Nom de Plume

“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” I asked. Steve and I were walking around Seward Park this evening. “Are you going surfing?”

“Well,” he said, “the waves are crap, so probably not. Besides, it won’t be as much fun, you know, alone.”

“Are you saying you’ll miss me?”

A pained look crossed his face. “Uh, yeah. Oh God, I feel ill now.”

I should interject and say this is perfectly normal for Steve; normal declarations of affection make him deeply uneasy. It’s a good thing I’m not very sensitive and that I don’t expect romance and roses because, God knows, I would never get them. His idea of a compliment? When we were going to the opening night of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, I was wearing a vintage sparkly shell. It was one of those 60s sleeveless knit numbers with the beads sewn all over. I came out of the bathroom with makeup and high heels (which happens, oh, once a year), black velvet and this glittery top, expecting him to say something really nice. He looked at me fondly and said, “Ohhhh, you look just like fishing tackle.”

In any case, back to the conversation at hand.

“So you’ll miss me?”

“Uh-huh,” in a monotone.

“Horribly?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Rip out the kitchen cupboards.”

I said nothing. What could I say? That the bathroom’s not finished, the floors aren’t finished, or that all the trim’s a mess? No, I couldn’t possibly say that. So what I did say, after a long moment of silence in which I was contemplating who I could go live with, was, “Uh, so how long will we be kitchenless?”

“At least a month.”

And call me crazy, but there was more than just a hint of glee in his voice.

Or rather reading too much. We such readers take the written word far too seriously. We hunch over our novels and analyze every word, every shift in tone. We scrutinize motivations and examine characters like they’re organisms under a microscope. If you read too much do you become desensitized to the simple pleasure of a book? Or maybe it’s the opposite. Do you become too sensitive and therefore more critical? I don’t know — but what I do know is that Steve is reading Until I Find You and laughing his head off.

I took a couple hours off yesterday and picked up Katie Berry, who was in town. We stopped at Maruta, a Japanese grocery in Georgetown, for sushi and then walked in Kubota Gardens. It was a lovely gray Seattle day, and we gabbed the entire time in the way of women who haven’t seen each other for months. Then back to work.

Well, I go. On Saturday. My mother embarked on rebuilding the ranch house about two years ago, and it’s finally finished. Which means she can start unloading the container that’s been sitting there ever since she retired and got stuff out of storage.

Yes, that’s right. My mother is the only person I know who actually owns a container.

I’m looking forward to it. Not only are all my books there — every single one that I made her save from my childhood — but I’m hoping to find my journals.

I’ve been keeping a journal in one form or another ever since I was twelve. Thee journals from about 18 on are in a box in the garage, but those teen years have gone missing. And I hope they’re in storage.

My early journals were more like scrapbooks, in which I cut and pasted articles from riveting publications like Young Miss and Seventeen in between magic marker entries of which boys I liked. Later, I graduated to antique fountain pens; this was from the same obnoxious phase in which I looked up obsolete words in the OED to put in my English essays. I’m sure these journals, if I find them, will embarrass me to death. All I can hope is that my mother doesn’t find them first.

I can’t help it, before a summary, before anything, I’m blurting out my opinion so here goes:

I was so disappointed.

It dragged more slowly than the donation process and left me colder than a clone who’s completed and is lying on a slab of metal in the morgue. And if you don’t understand that and want to read the book with fresh, unspoiled eyes, read no further.

Actually, it wasn’t that active a disappointment; it was slower and more seeping. Kathy went to school at Hailsham, a private school in the country, where all the students were made to feel special, as though they had a purpose. There are two students with whom she has a special relationship, Ruth and Tommy, who eventually become a couple. Years later, Kathy acts as carer to both. You see, they are all raised for organ donation; they are clones of real people and their sole purpose is to to provide the healthy bits to unhealthy real people.

The idea is fabulous. The problem was the tone; I would characterize Ishiguro as being a master of quiet dissonance, which works so well in Remains of the Day and The Unconsoled. To me, it didn’t work as well here; the characters — with the exception of the manipulative Ruth — the characters seemed flat. Perhaps the slow exposition of the spoiler was to blame; I already knew what it was.

