by Louise Erdrich
I've been a fan of Louise Erdrich's writing since college when I picked up Love Medicine. Mom and Dad gave me The Master Butchers Singing Club for Christmas when it came out in 2003, but for some reason I never got around to reading it. Even though in the time since I've read many of her other novels and all of her most recent ones. When Jen and I were in Minneapolis last September I saw that they were going to make a play of the novel and perform it at the Guthrie. I thought it would be fun to read it finally and then go and see the adaptation for stage. I've spent the last couple weeks reading it while sitting in the window seat our new place with the autumn light falling across the pages. So nice. Beautiful writing as always--the characters and descriptions... Some of my thoughts as I read: First, How could they possibly make a Louise Erdrich book into a play? How can you stage the beautiful small moments she captures in her descriptions? And secondly, I wish it was possible to have a butcher shop in town like the butcher shops of the past, where they slaughter out back, and there is an art and craft to the whole process, but current regulations prevent this. I understand why regulations have come into existance, a guarentee, a safety net, but I think something is lost. In response, we learn to raise and butcher our own meat, but even this isn't the same. I'm notaligic for the small community in which each person is so specifically trained and experienced in a single craft. We have aspects of it up here: master coffee roasters, master mead makers, master blueberry farmers :) ... but right now I'm missing my master butcher. I also missed seeing the play at the Guthrie as I wasn't able to make it back down to the cities during the run, but I'm glad it least it promted me to read... The books always better anyway, right?
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I just finished Erdrich's novel, Shadow Tag. Hard to read at times with a central relationship that is painfully complicated, but also just so well written. It was easy to imagine the characters expensive Minneapolis home on an unnamed lake after walking the perimeter of Lake of the Isles on our last trip down to the cities a few weeks ago (and even easier to imagine the vacation home on Madeline Island where the story ends). I couldn't help but wonder how much Erdrich drew on her marriage to Michael Dorris while writing this novel, but I also liked what this Washington Post reviewer had to say: "Erdrich has done what so many writers can't or won't do in this age of self-exposure: transform her own wrenching experience into a captivating work of fiction that says far more about the universal tragedy of spoiled love than it reveals about her private life."
Monday, November 1, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
by Salman Rushdie
Since spring and sun I've been craving a good book and a place I can sit outside in the morning and drink my coffee, eat a bagel, and read. I've had my nose in and out of a couple different books and tried sitting on our shady steps, laying back in Jen's crazy creek, against a canoe, or in my car with the windows rolled down, but until this week I had yet to really feel comfortable or to be absorbed in what I'm reading, to feel I could sit and read all day. Then on Friday Jen and I drove up our driveway after a week away on the lake and see two beautiful red volkswagen bucket seats perched in the sun of our yard. And inside the cabin, a book on the table with a note inside: "Magdalen: Here is my copy of my favorite book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Love, Kate" A Demorest delivery!! The next morning I brew some Demorest coffee and move outside. Everything feels right again. Of course it only took me two days to finish her book (which i loved! so good. so kate.) but now I need another. Suggestions?
Since spring and sun I've been craving a good book and a place I can sit outside in the morning and drink my coffee, eat a bagel, and read. I've had my nose in and out of a couple different books and tried sitting on our shady steps, laying back in Jen's crazy creek, against a canoe, or in my car with the windows rolled down, but until this week I had yet to really feel comfortable or to be absorbed in what I'm reading, to feel I could sit and read all day. Then on Friday Jen and I drove up our driveway after a week away on the lake and see two beautiful red volkswagen bucket seats perched in the sun of our yard. And inside the cabin, a book on the table with a note inside: "Magdalen: Here is my copy of my favorite book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Love, Kate" A Demorest delivery!! The next morning I brew some Demorest coffee and move outside. Everything feels right again. Of course it only took me two days to finish her book (which i loved! so good. so kate.) but now I need another. Suggestions?
