Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (audio)

Posted on October 12, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I have one to proselytize for, friends. Rules of Civility will certainly make the list of the greatest books I discovered in 2012.

The book opens with the story’s narrator, Katey, and her husband Val at an art opening in 1966. A few pages set the scene and the style of this book – and oh, the style! – before we’re whisked back into Katey’s reminiscences, beginning just a few hours before the new year of 1938 will be rung in. She and her best-friend-and-roommate, Eve, are out on the town, and they meet a man who buys them champagne for the toast at midnight. And then we follow Katey through the year.

Katey’s life changes a great deal in 1938, in all its aspects: career, home life, relationships, love, aspirations, her understanding of herself and of her world. I don’t want to mention any more of the plot, because I found such joy in discovering its twists myself, and you should too.

This book has many strengths. Its story is interesting: a single year, 1938, in the life of an ambitious young woman in New York City. And there are such surprises that I dropped my chin on my chest more than once. But the plot alone would not have made the book what it is. The characters are strong as well: Katey is pretty fabulous, as are a number of others. But neither is this the shining facet that draws the eye. I think the real victory is in the writing. You may have noticed (and I hope you’ve forgiven me) that I used not one but three teasers to whet your interest (here and here). It’s very evocative: I could see, hear, smell the New York City described; and further, I felt all the emotions Towles wrote. Driving to and from work and listening to this story (and Rebecca Lowman’s masterful, perfect narration), I arrived at my destination confident and optimistic, hopeful for the future, downcast, flabbergasted, or whatever that chapter called for. It was one of those very rare books that engaged me completely, made me lie awake at night worrying, wishing for certain events to transpire, caring deeply about fictional characters. It was amazing. And of course I have no great understanding of 1938 New York City; but Towles (and Lowman) have me utterly convinced that it sounded and looked and smelled and tasted exactly as described here.

And while I’m praising the writing, the style with which Katey’s voice comes alive, I must praise the reading of this audio version as well. Lowman has a frank, languid tone that feels precisely right for Katey; I love that she slows down. Her pacing is sometimes indolent and sometimes despairing, but it always adds to the sense of nostalgia in the beautiful piece of art that is Rules of Civility.

Oh, and it’s worth adding too that Katey is a reader, and literary references abound, which enriches the overall effect considerably for me and perhaps for you too.

Without having given away much plot, then, I assure you that the setting, the sense of style, and the writing on display in Rules of Civility are all remarkable. This will definitely be one of the best books I read this year, and the audio version is superb. Run out and get a copy.

Rating: 9 martinis.

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literary travels: Concord, Mass.

Posted on October 11, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Friends, I have a trip coming up. I’ll be joining my parents in Concord, Massachusetts for 4-5 days where they have a home for part of the fall; we’ll sightsee in Concord and Boston and visit the best pubs around. And then I’ll head a little further north to Vermont to see an old friend with a new baby, and her whole family, on their farm. I’m so very excited! I miss my parents (who base out of Houston, where I live, but travel so much), and I miss my girlfriend and her baby, and the weather in these northern locales will be so very dreamy compared to the heat that we are still experiencing down here. And I look forward to tromping around the Vermont woods – and seeing all that Boston, Concord, and the surroundings have to offer. This is where you come in.

One of the great attractions of Concord is literary in nature: the Transcendentalist movement is generally understood to have begun with Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord, and other major figures include Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott, also Concord residents. (The latter had a daughter you may have heard of as well: Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women.) Local sights that interest me:

  • the cabin at Walden Pond where Thoreau wrote Walden (which I hope to read for the first time before I get there. I have a charming pocket-size red cloth-bound copy);
  • the Concord Museum, home to numerous artifacts relating to the American Revolution, Puritans and Native Americans, and Emerson and Thoreau;
  • the Old Manse, home to Emerson and later, Nathaniel Hawthorne (that of Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse);
  • the Wayside, home to Louisa May Alcott, then Hawthorne, and then Margaret Sidney;
  • the Emerson House, now a museum and National Historic Monument (where he lived after vacating the Old Manse); and
  • the Orchard House, where Bronson Alcott and his family lived, including daughter Louisa May who wrote and set Little Women there.

