For Feisty Feminists

Luca Guadagnino’s story about a rich Italian family centered around Tilda Swinton’s Emma Recchi, a Russian trophy wife. Swinton, as always, brought complexity and soul to her lead role; the photography was beautiful; the music - re-purposed John Adams - added to the arty vibe; yet I found myself removed from the movie. The cool composure of the characters kept me at arm’s length, even as I admired the individual elements that came together in this well-made package.

The ending changed that. After an entire movie of characters acting as they are supposed to, giving only small hints of their inner longings - or, in Emma’s case, acting on them impulsively - it overflowed with emotion, showing longing, regret, hope, and grief in a wordless coda, with Adams’ lovely music swirling around the characters. Suddenly it was clear: that reserve, that slow build, was setting up this break, and made the show of emotion in small gestures that much more powerful. I Am Love earned its tears; it does not throw emotional content at you to get you to cry, it crafts an ending that grows perfectly, almost inevitably, out of the characters it has so painstakingly portrayed.

It’s been over a month since Cannonball Read 2 wrapped, a comprehensive list of all 52 books and links to review can be found here. Rather than do a list of all the books from best to worst, here are the highlights - the 10 favorites from all year, starting with the most recently read:

Digging to America by Anne Tyler - Tyler writes memorable characters and uses literary devices in ways that add to the story rather than draw attention to their use. A compassionate look at different cultures. (read more)

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler - Chandler’s sparse writing hides the skill that goes into writing a mystery this effective. (read more)

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - a sad dystopian tale, this book’s strength is the narration provided by the main character. (read more)

Wise Children by Angela Carter - bizarre, witty, fantastical story, a slow read but ultimately engrossing. (read more)

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher - Fisher should get some sort of prize for writing this book, adapting it into a totally different (wonderful) movie that radically changes the plot and jettisons major characters, but retains the same charm and wry tone. (read more)

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman - one of my favorite non-fiction books ever.  (read more)

Nobody Passes ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore - a must-read for those with an interest in gender & intersectionality. (read more)

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - sad and hopeful all at once, this book suffers a bit in comparison to The Book Thief (the two share similar themes and narrators), but is still one of the best I read this year. (read more)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - probably the favorite of all of these. Don’t be put off by the ‘young adult’ label, this book deals with themes of grief, loss, and love in a way few ‘adult’ books do. (read more)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - transcendent. The writing in this book is superb, and Humbert Humbert is absolutely fascinating & horrifying. If you haven’t read this book and think it advocates pedophilia, give it a read - it condemns the main character by giving him voice.  (read more)

Book 52 in Cannonball Read 2

I finished this book over a month ago, but I have been unable to sit down and write about it. It’s much harder to write about a good book than a bad one, and Tyler’s novel Digging to America approaches greatness, in subtle and small ways. It doesn’t have a jolting premise or a hook to lure the reader in - just solid writing, interesting well-drawn characters, and a damn near perfect ending.

Digging to America is the story of two American families who meet while adopting Korean girls. The Dickinson-Donaldsons are a family of WASP’s, the Yazdans are second generation Iranian-Americans. The book is the story of the two families getting to know each other, as well as of the different ways they approach raising children from different backgrounds as themselves. For example, the Dickinson-Donaldson’s keep their daughter’s Korean name - Jin-ho - but the Yazdans change their daughter’s name to Susan.

The main character is Maryam, the mother of the Iranian adoptive couple. She stands somewhat outside of the two families, watching as the couples grow closer together.  Her reactions to the enthusiasm and almost smothering friendship of the Dickinson-Donaldsons fuel the novel, providing friction for the loving but overwhelming family to bump up against.

Tyler subtly shifts the point of view of between sections of the novel. The book is written in third person, and the subjective information provided only comes from one source in each section - most amusingly from the five-year-old Jin-Ho near the end. Tyler weaves this into the fabric of the book, using it to create a complex portrait of the two families and all the relationships they share.

I mentioned the ending of the book. It is not anything earth-shattering, just a well-written ending in which a character makes a small, but defining choice. It doesn’t reach for a grandness or profundity that breaks with the tone of the book, it just wraps up the intimate and detailed story with grace.

Digging to America is a small treasure, a web of stories told with skill and compassion. You can’t ask for much more in a novel than Tyler gives her readers here.

Book 51 in Cannonball Read 2

First things first: yes, I read the whole thing through from cover to cover, and yes I’m counting it. This fucker is over 600 pages long.

Julia Child’s behemoth of a cookbook is much more than just a collection of recipes. It is a reflection of Child’s ebullient personality, and a stubborn and staunch declaration of refusing to do things the easy way if the hard way produces something better.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking is also infinitely more entertaining than Julie Powell’s insufferable Julie and Julia despite having no story and no characters.