Monday, February 22, 2010
Coop: a Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
by Michael Perry (2009)
Michael meanders all over and often uses words that are beyond my vocabulary and yet he always manages to keep my attention. He has such respect for his parents and the rural life he grew up with and he struggles (as I and many others do) to retain their values and choices. His biggest struggle though out the book is that he is trying to do too much. He is always behind on his writing and often has others do the building or butchering that he imagined he would be doing. When he brings up the idea of getting sheep, his wife replies,"I have this vision of you in Des Moines, talking about writing and raising sheep--meanwhile, I'm running through the brush with a howling six-month-old under one arm and dragging a bawling seven-year-old behind me with the other arm while we try to get the sheep back inside a hole in the cobbled-up fence" (214). Reading about Michael Perry being stretched too thin was timely for me. I had been feeling the same and in the course of time it took me to finish this book, I made a decision to cut back on some of my obligations in order to spend more time writing and more time on the farm. I am also reminded how fortunate I am that my farming can be a source of income for me versus a distraction from money-making commitments as it is for Perry.
And my favorite quote, as he watches old farmers give their condolences to his brother at his nephew's funeral: "it strikes me again how much we miss if we rely wholly on poets to parse the tender center of the human heart" (273).
Michael meanders all over and often uses words that are beyond my vocabulary and yet he always manages to keep my attention. He has such respect for his parents and the rural life he grew up with and he struggles (as I and many others do) to retain their values and choices. His biggest struggle though out the book is that he is trying to do too much. He is always behind on his writing and often has others do the building or butchering that he imagined he would be doing. When he brings up the idea of getting sheep, his wife replies,"I have this vision of you in Des Moines, talking about writing and raising sheep--meanwhile, I'm running through the brush with a howling six-month-old under one arm and dragging a bawling seven-year-old behind me with the other arm while we try to get the sheep back inside a hole in the cobbled-up fence" (214). Reading about Michael Perry being stretched too thin was timely for me. I had been feeling the same and in the course of time it took me to finish this book, I made a decision to cut back on some of my obligations in order to spend more time writing and more time on the farm. I am also reminded how fortunate I am that my farming can be a source of income for me versus a distraction from money-making commitments as it is for Perry.
And my favorite quote, as he watches old farmers give their condolences to his brother at his nephew's funeral: "it strikes me again how much we miss if we rely wholly on poets to parse the tender center of the human heart" (273).
Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder
by Kent Nerburn
This book arrived in the mail a month ago just as I had reached a break point in my writing and was looking to be consumed by a good read. Cory had received it as a gift and was almost finished reading it when she went online and bought me a copy as well. So many of my favorite books have come to me as recommendations from my friends and this book is another. The book starts with a request, from Dan, a 78 year old Lakota man to Kent, a 40 year old white writer: "I want you to help me write a book. I want to get this all down... What I have in my mind." As the book evolves, we do hear Dan's poignant philosophies on Indian history and relations between Indian and white people, but these philosophies are framed by another story, the present-tense story of the relationship between Dan and Kent and the story of how this book comes to be. The best advice to Kent comes early on in the book when Dan's friend Grover tells Kent to "write it all" not just the speeches and ultimately the book feels balanced and real and honest because he shows Dan as a complicated character and himself as a complicated character. It may be easier to leave the complexities out, but it is the complexities that drew me into the story and kept it real.
