A View of ROOM

I don't do a lot of book reviews on this blog. I tend only to review books I read when they knock me over with a wrecking ball, or when I have extremely high expectations that don't reconcile in any way with the experience of reading it. (And even then, I don't always; I have yet to write a review of Watchmen [the former] or The Hunger Games [the latter].) The motivation is sometimes to drive people to drop what they're doing and go change their lives by reading a certain book, and sometimes it's something akin to screaming, "What were you thinking?" Upon finishing ROOM, a Booker Prize finalist and international bestseller that is published in 39 countries, I was so energized by my dislike for it that I sat down and promptly wrote about 1,600 words. I thought I'd reprint them here.

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I don’t read a whole lot of novels anymore. More and more, I find myself starting popular, lauded novels, only to stop a third or halfway through because either they bore me or they irritate me, or both. I knew absolutely nothing about ROOM before I read it, only that I’d seen its cover frequently in the media and in “Best of” and “Must Read” lists, and that I thought that cover was one of the best ones I'd ever seen. I did not even read the jacket copy or the cover blurbs, preparing myself to become entirely enraptured in this “page turner” that had captivated so many readers.

However, it turned out ROOM was both boring and irritating. But I forced myself to finish to ensure I wasn’t missing a grand revelation that would make the whole ordeal worth it. I read the entire book from a Friday night to a Saturday afternoon because I was afraid if I stopped reading it, I would never pick up again. This revelation did not occur. I should have stopped reading.

**The remainder of this review contains SPOILERS**

The book is split into two halves of nearly identical length and is told through the eyes and voice of 5-year-old Jack. The first half of the book busies itself with showing how Jack and his mother busy themselves in an 11-by-11 room, wherein they are being held captive. A man, called Old Nick, brings them food and takes out their trash and rapes Jack’s mother, Ma. The story is considerably hampered by the first person narrative in Jack’s voice. While he ascribes names and genders to inanimate objects, the people in his life—Ma and Old Nick—fail to transcend being inanimate objects themselves.

To Jack, Ma is nothing more than his mother. I often observe women for whom motherhood is their personality, and they are patently uninteresting to me. Ma’s circumstances have made her into a person who is only “mother,” because to recognize herself as anything else would be unbearably devastating. (We do see how she deals with her flashes of recognition through a bit of non-serious drug use, and periods of catatonic depression.) Perhaps this is an issue with myself rather than the book, but I was not that interested in Ma as a character. Moreover, a 5-year-old narrator who has not yet developed his own skills of empathy does little to elicit empathy from the reader for the characters he observes.

Old Nick is the most uninteresting 2-dimensional villain of all time. More than anything, he serves as a plot device. He put Ma in the Room, he got her pregnant with Jack, he inexplicably let her keep Jack, and with nearly unbelievable stupidity, he allows them to escape, which sets up the second half of the book. There were multiple aspects of the set-up that did not serve to suspend my disbelief. The first was the entire premise of Ma having a child to begin with. There are so many questions raised that could not possibly be answered through Jack’s narrative. How was it that Old Nick apparently has sex with Ma nearly every night, but she only became pregnant twice in 7 years. The book sets up at the beginning that Ma takes birth control (ostensibly provided by Old Nick, who has a “guy”), but that obviously only started after she became pregnant with Jack. It’s revealed that she delivered a stillborn baby a year before Jack was born—why did Old Nick not put her on birth control then? If Ma enjoyed having babies, and Old Nick let her have them, why did she even take the birth control? Alternatively, why did she want to bring a baby into the horrible world she was living in? She reveals that she had an abortion when she was younger and did not regret it. Why did she let herself become, and remain, pregnant—twice—while in Room?

The escape itself was confusing. My first question was why on earth would Old Nick (who seemed to think of everything in designing his horrific love nest) not check to see if Jack was actually dead? Why would he not find a way to make sure Jack was dead, beat the body with a shovel or something? He’s supposed to be a psychopath, right? Was this out of respect or love for Ma? Old Nick’s motivations are paper thin, and the reader is just supposed to go with it. There was not enough here for me to go with it. My disbelief was not only not suspended, it grew with time. As a reader, I felt manipulated.

(Other readers have noted the similarities of this book to the Fritzl case and that the existence of a real-life case is evidence enough to support the premise of this book and its villain; I disagree that it’s enough, and a novelist owes her readers to create an entirely self-contained world.)

