One Hour to Read

For some reason, I just love this passage:

"She had no other relations than two aunts ... who had not held any other than chance communication with their brother for many years. Not that they had ever quarreled ... but that having been, on the occasion of Dora's christening, invited to tea when they considered themselves privileged to be invited to dinner, they had expressed their opinion in writing that it was 'better for the happiness of all parties' that they should stay away. Since which they had gone their road, and their brother had gone his."

Isn't that wonderful? It seems such a very civilized way to have a feud. I wonder what the modern day equivalent is. "You know, it's really better for the happiness of all parties if you would just piss off."

At any rate, I wouldn't want to be the people who were not invited to tea. I can only imagine how aggrieved they must have felt.

This was one of my favorite months of Copperfield. It was full of all the most compelling characters. The humbly evil Uriah Heep was in this section, as was lovely Agnes Wickfield. (And I know Copperfield keeps saying that he thinks of Agnes almost as a sister, but Copperfield ought to wise up and ask her to marry him instead of the annoying Dora.) Dora, with her rich girl's life and her little yapping dog, for some reason, keeps reminding me of Paris Hilton. Minus the sex tape, of course, unless there's a blue side of Dickens that I don't know about.

Valuable insights like this, of course, are yet another reason why I never could have been an English major.

Din-witted, adorable, pampered Dora has a tough month. Her father dies, though to be honest she seems to show the most stress when Copperfield suggests that she learn how to cook because he might not have enough money to support her extravagant lifestyle. I may pick on Dora, but she has a great attitude to life.

"My love," said I, "I have work to do."

"But don't do it! returned Dora. "Why should you?"

It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face, otherwise than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.

"Oh, how ridiculous!" cried Dora.

"How shall we live without, Dora?" said I.

"How? Any how!" said Dora.

She seemed to think that she had quite settled the question, and gave me such a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent heart, that I would hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer for a fortune.

Oh, that Dora. I think she might be onto something.

I have enjoyed Miriam Toews' writing ever since reading her X Letters in Open Letters back in 2000. There was something very raw and personal in those letters, and that comes across in her novels as well. In those letters, she writes to the father of her 13-year-old son all about what the boy is up to. I was thinking of those letters a lot while reading this, mainly because the teenage boy in The Flying Troutmans reminds me very much of her son (at least the one I know from those letters).

What I like best about Toews is the tone of her novels. She reminds me of Nick Hornby, not in subject matter, but in how both seem to be masters of the first person narrative. In Toews' case, she captures perfectly the sort of confused melancholy in which we all occasionally live our lives. Her narrators usually don't know what they are doing, which is nice to read, because I don't usually know what I'm doing either.

For some reason, I don't really like summarizing fiction here. It's partly because I enjoy not knowing anything about a book before reading it. I know that most of you aren't like that, but, on the oft chance that you are, I don't want to ruin the book by revealing some intricate plot detail. This isn't the type of novel to use lots of plot devices, so I will say that the book is about a road trip a 28-year-old aunt takes her nephew and niece on while their mother is in a psychiatric ward. It's a very strange, but always interesting, family. (The last name of the family is Troutman, which is the reason for the odd title).

It's rare that I'm able to go into a book blindly like I did with this. I've usually at least read the little blurb on the back or have seen some book review. In this case, I knew nothing about the book. I knew I liked Miriam Toews, added the book to my wishlist, received it for Christmas, and then just read it without knowing a thing about it. It's one of my favorite reading experiences, though it's something you can only do with a trusted author, and I guess that's what Miriam Toews is for me. A trusted author.

(Note: A trusted author was very much needed after trying to read Peter Gent's North Dallas Forty, a rather annoying novel that I may or may not get through.)

Along with possibly Charles Dickens, Nick Hornby may well be the patron saint of this blog. Shortly before starting this site, I had read the two previous collections of his "Stuff I've Been Reading" column for The Believer magazine, and I admit that I've patterned some of what you see here on this column.

This is the latest, and unfortunately, the last collection. In each monthly column, Hornby begins with a list of Books Bought and Books Read. That they are often so different reveals how we all read. You buy something in the bookstore and then it often sits in a pile for several months. Occasionally, by the time, you get around to it, you no longer even remember why you buy it.

Like I try to do on this blog, this collection is as much about the experience of reading as about the books themselves. It helps that Hornby can make just about anything interesting.Frankly, it seems a little too meta to review a book about book reviews, so instead I'll just list a few  books he mentions that piqued my interest. You may or may not see these here in the future.

The Ghost - Robert Harris
The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta
The World Made Straight - Ron Rash
Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences - Lawrence Weschler
Skellig - David Almond

I picked this book up because someone recommended a book by somebody else. That's how it works sometimes. I was planning to read Tim Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus" about the reporters who covered the 1972 presidential campaign when I came across this one instead. Both Crouse and Thompson covered the 1972 campaign for Rolling Stone, and so it made sense to read this when Crouse's book was checked out of the library.

