Strengths and shortcomings of In the Distance

Some of the descriptive passages are incredibly well written and his insight into the daily life and the hardships endured by those who crossed the country in covered wagon are excellent and perhaps unique and the intimate knowledge about survival skills makes for a great adventure story but, in the end, I'm a little let down by Hernan Diaz's novel, In the Distance, because, like man road stories - this one about he 20 or so years of wandering in the wilderness by the Swedish immigrant Hakan in his futile attempt to find his long-lost brother whom he believes to be in NYC has no sense of an ending. I mean since the entire quest and therefor the entire novel is about H's search for his brother, don't you think the novel should lead to either a meet-up w/ Linus or at the least some information about Linus's life and disappearance? In fact, this novel just seems to run out of gas: Hakan gets help from yet another unexpected quarter as a vineyard owner who happens to speak Swedish gets him passage about one of his ships bound for Alaska; the ship gets ice bound for a time, and when it's freed Hakan disembarks w/ the crazy idea of crossing the Bering Sea on foot. Maybe that's possible - or t least it was possible during the Ice Age - but then his plan is to cross Russian heading west to return to his native Sweden. Now that's impossible - even for a man who improbably survived for decades alone in the America West, somehow avoiding any attack by bears or other wild animals. Perhaps Diaz owes it to us to complete the narrative journey - in a second volume? - but I suspect Diaz himself has become weary of the trip. So, there are many fine points in this novel but there's no overall point, message, or insight, worth reading but it's puzzling to me how it could have been (one of three) Pulitzer fiction finalists. 

The most powerful and unusual chapter in Diaz's In the Distance

The almost unbearable and not really believable but, hey, this is a fable (In the Distance) more or less, saga of Hakan continues as he's arrested by some mid-west sheriff who's bringing him to Ill. to face a murder trial - they still believe he killed several men who attacked a wagon train - that he's a killer rather than a hero, and he's far too incapacitated to defend himself in any way, in fact he's so encumbered that he at times thinks he is guilty, or at least he feels guilt for killing other human beings regardless of circumstances; a deputy, Asa, takes pity on H. and realizes the sheriff is brutal and corrupt and frees Hakan, and they take off for the west, a journey that will keep them apart from civilization for many years. During this time they develop some kind of homoerotic relationship, though Hernan Diaz is a little circumspect on the details - but we do get the picture. Asa is eventually killed by some bounty hunters, and Hakan goes into even deeper isolation, again for many years, living in a system of interlocked caves that he has excavated. Though it's hard to believe his survival is possible, this is maybe the strongest chapter in the novel, as Diaz manages somehow to bring us into the consciousness of a man who is completely apart from all human society, so much so that he forgets what people look like, his language ability, never strong, atrophies, and he has visions and hallucinations. It seems he's made his way almost to the west coast, back near where his American journey began. He has given up his search for his brother, realizing that he would be unable to communicate with him if they were to reunite. I've been a bit confused on the time frame for this novel; I've been posting that it's set in the 1880s or so, but now I think that's when the opening chapter - in which Hakan relays his sage to some fellow shipmates while icebound, and that his arrival in the U.S. (SF) is probably in the 1850s - either way, the story is largely free of time markers and historical events from the world at large, no significant reference, for ex., to the Civil War till near the end: The sense is that the American plains and deserts are a world unto themselves, a place where one could truly vanish.

Making sense of the personality of Hakan in Diaz's In the Distance

Trying to get a sense of the personality of Hakan, the protagonist in Hernan Diaz's novel In the Distance. We know from the outset that he and his brother - seemingly both teenagers? - set off from their native Sweden, ca 1880 I think, headed for NYC, but they get separated en route and Hakan lands in SF, then sets off east, against the flow of migration, to find his brother, Linus, in NYC. First of all, if Diaz gives us any significant family background of the two I can't remember it; in any event, of the course of the (first two-thirds) of the novel we learn little or nothing about Hakan's family and youth. He is an amazingly non-introspective character, in some regards, and in others he's thoughtful and almost philosophical. I have to think of Hakan as perhaps on the autism spectrum or living with some degree of retardation. Just the idea that he expects to cross the country to New York and that he can somehow easily find his brother in the city suggests he's naive to an extreme degree. He's also painfully shy, especially around women. In what seems to be the climactic scene of the novel he almost single-handedly fights off an attack on a group of settlers whom he's traveling with, kills several of the attackers, and then feels such guilt and remorse about doing so that he leaves the group and heads off alone. Over the course of his tortuous journey he continues to think of himself as a pariah - rather than as a hero. Despite his extreme social awkwardness, he turns out to be a quick study when it comes to nature and medicine; he's extremely resourceful in keeping himself fed and free from fatal exposure while traveling alone across deserts, ranges, plains - and he learns from a companion the rudiments of surgery - well enough to perform delicate operations on a young boy and on his horse. Putting all this together, to the extent that his character makes sense at all, he seems like a genius with severe social anxieties, an adept at survival but an incompetent at the basic skills of community and social life.

What separates Diaz's In the Distance from many other "frontier" novels

Hernan Diaz must have done a lot of research for his novel In the Distance, about a cross-country trek late-19th century (ca 1880?) by horse, covered wagon, on foot, etc. The beauty is that he wears his research lightly; this novel does not feel at all scholarly or pedantic - just leaves you wondering at every turn, how does Diaz know all this? How does he know in such detail the look and feeling of riding in a wagon train through muck and mire and desolation, crossing the salt flats on horseback, dealing with severe wounds and injuries, such as a crushed limb in need of amputation, with 19th-centruty medial implements and little to no medicines, painkillers, or sterilization? Maybe he makes it all up, summoned from his imagination - though I suspect not; I believe he build a foundation of knowledge and then "imagined" it into fiction. At times he uses a narrative technique that I am usually contemptuous of, that is, piling on topical details through sentence fragments - but Diaz makes it work, perhaps because he uses not even fragments but single words, creating long, almost poetic, screens of detail to evoke various atmospheres and conditions. Diaz is indifferent to plot - the novel, at least for the first half, involves one man's trek to reunite w/ his lost brother, though one particular twist makes this novel differ from many other frontier pieces: The protagonist, Hakan, travels from west to east, against the torrent of travelers heading west, looking for land or for gold. H boarded the wrong ship and landed in SF, and hopes to reunite w/ his brother in NYC - but faces many hardships and obstacles in his journey, each illuminating a facet of frontier life.