The second half of ROOM follows the escape, and has its roots in the classic trope of “Fish Out of Water” stories, with such subtropes as “Raised By Wolves” and “Stranger in a Familiar Land.” Ma attempts to reintegrate herself to the world from which she was taken, while Jack observes this new world through little “kids say the darnedest things” commentaries that are meant to be wise, but only skim the surface of striking a new insight. Every one of these “world through an innocent child’s eyes” scenes is deeply irritating. I was reminded of Tarzan, Third Rock From the Sun, Encino Man—any number of stories wherein someone unfamiliar with our world sees things differently and makes “profound” observations. They take idioms literally. They inadvertently ask silly questions that make people laugh. It’s been done to death, and it’s been done better.

That’s actually the best way I can describe my experience of this book: irritating. I won’t pretend that I’m a huge fan of small children in the first place, but being trapped in this kid’s head for the length of a book was the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. I think part of it was because it wasn’t done exceptionally well. Jack is supposed to be precocious and have a big vocabulary. He also watches tons of television (where I imagine they speak like real people), and his mother frequently corrects his grammar. So why does he say ridiculously wrong things like, “Ma hots Thermostat way up”? There’s also inconsistency. I was inordinately irritated that Jack first says the trash can lid goes “ping,” then later it changes to “bing,” and still later it’s “ding.” Jack has childish obsessiveness with repeating and patterns and sameness, so it was really jarring when he didn’t follow the “rules” that were laid out for his character. Related to this, I was annoyed by the non-American speech mannerisms that abounded in the book, which ostensibly takes place in America, such as “bit” instead of “part” and “meant to” instead of “supposed to.” I know Donoghue is not American, but I shouldn’t have been able to tell that in the book—because Ma and Jack are. ROOM needed a much more highly skilled editor than was assigned.

The other major thing that irritated me about ROOM was that it seemed too self-aware and too clever, which again, did not serve the suspension of disbelief. It reminded me of the Time Traveler’s Wife in that the author was trying to be too hip for her book. Jarring pop culture references abounded, including song names like “Tubthumping” and “Lose Yourself.” (Really? Eminem? Really?) Dora the Explorer was an ongoing thematic element. Again, really? I wonder if perhaps Donoghue relied a little too much on her own relationship with her 5-year-old son to add veritas to the experience of a 5-year-old, instead of sticking with her own invented world. No one would have had a problem if Jack’s favorite television show was made up for this book only.

Related to this was the sense that Donoghue had some sort of unclear ideological motivations that she needed to get out in the book. The whole breastfeeding theme seemed unnecessary (not to mention uncomfortable); it was charged with something much more related to the author than the story. The secondary characters are aggressively diverse, with names like Ajeet, Oh, Lopez, and Yung. Ma’s brother, Paul, is in a “partnership” rather than a marriage (like the author herself), and it happens to be an interracial one at that. Now, I have no problem with any of this; I’m as progressive as it comes. But when you stick it in a novel the way Donoghue does, it’s not part of the book’s tapestry; it’s a big neon sign that says “Look how modern and progressive I am.” Coupled with the pop culture references, this book is going to have a really short shelf life.

But absolutely the worst part of the book was that it was boring. The things that children obsess over—their toys, their meals, their poo—are really not all that interesting to adults. Put that in a room where nothing ever happens, and it gets really old, really fast. There was some tension and movement once Ma decided to hatch their escape plan, but that lasted for maybe 15% of the book. After they escape, the tension dissipates completely, and I found myself skimming large sections just to see if anything was going to happen. No, nothing happened.

If you’ve read this far in the review, you’ve probably already read the book, so I can’t tell you now to take a pass. But I wish now I would have let someone stop me.

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Must a Novelist Read Mostly Novels?

I love math. I know this is strange coming from a writer, but it’s true. I think that, when so often mired in the vast gray area that is language and narrative, I find solace in the black-and-whiteness/wrong-and-rightness that math offers. I find elegant beauty in a spreadsheet, the way you can put in the numbers you have, arrange them just so, and find answers—real answers, correct, indisputable answers—to big questions. I love statistics and charts, and (while they can be interpreted in many ways to many ends) numbers themselves do not lie.

All of this is to say that I’ve come across some interesting numbers in my life as a writer and reader. As you may know by now, my preferred medium is the novel. I consider myself a novelist. While the vast majority of my life is spent on business writing, writing novels is my calling. It’s what I love the most; it’s what I do for fun. I do it even though I’m not making money on it.

Now, keeping in mind who I am as a writer, let’s consider who I am as a reader. Out of the last 30 books I’ve started and/or finished (and you can verify this for yourself), it breaks out the following way:

• 1 graphic novel (2, if you count Eric Drooker’s Howl here)
• 2 books of poetry (1, if you count Howl under graphic novels)
• 3 short story collections
• 7 novels
• 17 non-fiction books

And it is important to point out that, out of those 7 novels, I only finished 4. (I no longer finish novels that I am not enjoying by the midpoint. #YOLO.)

