See Now Then

A few years ago I went to a reading by Georgia authors Terry Kay and Lauretta Hannon. During his presentation, Kay talked about the importance of rhythm in the language an author employs. He talked about reading your work aloud and getting a sense of its rhythm before you call it done.

When I'm reading a novel, my awareness level isn't that sharp. I'm paying attention to the elements of the story itself - the plot, the characters - so that the language, for the most part, is secondary. Something might jump out at me - like the repeated use of a certain word, but the truth is, I am a shallow reader. I'm ankle deep in the experience, not knee, not neck. Ankle.

Last week, I plucked Jamaica Kincaid's SEE NOW THEN from the library shelf of new audio books. I knew nothing about it, but recognized the author's name. After a cursory skim of the synopsis, I figured I'd give it a try. I hadn't read or listened to any of Kincaid's work so why not?

Impressions are made on first encounters. If my introduction to you is when you are cutting me off in traffic, I'm going to think you're an asshole. I'm not going to waste any time considering how you might be late for an appointment or you just got off the phone with the school nurse and you have to go pick up a sick kid at school or that you don't really know where you're going and had to get across that lane before you miss your exit. Nope. You're just a jerk who risked both our lives by cutting into my lane on I75.

Conversely, if I'm driving through a busy parking lot and you're the nice person who stops and waves me on so that I can get to the spot I've spied, I'm sure in that moment that you are definitely not a jerk.

And so it is with this novel SEE NOW THEN. If my first encounter with this work had been the hardback (read an excerpt here), I wouldn't have made it through a couple of pages before I gave up. What's more, I likely would never again have tried to read something by Jamaica Kincaid. As you can see from reviews, this is not an easy read. Set aside the argument about whether it's autobiographical or not (and why is it that we care so much about that?), but the way Kincaid has employed repetition, in particular, drives readers mad. Stark raving, one star review giving mad.

But if you are introduced, as I was, to this novel as an audio experience, read by the author?

Wow. Now I understand what Terry Kay meant all those years ago. Rhythm.

SEE NOW THEN is a novel to be listened to, listened to, listened to.

Tangled up

"The French called this time of day “l’heure bleue.” To the English it was “the gloaming,” the glimmer, the glisten, the glamour — carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows.”


“Did I believe the blue nights could last forever?”

During my commute, I'm listening to the audio version of Joan Didion's Blue Nights.

Dear lord, what was I thinking? Yes, it's beautifully written and Joan Didion is the quintessential dry-eyed sob sister, or as John Banville wrote in his review in the New York Times, a connoisseur of catastrophe. But holy gut punches. Between her daughter's death and Joan's aging, I may find the compulsion to drive the car over an embankment on Georgia Highway 61 too much to resist.

Highway 61 - See how easy it could be?

At first, the memoir irritated me with its name dropping and product placement. I almost gave up on it.

Related, but not entirely, it turns out...One of the reasons I don't read chick-lit is because I cannot stand all the references to designers. It's my own version of reverse snobbery because I don't know one designer for another. I mean, to even name a designer, except for the really ubiquitous ones, I 'd have to Google something like "Who are the hot fashion designers in 2012."

Which I fruitlessly did. So I gave up.

The point is what may impress some who enjoy hearing the details of what it's like to eat off the very special and expensive plates of some high society matron sounds like so much blah, brag, blah to me. Yes, it's cool that Joan and her husband John Gregory Dunne lived in the rarefied air they did, but if I'm trying to relate to the story of discovery and loss, etc. you're losing me, Joan. We're not connecting.

In fact, the Chanel suits, the two batiste Christening gowns (gifts both!) for the baby Quintana Roo, the bassinet from Saks, Quintana's introduction to caviar at age five, and the trips to movie sets are obstacles for me. I can't hear what you're trying to say because you keep placing all these status barriers between your story and me, the reader.

I slid the audio book under the car seat (DO NOT PUT IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT) and went back to chewing the inside of my cheek while listening to the radio and gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly.

