White Oleander

There's an old acting adage that says there's a difference between showing and telling, and that it is always better to show than to tell. Authors bear the same burden.

Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander (390 pages), is a writer with a Bradbury-esque style. She has the bewitching ability to compose a thought that is taste, smell, and sight. You don't read her sentences; you feel them.

I'm just going to go ahead and put you all out of your misery now and say that I highly recommend this book. Now go buy it. Do not, however, rush off to see the 2002 movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. It's rare that a movie can compare to the book, despite decent casting. Sad, but true.

The book itself follows Astrid Magnussen, daughter of Ingrid-- a controlling and beautiful poetess. Ingrid draws strength from the power she holds over others, unintentionally forcing her daughter to live in her shadow. Driven mad by rejection, Ingrid murders her lover and is sentenced to life in prison, leaving Astrid alone.

Yet, even locked away, Astrid finds that her mother is more of a force to be reckoned with. Actually, that's an excellent way to describe her--as a force. Astrid is passed from one foster home to another, trying to divide herself from her mother, yet she is always present. The novel explores family, individuality, and if the two are not mutually exclusive.

Fitch has an interesting perspective, and I am impressed with her ability to develop characters. Even the smallest character emerges from the pages as a fully formed human being, with its own opinions and voice. I sincerely look forward to reading more of her work.

Heroes and Heroines

I am not someone who reads science fiction or fantasy. I will gladly watch it on TV, but when it comes to novels, I have never progressed far beyond Ray Bradbury or Terry Pratchett. As critical as I am of fiction in general, I am even more critical of science fiction and fantasy novels. So when a friend presented me with R.A. Salvatore’s The Highwayman (419 pages, $7.99), it almost goes without saying that I was skeptical.

Fantasy writers have an awful habit of alienating potential readers like myself by giving characters overly complicated names, never ever writing in anything except the passive voice, and using laughable phrases like “he knew not”- symptoms of bad writing in general. Mr. Salvatore is no different. He cobbles together names out of the messiest bits of the alphabet: d’s and y’s and r’s all lassoed together, awkward vowel clusters, and sometimes names with no vowels except y, which is just mean. The inevitable result is a character list that includes names like “Rulhio Noylan” and “Guldibonne”. My spelling checker is having a field day with those. I’m not saying that every character should be named Steve, but complicated and unintentionally funny names distract from the flow of a storyline.

The novel tells the story of the rise of a Robin Hood-esque figure called the Highwayman. All the clichés are accounted for: his humble roots, bullied as a child, an oppressive government just begging to be overthrown, death of certain family members at the hands of said oppressive government, and, of course, the fair maiden who loves him. One needs an exterminator for this massive cliché infestation.

On the bright side, Mr. Salvatore wisely chose to have the Highwayman overcome physical obstacles instead of teenage angst. No one likes a moody hero; the man constantly crying, “Why me?” and pulling his hair in between fights. The author introduces the Highwayman after two hundred pages of back story as someone with serious physical limitations, which made me perk up and take interest. Physical obstacles are far more formidable than mental obstacles, and I found myself wondering how in the world this man could turn out to be the hero.

I did also enjoy the fact that Mr. Salvatore refrains from writing his characters as cardboard cutouts despite all of the clichés. The characters acknowledge two sides to their personalities, although it is only the men who do so. The women, even those that are not the typical damsels in distress, are pure, and don’t have an ethical gray area. The Highwayman admits to himself that stealing from the rich and giving to the poor isn't just the right thing to do, it's fun. Getting revenge on those who humiliated him is fun. Being able to woo his beloved as the famous Highwayman is fun. He isn’t the squeaky clean boy scout as much as he would have others believe. He does have the typical Arthurian code of chivalry that most heroes have, but adding an impish dimension to the character seems more real. I find it interesting that Mr. Salvatore never misses an opportunity to inject a bit of triteness into his plot, yet his characters occasionally show some depth. In The Highwayman, good people do bad things, and some of the bad guys are allowed to have a conscience.