The recipes, even when complicated, are not difficult per se. Rather, they just require a lot of steps, but Julia tells you exactly what to do and how to do it. Of course, anything with as much butter, cream, and wine in it as these recipes is bound to taste good.

Book 50 in Cannonball Read 2

We is a dystopian novel, widely considered to be a precursor to George Orwell’s 1984. It is written in the form of records chronicling the progress of D-503 from enthusiastic support of OneState, a fascist regime, to a man in love despite the prohibition on such emotional attachments, to an advocate for rebellion, and lastly to a sort of lobotomized supporter of the regime once again. The comparison to 1984 is not particularly apt, as the only elements the two novels share are fascist regimes, male main characters, and women that they fall in love with while rebelling against the fascist regime. Where 1984 is both nuanced and fully-formed, placing the reader inside the protaganist’s mental state, We is sort of, well, half-assed. D-503 is never a full character, and sure, that could be partly due to the fact that he is just a cog in a big machine, but it’s also because Zamyatin doesn’t know how to show - only how to tell.

One of the best parts of reading dystopian novels is the details provided about the society depicted. Zamyatin provides scant details, opting instead to feature D-503’s flowery descriptions of his surroundings.

The book also features ellipses all the time (this could be the translation, or the original text itself). Let’s do a little experiment. I am going to turn to any random page and count the ellipses.

Page 82: 5 ellipses. Example: “I knew I was imagining all this, that everything was the way it was before, but still, it was clear. . .”

Page 149: 9 ellipses. Example: “I couldn’t move . . . because I wasn’t standing on a surface.”

Page 42: only 3 ellipses.

Page 169: 6 ellipses.

Ellipses are the stupidest punctuation imaginable.

We is not so terrible and ridiculous as Brave New World, but it does not approach the brilliance in characterization, plot, or dystopian dread that Orwell created in 1984.  It provides little useful political critique other than ‘fascism is bad.’

Book 49 in Cannonball Read 2

Woman on the Edge of Time is an ambitious book. It is, all at once, science fiction, feminist critique, utopian novel, and condemnation of our welfare and mental health systems. Miraculously, the novel manages to be all these things, wrapped up in a gripping story populated with vivid characters, and never loses the reader’s attention for a second.

This is a difficult book to talk about without spoiling it. There’s no big twist, nothing that isn’t pretty clear in the first 50 pages or so, but it’s a joy to see the story unfold without knowing where it is headed.

Woman on the Edge of Time tells the story of Connie, a poor Latino woman in New York, who is currently on welfare, and soon becomes involuntarily committed - her second stay in a psychiatric hospital. She also frequently sees a person that may or may not be real - Luciente, who says she is from the future.

As the story progresses - and, yet again, I urge you to read the book without knowing anything, but it’s hard to write a review without talking about what is going on - Connie visits Luciente’s time, which may or may not be the future that happens, depending on the actions of Connie and others in her time to bring about a revolution and a more just society.

The future utopia is grounded in the idea of making as little environmental impact as possible; making decisions based on how they affect the whole population; and creating space for fun, recreation, and meaningful work in the lives of citizens. The ideas Piercy presents in this idealized future society are interesting, and the only one I have a strong problem with is how the future society handles birth and reproduction. Reproduction now takes place outside of human beings, and Luciente states that women had to give up childbirth in order to be equal. I simply don’t believe that it is necessary to have reproduction take place outside of women’s bodies to do away with sexism. The root of misogyny is hatred of women and denial that they are human beings, not biology.

Woman on the Edge of Time is thought-provoking, but also compelling and thrilling to read. The ideas behind it would be enough to recommend it, yet Piercy brings much more than just theory to the table.

Book 48 in Cannonball Read 2

Werner Herzog’s masterpiece Fitzcarraldo took over 2 years to make and involved pulling a ship across land; replacing Jason Robards when he fell ill with crazypants Klaus Kinski; braving the jungles of a foreign country; and dealing with the locals, some of whom were helpful and friendly, some of whom wanted to throw Herzog in jail. Herzog’s book Conquest of the Useless: Reflections on the Making of ‘Fitzcarraldo’ gathers his writings during this two year period. There are some interesting passages, some remarkable incidents, and more than a few memorable anecdotes, but overall the book hardly leaves an impression.

Herzog does not offer many details about filming; in a note at the beginning of the book he states that the writings are more “inner landscapes, born of the delirium of the jungle” than journal entries. That holds true throughout the book - the entries are reflections on his physical surroundings, but give little insight into the process of making a movie like Fitzcarraldo.

There are some interesting passages, to be sure. Here’s one about a movie about Paganini that Kinski wanted to make:

Kinski gave me his screenplay to read, all six hundred pages of it; he wants me to direct the film. One glance at the script makes it clear that Kinski’s project is beyond repair. There is half a page of fucking, then half a page of fiddling - and so on, for six hundred pages. The whole thing adds up to one enormous Kinski ego trip. He will have to do this one himself.

