A Guate iPhone test

This is Tabi, our house dog. She's neurotic. Refused to look at the camera. Literally.

Beat the Reaper: Josh Bazell

To begin, a confession. Actually, two.

One, despite how very little I am reading right now, I am still horribly behind in updates. I don't have a bad or good excuse for this. But it bothers me to no end.

Second, the first time I saw this cover, I misread it as "The Beat Reaper" and was instantly fascinated by such an odd title. To the book's credit, the fascination didn't lessen once I read it correctly.

It took me weeks to get my hands on this one, it seemed everyone on BookMooch wanted it as bad as I did, and every time it became available, someone had beaten me to it (no pun intended).

When it finally did arrive (thanks, Amy!), I set it aside to read on spring break. And then on the Thursday night before the last day of class I peaked at it and proceeded to read it in one sitting. In a word, I liked it. I think I loved it, even. I didn't think it lived up to the rapturous praise many other Amazon reviewers gave it, but it was in fact really, really good. But it's not a book I'm going to hang on to, I'll reMooch it in a few days and let someone else sit up all night reading it.

The story is this: a former Mafia hitman goes into Witness Protection, ends up a doctor in Manhattan and discovers that one of his patients recognizes him from his past and threatens to turn him over to his old boss. The patient is terminal, but doesn't know it yet. And the doctor must decide to stay and care for him, or go back into Protection.

Bazell (a physician himself) has created a narrator that's immediately likable, despite the fact that he's a former hitman. He uses medical jargon throughout the text, but he translates faithfully, so I don't think it would be off putting to readers who aren't familiar with the terms. There's a fair bit about the ludicrous hours interns are expected to keep, and how they're all cracked out of their skulls from the pressure of those first years, and Bazell doesn't spare the reader much on this, but as many times as it made me wince in places, it made me laugh out loud as well, which I consider a fair trade.

The narrative happens in one day, but you're treated to several decades worth of flashbacks which works to carry the tension throughout the novel. The flashbacks I was especially impressed with -- they were written so gracefully, never feeling forced, which takes considerable talent.

Now that I'm back thinking about it, I'm finding I liked this book much more than I remember liking it. There are books that I read and as soon as I finish them, I want to start them all over. I felt that with the last several books I've read, and having not felt it with this one has perhaps colored my memory of it. But no, the truth is I loved it, clearly, I couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. But it didn't move me. I don't feel like a better person having read it. Which is not to say that everything I read ought to do that. I don't feel like a better person after eating gelato but hell if I don't love every single second of the experience.

Whenever I finish a book I try to think who I can recommend it to. With Reaper, I think I could recommend it to most people who want something light and quirky and darkly comic, but I'd advise they check it out of their library, or Mooch it and save the twenty bucks for something else.

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

Grey morning dulled the bay. Banks of clouds, Howth just one more bank, rolled to sea, where other Howths grumbled to greet them. Swollen spumeless tide. Heads that bobbed like floating gulls and gulls that floating bobbed like heads. Two heads. At swim, two boys.

In the end, what to say about it? How to start?

This one wrecked me. As I knew it would. In the way all good literature ought.

I missed out on the hype surrounding At Swim's release. So it wasn't until years later I crossed paths with it, but within the first week I'd heard mention of it, it was mentioned three different times, so I bought it. Plus, both the clothbound and paperback covers were gorgeous, which helps.

I have a Cataloging in Publication fetish* -- the first thing I do with a new book is flip to the copyright page to discover how the Library of Congress has catalogued it. Here is At Swim:

1. Ireland--History--Easter Rising, 1916--Fiction. 2. Dublin (Ireland)--Fiction. 3. Male friendship--Fiction. 4. Teenage boys--Fiction. 5. Gay youth--Fiction.

Isn't it pretty? Isn't it magical? Each time I read CIP data, I feel like it's a secret incantation that will unlock the work at hand.

The next thing I do is read the endorsements, which are ranked. Non-American news media endorsements get top billing, followed by non-conglomerate owned American news media, followed by conglomerate owned American news media, followed by other authors -- which is always sketchy. Sometimes other authors say useful and true and brilliant things about one another's works. Sometimes it's just a big circle jerk.

So. Here was what Murrough O'Brien of The Independent on Sunday (UK) had to say about At Swim: "A story of such tenderness, wit, and metaphysical conviction that you might well be tempted to have it placed on your breast when the earth takes you."

I thought two things when I read that: 1.) I'd never read such a loving endorsement before. And 2.) I'd never suspected a reviewer so full of shit.

And here is what Richard Canning of the regular ol' The Independent (UK) had to say: "Mesmerizing, sophisticated, intense, nearer to the truth of our lives than most established writers dream of ... There is no crisis in fiction except for those who choose not to read it. Don't miss out."