I eventually reconsidered and extracted the audio book from beneath the seat. But note, I was doing this selfishly. The truth is, I couldn't listen to one more political story, my favorite music station was playing too much Sting and the old time radio classics station was airing westerns which I just couldn't appreciate as I creeped along in traffic that a horse-drawn wagon could lap. Plus I had a serious need to pee.

I'm glad I retrieved the book from car interior oblivion because whether it was my mood or a shift in the story arc, I was able to eventually find connection, to let myself be pulled into the words unraveling the very human endeavors of growing old and losing loved ones.

The dying part was particularly hard because I cannot, will not imagine that one of my children could die before I do.

Ah. The truth making itself known whether I want to acknowledge it or not.

Perhaps I was looking for an excuse to not listen to Blue Nights. Maybe I didn't want to be exposed to such heartbreak. I was afraid of experiencing secondhand Joan's pain, no matter how beautifully written.

My own weakness laid bare in a 1995 Toyota Celica. Not pretty.

“When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children.”

Of all the things I fear - the death of my children is the thing I fear most. That's not a badge of honor, a sign of my devotion, a measure of my depth of love for those three human beings who are part me, part MathMan and mostly inconvenient and expensive. Rather, it's because I'm a big pussy who does not ever want to have confirmed just how weak she is when it comes to her children.

What other kinds of things do I shield my fragile bits, the raw nerves from? My disdain for status statements is easy to discern if I give it a moment's thought. I hate status issues because they force me to admit my failures. According to the Laws of Capitalism, I am a spectacular failure. This is something I'm keenly aware of, again in relation to my children and what I haven't been able to do for them.

My inability to achieve financial security and success is a noose with which I hang myself often. For all the things I could offer my children, financial security seems to be the most valued by our society. If you can't provide it, you are punished in oh so many ways. Which means your children are punished, as well. That knowledge tends to negate many of the good things that don't come with a price tag.

It's cold comfort, but what I'm finding in Joan's story is that even when you are in the position to give your children everything and more, you still will not be able to protect them from everything. Real security cannot be purchased, cannot be banished by privilege, connections or a healthy bank account. The best healthcare money can buy remains useless in the face of certain death.

Yesterday evening, MathMan and I drove home after having dinner out. A rare moment of quiet, contentment, no conversation needed. The light over the hills and across the open fields was blue. Blue night. Blue nights.

I noticed it, broke the comfortable silence to remark on it, realized I'd always noticed it.

I've gotten used to the space I'm occupying

There are some things I cannot imagine living without. For example, music and books (click that link for a book review I've posted at buy-her).

For a long time, reading was a deferred passion. I didn't read adult books for fun while I was busy with the business of working full time and raising a family and commuting and being annoying to my inlaws, but now that my days are differently constructed (how's that for bullshit), I'm reading whatever I dang well want.

I try to follow the trends, but my tastes won't always cooperate. I got to maybe Chapter 8 of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom before I made an obnoxious sound and tossed the book aside. Patty Bergland needed meds. I'm sure of it. You know what's weird, Patty? You.

Um, sorry about that. I don't usually get that hostile about characters with whom I don't connect.

Other books grab me and I torture MathMan by telling him plot details and if he's really lucky, by reading passages to him. He's a good facial liar. His features say I'm listening, but I know the Einstein-haired brain squirrels are doing complex equations on a white board inside his cranium even while I'm speaking. It's okay. I don't quiz him to see if he was listening. I mostly talk to hear my own voice anyway.

Music, on the other hand, has never lost its place in my life. From being a little kid listening to Melanie's Brand New Key on a transistor radio to today when I heard a new song I really liked by Plan B, music is always there.

Recently, I lost my itunes in a computer crash so I've been rebuilding my music library and creating new playlists. It's time consuming, but it's hardly a chore. I've enjoyed rediscovering songs I'd forgotten we had.