We’ll also be walking the Boston Freedom Trail and Minute Man National Historical Park, for their American Revolutionary War relevance (and overlapping some of the above – the Wayside is in the Minute Man Park, for instance). Apparently the Underground Railroad stopped off in Concord as well: the Transcendentalists were movers in abolitionism (or more commonly “anti-slavery”, in the contemporary term) and feminism/women’s rights, and the Alcotts helped slaves along their way to freedom.

So tell me, friends – TBM, I have you specifically in mind! – how’s my itinerary looking so far? What am I missing; is anything here redundant or less interesting? And one final important point: what’s the best, most authentic Irish pub in Boston?? My Pops hasn’t found it yet. Remember, we’ve been to Ireland; no green beer please. 🙂

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In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke

Posted on October 10, 2012 by pagesofjulia

As noted recently in my book beginning, Burke is an old favorite. Between this book’s title and its colorful cover, I felt especially drawn to it. The electric mist and the Confederate dead are some of the odder, more alluring moments in this story, too, but they are not its center.

Detective Dave Robicheaux is the star of Burke’s bestselling series. In this installment, he’s at home in New Iberia, a small community on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. There’s a movie production in town, which brings with it various complications of the local scene: a group of gangsters come in from New Orleans; the Hollywood actors drive drunk and make trouble; several girls turn up dead in what looks like the work of a serial killer; and a body surfaces that relates to an event in Robicheaux’s own distant past. He continues to attend AA meetings and his alcoholism continues to be one of the sources of conflict in the story. There are some weird, almost paranormal forces at work – or are they just the manifestations of his alcoholism? – and that keeps things interesting and colorful.

This book shares certain themes with all Burke’s work, including racial injustice that persists in the South; a love of nature (and some outstanding, lovely writing conveying the natural beauties of south Louisiana); struggles with alcoholism; and corruption in positions of authority, manifested in the conflicts Robicheaux has with his workplace superiors. One of Burke’s greatest strengths, in my opinion, is the strong sense of place that he conveys with his lovely, lyrical writing. He waxes poetic about the beauty of nature; and both the natural setting and the cultural references evoke south Louisiana unmistakably. His stories, it seems, could be set nowhere else. (This is not true. Swan Peak is set in Montana and is equally successful. But my point about a strong sense of place stands.) While his plots are interesting and his mysteries do indeed keep the reader on her toes, Burke’s beautiful writing and obvious care for natural and cultural settings are the best and most unique parts of his work. I feel that his closest readalike author is Michael Connelly. Connelly’s writing is not nearly as lyrical, but his strong sense of Los Angeles, and Detective Bosch’s love for jazz and LA, and the dark, brooding mood both authors create, make them a matched pair in my view.

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead is vintage (1993), classic James Lee Burke, and thus strongly recommended.

Rating: 7 crawfish poboys.

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Teaser Tuesdays: triple-dipping from Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Posted on October 9, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Forgive me, friends! I am having too much fun with Rules of Civility not to quote from it for a second week in a row – and twice today. (See last week’s teaser here.) It was too hard to get it down to even these three teasers, I could have done more…

First for today, a bookstore-lover’s teaser.

…I stepped into a used bookshop a few doors from the salon. The shop was aptly named Calypso’s. It was a little sunlit storefront with narrow aisles and crooked shelves and a shuffling proprietor who looked like he’d been marooned on MacDougal Street for 50 years. He returned my greeting reluctantly and gestured at the books with an annoyed wave as if to say, “Peruse, if you must.” I picked an aisle at random and walked far enough into it that I would be out of his line of sight. The shelves held highfalutin books with broken spines and ragged covers – the usual second-hand bohemian fare. In this aisle there were biographies, letters and other works of historical nonfiction. At first it seemed as if they had been stuffed on the shelves willy-nilly, since neither the authors nor the subjects appeared to be in alphabetical order. Until I realized that they had been shelved chronologically. Of course they had!