This is where I confess that I have never really liked Hunter S. Thompson. A long time ago, I tried reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and just couldn't get through more than about 20 pages. I didn't really expect to read more than 20 pages of this book either. I figured I would give it a try and then -- since it's a library book -- just cut my losses when it got too weird. And yet while it did get too weird at times, it still hooked me. I loved reading about McGovern, Muskie, Humphrey, Wallace, and all these other political figures of whom I was only vaguely aware.

I was occasionally on the campaign trail myself this year for the New Hampshire primary, so that's part of the reason the book appealed to me. At one point, Thompson writes about driving from Cambridge to New Hampshire to go to some campaign events. Hey, that's just like what I was doing, I thought. Key difference: He was writing for Rolling Stone, while I was writing for my web site. Also, I didn't have an open bottle of Wild Turkey on my lap while making the drive.

There is even someone in here that I have met. That would be Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton, who was McGovern's vice-presidential pick, until it was revealed that Eagleton had been previously treated for nervous exhaustion with electro-shock treatment. Eagleton was later dropped from the ticket and replaced by Sargent Shriver.

I met Eagleton, because after he retired from the Senate in 1987, he went on to be a political science professor at Washington University where I took a course he offered. And, wow, would this ever be a more fascinating entry, if I could remember anything about the course. I think it had something to do with the New Deal, but I'm not quite sure. I do remember one session in which a student actually asked him about the shock therapy and how he thought it affected his career, but I may not have heard his response because I was too busy cringing.

Sadly, from our perspective, the course might as well have been called Political Science 345: Advanced Study of Crazy Ex-Senators Who Might Have Been Vice-President if not for the Electro-Shock Therapy.

At any rate, I seem to have gone off on a tangent, but that's fitting because this whole book is full of tangents. In some ways, Dr.Thompson is blogging here years before blogging even existed, though I'm sure many others have already made that same observation.

Finally, on the long list of things only Hunter S. Thompson could get away with, we can add doing a Q&A with the editor for the end of a book because you were too stoned, drunk, sick, or whatever to finish writing the damn thing. It's an interesting literary technique, having your editor come in to interview you because you can't finish your book. And so most of the last 50 pages read like so:

Ed: Do you have any more to say about this book before we wrap up this entry?

JDL: Not really, though I did like the part about the venerable NBC newsman of my youth John Chancellor being addicted to LSD.

Ed: Is that really true?

JDL: No, I'm pretty sure Thompson made it all up, but I still enjoyed the image of Chancellor on LSD while delivering the news. I was slightly disappointed not to read about Walter Cronkite being addicted to cocaine or something.

Ed: This technique tends to work a lot better when Hunter S. Thompson is doing it, don't you think?

JDL: I would have to say yes.

One of my pet peeves is the phrase "in a word," mainly because it's so seldom followed by just one word. It's especially amusing when someone truly wordy uses it. Here's my favorite sentence of this month:

"In a word, although we took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for him, and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he earned by the following Saturday night ten shillings and nine-pence; and never, while I live, shall I forget his going about to all the shops in the neighbourhood to change this treasure into six pences, or his bringing them to my aunt arranged in the form of a heart upon a waiter, with tears of joy and pride in his eyes."

Well, Dickens can be, in a word, verbose. 

That paragraph, incidentally, is about Mr. Dick, a wonderful character who is a bit of a simpleton who still manages to be insightful. Mr Dick is a constant companion to Copperfield's Aunt. Mr. Dick reminds me a little of Chauncey Gardiner. 

At one point, Mr. Dick moves into a room in which "there wasn't room to swing a cat," he doesn't seem to mind though:

You know, Trotwood [David Copperfield], I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me?

And he clearly has a point. Unlike Chauncey Gardiner, I don't expect Mr. Dick to become an important adviser to the Prime Minister, but who knows? I still have another 300 pages to go.

It's not really fair to call Will Leitch a loser, at least not now when he's a successful writer for New York Magazine. I tend to look up to him a bit, so I'm also not comfortable with calling him a loser. You know, it's not at all good when you're looking up to a loser.

So, while he's not a loser now, I suppose it is possible that he was one back in 2004 and earlier when these essays were written. Will obviously thinks so. Still, I think it's important that this book is called "Life as a Loser," rather than "Life of a Loser." "Life as a Loser" makes the book sound like some sort of undercover journalistic investigation on what losers must endure, as if Will is simply playing a role as a loser while waiting for bigger things to come along.

Of course, it's tough to say he's not a loser when he writes about his fiancee dumping him on national television. (It actually happened the night before he appeared on "Win Ben Stein's Money," but that didn't stop Jimmy Kimmel from mocking him about it during his appearance on the game show.) It's not so easy either when he writes about being homeless in New York, jumping from couch to couch. Or about trying to live for a week on $1.73 after screwing up his finances and accidentally bouncing a check to his roommate.

