He might fast as much as he could, and he did so; but nothing could save him now, people passed him by. Just try to explain to anyone the art of fasting!  Anyone who has no feeling for it cannot be made to understand it. The fine placards grew dirty and illegible, they were torn down; the little notice board telling the number of fast days achieved, which at first was changed carefully every day, had long stayed at the same figure, for after the first few weeks even this small task seemed pointless to the staff; and so the artist simply fasted on and on, as he had once dreamed of doing, and it was no trouble for him, just as he had always foretold, but no one counted the days, no one, not even the artist himself, knew what records he was already breaking, and his heart grew heavy. And when once in a while some leisurely passer-by stopped, made merry over the old figure on the board, and spoke of swindling, that was in its way the stupidest lie ever invented by indifference and inborn malice, since it was not the hunger artist who was cheating, he was working honestly, but the world was cheating him of his reward.

One of the notable things about Kafka’s work is the way his clear and precise language invites multiple interpretations. Coming to this story all these years after it was written, I found myself automatically substituting the literary artist in place of Kafka’s performer. Suffice it to say, things do not end well for the hunger artist. In this era of widespread visual, interruptive and multimedia diversions, one hopes that the literary artist – and the practice of engaged literacy – can somehow avoid a similar fate.

________

My previous post was on wordless books, and the following juxtaposition perhaps serves as a fitting coda to that piece and to the dire musings above.

In reading Kafka’s The Complete Stories, I didn’t get around to John Updike’s introduction until I was done. In his description of “The Metamorphosis,” in which traveling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up as an insect, Updike points out Kafka’s concern that no depiction of the insect should appear on the cover of the book, not even at a distance – that it would shut off the reader’s sympathy for this conflicted creature. Updike goes on to describe the dark humor and pathos of Gregor’s plight as he and his family try to adjust to his situation:

Later, relegated by the family to the shadows of a room turned storage closet, he responds to violin music and creeps forward, covered with dust and trailing remnants of food, to claim his sister’s love. Such scenes could not be done except with words. In this age that lives and dies by the visual, “The Metamorphosis” stands as a narrative absolutely literary, able to exist only where language and the mind’s hazy wealth of imagery intersect.

Maybe it’s not too late for the literary artist after all.

Scott

In his previous books, David Mitchell established his astounding virtuosity as a storyteller, weaving together numerous genres and storylines into the fabric of a single book. This time out he works mostly within the historical fiction framework and proves again that he is among the best novelists writing today. (He’s been a finalist twice for the Man Booker Prize, and Thousand Autumns is on the recently announced longlist for this year’s award.)

To attempt to summarize in a few words a book of such commanding versatility is a fool’s errand. But I have to give you some idea of what to expect. In briefest outline, and without giving away too much, the book is set in Japan just over 200 years ago, during the waning years of the Dutch East Indies Company. Young Jacob de Zoet arrives at the Dutch trading post, an artificial island off Nagasaki called Dejima, for a five-year stint as a clerk – a test of his worthiness set by the father of the girl he wishes to marry back home. This work begins in earnest as he must correct the corrupt accounts of the previous station chief who is dispatched just as Jacob arrives. Through a chance encounter, he is smitten with the somewhat liberated midwife Orito Abigawa, who is, of course, unobtainable for a westerner like Jacob. As her family falls deeper into debt, Orito is pulled from her studies at the behest of powerful Abbot Enomoto and is conscripted into a “nunnery” that engages in secret and sinister ritual practices. Jacob and Uzaemon, his friend and competitor for Orito’s affection, strive to rescue her from her mountaintop shrine. There’s much more, but I’ll leave that for you to discover.

A brief plot summary like the one above can only take you so far. It cannot begin to convey the fully-formed characters and their complex interactions; the powerfully evoked settings on both land and sea; the multiple subplots and nuanced storylines; and the book’s underlying concern with the corrupting nature of power and money. Mitchell also explores the tensions between eastern and western culture in such areas as trade (or isolationism), science, medicine, politics, religion, and enlightenment values.

More extensive reviews can be found in The Guardian, The Times, The Washington Post, and BookForum. And The New York Times offers an excerpt from the book.

If you’ve already read Thousand Autumns and are looking for a similar reading experience, you might consider: Tom Jones by Henry Fielding; Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan; or São Tome by Paul Cohn.

Scott

There.  I said it.

I’m one of those people who lives inside her head 24 hours of the day, my imagination never seeming to wind down. Most who know me would think I would seek out books with happy endings or endings that are neatly tied up. So not true. I like a satisfying ending.