More adventures, though not sure of the point of thie novel In the Distance

The saga of Hakan continues through the first third or so of Hernan Diaz's In the Distance, as he is rescued from near death-delirium from exposure by a passing covered wagon and team and finds himself in the company of a biologist-physician-philosopher who expounds to H his various theories on the origin of species. (I think Darwin's work would have been well known by the time of these events, which I think are in the 1880s, but I could be wrong on both counts.) The physician's theories in essence are that everything on earth (and in the heavens) has evolved from the same basic matter, and he hopes to prove this by finding some sort of fossil in the salt basins of what seems to be Nevada or Utah. His search for the evidence leads to near-death for the entire expedition - he's a man obsessed, much like Ahab. From what he's learned from the physician, Hakan is able to save the man's life as they head back toward a settlement for supplies. En route, another adventure: they come across a native village that had been pillaged presumably by white settlers or brigands. They stay on this site for some time, healing many of the people - Hakan has learned a lot by now about medicine and battlefield surgery - as well as learning about the native views of life and death, w/ death being a mere absorption into the matter of the land, a counterpart to the physican's theory of evolution. Eventually, the physician (sorry I can't remember his name) sets off on another expedition into the salt basins and Hakan continues his journey east, hoping to find ihis brother when he gets to NYC. Not sure yet what the point of this novel is aside from its tales of adventure, but clearly we will learn more about the skills and authority that Hakan develops on his journey.

General consensus on House of Broken Angels - powerful, abundant, in need of editing

Small book group last night for discussion of Luis Alberto Urrea's novel The House of Broken Angels; unsurprisingly, there was general consensus. All had great admiration for the plenitude of this novel - many strong characters, witty and sometimes evocative writing, great examination of the history over 3 or 4 generations of an immigrant family (not all concurred w/ my thought that every American has the material at hand to write a similar family saga - the experience of struggle and eventual assimilation is near-universal in this country - it's not just a story about Mexican-Americans but about all Americans). As JoRi noted, this is anything but a "pity-party,", that is, it's not, as one might have suspected in picking up this novel, an account of struggles and suffering and overcoming prejudice and hatred; it's a novel about aspiration and success (as well as the above struggles), a heart-warming family saga. All that said, JoRi also said she struggled to finish the novel (not sure if she actually did finish), as there were so many people and events, especially in the 3rd section, Big Angel's b-d party, that you just feel overwhelmed, and that a good editor would have  told him when to cut back and when to be more clear (in particular, it's almost impossible to know whether one of the characters did or did not kill someone). We were greatly helped in the discussion by the family tree that M put together - but even in doing so there were still points of confusion and omissions, further evidence that it's almost impossible to hold the entire novel in one's mind while - or just after - reading (or even re-reading) it. Is that bad? We could say the same thing about Ulysses or 100 Years of Solitude. And it's also possible, as I have noted, that the confusion and super-abundance is part of Urrea's literary strategy - making us feel that we, like the many cousins, about part of this big celebration and, like the characters themselves, trying to figure out who's who. All that said, I have to agree w/ JoRi that there's just too much material here, some of it left half-baked, and the novel could have been that much better w/ greater editorial guidance. Also: We never could quite figure out the significance of the title; we've got 2 Angels, but who's broken?

And adventure story that may have more dimensions - In the Distance

Began reading Hernan Diaz's new novel, In the Distance, and based on first 50 pp or so it promises to be a fine adventure novel that reverses some of the expected tropes of the genre. The basic premise: Two brothers from an impoverished family in Sweden ca. 1880 head for America (New York, specifically), but get separated en route, and we follow the younger brother, Hakan (pronounced Hawk-en), who boards the wrong vessel in England and finds himself in SF at the height of the Gold Rush. He aligns w/ a prospector family that is woefully unprepared for the venture; they set off heading east, of course, which is all that Hakan really wants - he has the naive idea that he can head east to NY and quickly locate his brother in the city. The family does find some gold, but are over-run by some outlaws and Hakan is held captive in a saloon where he becomes essentially the sex slave for the woman who owns the saloon. He eventually escapes from captivity and continues making his way east. We know that he endures for a long time, presumably never finds his brother, and becomes somewhat of a legend because of his prodigious size and strength - and we know this because in the first chapter he is aboard a boat ice-bound in what seems to be one of the Great Lakes, and he begins to tell his life story to fellow passengers. So, this novel promises lots of adventures and escapes, and it has cinematic potential. Is there anything of more significance, e.g., insight into the immigrant experience, into American colonialism and exceptionalism, into the economics and politics of the Gold Rush, into relations between settlers and natives, between miners and ranchers? So far no evidence of that, but I suspect there will be more dimensions to this novel, which btw was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year (and those awards are never rigged, are they?).

Four interpretations of Urrea's House of Broken Angels

It's obvious that Luis Alberto Urrea's novel The House of Broken Angels is a timely book, as it's about the assimilation, over some 50 years, of a Mexican-American family of four generations. As noted in many previous posts, it's challenging to the reader to keep all of the characters straight - who's the patriarch? which are the sons and daughter? which are the cousins and of what generation are they? who are the many young people introduced in the final section of the novel? - but as also previously noted maybe it's best not to worry about all of the secondary characters and just imagine yourself as an interloper and Big Angel's birthday celebration in the final section and figure that some of the people you "know" and some you don't - just like the characters themselves! (Many of the young people wonder which of the guests is a cousin and which a neighbor or friend.) An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine how different readers would react to this Rohrschach Test of a novel, such as, what about DJT (if you can bring yourself to imagine him reading a book, much less a literary novel)? Clearly, he would see the saga of the de la Cruz family as a story of illegal immigration leading to a life of crime and violence (2 or maybe 3 of the sons get involved in drug trad and gang shootings) imported for the lawless states of Mexico (there are some pretty brutal scenes of abuse and violent confrontation among family members before emigration). Other readers - most, I would hope - would see this as a moving and inspiring story of successful adoption of American values and customs while retaining strong family ties; Big Angel in particular is an example of success, a proud white-collar employee raising a large family and, through his faith, coming to terms w/ his life and death as he recognizes that he has been blessed with a great marriage. Still others might see it as a novel of assimilation and loss of family - as the youngest generation knows little or no Spanish and live a life of screen time and video games with little sense of the wit and wisdom of their elders. Still others might find in this novel evidence that almost any family - or at least any that immigrated over the past century - could construct a similar tale of struggle and adaptation; had I the skill, the will, and the imagination I could imagine the same kind of story in my family, either side, with various aunts, uncles, cousins, et al gathered at a grandfather's birthday or funeral: This novel shows us the richness and variety of all families.

