Nom de Plume

For those of you who read about our burning need for a barbecue, we have news.

We ordered the Kamado. In blue. With the feet.

Okay, okay, why the change in heart? Well, they were having a Christmas in July sale. Order in July, they will manufacture it to your specifications and deliver by Christmas. And they’ll give you 20 percent off.

It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I do feel compelled to note that for Steve, 20 percent off didn’t mean that we got a great deal. What it meant was that we could upgrade in size.

And an upgrade it is. The thing weighs 500 pounds.

One hot day last week, Steve and I were lolling on the shores of Lake Washington and I was reading a regency romance. He looked sideways at me and asked, “Aren’t you embarrassed to be reading those in public?”

“Not really,” I said absentmindedly, thoroughly engrossed in the description of the heroine’s pelisse. Steve just arched a brow and went back to blowing up his inner tube.

It occurs to me that I lied.

After all, I rarely–if ever–post reviews of the romance novels I read. And to be frank, I read a lot of them. I’m not alone. More than 51% of the books published in the United States are women’s fiction. They fly off the shelves at grocery stores. Publishers have a hard time keeping up with the demand.

So I tell myself that they’re research for my own regency romance. I tell myself that I still read more literary fiction than the average person who pooh-poohs romance. (Which is true, even if it may not be evident on this blog.) I tell myself that they’re really no different than chick movies. (Which is also true.) I go so far as to justify my reading habits with the excuse that we don’t have a TV.

But the fact is that I enjoy reading a good regency romance. And it’s also a fact that I’m a little ashamed of it. (Strangely enough, I’m not as embarrassed about reading modern chick lit, though there’s really no difference other than chick lit comes in paperback and romance in mass-market paperback.)

Why the shame? I suppose it’s that romance doesn’t seem “serious.” But there’s a lot of supposedly good stuff out there that isn’t serious at all. Or is it because of the perception that it’s not well-written? That can’t be true either, because there’s a lot of well-written romance out there. Fundamentally, I think most peoples’ objection springs from its formula-driven plots (well, that and the lurid covers), as though succumbing to its pages makes the reader herself a cliche. We readers are a self-conscious lot, thoroughly aware that we read is what makes us who we are.

But perhaps, too, the formula is its appeal. You know it’s going to end happily. You feel safe and cossetted in the formula; there’s nothing jarring between the bright covers. A romance calls out to you and says, “There’s nothing unsettling here. Just relax and read … ”

And I confess: Reviewing a romance can be boring because of the formula. Heroine meets Hero, but their love is doomed to fail because (reason). Love overcomes all after (impediment 1) (impediment 2) (impediment 3). They live happily ever after. For me, a good romance is well-written, well-plotted, and at least vaguely credible. I could say that, but three lines seems an insult.

(Similarly, it’s also true that I haven’t posted reviews of all the literary fiction I’ve read either; the better a book is, the harder a review is to write.)

So, will I start reviewing the romance I read? I don’t know. We’ll see.

It’s England, the early 17th century. Catholics and Protestants are battling. John Brigge is the coroner and one of the governors of an experimental government in a northern town. He is also a closet Catholic. One blustery night, just as his wife has gone into labor, he is summoned from his farm, the Winters, to try an Irishwoman for the death of her child.

Brigge is, more than anything, a just man who firmly believes that “the law sees more clearly when it sometimes is blind.” This attitude slowly gets him into trouble as the law becomes more Puritan–men stealing food for their families are punished as severely as highwaymen; lasses bestowing kisses on their beaus are whipped. He himself is not exempt from sin; although deeply in love with his wife, he has also committed an indiscretion with her ward. The thought torments him.

Because he refuses to obey the law–instead of making an example of the Irishwoman–he does not immediately indict her for killing her child. Instead, he calls for a key witness that was sent out of town. And during this time, he is increasingly regarded with suspicion of his fellow governors–until he himself is called out and jailed for immorality.

Bennet introduces this novel with the statement that “I have seen no evidence to support the assertion that when history repeats itself it does so as a farce. Tragedy, it seems, comes round again and again.”

And while the novel as a parable for our times may have some merit, it’s not what I found so compelling. Many historical novels make the tragic mistake of bestowing a modern perspective on its protagonists; the result is that though they may be illuminating, or educational, or even a just good book, there is still something missing.

Not so for Havoc. This felt as alien to me as a science fiction novel because he so clearly captures the thinking of someone in the 1630s–someone who thinks that eaglestones hung around the neck of his laboring wife will deliver her safely of child, someone who is given to portents and visions, someone who places his fate in God’s hands and trusts in him implicitly. “John Brigge was of the old faith,” says Bennet, and we as readers are drawn into his somber and narrow world.

