New fiction by the great E. L. Doctorow

E. L. Doctorow

 Andrew's Brain. The tantalizing title of Doctorow's stunning new novel. Deceptively simple. Far from the sweeping works of the past, and like his more recent work, compelling, gripping, smart and readable. And, surprising. But I cannot say more without a spoiler.

A man named Andrew sits in an office speaking to a probing unidentified inquisitor/counselor about the life and loves of a man named Andrew. Needing, for reasons unidentified, to speak of himself in the third person.

We don’t know exactly where he is, or why, or why he is wherever he is or why he speaks to this person, but we know from the first that he despairs. Perhaps trauma. Perhaps PTSD. Perhaps merely one too many losses.

In this compact novella Doctorow presents a portrait of a man who has suffered much for what might otherwise be considered negligence. We discover early on that he lost a child with his first wife, and when his second much younger wife passes [we learn much later how] he brings their newborn baby to his former wife and her boorish husband, as if repayment, but in truth, in need of someone to care for the child, because he cannot. We’re not sure why not and the story hinges on this moment.

As Andrew recounts his tale, and all the nuances and details of his life and marriages, we meet a man conflicted and regretful, but also defensive. Questioning. A brilliant professor, he has to struggle through half his life before he begins to understand himself and, as the title suggests, the workings of his own brain.

But when did the brain become the mind, he asks? And the reader might ask the same, as he expounds on the workings of the brain, that organ that dictates to all others, including the heart. As the great DeLillo said in a recent commentary on Doctorow's writing, “...the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.” Yes, Andrew’s monologue conveys a much larger meaning.

I admire every novel E. L. Doctorow has written, from the remarkable “Ragtime” and “The Book of Daniel” to the starkly chilling “Billy Bathgate” and the post-modernist “Homer & Langley” and “The March.” He has won just about every great literary award and still publishes enigmatic short stories in literary magazines like The New Yorker. I saw him speak a few years ago at UCI about science and humanity and he was truly spellbinding.

A new novel from this master is cause for joy and I can tell you that this late-life masterpiece will see a lot of publicity because, without spoiling anything, Andrew’s recitation suddenly places him into a political conflict of the most insidious nature, and while this story shift pulls you up short, it takes the novel to a higher plane. 

I must confess, I wanted more of the book, it was too brief for me, and the ending not satisfying in that way that novels wrap up and make sense, but of course, Doctorow leaves us to think for ourselves. What is the trajectory of our lives? How do we find ourselves in prisons of our own making? And what, or who, can alter that destiny? Read for yourself and decide.

Passion and Friendship Italian-Style

Elena Ferrante

Europa Press publishes little known [in the US] or out-of-print authors in beautifully designed paperback editions. You’ve likely seen them at the bookstore – hard to miss their striking cover illustrations and hard not to pick one up, thankfully, so you might discover the mighty fiction of a fierce eloquent writer like Elena Ferrante.

            “Days of Abandonment” is the best known of her half-dozen novels and the most stunning. In a stream of consciousness style, an abandoned mother of two children narrates the early weeks and months of her self-imposed seclusion and descent into near madness. However she does not dwell in self-pity, oh no; she rages, she disparages men, she seduces an even lonelier neighbor, she rails at her children, she neglects her home and herself so that one fears she might end up the crazy woman upstairs, until she oddly finds her way to equanimity. Brava!
Rarely do you read about grief as charismatically, and honestly, without platitudes or over-simplifications. Here we find wrath, sometimes humor, the evolution of clarity, in a fascinating diatribe with a surprisingly satisfactory conclusion. 

Ferrante might be a poster-child for the adage to write what you know. Her novels take place in Naples and within their pages we can smell the tomatoes, hear the scuffling of shoes below the window, imagine the swill of dirty water tossed from buckets to the sidewalk outside cafes. And, “My Brilliant Friend” captures multiple generations in the midst of cultural change in a city that resists change.

            Elena narrates the story of her friend Lila, a unique girl who consistently defies convention even as she ultimately seeks its protection. Elena and Lila grow up in the fifties in the midst of a culture characterized by warring families and traditions. These are the descendants of the Mafia and they wield their power the old-fashioned way, with their fists and with whatever wealth they can take. Persistent class divides rely on power; women, on the other hand, ignorant and largely repressed, are possessions or ornaments. Lila, unusually smart, surly and fearless, is alternately admired and feared by all but Elena, whose intellect propels her to better schools where she might have a chance at a better life. Lila never has that opportunity, despite her superior brainpower. However Elena, as stimulated as she is at school, longs to be more like her beautiful defiant friend, the brilliant friend at the center of everyone’s life. The novel’s ending leaves the reader hanging, because the story continues in the second of the ‘Neapolitan Trilogy’ entitled “The Story of a New Name.” I will read next and report back.