Why is Urrea's novel so complex and demanding?

Luis Alberto Urrea's novel The House of Broken Angels is so well written at times, w/ beautifully evoked scenes and encounters, sharp character delineation, a great sense of the history of a family over 4 generations,t racking the assimilation (or not) into life in the U.S. and the gradual evolution from being Mexican to Mexican-American to simply American, a really fine novel, but devilishly difficult to read at many points, particularly in the final section, Big Angel's 70th (and last) birthday celebration. I'm reading the novel for the 2nd time and am still completely lost and confused at various points as I try, hoping against hope, to keep some of the peripheral characters straight: who's married to whom?, who's divorced from whom?, who's a child, a grandchild, a great-grandchild?, who are these many cousins?, who's related by blood and whom by marriage?, and I could go on. I don't think it's just me, and I definitely don't think it's Urrea's mistake. He's intentionally written an exceptionally demanding novel that requires our full attention and at least one re-reading and possibly extensive note-taking during the process of reading. Is it worth it? Well, this novel is not as great in scope as, say, 100 Years of Solitude, nor as groundbreaking in style and intellectual depth as Ulysses nor part of a grander scheme of works, like Absalom, Absalom! - so, no, in a way the demand on the reader is too high a price. But in another way, I've come to think that Urrea is intentionally creating confusion so that we the readers will feel like a guest who has meandered into this lively celebration - knowing some people, not knowing most, figuring things out as we go along - an interactive, participatory novel, in its way.

A story that echoes Tom Wolfe, 2 generations later

The Luck of Kokurra (a reference to a city in Japan that escaped nuclear bombing because of cloud cover), Gary Shteyngart's fiction piece - I'm going out on a limb here and predicting it's part of his forthcoming novel, Lake Success - calls to mind Tom Wolfe a generation or maybe two generations back, writing about the moneyed culture of New York in his well-researched and completely absorbing novel Bonfire of the Vanities. In GS's case he's writing not about bond traders - a long surpassed niche - but about hedge-funding managers and founders and elite day traders. And you know what? This already feels like yesterday's news. He centers this piece, and perhaps his entire novel?, on a 30-something guy who set up his own fund, now falling apart and under investigation, who takes off with a thousand or so in cash for what he calls a Greyhound Bus tour of the U.S., leaving behind his Asian-American wife (this is an odd thematic element that has occurred now in 2 consecutive NYer stories; what gives?) and their autistic son; we learn nothing significant about them in this piece. This piece is set in Atlanta, where the hedge-fund guy crashes at the condo of a former colleague who, at the end, refuses the guy's plea for a "loan" of $2k. (Is the Atlanta setting another Wolfe homage, echoing his 2nd novel, A Man in Full?). Obviously GS is an established literary light, and he's done a great deal of research for this piece (as did Wolfe for his), but from the evidence here the protag is in no way a sympathetic character and the action of this selection, such as it is, is one of debauchery and waste. The two men are - or have been - ridiculously wealthy all because of shrewd trading, not because of any investment that can actually help people other than themselves or improve the world in any way. GS does not wear his research lightly, either, as he bedevils us w/ talk of longs and shorts and something called A.M.U. (like an ERA for hedge-fund managers?), and in particular with lots of arcana about various status symbols: the car to drive, the right watch to wear (GS apparently has a thing about watches), all of which makes me feel that I don't want to know any more about these shallow, self-centered, privileged characters. I might have felt otherwise had this fiction piece actually reached a conclusion, but I'm guessing it's just one stop on a long odyssey. Not likely to join him.

House of Broken Angels easier to grasp on 2nd reading but why no family tree?

Began re-reading Luis Alberto Urrea's novel The House of Broken Angels in preparation for Sunday meeting of book group, and certainly in hopes of bringing this extremely complex family saga back into my memory and consciousness in some useful and organized manner. No doubt it's easier going through this novel a 2nd time; in first reading I was impressed numerous times by the wit and by some excellent scenes and sense of place, but I had a really hard time keeping the characters and the chronology straight. Somewhat better second time through: Now I know that Big and Little Angel, half-brothers, one 70 and on verge of death and the other in his 50s and the only family member who is half-white/half-Mexican-American and the only one living in what seems to be another world, an academic post in Seattle. I also see more clearly now that there are 3 phases to this novel: Part 1 involves the funeral of Big Angel's mother and the ensuing family gathering; part 2 gives the back story of the family, beginning with Big Angel's father, Antonio de la Cruz, working as a motorcycle cop in a small city on the Baja (I think), La Paz, and abandoning the family to pursue another woman and move to Tijuana and later to San Diego, and in this section we also see Big Angel in youth, falling love w/ Perla, who will be his wife of 50 years, and giving some important background on his brothers, or as we learn half-brothers, and his emigration north to escape abuse at the hands of a cousin who runs a fishing boat - lots of stuff, and some great descriptions of life on the Baja and some dramatic scenes of confrontation and flight. The 3rd part - haven't gotten there yet in the re-read - is teh 70 (and final) b-d gathering for Big Angel, where we meet many of the younger generation and see family history repeating itself in some fashion. Yes, the novel is better because more graspable on 2nding reading; I still don't know why Urrea didn't make things a little easier for us by including a family tree - even G Garcia Marquez did that!