After the desktop computer had to be restored, I switched over to an old laptop we thought was dead (just the battery was dead).  Score! There's an old itunes library with even more music and a couple of old playlists that were once the soundtrack of my days. Those days were so different, it's hard to believe that was my life. From the distance of two or three years, it seems like that was someone else driving all those miles, doing that work, juggling those projects and negotiating her way through egos and budgets and the Big Ideas of other people.

Even so, I can listen to some of the music from back in the day when I actually wore panty hose to meetings and I'm transported.

Can't you hear the screaming?

What are you listening to? What are you reading? Did you click the link and read the review? Don't make me come over there!

Blogging Other Places: Buy Her

I've written a book review of Laura Munson's This Is Not The Story You Think It Is:  A Season of Unlikely Happiness over at Buy-Her.

Please join me over there.

A Late Night Book Review

NiI know this is rather uncharacteristic of me....I'm saying good things about something.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was immediately taken by some of the ideas in this story. I love thinking about what might happen to us when we die.  One day, I might believe there's nothing.  You're just dead.  The next day I'm wishing for reincarnation as someone taller, thinner, prettier and born to astonishingly wealthy people.  And then there are those days when I hope like the dickens that I'll come back as a ghost because I fear that when my time comes, I still won't be quite ready to go.

So when I picked up Audrey Niffenegger's book Her Fearful Symmetry, I did what I always do.  I read the dust jacket synopsis.  Well, I became drawn in right away, but there are two more tests I must make before I'm willing to commit to a book.  I don't have time to devote to poorly written books or bad stories.  I'm busy with social networking without leaving my house, you know.  So I read the first page.  No problems there.  It's a credit to the author that I actually stood and read two more pages before someone tapped me on the shoulder and said it was time to go, the library was closing.

The librarian is used to me growling at him like that.  No worries. He knows I don't bite.  Anymore.

The third "Will I Be Taking This Book Home" test is the hardest of all.  Dialogue.  An author can ruin a great story with bad dialogue.  Niffenegger writes the way people talk.  When I'm checking for dialogue, I have the bad habit of flipping to the middle of the story.  Thankfully, that didn't ruin any suspense.  I don't want to give any spoilers, but I will tell you that I found the conversation between one of the twins and their neighbor who had some OCD issues to be both very believable and very touching in a way.  A good way.

Niffenegger's writing appeals to me on several levels. I enjoyed her descriptions of the cemetery and the flats occupied by the novel's characters.  She gave enough detail without boring me to tears with minutia.

The character development was wonderful. I didn't fall in love with any of the characters, but they were so very human in their quirks, strengths and weaknesses, I couldn't help but project my own desires for each of them as the story progressed. I guess you could say I cared what happened to them. That to me is a hallmark of a story well told.

Cracker? I Don't Even Know Her! (But I'm Going to Email Her Anyway)

Last week, MathMan and I popped in to our local library to borrow some dvds to watch as we drift off to sleep. Nothing soothes the savage beast of my inner voices like a good British murder mystery. I'm trying to learn to go to sleep to the calming sounds of babbling brooks and panflutes via the Spa Channel on Sirius/XM, but I'm like an addict. I need my Brits bonking one another over the head with random objects or pushing each other down ancient wells.

MathMan and I are currently working our way through the Rosemary and Thyme series, having viewed all the available Poirot, Hetty Wainthrop, Mrs. Bradley Mysteries and Midsomer Murder collections available in the library. And although PBS has been kind enough to provide us with a couple of new Poirots and Miss Marples (delights each), they are not enough to chase away the nightly parade of hobgoblins and worries so that I can finally escape into my dreamworld.

So there we were, whispering our way through the stacks when a book title struck me and I just had to pick it up. I'm very predictable in how I select books to read. I read the first page first, then I flip around for some dialogue. Bad dialogue will chase me away in no time flat. To me, bad dialogue is like watching a bad performance. I'm embarrassed for the writer.

