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.

Anna Karenina

I seem to remember an old joke that it wasn't so much about marital infidelity as about agronomy.   Turns out, after 30 CDs --something like 34 hours spread over December and January --it's not so much of a joke after all.  Russia liberated the serfs at roughly the same time as Lincoln ended slavery in the US.  I read a lot about sharecropping from the sharecropper's point of view, but I never read about an owner trying to come up with an agricultural system that would be productive, profitable, AND fair. 

12/19/09 What I saw while grading papers

The History Channel, for about five hours.  Two hours of "Black Blizzards," a story I've been fascinated by since listening to Tim Egan's The Worst Hard Time last spring:  The choking clouds of Black Sunday, the barbwire sparking, the people refusing to move.  Then "102 Minutes That Changed America," raw documentary enhanced with quiet anxious drumbeat and ambient drone.  Again the dust clouds.  The fight for survival.  I was a hundred miles away on 9/11, in Massachusetts.  We watched CBS in the school library and lobby.  The superintendent said our lives would never be the same.  I felt disoriented, but I wanted to believe he was wrong.  I was glad to get home later that day and see my kids.  Today, between those two dust-ridden programs, The Beatles on Record.  A breath of fresh air.  Afterwards, Einstein.