While I was waiting for At Swim to arrive, I cruised Amazon.com reviews and blog reviews and established media reviews, and was really irked by how often At Swim was referred to as a "gay novel." Another reviewer addressed this, stating that At Swim was "a gay novel in the same way that Beloved was a black novel." Which I couldn't agree with more. After about an hour of reading so many people fall all over themselves admitting that yes, gasp, even though the 3 main characters are gay, you don't have be gay to read this book, I'd decided that I wasn't going to even address (here) the gayness or notgayness of the novel. Because really, it shouldn't matter, right?

Well, yes and no.

Here's the thing: it is a gay novel. It's also an Irish novel. And a historical novel. And a war novel. And a psychological novel. And a bildungsroman. And you can't talk about it at all, without talking about these things. Or mentioning its incandescence. Or what a joy, a complete and unadulterated joy it is to read.

Broadly it is this story: two young Irish men, one poor and one more poor, both smart, only one "properly" educated, both coming of age on the threshold of a revolution. The one, Jim, is shy and devout, the son of a rather ridiculous but endearing shopkeeper. The other, Doyler, is the brash, heretical, cripple; son of Jim's father's old army pal. The young men reconnect at the Forty Foot, a great jut of rock that serves as a popular bathing spot, and make a pact that Doyler will teach Jim how to swim, and in one year, on Easter Sunday of 1916, they will swim out to sea, out to Muglins Rock and "claim that island for themselves."

Of course, we all know what happened Easter Week of 1916. But watching the events of the Easter Rising unfold in these pages was in many ways like learning about it for the first time.

Meanwhile, Jim and Doyler fall in love with one another. Only, it's 1915. And they're Catholic. And they don't yet have a vocabulary for what it is they feel. Here:

Slow and affecting, the soldier-speaker went on. Did ever a man, he asked, have more of heroic stuff in him than Wolfe Tone? Did ever a man go more gaily and gallantly about a great deed? Did ever a man love so well? Was ever a man so beloved? "For myself," he said, speaking slow and a little shyly, "I would rather have known Wolfe Tone than any man of whom I have ever heard or ever read."

Jim knew this man's heart was deep and true, for he made Jim wish for an equal love and an equal truth in his heart. He was swept by a great desire to take hold Doyler's hand and tell him in his ear, That's how I think of you, that's exactly how I think of you.

The axis of this little world during these tumultuous years is the third protagonist -- MacMurrough, one of the most bewitching characters I've ever known.

Oh, MacMurrough. MacMurrough, MacMurrough, MacMurrough. MacEmm. How did I get by before you?

Prior to reading At Swim, Ian McEwan's Atonement easily came to mind as the most psychologically astute novel I've read in recent years. Brideshead Revisited as the most beautifully sad. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay as the most sparkling and magnetic. (I could do this all day, but you get the point). And then along comes little At Swim, and I feel as if I've never read anything before this. Or that, it was all preface to this.

Critics and non-critics alike have compared O'Neill to Joyce. At Swim to Ulysses. In full disclosure, I have never read anything by Joyce. So I can't speak with any authority about how accessible or inaccessible this language is in comparison. It's true that it's a very dense read. And that I didn't know what the hell O'Neill was talking about half the time. And that I would have very much appreciated footnotes. But none of these was a detraction in any way. Like listening to opera -- I don't know what they're singing, but it's beautiful. There were dozens of times throughout the book where I'd get lost, have to go back and reread several times. And there were times when the book felt like one big Irish inside joke. But even so, it was beautiful. It never irritated me, and reading it never felt like work.

I feel like I owe MacMurrough more than the previous shout out. But, again, what to say? That I love him? That I miss him? That I, too, want it to be all right for him? When we're first introduced, MacMurrough has come back to Ireland after spending two years in a hard labor camp on account of "some buggery at Oxford" and is settling awkwardly in his ancestral home, with his proud, revolutionary spinster aunt. He is predatory and dandified. He smokes Turkish cigarettes and watches the boys in the sea from his garden and keeps company with Scrotes, Nanny Tremble and Dick. He is often abrasively honest, especially about himself and his shortcomings. He wants a different world for Jim and Doyler than the one that jailed him for his Oxford tryst. And in wanting so, discovers he wants a different Ireland for them as well, than the one so heavily yoked by British colonialism.

Again:

MacMurrough pursed his lips. I want it to be all right for him, he said. For both of them.

--Help them.

--I have procured the one his suit. The other apparently can clothe himself. It should seem the extent of my capacity to assist.

--Help them make a nation, if not once again, then once for all.

--What possible nation can you mean?