Never mind that I'd just told MathMan that I wasn't going to check out another book. I had a stack of them already waiting to be read and I was finishing up the Wolitzer book I told you about last week that irritated me for reasons hard to explain.

None of that mattered after I read the title of the first chapter and started laughing. "Everything You Need to Know, I Learned in a Single Wide." A few paragraphs in and I was hooked. Now I didn't grow up in a trailer, nor did I grow up in the south, but a three bedroom brick ranch on the edge of a southeastern Indiana river town is pretty dang close. There's a reason why I've found it easy to blend in here in Georgia.

In her book, The Cracker Queen, Lauretta Hannon, describes her roots, her life, and the lessons she learned along the way to becoming what she calls a Cracker Queen. I'd never considered the idea of being a Cracker, much less a Cracker Queen, but by Hannon's description, it's quite possible that I have the makings of being one.

Hannon writes in a way that made me just gobble the book up like a grilled cheese sandwich. I do not nibble grilled cheese sandwiches at the edges. I take big bites and enjoy the heck out of them because they are a rare, simple treat that remind me of my own childhood. Although Hannon's story isn't reflective of my own, I grew up in the same timeframe, in a place not unlike where Lauretta came up. Through her writing, it's easy to feel like you know her.

When I picked up the book that day at the library, I expected to be entertained and perhaps touched, but I didn't expect to be inspired. But let me tell you, as I've been dinking around with this blog and it's earlier incarnations for a few years now, kept journals and started doing some memoir-writing exercises, I never really thought that the stories I tell here could make a book. I just thought of them as my stories.

But reading Hannon's wonderful work has made me look again at the things I write. Last week, I wrote this lament and my friend Utah Savage left a comment that sent a shiver up my spine:

Here's what I think. I think you're writing the book right now. THIS IS THE BOOK! Yes, it's that good.

Now, I'm not one to take compliments well, but this compliment from Utah was just what I needed to hear. I connected that with the stirrings of inspiration I was feeling from Hannon's book. Then last Sunday I was lolling about on the deck with MathMan and The Dancer, having breakfast and reading the last chapters of The Cracker Queen. When I came to the section where Hannon listed the reasons why she'd never let herself quit her day job to be a full-time writer, I read the list aloud. There was much fingerpointing and guffawing. It was all too familiar.

In the book, Hannon quotes Eleanor Roosevelt. "Do one thing every day that scares you." I read this aloud, too, because this is something that The Dancer needs to hear and often. Like her mother, she's a bit of recluse in her own comfort zone.

So I did something that scared me. Something I have never before done. I emailed Lauretta Hannon and told her how much I enjoyed her book. To share your happiness and gratitude with someone who has given their art and story to the world seems like such a simple gesture, but I have never been one to be a screaming fangirl. Now, all bets are off.

I've embraced, as Lauretta says, my inner Cracker Queen. To continue to laugh with my mouth wide open, to go for what I want and to do what scares me, at least once a day. No one but me could tell Lauretta how her book touched and inspired me and so I wrote. And she wrote me back and I was the screaming fangirl all over again. Okay, so I didn't scream, but I whooped and called MathMan in from the other room so he could read the message and validate that I wasn't seeing things.

You're laughing at me right now, aren't you? That's okay. I don't blame you. What a simple thing to do and what results I got in Hannon's lovely, encouraging message back to me. And how silly the me of a week ago would have been to hold back from emailing an author of a book I enjoyed because I felt inadequate or inconsequential or .......heaven forbid....like a fan? How many times did I not get an autograph or share my pleasure about something becase doing so, scared me?

So now I'm going to go buy this book because (1) I have to have it and (2) I want to see if Lauretta will sign it for me when she comes to an event at our local library next Friday. I'll try to not act too goofy, but I make no promises.

Read the book, y'all. Be entertained, touched, inspired. And whatever you do, be sure to do something that scares you. And then come back and tell us about it.