This list, of course, is limited to book-length material, but I also extensively read short works—essays, articles, scholarly papers, Supreme Court rulings—and I would estimate that, in recent record, 95% of this reading is non-fiction. (Though, I did recently read “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” and "The Extinctionists" on Instapaper.) The last new book I bought, which I am practically drooling to crack open, is also non-fiction. When I put on my stereo while I’m cleaning, I’m far more likely to listen to Radiolab than Radiohead (though, when I’m writing, I listen to Radiohead more than anything else…). If I want a quick bite of television, it will be a TED Talk before it’s a sitcom.

What does it mean that well over 50% of what I consume is non-fiction, that only 14% of my reading consists of novels that I actually finish?

This recent revelation is throwing me for a loop. Is it possible for a novelist to love something more than novels? Am I secretly a non-fiction writer? Have I been hacking away at the wrong destiny?

Here is my answer to these questions. I am a learner and a seeker. This is why I read; this is why I write. I am drawn to non-fiction because it gives me raw materials: information, facts, the stories of how real people lived and live. Fiction is the means by which I synthesize this information into the philosophies and ideas I want to explore. In The WarMaster’s Daughter, I tackled gender issues, war, religion, the meaning of “family.” My new book, Bugged, explores psychology, neuroscience, entomology, and medical ethics. Non-fiction inspires me with the patterns and anomalies of the existing world. It teaches me what we’ve collectively figured out, and where we still have incredibly complex questions.

On the other hand, the ideas in novels, by and large, are already synthesized. The author is asking questions in a particular way, making particular points, choosing which themes and ideas rise to the top. This offers intellectual and emotional pleasure; that’s why we read. However, it’s not the stuff that makes me want to push my fingers into the clay. To extend a metaphor, I find a set of paints much more inspiring than a painting. I love to experience a beautiful painting, but the only thing I can learn from viewing a painting is craft. The art comes from living and learning and synthesizing all the ideas that exist in the world. Van Gogh did not paint because he saw another painting; he painted because he experienced the world.

So what does it mean about me as a novelist that I don’t gorge myself on novels? I supposed I’d rather my readers judge that for themselves. I hope my books are appealing to the learners and the seekers out there; I hope they appeal to fiction and non-fiction lovers alike.

What about you, dear reader? When you take an honest look at what you consume above anything else, what is it? Does it surprise you? Is what you really like different from what you think you like? How does what you read affect what you write? 

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder: Ray Bradbury Remembered

I am not one to get worked up over celebrity deaths. Seeing all the knee-jerk “R.I.P.s” on Facebook after a celebrity death, no matter whether banal or shocking, tends to make me smirk derisively. The R.I.P. reads much more like, “I heard about it first.” Or “I care suddenly about this person in a way that is not at all fake, really.”

So I was caught off guard today when I read about the death of Ray Bradbury and found myself with a lump in my throat. It’s not as if I knew the man personally. But what I felt was genuine sadness at his passing. You’ve probably noticed that even this blog, which I’ve been keeping for over 5 years, is named after a quote from Bradbury’s seminal work, Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury’s writing has been more influential on me as a reader and as a writer than any other single author. And since I self-identify as a reader and writer above anything else, I feel this loss strongly.

I want to quote something from the introduction of my copy of The Martian Chronicles. Written by Clifton Fadiman 8 years after the book’s first publication in 1950, this intro was included with the 19^th printing of the book in 1967. 

“[The Martian Chronicles] is not exactly a classic, but it is a book that has lifted itself out of the ruck of its competitors. It sounds a truly individual note: nobody writes like Ray Bradbury.”

I couldn't agree more. I don’t think Bradbury is the best writer, but he is one of my favorites, and that’s what matters. Nobody writes like Ray Bradbury. I feel strong nostalgia for his writing because it was some of the first fiction I read as an adolescent that actually stuck with me, and I find that it has held up into my own adulthood. But I also feel another kind of nostalgia when I read Bradbury, a type of nostalgia that is essentially American—a longing for something simpler in the face of complications like war and technology. Bradbury came up in the dusk of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and he personifies a nostalgia for a time when the gap between science fiction and science fact was so much wider.