About a year ago, Steve found 3 or 4 of those old U.S. state drinking glasses and thought they’d be fun to collect. Tacky as they are, I don’t mind them; in fact, I enjoy serving people wine in them. It’s more fun to ask which state they want to be instead of which little wine anklet they want–and it’s a LOT more fun to watch their noses turn up.

In any case, his mother just sent us another batch of them–her third shipment if I recall correctly. We opened the package, and marveled at how racist Tennessee was.

Not, of course, that this should have been a huge shocker. But then, Steve looked a little closer. “Is that what I think it is?”

I peered at the glass …

So tell me, Dear Reader, are we high or is that actually a KKK hat? And is the figure standing next to it what I think it is?

I read all these reviews of Little Children a while ago. One person described it scathingly funny, another said she couldn’t stop laughing. Great, I thought, another heartrending comic materpiece like Franzen’s The Corrections. Put it on my to read list, and picked it up at the library day before yesterday.

Only I didn’t think it was so funny.

Oh, not that it was bad; it wasn’t. It was pretty good even. But while I enjoyed it, I didn’t find it the scathing indictment on modern American domestic life it was rumored to be. I just found it sad.

It centers around a two couples in a suburban town. Sarah, previously a militant feminist, has somehow become a mother in a traditional relationship. Her husband is obsessed with an online porn star. Then there are Kathy and Todd, he a stay-at-home dad trying to pass the bar for the third time and she a documentary film maker waiting until he can start bringing home the big bucks. Sarah and Todd embark on an affair. There are peripheral stories as well: the child molester who just moved to town and the retired cop who thinks its his duty to harass him.

All in all, as I said, it was pretty good. Not as good as other novels about domestic life written from a man’s POV, such as Chang-Rae Lee’s The Aerialist, or even Robert Inman’s Captain Saturday–but good nonetheless.

Just not terribly memorable.

However, it does prove to me that the current male authors who are most revered by the Literary Powers That Be usually write something that is termed one of three things: 1) “gritty and real”; 2) “a satiric indictment of modern (insert adjective here) life”; or 3) “a political tour de force.”

I admire bicyclists. I really do. Especially those on Lake Washington Boulevard. After all, it takes courage to don flamboyant Spandex and then appear in public.

Case in point: Two days ago, Steve and I were driving home and there was a guy in yellow shorts. And no, we’re not talking about a pair of shorts that happened to be a muted yellow. We’re talking bright, almost neon, yellow Spandex shorts with advertisements across the rear. And the matching biking shirt.

It was painful. It also topped the list as the worst workout outfit I’ve ever seen.

Spandex is bad enough. No one looks good in it. Particularly men. Frankly, I have zero interest in bulging anatomical parts. But okay, I can see how Spandex is more comfortable, allows more movement, and so on.

But what I really don’t understand is why people pay for Spandex that has someone else’s advertisements splashed all over it. Look, I’ve seen these people careening all over the road, trying not to get hit by oncoming cars. Hell, I’ve tried not to hit them. And I can tell you one thing: They’re not wearing those little outfits because they’re being sponsored.

No, indeedy.

So while I will defend anyone’s right to wear bright yellow biking outfits, I think it inadvisable. Unless, of course, you like being ridiculed on someone’s blog.

I drove to Kirkland for a meeting today, taking the same route I used to take to work. I can’t believe I drove that every single day. No wonder I was so unhappy. Now, if I’m in a car for more than 10 minutes around town, I want to shoot someone.

A year and a half after moving here, I finally got Washington plates for the beast. But, I ask you, 86 dollars?! Of which 50-some is classified as “other expense”?!?

I’m seriously thinking about becoming a Republican.

I’ve always preferred Thoreau to Emerson. Apparently, Emerson’s wife felt the same way.

Okay, so perhaps that’s not completely true. Brown “explores the ‘cracks’ in the historical record, the places we do not–cannot–know. [Mr. Emerson's Wife] tells what ‘might have been.’”

And “what might have been” makes a fine story, indeed.

Lydia Jackson meets Emerson at a reception, and flattered by his interest in her mind, agrees to marry him. They remove to Concord, despite her reservations, and she is quickly disappointed in her marriage. He is often gaspingly cruel to her in his indifference and his ongoing adulation of his first wife, now dead of tuberculosis.

When the young Thoreau comes to live with them, a mutual feeling springs up between the two. At first prompted by jealousy of others coming between them and the esteemed Emerson, it grows into something independent…and later dies of its own accord. And Lydia, in a stunning scene towards the end of the book when she and Emerson are old and Thoreau is dead, says she loved Emerson all along…

Brown’s juxtaposition of the ideals of the Transcendalists compared to reality is haunting. Moving, beautifully-written. Recommend.

Usually, Barbara Vine (an alias of Ruth Rendell) is fabulous travel reading. Not so this one, which was hard to get into.