Smart and subtle New Yorker story by Weike Wang

Current New Yorker story is by a writer unknown to me, Weike Wang, winner of an award (PEN? Man Booker?) for his novel, Chemistry - and by evidence of this piece, Omakase (a chef's choice sushi dinner order), a talented and subtle writer. This story tells the seemingly simple tale of a 30-something man and his same-age partner - they've lived together for two years after a careful courtship, long-distance at first - as they go out for sushi dinner in a "hole in the wall" restaurant near where they live in a rapidly changing Harlem neighborhood. Over the course of the meal - they are the only patrons on the six-seat restaurant - they chat, or rather he chats, awkwardly, w/ the chef and the strained conversation - his probing too avidly to learn how long the chef has worked at this spot and how he left of lost his previous job, his too-eager guffaws at the chef's jokes, her icy silence until the chef (none of the characters is named, btw) makes a disparaging remark about the Chinese (she is Chinese-American, as we learn part way into the story) - reveals the cracks and fissures in their relationship. From the start, we learn, as they first dated via Skype, she worried that he liked her only because he maybe had a thing for Asian women (turns out not so). At the end, she counters the chef's remarks by stating that she is Chinese, which pretty much puts and end to the bonhomie of the evening. On exit, he tells her that she has to learn not to take everything so seriously. But that's who she is - different in many ways from him, a highly organized banker, whereas he is an artist and a potter and a bit of a food snob and know-it-all - and we can see that she's simmering and that it won't be long before the relationship collapses, though all of this is unstated, revealed though hints and silences.

A fine new book - Operation Chaos - about war resisters in Sweden (topic of my novel, Exiles)

Those who've read Exiles will know of my interest in the American war resisters, including so-called deserters, living in Sweden in and about 1970; I tried in that novel to capture the sense of fear and paranoia that permeated every moment of the lives of those in this community, and their allies and supporters. I based these feelings and ideas on my best memory of my contact and association w/ these brave men and their equally brave partners. There was always a sense in the resister community that maybe, just maybe, people were playing up and exaggerating the possibility of government surveillance and worse, that they were over-estimating the importance to the U.S. government of this tiny group of activists. But in any event, the paranoia and fear was omnipresent. I've been reading Matthew Sweet's excellent new book, Operation Chaos, by far the most detailed and well-researched account of the deserter community in Sweden, and Sweet's book makes it absolutely clear that the war resisters in Sweden were not paranoid at all - the CIA and other government agencies had implanted moles and spies among the deserters and had done everything possible to split the community into factions and to make life in exile for these men as miserable as possible. Honestly, I never thought the attempt to disrupt this community and to halt the exodus of American soldiers could possibly have been this pervasive and malicious, but Sweet nails it down, though extensive historical research and equally extensive contemporary interviews and meetings w/ members of the community, some still in Sweden, others back in the States. I was surprised among other things at the extent of the community in Sweden in the early 70s; I set Exiles in Uppsala (in earlier drafts called Upland, because I never meant it to be a real city - publisher pushed for the change), and had thought that there were no deserters living in Uppsala at that time (those I knew were in Stockholm). Apparently there were a few in Uppsala, and many more in Malmo and perhaps other cites. I didn't follow news of community in the Swedish press, which I could barely read anyway - but it was apparently a pretty hot news topic at the time (I do remember a TV special - which I "copied" in the novel). One thing that Sweet does not discuss is the # of war resisters and deserters from many other countries who'd come to Sweden in exile; these other communities were a major part of the novel (and of my life, when I lived in Uppsala). Anyway, for those who have any doubt about the long read of the CIA in the Nixon era and about the "nefarious" (a word Ann Beattie used in her much-appreciated blurb) actions of the U.S. government at that time, Sweet's book will show you the light.

One of Singer's best stories and one of Cheever's worst

Reading a few more selections in the norton Anthology of short fiction 3rd ed, including Isaac Bashevis Singer's famous The Spinoza of Market Street, which oddly I'd never read before .  Clearly one of his best stories, free of the mordant cynicism and occasional misogyny of his "american" stories yet not mired I. The sentimentality and yearning for a lost world of his shtetl stories. This story is a study in personality, specifically of the ill, elderly scholar, Dr. fischelson, who has devoted his life to the study of Spinoza and has done his best to model his life's on the tenets of S's stbinking, essentially, if I have this right, attempting to view all human life from the perspective of god and realizing that we are just a minute part of the cosmos so attention to worldly matters is meaningless and interferes w our purpose on earth. So dr F suffers from his illnesses and maladies and looks out his window on the teeming life below - a busy street in Warsaw in 1905 - a street whose life is disrupted by the outbreak of war, to which dr f presumes to be indifferent. All changes when his neighbor cares for him during a near fatal illness (and starvation) and eventually he agrees to marry her. In a rarity I think for singer he describes the sexual joy of their first night together and in the morning a sexually awakened dr f looks out the window at the cosmos above and acknowledges that he has become someone Spinoza would call a fool - tho we might call him a mensch. Also rea John Cheever' story the fourth alarm, about a suburban husband (of course) spurred to seek a divorce when his wife becomes an actor and takes a role in a play in manhattan that involves nudity and on-stage sexual acts. In my view this embittered story is one of jc's weakest and hold little interest except inform its offered insight on Cheever's repressed homosexuality, his tension between suburban propriety and urban exuberance, and his strained relationship w his wife, a poet ever competitive w her husband's literary success. Why ri cassill chose this story over so many better ones (the airplane crash story, the brotherly rivalry story, e.g.) is a mystery - perhaps to settle a grudge against a rival?

Placing Chekhov among some of his contemporaries

One way to appreciate the excellence of Chekhov's stories - their sorrow, their pacing, their strangely open endings - is to compare them w the work of Chekhov's contemporaries, even the best of them. Reading further in the 3e of the norton anthologynof short fiction I read stories by three near contemporaries - Saki, Stephen crane, and Edith Wharton - each of them fine but each still embedded in the tradition of the well-made story, w a formal conclusion, a central action, and to some degree w a twist of fate. saki's open window is a short piece that has a surprise ending but is more of a romp or a quip about a mischievous young woman who delights in tricking house guests - I won't give it away, it's worth reading and will take two minutue. Crane's story, the blue hotel,  best of these three, is a long tale about a fight among gamblers in a Nebraska town in deep winter - leading to a death foreshadowed at the outset. The conclusion, in which we sense the complicity of several men in the killing is strong and surprising and raises the story above the level of western adventure. The Wharton story, the muse's tragedy, is her take on a more famous story (the aspern papers) by her friend h James and tells of a young man infatuated w the woman who was presumably the use and inspiration for his favorite poet. Story has potential but wharton wrapped it in a long and unlikely letter from muse to the young man thanking him for loving her but breaking it off - sad in its way (reminds me a little of rosencavlier, a great opera) but a little schmaltzy as well. This was a random selection and is not to say that these are the greatest short stories by Chekhov's contemporaries- esp if you count near contemporary Joyce - but they give perhaps a sense of the typical English-language literary piece of the time. Today of course the open stories of Chekhov, Joyce, Hemingway are the norm -  and much abused by fledgling writers who think a story can end effectively w protagonist gazing at the sea or the stars.