Further in, Fadiman nails the essence of the writer, who was at that time not yet 30 years old and would go on to write hundreds of short stories and ten more novels, including Fahrenheit 451—one of my top 3 novels of all time: 

“Mr. Bradbury has caught hold of a simple, obvious but overwhelmingly important moral idea, and, quite properly, he will not let it go. That idea—highlighted as every passing month produces a new terrifying lunacy: sputniks, super-sputniks, projected assaults on the moon, projected manned satellites—is that we are in the grip of a psychosis, a technology-mania, the final consequence of which can only be universal murder and quite conceivably the destruction of our planet.”

Oh, what the last six decades must have been like for Mr. Bradbury. “There are too many internets,” he said. “There are too many machines.”

In December 2011 (coincidentally the same month I published my first novel), Bradbury conceded to allow Fahrenheit 451 to be published as an e-book, despite his disdain for the medium (and the obvious irony given 451’s subject matter), provided that Simon & Schuster allow the e-book to be digitally downloaded by any library patron. Given the recent hubbub around the Big Six and e-lending, that is kind of a big deal.

What’s missing from much modern science fiction is not the imagination—I believe that part is alive and well. What’s missing is the morality. This was where Bradbury shined: rather than being an observer and a documentarian with a cold impartial eye to our “terrifying lunacy,” he chose a side. But he did it with beauty and grace and imagination, and that is why his work will last forever.  

Truly: rest in peace, Ray Bradbury. I hope with all the fibers of my writerly, readerly being that you passed away in a state of hope rather than defeat. May you now be in a place of wonder, light, and beauty that is worthy of your own brightest imaginings. 

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” 

–Ray Bradbury

Wherefore YA Sci-Fi?

Fresh off the heels of finishing the short story referred to in the previous post, I realize I have no idea what is meant by the cliché “fresh off the heels” or “fresh on the heels.” (Is it an inadvertant combination of “fresh off the presses” and “hot on the heels”?) George Orwell would shame me for saying that.

Let me start again: For the first time since roughly 2009, I have a finished, polished short story that I am ready to put into circulation. I wrote a few between then and now, but they were specialized for contests or based on weird prompts. The story at hand is the first I’ve written in years that was straight from the imagination, for no other reason than I had an idea and I wanted to write it down. Felt pretty damn good, if I do say so myself, and Present Me shall now say “nyah nyah” to Past Me who so recently denounced writing short stories.

Now I face the daunting task of beginning to submit my short story for publication.* This is a circle of hell with which I am intimately familiar; I am both looking forward to and dreading re-entry. Surfing Duotrope today (a wonderful, free alternative to Writers Market), I began narrowing down a list of publications to which to submit my first round. I’ll save my whinging about hard copy submissions for another post, but the target of this particular diatribe is one certain publication that came up in my search results for a publication open to soft science fiction short stories of about 4,000 words. [Anonymous Online Magazine] described its needs thusly: 

"We are looking for hard science fiction, soft science fiction, and everything in between. Think Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, George Orwell or Ray Bradbury with a YA focus." 

“With a YA focus”? Okay, so when I was a “YA,” my YA fiction was Asimov, Orwell, and Bradbury—a lot of Bradbury. (Always and forever, a lot of Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 fits neatly into the category of read this, like, now.) It should be no surprise that I was a bookworm as a kid. But the books I remember being affected by the most were not novels; they were short story anthologies—more specifically, sci-fi and fantasy anthologies that I rescued from a box of my father’s old books from his college days. I read TheIllustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles until they fell apart.

I used to sneak a copy of copy of Playboy’s 1966 Book ofScience Fiction and Fantasy into my 7^th grade classes with a different cover on it, because I was embarrassed it said “Playboy” and I didn’t want to explain. The stories weren’t dirty, they weren’t graphic. But they made me feel something unexplainable deep inside, like there was something darker, bigger, stranger than myself out there, that there would always be something to be explored, both at the outreaches of the universe and the inner reaches of my soul. I lost my dad’s old paperback somewhere down the road, so a few years back, I tracked down a used copy just to read all the stories again. They were as good as I remembered. “The Fly” by George Langelaan! “I Remember Babylon” by Arthur C. Clarke! “The Vacation” by Bradbury is still to my mind one of the most perfect short stories I’ve ever read.

I don’t remember “YA” being its own genre when I was coming up. As a young adult, I read a few YA books: some were great; some were not so great. But they weren’t the books that turned me into a lifelong reader or a writer. Sure, it was nice to see someone like me in a book, but the books that dug in their claws and never let go were the ones that gave me a salty glimpse of what it was like to be a grown up and still be frightened, whether of what you might find on another planet or of what you might find in yourself.