--Like all nations, Scrotes answered, a nation of the heart. Look about you. See Irish Ireland find out its past. Only with a past can it claim a future. Watch it on tramcars thumbing through its primers. Only a language its own can speak to it truly. What does this language say? It says you are a proud and ancient people. For a nation cannot prosper without it have pride. You and I, MacMurrough, may smile at the fabulous claims of the Celt. We may know that the modern Irishman as much resembles the Gael of old as he resembles the Esquimau or the Kafir on the Hindu Kush. And we may believe he is the better for that. But no matter. The struggle for Irish Ireland is not for truth against untruth. It is not for the good against the bad, for the beautiful against the unbeautiful. These things will take care of themselves. The struggle is for the heart, for its claim to stand in the light and cast a shadow its own in the sun.

--Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literatures for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale; and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light.

Like many stories, this one too is a love story. And in so being, it is MacMurrough who experiences the most transformation. We watch as love takes hold him and makes him something new. He is at first bewildered, then resigned, then madcap engaged, then resigned once more. And like so many love stories, this one too is a tragedy. It's a tragedy about the things love doesn't protect us from -- death, mainly, but the smaller deaths as well, heartache and disappointment; but it's also about the things love calls us towards, in spite of what little protection it offers -- ecstasy and joy and hope and desire and possibility, however fleeting they may be.

So ... it's not that I want you to just read it. It's that I want to make a gift of it to you. Could I, I'd rent a chalet in the forest or the mountains, and I'd make you and keep you a fire going. I'd see to it that you had wine or whiskey or hot chocolate, and in the course of it, you'd likely need all three. And I'd be very very very quiet, while you read. While you allowed this book to clear run away with you in the most lovely and extraordinary and reckless and necessary way.

Remember what Murrough O'Brien said? About wanting to be buried with this book? He was right. I have so many, so many, books I want to read, that usually, as soon as I finish one, I hop out of bed, and place it back on my shelf, to make room on the bedside table for the next in line. When I finished At Swim, I couldn't let go. I didn't want to be so physically separated from it. I couldn't even bring myself to put it back on the bedside table. Instead, I tucked it against my chest and slept with it.

If we're allowed to say that stories can save our life, then surely this is that story. Surely it is that miraculous.

Ed. Note: referring to the following definition of fetish -

Fetish: an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency (Random House Dictionary, 2009).

Un équilibre délicat

I got here sooner than I thought, or hoped -- that delicate place where you don't know quite how to end it. 

At Swim, Two Boys. 

Reviewers often comment on the weight of it, the epic-ness of it, how many pages it is (nearly 600). Hearing this, I had hoped it might take me a few weeks to read it, but it did not oblige. And despite being busier than I think I've ever been, I find myself, a week after starting it, less than 100 pages to the end.

Already, I feel myself coming undone. The sadness is beginning to settle in, the knowledge that I won't feel this way again for a long time. Years, perhaps. 

There are dozens of books queued up behind At Swim, books I'm sure I'd have loved if I'd happened upon them earlier. But now? Now, I can't even think about them. Now, I'm in that delicious, tiresome place where you don't have the heart to go on, can't help but go on, knowing full well you'll find yourself unmoored when it's through. 

I think I'll finish it tonight. And tomorrow is Friday. After my exam in Medicine Administration I'll be free to come home and sit in the dark and indulge the melancholy that's coming. What cheer. 

Also.

We would be remiss if we failed to send out bunches of congratulations to our very beloved Neil Gaiman on his being awarded the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. Yay, Neil! Such a very much deserved honor.

Um, yeah.

So this gig is quickly becoming a list of promises I don't keep. 

No, I did not finish A Moveable Feast. No, I did not get any further in Infinite Jest than I did the first time I tried to read it. I have a lot of catch up to do, but this is not that post. 

I stopped reading Feast on purpose, on account of loving it so much and not wanting to ever finish it. I do that sometimes. It's an odd habit. But I can't claim the same intention in my abandonment of Jest. It's so dense! I love it. But it's a slow, concentrated read for me, and because present life circumstances have forced me to do most of my reading at bedtime, I just couldn't hang with someone like David Foster Wallace so late in the day. Jest deserves all of me. So, maybe this summer, maybe in a few years, maybe in ten. I feel confident I'll finish it. Someday. 

Meanwhile, I read the Twilight Saga. Twice. And would be reading it again had I not loaned those beauties out. I also read The World to Come and Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Motorcycle Diaries and A Certain Slant of Light and A Great and Terrible Beauty and The Meaning of Night and Sense and Sensibility and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

All of these deserve their own posts, but again, this ain't it.

I left my job at the state two weeks ago and entered nursing school full time. It terrifies me and I love it, but what I do not love is how few hours there are in the week now for books. However, since I'm reading more slowly, I hope I'll also hold myself more accountable here, and actually talk about what I'm reading. 2009 marks the first year that I'm actually keeping track of what I read, and I hope to make some sort of record here as well, as the year progresses.

I also decided to read Jane Austen's novels back to back this year. I finished Sense and Sensibility last week and am 5 chapters into Pride and Prejudice currently, along with 3 short story collections, one of which, Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters I cannot say or think enough good things about.

