The Next Thing

I have read a few books since last posting, and started a few more. I read "Flaming Iguanas" in about three days. It's such a short book, and it's put together more like a journal or a scrapbook than a novel. It's square and bright yellow and illustrated by the author. It looks like a novelty, and maybe it is, but I'm all right with that because there were some valuable lessons hiding in there inside the dirty lady with the motorcycle. I did think it was nonfiction at first, and when I realized it wasn't, I was a little sad. The voice was just so believable. I can only give one example of a valuable lesson, and I'm being too lazy to look up the actual quote, but it goes something like this: Happiness is coming home to someone who asks you how your day was and actually gives a shit about the answer. That's it. Problems, schmoblems/everybody has them. Also that forward slash. You see it a lot in that book. Like she's writing poetry but she isn't. She just needs to move to the next line in the verse sometimes. Like that piece of advice about doing the next thing.

My next thing was "The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte" but I have put him on hold in favor of the new A.M. Homes: "May We Be Forgiven." Branwell is fascinating, but when I get a shiny new hardback in the mail and it's signed by the author, I have to eat it before it spoils.

I've never been old before

This morning I finished reading "I'll Never Be Young Again" by Daphne du Maurier. I'm not sure why, but I decided to scroll down on the book's Goodreads page and see what people had said about it. Normally I avoid this, but I had a mild curiosity. This is Du Maurier's second book, and I think a lot of people used that as an excuse for why they didn't enjoy it. This argument makes no sense to me as a devout Du Maurier lover. Her first book, "The Loving Spirit," was brilliant. It stands to reason that she would explore different styles, and anyone familiar with her at all should know that this wasn't just an early phase of experimentation. Du Maurier dabbled in a great many styles of writing throughout her career -- it's just that she is more well known for "suspense." Several reviewers of this book found it boring and disappointing, some unable to finish it. I, however, fell in love with this book from the first page.

Anyone doubting Du Maurier's ability to hook you with suspense early in her career should read the first chapter of this book more closely. Dick's description of impending death as he stands on the edge of a bridge ready to jump was more than enough to convince me I was at home in this novel.

"It seemed strange that things could still be done to me after I was dead, that my body would perhaps be found and handled by people I should never know, that really a little life would go on about me which I should never feel....Not the fear of that hasty look round, the sudden plunge headlong and the giddy shock of hard, cold water, the river itself entering my lungs, rising in my throat, tossing me upon my back with my arms out-flung--I could hear the sob strangled in my chest and the blood leave me--but fear of the certain knowledge that there was no returning, no possible means of escape, and no other thing beyond....I felt the flesh that was mine and the body that belonged to me; queer to think it was in my power to destroy them so swiftly."

Later, of course, there are instances of her humor and surprising worldliness as Dick begins his life journey anew. Du Maurier reveals that she knows the human mind and mood and the self-denial of predictability. Dick had been shut off from the world -- sheltered in his parents' home for years until he ran away, thinking there must be nothing in the world for him. It was a beautiful experience to watch Dick awaken to life like a child, and sad to watch his eventual complacent acceptance of responsibility. However, we all know that for him to survive, this must occur. He must get steady work and support himself in society -- with only his memories of adventure to remind him that there once was more to life. But without these experiences, his mind would be dull and lacking in compassion. Truly a man formed by his relationships, he will remember those that he lost in his surreal other-life, taking with him the wisdom they both knowingly and unknowingly imparted.

"She's no longer young, you see, Richard, this is her home. Her roots are here, the whole meaning of her life. Even now that he is dead she will go on, with her memories, and it will be her consolation, living with them."

Because we all must live and die, and find our place in the world. And we can only hope that in our death, those we have touched will carry our memories with them.

Poison dart? I mean, raisin tart?

The copy of "My Cousin Rachel" I just finished reading has a Reading Group Guide at the back. I usually avoid reading these because I don't want to be influenced by corny questions meant to inspire conversation at a tea party. But I gave in, because that is a ridiculous attitude for someone who wants all the information and trusts herself to interpret appropriately. I won't answer the guide questions in essay format or any other; though, I will say that they were reasonable and have not adversely affected my understanding of the story. They touched upon the obvious themes of youth and immaturity, and the universal battle of wits between men and women. I could go there, but really what I want to do is wonder what happened. 

The narrator, Philip, is, for lack of a better phrase, living in his own head throughout the novel. Usually a first-person narrator gives you a fairly broad viewpoint, the author allowing you to discover things through the narrator's interactions; but Philip is often confused, and the reader is no wiser. Ultimately the story is tragic, regardless of who was originally in the wrong. Were Philip and his cousin Ambrose both deceived by Rachel? Did she try to poison them each in turn for their family fortune? Or were Philip and Ambrose really so similar in character that they both misread her actions out of paranoia, and it's only a coincidence that they both became ill during their time with her? With no proof that she was plotting against him, and supplied with enough rationalizations to justify her spending, Philip and the reader find it believable that she is innocent. Because if she was trying to kill Philip, why would she not have succeeded? Or was she using her power to demonstrate that she, too, is capable of employing a stranglehold? Philip's anger literally caused his hands to grip her neck -- flashback to "The House on the Strand" -- but her move was drawn-out and calculated, if  such a move indeed existed. It's hard for Philip and the reader to determine whether Rachel's feminine wiles are the manifestation of misappropriated good or fallible evil. 

But, ultimately, no one wins. (And so without telling the full story I'll spoil the ending...) It can take only a moment to ruin the rest of your life. A split decision can have ramifications that you knew you risked, but something told you to act. Is it fate stepping in? Fate meaning nothing but a tipping point -- a Choose Your Own Adventure plotline that happens to bring the story to an outcome that makes a strange kind of sense. I keep thinking of a trial I reported on in Alabama, in which a woman turned her car around using the emergency median of an interstate, killing the lead man in a group of motorcyclists. Sometimes you ignore things that you can clearly see. "I just didn't think ... " Philip didn't know for sure that Rachel would die if she walked along the unfinished bridge, that it would certainly break beneath her weight. But yet he had been warned, and chose not to pass the warning on. The driver of the car in Alabama received a jail sentence; but in Cornwall, Philip was hanged. 


I found the novel's ending everything I could have hoped for -- surprising, saddening, thought-provoking. It brought the story full circle to the opening scene where Philip remembers seeing the body of a dead man who was hanged for killing his wife. While I am not a proponent of the death penalty in reality, for the purpose of fiction I find myself feeling the sentence justified. At the same time I want to believe that Rachel was not evil, that she was simply a cultured and knowledgeable woman of the world who found herself in a Twilight Zone upon moving from fancy Italy to frumpy England, where she tried to fight off love feelings for her dead husband's doppelganger and failed, leading him on and leading him to destruction. And the satisfaction of that heartbreaking duplicity is just one example of what pulls me in every time, convincing me that Daphne du Maurier is herself a sort of supernatural vessel of the collective unconscious, reaching into the most intimate moments and fears and dramas of the mind with exquisite finesse.

Fun and games until ...

Yesterday I finished the Daphne du Maurier novel "The House on the Strand." I've yet to go over the supplementary material in the Companion, but she dedicates the book to the former occupants of her home, and it's obvious a lot of research went into the writing. It reminded me of A.M. Homes researching her genealogy in "The Mistress's Daughter," except in memoir form the process was fairly boring and in novel form the process exploded into a life-altering experience on mental and physical levels. 