An overlooked Chekhov short story

Coming across a Chekhov story I'd never read (or at least don't remember having read), in this case in the Norton Anthology of short fiction (3e), Is always a revelation and a pleasure. Yesterday read A visit to Friends, sandwiched between 2 much more famous stories (lady w lap dog and the darling) and I have wonder how his one's been overlooked - maybe because there are so many great Chekhov works we can't find room in our brains for another? In this terrific story the protagonist is a 30something Moscow lawyer who receives a note from two women longtime friends inviting him to visit them in the country.  The invite stirs him to memories of youth when he was in love w one of the women (playfully called Va). But he knows what the invite means: they're in financial distress and  the other woman Ta, short for Tatiana) and her unfaithful and self-pitying husband , Sergei - want to hit him up for a "loan" and free legal advice. The young man goes and senses that he , that they all, have grown much older and their carefree youth is gone. He finds Sergei odious. And then there is Ta's sister, Na (Natalia?) - and the man senses without ever saying so that the whole purpose of the visit is to set him up w Na , which would solve their problems. He flirts w her, dances w her but in the end - this is Chekhov! - he cannot bring himself to live her and all go off into the despair and loneliness of their lives.  This fine short story has all the anguish and elements - the elusiveness of happiness, the longing for connection w others just out of reach, the pride of the wealthy on the verge of despair, self-centered "types" as he calls them (a great moment in this story is the man' s realization  that he too is a "type") characteristic of Chekhovs great dramas.

A surprising setting for a Bellow story

Came across a Saul Bellow story that I'd never read nor in fact even heard of in an old edition of the Norton Anthology of Short Stories, Leaving the Yellow House, which turns out to be a narrative about a 70-something widowed woman living alone in an isolated town in the far west built upon the ruins of a tungsten mine and on the shores of a volcanic lake probably in Nevada tho Bellow doesn't specify. He does denote in I think the first sentence that Hattie is one of only six white people in the town - a strange almost racist observation (there are native Americans, blacks, hispanics, but they don't seem to count) tho it does set up the social miles and mentality of the community. Hattie is embittered and debilitated, a far-along alcoholic,and the story concerns her doomed efforts to live independently following a car crash - she insists she lost control when she sneezed, a comic motif in this long piece, whereas everyone knows she was blind drunk. In a touching manner, several of the few townsfolk do come to her aid but none is willing to take her in permanently unless paid for their efforts, understandably - tho Hattie has no money to spare. (In part this story, from 1957, is about the absence of social services in the US and the bogus nature of the belief if independence and minimal government.) Bellow does a great job giving us a vision of the isolated community, w both humor and pathos. Most surprising to me was that this story is in the Bellow corpus; everything else I've read by him is about Chicago or Jewish intellectuals or gonifs and shysters or Manhattan - all of it urbane or broadly comic (e.g. Henderson); this shows a thematic or at least topical range in his work (it was included in the Mosby's Memoirs collection) that I'm guessing most readers are unaware of; perhaps other works in that collection peer off in different directions as well - an oportunity for Bellow to spread his wings so to speak. Q

Adichie's insight and her observations on two cultures

About 1/4th of the way through Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanuh (2013) as her protagonist , Ifemelu, leaves Nigeria to begin postgraduate studies in the US (the novel actually begins w her 13 years later as she is a successful academic or writer living in Princeton, w most of the first 100 pp or so giving us the back story). Her Aunt Ulu (so?) picks her up at the airport and brings her to her apartment in Brooklyn, where I is to live until she begins her studies in the fall. Most of this "arrival" section concerns I's first observations on american life - a double vision of sorts in that I is observing the new culture w the perspicacity of a field anthropologist as well as observing the various ways in which her aunt has changed as she adapts to American life. These observations are I think what has made Adichie a world figure. She has a sharp eye for detail in writing about her immigrant communit and uses this precision to tell not only an immigrant's tale but also as an aid in her cultural dissection of America: the way we talk, drive, raise children (her aunt has a 5year-old son, Dike), what we and our children watch on Tv, how we shop and how we eat, and, as to the immigrant community, the need to assimilate, to advance in career, to impress those who have stayed behind, to adopt American mannerisms, to put the best face on everything, and to play the game, so to speak, for ex., to get I a job her aunt gets her an ID from a fellow Nigerian who'd returned home, so I now has a new name like it or not (oddly the first name is Ngozi) so there's a sense of us against the system, doing whatever it takes, this is America (and Nigeria as well). So - I'm getting insight into a new culture but I'm not caught up in the narrative, which is languishing ever more chapter by chapter.

Many characters and plot elements in Adichie's best-known novel

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie continues in section 2 of her 2013 novel, Americanah, to set up the forces of conflict in her plot: stepping back from the near-present of part 1 w the protagonist, Imfelu, settled and successful in academics in the us but preparing for unknown reasons to return to her native Nigeria and reconnect her first love, Obinze (?) who is successful as well as married, CNA show us I entering college and having her first sexual experience w O and just beginning to dabble in student politics (and showing interest in a student activist leader) as, in parallel, we learn the fate of her aunt Uma, who had become the "kept woman" of the boorish but all-powerful General but whose world of prosperity is ripped away from her when the G dies in a military plane crash ((a coup maybe?). U leaves Nigeria w infant son for the US, setting up a line of opportunity for"we I,Aline, I's later emigration. Aunt U's story interests me more than I's at this point, as it's so foreign to Americans cultural experience- whereas I in many ways could almost be an American family - w first-generation college student issues. A lot of events and many characters and 3 significant settings in first 100 pp of this episodic, well-realized, ambitious if conventional novel.