And without giving away the ending to Jean Kwok’s book Girl in Translation, I will say it was a greatly satisfying ending, caught somewhere between happy and real. Too many authors make a happy ending for their novels and I consider this taking the easy way. Girl in Translation will leave you feeling, “this is the way it was supposed to end.”

 We’ve all been new in school, new in town and filled with those particular horrors of “What if no one likes me? What if no one even talks to me? What if no one notices me?” Take all of those feelings and tightly entwine them with being new to the country and not having a firm grasp of the language. Oh yeah, and add being a teenager to the mix and you have Girl in Translation.

We follow the main character, Ah-Kim Chang (or Kim as she’s known in America) as she and her mother emigrate to America with dreams and expectations of a better life, only to work 20 hour days in a sweat shop and live in an apartment filthier than  in any episode of Hoarders. The mother and daughter sometimes have to sleep in shifts to keep the roaches from crawling all over them.

The novel opens with Kim and her mother’s arrival in America, sponsored by Aunt Paula, an out-and-out cruel woman who owns the sweat shop. And we watch them until Kim heads off to college. My favorite part of this novel wasn’t so much a particular scene or plot twist. It was watching Kim grow up, clinging to her Chinese heritage at first, strangled by it as a teenager straddling both worlds, and then finding the balance between being and becoming.

 To me, the message of the novel wasn’t that these immigrants were strangers in a strange land but that they were humans in a new world and struggling-like the rest of us-to find their own way. And it was completely satisfying.

Jennifer

In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then you look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.

Storytelling is also a way the soldiers pass time (they even scold one another on their storytelling styles), and the more improbable stories can take on the qualities of urban legend. O’Brien describes Rat Kiley’s “reputation for exaggeration and overstatement, a compulsion to rev up the facts”:

It wasn’t a question of deceit. Just the opposite: he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt. For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you listened to one of his stories, you’d find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe.

Fiction about war goes well beyond daily news reports and fatality statistics, gaining power through its ability to present psychological and emotional truths that best represent the author’s experiences. O’Brien’s book does so powerfully and memorably. Please join us in reading The Things They Carried, and in attending related book discussions and other events as part of our month-long Big Read program running throughout the month of May.

Scott

Shields may be bored with plot, but the appeal of a good story continues to determine the reading choices for the majority of readers. Plot is of central importance in much popular fiction, and it is practically definitive for adventure stories, mysteries, and thrillers. Romance readers require happy endings, and plot-driven quests are common in science fiction and fantasy. It might even be argued (as Shields does) that some memoirists give in to temptation and introduce fake events in order to create a captivating story line. Storytelling has very deep roots, and I think plot-based books will continue to dominate the offerings of the major publishing houses.

But publishing trends and popularity aside, I would love to see more interest in the type of fiction Shields is espousing.  I’m glad for the passages in which he makes direct reading recommendations, and for the reluctantly supplied footnotes – both of which may help steer adventurous readers to deserving authors. Among the many rewarding though hard-to-classify writers Shields has singled out are: Lydia Davis, Jorge Luis Borges, J. M. Coetzee, Nicholson Baker (especially The Mezzanine and U & I), and Fernando Pessoa (for his The Book of Disquiet).

Just as Shields will occasionally spit out lists of books in support of his manifesto, I thought I’d add to his suggestions some titles I’ve enjoyed that use collage, fragments, ancedotes, restless inquiry, the prose poem, or essay-like explorations: Bluets by Maggie Nelson; The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint; The Interrogative Mood: a Novel? by Padgett Powell; Most of It by Mary Ruefle; and Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas.

The links above will allow you to read reviews or summaries of the books in the library catalog, or to place titles on hold for easy pickup. David Shields has thrown down the challenge. Take a deep breath and crack open his book. Or step into the brave new world of fiction offered in the links above. Getting started is as easy as the click of a mouse – what have you got to lose?

Scott

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.  –Groucho Marx *

A popular stereotype about librarians is that we’re all cat people. Books like Dewey: the Small Town Library Cat that Touched the World do little to disabuse people of this notion.

I’ve got nothing against cats, but I’m a dog person. I even like reading about dogs. Luckily, there are many wonderful dog-centric books, both fiction and non-fiction at the library. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst is an odd and oddly captivating story. When Paul’s wife falls from a tree and dies, the only witness is their Rhodesian Ridgeback Lorelei. In his grief, Paul tries to teach Lorelei to speak so he can learn whether her death was an accident or suicide.    

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewsi follows the plot of Hamlet, but in Wisconsin and with a mute protagonist and his family’s special (fictional) breed of Sawtelle dogs. You don’t have to be a dog lover or a Shakespeare lover to be drawn into this thrilling family saga.