The narrator, Dick Young, spends the summer in his professor friend's historical Cornwall home and begins secretly testing a drug that transports him six centuries into the past to observe some yesteryear drama. While unable to involve himself in the events, he feels drawn into the action as though he were mysteriously connected -- as though there were some reason he needed to be there, to solve a mystery or to validate certain actions. But in reality, and much to the bewilderment of his wife, his obsession leads him into a double life whose secrets are revealed only when events turn lethal. The professor takes a hypnotic drug walk into a freight train, and Dick takes a hypnotic drug walk into his wife, choking her (but not to death). If only she had been a cohort in the drug testing, perhaps a safer environment could have been created. Alas, the reader wonders, was this marriage headed for instability either way? Their best moment as a couple came when he teased her: "Husbands loathe wives who understand them. It makes for monotony." There is some truth to that statement, but if she could have been trusted, maybe the professor's life could have been saved. And just perhaps, Dick would not have ended up taking the final dose of drug -- the one which paralyzes him. Was it worth witnessing the finale to his story? He saw the plague kill his hero, Roger, and many others. He saw it kill the liveliness of the era, and now a plague is on him, one which he will likely live through for many years. He enjoyed the way his life commingled with the past, popping in and out as though he were reading a book, I thought. And now that's the only way he'll be able to visit any other place or time. If Vita can stand it, she'll read to him at bedside, sending him into other worlds at intervals. Will he allow himself to connect to fiction, or will his misery overshadow any spark of happiness?


"There was no past, no present, no future. Everything living is part of the whole. We are all bound, one to the other, through time and eternity.... I felt myself on the brink of some tremendous discovery when I fell asleep."


Du Maurier's sense of humor never ceases to surprise me.

We had softshell crab and swordfish, too!

I went out of town this weekend, so I decided to take a break from Gertrude. I didn't want to bring the weathered Stein book on the airplane because if it didn't just put me to sleep, it would definitely get crushed and bent inside my over-packed purse. So I grabbed Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential." I knew I'd want to read this. I'd started it a while back, but it wasn't until I started obsessing over "No Reservations" on Netflix that I fully realized the Bourdain appeal. I'd say I'm two thirds in, and so far it's everything I expected. I like that I can hear his voice reading it to me in my head. I'm not sure if I like picturing a lot of what he describes through the lens of a restaurant for which I was a starch-shirted waitress. I keep picturing my old alcoholic chef and his crew -- a misanthropic leader of a misfit army -- and all of them reeking of truffle oil. Bourdain's descriptions of the grill man, the expeditor, the dishwasher, the sous chef and the owner bring up long-forgotten faces in my mind. It's an interesting reading experience, but instead of dwelling on my personal interactions with the apparently archetypal personalities, I'm focusing on the business details. I'm remembering studying the menu, tasting wines, eating samples of the specials, catching expeditor mistakes, watching the chef check the reservation list and check things off on a clipboard, hearing gossip about our competition, staring out the window while waiting for tables to walk in.... And I'm also trying to block out all that noise and listen to Tony tell me his story.

Read anything good lately?

I was asked this question by one of my bosses today, and when I replied, "Yeah I started reading this Gertrude Stein book ... " he replied, "So no." What is this magical gentleman reading? "The Hunger Games." A young adult he is not, and I told him so. Then I learned we had already talked about that, and I vaguely remembered because I had been drinking at the time. Well, at least my boss wants to talk to me.

So about that Gertrude Stein, I'm having a little trouble. I'm reading this fantastic copy I picked up at The Strand, and it's called "Three Lives." Three lives equals three short stories. The first was great and super short. It was about a housekeeper and the houses she kept, and the friends and lovers for which she cared. I'll keep it simple there. The second though, is about a girl and her experiences learning about men. She was a bit of a tease for a while, but now she's in a relationship, and apparently they can spend 200 pages worth repeating the same sentences over and over. It seems to go on eternally, because when I try reading it at night, the rhythmic dialogue just puts me straight to sleep. I'll paraphrase: "I know, Melanctha, that when I'm saying to you the things that I am always saying to you, Melanctha, that you really are understanding that I'm feeling just like you would know that I would be feeling when I really do know that you have a good mind, Melanctha, and that I really do like spending time with you, Melanctha, so much that I have a hard time telling you things, Melanctha, but you always seem to know what I'm saying when I'm saying all these things that I'm always saying to you, Melanctha." So yeah. It's a tough one. I find that I can follow it a little better if I am reading aloud, but you know, Melanctha, it just ain't always easy to be doing such a thing.

Help me Daphne du Maurier, you're my only hope

I can't believe I haven't posted here in a year and a half. That is disgusting. I'm seriously disgusted with myself. So just for that, I'm going to copy and paste this half-written blog post that's been sitting in my email drafts for like two years. And then I'll write a real one, because this is pathetic. Yeah that at the bottom? It's the notes I was supposed to report back on. Ugh.

Daphne du Maurier really wanted me to cry on the subway. But I refused. She kept bringing the dramatic death scenes, and I kept biting my bottom lip. I got all excited about writing about this book, but I couldn't stop reading long enough to finish a blog post, even though I found myself crafting sentences in the shower. (I'm sure I forgot them all, maybe I need a waterproof notepad in there.)

There are some really beautiful parallels in the lives of the four family members profiled in this book. Janet, Joseph and Christopher all died in connection with the Janet Coombe, the ship the family built at their own shipyard. Upon the vessel's launch, its namesake's spirit became its primary resident. As a figurehead at sea Janet could enjoy the life she always dreamed of, close to her son Joseph (the ship's skipper) and watching over her family as a sort of matriarchal ghost. She died, it seems, of pure joy -- ecstatic, fulfilled and in compliance with her fate. Her legacy was the foundation of future events she knew would occur but could scarcely predict. It's as if these four generations of sea-loving deep feelers was predestined to be part of a neatly tied package, sad and tedious at the time but inspiring and heartwrenching in legend form.

Joseph throws his life into the sea after his mother's death, and eventually dies by literally throwing his life into the sea. He became depressed when his sometimes-fragile son, Christopher, decided to try out his sea legs upon the Janet Coombe, only to abandon ship in London. Joseph had high hopes for his firstborn, and felt betrayed, deciding never to speak to him again. His depression leads to a breakdown in his second marriage, and wife Annie visits her old friend and gentleman caller, Joseph's brother Philip. Joseph discovers this, and his agitated state and verbal rage are enough to kill Annie and her unborn baby. Philip has Joseph committed to an asylum, a move that causes him to live out his days in a mournful stupor, eventually giving up completely.

Meanwhile Christopher has managed a tolerable London life. He returns to Plyn too late to save his father, but brings his family and settles down there.

288
298
356
337
boats/boys
missed connections

"R-A-N-T"

I have a half-written post on finishing "The Loving Spirit," but I'm not exactly in the mood to finish it right now. However, since finishing that book, I have read "Invisible Monsters" by Chuck Palahniuk. I'll start by saying how funny it is that on two separate occasions I was approached on the subway while reading this book. The first time, I was standing in a crowded L train when I felt a tapping on my shoulder. Like a good New Yorker, I ignored this, not wanting to be disturbed. If someone needed me to move over, they should've figured that out sooner. If they had been comfortable the first half of the trip, they'd be fine the rest of the way. But when it was about 10 seconds before the train would be dumping out 90 percent of its passengers, the tap came again. I caved and look over. A muscle-head type says to me, "That's a great book. You should read 'Rant' -- r-a-n-t." As though I didn't know how to spell rant, or that I knew nothing of Chuck's other works. I smiled and acknowledged that yes, the book was good, and we each went our ways. The second time, I was on a less crowded N train when a slightly older, less muscle-head type says nearly the same thing, but instead recommends "Snuff" because "it's about a big orgy." Hmph. What else is there to say? If I were looking to meet a guy, this would be the way.