Author Amor Towles has graciously shared still more about Calypso’s on the “Baedeker” section of his website. Hover over #8 to read about this little real-life bookstore, including references to a few of my favorite literary figures. Not to mention the allusions built into the Calypso’s name, and Towles’s used of the verb “marooned”…

And nextly, how about a little linguistic confusion:

In front of me, a broad-shouldered man with the twang of an oil-producing state was trying to communicate with the maitre d’, an impeccably groomed Chinaman in a tuxedo. Though both men could travel the normal distance from their accents to the neutral ear of the educated New Yorker, they were finding the distance between their respective homelands difficult to traverse.

I love this image (not to mention the coy use of “oil-producing state”).

Review coming soon, but as you can see, I’m smitten.

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footnotes, endnotes, othernotes

Posted on October 8, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I teased you recently, in my review of On a Farther Shore (the new Rachel Carson biography by William Souder) with some thoughts on Notes. You may notice that this is my third post concerning Souder’s book. It has been rather thought-provoking, which is always nice.

Authors of nonfiction should cite their sources. I don’t think there’s much disagreement on this point. But to the question of how they should do it, there are several answers. The most common use a superscript number or other symbol in the text to refer the reader to more information elsewhere. Footnotes reside at the “foot” of the page, and endnotes are collected at the end of a chapter or a book. (I don’t read e-books, but surely there’s a clever way to imbed notes in the text in the form of little hyperlinks so that the reader can reference the note on the spot if she so chooses, which sounds convenient and reasonable [except that she’d have to be reading an e-book, so there’s a compromise].) The content of notes is often bibliographical, giving credit to the author’s source for a piece of information, but can also allow the author to further discuss a point, like a long parenthetical outside of the text itself.

There are pros and cons to footnotes and endnotes. Footnotes take up space on the page, and may be annoying to readers who don’t care about them. Endnotes can be inconveniently remote, for readers who do care – I’ve been known to use two bookmarks, one for where I’m reading in the main text and one for where I’m reading in the endnotes, so that I can quickly find the next note I’m directed to. I guess the main question, then, is whether the reader cares about the content of the notes in the first place. I suspect I’m fairly typical in that I am more likely to care about notes that offer further thoughts on the main text, than notes that only cite sources.

William Souder, in On a Farther Shore, uses endnotes, gathered all together in one long section (75 pages) at the end of the main text. At a glance, they appeared to be works cited, and I was going to leave it at that. Normally at the end of a nonfiction read, I look at the Acknowledgements, Notes, and sundry further thoughts, and read as much of it as attracts my attention (often most of it). In this case, I found that I had been wrong about the notes: most of them were citations, but there were some parenthetical-style remarks by Souder, describing his experience in researching the book (descendents of Carson and her friend Dorothy Freeman hosted him at their homes on the ocean; he wrote a chapter at Carson’s own desk) or expanding upon the text of the book. This was valuable! For example, I learned in a note that “in the 1950’s and 60’s it was common for doctors to discuss a cancer diagnosis with a woman’s husband and not with the patient herself – a disturbing practice that left the unmarried Carson in the dark about her condition.” (Souder notes in the main text that Carson’s ignorance about her condition and treatment options was all the more ironic and tragic because, as a scientist, she was more capable than the average man of understanding that information and using it to make decisions about her care.) This shocking detail seems important to me! I’m glad I came across it by accident – after which I read the notes through, and found other tidbits of value. For example, Souder emerges as a person with feelings and personal impressions only in his notes.

My point here is that I almost missed the notes that were valuable to me because I misunderstood their content. This isn’t necessarily an argument for footnotes over endnotes; but at least I might wish that Souder had made it a little more clear that there’s more than citations in that exhaustive 75 pages of notes at the back of his book. Keep your eyes open, kids.

What are your feelings about footnotes, endnotes, or othernotes?