Mr. Salvatore does have potential, but his writing style is forced. He composes his phrases indiscriminately; he doesn’t pay enough attention to the nuances of his choices. Daylight might surround a character, but the day probably would not. He can also be too adjective-happy, dumping them all over the place. It is better to be plain-spoken than to force finesse. The book would have been infinitely better had R.A. Salvatore shaved the clichés, stopped trying to decorate every line, and just let his characters speak.

Next week: White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Slowing Down

There is a difference between the word “house” and the word “home”. A house is a shelter made of bricks. It can crumble, burn, be destroyed, and we can build a new one. A home is an idea. Few people know how to build a house, but anyone can build a home. It’s Christmas and birthdays, and that huge fight you had with your mom when you wanted to paint your room. It can be a house, an apartment, another person. When you’re tired and beat at the end of the day, when everything has gone wrong, and you want to go home, you don’t want to go to the house. You want that space you have created that’s yours; you want your people, your pets, or just to be alone in that place you call home.

Sarah Orne Jewett’s Deephaven (305 pages, $27.58) is about a sleepy New England coastal town that becomes home for two summer visitors. Kate Lancaster invites her good friend Helen Denis to spend a few months at her late aunt’s house, and the two quickly become integrated in the community. It is a community of fishermen and housewives, each with their own story to tell. It is a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s history. The fashions are from another generation, and there is little in the way of excitement, yet these two young women are never bored with the inhabitants of Deephaven.

The girls befriend the fishermen of the village, stopping to watch them work and listen to their stories of being on the ocean. They visit their friends in the lighthouse, and go fishing for their dinner. They spy on the secretive old captains who sit sunning themselves on the wharf, hoping to catch the outrageous tales they tell each other.

My favorites are the stories Captain Sands tells Helen and Kate. He tells them about all of the times when his relatives and acquaintances have known when someone close to them is about to die. He believes that people are connected in a way that science cannot yet explain. We still hear such stories today. The mother that wakes up in the middle of the night knowing that her child is in danger, the twins that know when the other is upset no matter where they are, and the wife who knows when her husband is ill even if he is not there. A pessimist would say that it is blind luck, but maybe, just maybe, we are connected to the people we love. Either way, Ms. Jewett is building on her themes of home and community. In the novel, a community is not a collection of random people, but is a kind of extended family. The neighbors take care of each other with the same compassion they would a family member.

The girls become part of the community even though they are not permanent residents. Acceptance is instantaneous; there is no suspicion of outsiders. Deephaveners are warm and friendly, and the girls quickly become as caring and attentive to their neighbors as those that have lived in Deephaven for years. As someone who has very little knowledge of her neighbors, I found this openness fascinating. Suburbia allows its inhabitants to create their own little islands using privacy fences. Getting to know your neighbors is optional, but it is mandatory in Deephaven. Deephaveners are far from resentful of this fact, and see their way of life as the best. Larger cities like Boston are regarded as exotic, but hardly appealing. It seems that the other people of the village are what make Deephaven home. The familial ease between neighbors transfers to the girls. Their relationship eventually becomes the relationship that Deephavers have with each other. They are more like sisters when they leave than when they came, which made me wonder if community begets community. The girls spend months around people who treat them like family, and the two become closer to each other than ever. Does the mere presence of home and family cause others to create their own home and familial relationships?

Admittedly, Sarah Orne Jewett is not the author one should go to for excitement. Intrigue, mistaken identities, and love triangles are nowhere to be found in her stories. She is the author one reads to slow down and relax. Her tone is never hurried, and she addresses her reader as a friend. She lovingly moulds her characters through the stories they tell. Every inhabitant has a “pet story” they love to tell, and it says more about the teller than the people it involves. The book is lovely, but something you have to be in the mod for. In the age of Twitter and instant everything, there’s something to be said for taking your time.

