Nom de Plume

One day, Vincent Nolan, who is a neo-Nazi, walks into the human rights foundation World Brotherhood Watch. He claims he wants to stop other men from doing what he has done. Vincent is sincere, but matters are complicated by the fact that he also needs refuge from his cousin, the man who took him in when he had nowhere else to go, indoctrinated him into neo-Nazism and whose truck and cash he stole. Still, Meyer Maslow, the Holocaust-survivor director of the organization, recognizes the opportunity for what it is — and asks his fundraiser Bonnie to take him in.

Bonnie is a single mother of two boys. She is eager to please and has a hard time saying no. Reluctantly, she takes Vincent in. Over time, a strange sort of relationship develops — both she and Vincent are like injured animals licking each other’s wounds. Similarly, Vincent has an electric effect on Meyer, who starts to see that his life’s work has become stale — instead of being out in the world doing, he stays in the office organizing. As Vincent starts speaking publicly, the characters all start to evolve. Ultimately, however, Vincent is terrified his cousin will find him. And of course, he does.

I started A Changed Man with high expectations — which weren’t so much disappointed as they were withered. Prose does an excellent job characterizing each of her protaganists; they all display a compelling and thoughtful internal landscape. But while the plot has promise, somehow it was a bit disappointing — especially the end, which seemed tacked on.

Ultimately, the question is not who, but what Bill Napoli is.

The ingenious ladies over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels have come up with the idea of Google bombing him. This is my contribution — now make yours.

For those of you who live under a rock (which, admittedly, is me most of the time), Bill Napoli is the republican senator from North Dakota responsible for recently passed legislation that prevents doctors from performing an abortion except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. And this is his description of what would be an acceptable case for abortion.

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Is it just me, or has he spent a lot of time fantasizing about that particular scenario? I mean, what does the brutal sodomy have to do with anything?

Thanks Wade!

When Steve was in L.A., and we were doing the long-distance thing (2 years of it!), I came to the conclusion that I really detested the city. Everything about it seems false: the people, the architecture, the stores, everything. Even the balmy weather and crisp light conspire to render the place completely unreal. Spiotta evokes this sense of L.A. in her novel Lightning Field: her characters are victims of geography as much as they are of circumstance.

Mina doesn’t have any good male figures in her life: her father is a ex-Hollywood director living in a yurt and avoiding his debtors; her brother is disturbed, having spent most of his adult life in and out of psychiatric wards. Even her screenwriter husband is somehow completely ineffectual. As a result, she has acquired two lovers, one of whom is her husband’s best friend and who spends most of his time videotaping their time together.

Mina works at her friend Lorene’s concept restaurants, places that cater to the whims of Los Angelites while simultaneously mocking them. Vanity and Vexation, for instance, is an “eccentric-diet-tolerant eating environment, a gourmet restaurant that would adapt to virtually any dietary restriction.” Lorene herself spends most of her time not eating, visiting spas for spiritual detoxification, and coming up with new ways to pander to Hollywood’s elite. It turns out that Lorene was initially Mina’s brother’s girlfriend, which is how the two met — and neither is immune to the consequences of his illness.

On the periphery is Lisa, who cleans Lorene’s house and dreams about the myriad ways her children could be harmed until she becomes so neurotic that everything poses a threat.

The story itself is completely disjointed and its themes are, when it comes right down to it, rather banal — but somehow, it just works. Spiotta captures the lives of her characters, who seem to vacillate between what is real (family problems, doomed relationships) and what is not (boob jobs, movies, L.A. itself). The result is a dark disturbing novel that is punctuated with irony and wit.

I checked this out from the library well before I bought The Fool’s Tale — but I picked it up right after I read it and was quite surprised to see that it dealt with the same part of the world 150 years later. In fact, many characters in both novels share the same name and the same historical figures are mentioned. Which just proves that synchronicity is alive and well. After all, how often does one encounter names like Maelgwyn in a novel?

But in terms of similarity, that’s it. For one thing, it ends happily. (And why is it that with certain novels you just KNOW they’re going to end happily while others scream doom from page 1?) For another, it’s eminently readable, but not that memorable.

So. Wales after the bubonic plague. Elise, who married a religious fanatic (and who, by the way, is prone to visions) kills her husband in self-defense and escapes with her servant. She meets up with Gwydion, a man seeking revenge against the killer of his family. He’s wounded by the villain; she nurses him. Five days of this, and they’re madly in love but each continues separately. Meanwhile, the psycho husband who has not really been killed, must be dealt with. So must the guy who killed Gwydion’s family and taken over his house and birthright. And they are. And Elise and Gwydion live happily ever after.

The end.

Sometimes, I worry there’s no more originality to be had in the world. How much harder it is to come up with anything original than it was two hundred, four hundred years ago — one has the sense it’s all been done before. We walk into art galleries and scoff, “Oh it’s so derivative.” We read voraciously, and only 1 in 10 books is memorable in any way. If Burns had written, “Oh my luve is like a red, red rose” today, he would have been laughed out of his poetry workshop. You can bet, too, that no poetry journal would take “Tyger ,Tyger burning bright” either, unless it were an animal-centric publication intent on reclaiming language with its alternate spelling. I do think it’s harder to be original than it ever has been — despite, or maybe because of — our seeming acceptance of all. But here’s a secret; we’re no more accepting, not deep down. I think we’re just as judgemental as the Spanish Inquisitors. The only difference is that iron maidens and torture racks are no longer socially acceptable. (Unless, of course, one is Rumsfeld.) No, instead we kill that which is easily accessible with disdain.