I did enjoy "Invisible Monsters." It was slow to get into, but I let myself be surprised by all the turns. It might be a lazy way to read a book, not overanalyzing anything at all, but I like the element of surprise. I don't really get much satisfaction in figuring out the riddles before they have a chance to reveal themselves. Especially in a book like this, where the riddles are revealed, never left to the reader's imagination. The closest I came was figuring out one major point one paragraph before it happened. I think that was the point at which I began to care about the characters. Each mystery revealed brings the reader closer to understanding.

So now I need to decide what to read next, and today I've created my own riddle. How long do you wait to read something that you've had a negative interaction with someone about? Each page you read is shadowed by this person in your head saying things to you about this book that you never wanted to hear. Maybe it isn't measured in time but number of books read in between. Maybe one or two more unrelated books will get me to the one(s) I'd really like to conquer but can't yet.

dream a little dream

And so Daphne has sucked me in with a plot that seems to be a riddle. It's mysterious without being a mystery. "The Loving Spirit" is divided into four parts -- and I finished the first a couple of days ago. It's devoted to Janet Coombe, begins with her marriage and ends with her death. Her whole life seems to have been one long haunting of herself. She lives one life but is haunted by another. We find that the other life actually belongs to her son Joseph, who is in multiple ways an extension of Janet. He is the male version of her, the other half of her soul -- you might even say her soul mate, in the non-romantic sense. I have read that some mediums believe your soul mate does not always come to you in the form of a lover, but may serve different roles in different lifetimes -- parent, sibling, friend, stranger. It might be nonsense, but it's a perfectly acceptable theory in the literary world. "It was like a union of spirit defying time and eternity -- something that had existed between them before birth, before their physical conception of each other" (p. 67).

Janet's life revolves around three significant moments -- the night Joseph was conceived, the night he was born, and the day he became captain of the ship bearing her likeness and name. Most of her sons were boat builders along with their father, but Joseph was the sailor. As a man, he is able to live the life Janet could only dream of - "he was her second self." Joseph tells Janet that a woman is like a ship: "She'd run like a devil if I let her, laughin' with the joy of escape, but a touch of my hand an' she'd understand, obeyin' my will, recognizin' I was her master an' lovin' me for it" (p. 71). Their relationship is atypical and they both realize it, as they spend their days pining for one another's affection. Daphne manages to throw some humor into it, describing how as a child Joseph fainted after watching his mother successfully scale a rocky coastline and fearing for her life.

Ironically this intense devotion contributes to Janet's demise. After years of physical and emotional strain related to watching her son set sail and return, set sail and return, yearning so hard when apart and loving so hard when reunited, her body can take no more. "Instead of calming her and soothing her, his presence acted like a drug that fortifies for the instant, creating an impression of renewed vigour and strength, but leaves its patient weaker than before" (p. 103). While he was gone, she had functioned like "some mechanical being" (p. 86) but held onto thoughts that life was more than the present moment. "Perhaps there was no end to a living moment, and even now her young self slept secure in the arms of Thomas, on some other plane of time, like the undying ripple on the surface of still water" (p. 90).

Those last two quotes, combined with the scene in which the ghost of adult Joseph appears to her on a night before he is even conceived, show Daphne's first stirrings of "stories of intrigue" to come. She's only writing her first novel but already more than dabbling in the supernatural. In "Myself When Young," she writes of confidence and trepidation associated with writing this book. She wants every word, every sentence to count, but she gets nervous that it's all garbage. But of course the novel was meant to be, inspired by the Jane Slade boat and a vision of Daphne's own: "I walked up to the Castle point, and it seemed to me that I was standing on the cliffs years hence, with a grown-up son, but of course I was only a ghost, being long dead, existing only in his thoughts (p. 154).

Daphne includes a bit from a letter describing her planning of the novel: "And always, no matter what people say to me, there must be Truth. No striving after cleverness, nor cheap and ready-made wit. Sincerity--beauty--purity" (p. 168).

everybody's searching

May already? How did it take me three months to finish "On the Road"? Well, considering it took Jack Kerouac years to live it and only days to write it, it's a pretty good compromise. It was easy enough to go a while without reading, because Kerouac writes with great detail about major events, but skips giant amounts of time. So while I was busy hanging out in New York doing my thing, Kerouac (er, Sal Paradise) was busy hanging out in New York, doing his thing. And it was nice, catching up with an old friend, because Sal was always just catching up with Dean, seeing him for the first time after years, noticing how he had changed or remained the same.

Some of what I've been doing book-wise during the last few months is building up my Daphne du Maurier collection, some from eBay, some from the Strand, some from the Half Price bookstore in Omaha ... you never know. But when I finished reading "On the Road," I jumped into "The Loving Spirit," which is her first novel. She talked a lot about its writing in the memoir I read, "Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer." I guess I didn't write a blog post on that one, but I read it directly after the short-story collection, "Don't Look Now." As I read her shorts, I pictured Daphne in her seaside Cornwall cottage, and I wondered how empty rooms and expansive sky equaled dark, twisted intrigue. And I was able to get a really nice picture of her life before her writing career as well as her penchant for solitude. And even though it's been a while since my mind has imagined the details, I'm finding it pretty easy to recreate that atmosphere while reading "The Loving Spirit." It's such a beautiful mental transformation -- but I am truly glad I've got a more personal view of Daphne now. I'm not sure I would fully appreciate it if "The Loving Spirit" was the first du Maurier book I'd read. Because knowing what I know about the woman, it definitely reads like a first novel. You can clearly see how much of herself she put into her protagonist, but she manages to do it in a most-endearing way. For me, it's all about the context. I feel like I'm reading her work now more as a study than for leisure. I'm giving myself a thesis in du Maurier.

And that thesis is going to extend beyond Daphne, and I'm pretty excited about it. Her sister, Angela, has a series of books, one of which I've already purchased. Her grandfather was a writer and illustrator, George du Maurier. He's got three, one of which is available at the Strand in a lustworthy two-volume British first edition for a mere $60. I can't say that will be easy to ignore for long ... I have a feeling I'll be giving in on that one before it slips away. But I have also collected various related paperbacks, including a short-story collection and a biography of Katherine Mansfield, one of Daphne's inspirations. I'll probably tackle the bit of Mansfield fiction when I finish "The Loving Spirit." But enough gushing ... here is what I've taken from the first 30 pages or so of Daphne's debut.

Janet Coombe is representative of Daphne's heart. She feels obligated to fulfill her "womanly duties," so to speak, but she dreams of the ocean and sailing and even voices regret that she wasn't born a man. In the books first chapter, she marries her cousin Thomas. "She loved Thomas dearly, but she knew in her soul there was something waiting for her greater than this love for Thomas. Something strong and primitive, lit with everlasting beauty." This theme is so clearly a piece of Daphne's life, and I feel I've already seen it recur in some of her other work.

In the third chapter, Janet has her first child, and you get glimpses of her personality in some of her actions related to the baby. Her family members tell her to rest, but she feels strong and annoyed. When they won't leave her alone, she makes her irritation clear. "I wish you'd away, all of you, and go about your business and let me be. I'm not feared o' pain nor trouble, and if I had my way I'd leave you to your ribbon-tyin', and soup-makin' and take myself to the quiet fields to have my baby, I would, 'midst the cattle and the sheep who'd understand." When the baby is born, she finds it annoying that people marvel that the baby looks like it's father as though no baby ever did before.