Next week: The Highwayman by R.A. Salvatore

The Surrender

Finding myself once again at a loss for something to read last week, I wandered aimlessly among the shelves of my local bookstore, alternately poking fun at the titles and randomly grabbing anything that caught my eye. The result, of course, was that I spent over an hour being incredibly disappointed until I noticed a name that I did not expect to find outside of the tiny plays section: Tennessee Williams. I can’t even be sure how I noticed the slim, white, unimposing volume surrounded by thick, colorful spines sporting their authors’ names in raised twenty-point font, but perhaps it was exactly this contrast that attracted my eye. After all, Tennessee Williams is a name that needs no glitzy cover to find its audience. The man is renowned as the author of plays such as “A Streetcar Named Desire”, “The Glass Menagerie”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, and “The Night of the Iguana”. To my surprise, that day in the fiction section I found that Tennessee Williams also wrote a collection of short stories called Tales of Desire (104 pages, $9.95).

Tales of Desire consists of five separate stories: “The Mysteries of the Joy Rio”, “One Arm”, “Desire and the Black Masseur”, “Hard Candy”, and “The Killer Chicken and the Closet Queen”. Each story explores the secret cravings of its male protagonist for the company of others of the male persuasion, yet the journey is always new. While the protagonists of “Mysteries” and “Hard Candy” eventually find themselves in the Joy Rio Theater, “Mysteries” deals with the sexual desire and loneliness of an aging watchmaker, while “Hard Candy” is purely about the lust of a retired merchant. Yes, both deal with lust, but Pablo Gonazles in “Mysteries” is attempting to replace his feelings for his dead love by seeking out brief encounters in the theater.

“One Arm” is the story of a man with a sordid past awaiting execution in a southern prison. Desire is something that others have always put upon him, and something which he exploited. In the end, he seeks comfort through physical contact. In the opposite corner, “The Killer Chicken” relates the story of a lawyer who has repressed his sexuality, pushed his desire so far down that he does not even recognize his yearnings when they emerge. Mr. Williams also sets up this story so that the protagonist’s repression of his sexuality results in the repression of his very identity, so that he mirrors his mother’s personality. Perhaps repression is just another word for hiding. In which case, the protagonist of “Killer Chicken” unconsciously hides behind the idea of his mother, throwing up road blocks between his illusion and reality.

In all the stories, desire is something secret to be fulfilled in dark corners; something that, as in “Desire and the Black Masseur”, goes hand-in-hand with shame. “Desire” follows Anthony Burns in his quest to cleanse himself of sin through torture. Burns feels that his desire has swallowed him whole, and he must atone for his sins at the hands of a black masseur that he meets at a Turkish bath. Tennessee Williams brings up an intriguing and somewhat frightening idea in this story. “The nature of man is full of such makeshift arrangements, devised by himself to cover his incompletion. He feels a part of himself to be like a missing wall or a room left unfurnished and he tries to as well as he can to make up for it. The use of imagination, resorting to dreams or the loftier purpose of art, is a mask he devises to cover his incompletion. Or violence such as war, between two men or among a number of nations, is also a blind and senseless compensation for that which is not yet formed in human nature. Then there is still another compensation. This one is found in the principle of atonement, the surrender of self to violent treatment by others with the idea of clearing one’s self of his guilt” (45). (I could have paraphrased, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to demonstrate Mr. William’s skill as a writer.) Mr. Williams, as an artist, is pointing out that art is a way of compensating for something the artist lacks. I wondered if it were true. If imagination compensates for what reality lacks, and art is an expression of the imagination, then the pursuit of art is the pursuit of compensation. Seems depressing, doesn’t it? What if the pursuit of art, greatness, scientific achievement, etc. were all just a cover? Do we indeed erect skyscrapers, declare war, and cure diseases because we feel incomplete? Our single-mindedness in certain areas of our lives means that we do not have to turn to see our failings. Perhaps. Then desire would be a craving of completion.