An unusual story about a tragedy and its aftermath by David Gilbert

David Gilbert's story, fungus, is the third and final piece in the New Yorker summer reading double issue ( what does it mean that two of the three are set in Portland Oregon?), and it fits loosely w the parenting theme of the issue. This story is about a young father whose wife and older daughter have recently died in a car crash ( we learn nothing about them aside from this salient fact) who is trying to keep his life in order as he raises their six-year old daughter and fends off well-meaning condolences and solace from his friends. The central event is their purchase of a car to replace the one involved in the fatal accident. At some points this is a heartbreaking story as we see the protagonist trying to ease his daughter's pain in sometimes strange ways such as letting roam at will in the car lot to pick out their next car no questions asked. The story also delves into the spirals of the man's thoughts as he obsesses on numerous topics but avoids thinking about the central issue in his life. Gilbert writes w that sharp urbane wit we associate w the Brooklyn writers and draws on a store of arcana: the protagonist has lots of thoughts about the indie rock. Suicide of his 90s youth (all of which was obscure to me) as well as lots of literary and cinematic references (Roethke, Slinger, Antonioni) probably not obscure to most readers; there is a hint that the protagonist may be a writing prof but that is only adumbrated. In fact the entire story is remarkable in being one of the few that have a potentially dramatic back story that is never developed - the whole narrative is in the present and we have only hints to and glimpses of anything preceding the nominal events in the foreground of the narrative;'the protagonist's interior life is developed but he pointedly refuses to reflect on the tragedy in that has changed him forever.

Karen Russell's frightening story on motherhood

Karen Russell's story in current New Yorker, Orange World, is about new mothers and their anxieties and I would have to suggest that most new moms and maybe new dads as well wait a few years before reading this piece as KR efffectively enumerates all of the things that can go horribly wrong for newborns - a story sure to provoke rather than alleviate anxieties. kR's protagonist, Rae, is a bit older than most new moms and had a difficult pregnancy w a report of a likelihood of genetic defects or maladies for the newborn. She also endures a post party's depression that is extreme, so much so that she imagines that a creature representing the devil has taken hold of her psyche and she leaves the house each night to lie on a curb stone and feed or nurse this devil-spirit - whether this actually occurs or if it's solely her delusion is not clarified but one has to wonder where the hell her husband is during all this. To get her mind straight she joins a group of new moms who each relay their horror stories - further anxiety provoking for many readers I'm sure. Then the story pivots as Rae confesses about her tryst w the devil - and it turns out this is a familiar theme among mothers in this area (Portland) and the mothers unite in a scheme to capture the creature, transport it far away, and release it (why?). So it becomes a women's solidarity story in some ways. You need a lot of buy-in the get w this story, at least if you take the events literally, as some kind of horror/monster story - but as a parable for the fears and anxieties of motherhood and the social pressures to keep these fears private and silent the story is powerful and revealing - and maybe even more frightening.

A painful memory of a childhood trauma in story set in China

Yu Lang story Silver Tiger seems an odd choice to lead the New Yorker summer fiction issue - author  (writing in Chinese) unknown to most of the readership and a story that's not immediately engaging as a narrative tho it does fit in w the theme of the issue, parenting, in this case bad parenting. The story is the recollections a pun adult man seeming to be successful (in academic life?) recalling his boyhood in China date uncertain. He was as he says raided by his deaf grandmother (I think more accurately she had hearing difficulty - he does not seem to communicate w her via sign) who believes the child will live under a curse till age 9 and her charge in life's is to bring him alive to that point of safety. He nearly drowns in a pond innermost backyard - die in part to her neglect - and has a vision of the eponymous tiger - and I'm not sure what that means at all. The central dramatic point of the story occurs when the boy's father appears on scene to take the child to a hospital for treatment of a urinary blockage - a scene that is extraordinarily gruesome. Overall the point of the story seems to be either that life's in rural China was a trial of endurance for children or else that even w horrible supervision children will manage to endure.  The great unspoken question is : Why did the parents entrust son to elderly grandmother? I suspect it could have been because they Igor have been assigned to a remote workplace or conversely maybe they went to a city to seek their fortune - but no answer to this riddle is given, unfortunately, as the answer could place this story in a social context (rather than just a semi-exotic childhood memoir).

Why Adichie's Americanah is, at least so far, more than just a teen-romance novel

The 2nd section of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah (2013) becomes a teens-in-love story, as we move back a little bit in time and see as Ifemelu, in h.s., meets her first serious boyfriend, Obinze. This part of the story is only somewhat interesting to me and seems, on basis of pure plot, not much more than a teen romance novel; what raises the novel to a higher level and will (or must) keep my interest and has made this novel a sensation rather than another star-crossed lovers story is the cultural context: We get back story on Ifemelu's family - her mother a religious fanatic jumping for church to church and her father an idealist of a sort, dismissed from his government job (in Lagos) because he would not submit to the humiliation of addressing his boss as "Mama" and now out of work, putting family finances in jeopardy. Ifemelu seems to be the only one in her cohort of school friends to be living on the edge of poverty, so on the one hand her eyes are opened by the privileged lives of her classmates, w/ their European vacations etc., and on the other hand for the first time she recognizes the poverty of her own family, e.g., she didn't realize it was unusual to not have a telephone at home. This dialect reminded me of the American novel Prep - scholarship girl in a new environment - though it's clear the Ifemelu fits in well in her new scene, intellectually and socially, and that a love relationship w/ Obinze, from a family of intellectuals and scholars, will only advance her stature (and self-esteem). What everyone in her clique holds in common is a fascination w/ all things American - and we know that this force will drive her to emigrate to the U.S. and to attain success, with the mystery being: Why does she choose to return to Nigeria? She's not trying to reconnect w/ family nor is she on a social mission; is she really expecting to start anew w/ Obinze, who is to all appearances happily married and involved in fatherhood?