Wednesdays are my long days for nursing school. Class begins at 7:30am and I'm on campus until 9pm when my last class lets out. Lucky for me, a book arrived by mail this past Wednesday, which I began that night. And what I can tell you is this: I'm in love and in love and in love and in love with At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill. 

I knew this book would break my heart, it already has in some ways. But I also knew, less than 15 pages into 500+ that it would be worth whatever it asked of me. And with that, I'll bid you goodnight, and get in bed with this marvelous gift of a novel. 

Infinite Jest

I spent the weekend in Ohio, celebrating my cousin's wedding. I also got very behind in email and RSS. So it wasn't until Monday that I learned of David Foster Wallace's suicide, and the news derailed me a little bit. In full disclosure -- I have never read a single one of his books. I've read some of his essays and a few of his stories and even fewer of his journalism pieces, but I have felt, since first meeting him, that he belonged to me. This is something that I am sure would have bothered him in some way. I realize he is not a thing to be consumed. But I met him, not literally, in Prague, and he became, quite by accident, a character in a screenplay I was working on for a class there, and since then, I've considered him a dear friend who I don't keep up with as well as I should.

That he was one of our most brilliant minds and that he left too soon is without contention. I think it is also fair to say that he left us at a time when we needed him the most. I cannot help thinking about his last days on earth, and the loneliness I imagine he felt before he hanged himself. And when I get to that image -- the starkness of his suicide -- I get physically ill, as I am now.

When I was 25 I bought Infinite Jest and I read something like 33 pages of it. I had never heard of it before. And no one had ever recommended it to me. Rather, I came across it the old fashioned way, in one of the few independent bookstores still open in this country. It was a 10th anniversary reissue with a forward by Dave Eggers. Eggers and Wallace (along with Franzen and Lethem and others) belong to a group of writers affectionately called The Maximalists. And I like every one of them. But Wallace has always been a favorite, despite what little of his work I've read.

So. Jest has been sitting on a bookshelf for over two years. I look at its spine nearly every day, and think loving thoughts about it, and mean to start it again, and don't. But I feel that right now, this very day in fact, there is not a more sensible thing I could do than to climb into bed with it once more.

The book is, in the most general sense, about addiction and entertainment. It's a really big book, about really big ideas, and we are living in what I quite seriously consider perilous days. This election has me, at best, flummoxed. I often feel like I live with aliens, here in my Red state. I wonder if we, as a nation, are really as unserious and cruel and stupid a people as our media and their polls are making us out to be. Ever since John McCain chose Caribou Barbie as his running mate, I have been considering rereading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. But then Wallace died. And left me feeling so alone, that it seems, as I've said, the only thing left to do is pray, get some sleep, continue to register voters, and read Infinite Jest. So, that is what I plan to do. If you need another reason to read this book, here is some of what Eggers had to say in the Forward:

"And yet the time spent in this book, in this world of language, is absolutely rewarded. When you exit these pages after that month of reading, you are a better person. It's insane, but also hard to deny. Your brain is stronger because it's been given a monthlong workout, and more importantly, your heart is sturdier, for there has scarcely been written a more moving account of desperation, depression, addiction, generational stasis and yearning, or the obsession with human expectations, with artistic and athletic and intellectual possibility. The themes here are big, and the emotions (guarded as they are) are very real, and the cumulative effect of the book is, you could say, seismic."

And, later:

"And now, unfortunately, we're back to the impression that this book is daunting. Which it isn't, really. It's long, but there are pleasures everywhere. There is humor everywhere. There is also a very quiet but very sturdy and constant tragic undercurrent that concerns a people who are completely lost, who are lost within their families and lost within their nation, and lost within their time, and who only want some sort of direction or purpose or sense of community or love. Which is, after all and conveniently enough for the end of this introduction, what an author is seeking when he sets out to write a book -- any book, but particularly a book like this, a book that gives so much, that required such sacrifice and dedication. Who would do such a thing if not for want of connection and thus of love?

"Last thing: In attempting to persuade you to buy this book, or check it out of your library, it's useful to tell you that the author is a normal person. Dave Wallace -- and he is commonly known as such -- keeps big sloppy dogs and has never dressed them in taffeta or made them wear raincoats. He has complained often about sweating too much when he gives public readings, so much so that he wears a bandana to keep the perspiration from soaking the pages below him. He was once a nationally ranked tennis player, and he cares about good government. He is from the Midwest -- east-central Illinois, to be specific, which is an intensely normal part of the country (not far, in fact, from a city, no joke, named Normal). So he is normal, and regular, and ordinary, and this is his extraordinary, and irregular, and not-normal achievement, a thing that will outlast him and you and me, but will help future people understand us -- how we felt, how we lived, what we gave to each other and why."