After another chapter and another child, Janet gets more brazen and tells her husband of her fantasies of being a smuggler. And all I could think of was "Jamaica Inn" and the short story of the ghost ship, where Daphne shows her readers just how knowledgeable she is of boats and smuggling, and you see the author's heart's desire.

yes, please

Jack Kerouac loves the word "lugubrious." As Sal Paradise, he paints his memoir with an engaging mix of earthy and intellectual thoughts. The man of the earth is the poet. The unwashed bum is a secret genius. But so far, his life "on the road" is anything but exaggeratedly sorrowful. A lugubrious nature is merely observed in others and spun into the frame of a catchy sort of American dream, whereby a man can set out across the country with $50 and a few names to throw around and end up happy living 10 different lives in the span of one summer.

At about page 100, "On the Road" could almost end. Sal has spent an amazing summer adventuring across the country, and now he's headed back to New York. But if that were the case, this book would never have become the beat bible. At this point, you can feel that Sal is just getting started, even though he's done more hitching and busing than most people do in a lifetime. There's so much in his mind that Kerouac has only hinted at, but it lies in that fascinating mix of matter-of-fact storytelling and keen insight. It's as if ignorance and intelligence spent some time "alone and mixing up [their] souls ever more and ever more till it would be terribly hard to say good-by." Alas, that was just the result of stimulating conversation between Sal and his Mexican mistress.

He references a lot of things I have to look up to get. And at the risk of sounding like somebody on Yahoo! Answers, I'll admit even page 2 left me quizzical. But when you type Modigliani into Google, you get a much clearer picture of Marylou. If you want to know what pulling wrists is, you have to weigh arm wrestling against debating, and it's pretty clear which he means, I think. I wonder if people in 1955 sometimes made a point to read next to the encyclopedia shelf? But even if you don't bother to look up hincty or Hassel or fellahin, there's plenty of easy richness to savor: "Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries." California, of course. Not far out of this romantic mood, he first sees his exotic princess, and like any good poet he marks the occasion with the familiar sauce of life: "A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world."

Sal's travels bring new meaning to the idea of living paycheck-to-paycheck. Everywhere he travels, he's looking for work, and he'll go as low as picking cotton to find it. Luckily he's got an extremely loving and understanding aunt back in New Jersey, who sends him cash when he's in a pinch. That's the result of living one of the classic American dreams backwards -- you usually try to leave the small towns to make it big in New York, but Sal left New York to try and make it in Hicksville. But he brings New York with him, carrying it in his pocket to rub when he's lonely: "LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle." And for as much enjoyment he got out of living in hotel rooms and tents, riding on truck beds and in rail cars, picking grapes and spending his last dollar on whiskey, he lives with the knowledge that life isn't lived in stillness. He keeps moving, even in solitude, even away from his best friends, his new friends, his love whom he knows he'll never see again: "We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time."

YOU in the afterlife

I first saw "Sum" at Barnes & Noble one day, sitting on the new paperback wall. I read a page, found myself intrigued, and promptly forgot the book existed. Then I saw it again about a month ago at a thrift store near my apartment, and borrowed $2 from a friend to purchase the collection of "tales from the afterlives." Each of the 40 nugget stories is fiction, written by a neuroscientist named David Eagleman. A scientist writes fiction? This you have to see.

It took about two days to read this book, and I loved how quick it was. Basically, Mr./Dr. Eagleman thought up 40 different scenarios that we might come upon in the afterlife, some more plausible than others, some include God but some do not, and some include odd versions of God. Some include aliens. Some include different versions of yourself -- you at different phases of life, you being all the things you could have been but chose not to be, you as an actor on the stage of someone else's life, you with greater intelligence than your creator(s). And they all make some comment on the state of life. Individual life, universal life, cellular life. Most sound pretty dreadful, but the point is to make you appreciate more fully what you choose to do with your life on Earth.

"Your eyes hurt, and you itch, because you can't take a shower until it's your time to take your marathon two-hundred-day shower." In this afterlife, you experience similar events consecutively, which is supposed to help you appreciate the randomness of real life, but on a microscopic level. As though you could say: "Hooray! I don't have to cut my fingernails every single day! I'm so looking forward to that next joyful cutting session." But the scenario doesn't acknowledge that you can still be bored with life in general. That's for another story -- the one in which Earth is populated only by people you met during your life. Of course, you end up lonely because the joy of life comes from *new* experiences.

A few of the stories include gods that are weepy and regretful, as though they blame themselves for the mess of humanity. When God isn't mentioned, there is usually some sort of Technician, Collector or Caller that serves as a crossing guard at the intersection of Now and Later. Eagleman makes playful metaphors about immortality and relationships. Self-realization and empathy are major themes, but (happily) religion is not. It's an exercise in creativity for both author and reader -- it's almost a challenge to stretch your imagination to places most people don't think much about. It reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, where "you" are the main character, and you have to decide your next step. But this book wants you to take that step literally. You're heading down Now, will you make a right or a left onto Later? He's not saying you need GPS navigation, but maybe you shouldn't just wing it. Just in case.

I am homes

Quotational endorsements on book covers don't always give you a lot of insight into the real impact of a piece of potential literature. A quick browse of my roommate's bookshelf tells me "The Time Traveler's Wife" is -- and I nearly quote -- enchantingly beautiful and dazzlingly romantic. But that doesn't make me want to read it. At all. Luckily, works that are both amazing and aged penetrate enough intellectual minds to accumulate more thoughtful words. In those cases, pull quotes are classy and beautifully free of exclamation points. Such an inspired word byte appears on the backside of "Don't Look Now," a collection of Daphne du Maurier short stories. The little nugget of wisdom caught my attention because its author was able to say exactly what I had been thinking the whole time: "Daphne du Maurier's genius lay in her plots, which she spun with astounding originality and ease ... (they) have an effectiveness that makes them seem almost traditional, belonging not to any one author but to the imagination of the world." -- Alberto Manguel. When you read Daphne's stories, you feel as if you're reading fables of the ages -- tales that have been embedded in the collective subconscious since tales were things to tell. The kicker is that you simultaneously feel like du Maurier's singular imagination is a bottomless pit of newness. What this adds up to is that these are stories that simply need to be written, told, heard.

Du Maurier writes little mysteries -- riddles almost -- that tangle like hair and resolve like the release of a long-held breath. For me, each story was a tiny masterpiece, from "The Birds" to the lengthy "Monte Verita." I can honestly say there wasn't a story there I didn't finish without a satisfied smile slowly creeping up my cheeks. But so out of reverence for my obsession, I don't intend to expound upon my individual infatuations with du Maurier bits until my second readings of them. I'll obsess, but I won't over-permeate. Which leads me to post-part 2.

On my way to Short Story Town, I most recently finished the A.M. Homes collection "The Safety of Objects." I sped through this large-fonted paperback, relishing the stories in a similarly rewarding way. Du Maurier tells stories you can feel in the world's imagination; Homes tells stories you knew existed, but until now, no one would admit to it. You want to point your finger at the characters and yell in italics: "I knew it!" These aren't fairy tales, they're tattle-tales. They're windows into our neighbors' homes. You might see into their hearts, more likely you will see into their pants -- and it's not pretty. Homes knows how to convey familiar (if ugly) sensations, like the sweaty thigh sticking to the vinyl lawn chair or the chewiness of a Barbie doll foot in a child's mouth -- as well as unfamiliar urges like the near-heartbreaking quest of a kidnapper to replace his (dead?) son, or the desperation of a mother who goes to extremes to end her family's suffering. On top of this, she outs the secret sexual curiosities of ages 1 to 100, with a precision that keeps the reader one step short of uncomfortable. We ogle, but we know these are the exploits of others. It's the type of "fiction" we see sometimes exposed in the news, but more often we picture it the ignorance of trailer trash or the stuff of Lifetime movies. "Stiletto sharp," says the front cover quote.

