Musings on My Life As A Man

Happily, I got a few books for Christmas that I'd been desiring for quite some time. Hope you don't mind if I list them for you: Running With Scissors (Augusten Burroughs); America: The Book (Jon Stewart et al); the Ann Lamott book about writing whose title escapes me at the moment; and finally, the subject of this blog post, My Life as a Man (Philip Roth). Hooray! Several weeks' worth of excellent reading lie ahead. (Meanwhile, Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women and Bill Clinton's My Life are still staring at me, unfinished, from their respective positions on my nightstand. A-hem.)

My Life as a Man is my second foray into the work of Philip Roth. I started out earlier this year with Portnoy's Complaint, which I ignorantly had known only as "the masturbation book" before I actually read it but which turned out to be much more. In fact, I don't understand why people fixate on that one aspect of the protagonist's character. It's interesting and telling that Portnoy has a compulsion to ejaculate and his father is chronically constipated (likewise, Portnoy seems to spend his life trying half-heartedly to shake Jewish tradition while his father steeps in it), but beyond that, the gritty details of Portnoy's masturbation don't seem so urgently important as to warrant much attention. More significant, I think, is Portnoy's endless dismay over being civic-minded and compassionate yet obsessed with sex (in particular, screwing shiksas). He's neurotic and guilt-ridden and occasionally self-loathing, yet he is, generally speaking, a respected leader the community. It's a type of man that one recognizes, especially in politics and public service.

The protagonist in My Life as a Man, Peter Tarnopol, is similarly uneasy with and disturbed by his own dichotomous character. On one hand, he's a Jewish man from a loving family who excelled as a student and found success early as a writer and professor; on the other hand, his personal life is utterly fucked up. He is ostensibly a person who wants to help others improve themselves (teaching university students how to write, encouraging an inorgasmic girlfriend to try to achieve sexual pleasure), yet he's also known as a "seducer of college girls" and is so insecure that one wonders whether his magnanimous behavior isn't undertaken to bolster his own flagging feelings of self-worth. Most notably, he marries a troubled, verbally abusive woman, named Maureen (!), because she 1) cries pregnancy and 2) threatens to kill herself if he doesn't marry her, then kills herself anyway, and that seems to negatively affect his personal relationships with women for an indefinite amount of time afterward.

Basically, the reader learns about the flawed protagonist (Tarnopol) from Tarnopol's point of view. He is both self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. What results is narration that comes across as fairly unreliable but revealing just the same. It's also quite entertaining, and the tone is intimate, as if Tarnopol is telling you his life story over several beers in a pub or something.

I'm about two-thirds of the way through, and I'm currently in a section of backstory that comprises, in detail, all the events (from Tarnopol's point of view) leading up to his marriage, attempted divorce, and the eventual loss of his wife altogether. Right now, Tarnopol comes across as self-aware, yet foolish and (to the reader's amusement) obsessed with what is Right and Wrong instead of being concerned about what is stupid and potentially harmful. He's a fairly sympathetic character, but he's not tragic. Yet.

So far, I'm miffed by the reader reviews on Amazon that label this book "depressing" and "bitter." It could have been either of these things if Roth hadn't spent considerable time poking fun at youthful earnestness, academic pretension, and human frailty in general. But because one of Roth's main messages in this novel seems to be, "Look how ridiculous we human beings are! Let's stop taking ourselves so seriously and have a good chuckle over it!" the story doesn't get overwhelmingly sad.

More later, after I finish!

M's Long-Overdue Return to Fiction

I had bookstore anxiety. It was getting to the point where each time I'd set foot in a Borders or a Barnes and Noble, I'd become overwhelmed by dozens of titles and authors I so desperately wanted to read. Within 30 minutes or so, I'd be hot and perspiring, with a touch of upset stomach. Of course, that's the same physical response I have whenever I want to buy something but feel I shouldn't (clothes, mostly), but lately it's occurring primarily in bookstores, and with great intensity.

The thing is, I was suffering from Fiction Withdrawal. I hadn't picked up a novel since...well, I can't remember! That's not like me. Could it have been that the last novel I'd read was The Color Purple, back in the spring? No, I'm sure not. I must be forgetting something. But the point is, it's been quite awhile. Too long!

