Hi,
Picking up from where we left off- part two of my reading review for December 2016.
Thanks for reading. See you all again on Friday.
Tim
*Stoner by John Williams (12/12)
Coming my way via half-recommendation ('I'm going to read this'), I picked up Stoner with no expectations. The tale of an unremarkable farm boy who goes on to become a scholar, instructor, and professor at university, this story shares few characteristics with books I've considered 'page turners' in the past. And yet, I finished Stoner the same night I started it.
The novel primarily covers the title character's career in academics. Stoner, it is often described, loves what he teaches. He exemplifies the idea that anyone who loves possesses the capacity to understand the object of this love. As his career progresses, he takes on roles as friend, enemy, husband, and father, each experience intertwining with the next to reinforce the same lesson about love from different points of view.
I saw a commentary here in how those who love with restrictions are doomed to never fully understand the object of their love. Teachers who do not love their work in full fail to understand their craft in full. A parent who loves conditionally is able to understand a child only within the framework of those conditions. The ramifications of how love shapes Stoner's understanding of life play out in so many more ways throughout.
Stoner, in a way, was almost the exact opposite of The Waves, the book I completed just moments prior to opening this one. Stoner is told by focusing on one person rather than many. It relied on a calm third-person narrative style that clashed with the intensity of Woolf's method calling for multiple characters to interchange inner monologues. Williams's writing was simple, again a contrast to the complex lyrical quality of Woolf's. Even my reading experience contrasted- I finished Stoner in six hours while I enjoyed The Waves over the course of six weeks.
And yet, I took away similar lessons from each work. Like with The Waves, Stoner is a portrait of how people face and accept the challenges brought on by life's joys, demands, and disappointments. As John McGahern suggests in his introduction, Stoner's great achievement is his fully lived life, done so by meeting rather than shrinking from the limits he encounters.
One up: I read an awful lot but rare is the book that I pick up and finish the same day. That suggests to me that the elements of pacing and style here will keep the pages turning for any reader.
One down: I think some will find darkness here where perhaps I saw light. It is unclear if Stoner's life is heroic or tragic. More than once, the deafening silence of what remains unsaid reverberates far longer than the words shouted by the characters. The scene that I cannot get out of my head which exemplifies this idea is when Stoner first discusses the possibility of a life in academia with his parents.
Just saying: Stoner lives through two world wars. The circumstances allows an insight on war, delivered from Stoner's mentor, who describes the tragedy of ongoing war as not just measured in the direct loss of life on the battlefield but also in the loss of the less tangible elements in a community. It elevates darkness and brutality to a permanent place in society through its seeming necessity and stunts the effected generation's ability to carry out its responsibilities to build up the traditions of civilization.
*The Gutsy Girl by Caroline Paul (12/13)
A collection of stories about Paul's life, with preference given to the unexpected or unusual. Whether detailing her qualification for the national luge team or describing her turbulent ascent to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, Paul's anecdotes are reflections about facing fear, ignoring stereotypes, and giving it your all in the face of self-doubt, trepidation, and those annoying naysayers who cannot help but say nay.
The spirit of trusting yourself to grant you safe passage out of your comfort zones is the theme that links this collection together. There is something here for anyone who needs a little help to dream, to be brave, or to achieve when all visible signals are discouraging. I should know, given how far outside the target audience I fall (girls aged eight to fourteen, if I were to hazard a pretty strong guess).
I ended up reading this book because I enjoyed Lost Cat, a book with a similar blend of storytelling and illustration. My positive experiences with Paul so far suggest I'll try Fighting Fire, a full-length memoir of her career as San Francisco's first female firefighter.
One up: Scattered throughout the collection are miscellaneous tips and strategies for navigating various adventures. My favorites include her advice to use a line of three landmarks to walk in the woods without circling and to carry Vaseline soaked cotton balls in film canisters as emergency fire starters.
One down: I guess it bears repeating- this book IS directed at preteen girls. The self-conscious reader (and aren't we all?) will perhaps find him or herself (though likely himself, right?) best-off enjoying this book within the sanctuary of four closed walls, a nice solid roof, and tightly stapled curtains.
Just saying: Paul distills her wisdom gained through experience for her younger target audience. In encouraging the hesitant forward, Paul points out that those who learn from failure never really fail at all. She suggests those who feel stuck in some way to write two obituaries- the first describing the life lived so far, the second a detailed account of the life truly desired. A bridge with the endpoint defined is far easier to cross (or, in her case, climb).