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book beginnings on Friday: In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke

Posted on October 5, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I felt like taking a break in between long-ish nonfiction reads (much as I enjoy those!), and James Lee Burke looked to be the perfect choice: high-quality, easy-reading fiction, tried and true entertainment, and thought-provoking to boot. He’s one of my longtime favorites, and yet somewhat strangely, I haven’t read anywhere near all his work. I’m all out of Michael Connelly and Lee Child until they write more; but there’s plenty of Burke out there I haven’t enjoyed yet, and (thank goodness) he’s still writing, too.

So here we are with In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (if that title doesn’t catch your eye I don’t know what will). It begins:

The sky had gone black at sunset, and the storm had churned inland from the Gulf and drenched New Iberia and littered East Main with leaves and tree branches from the long canopy of oaks that covered the street from the old brick post office to the drawbridge over Bayou Teche at the edge of town. The air was cool now, laced with light rain, heavy with the fecund smell of wet humus, night-blooming jasmine, roses, and new bamboo. I was about to stop my truck at Del’s and pick up three crawfish dinners to go when a lavender Cadillac fishtailed out of a side street, caromed off a curb, bounced a hubcap up on a sidewalk, and left long serpentine lines of tire prints through the glazed pools of yellow light from the street lamps.

What a lovely passage, and what an example of what Burke can do. He’s evoked a place, given us smells and colors and the feel of the air; this descriptive first paragraph is just dripping with local flavor. And that final sentence begins the action, too: what on earth is this lavender Cadillac up to? I’ll give you a hint: our narrator is a cop, and therefore likely to get involved.

Still loving James Lee Burke. And what are you reading this weekend?

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On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder

Posted on October 4, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Rachel Carson was born in 1927 and by the 1950’s was the author of several bestsellers, a national hero for her lyrical, literary, scientifically accurate books about the ocean. She also published myriad magazine and newspaper articles, both as a government employee and as a freelance writer. In 1962 she published a somewhat different kind of book. Silent Spring retained the literary style for which she was well loved, but its subject – while still the natural world – took a different tone. Carson wrote about the then-widely-used pesticide DDT and its sinister effects, not just on the insects it claimed to target, but on wildlife generally including many fish and birds (hence the title) and even human life.

The immediate reaction to her book was mixed. Critical reviews were more positive than negative, but the government (to varying degrees) and the pesticide industry (predictably and totally) offered less praise. Carson came under attack as a hysterical nature faddist and Communist sympathizer, even as Silent Spring topped bestseller lists and initiated federal investigations. Today, the ecology and environmental movements credit Rachel Carson and Silent Spring with helping to establish what is now a central issue of our times.

William Souder’s new biography of Carson, published on Silent Spring‘s 50th anniversary, begins with the conjecture that Carson’s name is now “unknown to almost anyone under the age of fifty.” There are a few of us, of course (although I confess my personal poll may not constitute a random sampling), but his point is well taken: in 2012, Carson is less on our minds. But even if DDT is no longer sprayed on kids playing at the beach and the rivers we catch our fish out of, environmental issues are among the most pressing of our day. (I am thinking of climate change, overpopulation, water tables, land use, urban sprawl, species extinction…)

That’s the argument for Carson as a biographer’s subject. Now, how did Souder do? As observed yesterday, his style is rather a traditional one. Souder himself does not enter into the story as a character; he doesn’t give us his own impressions (unless you delve into the Notes at the back of the book, on which more is coming in a later post). I am a fan of the newer style of “creative nonfiction” exemplified most recently at pagesofjulia by Soundings, but that doesn’t mean the straightforward sort of biography is necessarily dry, either.

Souder brings his subject to life. His plentiful research (again see those Notes) clearly and exhaustively outlines Carson’s background and personality, and enigmas. For instance, he notes the weekend in college when she went one two dates with a boy from another school, and then as far as we can tell, never dated again. He writes eloquently of her strange single-mindedness, for example in reading Henry Williamson for his nature writing (which she loved) while totally ignoring his frank Nazi sympathies.

