Novel as OUTLINE of a life

Rachel Cusk

I was hesitant to write this review because, as a rule, I only review books I love. The point is to establish a recommended reading list, mostly new works, although on occasion I return to a great read of the past. 

More to the point, it’s not that I didn’t like Rachel Cusk’s latest novel, OUTLINE, quite the contrary. I’m fascinated by it. In part, or in spite of the fact that the novel stretches the boundary of the form, but in this way, not for everyone.

Cusk delights in language and is known in her native England for plot-limited, episodic fiction. She might soon be anointed one of the queens of post-modern literature, joining her country-persons Julian Barnes and Kate Atkinson, among others. IN OUTLINE, she has, in effect, outlined the narrator’s life through her connections, or lack of, and everything is filtered through the narrator’s eyes, very little direct action or even dialogue. Fascinating.

OUTLINE follows a writing teacher on a summer assignment in Athens and through her interactions with fellow travelers, students, and ultimately her replacement, across ten distinct moments in time, she constructs a portrait of a lonely woman drifting through time and space, even as she tries to facilitate others’ personal aspirations. She seems to have lost her anchor, and no compass, although she never says as much. She observes, she wonders, she engages without engagement... A lesson in writing as well.

In some ways, the book reminded me of Jenny Offill’s brilliant DEPT OF SPECULATION, reviewed here recently, as the telling may be more impressive than the tale, and Offill too creates a portrait of a woman dealing in turmoil – loss of self most notably. Offill also filled the novel with commentary and ruminations, although she spoke from the narrator’s heart.

Like Offill, Cusk’s descriptive prose is exceptional. Setting is the focus in each narrative. People and landscape, as if a lesson in detail. Exquisite descriptions. However, in truth, half way through the slim volume [248 pages] I found myself sighing. Sometimes, no matter the beauty of the language or the profoundness of thought, I long for story. And when I need elegant philosophical ramblings, I turn to Anais Nin or Rebecca Solnit. Or poetry. But reading is a matter of place and time in the reader’s life and perhaps I just wasn’t of a mind for this sort of narration, even though I admired the novel immensely, and I kept going. Difficult to stop reading passages like these:

“The apartment belonged to a woman called Clelia, who was out of Athens for the summer. It stood in a narrow street like a shady chasm, with the buildings rising to either side. On the corner opposite the entrance to Clelia’s building was a café with a large awning and tables underneath, where there were always a few people sitting. The café had a long side-window giving on to the narrow pavement, which was entirely obscured by a photograph of more people sitting outside at tables, so that a very convincing optical illusion was created. There was a woman with her head thrown back, laughing, as she raised her coffee cup to her lipsticked mouth, and a man leaning towards her across the table, tanned and handsome, his fingers resting lightly on her wrist, wearing the abashed smile of someone who has just said something amusing. This photograph was the first thing you saw when you came out of Clelia’s building. The people in it were slightly largely than life-size, and always, for a moment, exiting the apartment, they seemed terrifyingly real. The sight of them momentarily overpowered one’s own sense of reality, so that for a few disturbing seconds, you believed that people were bigger and happier and more beautiful than you remembered them to be.”

Want to stimulate the senses with dazzling prose and fascinating observations? Read OUTLINE. Available in hardcover or for your e-reader.  I promise next to review a more old-fashioned tale, I need one.

Learning to Look in Oaxaca, MX

I am making my way down cobblestone streets from my daughter's sweet casita on a hill overlooking the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, to the center of town. Centro. I am watching for the markers I made note of when we walked together so I won't get lost. 

Turn left at the metal gate, right at the playground, left at the mural, and so on, one turn after another until I reach the main square. And, this square too is a marker, the anchor for my travels around the city.

I often make note of directional cues. Colors of posts in parking garages. The location of landmarks in proximity to a cafe. Unusual architectural detail. In this way, I find my way, and familiarize myself with my surrounds. 