Promosing start in Section 1 of Chimamanda Ngozi Achiedie's Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Achidie's best-known novel, Americanah (2013) gets off to a fine start, and it's obvious from Section 1 - one chapter that takes place in and around Princeton and the second in and around Lagos - that CNA is a sharp-eyed social critic and a write with wit and style. Her story is aboutcenters on a 20-something Nigerian woman who has lived in the states for 13 years and has dual citizenship - have too look up her name: Ifemelu - a successful academic (has just completed a fellowship at Princeton, field not named) involved in a relationship w/ Blaine, an African-American teaching at Yale. Novel opens w/ Ifemulu traveling to Trenton to get her hair braided in an African salon - none exists in the upscale Princeton - and through this device CNA gives us some real insight to how foreign-born citizens view Americans and out quirks - e.g., saying conversationally "I know" when we really mean "I agree" - as well as quirks of the African community in the U.S.: Ifemelu engages in a complex discussion about various African "tribes" and rivalries w/ her stylist. Second chapter shifts to Lagos where we meet Ifemelu's first serious boyfriend - Obinze - now a successful entrepreneur and - seemingly - happily married. Again, CNA offers sharp insights into Nigerian culture, politics, and economics - the hustling, the currying of favor with the wealthy, the schemes, how much theft is tolerated and how much is unforgiven. The plot entails Ifemelu's surprise deicision to leave her American boyfriend and the culture in which she has thrived to return to Nigeria; her reasons for doing so are not yet clear, even to her - but it is clear, whether she knows it or not, that she in part wants to connect with Obinze, or at least with that part of her life and her past. It's a long novel (nearly 700 pp!) and not sure how well CNA will maintain the narrative voice (3rd person, thank God - a sophisticated way to tells a complex story such as this) and the forward-moving plot - but it's promising so far and it's clear how this novel established CNA as a leading public figure and insightful commentator on all matters African and American.

Disappointing ending to Strout's novel

In the end, I have to say that despite her many talents, including her ability to create a wide range of characters and to present each of them with insight and sympathy despite their man problems, maladies, and social malfeasance, no small feat, Elizabeth Strout lets us down in her 2017 novel, Anything Is Possible. She calls this a novel, though many would see it as a collection of linked stories, each about a character who has some relationship, however tenuous, with Lucy Barton, a woman who was a social misfit in the small Illinois town where she was raised and is now a successful writer living in NYC who has just published a memoir about her childhood. One would expect that the chapters/stories in this volume would build toward a conclusion and that the conclusion should have something to do w/ Lucy, whose memoir is what brings these characters and their stories into conjunction. But, no, Strout introduces Lucy in a chapter/story near the end of the novel but not at the conclusion, and in this chapter Lucy returns home for the first time in decades and meets w/ her brother and sister, whom she has not seen since she left home, and after some cold exchanges of words they begin to reminisce about their parents' cruelty until Lucy has a panic attack and gets her sibs to drive her to Chicago. Story just pretty much ends there, w/out any insight or revelation or dramatic climax. Then we get a few more stories/chapters, loosely connected w/ Lucy and with the Illinois town (Amgash?), and the novel concludes with a narrative about Lucy's cousin, a successful businessman, who returns to a theater post-performance to retrieve a toy left behind by his granddaughter and he encounters the lead actor who seems to be significantly disturbed and perhaps suicidal or worse; after they talk for sometime, the cousin has a heart attack and the actor calls rescue - an act of grace, I guess - but how can we really be satisfied with this is a conclusion to a novel? Not only does it center on a character about whom we know next to nothing, but he's completely uninteresting compared w/ the failed actor. Strout has fallen back on telling, rather than showing through action, and it seems to me her interest in this project waned as she neared the conclusion, or at least mine did.

The problem with the Barton siblings in Strout's novel

Elizabeth Strout seems to be losing her way in the middle of her 2017 novel (or collection of linked stories, if you prefer), Anything Is Possible, as we get 2 long chapters that seem to go over familiar ground, without advancing either the plot or our sense of (and compassion for) the main characters: in Mississippi Mary the youngest, the favorite, daughter, Angelina, goes to Italy to visit with her 70+-uear-old mother, for the first time since her mother left for Italy to marry an Italian man 20 years her junior w/ whom she fell in love. Contrary to what one might expect, this is not a marriage, on either side, about $; the mother had a prosperous life back in the U.S., though a marriage roiled by infidelity. Now she is living in some squalor on the Italian coast, but enjoying her life and new surroundings. It takes Angela some time to appreciate this, and the story keeps meandering back and forth, with the mother pleading for A's affection and understanding, which at the end she seems to have attained. The story consists largely of dialog and contains no highly dramatic or surprising moments, in my view. The next story or chapter is the first in which Lucy Barton, the daughter from a highly impoverished and at times abusive family, returns to her home town in Illinois and marks her first appearance in this novel, though most or even all of the stories reference Lucy, a famous author who has just published a memoir (which may or may not be Strout's preceding novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton). Lucy visits her brother, in a very awkward scene in which he tries to make his run-down house attractive enough for his long-gone sister (though they talk by phone weekly); other sister, Vicky, pays a surprise visit, leading to lots of bickering about family history and an account or a truly horrendous incident of abuse regarding eating practices. All told, this chapter, again, is a lot of talk and adds little information to our store of knowledge about Lucy and her environs. In fact, this story further highlights the question as to why Lucy seems to still hold a great deal of love and affection for her (now deceased) parents; I know that Strout's writing is all about compassion, ours for her characters and her characters for one another, but in this case I think the normal human reaction would be for Lucy and her siblings to just say FY to their parents, who treated them so horribly and may have ruined their chances for happiness and acceptance in life. These adults are survivors, and if Strout truly has compassion for her characters she'll let them cut loose from their troubled past.

The suffering and trauma in Elizabeth Strout's paired novels

After finishing reading Elizabeth Strout's 2016 novel, My Name is Lucy Barton, I've resumed reading her 2017 novel, which could as well be described as a collection of linked stories, Anything Is Possible, which focuses on the small Illinois town where a town native Lucy Barton, who has settled as an adult in NYC, has just published a memoir about her childhood in the town (an obvious back-reference to the previous Strout novel), and what a shock, to move from the attenuated, rather placid world of My Name Is .., in which the narrator, the eponymous Lucy Barton, recalls her lengthy recovery from surgery and her strained relationship w/ her mother, w/ a # of references to how she'd felt ostracized in the town in her youth, largely because of her family's extreme poverty, the shame about her father's antisocial behavior (there is one paragraph or short section in which Lucy reads a reference to a mentally ill man who masturbated in public and she feels great horror about this - only in the subsequent novel to we learn more about her father's sexual behavior), her concerns about her older brother (his odd behavior toward animals - sleeping in the pen w/ animals doomed for slaughter - and his effeminate behavior that outraged their father), and most of all her difficult relationship w/ her mother, at times friendly and like gal-pals and at other times distant and silent. (Sorry for that ridiculously long sentence.) In the latter novel, however, we get a series of stories that show that everyone in the town, whatever the tenuous or direct connection to Lucy Barton may be, is in some way wounded, cruel, degenerate, criminal, surreptitious, or all of the above; Lucy's family history, which Strout expands somewhat in the 1st chapter/story in Anything Is Possible (we meet her brother and get some insight into the father's rage and into his possible act of criminal arson) is part of a pattern of hatred and shame that permeates this small town. Yesterday I read the 4th story/chapter, which tells of a seemingly upright 60-something resident, Charlie, whose wife runs a little gift shop (we met her in the 1st story) who, under the guise of attending groups sessions and conferences w/ fellow Vietnam vets, is carrying on a long-term relationship w/ a prostitute; the woman - he never actually learns her real name - hits him up for $10k to pay off her son's drug dealer; Charlie gives her the $ and then feels great remorse, as he knows his wife will see the w/drawal from their account and he will have to explain why he has stolen this $ from her. As noted in an earlier post, these stories also into tales of infidelity, voyeurism, rape, and other malfeasances.Is Strout's point that this town is typical? That everyone suffers in secret (though only artists make that suffering public)?