Speaking of movies, I'm planning to watch "The Safety of Objects" in film form asap ... and I'm hoping "Don't Look Now" and "The Birds" aren't far off the horizon. Apparently D du M wasn't much of a fan of Hitchcock's version of the latter, but that only makes me want to see it all the more. I've got another short-story master on deck, this time it's inspired by what inspired Daphne. "Stories" by Katherine Mansfield ... I figure if Daphne loved "Jane Eyre," we might have more tastes in common. But not before I finish my detour in man-town with "On the Road." Then maybe I'll pull A.M. Homes's "Music for Torching" out of the dugout. It's the continued story of a set of surburbanites who spend their staycation experimenting with crack. Yes, crack.

obsession

It always starts with "Rebecca." The book that is so good you don't want to share it with anyone. It never leaves you. It possesses you. It possesses me, and now so does its author. I'm not sure I could accurately explain how my obsession with Daphne du Maurier has come about, only that I'm basically in love with her. Or maybe I just wish I could have been her in another life. Alas, I can only hang onto the thought that I was born about eight years before she died -- so we shared some meaningless time on Earth together. Twenty years later, the dormant presence has come back to life.

The obsession began when I declared "Rebecca" my favorite book. But I wasn't convinced the author could interest me further until I learned of her association with Alfred Hitchcock. I let the thought marinate all through "Jamaica Inn," but the fever hadn't quite peaked. The day I bought the story collection "Don't Look Now," I knew I was in for something, and it took me to about page 3 to figure out that du Maurier would soon dominate me. With each page she owned me more and more, and by the time I'd finished "Monte Verita," I knew I had to get my hands on every piece of this woman's work.

I bought a decrepit copy of "Rule Britannia" at a used bookstore (surprisingly not The Strand) and added a heap of fiction and biographies to my Amazon wish list. I repeatedly fondled a copy of "The Daphne du Maurier Companion" at my nearest Barnes & Noble, but opted not to drop the $18 in favor of my favorite contemporary author, A.M. Homes, when a coupon begged redemption. But The Strand did beckon, and I swooped in on the D shelf and snagged a handful of relics as a Christmas present to myself. Those plus a couple more I got for Christmas, and my current collection is as follows:

Rebecca
Jamaica Inn
Rule Britannia
Don't Look Now
Myself When Young - The Shaping of a Writer
Mary Anne
My Cousin Rachel
The du Mauriers
The Young George du Maurier
The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories
The Daphne du Maurier Companion
Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster
Daphne du Maurier: A Daughter's Memoir by Flavia Leng

It's a short list compared to what I'll continue to compile over the years, and doesn't even include other things I'm buying as companions to the collection, such as works by her grandfather and sister, and others that inspired her in some way (I've already invested in "Tales from Shakespeare" by Charles Lamb and "Stories" by Katherine Mansfield). I've also now seen the Hitchcock "Rebecca," as well as "Daphne" and its accompanying "Vanishing Cornwall."

It's time I admit it: I'm a total geek. But why not? It's about time I had something to collect other than random books I "might" like. Besides, it's a match made in heaven -- there's the sea, there's writing, there's reclusive nature, a desire to wear pants rather than dresses ... there's Cornwall (can I mention that's where Tori Amos lives? Rereading my mention of the Tori song in an earlier post has total new meaning. It wasn't just a coincidence!).

There are so many details I'd love to go into, but I'm just a du Maurier baby-fan. I can dream of being an authority, writing research papers for no one but myself to read, attending the festivals, acquiring that rare, signed first edition (I already made one purchase from The Strand's Rare Book Room -- so it was only $15 and unsigned, it's still cool as hell). I want to dig, I want to know, but it's barely the honeymoon stage and I'm already the jealous boyfriend. I'll read the professional criticisms but shield my eyes from Goodreads or Amazon "comments" on the lady. What could they know?! They don't love her like I do! It's mine and you can't have it. More to come.

picking some brains

Moving into an apartment that puts you one short subway stop away from work is a surefire way to slow down your reading progress if you're used to the trip taking an hour. In the past five months, I've managed to make it through a few great books, though. Unfortunately, the closest I've gotten to blogging about them is the automatic Goodreads updates that tell you things like I'm on page 100 of "Comic Book Tattoo," a Tori Amos collector's item I got for Christmas, and will likely get into here a little later.

The first book I started after Olive Kitteridge, I believe, was Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I was heading back into my nonfiction stream, and I wanted to wax philosophical. I didn't quite make it all the way to the end, though the 225 pages I did read were amazing, and I plan to finish it off in the not-so-distant future. That book is best read in long sittings, and after August and September I was quite short on those. But I can say I underlined in red something on almost every single page of that little 380-page pink book. I'd like to do a more in-depth post on it one day when I start reading the end of it. But I'll grab a random snippet: "She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before." How appropriate.

"Zen" was too heavy for short sittings, but I wanted to stay with the "inspirational" nonfiction, so I read "On Writing" by Stephen King. And it was very inspiring -- it made me want to write both fiction and memoir (and even read more memoirs of authors). I've always been a King fan, though I've barely put a dent in the 10 or so novels of his that I own, my favorite being "Dolores Claiborne," of course. Anyway, I liked "On Writing" for its honesty. You got to see Stephen at home, letting his wife make sweeping literary decisions for him, and him being perfectly happy to have it that way. He made me want to get on paper every potentially silly (read: groundbreaking) idea that pops into my head. I'll have to spend some time identifying my Ideal Reader, though. Maybe it's him. I feel like I could go to "On Writing" with a question, and Stephen would answer it. Reading that book is like having a conversation with the man. He made himself the protagonist of a plotless narrative, and I felt I knew him pretty well by the end.

Inspired by King's "Carrie" confessions, I decided it was high time I read that classic. I can't remember why, but I was quickly distracted from it. There's a mysterious black hole in my memory (well, that's not so mysterious if you know me), where I might have picked up something else, but eventually I ended up cracking another author memoir, this time A.M. Homes's "The Mistress's Daughter." I put a short review of this one on Goodreads, where I express my desire for "more narrative and less fact-spewing" about the adoptee's reunion with her biological parents. I hope Homes writes another memoir, and I'd hope for something under the category of "more personal," but you don't get much more personal than your search for identity. And the drama isn't missing. On page 60 Homes drops the drama into one succinct sentence: "Ellen thinks I'm her mother, Norman thinks I am Ellen, and Norman's wife thinks I am the mistress reincarnate." But it's interesting to watch Homes dig into her ancestry, more so on the reflective side than the genealogical analysis. When her biological mother dies, she goes through this relative stranger's things and finds pieces of herself: "It creeps me out, this indescribable subtlety of biology. In her pockets I find the same things I find in mine" (page 98). You don't have to be adopted to appreciate her words. "Did I ever say how precariously positioned I feel--on the edge of the earth, as though my permit could be revoked at any second?" (page 117)

the only olive i'll consume

I finished "Olive Kitteridge" quite happily just over a week ago. I've started recommending it at work, emphasizing its ability to portray silver linings amid all the dark clouds. I've been distanced from the book because I've already started reading "On Writing" by Stephen King, but I'll do my best to stay true-to-form today, but covering just a few of the stories. I also owe Goodreads a review, since that's why I have the book in the first place. Random House sent it to me all shiny and crisp, but even the short time it spent traveling in my bag wore it out pretty well. Nothing's ripped, but the edges are soft now, and you can see scratch marks from my keys and wallet. I knew this book wouldn't stay pristine, though, because I marked important passages with fun little arrows. Some look like sideways smiley faces, others like enigmatic Chinese characters.