It’s not that I thought it was bad — Ishiguro writes so well. But for a better literary science fiction novel, read Atwood’s Oryx and Crake instead.

For a long time, especially in college, John Irving was one of my favorite writers. A Prayer for Owen Meany remains my favorite, followed by Cider House Rules, The Hotel New Hampshire and then of course, Garp. But starting with Son of the Circus, his sprawling familial novels with his trademark warped viewpoint descended into just being bizarre and not very readable. Now, for readers looking for those early Irving novels, there’s Until I Find You, which echoes earlier work.

Echoes being the operative word.

The actor Jack Burns is the son of a tattoo artist mother and an organist father. His father is not part of his life, and until he is an adult, he thinks it’s because his father deserted him. This, along with a somewhat unhealthy relationship with his mother, causes him to develop his “older woman thing.” There is a lot of “penis-holding,” dysfunctional sex, therapy, Hollywood lifestyles and ambiguous relationships … But rather than summarizing its 820 pages, which would be tiresome for both of us, I’ll just let you read the blurb yourself. (Note that Random House says there’s too much stuff to summarize too, and that’s their job.)

Other reviewers have called his novel “self-indulgent” and they’re right ( there is, for example, an untoward focus on Jack’s nether regions and this is the least of it); however, this is not what bothered me. So what did? Rather than standing on its own as a story, I was reminded of earlier, better Irving novels. It was as though he said, “Okay, those other books didn’t work so now I need to return to the formula.”

John Irving’s success has always been in capturing both the mundane and the unspeakable, churning them through his oddly-configured kaleidoscope and then writing what he sees so we see it too. His characters are strange, the situations they find themselves in even more so. And herein lies the problem: Jack Burns didn’t feel like a character; he felt like Irving himself. Indeed, there are sections that are straight out of the author’s own life. It went far beyond using real life as artistic fodder and felt, at times, like an odd sort of capitulation to market forces. And that’s what feels strange; this was a capitulation to readers just like me.

Still original, still a unique voice, I enjoyed the novel. But if you’re reading him for the first time, don’t read this.

1) If my toner cartridge is “at the end of its life,” then why is it still printing perfectly?

2) Why does the kid across the street with a car worth even less than mine have an alarm system so sensitive that it goes off when you pass within two feet of it?

Last night, I was listening to a podcast that talked about Lolita. The content was pretty facile, but can you imagine the furor if Lolita were a new book today? Not only would this administration try to ban it, but Nabakov’s computer would be seized by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security would try to get records of library patrons who had checked it out, and some conservative home-schooling crank would put together a google map of every bookstore that carried it.

So celebrate Banned Book Week; censorship is closer at hand than you think.

link

A few months ago, I bought a mid-century couch from the Fremont Market. It’s been sitting pushed up against a wall and virtually unused … until Sunday. This past Saturday, we went back up to the market (where we ran into a couple I vaguely knew from Boise), and I got another mid-century piece — a teak coffee table. This led to getting rid of one cheapo couch for another.

Steve was worried that it wouldn’t go with the house and then realized that we have such a hodge-podge that it doesn’t really matter. What really matters to me right now is getting the floors redone.

In any case, I’m pleased with the two purchases. They go well together. I’m not convinced about that particular rug and the pillows, but those are small things to switch around. No modern monochrome for us!

On another note, we finally bought a new sink and Steve installed it. The rest of the bathroom is still a mess, especially considering that I’ve taken down all the towel racks and need to mud, Kilz, and paint. It just seems so daunting. Nonetheless, Steve wanted to rip out the kitchen cabinets on Saturday.

I have enjoyed other Hilary Mantel novels enormously. I didn’t enjoy this one. In fact, I hated reading it, but am not immune to its strength. And that raises an interesting question about books that are flawlessly constructed, well-written, and even powerful–but that you just don’t like. (Ultimately, it’s the same question of art: should a painting mean something or should it be aesthetically pleasing?) And perhaps this is a testament to Mantel’s skill: she takes you someplace you really don’t want to go, but you go anway.