This book arrived in the mail a month ago just as I had reached a break point in my writing and was looking to be consumed by a good read. Cory had received it as a gift and was almost finished reading it when she went online and bought me a copy as well. So many of my favorite books have come to me as recommendations from my friends and this book is another. The book starts with a request, from Dan, a 78 year old Lakota man to Kent, a 40 year old white writer: "I want you to help me write a book. I want to get this all down... What I have in my mind." As the book evolves, we do hear Dan's poignant philosophies on Indian history and relations between Indian and white people, but these philosophies are framed by another story, the present-tense story of the relationship between Dan and Kent and the story of how this book comes to be. The best advice to Kent comes early on in the book when Dan's friend Grover tells Kent to "write it all" not just the speeches and ultimately the book feels balanced and real and honest because he shows Dan as a complicated character and himself as a complicated character. It may be easier to leave the complexities out, but it is the complexities that drew me into the story and kept it real.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Behind You
I've been on a Jacqueline Woodson marathon for the past couple months--ordering all her books through the libraries interloan. YA novels, they are the perfect length to spend a morning with or start before bed and then stay up late to read the whole way through. Last night I was up until two with Behind You. Fifteen year old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by cops as he's running home from his girlfriend's house through central park. The chapters rotate narrators: Miah's girlfriend Ellie, his best friend Carlton, his teammate Kennedy, and his parents who haven't talked to each other since his dad Norman moved across the street and broke his mom Nelia's heart. Before Miah dies the characters are connected to each other through him, but now that he is gone, they seek each other out in order to feel connected again. My favorite was this passage written at the end of the book in the voice of Miah's mom. It is a year after Miah has passed.
Some days there is Ellie in my kitchen, the yellow-gold light spilling over us as we talk. Some evenings there is Norman on my stoop, telling me about his life, listening to me talk about mine--friends now, the past of us together not as painful as it once was. And on Saturdays there is Carlton, carrying my grocery bags--when I say, Sing, Carlton, he does, and his voice takes me back to another time, a lighter time, a freer time.
And each day there is at least one perfect moment--the way the sun moves around the living room, roasted potatoes with lots of rosemary and oil, a new baby wrapped up in blue, a child laughing.
The snow blows and blows. I turn a way from my window, make my way upstairs to my study. When I turn my lamp on, so much beautiful light fills the room.
Some days there is Ellie in my kitchen, the yellow-gold light spilling over us as we talk. Some evenings there is Norman on my stoop, telling me about his life, listening to me talk about mine--friends now, the past of us together not as painful as it once was. And on Saturdays there is Carlton, carrying my grocery bags--when I say, Sing, Carlton, he does, and his voice takes me back to another time, a lighter time, a freer time.
And each day there is at least one perfect moment--the way the sun moves around the living room, roasted potatoes with lots of rosemary and oil, a new baby wrapped up in blue, a child laughing.
The snow blows and blows. I turn a way from my window, make my way upstairs to my study. When I turn my lamp on, so much beautiful light fills the room.
Friday, October 23, 2009
A Gate At The Stairs
by Lorrie Moore
I liked this quote on the back of the book (by Susan Salter Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times): "Lorrie Moore has something that many writers of her generation don't have: She is truly odd...[But] Moore's stories don't leave us in the solitary confinement that oddity can create.... They are the dance halls and constellations in which eccentricity becomes uniqueness."
I find myself liking Moore's characters and connecting to them because of their genuine quirkiness. In high school I read and reread Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? I liked the main character in it. I don't remember her name, but she was a teenage girl, and she was also weird. In A Gate at the Stairs, the main character (Tassie) and I are not only both girls and a little weird (although I think she is a lot odder than I am), but Tassie also grew up on a farm in Wisconsin (a lot different than my farm with her bumbling father and emo mother and close proximity to a big city) and like me, she graduates from her small town high school in 2001. The story starts during her freshman year of college, a few months after 9/11. I can't recall another book I've read in which the main character and I were the same age in the same year.
Who will run the frog hospital? was short (just over a 100 pages) and I had lived a lot less when I read it. It was easy to connect. In A Gate at the Stairs, Tassie and I have a lot more in common, but I also know 200 more pages about her life and I know ten years more about mine, which makes it easier to see that in fact we are quite different.
But it still doesn't make me like her any less.
I liked this quote on the back of the book (by Susan Salter Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times): "Lorrie Moore has something that many writers of her generation don't have: She is truly odd...[But] Moore's stories don't leave us in the solitary confinement that oddity can create.... They are the dance halls and constellations in which eccentricity becomes uniqueness."