*Sounds Like Me by Sara Bareilles (12/16)
In fall of 2007, an unlikely hit song became (by my unofficial determination) the most frequently played song in my college basketball team's locker room. It was 'Love Song', by Sara Bareilles. I enjoyed it at the time despite it not being quite my cup of tea. In fact, it took another six years before I listened regularly to any of her other work, an incubation period of sorts that baffles me in retrospect.
The book brings out so many of the same qualities that her fans love about her music. It embraces moments of weakness brought on by doubt and suffering, examining it all without self-pity, to bring forward a work bursting with exuberance and strength. The book is divided into chapters focusing on one particular song. No two chapters are delivered in the same way. The versatility of her writing is reminiscent of her wide ranging musical skills.
One chapter is a series of letters to herself, another the detailed account of her initial failure in co-writing, a third a reflection on how her struggles with body image impacted her songwriting. Each chapter reinforced a number of broader themes- that patience allows time to soften the hardest edges of experience, that cultivating self-worth from external forces is like running on a treadmill forever speeding up, that empathy is best exhibited through inclusion.
I liked best the acknowledgment that believing in the possibility of others becomes increasingly more difficult with age. It took some reflection before I realized how this applies to how people see themselves much more so than it does to how they see others. The work of bringing out the strength and beauty in others is near impossible for those who cannot attempt the same for themselves.
One up: There is no holding back in this book. I think that explains her success as a songwriter as much as it does describe the strength of this book.
One down: Those seeking a line-by-line account of the songwriting process should look elsewhere. This book is more about the person holding the pen than it is about how the pen conjures, edits, and finalizes each verse.
Just saying: At one point, she shares alternate titles for the book. I'm not sure if she ended up choosing the best one or not. But I do know I laughed at "I'm Not Gonna Write You A Book". (1)
*Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (12/17)
Lorde's collection includes writing and speeches from 1976 through 1984. The focus of these pieces is wide ranging, covering many of the themes she is most well known for today. What these pieces share is an underlying belief in the indispensable role difference plays as a source of change, growth, and understanding.
It is, from her point of view, how she sees the role of the feminist. She writes that a feminist heals divisions and makes connections. In a number of essays, she addresses ways to do this on the personal level. Those who learn to recognize their deepest feelings, for example, ultimately develop an intolerance of the foreign conditions that poison the emotional core- resignation, suffering, self-denial.
As a person develops this understanding of self, the capacity to reach across differences and exhibit compassion through cooperation emerges. Her well-known quote 'for the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house' grows out of this idea. Beating an oppressor at their own game is an isolating approach. To stand against the structure, united through common cause with outsiders, is a way forward that brings positive change and makes room for the human concerns of those looking in from the outside.
I think Lorde saw the inability to relate across difference and fuel growth out of understanding as the biggest challenge facing her time. I think progress has been made since then but I'm afraid there is a long way to go. The frustrating aspect of progress is that some required steps resonate very little in the arenas we desire to impact. But those who are kinder to neighbors than to themselves or yield to anger or indignation rather than comprehend another's anguish are limited in the extent they can bring out these desired outcomes.
One up: Lorde references an idea I believe I cited in a past post- that poetry is a way to fashion languages which do not yet exist. Her prose takes on the same quality throughout the collection.
One down: One night, I read a few pages of this book while riding the Red Line. About a third of the way into my trip, the man sitting a couple of seats down from me got my attention. When I looked up, he pulled out the same book from his backpack and waved it in my general direction.
"Pretty good, huh?" he asked, before returning the book to his bag.
But then why aren't you reading it? I wondered as I scanned the page, serching for the place I had just lost.
That stray thought is the closest I can come to saying something negative about Sister Outsider.
Just saying: I did not extensively investigate Lorde's background but it would not surprise me to learn that she studied economics. Her observations about the problems of profit-driven thinking are among the sharpest commentaries in this collection.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. But good rules have exceptions! Be BRAVE!
So, read this or not?
I
only read music books if it details the music I listen to. This book
makes me want to bend the rule a little bit because I think it applies
in a general way. The stories shared here are not really about her
career or even the specific songs she writes about. But I think the
safest progression is to listen to her music first and, if properly
inspired, read this book next.
So, for you Sara
Bareilles newbies- I would start with the album Brave Enough: Live at
the Variety Playhouse. I really like the
piano-and-vocals solo format (with a brief guitar stretch in the middle)
of this 2013 concert recording. As a bonus, her humor and warmth as a performer is evident throughout. It's her
only album that I listen to in full. The studio albums bring some extra
bells and whistles, mostly with their additional instruments, and
although this works very well in general, I find that my preference
remains for the simpler sounds of Brave Enough.