At its heart, this is the story of two women who are paired together in an improbable way. Alison is a fat, sloppy psychic who has been visited by spirits ever since her childhood, which, by the way, was truly horrific. Colette is a thin, brisk woman who does everything by the book; she went to school, got a good job and married a man who would do. She is unhappy. After her divorce, she ends up on the psychic circuit looking for meaning. Feeling an instant bond with her, Alison offers Colette a job as her assistant.

Although Alison and Colette are absolute opposites — Alison is fat, forgiving, understanding, malleable; Colette is thin, unforgiving, and rigid — they have in common a lack of control in their respective worlds. Alison is tormented by the spirits of cruel men from her childhood, which means she can never move on. Colette is at odds with the modern world that surrounds her. When the two pair up, they give each other a glimpse into another world; perhaps this is what draws them together. The novel charts the time they spend together.

Colette goes to live with Alison, and eventually they move to an industrial wasteland in the middle of the countryside, a move that was calculated to lose the spirits. It works for a while, but ultimately the pasts of each catch up with them. It is only when they embrace their respective ghosts, for lack of a better word, that they achieve an uneasy compromise with the lives they must lead.

Amanda Quick is one of the pseudonyms of best-selling author Jayne Ann Krentz, who is probably the most prolific romance authors ever. She writes under different names, each of which has a different category of romance. She’s formulaic — but it works. I like her. Amanda Quick specializes in the 19th century and features sharp, very prosaic heroines who meet up with strong, self-made men to solve some sort of mystery. Lie By Moonlight is no different and was an enjoyable way to spend a cool autumn evening.

Somewhere — I can’t remember where — there was a review of Hearn’s Tales of the Otori trilogy, so I placed all three books on hold at the library. I got the first and third.

The setting for Across the Nightingale Floor is a mythologized feudal Japan, which made this rather interesting to me; although the setting was ultimately fiction, Hearn did a lot of research and it shows. Takeo is from a remote village and has been brought up among the Hidden, an underground religion that advocates peace despite their persecution. When the warlord Iida Sadamu razes his village and kills his family, he is saved and adopted by Lord Otari Shigeru, a mysterious man with an agenda of his own. Takeo doesn’t know what it is.

It transpires that Takeo’s father was a famous assassin and a member of the Tribe, which is an old network of families with almost supernatural skills. Takeo’s growing knowledge of his fate — one of violence — is at complete odds with his past — one of peace. Nonetheless, he swears revenge on Sadamu with Lord Shigeru’s blessing. He, too, hates the warlord.

Sadamu has built a nightingale floor, which is constructed in such a way that it sings with every step; no assassin can cross it without being heard. This is Takeo’s challenge. Or one of them anyway. As one of the Tribe, he will be enveloped into its fold despite his reservations. Combine this with a love interest — the beautiful Kaede who has been a slave — and the demands on him are enormous.

I liked reading this; Hearn plunges you into a completely new and different world. However, my interest has not held. As I mentioned, I got the first and third books and wanted to read them in order. I still don’t have the second. If it comes before I have to return the third, I’ll read the rest of the trilogy; if not, I probably won’t. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a bad read at all.

You often hear around water coolers people talking about their favorite day of the week. Everyone hates Mondays, for example; most people love Fridays. My personal favorite, when I work in an office, is Thursday; the anticipation of Friday balances with the productivity of Wednesday, the “hump” day.

But few people talk about their favorite time of day. I have two: first thing in the morning when I’m drinking coffee and anticipating what I’m going to get done that day and late at night, when I’m zonked on the couch reading. My least favorite time is this one, from about 2:30 to 5:00. It seems an empty time to me, especially now that I’m working from home again. I can’t really concentrate on writing or work; I’m too restless to read. I usually end up going for a walk, cleaning the house, or just generally puttering. After five, the day picks up again and I look forward to Steve getting home. But now, it’s not morning, it’s not evening. It feels dead and melancholy.

Anyone else? Least favorite time of day?

I don’t normally do this, but I just got my biz cards done and can’t recommend printingforless.com enough. So if you need any offset printing done for a reasonable price, go to them. They’ll even send you a mug when your project’s over.