            Start with “Days of Abandonment” for a taste of Ferrante’s elegant ferocious fiction.

Subtext and Nuance: The Infatuations

Javier Marias

This fascinating novel by the renowned [in Europe] Spanish writer, Javier Marias, revolves around the narrator’s first person account of her relationships, in fact, infatuations, with a very few people. In truth, the story has to do with the very concept of storytelling: the subtext and nuance that reveals the heart of the story. What really happened, who speaks truth and who deceives, and, in the end, does it matter?

“The mistake of believing that the present is forever, that what happens in each moment is definitive, when we should all know that as long as we still have a little time left, nothing is definitive. We have all experienced enough twists and turns, just in terms of luck but as regards our state of mind. We gradually learn that what seems really important now will one day seem a mere face, a neutral piece of information.”

            Quotable passages abound throughout the book, and if you like existential banter and interior monologues, you will love this novel. I was infatuated with the words more than the story, where little happens, but much is revealed, slowly, and much left to the reader to decide.

            We don’t know much about the narrator, Maria. She has breakfast every morning at a café where she admires a couple also there every day, imagining their nearly perfect lives together. Their existence seems to bolster her spirits, as if guiding her into their satisfying universe. However, when he is tragically murdered, and she befriends the wife, another man enters her orbit and through him, all imaginings are torn apart, although our heroine is the least touched by all that happens in the book. Marias reminds us that what happens in life is mirrored in fiction, and equally forgettable, or so it seems.

“What happened is the least of it. It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and the ideas that the novel’s imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.”

            Many of us become infatuated not only with people but with our ideas of those people and our concepts of self within their orbit. So it’s no surprise that Maria works for a publishing house and grapples with novelists to the point of exasperation. She has no real appreciation for their incessant musings, even as she lives within her own. Oh yes, The Infatuations is a lot about storytelling. 

            A literary page-turner, for the language and the simplicity of the story, this novel is not for those who thrive on high plot, rather that place where romanticism and reality coincide. I loved it.

The Signature of a Great Writer

For some reason, when I moved blog sites, some of my reviews were lost, so I am reposting my review of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Signature of All Things" because this book deserves as much attention as possible.

Elizabeth Gilbert

If you loved “Eat, Pray, Love” be warned that this is a very different book: not only a novel, but a sweeping historical and scientific novel, 500+ pages of great writing. Think Barbara Kingsolver meets James Michener and Charles Darwin. Utterly divine, but totally different than the memoir.

If you did not love “Eat, Pray, Love” and if you love a big juicy interesting read, you will love this one, because Elizabeth Gilbert, when released from neurotic navel-gazing, is a smashing writer with brilliant insights

I hated to say farewell to the protagonist, Alma Whittaker. A botanist in the 1800’s [who even imagined female botanists at that time?] she is a force of nature. Raised by an ambitious father and a stoic hard-edged mother, her intellect is prized, and she ends up taking command of the family’s personal and professional lives, including their massive homestead and her father’s thriving pharmaceutical business. Alma takes control of many things, including her libidinous passions, and like so many true intellectuals, she is curious and wise about the ways of the world, in this case the plant world, but often completely ignorant of personalities and penchants.

But Gilbert’s Alma is neither arrogant nor dismissive. She is a student of all things, including her own nature, and she learns from her mistakes with a determination rarely seen in anyone much less a woman of the 19th century.

The title stems from the writings of Jacob Broehme, a 16th century German who had mystical visions about plants, which he dubbed the signature of all things. Broehme contended, and what is commonly accepted among medicinal herbalists and shamans, that hidden clues for human well-being are embedded in the design of flowers, leaves, fruit, and trees. As such, basil is shaped like liver, walnuts like brains, etc.

Alma also comes to believe in the concept of multiple timeframes. Human time as a limited narrative based on collective memory and recorded history. Geological time, about which Charles Lyell and John Phillips had written, that moves at a snail’s pace. She also accepted the idea of Divine time, which is eternal, and she ultimately postulated what she called Moss time, blindingly fast in relation to geological time because mosses expand so rapidly by comparison to geographical phenomena. Over a lifetime of study, Alma “observed these great, inaudible, slow moving dominions of green as they expanded and contracted. She measured their progress in fingernail lengths and by half decades.”

Trust me, mosses, and algae, are fascinating!