This may not make me very many friends, but I have to confess that I don’t “get” the whole YA thing. I understand it as a marketing handle, but it ends there. I do believe that there are stories worth telling about characters under the age of 18. But I think it is absolutely essential that fiction not pander. Just like when a mother buys her child a coat or pair of shoes that’s just a little too big so there’s “room to grow,” children and teens should read stories that leave them room to grow. The best fiction shows us ourselves, but also shows us an “other,” so that we may experience the world outside ourselves. (As an aside, Max and Menna by Shauna Kelley is a terrific example of a book marketed as YA that does not pander to its audience whatsoever, but treats them as mature equals.)

As writers, it is not our job to tell our readers who they are by writing something “focused” on who we decide they are. Rather, our job is first to tell the truth, and then to let our readers discover their place in the world through the stories we tell.

*I feel I should explain why I would seek a publisher for my short story when I rally so vehemently against legacy publishing. I have my opinions on this matter, and explain I will, but let’s save that for a future post.

Nevermore

Today is the 165th anniversary of the publication of "The Raven." That poem has been one of my greatest inspirations. Anyone who knows my writing knows I am a hardcore formalist, and I find the internal mechanics of The Raven to be astounding. The meter is precise. The rhyme scheme, both internal and end, is cyclical and haunting without being repetitive or grating.

I admit I probably heard it read out loud one too many times while I participated in Forensics in high school. But listening to Vincent Price read it brings the magic back.

"A Book Meme"

I've been "tagged."

A Book Meme.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment here once you post it to your blog so I can come see!

So here we go, from The Art Book. Page 123 is Edgar Degas' The Rehearsal:

"The composition appears totally random: the figure on the far right is cut off by the edge of the canvas, and truncated legs appear at the top of the stairs - had he waited only a few seconds more, it seems, another dancer wold have walked into the picture. The painting is executed with vibrant, rapid strokes of pastel and some areas have merely been sketched in. The cool tones and lack of formality are refreshing."

I'll tag a few members of my writers group:

Jes
Gavin
Dan
Tim
Stacy

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke

He was a visionary and hugely important figure in science fiction, space exploration, and secular humanism. He will be missed by many.
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Even in death Arthur C. Clarke would not compromise his vision.
The famed science fiction writer, who once denigrated religion as "a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species," left written instructions that his funeral be completely secular, according to his aides.

"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral," he wrote.

Clarke died early Wednesday at age 90 and was to be buried in a private funeral this weekend in his adopted home of Sri Lanka. Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome for years, had suffered breathing problems in recent days, aide Rohan De Silva said.

The visionary author won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future. The 1968 story "2001: A Space Odyssey" — written simultaneously as a novel and screenplay with director Stanley Kubrick — was a frightening prophecy of artificial intelligence run amok.

One year after it made Clarke a household name in fiction, the scientist entered the homes of millions of Americans alongside Walter Cronkite anchoring television coverage of the Apollo mission to the moon.

Clarke also was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

His nonfiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.

"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these, I would like to be remembered as a writer."

From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and nonfiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year.

A statement from Clarke's office said he had recently reviewed the final manuscript of his latest novel. "The Last Theorem," co-written with Frederik Pohl, will be published later this year, it said.

Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956; "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.

When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they looked for inspiration to several of Clarke's shorter pieces. As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with "2010," "2061," and "3001: The Final Odyssey."

Planetary scientist Torrence Johnson said Clarke's work was a major influence on many in the field.

Johnson, who has been exploring the solar system through the Voyager, Galileo and Cassini missions in his 35 years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, recalled a meeting of planetary scientists and rocket engineers where talk turned to the author.

"All of us around the table said we read Arthur C. Clarke," Johnson said. "That was the thing that got us there."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke said he did not regret having never traveled to space himself, though he arranged to have DNA from his hair sent into orbit.

"One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time," he said. "Move over, Stephen King."

Clarke, a British citizen, won a host of science fiction awards, and was named a Commander of the British Empire in 1989. Clarke was officially given a knighthood in 1998, but he delayed accepting it for two years after a London tabloid accused him of being a child molester. The allegation was never proved.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa lauded Clarke for his passion for his adopted home and his efforts to aid its progress.

"We were all proud to have this celebrated author, visionary and promoter of space exploration, prophet of satellite communications, great humanist and lover of animals in our midst," he said in a statement.

Born in Minehead, western England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Arthur Charles Clark became addicted to science fiction after buying his first copies of the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" at Woolworth's. He read English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens.

Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.

It was not until after World War II that Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King's College in London.

Serving in the wartime Royal Air Force, he wrote a 1945 memo about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications. Clarke later sent it to a publication called Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.

He moved to Sri Lanka in 1956.