I trace my unplanned respite from fiction back to the pleasant June day S surprised me with a copy of My Life, Bill Clinton's autobiography. It was a thrilling, thoughtful gift that S had somehow acquired from his work for free. Woo! So I dove into that with gusto for several weeks, but then petered out about a third of the way through in late August or so (around Clinton's birthday, in fact). Feeling a bit bogged down by the density of the chapters on Clinton's early political life in the nineteen-sixties, I decided to take a temporary hiatus and return to the book at a later date. I should add here that I actually really wrestled with this decision, as I tend always to see a book through to the end on principle. I'm just not one to abandon a story partway through. However, to read Clinton's autobiography from beginning to end without a break might have caused my head to explode, and I couldn't risk that! I must take care to preserve whatever precious brain matter I have left now that I'm on the cusp of my thirties.

Anywho. Clinton got tucked inside my nightstand drawer, and I read a few light things here and there, one of which was...a-hem...former supermodel Janice Dickinson's memoir, No Lifeguard on Duty, which was surprisingly well-written (hello, ghostwriter). Finishing that one (in two days; the thing was such an easy read) stoked my nearly lifelong fascination with the world of modeling and fashion, and I was prompted to buy Michael Gross's Model, The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, which I've been plodding through ever since. The thing is thick, a bit dry (despite the critics' tantalizing snippets on the front and back cover that describe it as a "juicy tell-all," blah blah blah), and poorly written (or edited, or both). It's definitely a comprehensive history of the modeling industry in the United States and France, but I kept getting distracted by Gross's strange turns of phrase and not-quite-right figurative language. He's certainly a thorough researcher, but his writing is nothing to admire, and it can even be bothersome at times.

So. Having made my way from modeling's beginnings to its Studio 54 heyday in the nineteen-seventies, I tired of the book and put it down, again undergoing considerable guilt because of my decision. (Fortunately, though, the book reads less like a continuous story and more like a reference guide, so picking it up again won't require much mental exercise in terms of remembering "where the story left off," so to speak. Unlike My Life. Eek!)

After putting the Gross book down and seeing Funny Face, the Hepburn-Astaire film about an ordinary-woman-turned-international-modeling-superstar cited frequently by Gross in his big old book (it's not such a hot movie; I'll save that for another entry), I officially declared an end to my little modeling jag and wondered what to read next. For some reason, indulging in a novel felt like cheating, since I felt I somehow didn't deserve it after putting two nonfiction works down unfinished. I spent a few weeks with my face buried in magazines and Internet journalism pieces (Slate and Salon, especially around the time of the election), but finally two holiday-shopping excursions to big, wonderful bookstores did me in. There was nothing to do but read some fiction! Even J here at work suggested it might be just the thing.

So this past weekend I finally picked up Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter, a novel I'd bought this past summer but hadn't yet cracked open. I'd been feeling nostalgic for Southern fiction on and off this year, and managed to squeak The Color Purple in, but nothing else. Having read The Golden Apples by Welty in that Southern Fiction class in college (fabulous course; brilliant, mercurial, rather inflexible professor who loathed me), and having remembered said professor speaking highly of The Optimist's Daughter, I decided I couldn't go wrong choosing that one. Indeed, I'm not quite halfway through the slim little paperback and already I find myself thinking about the characters on and off throughout the day. It also seems like a timely choice, considering the situation with my grandmother. The main character in the novel, Laurel (the optimist's daughter, natch), has just seen her father, the optimist, die by what comes across as his own will after undergoing risky but not normally life-threatening eye surgery to repair a slipped retina. Now she has returned to her childhood home in Mississippi (from Chicago) to attend his funeral and take care of his affairs. Complicating matters is his father's much-younger wife of a mere one-and-a-half years, Fay, whose behavior suggests she is selfish and childish and holds her deceased husband's family in contempt.