Once Alma recognizes that she will devote her life to science, she rejoices in the possibilities: “Alma’s existence at once felt bigger and much, much smaller – but a pleasant sort of smaller. The world had scaled itself down into endless inches of possibility. Her life could be lived in generous miniature… She would probably die of all age before she understood even half of what was occurring in this one single boulder field… it meant that Alma had work stretched ahead of her for the rest of her life. She need not be idle. She need not be unhappy. Perhaps she need not even by lonely.”

And what a life she lives! From Pennsylvania to Indonesia and to Holland, Alma leaves an indelible mark on the people in her midst, and on the reader, and in the pages of this remarkable novel lies profound universal and personal truths, as well as emotional and scientific fascinations.

I read a lot of good books and I can tell you this one is a true winner. Brava Elizabeth Gilbert and thank you.

Finding Lost Time

Years ago, a good friend in her mid-forties was working on a Masters degree, and a professor urged her to pursue a PhD in order to teach. She demurred. “I’ll be fifty by the time I complete the requirements,” she said. The professor replied: “You will turn fifty in five years – you can be fifty with a Doctorate or with a Masters.”

I never forgot those words. They apply to everyone with a dream. The only thing we know for sure is that we will age. What matters is what we do with our years. There is no statute of limitations on a dream and no rush.

I was in my late forties when I completed my Masters in Writing. My first novel had already been roundly rejected and I saw that was like training wheels on a bike – great for beginners but better stored in the shed. I was in my fifties when the next novel attracted a serious literary agent, and a slew of raves for writing, but no acquisition, and the agent gave up quickly. So did I. Perhaps, I thought, time had run out.

Still hopeful, I gave up my businesswoman persona and spent the rest of that decade as a journalist, and was nearly sixty when I started blogging. Writing is writing, whatever the form, and I learned a lot, and never gave up on fiction.

In truth, age is a writer’s ally. The greater the experience, the more we have to say. More time to learn important truths, to establish a more expansive point of view, to refine skills and find your voice, and infinitely more stories to be told. The novel I will publish in January could never have been written twenty years ago.

I would have loved to devote my life to fiction and I always admired those writers who woke before dawn to knock off five thousand words before getting a nutritious breakfast on the table for their children and heading to work. I don’t have that sort of stamina. I had a husband and children and turns out there is a shelf life on that time. Parents also needed tending. Friends needed a friend. I wanted to take vacations at the beach and save for retirement. I had a room of my own and carved out time to write, but never enough time. Or was it determination? Courage?

Time is on your side whatever the obstacles in your path, as long as you don’t let the calendar undermine your resolve.

I still make a living as a journalist and marketing writer, so I split my days. Mornings, I craft articles, book reviews, newsletters, brochures or grants. I work at home, the kids grown, husband gone. No distractions. However writing, as you know, is a lonely job, so in the afternoons, I write fiction at a café. I like the sense of camaraderie there, even if I rarely lift my eyes from the screen. With a change of scene I also change my voice from the expository to the novelist. Sometimes I use people at the next table for character sketches; sometimes I borrow snippets of conversation. Sometimes I read, which is never wasted time because I truly believe you cannot be a great writer unless you read great writers.

I wrote a story while in graduate school in 1999. An African-American nurse, a single mother with three children, tried to run three times a week or so to stay sane. The only time she had to call her own. A tragedy stops her in her tracks. I love to read short stories, but rarely write them, although some years later, I wrote another story about a depressed girl who takes up running, and I realized she might be the grown daughter of the nurse. What might have happened to the nurse? To the other children? Their kindly neighbor? Their father was Caucasian, so what challenges do brown people face these days in the land of black and white? Who might they encounter on their journeys? A novel was born. Many characters came and went, and direction shifted many times. Years passed. But now, as Toni Morrison advised, I wrote the book I wanted to read.

Age however crept up on me when I realized I had no desire to waste time querying agents or praying for an editor or wading through the labyrinth known as the publishing industry. No, I would rather be writing, so I will self-publish “Colors of the Wheel” in January and the many friends and colleagues I have known throughout this long life are rooting for me. Hopefully, they will also spread the word.

If you don’t count the original story, six years is what it took to get this book right. Six years! I might have had a PhD. 

This post was just published today on women writers, women's books: http://booksbywomen.org/age-a-writers-ally-by-randy-kraft/

ISBN

Cover design by Lindsay Wiley Designs.

It is official. The novel has an ISBN. Two in fact - long and short. Truly, what more iconic emblem of publishing? Exciting. In fact, this wordsmith is a bit speechless. January, "Colors of the Wheel" will be available in paperback and as an ebook. Only took 65 years!