Perhaps that’s the appeal of historical novels; they take us into a world that is so unfamiliar to us that it all seems new. Though to be honest, many historical novels fade into dusty memories of themselves too. (Which is the reason I haven’t bothered with Geraldine Brook’s latest novel; the one before was fine, it was good even, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what it was about. She should have stuck with her nonfiction.)

However, this is not the case with Nicole Galland’s The Fool’s Tale. At first, I thought it was so good because it occupies a time and place that few other novels do — in my mind at least — and therefore seemed wholly new. Then, when I finished, I changed my mind.

This was a fantastic novel.

Set in Wales at the tail end of the 12th century, King Maelgwyn, known as Noble, is saved as a child by his friend and servent Gwirion. After that, Gwirion occupies a special place in Noble’s court and heart. He is the fool, the jester, the one who carries out elaborate and crude pranks and is the only person to whom Noble shows any concession and forgiveness.

Noble, like most kings, must marry for political reasons; he chooses for his bride Isabel Mortimer, the niece of his nemesis. In this way, he hopes he will be able to defend his minor kingdom.

Gwirion and Isabel find themselves at odds. Each tries to win the king’s affection, believing him or herself the most important. Over time, however, their hatred of each other turns into something else entirely, just as Noble (displaying the irony Gwirion is so fond of), turns into anything but. In fact, Noble becomes a monster.

At first blush, The Fool’s Tale seems like the Arthurian love triangle, but the similarity seems to disappear after a while because even though the structure of ruler-wife-servant remains, the characters are so very different. And at the end, one is left topsy-turvey in an already unfamiliar landscape.

At the end of the novel Galland says:

…despite the cornucopia of historical detail … these three people are not inherently Welsh, nor inherently Medieval–mostly because neither am I. Of course, they’re not modern Americans, but all I can say about them with any certainty is that they are mine.

And this, I think, is ultimately what I found so appealing about the book. It was less a journey in time, into the black and white pages of a novel, or even into the lives of these three characters , as much as it was a journey into Galland’s private world. I had the sense of entering an inviolable space where my own clamoring voices were hushed. She let us in.

And that’s originality.

Spring is springing: tree blossoms are in bloom; the calla lilies are shooting leaflets up into the air like arrows, and Steve is getting into the garden once again. He took yesterday off to go whitewater kayaking, forgot the paddle, and ended up at Squawk Mountain Nursery to pick up some euphorbia.

Harry is a delightful woodblock printmaker who lives in England. I saw some of his prints online at baren forum, and then visited his site directly. I really, really like a lot of this–and so I asked whether I could buy some of his work. And lo and behold! I’m Harry’s first customer across the pond.

This is what I purchased:

And this is what Harry, bless the man, sent me along with it:

Aren’t they lovely?

In Tangiers, in the late 50s, two boys become friends. They remain close through the years, through their rebellious early years to being political prisoners and on into their marriages, and up until the point of a drastic betrayal. This was a powerful but sparse volume that goes down far too quickly, like one’s first morning shot of strong coffee — and if you want to read it, look no further because this contains a spoiler.

The Last Friend is a story told in two main parts. Ali begins the narrative, beginning with how they meet; he ends when the friendship seems to be over. At this point, Mamed is living in Sweden and has charged him with overseeing the furnishing and decoration of an apartment back in Tangiers. On a visit home, Mamed accuses Ali of cheating him and catalogs all his faults. Ali, who has of course, not cheated him, is devastated.

Then the story is Mamed’s. Mamed retells the entire story of their friendship from his perspective–and it’s interesting to see how each person remembers major events–and continues to explain the cause of the betrayal. Simply put, Mamed is dying of lung cancer, and he wishes to spare Ali the pain of his death. It is love that makes him push Ali away, rather than the opposite. Combine this with a lifelong jealousy of Ali, and it’s powerful stuff. I can’t say that I understood his decision or that I could condone it, but perhaps that’s the point — ultimately, I think not trusting Ali with his impending death was as much of a betrayal than the breaking of their friendship. Perhaps even more of one.

For me, Ali’s narrative was the driving force of this novel; by the time it shifted to Mamed, I had lost a certain amount of interest. Still, this was a strong story that’s well-written, and I would recommend. I think I’ll also be reading other things by Tahar Ben Jelloun.

From 1981 to 1983, we lived in Nigeria. Embassy housing put us in a three-unit complex, each of the identical apartments stacked on top of each other in a compound with a huge magnolia tree and a guard who spent most of his time napping under it. We lived in the middle unit; Nuel lived on the top floor and Laura lived on the bottom. Nuel just visited my mother in North Carolina, and strangely enough, Laura just retired to Bellingham and spent a long weekend with us.

It was a nice visit: We did a lot of the things that have been on the to-do list. We went to the Asian Art Museum, which just reopened, and to the Tacoma Glass Museum. Tried a new Indian restaurant in Renton, Naan ‘n Curry, which despite its remarkably uninspired name, has the best Indian food I’ve had in the States. Went to a new Italian restaurant kitty-corner from the Melrose Grill, which Steve and I have been meaning to go into for a few months. And there’s my excuse for not posting for a while.