A Different Road
I didn't mark much in this story, because most of the words simply drove the narrative to the climax, where the reader is left to gawk at Olive and Henry's near-lethal bickering. Coming home from a restaurant one night, Olive is in dire need of a restroom. The closest one is at the hospital (remember, we're in the sticks), and Olive remarks that since she was born there, the least they can do is offer her a toilet. The emergency-room doctor insists on checking her out, and I was surprised when Olive didn't resist. But the timing was unfortunate, because two masked gunmen arrived and forced Olive, Henry, a doctor and a nurse into the bathroom. One masked man remained their captor while the other presumably stole drugs. As hostages, Olive and Henry spewed insults at each other. They were uncontrollable under the pressure and revealed deeply buried resentments. This, combined with the already traumatic experience, had sad consequences for their relationship.

"No, they would never get over that night because they had said things that altered how they saw each other. And because she had, ever since then, been weeping from a private faucet inside her, unable to keep her thoughts from the red-haired boy with his blemished, frightened face, as in love with him as any schoolgirl ..." The captor had unmasked himself, revealed his fear and vulnerability, and Olive had taken notice. I could probably write a whole paper on how this event allowed Olive to embrace a side of herself she had neglected. But the author didn't revisit this, so I'll not dwell on it. That's something both good and bad about this book. The stories involve deep issues of so many characters, your imagination could run wild with any one, and as a result, we're left to make our own assumptions about Olive. Just like everyone else.

This wasn't my favorite of the stories, but it was pivotal for the characters' lives. I wish it had felt more dramatic so it would have had more entertainment value. As it is, no one is shot, and the event is both shattering and inconsequential. I suppose the author thought the conversation needed something extreme to bring it about, but if the event were too extreme, it would overshadow other important events in the book. The town believes Henry shuts down because he was faced with his mortality, but Olive knows the truth. Unfortunately, we don't have a second story from Henry's perspective, since he soon lapses into a vegetable state because of a stroke. Some insight might be available in the initial story, but the average reader doesn't have time to revisit that without devoting much too much energy to one (albeit Pulitzer-winning) book, and neither do I.

Highlights from Winter Concert
"Funny to have tickets in order to get into a church."
"What a lonely thing to be a young girl!"
"Mrs. Lydia was looking at her with those new eyes; unnerving to have a sixteen-year-old's eyes looking at you from an old woman's head."

In this story, a man admits to cheating on his wife. But first, they comment on the marriage of Olive and Henry Kitteridge, and introduce the idea that Henry can "stand" his wife simply because he loves her.

Tulips
Another plot-driving narrative, though this one includes more palatable circumstances and just plain better writing. The most poignant moment occurs when Henry collapses: "She shouted at him, waiting for the ambulance to come. His mouth moved, and his eyes were open, and one hand kept jerking through the air, as though reaching for something beyond her." This statement brings up valid questions. Was Henry continuously reaching for something beyond Olive? Was his love for her really enough?

Olive visits her neighbor, Louise, and we get a juicy back story concerning Louise's son, who stabbed his wife to death, thus driving his mother to the brink of insanity. Olive has problems, but she's grateful they're nothing like Louise's. Louise claims to live for her son, so he knows he's not alone. This parallel story magnifies Olive's issues with not being needed by her own son. "Oh," said Louise, laughing softly. "You came here for a nice dose of schadenfreude, and it didn't work."

I love some of the author's imagery, and one of the best examples of this is when moving windshield wipers are compared to shaming fingers: "It was shame that swiped across her soul, like these windshield wipers before her: two large black long fingers, relentless and rhythmic in their chastisement."

-------

In the rest of the book, I did a little marking, but mostly I was ready to finish it and get back to my nonfiction foray. Olive attends a funeral, reminisces about a lost love, visits her son in New York with his new wife (while relating the visit to the dubious ear of vegetable Henry), watches her husband pass away, and meets a potential kindred spirit to live out her days with.

Unfortunately for my constant reader, I'm even more eager now to get back to Mr. King's advice on fiction and writing in general, so the rest of this page-turner's meat will stay in the freezer unless you decide to cook it yourself.

quarter in a mud puddle

After reading the first of the 13 stories in Elizabeth Strout's "Olive Kitteridge," I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. How can you like a novel if you can't like, or at least relate to, its protagonist? I was barely into the second story when I started grumbling to myself that this book was too depressing. Olive was just a mean old lady who knew a lot of people who died. Maybe I didn't want to like this book because of the prominent Oprah quote on the cover, or because it's one of those books "everybody" likes. But I kept reading, and at the end of the second story, I knew this book was unlike anything I've ever read. Olive isn't just a mean old lady. She's something completely different to every person she encounters. She's an angel, a fuddy-duddy, a wife who doesn't appreciate her husband, a stern mother. Or is she? Each of these stories reveals a new side of Olive through the eyes of her fellow townspeople.

Pharmacy
The book's opening story gives us some background on Olive's marriage. The focus is on Henry, a pharmacist who watches his way of life mold to uncontrollable circumstances in the progression of modernity. The story alternates between the "good old days" and the "we're getting old" days, and we find that Henry is a gentle, naive soul who just wants everyone to be happy. His reliable old assistant is replaced by a newly married young girl, and Olive teases him that he has a new girlfriend. Denise is sweet and Henry admits only to himself that he is intrigued by her. She ends up leaning on him quite a bit when her husband is killed in a hunting accident, but she later remarries and moves away. Henry's pharmacy is replaced by a brightly lit chain drugstore. "People are never as helpless as you think they are," Olive tells her husband. Denise sends Henry greeting cards for years to come.

Incoming Tide
Wondering why I should care about this woman, Olive, and why she hasn't yet appeared in the second story, I begin to make notes in my book to mark things I don't like. I feel the book is too depressing, and unnecessarily descriptive passages are putting me to sleep: "He squinted hard toward the ocean. Great gray clouds were blowing in, and yet the sun, as though in contest, streamed yellow rays beneath them so that parts of the water sparkled with frenzied gaiety."

But I want to find out: Does Kevin commit suicide at the end? His mother did as much when he was younger, and he left town. Now he has returned to follow in her footsteps. He parks by the water and is approached by Olive Kitteridge, his former teacher who knows of his past and wants to empathize. I get annoyed when the author spells out what should be implied: "It was always sad, the way the world was going. And always a new age dawning." But I appreciate observations on New York: "...he had thought more and more how provincial New Yorkers were, and how they didn't know it." And I give in to the blatant explanations: "He missed his mother. ... But this turbulence in him was torture." He's turbulent like the waves, see?

He is saved from his rising surf when he literally jumps out of the car and into the water to save a woman from drowning. She clutches him more tightly than he thought possible, and he is inspired: "...oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on." I don't want to like this, but I love it.

The Piano Player
Angie has played piano in the cocktail lounge for years. She is highly cognizant of her stage fright and relies on vodka to get her through it, to get her to that place where she is alive only inside the music. "...when she played, it was like being a sculptress, she thought, pulling at the lovely thick clay." I can hear the jazzy lounge piano in my head while the author reveals Angie's secrets, and we see Olive and Henry enter. Olive is grouchy, Henry is a breath of fresh air. But our focus remains with Angie, who spies in the crowd a former lover. Simon comes to talk to her, to make himself feel a little better about the life he doesn't love. He's married with children, and Angie hasn't changed. He stabs her with a dull knife of knowledge: Angie's prostitute mother had once sought him out in desperation. That night, Angie decides to stop seeing Malcolm, her married lover, and tells him so. He's angry, but he doesn't hurt her. She has friends. "A face like an angel. A drunk." She thinks of her mother, paralyzed and thin and cared for by attendants who are rough and leave bruises on her frail arms. Tomorrow Angie will mention this to someone kind.