In recent years, Clarke was linked by his computer with friends and fans around the world, spending each morning answering e-mails and browsing the Internet.

Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children. He is survived by his brother, Fred, and sister, Mary. His body is to be brought to his home in Colombo so friends and fans can pay their respects before his burial.

On the Shelves

I took these pictures last night to help me fill out my "shelves" on GoodReads. Thought I'd post them for those bookshelf voyeurs out there. Post your own and leave the link as a comment: I'd love to see! Also, join me on GoodReads so we can share what's good, and what's not.

ABOVE: This is a shelf of favorites, mostly. Like We Care was the last book I helped publish at Bancroft Press. It was written by Tom Matthews who was an absolute delight to work with. I picked the book from the slush pile, helped negotiate the deal, edited the book, and worked directly with the graphic designer on the cover and layout. The title image is in my handwriting. I'm also credited in the acknowledgements, which is pretty cool.

Money by Martin Amis is my favorite book of all time, and Jazz by Toni Morrison is the book that made me want to be a writer. Narrative Design is a great writing book written by my favorite fiction professor at Goucher, Madison Smartt Bell. Lots of good stuff on this shelf.

ABOVE: Mostly books about writing and the industry. Also the random classic, There's a Wocket in My Pocket.

ABOVE: Mostly trashy novels (Valley of the Dolls!) with a few random gems thrown in (Watership Down and The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay).

ABOVE: More trashy novels (Ann Majors, yuck!) with a random classic (Art of War) and what I think is my third copy of Like We Care.

Is the World Entitled to Art?

As you’ll notice from the adoring Lolita posts from the end of last year, I’ve recently become a huge Nabokov fan. I’m not rabid, or well-read, enough to yet call myself a “Nabokovian,” but I could see it happening eventually. And so I’ve been mildly to warmly interested in the recent debate surrounding the late author: an unfinished manuscript of his last work before his death exists in a vault somewhere, but Nabokov’s son, Dmitri was tasked with the death-bed request to burn the manuscript before anyone could read it. Dmitri has not yet made a decision, and is stuck between meeting his dead father’s wishes to burn the manuscript and keep it a secret forever from the world, and some other option—publishing it for mass consumption, bequeathing it to the Ivory Tower for study, even just keeping it in a vault forever and ever.

It’s really a fascinating debate, and I don’t envy Dmitri’s position. At first blush, my reaction was “Set the work free!” As a fan, of course I want to read the manuscript. Despite the fact that Nabokov considered his work unfinished, unpolished, and thus unfit for public consumption, I’ve no doubt that it’s perfect in its genius as it came straight from his pen. I admit I haven’t even read all his works, but I can empathize with any Nabokovian who has read all his work and has been all but drooling for just one more morsel dropped from the table. How easy (or possible) is it to for any literati at all to be objective about this situation?

But, Chris (of course!) brought objectivity and level-headedness to the argument, showing me a side of the story I hadn’t considered: why do we (the world—the readers, the viewers, the experiencers, the fans) think we are entitled to the art created by artists? What right do we inherently have to what they produce?

I recently read an article in Slate about Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel in which the headline compared him to J.D. Salinger. Both are artists who have contributed heartbreakingly small collection of brilliant works to the world, and have now all but vanished, having ceased to make their work public or even to make work at all. Writes Taylor Clark about Mangum:

“And if Aeroplane really is Jeff Mangum's final statement to the universe, maybe we should be happy with that—not because of some tired line about going out at your peak (which he likely didn't reach), but because his story is a kind of modern fable. Many fans see his disappearance only in selfish terms: They've been deprived of more great music for no good reason. They can't understand why Mangum would shun success just to shuffle through his days, and, indeed, when musicians abandon this much promise, the culprit is usually drugs or debilitating accidents or people named Yoko. So he must have gone nuts, right? Well, no. After all, what if Mangum is just being honest? What if he poured his life into achieving musical success only to discover that it wasn't going to make him happy, so he elected to make a clean break and move on? We should all be so crazy.”

Is it selfish to desire, even to demand, that artists of genius not withhold themselves from the world? Or is the artist the selfish one?

Like I imagine it is for others, it’s extremely difficult for me to empathize with the artists at all. I live (and participate) in a world where most of us are clambering for attention, recognition, and even fame. I’m a mediocre artist in a world full of mediocre (and lesser) artists screaming in a crowded room of screamers. The internet has made things worse a million-fold. We have the ability to broadcast our thoughts, art, and “art” to billions of people all over the planet—and so we do, largely to our own detriment, contributing to “information overload” and the general watering down of what’s left of our culture.