Once I have arrived the first time, I rarely lose my way again. True for driving as well, which was a particular challenge in Orange County, where roads curve and cross each other, nothing like the NYC grid where I first learned to navigate. 

My version of breadcrumbs in the forest.

What comes to mind is learning to look. The title of an after-school class that taught my young children about the nature and meaning of art. Learning to look is hardly confined to art, nor to navigation for that matter. Yes, it is a grounding exercise. Yes, it serves as center-point for thought and interpretation. Sometimes it is a matter of life or death: crossing the street at the green, avoiding snakes in open space or jelly fish at sea. Learning to look underscores just about everything. They call it mindfulness these days.

In San Miguel de Allende, another wonderful city where I sojourned before Oaxaca, one must always look downward while walking to avoid uneven surfaces, ruts or hidden obstacles that have taken down many a visitor, even as the eye drifts upward to carved doors and overflowing flower boxes. Mindfulness in that city is equal measure safety and delight.

So as I walk, I remember the first time I took my young grandson into the backyard to examine the landscape. I do this each week. Even just a few months old, he looked at every leaf and flower with reverence, learning to look. Imprinting, in effect: the natural byproduct of innocence and the root of curiosity. Soon I will teach him street names, point out particular trees or the colors of houses in his neighborhood, so he will always find his way home. And always appreciate his surrounds.

However, being lost also has value. And charm. The joy of discovery. One must never allow the grounding to inhibit forging new territory. A different path offers new vistas. And another way of looking.

My firstborn daughter, even as an adolescent found every possible alternate driving route to avoid highways and main roads, and I do the same. Is it no wonder that in the many cities she has lived she has always found her way around quickly and always on a more interesting path. I happily follow her lead.

Sadly, too many these days rely on GPS systems for direction. A focus on speed and reassurance. Antithetical to mindfulness, or the joy of exploration. Maps are no longer in our hands or minds and the art of looking may soon be lost. 

Until then, I pay close attention. Not only to sights but sounds, scents. And the impressions the senses inspire. All the very essence of living that begins with learning to look.

San Miguel Redux and Anew

Another visit to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Sixth in three years. Subtle changes mostly please. New restaurants, more contemporary and eclectic in food and design. [La Parada, Peruvian, terrific in every way.] More rooftop dining. Shops more stylish (modo) also more expensive. More Mexican tourists, a good thing, neutralizing the effect of the large expat population, although their presence makes an Anglo feel more at ease. So many lectures, events, classes and music to satisfy mind and soul. A new small theater, the fourth, with a robust expat drama group mounting readings and original plays.

Streets clean and rough surfaces smoothed in spots. Colors vibrant: earth tones and blues, touches of gold. Flower boxes and bushes overflowing. And oh those gorgeous carved doors, still impress, occasionally open to reveal courtyards and gardens. Always a thrill to catch a glimpse of worlds within.

The 10th annual Writers Conference rose above unexpected/unusual winter rains [what conference organizer Susan Paige called global-wierding] with good cheer and terrific speakers: the great and glorious Gloria Steinem, the feisty Alice Walker, the wonderfully wise writer/lawyer Scott Turow, the tender poet Richard Blanco, and the humor and insight of Jane Urquhart. For me, on the faculty for the first time, teaching journalism, a rare treat to enjoy a faculty brunch and proudly wear the badge to all special events. 

I've been told the city is less safe than it was. Kidnappings of high profile residents and rapes have been reported. Purse snatchings or home thefts have always been around, as in all major cities. The prominence of police and military officers around Centro suggests concerns are true and add a safety net. One must always be careful in a city, but we never felt unsafe.

Visits with friends cemented the personal connection begun more than three years ago even though my daughter resides elsewhere now. This city has joined the pantheon of places I feel most at home: New York, San Francisco/Berkeley, Greenwich, CT, Laguna Beach/Dana Point, San Miguel de Allende.