Sadly, these types of passages - which are not great, simply amusing for a Herzog enthusiast - occur only once every 20+ pages. There’s not much knowledge to gain from Conquest of the Useless  about Fitzcarraldo or about Herzog himself.

Books 46-47 in Cannonball Read 2

Both Chandler and Hammett are revered by writers, and perhaps undervalued for the same reason: the economy and simplicity of their writing. Like Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold or, I would argue, Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, both The Big Sleep and The Thin Man are so straightforward and unassuming in their storytelling that they make it seem easy to write a book this good.

The Big Sleep introduced Philip Marlowe, a hard-drinking world-weary detective - before that was a stereotype.  Marlowe is hired to investigate some IOU’s sent for collection to General Sternwood, the dying father of two young women who seem to get in a lot of trouble. Marlowe gets involved in a web of criminal activity, and continues to investigate even when he has done his job for no other reason than he needs to know.

The Thin Man involves a detective, Nick Charles, who refuses to work on the case but continues to be involved against his will. The Thin Man has a much lighter tone than The Big Sleep, mostly owing to Nick’s relationship with his wife Nora. (Side note: I recently watched the movie version of The Thin Man, it’s divine. If you haven’t seen it, check it out).

Both books tell complicated stories, with dozens of characters that are all suspect at some point or another. The main characters are well drawn,so much so that no action they take is surprising - though the circumstances in which they find themselves are constantly surprising. Both books also clock in under 200 pages, packing a great deal more story, character, wit, and wisdom into those pages than many writers can put into 400+. Books this simple, and simply good, are uncommon. Chandler once said that it takes 10 years of writing to figure out anything worthwhile to say, and another 10 to figure out how to say it. Both Chandler and Hammett show at least 50 years of writing experience in their novels.

Book 45 of Cannonball Read 2

The Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History is a collection of articles about the famous obsessive filmmaker, published in 1986. It came after his two acknowledged masterpieces starring Klaus Kinski - Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God - but well before the current renaissance he has been enjoying as a filmmaker and celebrity, kickstarted by Grizzly Man.

This is a motley collection, as many compilations tend to be. There is a piece on his short documentaries; another on the use of blindness in Land of Silence and Darkness; on whether his method is the medium; and, even over twenty years ago, on the way his persona interacts with and informs his filmmaking.

While Herzog is a fascinating figure, some of these essays aren’t. It’s a mixed batch, so maybe skipping around, reading in tandem with the films explored in the book is your best bet.

This book also offers up a new ‘batshit Herzog’ anecdote. In one scene in The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner, a short film about a ski-jumper/sculptor, the titular Steiner crash lands, and it is unclear whether he has suffered a serious or even fatal injury. Herzog steps in to say ‘at this point, our film could be over.’ That single-mindedness - placing real human suffering lower in importance than the movie you are making - may be maddening on a human level, but damn if it doesn’t make for some great art.

Book 44 of Cannonball Read 2

Kind and Unusual Punishment: The Prison Business is Jessica Mitford’s expose of the ways in which prisons exploit and abuse their prisoners. Though it was published in 1974 and some of the specifics of her research - statistics and facts - may be out of date, the philosophies behind American prisons have not changed, and her critiques of the system ring true today.

Mitford, the muck-raking journalist who also wrote The American Way of Death, looks at every aspect of imprisonment, including the attitudes of those who keep the keys to prisons. She investigates every step of the process of incarceration - court proceedings, imprisonment, work and wages within the prisons, work release programs, and the eventual release back into society - and finds pretty much every aspect problematic.

The ‘why’ of these problems has more to do with the ideas that she investigates - first and foremost, the idea of there being a ‘criminal type’, a type of person who is innately more likely to commit a crime. Mitford explores the changing ideas of a criminal type throughout history, and comes away with the conclusion that the criminal type is actually the poor, non-white type whose actions are criminalized, even when they cause little harm to society.

Mitford also looks at the process of plea-bargaining, finding that it is weighted more towards the ease and comfort of those who work in the judicial system than the accused criminals whose lives are drastically changed by the proceedings. Mitford looks at a ‘treatment’ model of prisons, and finds this lacking, too, because it assumes that everyone in prison is mentally ill. Additionally, treatment professionals are often looked down upon by security staff, and are unable to effectively advocate for their patients/prisoners because of the harsh, often violent mentality of the wardens and guards at prisons.

All this might sound like some radical communist bullcrap - it doesn’t to me, and would not have even without the facts Mitford presents.  She provides a compelling argument that our prison system is rotten to the core, and provides little alternatives or ways to reform the system - to Mitford, a just society would not have a prison system.