I will mention one angle that I noted as absent: there is nothing in Souder’s book about Carson suffering for her sex in the field of science. This seemed like a natural obstacle for her to have faced as a science writer in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and I wonder at its absence, particularly in comparison to Soundings, where Tharp’s professional limitations as a woman are one of the central issues. Did Carson not feel that she was held back? Did Souder miss something? His work feels thorough. I am hesitant to think he missed such an important angle, but it makes me wonder. There are a few references by her contemporaries to her status as a “spinster,” but even these don’t feel particularly biting. And apparently her critics entirely missed the lesbian question. Carson had a very close female friend for the final 10-12 years of her life with whom she exchanged ardent letters. Whether they had a sexual relationship is not known, although Souder makes the case that it’s unlikely; but that’s irrelevant in looking for contemporary criticism of her for it. It seems like such an obvious way for her detractors to attack her. I just wonder.

Despite my questions about the role sexism might have played in Carson’s career, this biography feels well-researched, thoughtful, and finely wrought. It can also serve as a fairly good quick introduction to the history of ecology, environmentalism, and nature writing: Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt all get put into context. In fact, context is one of its strengths (again, see yesterday’s post). I feel like I know Carson much better now, which is of course what I was looking for, but it was also an enjoyable read. I recommend On a Farther Shore, because Rachel Carson is every bit as relevant today as ever.

Rating: 7 birds’ eggs.

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biographies of parallel lives: Rachel Carson and Marie Tharp; and beyond

Posted on October 3, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Remember when I raved about Soundings, the biography of the woman who mapped the ocean floor? I was enchanted in part by the style in which author Hali Felt evoked her subject, Marie Tharp, as a personality as well as a historical figure. I was also fascinated by the unique persona of Tharp herself, and her role as a woman in science in the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s.

And now I’m very pleased to have picked up a new biography entitled On a Farther Shore, by William Souder, about Rachel Carson, for the 50th anniversary of the publication of her groundbreaking book. Silent Spring exposed the tragic truth, that the widely used pesticide DDT was killing not only bugs, but birds and myriad other wildlife, and even humans. Carson is credited with playing a major role in the birth of the environmentalist movement.

These two biographies employ very different styles. Felt is a visible character in the story she tells, of Tharp’s life through the lens of Felt’s research experience, while Souder’s work so far tracks like a traditional biography, with the author invisible. But their subjects share a few obvious similarities. Both were women on the margins of scientific communities that weren’t entirely prepared to let them in, and they were more or less contemporaries (Tharp was born 13 years later than Carson). Both challenged the gender barrier and accepted understandings of their fields. I recognized these parallels when I began reading On a Farther Shore.

But I wasn’t prepared for the confluences and coincidences that came fast and thick in the opening chapters. (I’m only about 50 pages in, so this is far from a final review of Souder’s work. Although I do like it so far!) For one thing, forgive my ignorance: I knew about Silent Spring (I read it when I was a kid), but had not known that prior to that most famous of her books, Carson had been a well-loved and bestselling author of literary writings about the ocean. So, number one: both women were fascinated with the sea. And then came a comparison of Silent Spring, with its unprecedented exposure of an industry that would later be legislated and regulated largely because of the book itself, to one of my all time favorites: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Next I learned that Carson grew up scarcely an hour’s drive away from where Edward Abbey would grow up 20 years her junior. That is a hell of a coincidence.

As I joyfully made these connections (which I know will continue, because our world is all interconnected), I mused. I remember feeling, in middle school, even in high school, that certain subjects were “work,” were chores, weren’t fun, didn’t feel like they were teaching me things I’d need to know or care to know later in life. I liked English but had less use for history. And I also remember when this changed for me, and when learning for its own sake became something I felt passionately about. The light-bulb moment was related to the interconnectedness of all things. That history, biology, political science, and literature were all the same story; that nothing happens in a vacuum, just as Gertrude Stein, mentor and friend to my main man Ernest Hemingway, was a student at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts just a few decades ahead of Rachel Carson. I don’t know about the rest of you, but learning that the world is interdisciplinary and that contemporary figureheads from a variety of textbooks lived in the same world – that Einstein’s life work and philosophy was deeply influenced by his observation of German militarism culminating in Hitler’s rise to power, that the reclusive Harper Lee and the effervescent Truman Capote were buddies, that Mark Twain and the much-younger Helen Keller were close – has been the turning point for me in appreciating so much more reading and learning than I did even 10 years ago.