However, beyond all its charms, the greater pleasure this visit  was showing off this lovely city to my amor. My late life love, who wasn't even known to me a year ago, and who fell in love, as so many do, with cobblestone streets, mountain vistas, the rich color palette and friendly people, and appreciated, as I always do, the easy pace as well as many opportunities for intellectual and cultural stimulation. And we too fell in love all over again. To stroll hand in hand, to seek out new dining spots, to relish the resounding of the church bells from our lovely hotel dead center of town at the Jardin... I never understood before that San Miguel is also for lovers. Now I know. We will return.

However, first we will head back to Oaxaca, another smashing city, very different with charms of its own and far more Mexican than Anglo... but that's another blog.

Speculation and Summation

JENNY OFFILL

DEPT. OF SPECULATION

By JENNY OFFILL

I’m late, and perhaps redundant, in reviewing this novel. As it was named to all the 2014 “best of” lists I read, including the New York Times top ten, I am decidedly behind the eight-ball. Nevertheless, a novel worth talking about, again and again, more for the telling than the tale.

1. Narrated by “the wife” who is never named, the story centers on her unraveling marriage to “him.” She names their one child but speaks of her largely as “she” and never uses “we” but once, a crucial once.

2. The novel is more a novella, as there are few characters and a discreet time frame, even beyond the slim 177 pages, and the story is far wider than long in its view. I recommend reading in one sitting if possible, a powerful experience.

3. The novel hardly conforms to the general format, if there is such a thing anymore. There are no traditional chapters, sections, or dialogues, rather a sequence of fragments: thoughts, impressions, memories and commentary [speculations] which often veer into the philosophical and scientific, inciting a range of historical characters from Rilke to the French physician Baraduc to Buddha.

4. Fantastically sharp prose – intuitive, existential insights worthy of contemplation:

“Baraduc claimed to be able to photograph emotions...He sought out emotionally agitated people, then held up light-proof paper a few inches from their heads. He found the same emotion would make the same kind of impression upon the photographic plate, but that different emotions produced difference images. Anger looked like fireworks. Love was an indistinct blurb.”

“How has she become one of those people who wears yoga pants all day? She used to make fun of those people.  With their happiness maps and their gratitude journals and their bags made out of recycled tire treads. But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.”

Or the simplest of moments defined by a mother still struggling with her role. “But the smell of her hair. The way she clasped her hand around my fingers. This was like medicine. For once I didn’t have to think. The animal was ascendant.”

5. The novel feels more like memoir than fiction. Or like a Tao of extended aphorisms that make us pause to consider everything in our midst and every bit of our senses. This protagonist/narrator is a writer and teacher, and deep thinker, much like this new generation of wise minds who, like Offill and Rebecca Solnit, speak for their peers and also for those of us much older who remember the most painful and most tender moments of love and marriage and motherhood, and smile, because we know everything goes in cycles and time heals.

Available in hardcover but soon in paperback. And of course e-book. 

Happy new year, happy reading.

The Other Side of Paris with Francine Prose.

I’ve been a fan of Francine Prose for some time. She writes with clarity and intelligence, and always directly to the reader. She bases stories on the downfallen, the marginalized, the supernatural and the unnatural, never with a heavy hand, and she gives them all a face we recognize. Sympathetic without hyper-sentimentality.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club. Paris 1932, my holiday reading and the last of my 2014 book reviews, is no exception. Based on interconnected characters during the days leading into World War II, she realizes their stories through fictionalized letters, a supposedly published memoir, and personal narratives, narratives that contradict now and then to suggest unreliability, and while she drops many hints at what will come, one is compelled to read on to find out how this strange story plays out.