In Travels with Charley: in Search of America novelist John Steinbeck chronicles his 1960 cross country road trip with his beloved French poodle, Charley, and his truck, Rocinante. I fell in love with old Charley and with Steinbeck’s eloquent account of his journey across the changing American landscape.

In Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment, an elderly couple puts their Manhattan apartment on the market the same weekend that their beloved daschund Dorothy undergoes emergency surgery all while living in a city that is paralyzed by fear of a possible terrorist attack. There are many lovely, quiet moments amidst the drama.

I picked up Temple Grandin’s Animals Make Us Human for the dogs. But Grandin’s unique perspective as an autistic researcher and her insights into the emotional and psychological lives of animals were so fascinating, I stayed for the cats, horses, and other animals she explores in this book.

Have you read any doggone good books lately?

Mindy

* This quote, and many more, can be found here.

Nancy Pearl describes magical realism as “a style of writing that allows authors to look at our own world through the lens of another world, an imagined yet very familiar one in which past, present, and future are often intertwined.”

Some of the best-known writers of magical realism are Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel García Márquez. 

A few of my all-time favorites include Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, Aphrodite, and My Invented Country, as well as Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.

The Lady, the Chef, and the Courtesan by Marisol and Hot House Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin are a few you may have missed.

And, of course, Pedro Almodóvar movies are a wonderful accompaniment to these books, especially Volver.

Kara

Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding

History: The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles

Drama: Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout

General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

Music: Violin Concerto by Jennifer Higdon

There was also a special citation given posthumously to country music icon Hank Williams.

And closer to home, among the many journalism awards, The Seattle Times received the “Breaking News Reporting” award.

For a full list of award winners and finalists, and to learn more about the history of the award, visit the Pulitzer Prizes website.

Welcome to Everett! You drove here from Topeka. That’s a long drive. Did you listen to any cool music or audiobooks?
It is a long drive indeed, but I’m a fan of road trips. I listened to two great audiobooks: I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb and T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain. I also listened to some of my favorite music including Pavement, Wilco, Radiohead, R.E.M., Neil Young, Warren Zevon, and The xx.

Kansas makes me think of The Wizard of Oz. Can you recommend any favorite Kansas authors or books or movies about Kansas?
I’ve yet to travel from Kansas and not heard, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s an irresistible response to learning someone is from Kansas. Two great authors more or less from Kansas are Gordon Parks and Langston Hughes. A great book is James Carlos Blake’s Wildwood Boys, a historical novel about the pre-Civil War Kansas-Missouri Border Wars told from the perspective of Bloody Bill Anderson. I love John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing, set in both Kansas and Colorado. John Williams’ wonderful book Stoner is one of my absolute favorites, but it’s set in Missouri.

Do you have any favorite books or shows with a Washington setting or author?
Two of my favorite television shows are closely associated with Washington: Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure. As for books, I’ve recently become a fan of Spokane author Jess Walter and Olympia author Jim Lynch. The Financial Lives of the Poets and Border Songs are two of the best books I’ve read in the past year.

What’s your favorite book?
My all time favorite is Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Yates is an incredibly underrated writer. My previous favorite book was David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The aforementioned Stoner is a recent favorite.

What was your favorite book growing up?
The book that blew my mind as a youngster was Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Its meditation on the great expanses of time and the universe changed the way I thought about the world. The other seminal book of my childhood was To Kill a Mockingbird. I read it the summer after sixth grade and it hooked me on a life of reading.

What’s your favorite movie?
The Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski is the greatest movie of the last 25 years. Other favorites are Mulholland Drive, Nurse Betty, Ghostbusters, and No Country For Old Men.

If you were stranded on Jetty Island and could only take three books, what would you take?
Infinite Jest—I’ve been meaning to reread it and it’s really long. Charles Willeford’s Sideswipe. And Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow — it might be quiet enough to actually concentrate to read it.

Muriel Barbery‘s Gourmet Rhapsody was just that book for me. It’s the story of ‘the world’s greatest food critic’ who is about to die and must decide his final meal.

What I found so wonderful about this book, however, was not so much the storyline but its poetic language and magical characters. Even with these delightful underpinnings, it is also the kind of book (my favorite kind) that is fabulously political and prophetic at hidden turns — reminiscent of such literary pleasures as Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon and the visual delight of Babette’s Feast. 

Barbery fills the book with exquisite sentences, such as, “That is sashimi: a fragment of the cosmos within reach of one’s heart, but, alas, light years from the fragrance or taste that is fleeing my wisdom, or is it my inhumanity…”

Exactly. If those words touch the depths of you like they did me, you will love this book.

Kara