Welty strikes a perfect balance of melancholy and honesty in her storytelling, and her writing seems effortlessly elegant and uncomplicated. She does a marvelous (but not messy) job of attending to detail, like the way she includes the sights and sounds of the loud, rowdy Mardi Gras carnival going on in New Orleans very close to the hospital where Laurel and Fay sit with Laurel's father during the weeks immediately proceeding his eye surgery. Fay longs to join the revelers outside, while Laurel finds them noisy and upsetting.

Anyway, I am thoroughly savoring my Return to Fiction with this book. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, it feels nourishing, in a way. If I'm still hungering for Southern writing when I finish, I've got Clyde Edgarton's Killer Diller in my bookshelf still unread. Otherwise, I might make a go of Jane Austen's Persuasion (another summertime purchase that's gone neglected) or The Lovely Bones, which S read earlier this year and has been recommending to me ever since.

The Color Purple

Note: Many thanks to the commenter who pointed out my Celie/Cecie typo! It's been corrected. (Although, I must assure that person that I did, in fact, read the novel!)

This is one of those great American novels that, somehow, incredibly, I'd never read. What self-respecting English major gets 28 years into life without reading The Color Purple?!

So, I read it. I wasn't expecting the format to be epistolary, like Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, so it took me some time to adjust to Celie's letters to God (and later, her sister) serving as narrative.

The story begins so dismally, with Celie young, poor, sexually abused, and barely literate. It's painful to read. Later, she's a bit older, but still poor, abused, and hardly more literate. Her story takes a hopeful turn at the introduction of some strong, self-respecting women into her life, namely Shug Avery and Sophia. I love these two women. Shug Avery is larger than life, happy, smart, funny, and---after a brief period during which she's unfriendly to Celie---kind. She's a feminist ahead of her time, making money, standing up for herself, and reveling in her sexuality---all with no apologies. She's such a memorable, likeable character. And she's in large part responsible for Celie's developing and growing into a confident woman herself.

Sophia, Celie's stepson's wife, doesn't take shit from anyone, including the bigoted white mayor of her rural, southern town. It's heartbreaking to see her land in jail, then in a kind of modern-day slavery, for years, merely for slapping the mayor after he insults her on the street. Neither Sophia nor Shug are afraid to call out the men in their lives when these men are being mysoginistic, demanding, condescending assholes, which is often.

It's interesting how Alice Walker gradually reveals the the male characters' good qualities throughout the course of the novel (with the exception of the mayor). For Celie's husband, kindness and a more enlightened view of women (and Celie in particular) come only after many years of meanness. He mellows with age and with the continued assertions of independence made by the women in his family. He's a fairly sympathetic, likeable character by the end of the story.

I love the story of Celie's sister, Nettie, who moves to Africa with a married couple to perform missionary work. Her experience enriches her, and she matures into a thoughtful, knowledgeable, educated woman. Her growth is documented beautifully in the detailed letters she mails to Celie, which Celie doesn't even know exist for years, because her husband hides them from her. The demise of Nettie's adopted village is a harsh wake-up call for the reader; this type of greedy, uncaring destruction of remote, "uncivilized" tribal settlements goes on all the time, I'm sure. I wonder if Walker herself has been to Africa and gotten to know groups of indigenous persons there, because Nettie's story seems like it could only have been written by someone who's had a similar experience, it's so vivid and nuanced.

At the end of the story, when Celie and Nettie are reunited, is it real? Or, is the reunion taking place in some sort of heaven? After learning from Celie, who learns from the government, that Nettie's ship was likely lost at sea, I figured Nettie and Co. were dead and gone. I was therefore stunned by the ending, but also elated by it. It just seemed too good to be true that Nettie and Celie might see each other again...this time as older, mature, accomplished, worldly women.

One theme of The Color Purple that resonated with me was the huge significance of family and community on a person's life. Celie was, in part, a product of her evolving and dynamic family. (And by "family," I don't mean blood relatives only.) As her family grew and changed, so did Celie. And through it all, her connection to and relationship with Nettie---just knowing Nettie was out there in the world somewhere---kept Celie hopeful. What power family has over us!

Since reading The Color Purple, I've felt a renewed interest in my own extended family and my ancestral background. How can I possibly know myself if I don't know about the people from whom I came? I know my father and both grandmothers have some documents that can help get me started on some genealogical research. I'd like to pursue that as a hobby...in between books, that is.

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Does anyone actually read this blog? I'm guessing a big fat "no." That's OK, I can live with that. If, however, there's anyone out there reading (maybe S? Or a family member?) who's interested in my other blog, here's the link:
Waxing Prosaic
It's just my observations of (and reactions to) everyday, ordinary things. I can't guarantee it won't bore you silly.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: Part II

I've recently finished reading this novel, by Dai Sijie, translated by Rilke, and can recommend it enthusiastically. The story has something for everyone: history, humor, adventure, suspense; heroes, villains, a beautiful girl; warmth, despair, anger. On top of that, it's short, which makes it accessible to young adults, busy grown-ups, and the literature-wary. And thankfully, it's well-written and beautifully translated.

Since my last post, I've blazed through my favorite scene in the novel: Luo and the protagonist working together with a needle, a sewing machine, and some tin to drill and fill the rotten tooth of the village's Communist-party leader. The protagonist finds he enjoys inflicting a bit of physical pain on this man, who serves as a symbol of the political ideology that's forced the protagonist and his friend away from their families and into the countryside in the first place.

Now that I've finished the novel, I can say with full confidence that the sex scenes in this story are mild, innocent, and lovely, and so I'm further baffled by the mother-and-son team in Tacoma, Washington that first recommended their school district ban the book. (Sadly, incredibly, they prevailed. I imagine the English teachers in the district are disgusted with their superintendent's decision.) Furthermore, the irony of censoring a book about censorship is too much to bear. What message does that send the students? It's absurd.

Anyway, this novel is colorful, magical, and absorbing. The ending is a bit cryptic in a way that I appreciate. I don't like a tidy ending. I want to finish reading a story feeling a bit miffed, a bit unsure. Life is messy and complicated, and I like literature to reflect that.

I suppose if I were to offer one critique of Sijie's story, it would be that we don't see the boys suffer enough during their exile to the remote mountain village. We do get one potent peek at their having to haul human and animal feces in pails on their backs, but much of their experience comes across as almost---almost---idyllic. They are, of course, away from their homes and their families and art and culture, which is indeed punishment and abuse. But so much attention is placed on the boys' outings to Yong Jing to view movies and their visits to the little seamstress, we tend to feel a bit detached from the stark tragedy of the situation.

I feels a bit blasphemous, however, to offer such a criticism of a story that is so rich and moving. Besides, the author himself experienced re-education first hand. Who am I to judge his retelling of it?

Suffice it to say that one good thing came out of the Tacoma-censorship situation: I got curious, picked up the targeted novel, and enjoyed an exhilarating, satisfying read.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: So far, so good.

I remember seeing this novel in bookstores a few years ago and admiring its cover. The cover art is a striking photo of a bright-red pair of girls’ shoes. The leather is worn, but its color (possibly enhanced by the graphic artist) is warm and vibrant. Each shoe has a strap that buttons into place, and the toes are reinforced with what looks like brass. The background is vague---maybe the painted stone of a building---but the colors are rich. The cover copy appears in complementary colors, and the book’s spine includes a pretty red brocade design.

I forgot about the novel in the three years since it first debuted in the United States. A couple of weeks ago, however, a coworker forwarded me an absurd news story from the Tacoma, Washington News Tribune about a school district that recently banned Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress from its curriculum. The trouble began when a high-school student reading the novel in his English class found some of the novel’s sexual content questionable and showed it to his mother. Mom was similarly offended, circulated a petition to ban the book from local schools...and the rest of the unsettling details are in the article: http://www.tribnet.com/news/story/5057442p-4985266c.html

This same coworker expressed annoyance that a story with so much value---specifically, information about Mao Zedong’s “re-education” of the middle class during his so-called Cultural Revolution---would be withheld from students. She said the novel touched on a part of Chinese history Americans know little about, and she believes it’s something kids should learn about in school. My response to this was essentially, “What was Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution?” I’d never heard of it, much less learned about it in school. She told me the bits she knew, and I found it almost impossible to believe. Sending formally educated, city-dwelling adolescents out to the countryside to forego all their intellectual pursuits in favor of hard labor and agricultural education? Very bizarre. They were separated from their parents for indefinite lengths of time during this re-education process. Meanwhile, formally educated, urban, professional adults were distrusted and monitored by the state, and in some cases, declared “enemies of the state,” as is the father of Luo, a character in the novel. Luo’s dad is a dentist.

So anyway, I had to read this novel to see what all the fuss was about in Tacoma, and because the bits of information my coworker had shared with me about China’s Cultural Revolution had really fascinated (and repulsed) me. She lent me her copy of the novel, and I’m now I’m a little less than halfway through it.

It’s absorbing, for sure. It’s a first-person narrative; the protagonist is unnamed but has three friends who compose the whole of his life in the countryside during his “re-education.” The friends go by Luo, Four-Eyes, and The Little Seamstress. They’re all kids between the ages of 13 and 20, and they’re each endearing in their own way. The protagonist, Luo, and Four-Eyes have all been sent to the remote Phoenix of the Sky mountain region for re-education; The Little Seamstress is indigenous to nearby Yong Jing. She is beautiful, smart, and charming, and both Luo and the protagonist have fallen for her. Luo, however, is the one to become her boyfriend, and they---gasp!---have sex standing up, beneath a tree, “like horses.” It’s an honest and sweet description and, as I was telling my coworker, Luo clearly says “like horses,” not “with horses.”
Ha!
So far, the story is unique, sad, hopeful...but not at all sexually explicit. We’ll see what the remaining chapters contain in the way of love and desire and sex.

I haven’t even touched on the main plot line, which is that Four-Eyes has smuggled a suitcaseful of classic Western fiction to the countryside with him. This is dangerous, of course. Luo and the protagonist finally coax a novel from Four-Eyes' stash---it’s a Balzac volume, “thin and worn”---and both boys read it all in one sitting, and are forever changed. Right now, where I’m reading, Luo and the protagonist are doing things for Four-Eyes in exchange for the opportunity to read another of his hidden books.

And with that, I’m going to excuse myself to go read some more!

The Devil Wears Prada: "Not so much," as Andrea Sachs would say.

My number-one guilty pleasure is reading fashion magazines, preferably while curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee and a long, lazy Saturday afternoon stretched out before me. Glamour, Cosmo, Marie Claire, Allure, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue: I read them. I know them. I can recognize their respective layouts, font choices, and front-of-book departments. And I know the names and faces of their respective editors in chief. Which is why I borrowed Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada from my local branch of LAPL after waiting an eternity for it to come out in paperback at Barnes and Noble. When it finally did, I decided I'd be a fool to actually purchase the thing when the library's givin' it up for free. It was the first wise decision I'd made in months.

I’d been wanting to get my imperfectly manicured hands on this gossipy little roman à clef about a girl who lands a job at "Runway" magazine to work as the assistant to editor in chief "Miranda Priestly." Let's review: Runway = Vogue; Miranda Priestly = Ed-in-chief Anna Wintour; and the protagonist, Andrea 'Andy' Sachs = Devil author and former Vogue assistant Lauren Weisberger. By the way, she's 26 years old, this girl. Or something like that. She's wee, is what I'm saying. Years shy of 30.

Moving on, then: Weisberger, who from this point forward shall be referred to as PLRG (Poor Little Rich Girl), would certainly NOT be a bestselling author had she chosen less-scandalous, less-juicy, less-Page Six–ish, less-autobiographical material for her debut novel. This book sells because people want to read about what a huge bitch Anna Wintour is. That's it. Ain't nobody buyin' it for its literary value. Anyone who reads Vogue, works for Vogue, works with Anna Wintour, has heard of Anna Wintour, admires Anna Wintour, or despises Anna Wintour was, I'm sure, literally sprinting to the bookstore to buy this freaking book when it cam out, if they hadn't already preordered it from Amazon. In a way, then, PLRG is an effing genius for taking her story to Doubleday, choosing a provocative title, and standing by looking cute as the marketing team worked its magic. In another way, though, she's a sellout. She jumped the shark before she even got in the water. She eschewed good writing, an imaginative story, and thoroughly developed characters for a slick, glossy, thinly shrouded exposé of a well-known, powerful fashion icon. And hey: It sold. It continues to sell. After all, it is deliciously entertaining to read about an intimidating, seemingly omnipotent celebrity getting called out on her outlandish, outrageous mistreatment of those around her.

But a whole novel in which the author reveals the nasty “truth” (or some semblance of it) about Anna Wintour does not sustain a reader’s interest for long. About halfway through The Devil Wears Prada, I found myself uttering, “I get it, I get it. She’s mean. She’s nasty. She never says ‘Thank you.’ She’s vague in her demands. She spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on designer clothing, extravagant meals, and travel. I get it. So what?” And it doesn’t help that the protagonist, who readers are sure to equate with the PLRG herself, is not particularly likeable. She whines and complains about how skinny and beautiful and tall her coworkers at Runway are, yet she’s a self-described five feet ten inches and 115 pounds. Um, hello? That’s tall and skinny, Honey. And she’s outfitted in designer duds by sympathetic fashion editors who wince at her sensible shoes and conservative suit jacket. Furthermore, she charges nearly every one of her meals, cocktails, and lattés to Runway’s expense account. Oh—and a Town Car takes her anywhere she needs to go on the island of Manhattan, whether she’s on the job or off. Poor her.

Andrea (that is, Weisberger herself, the PLRG) all but comes out and says she’s slumming it by stooping so low as to work at Runway, a mere fashion magazine (in the hope of moving straight to the staff of The New Yorker in a year; more on that later), yet she takes full advantage of the fashionista trappings available to her. At one point she even makes a comment about how working for a fashion rag is at least better than working for some totally lame trade magazine—and then she mentions Popular Mechanics as an example, which is neither totally lame nor a trade magazine. Having worked in trade publishing myself, I want to laugh at PLRG for being so condescending and stupid. It’s difficult to empathize with or feel sympathetic toward characters who are condescending and stupid.

Another unpalatable aspect of the Andea character is that Andrea always lets us know when she’s performed some act of charity. She buys Starbucks coffees for the homeless. She buys a sandwich for her driver. She mails a cast-off designer dress and shoes to a teenage girl who had written to Miranda requesting a prom dress months earlier. Give me a break, please. It’s not Andrea who’s purchasing the coffee and the sandwich and the dress—it’s Runway. Andrea’s expensing all of these items, of course. And she even admits to buying the coffees because of the pleasant “fuck you, Miranda” feeling it gives her. How's that for virtue?

Time to address Andrea’s/PLRG’s desire to work for The New Yorker. First of all, what editor or writer doesn’t dream of working for The New Yorker? Join the club, Sister. We’re a million strong—and growing. In this novel, Andrea seems to think she’s the only one in publishing with such a lofty goal. I don’t get it. Could she really be that naïve?

Secondly, she doesn’t seem to realize that it’s nearly impossible to get a job there. I’m amazed that this girl thinks she’s entitled to a job at The New Yorker one year out of college. She earnestly seems to believe that working twelve months as Anna Wintour’s personal assistant is enough to qualify her for the coveted position of The New Yorker staffer. Furthermore, she talks of “writing for” the magazine. Ha! Dream on, sweetie. Think “editorial assistant,” if you’re really, really lucky. Or maybe “receptionist,” if you’re only a little bit lucky.

I fear I’m coming off as Bitter, party of one. And that may be true. I read this novel from a niche perspective: A writer and editor who dreams of working for Condé-Nast but knows it will probably never happen. I’ve edited a trade magazine; I’m currently editing corporate publications. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not The New Yorker, or Vogue, or even Popular Mechanics. So I’m turned right off by Andrea’s/PLRG’s sense of entitlement, her naïvete, and her hypocrisy (fashion bores her, yet she’ll happily sell the $38,000 worth of designer clothing she’s been granted by Runway in order to pursue a writing career after being fired from the magazine).

I was willing to give this novel a chance, I really was. Unfortunately, like a delicate, gem-encrusted stiletto sandal, The Devil Wears Prada turned out to be all sparkle, no substance.