The core character, Lou Villars, is based on an infamous femme fatale named Violette Morris, a lesbian car racer and cross-dresser who was tapped by the Nazi’s to interrogate resistance members, some of whom were her cohorts at the Chameleon Club, one of those outrageous night haunts where there were no inhibitions and anything went. Lou found herself a community there, but was subsequently disillusioned by the French government’s refusal of her professional driver’s license, because she wore men’s clothes. She had been a javelin thrower and runner, and, ostensibly, Hitler admired her prowess so much he invited her to the 1936 Olympics and she was thus easily seduced to the dark side. Did she turn her back on those who had taken her in when she was desperate to release her inner self?

Francine Prose

Among the scintillating cast is a hyper-sexualized, self-impressed writer named Lionel, modeled, according to previous reviews, on Henry Miller, and an idealistic Hungarian photographer based on Brassai. And an aristocratic woman, her gay husband and fascist brother, who come to Lou's aid, and serve as patron to the photographer. Add an assortment of strivers and believers, in all shapes, sizes and sexual orientations, who make their way in a Paris struggling with "unemployment, inflation, mass bankruptcy, immigration, a crushing national debt, an increasing tax roll, and a diminishing tax base, political scandal, poverty, a shrinking middle class..." Sound familiar?

There is unrequited love, manipulative love, true love and promiscuity, all of which represent Paris before the German invasion, and because Prose alters voices and style from chapter to chapter, the narrative is consistently interesting. Every character in some way struggles with commitment - to purpose, family, lovers, sexual identity and country - the novel is thoroughly engaging and strikes truth. 

I believe it was a sleeper this year, much overlooked for more sensationalized works. If you enjoy the bizarre and the contemplative, and never tire of reading about Paris, this is a novel worth your time. A good, curl up with novel. And talk about it with friends. The best kind. 

Available in hardcover, but coming soon in paperback, and of course for all e-readers.

Happy new year. Happy reading.

Murakami Light: Existential/Enigmatic

The many faces of one novel and one writer.

The London Observer called Japanese writer Haruki Murakami the best novelist on the planet, so it is no wonder that this latest novel sold one million copies in Japan the first week of publication. Murakami fans might consider it Murakami “light” – the novel explores major themes, but in a style more traditional and less abstract than usual, especially the well-known IQ84, Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which, I confess, I found terribly difficult to interpret.

Murakami is a surrealist who once told an audience that his dream would be to find himself at the bottom of a well where he might freely contemplate the universe. Think Alice.

What all his novels and stories share is a fascination with the human psyche and the delicate nature of human connection. They also share similar protagonists – outsiders, dreamers, often lost between reality and an alternate reality. Sounds simple, but in Murakami’s fiction, nothing is as it seems and absolutely nothing is simple.

This novel’s namesake is no exception. Tsukuru has been wandering for sixteen years as if disconnected from the earth, and from himself, since his four best childhood friends dismissed him from their circle without explanation. These were each knicknamed for primary colors – blue, red, white and black – however Tsukuru was never designated a color and this sets the tone for their friendship, and for their abandonment. He never asks why they rejected him so abruptly and permanently, assuming it was because he is colorless and thus meaningless.

Tsukuru barely survived depression and still suffers physical and emotional trauma. He cannot connect intimately with anyone, especially women, and although he pursued his passion to build train stations, he takes little pride in his work. He perceives himself a drifter through destiny, rather than master of his fate.

Enter Sara, a no-nonsense travel agent who captures his fancy and insists that he must clear out the baggage of his past in order to construct a future. She serves as both facilitator and motivator, and Tsukuru seeks his friends to unlock their secrets.

Makes for good fiction. Yes, Murakami’s writing is sometimes so plain it is surprising how mesmerizing the novel is. A page-turner, yet there is little desire to rush to the outcome, which is surprisingly benign, and while the book touches on the profound, it is more a personal journey, for the fictional Tsukuru and for the reader. So many of us have lost touch with people once so important they anchor our image of ourselves, the people who serve as witness to our existence, and how many of us never fulfilled the dream of belonging?

