - just that I wasn't captivated by all of them), but still really liked some aspects. I flagged some passages, although I will be guessing, at this long remove, as to just why...

"Initially, the paper suffered under the suspicion that it was an international mouthpiece for Ott's business empire, but this was unfounded. The greatest influence over content was necessity - they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office" (50).

Funny! On two counts! And quite reminiscent of a lot of academic writing, too.

In a lengthy - and delightful! - description of an editor's "Bible," a super idiosyncratic style guide, we read:

GWOT: No one knows what this means, above all those who use the term. Nominally, it stands for Global War on Terror. But since conflict against an abstraction is, to be polite, tough to execute, the term should be understood as marketing gibberish. Our reporters adore this sort of humbug; it is the copy editor's job to exclude it. See also: OBL, Acronyms; and Nitwits.  (78)

Ha. There's more about the Bible. This may have been my favorite cycle in the book. The same editor also produces an internal newsletter he calls Why?, collecting his "favorite" mistakes and errors and bad ideas from the newspaper (79).

There is one character, so interesting, and so well drawn - Ornella, who we see, in some old family pictures, "when she was dashing, too thin and too young. (She was only sixteen at the time of her marriage to Cosimo.) She has a different face today, matted with peach foundation, orange lipstick, liner around her eyes, green mascara so thick that when she blinks one sees frog's fingers clasping. Her hair is yellow, dyed at great expense and pulled back in a bun so tight that the canvas of her face appears to be held fast by the knot at the back of her head' (209).

I would have said "frogs' fingers" but minor quibble - that line, right there, just that fragment of a line, is the kind of thing I will remember about a book for years. Creative, unique, but still totally understandable and evocative; lovely.

I also love that when unexpectedly faced with caring for a small child, her immediate - slightly nervous - reaction is not just to feed the boy, but to make him "pastina in brodo." Of course! That's my fall-back for sick or hungover peers, but I would give it to babies and children too :)

More Serious Business

Two books about books in the most recent email from Yale University Press / Literature look super interesting: Why Translation Matters, by Edith Grossman, and A Reader on Reading, by Alberto Manguel.  I will need to check them both out at some point...

Novels Can Be Serious Business...

...I am taking this article as justification for all the reading of, and thinking/writing about, novels that I do.
"Next Big Thing In Literature: Knowing They Know That You Know," New York Times 3/31/10. Patricia Cohen

see also "Can 'Neuro Lit Crit' Save the Humanities?" NYT blog 4/5/10

Also all the procrastination I do.

I [heart] Patty Limerick

Update: to make it even easier to access the awesome essay "Dancing With Professors" it now has its own page, on the left.  Hope that's not a copyright violation!

Wrote a little post on my history blog, in a frenzy of "I love Patty Limerick"-ness, but I realized that nobody reads that besides me, and for once I actually have something to say that might be interesting/helpful to other people, so I'm re-doing it here. 
C and I had to read an essay by Tony Horwitz for class today, "The History Beat: How a Journalist Covers the Past" (Harvard Review 32).  It talks about the challenges (?) of writing about history in a way that will be accessible, entertaining, and compelling for casual readers.  It's a nice article, especially because I know most of the references, but it immediately made me want to go and re-read Patricia Limerick's "Dancing with Professors: The Trouble with Academic Prose," which is just totally phenomenal.  She writes about how skewed the world of academia can be when it comes to pretty much encouraging un-readable writing:

In ordinary life, when a listener cannot understand what someone has said, this is the usual exchange:



Listener: I cannot understand what you are saying.


Speaker: Let me try to say it more clearly.


But in scholarly writing in the late 20th century, other rules apply. This is the implicit exchange:


Reader: I cannot understand what you are saying.


Academic Writer: Too bad. The problem is that you are an unsophisticated and untrained reader. If you were smarter, you would understand me.


The exchange remains implicit, because no one wants to say, "This doesn't make any sense," for fear that the response, "It would, if you were smarter," might actually be true.


While we waste our time fighting over ideological conformity in the scholarly world, horrible writing remains a far more important problem. For all their differences, most right-wing scholars and most left-wing scholars share a common allegiance to a cult of obscurity. Left, right and center all hide behind the idea that unintelligible prose indicates a sophisticated mind. The politically correct and the politically incorrect come together in the violence they commit against the English language.

The full text of the essay can be found here, and I really, really urge any of my friends (or siblings, M!) who read this blog to check it out - besides the fact the writing is far better than anything I can offer you, so if you are looking to waste some time at work, you'll get more out of Limerick (you can also check out her webpage) than this blog, it's a really fantastic, fantastic essay, if you have any interest at all in writing of any kind.  That's all - carry on!