So when a “real” artist chooses to cease contributing his work to the world, is it because of, or despite, the noise?

Is the world entitled to the art created by the artists it itself created? Or is the artist more entitled to do whatever the hell he wants? Burn the manuscript, or publish it?

Nabokov is dead. His published work will never die. His unpublished work (that we know of, at least) has a death sentence. If it’s pardoned, it will then live in perpetuity, and in possible imperfection, if what Nabokov had to say was true. If the sentence is carried out . . . we’re only left with speculation and disappointment—but some of us will also have the satisfaction that we’d given something back to Nabokov, whose already given so much to us, by granting his final wish.

Brief Response Upon Finishing Lolita

I finished Lolita over the weekend. I alternated between reading the book and watching the accompanying scenes from Adrian Lyne’s filmic version (which is 100% true to the book, but only as far as the events go—the characterization is completely wrong, but that’s another story). The book bowled me over so hard, I think I’m still recovering.

The best way I think I can describe is that Nabokov took me on a three-tiered, or three threaded, journey through the book. The first thread was the actual story as it unfolded linearly—how the characters experience the story. The second thread was the writing style/narrative—how the author experiences the story. The third thread was the way I felt about the narrator, Humbert Humbert, and the book at large—how I experience the story. All three of these met in a synergistic yarn which caused the three elements/entities (characters, authors, reader) to be interconnected in such as way as to make the existence of each impossible without the existence of the others.

Throughout “Part One,” I was absolutely entranced and delighted by the writing and, much to my chagrin and confusion, felt just as charmed by the pedophile Humbert Humbert himself. The book takes a sharp turn at Part Two. This was an interesting and ingenious division for the book: the change from Part One to Part Two is that Lolita finds out that her mother is dead. Charlotte actually has been dead for quite some book-time. Both the reader and Humbert know the mother is and has been dead. Only Lolita didn’t know, and when she finds out, everything changes.

“Part Two” begins the slow decline of the regard in which Humbert is held by Lolita, by Nabokov, and by the reader. His charm and wit have worn thin with his self-awareness and, later, his inability to deprive himself of self gratification. Confidence has become smarm, which soon gives way to patheticalness. The writing seems to become long-winded and cloying. I don’t fault Nabokov for this, as some reviewers have. Rather, the culprit is Humbert’s increasingly desperate attempts at justification for his actions that plays out via the narrative. I began to hate him, began to hate what he had to say, began to hate his every action, and in turn began to hate the book and the writing itself—but I was so mired in the story that I could not put it down. Likewise, Lolita was mired in her own situation that she could not escape. Even when she thought she did escape, she just got into another situation that was equally unhealthy for her. She never really escaped at all until her death (which we learn about at the beginning of the book, but actually occurs after the book is over: she dies in childbirth). The reader gets to escape the misery of the story at the same time both the characters do; but only death is a strong enough reprieve from the torment they’ve been subjected to by the hand of McFate and by their own designs.

As I stated earlier, I felt immensely uncomfortable and confused at how much I was enjoying reading this book about a “nympholectic” pedophile. It made me feel dirty, decadent, and debased. But the way I felt throughout the end of the book completely reconciled my emotive response to where it “should” have been through the incredible feat of making me strongly desire to read a book I was, at points, loathing.

There’s so much to say about this incredible book, but I haven’t fully been able to wrap my brain around it all. I just wanted to write a few words about my response as a writer. What I’m taking from this is how your narrative design can affect the interconnectedness of character/author/reader—and the tremendous effect that interconnectedness can have. I’ve also learned about creating unreliable narrators, and the power of both sides of that coin: when the unreliability is only hinted at, or unknown completely, and when the unreliability is undeniable and almost excruciating to the reader. Nabokov used that tool to effectively manipulate his readers emotive responses as if he were creating the responses himself.

I love when you finish a book and you feel like you have “traveled” – through time, through space, and through that intangible journey that is experience.

Read it.

Lo. Lee. Ta

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of

the tongue taking a trip of three steps

down the palate to tap, at three, on the

teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

--Vladimir Nabokov

I stopped at Barnes and Noble on my way home last night in search of Noah Lukeman's Dash of Style. Usually, I buy books online, using a site like Better World, which donates a portion of its proceeds to charitable causes for global literacy and uses green shipping methods. But I was really craving a look at this book.

But sadly (and not unexpectedly) they didn't have it. They had three editions of The Elements of Style, including an illustrated version (do you really need to illustrate a book about words?), but they did not have one copy of Dash of Style.