Murakami often uses music and pop culture to ground the reader and this book has plenty of it, including a cell phone with Elvis’ Viva Las Vegas as ring tone. Classical music, which can be both unstructured and meandering, is prominent, particularly for one of the four friends who plays a pivotal role, a young woman named Shiro, meaning white:

“The Yamaha grand piano in the living room of her house. Reflecting Shiro’s conscientiousness, it was always perfectly tuned. The lustrous exterior without a single smudge or fingerprint to mar its luster. The afternoon light filtering in through the window. Shadows cast in the garden by the cypress trees. The lace curtain wavering in the breeze. Teacups on the table. Her black hair, neatly tied back, her expression intent as she gazed at the score. Her ten long, lovely fingers on the keyboard.”

And music is pivotal to the book’s title:

“Most people see Liszt’s piano music as more superficial, and technical. Of course, he has some tricky pieces, but if you listen very carefully to his music you discover a depth to it that you don’t notice at first. Most of the time it’s hidden behind all the embellishments. This is particularly true of the Years of Pilgrimage suite. There aren’t many living pianists who can play this piece accurately and with such beauty.”

Colorless Tsukuru is available in a beautifully designed [Chip Kidd] hardcover and for e-readers. I would recommend for avant-garde book groups. Discover Murakami before he wins the Nobel prize, for which he is a persistent frontrunner, although I would prefer Philip Roth to win first. Happy reading.

A Different Take on the Irish Woman: Nora Webster

Colm Toibin

I rarely read reviews of new books before I pen my own, but I had to check out what the great Jennifer Egan had to say last weekend in the New York Times on the great Colm Toibin’s NORA WEBSTER. She got it right. 

The only thing she understated is that Colm Toibin deploys the same literary technique most every time in that he tenderly weaves a spell about his characters to slowly, gently draw the reader in. 

Not so much happens, so it seems, until you realize that a whole lot has happened in such a nuanced fashion that the sum is exponentially greater than the sum of the parts.

Such is the case with NORA WEBSTER, even more so than any other of his fictions, my personal favorite being THE MASTER, a fictional telling of the early life of Henry James.

Nora is a young Irish woman whose husband has suddenly passed away, leaving her with four children, few assets and no sense of direction. Not a new tale, not even revelationary, rather a mesmerizing introspective journey about a woman who learns that aloneness is also freedom. Of a sorts. After all, we are in the early 1970’s, just as the modern feminist movement is brewing in the industrialized countries, and we are in Ireland, a patriarchal culture. Toibin draws the connection between the personal and political through Nora’s two daughters, who have left home to study and to work while she tends to her two young sons, who have difficulty fathoming much less articulating their grief.

It is also clear that Maurice, her late husband, was the life of the party, and Nora happily settled in his shadow, and only as she forges ahead does she discover latent talents that bring out her personality and her independent streak. We see this almost from the start when the first decision she makes is to rid herself of a summer home to shore up finances, and to distance herself from her past, with no concern for the affect on her children. She would prefer a form of  anonymity in order to begin again.

“Nora found herself wondering if there was somewhere she could go, if there was a town, or a part of Dublin with a house like this one, a modest semi-detached house on a road lined with trees, where no one could visit them and they could be alone there, all three of them. And then she found her mind moving towards the next thought - that the possibility of such a place, such a house, would include the idea that what had happened could be erased, that the burden that was on her now could be lifted, that the past could be restored and could make its way effortlessly into a painless present.”

Toibin’s affection for his title character is clear from the onset, and his insights into her inner life profound. Her thoughts are revealed only to the reader, as Nora keeps much to herself, and her actions often belie her true feelings. In effect, she is searching for her center, if such words had been part of her lexicon; instead, she meanders through grief in fits and starts, discovering herself gingerly, as we do.

If you like smart slow character studies, with crystal clear and elegant prose, you will want to curl up with NORA WEBSTER. Available in hardcover and for all e-readers.