Darkness and compassion in Strout's novels

Elizabeth Strout's 2016 novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, tells a story in more or less alternating chapters of a successful writer from the Midwest who hadn't a troubled and impoverished childhood  - some of the chapters recollecting her long stay in a hospital for treatment of sepsismpost surgery Andy the other chapters looking back on her early days as a writer and her remarkable commercial and artistic success. Through these narratives coincide w some known facts about Strout's life we should not be naive enough readers to see this narrative as a memoir - at least not until we read Strout's follow up novel, Anything Is Possible, which gives us the back story or fills in the blanks about many characters mentioned in Lucy Barton and also notes the LB has published a memoir - so in a sense LB is a memoir by a fictional character (who's much like the author). Whew. The highlight emotionally of LB is Lucy's relationship w her mother, who visits her in the hospital. At times they seem like pals and confidants but then her mother can suddenly be cold and cutting - and we can sense from this the difficulty Lucynfaced growing up in such a troubled family - much more on that to come in the follow-up; in fact the oscillations of the mother's behavior are hard to credit in LB - until we read Anything.  It's almost as if Strout recognized , nearing the end of LB, that she had more to say than she could encompass on one novel and she rushes through many key points in the final sections of the novel, some of which are only a paragraph in length. We therefore learn little about the breakup of Strout's first marriage, and highly emotional scenes w her father and daughters feel perfunctory.  As noted in earlier post there is much about Strout's writing that is highly compassionate, and her character Lucy is a highly compassionate writer and thinker as well (tho why did Strout have to make her a Yankees' fan?). I think advice she received from her writing mentor was and is way off base, telling her she has only one story to tell tho she may do so in various ways - that seems to me to be judgmental and condescending: a great writer early in her career should feel she has thousands of stories to tell w world enough and time. The mentor seems to be speaking for herself,tired and under-appreciated in late career - tho she did give Lucy (and Strout?) the encouragement she needed at a difficult time. If this novel is about compassion adumbrated w darkness, the one to follow makes darkness visible.

An intimate account of Roth the writer and thinker and funny guy

FSG weekly news blast includes some great excerpts from Claudia Roth Pierpont's book of interviews w and observations of Philip Roth. Of particular interest are Roth's thoughts about his own writing and literature in general. Roth said he considers as I lay dying one of the greatest works of american lit (will have to re-read that!) and found absalom, absolutely! Almost impenetrable over first 50 pp (completely agree!), cited among Hemingway' greatest works Farewell to arms (naturally) but also islands in the stream and the posthumous publications (surprisingly - and no mention of the short stories); notes he prefer H to Fitzgerald , whose style he finds over-wrought (disagree there but see where Roth is coming from - H when you think about it is actually the more Rothian. Asked the best line in literature he came up w a line from crime and punishment- "this changes everything" (after a character pulls a gun on the speaker ) and from Ulysses as Bloom observes (I think) a former lover on the beach: still at it.  Both quotes are quite Rothian, in humor and pith, and not exactly typical of their respective authors. On his own work, Roth laments some early gaffes (as he sees them), notably setting goodbye Columbus in short hills at a time when no Jews lived there (true); readers from New Jersey will note that the Patinkin family (Brenda is based on the young Maxine Groffsky, who became a prominent lit agent) "actually" live in west orange where there still exists a neighborhood where streets , as roth wryly notes, based on parentAlmaspiration: Dartmouth road, oxford place, and Yale terrace specifically. Finally Pierpont accompanies Roth to a concert where has has several shrewd observations about the program esp beethoven's astounding quartet 130 w the gros fugue - i was surprise during to see how observant he was about music. In a recent post I noted that he wrote little about music tho friend AW informed me that music is important in roth's the dying animal - book I've read but don't well remember. definitely worth reading this excerpt nad probably the whole book - if the novel asymmetry gave us a look at a Roth avatar this book gives us an intimate portrait of Roth the man and the writer.

Compassion inthe work of Elizabeth Strout

Hat tip to long-time fan of Elizabeth Strout, M, who has noted as a key element in her fiction the compassion she feels and evokes for her characters, even, in fact especially, for those not ordinarily deemed "likable" or at least sympathetic.  Not to open the whole debate about the need for literary protagonists to be likable, but there's a huge difference between a character who is dislakble because of his or her actions,ideas, and behavior whom the author treats w contempt and same type of character whom the author embraces or redeems (think for ex of Olive Kitteridge). Strout brings this quality of compassion to the fore in her novel My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016), in which the narrator,the eponymous Lucy, who shares some biographical details w the author - and in fact is a first-person account of how the author, be it Lucy of Strout or Strout, became a writer. Lucy tells us of her chance meeting w an author whom she admires and of her subsequent conversation w a friend (a scholar or critic I think) who dismisses the author as too compassionate - a real put-down w of course some element of condescension and misogyny. Lucy/Strout , undeterred, determines that this authr's work will guide her as she sets out to become a writer, that is to write stories and subsequently a book (a memoir Lucy's case) of mistreatment, abuse, and suffering redeemed by compassion.  Writing about Lucy and her influences, Strout gives us real insight into her work and her intentions as a writer - though I think she makes it sound too easy to "become a writer," as if all one needs to do so is inspiration and a model. At least through the first half of the novel we don't get a sense of the difficulty of writing and publishing.