I find myself liking Moore's characters and connecting to them because of their genuine quirkiness. In high school I read and reread Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? I liked the main character in it. I don't remember her name, but she was a teenage girl, and she was also weird. In A Gate at the Stairs, the main character (Tassie) and I are not only both girls and a little weird (although I think she is a lot odder than I am), but Tassie also grew up on a farm in Wisconsin (a lot different than my farm with her bumbling father and emo mother and close proximity to a big city) and like me, she graduates from her small town high school in 2001. The story starts during her freshman year of college, a few months after 9/11. I can't recall another book I've read in which the main character and I were the same age in the same year.
Who will run the frog hospital? was short (just over a 100 pages) and I had lived a lot less when I read it. It was easy to connect. In A Gate at the Stairs, Tassie and I have a lot more in common, but I also know 200 more pages about her life and I know ten years more about mine, which makes it easier to see that in fact we are quite different.
But it still doesn't make me like her any less.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
After Tupac & D Foster
by Jacqueline Woodson
So good. With real language and complicated emotions. The best YA novel I've read since Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Last summer, my friend Andrea was hired as the middle school language arts teacher at the Bayfield Public School, where we had both attended--kindergarten through graduation. She started the year by reading a chapter a day from 'Absolutely True Diary' to each of her classes. The eighth grade group was especially drawn in and when she neared the end of the novel, pleaded that she not stop at the chapter break and instead read to the end. When she told me this, I was excited to find more YA books that they could connect with. After picking 'After Tupac' up at the library yesterday and finishing it in just a morning of reading, Jacqueline Woodson is at the top of my list of recommended YA authors. While reading it I was already devising writing prompts (Is there anyone who was once in your life but isn't anymore? What do you remember about them? Is there a musician/singer/rapper whose lyrics you especially connect to? What lines? Why? Write a scene of dialog that sounds like how you might talk with your friends or family.) I was happy to read on the back flap that this wasn't Jacqueline's only book and excited to read more. But I was also a bit wistful. Despite Andrea's success working in the middle school, higher ups at the school decided to rearrange teaching assignments and the result has her teaching first grade next fall. After seeing how she was able to connect with her students over the past year, I have no doubt that Andrea will find her way back to middle school some day. In the meantime I will continue to read YA, to make lists of authors, and books, and writing prompts. And not all has to wait, as I learned upon visiting Jacqueline's website, that she writes picture books appropriate for first graders as well.
So good. With real language and complicated emotions. The best YA novel I've read since Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Last summer, my friend Andrea was hired as the middle school language arts teacher at the Bayfield Public School, where we had both attended--kindergarten through graduation. She started the year by reading a chapter a day from 'Absolutely True Diary' to each of her classes. The eighth grade group was especially drawn in and when she neared the end of the novel, pleaded that she not stop at the chapter break and instead read to the end. When she told me this, I was excited to find more YA books that they could connect with. After picking 'After Tupac' up at the library yesterday and finishing it in just a morning of reading, Jacqueline Woodson is at the top of my list of recommended YA authors. While reading it I was already devising writing prompts (Is there anyone who was once in your life but isn't anymore? What do you remember about them? Is there a musician/singer/rapper whose lyrics you especially connect to? What lines? Why? Write a scene of dialog that sounds like how you might talk with your friends or family.) I was happy to read on the back flap that this wasn't Jacqueline's only book and excited to read more. But I was also a bit wistful. Despite Andrea's success working in the middle school, higher ups at the school decided to rearrange teaching assignments and the result has her teaching first grade next fall. After seeing how she was able to connect with her students over the past year, I have no doubt that Andrea will find her way back to middle school some day. In the meantime I will continue to read YA, to make lists of authors, and books, and writing prompts. And not all has to wait, as I learned upon visiting Jacqueline's website, that she writes picture books appropriate for first graders as well.
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