I think Steve, who refers to my plants as “Zia’s Vegetable Torture Patch,” presented this to me as a way of rubbing salt in the wound. His denigration is justified, but really, it doesn’t matter because sometimes planning something is far more satisfying than actually doing it. The Salad Garden lets me plan–quite happily–for next year with lots of great information, pictures, and rundowns of not-so-common saladings. Recommend.

The problem with being an obsessive person is simply that: one is obsessive. This may sound like stating the obvious, but what it actually means is this: Since I started the car search, I’ve ix-nayed dozens of cars based on online research, made comprehensive lists of maybes, been to seven different dealerships and driven 11 different cars. In three days.

So here’s the lowdown.

Subaru
I drove the Outback and the Forester, and really, I didn’t like either of them that much. They felt boxy; I felt hemmed in. Which doesn’t make much sense, but I blame the gears. Shifting felt really tight. And they handled fine, but they weren’t particularly FUN. Unlike the …

Toyota RAV4
which was totally fun and zippy, and I really liked the shape and how it was configured. Didn’t like the weird tunnel vision doohickeys around the gauges. Also, it didn’t feel totally stable, a little tippy, which wasn’t the case with the …

Mazda 6 (M6?)
It was pretty cool, lots of space inside. Elizabeth went to test drive it with me, and she hated because it looked kind of like a space ship. I didn’t mind that, but I did mind the fact that the back door opened like a minivan. So I drove the

Mazda 3 (M3?)
By far, my favorite. Small but lots of space. Handled well, really well. The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that they, too, had the little tunnel vision things around the gauges. Why do people do this? Nonetheless, I felt this was a serious contender. Not that this stopped me from going across the street …

Honda Element
The less said about this, the better. Suffice it to say that this car was made for aging boomers who want to relive their VW bus years — in comfort. I hated it.

Honda CRV
I keep wanting to call it the XRT. What’s an XRT anyway? This was nice, it was fine, it was quiet, it didn’t excite me at ALL.

Nissan XTerra
By this point, it was Saturday. And I mainly wanted to see what this felt like. The very nice manager located a manual, all the while warning me that the whole industry is moving away from stick shifts. Strangely enough, the manuals they do have have six gears. It was nice. It was solid. It was a gas guzzler. So I went to the Volvo dealership.

Volvo V50
Let me preface by saying that I’m a sucker for those Northern European cars. They’re sturdy, they last forever, and they’re simple. By which I mean that their designers would DIE before putting stupid tunnel vision things around the gauges. And I’m thinking that if I’m going to buy a car, I might as well buy something that’ll last for a long, long time. I test drove both the V50 and the S40, which is the sedan version of the V40, because they didn’t have a manual in the former. But this is it. Car search over. I’m getting a V50 even though all the product literature has pictures of sporty pregnant couples. (AAHHH!) And I know I’m going to get the cracks about rejecting the Subaru, but we all have our inherent contradictions and this is mine of the day. Still, for giggles, I then drove a …

Ford Mustang
I didn’t mean to, honest I didn’t. I wanted to test out some of their small SUVs, but they didn’t have any in a standard transmission. So the next thing I knew, I was driving this. I didn’t plan for it to happen. The sales guy was very nice, but a little clueless. First of all, he assured me he could get a good price if I traded in the 2002. Then he said, “You know, most of us take our cars for granted, but for you, with your little old Subaru, it’s such a huge upgrade that I know you’ll appreciate driving a classic like this.”

Well.

Always a little bit behind the curve, I’ve finally gotten into podcasting. I had a cheapie 128 mb player, which didn’t hold very much, and finally ordered the Cowon iAudio U2. It came early this week and I love it. 1 gig holds a hell of a lot. So I’ve been podcasting everything from NPR’s Science Friday to stories from transom.org to various City Club talks. My personal favorite is the WGBH forum lecture series (and of those, check out David McCullough’s talk about his book 1776–it was fabulous.)