Still, the book is so revealing that it's tough not to side with him in all these events. He's brutally honest and funny, and I could certainly relate to some of the events. Strangely, this is the first book I've read whose marketing blurb on the back actually insulted me. It says, "But don't lose perspective; when you look close, you'll realize that this life as a loser is a lot like yours." It's true -- But hey, I think the book just called me a loser.

By the way, apparently, my girlfriend has a crush on Will. I would probably be annoyed about this, if not for the fact that her primary reason seems to be that Will was nice to me once.This all meant that I read some of these pieces to her. I stress "some," because at times she needed me to stop in the middle of a piece because she couldn't take whatever embarrassing situation that he had gotten himself into.
 
What I envy most about Will Leitch is the sheer quantity of his output. It's all good stuff too. He seems able to write about anything at any point. As someone who often grapples with writer's block, I admire this quality. There is one essay in here called "Null Set" where he writes about not having anything to write about. Admittedly, every columnist has written one of these at one point, but his is strangely compelling, and it contained an incredibly helpful line:

I highly doubt handymen sit there whining, "You know, I just can't put together this shelf today."

Somebody remind me of that line the next time I can't seem to write anything.

I have a book shelf that, while big, is no longer quite big enough to fit all the books I like. This means that every time I finish a book, I find myself having to decide whether it is worthy enough to make it to my main book shelf. Periodically, I'll pick a book at random from my shelf and reread it to see if it's good enough to retain its most favored status. You know, it's sort of like the playoffs for books! If the book loses, it goes into my closet, or gets exchanged for something else at a used bookstore.

 

And that is how I ended up reading Notes of a Nervous Man. I expected this book of essays from the early 1990s by James Lileks not to make the cut, but surprisingly the humor held up well. If you can find it, I would recommend reading it. It's a collection of humor columns from Lileks' work with the St. Paul Pioneer Press and other papers. It turns out that the 1990s angst isn't all that different from today's angst. Angst is angst.

 

I'm not quite sure if this will make it back into the main book shelf, but I'm not ready to sell it either. I think I may instead need a second bookshelf (sort of an NIT to my main bookshelf's NCAA) for books like this.

 

At any rate, enough madness. Lileks is funny. You should read him.

On The Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

When I reread Paul Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar, I was disappointed that I was not able to read it on a train. This time, I made sure to read his sequel to that book on the rails. In fact, I saved Ghost Train specifically for a train trip to Maine, on which I read the first 100 pages or so. That was back in October when the leaves were changing, so I spent as much time looking out the window as I did reading. Somehow, that seemed fitting.

When I saw him speak at the Harvard Book Store in September, Theroux pointed out how few travel writers have ever gone back to the places they wrote about, and that was part of the appeal for him to take this trip again over thirty years later. I like the idea of that, and I spent part of my time with this book daydreaming of revisiting foreign cities I've visited.

This is a far more personal book than The Great Railway Bazaar, which is odd because I always thought that book was incredibly personal. It turns out that Theroux's marriage was falling apart during that trip, but he never included any of those details in order to make it "a jolly book." This time, he writes much about how he has changed during those years, and overall he is a much calmer traveler.

Ghost Train is also a more adult book (and not just because he visits a six-floor Tokyo porno shop at one point!). Because of who he is now, Theroux meets Arthur C. Clarke, Pico Iyer,  and other writers. He also partakes in more activities off the train than in the first book, whether it is going to a call center in India, visiting a gulag in Russia, or exploring the weird totalitarian state of Turkmenistan. That chapter alone, in which their leader Turkmenbashi makes North Korea's Kim Jon-Il seem well balanced, makes the book worth purchasing.

Most of all, Theroux remains foremost a reader. Towards the end, I thought this was an interesting quote:

I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike -- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits. If you have gotten this far in this book, you are just such a singular person.

Theroux spends a great deal of time on this trip, talking with people about books. And in many ways, this is an extremely literary travelogue. Many of the sights he points out are literary landmarks, and often he writes about the books he's reading on the train. This really is as much a book about reading as it is a book about traveling.

Finally, it may be a cliché to say so, but this is a book to be read slowly. Theroux always travels slowly, and I find it best to read his books that way as well, preferably over a few months.  That's why I started this in October and just finished now.

A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
 
This book might be part of the reason why I didn't have as many entries in November. I tried to keep up the hour of reading last month, but I wasn't always successful. On the bright side, however, I did write a novel.

As in previous chapters, when David Copperfield falls in love, well, he really falls in love. For example:

I had loved her every minute, day, and night, since I first saw her. I loved her at that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute to distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again, but no lover had ever loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora.

So take that, lovers of the world! Your love is nothing, compared to that of David Copperfield. If he had lived in the 1980s rather than the 1880s, Dickens could have written some excellent power ballads.

Other things do happen in this section, including some intrigue with L'il Emily and Steerforth, but for me it is the chapter in which Copperfield gets engaged that is the most memorable. As they say in sports, Dickens really leaves it all on the page in this chapter.