A Little Burst
In the most humorous of the first five stories, we get a glimpse of Olive as a mother. Her son, Christopher is marrying at 38. He's known his wife only a short time, and the reception is being held at the home he and his parents built for him. The author describes Olive "[w]edging her paper napkin into the slats of the picnic table," and I realize that all the little details that had been putting me to sleep are there to help me out. Each story is in a vastly different setting with new characters, so being able to visualize seemingly unimportant details serves to ease the reader's transition into and grasp on the current moment.

Olive isn't fond of her son's bride, or that bride's mother, for that matter. "Don't I hate a grown woman who says 'the little girls' room.' Is she drunk?" Olive is tired of the company and ready to go home and take a nap. She siestas in the master bedroom while Henry says his long goodbyes, and she overhears tidbits of the bride's conversation with a friend. She hears enough to know her dress is insulted and her husband adored. She also hears Suzanne refer to Chris as having had a "hard time," with no explanation. Depression runs in the family, but Olive has taken care of her son. She has loved him. Olive is enraged by the know-it-all bride, and she decides to steal a shoe and a bra from the room, and to draw a magic-marker line down the sleeve of a sweater she knows won't be worn for months. Just to show "Dr. Sue" that she doesn't know everything. "Of course, right now their sex life is probably very exciting, and they undoubtedly think that will last, the way new couples do. They think they're finished with loneliness, too."

Olive knows her body is wearing out, and she believes that her soul is, too. She progresses day to day on the lookout for "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are obvious, but little bursts can be just as fun. Like stealing a shoe from your daughter-in-law to "keep the self-doubt alive." She figures it's a better solution to life's potential emptiness than her husband's method: "He is an innocent. It's how he has learned to get through life." He prefers his bursts slow and gradual, and not a bit bursting. And just like that, I was fond of Olive.

Starving
Harmon is the owner of the hardware store. His wife, Bonnie, is increasingly distant, so he begins having Sunday rendezvous with Daisy Foster, a widow. "His brief Sunday moments with Daisy were not untender, but it was more a shared interest, like bird watching." He doesn't understand what's happening till he hears a local young couple use the phrase "fuck buddies." Appalled, he halts his sexual activity with Daisy, but continues to bring her a doughnut each week, and they start talking.

The young couple Harmon has been observing starts to have problems. They're busted for smoking pot and kicked out of their apartment. The boy leaves town, and the girl, Nina, loses her cinnamon (doughnut) complexion while giving in deeply to her anorexia. In need of a bed, she ends up staying briefly at Daisy's. When Harmon comes over, he stays longer than usual, talking with the girl. Olive arrives on her Red Cross collection rounds, and a mini-intervention takes place. Olive tries to reach out, telling Nina that we're all "starving" for something, but the girl sarcastically rejects the comment, bringing Olive to tears. "I don't know who you are, but young lady, you're breaking my heart." The conversation continues, and Harmon senses a strange energy, "something astonishing and unworldly," in the room. Nina goes home to her family, who keep Daisy updated on her illness.

Harmon feels his marriage unraveling as he is drawn nearer to Daisy. News arrives that Nina has died of a heart attack, and Harmon realizes he wants more from life than a quarter in mud puddle. He professes his love to Daisy, and rents out the room Nina had shared with her boyfriend.

----

The morals of the book are unfolding beautifully, and I can see the merit a book like this will have in classrooms and book clubs. I could probably devote an exorbitant number of blog posts to answering the questions in the reader's guide. Every person has to find his or her own way to "get through life." Death is imminent, but the way you live is so important because it's all we have. Olive's "little bursts" are the silver linings of her life, and they're no different from Harmon's quarter in the mud puddle. It's no hundred-dollar bill, but it sure might come in handy.

hey, i think i like this whole "true story" thing

My foray into the nonfiction world has begun, and as a result, I want more nature books and a job with the Central Park Conservancy (they're not hiring). Reading "Central Park in the Dark" was like pulling on my old hiking boots, grabbing a bag of gorp and embarking on an adventure through NYC's elegant treetops -- but without the sunscreen, because all of these wildlife dramas unfold after sunset.

I'll never again enter Central Park without turning on my long-lost wilderness senses. I might not know what kind of bird is on that branch, but I'll take a minute to observe it, or to say hello. Marie Winn has inspired me to think back fondly on my days in field-studies class, and to wonder why I didn't get my degree in forestry. Alas, I can school myself indirectly by memorizing everything I learned reading this book and will learn when I become obsessed with its many related blogs. I wanted to whine that there were no maps or photos included in the book, but I'd rather buy my own map of the park to hang on the wall, and I like the optional interactive aspect of going online to see what slug sex looks like beyond my imagination's eye.

I can never bring myself to underline things in a new book, but this one includes a handy index for referencing everything from the history of cars in Central Park to moth bait, pinking time and the Perseids. That means I can verify the Snapple "Real Facts" I started throwing at my friends: "Did you know the scariest-looking wasp is one that doesn't come after people? It's the cicada killer!" I'm not sure my pseudo-knowledge of shooting stars and roosting birds will help me convince anyone to go to the park with me at night, but perhaps at twilight you'll find me pointing out how you can tell the difference between male and female lightning bugs by where they're flying when they flash. Marie Winn does her best to comfort the reader by noting that in a decade of night visits, she's only had two scary experiences, one involving men who want to be cops, the other involving men who actually were cops. But the park has such a bad reputation, I'm not holding my breath till I'll convince anyone to go on a night walk there.

I did not want this book to end, and lucky for me the nature knowledge can continue by following Marie Winn online, and I can monitor the book for a whole month when I make it my staff rec in August. It just came out in paperback, though I was reading the hardcover version I received for free at NYU last year. And if I ever get money, I'll pick up a copy of Winn's other popular tome, "Red-Tails in Love," the story of some red-tail hawks who built a nest on a building on Fifth Avenue and had babies there for something like 10 years.

So I've got a whole heap of nonfiction stacked upon my television set, but I'm compelled to take a tiny hiatus from nonfiction. I happened to have won a free copy of the Pulitzer-winning short-story collection "Olive Kitteridge" from Goodreads.com, and since the point of a contest there is to read and review the book, I'll be starting on that today. It marks the second time I've read an honest-to-goodness bestseller ... the first being "Eat, Pray, Love." I'm not selling out, I'm expanding!

memoirs of a vampire in the dark

I have, of course, a few things going on in my reading world. When I finished "Jamaica Inn," I had a hard time picking what I would read next. There are just too many books on my "to read" list. Just check out my Goodreads account. I grazed the stack and grabbed a Doris Lessing book I found at The Strand recently: "The Memoirs of a Survivor." My radar pinpointed Lessing because we've had "The Golden Notebook" on our Fiction Favorites table a few times at the old Barnes & Noble. I scanned the cover, and decided this might be one of those hidden classics. Turns out it is. There are a lot of people who seem to like this book. It claims to be slightly autobiographical, so I figured I'd give it a go. At 189 pages, it should be a breeze, right? Well if there's anything I learned from Virginia Woolf (and actually, there was a lot) it's that a short book can sometimes take much longer to read than a long book. It's all about cognition. Lessing starts what seems to be a beautifully abstract story, but she philosophizes with the best of 'em, and halfway through this work, I got bored. Obviously, not all philosophical writers are boring, and I think when the mood strikes me I'll return to this book. But it's not quick train reading.

