Nom de Plume

As a book editor in New York, Phillip Carver has seemingly escaped the dysfunction of his traditional and upper class Southern family. But one Sunday afternoon, as he is contemplating the dissolution of his relationship, he receives call from his two older sisters begging him to come home and stop their elderly father from remarrying. Taylor roils us back to the past and examines each character, each action, each motivation in turn. No one, least of all Carver, is immune from his keen eye. And the amazin thin to me is that he manages to meld past and present into a single, restrained narrative, where actions speak louder than words. Still, take your time with it, read it slowly: Every single word in the present is weighted with the past.

Tanya is a typical Russian girl, except for the fact that she has an obsession with Dostoevsky, which becomes an ever bigger obsession with his mistress Polina. Thus inspired, she decides her life’s work will be as a muse. When she emigrates to the United States, she escapes the confines of her relatives, meets Mark, a novelist, and moves in with him. She has done it … she is a Muse, just like her beloved Polina

Being a Muse, however, is not an easy job. Sure, she lies around the apartment all day eating bon bons and reading trashy novels (“for her English”), but Mark is a whiny, self-obsessed schmuck who is a pretty terrible writer to boot.

I thought this was great: funny, well-written, totally offbeat. My only beef is the abruptness of the ending and how she describes how she overcomes her Mark/Muse inertia in, like, three pages. But aside from that, recommend.

Agnes Meadowes, a genteel woman who has been forced to take employment due to reduced circumstances, works as a cook to the Blanchards, a family renowned for its silversmithing. The business is not doing as well as they would like, and when a huge winecoolor commissioned by a lord goes missing, Agnes is thrust into the position of recovering it.

What a page turner. I was struggling through Kathryn Davis’ The Thin Place (which was beautifully written, and which I will probably come back to when not quite so overworked) when I picked this up instead. Five hours later (and 2 o’clock in the morning), I closed the book with a deep heave of contentment. It was a great mystery, of that there is no doubt, but it also conveys class in 18th century England incredibly well. Think of The Remains of the Day meets Girl with a Pearl Earring meets Agatha Christie. (Not, come to think of it, that I’ve actually read anything by Agatha Christie. But that’s neither here nor there. I had to get a mystery in there somehow or another.)

Once again espousing the outcast, Curtis Sittenfeld is back with a somewhat older and questionably wiser heroine trying the make sense out of her world. Hannah Gavener is probably one of the most neurotic characters I’ve ever encountered, but enjoyably so. (Though I confess that sometimes I just wanted to slap her.) I will be interested to see where Sittenfeld goes after she writes past the coming-of-age stories.

For the first few chapters, I didn’t know whether I had the fortitude to deal with yet another novel about the deeply contemplative crises of New Yorkers. But I reminded myself how much I loved Three Junes when it came out, and kept plugging along. It didn’t take much time to get sucked into the novel. I enjoyed it. There were interesting, well-developed characters. It was nicely constructed and written. But it was also pretty forgettable.

“Pull up the blog,” I said. “See the picture?”

“Oh, God.”

“I really want it.”

“Oh, God.”

“Does that mean you don’t love me enough to spend $400 on something I will use twice?”

Silence.

“Okay, I’m kind of thinking about just buying it for myself.”

“That’s just crazy.”

“You can make booze in it.”

“Buy it!”

Let me say that I am not a joiner. There’s a reason I work from home. (Well, there are lots of them.) I think the write a novel in a month thing is dumb. I think the write a blog post every single day is even dumber. But this, this is sheer brilliance.

Description:

For the next thirty days, we want you to show us your shoes–the good, the bad, the ugly-but-oh-so-comfortable. Post daily, or once in a while, or when the shoe whim strikes. Because you wear them every day, why not photograph them? Every day. For one month.

It’s that easy.

Although … who says I wear shoes every day? And I’m not saying that I’ll actually do it. I want to. But right now I have a deadline. Manana, manana.

Which come to think of it is what I say about my novel and my book blog posts too.

A while ago, I answered the questions in this survey. Now the report has been released. It’s pretty interesting. In their own words:

“New Unionism and the Next Social Safety Net� reports on the challenges independent workers face as they try to put together stable lives without access to our employer-based social safety net.

Although independent workers often pay more taxes than standard employees, they receive fewer benefits and protections from the government. The report argues that a new form of unionism is needed to help update the social safety net for a changing workforce, and makes specific policy recommendations that would improve independent workers’ access to equitable taxes, government representation, and traditional social insurance programs.

2006 survey findings include:

Independent workers lack benefits traditional workers have.
In the past year, roughly 39% of respondents experienced a period without health insurance; about half of these did not have health insurance for the entire previous year.

1/2 of respondents have saved less than $10,000 for retirement.

79% of respondents would be willing to pay to get access to an unemployment insurance program.

The independent workforce is an untapped constituency that votes.
3% of respondents feel that elected officials understand what being a freelancer is like, and 10% feel that the media understand.

81% of respondents view freelancers as a group with common interests and goals.

92% are registered voters; 90% have voted in a national election in the last 5 years.

Although the survey primarily focused on New York City (you can’t get much further away from that than Seattle) and didn’t represent me in terms of income, the section on taxes was pretty interesting. I mean, it’s not anything I didn’t know, but it’s nice to see it acknowledged in black and white.

Independent workers face complex and burdensome tax rules. They pay more
taxes than traditional employees because the tax code overlooks them in some
instances, and directly targets them in others. 50% of survey respondents cite the
additional tax burden as a significant disadvantage of freelancing, and 94% feel
that freelancers deserve more equitable tax treatment.

In other words, freelancers are all turning into Republicans. I know I am. Well, I’m not really, but sometimes I feel like it.

Some sections of the tax code directly target independent workers who don’t
have employers. As a result, these freelancers pay higher taxes than standard
employees. The Self-Employment Tax — the social security and Medicare tax
targeted at workers without employers — is 15.3% of net earnings. Workers who
have employers pay just half that amount, and their employers pay the other half.
In addition, a tax in New York City called the Unincorporated Business Tax (UBT)
requires self-employed independent workers who net over $55,000 a year to pay
extra income tax on top of their federal, state, and city income taxes.

Amen. Steve and I make about the same, amount, give or take, but even after deductions, I still pay about 15 percent more in taxes than he does.

Temps, contract workers, part-timers, and others who buy their own health insurance policies can’t take an income tax deduction for the cost of premiums unless their health care expenses exceed 7.5% of their total income. Independent contractors, the self-employed, and others who work without an employer relationship can deduct the cost
of health insurance from their income taxes, but they can’t deduct this cost from their
Self-Employment Tax liability.

I guess I shouldn’t complain because I have health insurance through Steve. It’s much better insurance for much less than an individual policy, but I can’t deduct it because it’s through his employer. Which is fair enough.

And really, I can’t complain on a broader level either. Sure, those full-time employees may have more benefits, but they also sit in rush hour traffic, don’t have the luxury of turning down work because of an upcoming vacation, have to be in the office from 9-5, and have to go to meeting after endless meeting.

So drawbacks notwithstanding, I wouldn’t trade.

So what’s my literary personality?

Your Literary Personality
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