I listen to the player all the time: when I’m mowing the grass, walking the dog, cooking and cleaning. So it’s funny that Nicki, our next door neighbor, called me day before yesterday with an extra ticket to a Seattle Arts & Lectures event. Cynthia Ozick was to speak.

Off we zoomed to Benaroya Hall. The talk was pretty good; she spoke about the germ of the idea in novel writing. She was very funny, self-deprecating and witty. As Nicki pointed out on the way home, “She talks like she writes, which is very unusual.” I agreed. Never mind the fact that neither of us have read a thing by her. In any case, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and vowed to myself yet again that I will get out of the house and take advantage of the cultural events around me.

She read an excerpt of her latest book. It was enjoyable and I thought to myself that I would read it. Then, an audience member asked what her favorite contemporary novelists were. Without a pause, she said, “John Updike is marvellous. Philip Roth is so inventive.” And suddenly, I had less of a desire to read her work. Which is rubbish, I know, but I couldn’t help it.

I have decided to buy a new car.

For those of you who know me, this is probably a shocker. I have been driving my 1974 BMW 2002 for the past five years, happily zipping around corners with a roaring engine. And though I still love the darn thing, it’s time to accelerate into the 21st century and get a car that doesn’t shimmy at speeds above 60 mph.

I’d like to think that I’m above thinking that one’s car reflects one’s personality. I’m not. There isn’t a single new car (that I can afford, anyway) that looks nearly as cool as an old 2002. Still, the time has come.

Today, I started the official search at a Subaru dealership. I like Subarus. I like everything about them–except the fact that everyone else likes them too. And I have this fear: If I buy a Subaru, will I become my own worst nightmare? Will I suddenly have two kids and a chocolate lab? Will I start shopping solely at PCC? Even worse, will I become the person who actually believes in the segregated scoop?

In all my webbish peregrinations around the many lit blogs out there, I’ve noticed that precious few lit bloggers post their own opinions about the books they talk about.

No seriously, this puzzles me.

There are links to essays, excerpts from author interviews, and discussions about other reviews. In short, many lit blogs seem to contain links to reading materials to what someone else has written about a book.

It’s frustrating; I want to read honest reviews of the books other bloggers have read. I don’t really care about reading the hooplah surrounding the NY Books section (which I despise anyway). I can find out the Booker shortlist by myself. As for author interviews, sure that can be fun, but I go to other sources for those if and when I’m interested.

And don’t get me wrong–there’s a lot of great information out there. There are writers who do post their own reviews. Some of them have a publishing slant, which can be helpful. Others list author readings by location, or even have a guest blogger who’s a published author. That’s great.

But it seems like a complete and total copout to post an excerpt of the L.A. Times Book Review’s opinion of Rushdie’s latest, and then say that this review is what’s made you decide to read it. I mean, WTF? I don’t really care WHY you read a book. I just want to know what you thought of it. I would love to find someone else out there who hated, say, The Known World. Or even someone who loved it, and see why. And then maybe even get into a little comment war about how much his or her taste sucks.

But, perhaps, when it comes right down to it, that’s the issue.

Moods dictate not only what we read, but how we perceive it. Although I’ve read some great reviews of Eve Green–prompting me to get it in the first place–I have not been in the mood for touchy-feely, workshop-tortured prose about childhood. So scratch this one out.

Eve — well, let me quote for a second–

Evangeline. Five consonants, five vowels. A hard name to be saddled with when learning to write joined-up. A hard name still, even at twenty-nine, since it takes me an age to spell it out over the phone, and I’ve been accused of making it up altogether before now. Men, in particular, pronounce it wrong. They rush into the word, tangle themselves up in it as if it were wire. Slowness, as with most things, is the key.

(Excuse me, this is the sound of me retching. Slowly.)

In any case, Eve’s mother dies and she’s sent off to Wales to live with her grandparents. Musing about her childhood as she’s pregnant, she relives the tale of the child who is abducted the year she arrives.

And that’s as far as I got.

Would I like this if I were in a softer, more forgiving frame of mind? Would I have more patience with its carefully stitched words and phrases if I weren’t feeling so restless? I don’t know. What I do know is that I read until page 54 and every single page irritated me.