Lessing's genderless narrator tells the reader of the current times, in which Britian is becoming a wasteland. People try to cling to their homes, but government services and consumerism have fallen to the wayside. Bands of young people rove the country, and this narrator is seemingly randomly assigned to become the caretaker of a 13-year-old girl, Emily, and her odd cat-dog. The narrator lives in an apartment building, and begins seeing visions of another person's home on the other side of the living-room wall. This is not a neighbor's home we're peeping into, for on the other side of the wall is actually a hallway. The narrator can step into the other world and roam the rooms, and even spends time cleaning them and otherwise interacting with the space, which we later find to be scenes from Emily's childhood. Emily is no trouble to the narrator, but begins hanging out with some of the gangs that pass through, and the narrator fears she will leave. She does not, though, partially because her cat-dog (Hugo) would be in danger of being eaten.

I attempted to scan the book for a good example of Lessing philosophy, but I got bored. I'd much rather my mind migrate to the next book I picked up, "Let the Right One In." I borrowed this book from a coworker after having seen the Swedish film. This book was quite the opposite of its half-finished predecessor. There's not a lick of philosophizing among the hundreds of pages of vampire-story goodness -- Lindqvist leaves that to the reader. Because I already knew the story, it was easy to visualize the events, if not a tiny bit distracting. I prefer to read a book before I see its movie version, but had I not seen the film, I don't know that I would've picked up the book. I suppose it sounds redundant to say the book was like an expanded version of the film, but it's true. There was an additional subplot and more explanation of what in the movie were mysterious details.

There were a few points in "Let the Right One In" (originally titled "Let Me In") where I could tell the translator had trouble making a sentence flow without repeating itself, but I appreciated the straightforward style the novel uses to lay out the events. That doesn't really mean this was a light read -- the subject matter made sure of that -- but it was quick. The main character is Oskar, a young boy who is bullied at school, which causes him to fantasize about killing more than most, I would think. So it makes perfect sense that he would enter into a passionate friendship with a child vampire who recruits men to do her killing for her. Eli took notice of Oskar because of his violent tendencies, so she intended to exploit him. But like the boy who is dared to date the loser and then falls for her (see "10 Things I Hate About You") Eli finds that her relationship with Oskar is unique. In a moment of potential weakness, she cannot kill him even though she is starving for blood. Her prior blood-seeking sugar daddy, Hakan, was exploited by Eli because of his perversion. He was able to love Eli because of her still-childlike body, and his desire to be with her competed viciously with the conscience that plagued his murderer self. Hakan lost Eli because he could no longer kill, and it's ironic that he wanted so badly to die but instead became a vampire and needed to kill to simply survive. Hakan's eventual demise is outlined in the major subplot that didn't make it into the movie. That scene is more gruesomely played out than Eli's killing of the school bullies, which thus became the peak of gruesomeness in the film.

I'd like to see a sequel to this book, and there may very well be one. I know the author has other vampire books, so I'll have to do some research, because they just may not be translated yet. But I'd like to see how the story plays out. Oskar told Eli he wanted to kill people who deserved it, so the randomness of vampire killing may not suit him, unless he becomes a Robin Hood-esque vigilante vampire. And there's another question: Would he let Eli turn him? Eli offered and Oskar declined, but who says he couldn't change his mind? Eli's cycle of leaching off human killers won't end until she partners with another vamp for eternity, and a child-vampire duo is tragically romantic. In this respect I had hoped for a little more from the book's ending, because just like in the film, the last scene is Oskar taking Eli in a trunk on a train with no known destination. The book did highlight what is only implied in the film -- that Eli was actually born a male. This touch is intriguing but sad because of the mutilation he endured. Oskar is confused but accepting of this knowledge, and in the end I like to think it only makes him love Eli more.

During (though not because of) this reading, something struck me. I knew that next I wanted to read something real. I've ignored nonfiction for a long time, but there are so many great books that I want to add to my "read" list, and I don't mean that book I read about how to find a job ... although I guess that counts. And now, for a list of nonfiction books I've read.

David Sedaris "Me Talk Pretty One Day"
David Sedaris "Holidays on Ice"
Chuck Klosterman "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs"
Cynthia Shapiro "What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here?"
Tori Amos "Piece By Piece"
Donald Miller "Blue Like Jazz"
Amanda Hesser "Cooking for Mr. Latte"
Virginia Woolf "A Room of One's Own"
Rick Warren "The Purpose-Driven Life"
Greg Behrendt "He's Just Not That Into You"
Lynne Truss "Eats, Shoots & Leaves"
James Frey "A Million Little Pieces" (yes, I'm counting it)

There may be a few more but that's the gist from the shelves I have here in NYC. That list is too short. A few essays, a few biographies, and a few life lessons. So, I went through those shelves and pulled out the nonfiction that I haven't read, and I stacked the books up on my TV to pick something new. Some highlights I hope to devour soon:

Truman Capote "In Cold Blood"
Mary Roach "Stiff"
Stephen King "On Writing"
David Grann "The Lost City of Z"
Elie Wiesel "Night"
Anne Frank "The Diary of a Young Girl"
Bob Dylan "Chronicles"
Adam L. Gollner "The Fruit Hunters"
David Sedaris "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim"

You may remember me starting something called "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read." Yeah, I wanna finish that, too. But for now, I'm reading a few things at once. "The Autobiographer's Handbook" is for inspiration in writing. Wade Rouse's "At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream" is for entertainment. And Marie Winn's "Central Park in the Dark" is for substance and train riding. Naturally, I could write all day about the book's first 60 pages, but I'll save it for a day when I'm in less danger of being late to work. Let it suffice to say I'm loving every page because it reminds me of field studies in high school, and it's a way of exploring the park I can't experience while just passing through. Which reminds me, I'm also making my way through the poetic essays of Colson Whitehead's "The Colossus of New York." Go, nonfiction!

quick trip across the moor

I left the UK still full of zombies, but I'm confident Darcy and Elizabeth will survive to be old and gray (or grey, as they'd prefer). As will Mary and Jem, the heroes of "Jamaica Inn," the second book I've enjoyed by Daphne DuMaurier. The author is officially one of my favorites now, and I plan to use my B&N employee discount to buy the other volume of hers we carry, a story collection that includes "The Birds." That's right, Hitchcock made films from at least three DuMaurier stories.

Never did I time the reading of a book so well as when I read the final page of "Jamaica Inn" on the 1 train as it approached 207 Street today. It took me no more than a week to read this, and it was pretty fantastic. I still like "Rebecca" the best, but I rooted for Mary even when she ventured where most would never wander. She talked a lot about stereotypes against women, which I appreciated. She would notice that she was treated a certain way only because she was a women, and everyone knows women are fragile and can't handle physical or emotional stress! She also took an opportunity to point out how, specifically, she would be treated in a certain scenario if she had been a man. I like that she made a statement without being obnoxious, and it fit the character well. She proves herself in the end, of course, when she courageously follows her heart and chooses the life that will truly make her happiest -- a life of adventure with the man she loves. She gets the best of both worlds, despite once vowing she didn't require love:

"If loving a man meant this pain and anguish and sickness, she wanted none of it. It did away with sanity and composure and made havoc of courage. She was a babbling child now when once she had been indifferent and strong."

But much of her existence at Jamaica Inn required her to take risks. After the death of her mother, a widow, she went to live with her aunt and uncle at the most loathed and avoided residence known to the people of the moors. Jamaica Inn was no longer serving its nominal purpose, but sat a dark and sinister hub awaiting smuggled cargo from ships wrecked by land-locked pirates. A witness to the illegal activities and a self-appointed guardian of her wilting Aunt Patience, Mary conspired with fate to bring her uncle and his cronies to justice. Little did she know, her sole confidant, an albino vicar, was the leader of the pack, and the man she loved but mistrusted would come through for her in the end.