Recognizing these connections has led to myriad new directions in my own reading. Some of them have been in fiction (I’ve read Gertrude Stein because of her relationship with Hemingway), and many have been nonfiction. In general, I would definitely credit this larger observation with my ever-growing appreciation of nonfiction. I’m sometimes saddened to hear from people who don’t like nonfiction, because they’re missing so much. I suspect they just haven’t met the right style of nonfiction yet; but maybe, too, they haven’t had that light-bulb moment that did it for me.

Does anybody else share this feeling that everything being connected make the world a fascinating place? Has it influenced your reading habits?

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Teaser Tuesdays: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Posted on October 2, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

I have chosen slightly longer than the standard teaser-length quotation for you here today. I feel that it perfectly sets the scene for the opening action of the book; and it’s also a great example of Towles’s writing, which I already love.

In the 1950’s, America had picked up the globe by the heels and shaken the change from its pockets. Europe had become a poor cousin – all crests and no table settings. And the indistinguishable countries of Africa, Asia, and South America had just begun skittering across our schoolroom walls like salamanders in the sun. True, the Communists were out there, somewhere, but with Joe McCarthy in the grave and no one on the Moon, for the time being the Russians just skulked across the pages of spy novels.

America in the 1950’s: there you are. I love the style of this paragraph. It’s so evocative. I’ve only begun this book, but I like it very much so far. And Rebecca Lowman’s narration feels perfect.

What are you reading this week?

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Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (audio)

Posted on October 1, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I was already a fan of The Bloggess, Jenny Lawson’s blog-alias. And her local connection (she’s Texas, with some time logged in a Houston suburb) didn’t hurt, either. Well, now having listened to her book as an audio read by the lovely Jenny herself, I can even more wholeheartedly recommend her to you.

Jenny has a quirky, crass sense of humor: she is fond of the word “vagina” and curses a fair amount. These things do not bother me, but fair warning. She combines that style, however, with an occasional earnestness that is endearing and captivating. This is her “mostly true memoir” (which I think is a great way to speak of memoir, in general! my impression is this one is as “true” as most), and therefore it’s the story of her childhood, growing up, marriage, and family life with husband Victor and daughter Hailey, including moving around the state. One emphasis is the crazy upbringing she experienced in a tiny tiny Texas town with an eccentric taxidermist father (whose idea of a loving welcome is tossing a baby bobcat at her new boyfriend) and long-suffering mother. Another is the mental illness Jenny suffers from, including generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress. (Disclaimer: I have no print version of this book at hand and am going by memory. But I am fairly confident in my memory.)

Her handling of these subjects is on the one hand hilarious, outlandish, and obscene, and on the other, as mentioned earlier, serious and thoughtful. For someone who suffers fairly debilitating bouts of depression and mental illness, Jenny is surprisingly positive in her interpretation of her own experiences. Presumably her feelings in the moment are often much less cheery; but in the format of this book, where she got to think it through and get it right, her philosophies are refreshing, graceful, helpful, optimistic. She comes across in the end as damaged, yes, but also hopeful, wise, and fun. I want to be her friend. In other words, I give Jenny, her book, and her website my ringing endorsement! Oh, and do check out the audio version if you can. She reads it herself (and sings all the chapter titles), there’s a blooper reel at the end (really just a bunch of off-color ramblings), and I always like to get things in the author’s own voice if possible – in a memoir most of all. In fact, I will pay her the compliment of putting Let’s Pretend This Never Happened up next to Tina Fey’s Bossypants, also read by the author and also hilarious. Go check out Jenny Lawson because she is unique and bizarre in the best possible way.

Rating: 8 self-reflections.

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