So, still craving something to feed my bibliophilia, I headed over to Fiction/Literature, where I promptly forgot the names of all the hundred or so books I want to read right now. Love in the Time of Cholera was on prominate display, because of the movie coming out, and I briefly toyed with the idea of purchasing One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I've wanted to read for some time. But the book was heavy in my hands--I wanted something lighter, shorter after having slogged through The Blind Assassin (which, I know I know, is not a long book; I just have a short attention span, which is why I mostly read short stories).

Thinking of heavy books, I remembered how fervently Chris had recommended Great Expectations (after overcoming his shock that I hadn't yet read it. I was a writing major, I told him yet again, not a literature major). So I headed to the Ds and selected one of the three editions they had available. It was strange indeed to see such a classic in mass market paperback (and about three inches thick at that size). While in the Ds, I saw Dostoyevsky, which reminded me of Nabokov and reminded me that I wanted to read Lolita. That seemed like it would be as "light and short" as I might get, considering my list of old and new classics that I hadn't gotten around to yet.

Long story short, I bought Great Expectations and Lolita (as well as Madison Bell's National Book Award Nominee All Souls Rising, which I really ought to read as well) and started Lolita last night. I don't know what I expected of this book, only knowing the plot and having seen the most recent film adaptation. In fact, I fear that the story is so ubiquitous that many have not taken the time out to actually read the novel.

I'm SO glad that I have. Even just reading the first paragraph (reprinted above) I was blown away. Nabokov plays with language in a way I am desperate to be able to do (and to have the confidence to do). The book was simultaneously creepy and laugh-out-loud funny--not a combination I ever expected. So many little lines and jokes and off-the-cuff witticisms have captured me entirely. 40 pages in, and I am in love with this book.

"...my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water..."

If I didn't have to get up for work this morning, I could have easily spent all night drowning myself in Nabokov's intoxicating language, his scenes and images that pop more vividly than any film could ever hope to recreate. I felt naughty reading the book, like a kid with a flashlight under the covers, reading something utterly trashy and delicious. I couldn't get enough. Today, I regret not having brought my copy to pore over during my lunch hour.

"I exchanged letters with these people, satisfying them I was housebroken, and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in all possible detail the enigmatic nymphet I would coach in French and fondle in Humbertish. Nobody met me at the toy station where I alighted with my new expensive bag, and nobody answered the telephone; eventually, however, a distraught McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel of green-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burned down--possibly, owing to the synchronous conflagration that had been raging all night in my veins."

I'm not going to do any sort of detailed literary analysis of Lolita. I just wanted to share how amazing it is, so, if you haven't read it yet, you can pick up a copy and join me in savoring it like dark chocolate cheesecake.

The List

So much left to read...(and this, only a start: Time's 100 Best English-Language Novels post-1923). Money is (currently) my favorite novel of all time, so I was elated to see it on this list. And The Sound and the Fury is the novel (in conjunction with Toni Morrison's Jazz) that made me want to be a writer.

I've cancelled my cable, scaled back my netflix, gave my television antenna away, and now I'm focusing on reading, reading, reading. I've already started working on this list, having most recently finished the astounding Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood.

I'm currently reading Dubliners by James Joyce, while waiting to see which of the following books I get for Christmas. They're all on my list.

The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow

All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren

American Pastoral
Philip Roth

An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser

Animal Farm
George Orwell

Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume

The Assistant
Bernard Malamud

At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien

Atonement
Ian McEwan

Beloved
Toni Morrison

The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder

Call It Sleep
Henry Roth

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess

The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron

The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon

A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell

The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West

Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather

A Death in the Family
James Agee

The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen

Deliverance
James Dickey

Dog Soldiers
Robert Stone

Falconer
John Cheever

The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles

The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing

Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers

The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene

Herzog
Saul Bellow

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson

A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul

I, Claudius
Robert Graves

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

Light in August
William Faulkner

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies
William Golding

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

Loving
Henry Green

Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis

The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

Money
Martin Amis

The Moviegoer
Walker Percy

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

Naked Lunch
William Burroughs

Native Son
Richard Wright

Neuromancer
William Gibson

Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

1984
George Orwell

On the Road
Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski

Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov

A Passage to India
E.M. Forster

Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion

Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth

Possession
A.S. Byatt

The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark

Rabbit, Run
John Updike

Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow

The Recognitions
William Gaddis

Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates

The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

The Sot-Weed Factor
John Barth

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

The Sportswriter
Richard Ford

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
John le Carre

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf

Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller

Ubik
Philip K. Dick

Under the Net
Iris Murdoch

Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry

Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise
Don DeLillo

White Teeth
Zadie Smith

Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys