Our Mutual Friend

Veneeerings, Podsnaps and Podsnappery, the Golden Dustman, the one legged Weg, Headstones, Riderhoods and Lightwoods, the Cherub --the Cherub's wife begging pardon to shut people up, the Cherub's daughter who wants so desperately to marry money, his other daughter: younger, sharp tongued, and her boyfriend George who'd better keep his mouth shut. Eugene Rayburn (there was a Gene Rayburn who was a game show host --was it The Match Game?) --the Golden Dustman's wife seeing ghosts and wanting to adopt a little boy, the scheming Lamelles (I listened to it in my car so I'm not sure of the spelling), Lizzie Hexam,  Jenny Wren the doll's dressmaker --one of the weirdest characters I've met in recent memory, Sloppy overseeing the removal of the mounds, the antisemitic debt buyer and the Jewish employee who fronts for him, taking all his insults without giving up his dignity. The river and the locks, the mills and the ministers, the schools and schoolteachers. The pupil who lives with her teacher and raises her hand whenever she has anything to say. . .

I'm doing this from memory --I know there are Dickens scholars and I've checked out some of the websites, but I don't want to go there now. I want to test my memory. I listened to this novel while driving back and forth to work last year --28 CDs in all, and I loved it.

linchpin

Tho other day I was watching a show called Castle, and there was a plotline about someone identifying an event or a person who could start WWIII, a war America couldn't win, at the end of which we'd surrender.  The linchpin turned out to be the daughter of a Chinese businessman.  I won't go into details, but the story's so plausible it's a little scary.  And it makes me wonder about the kinds of changes set in motion by Facebook and Twitter: spheres of influence that supercede boundaries.   

Ansary on Hosseini

I recently finished listening to Tamim Ansary read his book West of Kabul, East of New York while driving back and forth to work.  I feel I have been given a wealth of ideas to complement my reading of The Kite Runner, which I will do with students in the next few weeks.  From the sheltered privacy of Afghan life to the philosophical stances dividing Muslims, form the pain of leaving family in a far country to the sense of not quite fitting in --these two books have much to say to one another.  Toward the end of his, a work of nonfiction, Ansary describes a meeting he attended along with Hosseini, who had probably already completed The Kite Runner.  I had to smile when he describes him as a highly energetic physician who wrote short stories in his spare time, "horror stories," (I'm paraphrasing here) "in the tradition of writers like Ambrose Bierce." 

Nocturnes --Ishiguro

A striking example of how the same people whose novels make life worth living write short stories that leave me luke warm.  I laugh out loud at "Come Rain or Come Shine," and very much enjoy "Malvern Hills" and "Nocturne," but I miss the emotional connection that comes from spending time with the characters in When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go.  It seems as though I have a problem with the form, because I could say the same about Roth and Murakami.  Then again there are others whose sense of humor carries the day, even with stories over ten pages long: Franz Kafka, Roald Dahl, and Stephen King.  Poet James Tate wrote an excellent collection of short stories.  Faulkner wrote some not so memorable, but "Two Soldiers" and the stories that extend or continue the lives of characters in his novels are iirreplaceable.  Then there are people who write stories of five pages or less that serve up the same kind of impact as a good poem: Lydia Davis, Shirley Jackson, Heinrich Boll, Luisa Valenzuela.  So there are short stories I wouldn't want to live without, but nothing stays with you like The Sound and the Fury or The Windup Bird Chronicles.     

Great Expectations

I don't remember if it was 9th or 10th grade.  I don't remember much beyond Miss Havisham, Pip, a "conwict" and something about a scary staircase that turns out to be either the memory of an illustration or a scene from a movie version with Robert De Niro.  One thing I do remember is that I didn't like it.

Forty years later I listen to Great Expectations in my car --and the reasons why I didn't like it back then are obvious.  Its frank and relentless expose of adolescent insensitivity, embarrassment, cluelessness and ingratitude is not something an insensitive, embarrassed, clueless and ungrateful adolescent is ready to countenance.  Too much like looking in the kind of mirror that shows your soul instead of your face.  Too much like confession.  That Pip becomes a sympathetic character by the end of the novel was no consolation: the prospect of a future helping others reach their goals wasn't much fun at 15 either.

Forty years later I think I get it.

There's a lesson there for high school teachers.  Or maybe just for me.

The Color Purple

Students suggested we tackle this after I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and A Raisin in the Sun.  I had to confess that I had never read it.   But rather than just say no, I thought I'd check it out.  Turns out it tackles some of the most difficult questions of race in America, and of life on earh --and it does it with grace, intelligence and compassion.   So thank you, students, for helping me fill this gap in my education.  And thank you, Alice Walker.

The More We Know

the more complex and mysterious the world becomes.  The more we know, the more we find how much  there is to know, how much work there is to do, if only we didn't have to worry about getting paid or recognized for doing it.  Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything makes me think I'd be willing to help with catalog building, classification, pattern recognition, speculation, and maybe I wouldn't be unhappy about not winning a prize or being listed as a reference.  Anyway, Bryson ought to win a prize for this.  We ought to be proud that our day and age gave rise to such work.