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Wednesday, January 11th, 2006
My Proulx jag continues: last night I finished Postcards (loved it), this morning I started The Accordion Crimes -- I was thinking after Postcards almost anything would have to be a letdown, but it looks like I was wrong based on the beginning of The Accordion Crimes. Update: Er, just now I looked at the book and noticed the title is actually Accordion Crimes.
posted evening of January 11th, 2006: Respond
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Monday, January 9th, 2006
Something else about Annie Proulx -- it is amazing to me the way time passes in her stories. I am 3/4 of the way through Postcards and the story has spanned about 30 or 40 years so far; but I have no sense that I have missed parts of the story skipped over, or that I have been rushed along. Instead I feel like I have been listening to the story for 30 or 40 years. (Which is not to say the story is dragging -- it's not, it's gripping -- it seems to me like a huge accomplishment for her to be able to hold my attention for virtual decades.)
posted afternoon of January 9th, 2006: Respond
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Tuesday, January third, 2006
Today I started reading another Annie Proulx book, Postcards -- this one is grabbing me right away, pulling me into the story. I'm really liking the way she leaves key bits of the story for you to fill in -- something I have found annoying elsewhere. Something I have been thinking ever since reading Bad Dirt -- Proulx is incredibly versatile! In each story and each book, there is a new stylistic attribute.
posted evening of January third, 2006: Respond
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Friday, December 30th, 2005
We are in Boston until tomorrow. Today Sylvia and I walked around town while Ellen visited with her friend Deedee and worked on her writing. The day's itinerary: breakfast with Ellen at Faneuil Hall (if that's how you spell it), then split up. We went to the aquarium (lovely jellyfish exhibit and interesting turtle activities) where we stayed until about 11:30. Took the T to Massachussetts Ave. where we had a slice of pizza and went in to the Mary Baker Eddy library to look at the Mapparium. Had not done any research and was expecting from the name, a kind of museum devoted to maps; instead it turns out to be a huge stained-glass globe, which you view from inside while they shine lights in and play a tape recording about the world. Kind of neat but not as much so as a map museum would be. From there we took a long walk down Commonwealth Ave. to the Boston Public Garden, to see the pond from Make Way For Ducklings. Walked through the park, then stopped in at Borders to have a snack and look at the children's books. Happened on a very nice used bookstore across the street from there, where I bought Postcards by Annie Proulx. Then back to Faneuil Hall (which Google seems to think is the proper spelling), picked out a Hanukkah present for Ellen, and back to the hotel, where we are now waiting for her to get back. Nice times -- as walked back to the hotel we speculated about what would happen if (as we were walking from Faneuil Hall) we were to go back to the aquarium, and then out to the Mapparium, have lunch, etc.
posted evening of December 30th, 2005: Respond
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Thursday, December 29th, 2005
Today I finished The Shipping News; and also I read Roger Ebert's review of the movie based on this book. I must say Ebert captured the problems I had with the book pretty well, though I don't know if he read it. The characters in this book were not fully human, just collections of idiosyncrasies designed to highlight their author's cleverness. (And yet Proulx is such a good writer, the book still ends up being a fun read. I feel ungrateful, carping about its failings.)
posted evening of December 29th, 2005: Respond
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Tuesday, December 27th, 2005
We have read seven chapters of Prince Caspian; chapters 4 through 7 are a story-within-a-story, in which the dwarf Trumpkin tells the children how Caspian came to leave Miraz' castle and to be recognized as king by the old Narnians. Last night as we sat down to read chapter 7, I had almost forgotten that this was a digression, and was thinking of Trumpkin's story as the main story in the book. Sylvia however had not forgotten. She said she was bored with this story as I opened the book; I didn't quite get her meaning and asked if she wanted to stop reading about Narnia and find a different book. But that was not it -- after a little back and forth, searching for expressions, she let me know that she was tired of hearing the dwarf's story and wanted to get back to the main frame where the children were. So, we skipped 7 and read 8 last night. Funny, this was a little like The Princess Bride except in reverse -- Dad did not have it together enough to abridge the uninteresting portions of the book so young Sylvia took the task in hand herself.
posted morning of December 27th, 2005: Respond
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Monday, December 26th, 2005
I had the day off! I spent part of the afternoon in a bar, reading The Shipping News. It is a well-crafted story -- I am laughing at the jokes and feeling sympathy for the characters. But this is where I think it compares poorly to the short stories -- I can see the craft in the story, see Proulx making transitions and nod to myself in appreciation of a skillful transition, laugh at a punchline and think the joke was told well. When reading the stories I was much less conscious of my identity as a reader.
posted evening of December 26th, 2005: Respond
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Saturday, December 24th, 2005
I've been reading The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, gotten far enough in to start forming an opinion of it. I tentatively like the short stories better but am thinking this book maybe just starts out slow, and if it stays on the trajectory it's on currently, it could end up being a really good book. -- I guess short stories don't have as much room to start out slow before grabbing you. Why does it start out slow? It might be that Proulx is trying to show how Quoyle's whole life from his childhood until his wife's death has been spent in a fugue state, without any connection to the world around him. This would make sense to me but I don't think it quite worked -- I didn't have any connection to Quoyle in his fugue state. It might have worked better in first person. Since the family's arrival in Newfoundland, the story has really picked up and the characters are seeming a lot more real to me. This is only about a quarter of the way in, so there's plenty of room for the book to redeem its opening. One gripe I have is, Quoyle has no first name. Seems to me like his aunt at least should address him by first name. (I'm not sure now that she has yet called him by name at all, maybe when she does this will be resolved.)
posted afternoon of December 24th, 2005: Respond
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Thursday, December 22nd, 2005
Today and yesterday, I read Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2, by Annie Proulx. (A better verb than "read" might be "drank in" or "devoured".) What an amazing book -- Flannery O'Connor has some serious competition for my favorite author of short stories. I got interested in reading Proulx from the story Brokeback Mountain, which I read last week prior to seeing the movie -- what struck me about that story was the fullness of characterization, and the palpable sense of time passing; I loved it and wanted to read more. So on my way to the movie theater I stopped at Montclair Book Center where I picked up Bad Dirt and Shipping News. Bad Dirt mixes gravity and whimsy deftly, I particularly loved how The Wamsutter Wolf -- maybe the most moving story in the book -- is sandwiched in between The Contest and Summer of the Hot Tubs, both lighthearted, almost superficial stories. The characters are great -- the two I identified most closely with were probably Creel Zmundzinski (who opens and closes the book) and Buddy Millar (who is only in one story, The Wamsutter Wolf). But I got to know every character well and to feel for them.
posted evening of December 22nd, 2005: Respond
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Sylvia and I have finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and moved on to the second Narnia book, Prince Caspian. (We are reading them approximately in order of publication, rather than in chronological order as Lewis recommended -- see this Wikipaedia article for more info.) Sylvia is getting the plot tie-ins between the two books very strongly. Tonight we read Chapter 4, in which the dwarf begins telling the children the story of how Prince Caspian came to learn of the history of Narnia. Early in the chapter, there is a confrontation between Caspian and his uncle King Miraz, with Miraz telling Caspian that the stories of Old Narnia are old wives' tales and lies. Sylvia was at first a bit perplexed; she knew the stories were accurate as the matched up with the previous book. She quickly figured out that Miraz was lying and each time he told Caspian not to believe in Old Narnia, she was quick to interject that he was wrong. That seemed to me like fun and like a fairly complex level of understanding the books.
posted evening of December 22nd, 2005: Respond
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