The commonality in the stories seems to be that a desire, once fulfilled, results in the death of its carrier, as though desire had filled the physical shell to the brim. The protagonists allow this desire to consume them until they are nothing without it, but it has already been established that this book is not just about sex. It is about the need to be one of two, instead of just one, even if it can only be for a brief moment. The feeling of desire is the connection to Earth. Physical contact allows the protagonists to reaffirm their sense of belonging to the human race since without it they drift like so much flotsam. Yes, the fulfillment results in death, but maybe the brief connection is worth the price.

Next Week: Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett

A Different Kind of Gospel

The so called lost years of Jesus’ life are the subject of Christopher Moore’s hilarious novel, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (437 pages, $13.95). Everyone knows the story of Jesus even if you don’t believe in him, but really we only know the birth story, preaching after thirty, and the crucifixion. So what happened in between? Christopher Moore attempts to give his own version of events, and the result is that Christ knew kung fu. No, really.

Ok, before I get into the plot and whatnot, I would like to point out that Mr. Moore does not actually think that the son of God knew martial arts. It’s a story. I found it in the fiction section, so put away your torches my darling readers. Those are for emergency use only.

The story opens with the angel Raziel being sent to earth to raise Levi who is called Biff, Christ’s best friend, and to put the poor guy to work writing a new gospel. Biff relates the history of his friendship with Joshua, a.k.a Jesus, beginning with the day the two met when they were six. Mr. Moore applies a human perspective to Joshua that makes him relatable, but that does not take away from his ultimate role on earth. Yes, Joshua’s birth is foretold by an angel, and yes, he is the son of God, but that does not mean he is born knowing how to be the Messiah. Actually, Joshua spends thirty years and three hundred pages trying to figure out how to save mankind. Mr. Moore paints a picture of a man full of humor and light, someone endeavoring to understand sin without participating, someone who loved the entire human race without exception, and someone put on earth with the seemingly impossible task of saving our sorry selves. That’s Jesus for you. And that’s where Biff comes in.

Joshua decides that in order to figure out how to become the Savior, he must leave to find the three wise men present at his birth, Balthasar, Gaspar, and Melchior. Biff, of course, goes with him. To Biff’s way of thinking, no one in their right mind would allow the Messiah, an innocent, to wander the known world by himself. Biff also comes in handy as Joshua attempts to understand sin without partaking. After all, how can he expect to preach against something he cannot comprehend? Many prostitutes later, Biff is hooked on sin, and Joshua continues to fulfill his destiny. Joshua and Biff travel from Nazareth to Kabul, from Kabul to China, and from China to India to visit the three wise men; each learning very different things in the same environment. Biff aquires skills such as poison-making, kung fu, and the Kama Sutra, while Joshua learns yoga, the Divine Spark, and Enlightenment. The journey itself is funny and touching, and not just because of who Biff is touching. Not funny, I know, but, like Joshua meeting the Untouchables in India, I am unable to talk about metaphorical touching with a straight face. You try it: say “heartwarming”, “self-discovery”, or “finding yourself” without feeling like a tool. It can’t be done, so Mr. Moore has artfully written a book on the aforementioned topics without actually saying any of them. Thank you.

While Biff adds his own brand of humor to the story, he is also the reader’s all-access pass to the Messiah. It is Biff’s perspective that furthers Joshua’s human side. Biff loves Joshua not just because he is the Messiah, but because he is also Biff’s best friend. Biff knows very well that if he chose to, he could aspire to Joshua’s level but that he has no hope of being the kind of person that Joshua is. Talk about living in someone else’s shadow. Even the woman Biff loves, Mary Magdalene, only loves Biff because she cannot have Joshua. If Jesus were around today, I doubt anything would be different in that particular area. Ideally, we should all strive to achieve the kind of perfection Jesus possessed. Realistically, we all know we can never achieve that kind of perfection, no matter how hard we try. The fact that being a Christian (or a good person in general) means a life of strife and struggle that offers no hope of reaching that ultimate level is depressing. The fact that we still choose to struggle is the definitive act of hopefulness. Lamb reminds us that knowing our own limitations should never stop us from trying to overcome them.

Mr. Moore also throws in little modern tidbits throughout Lamb, perhaps to make you stop and think. For instance, in China, Biff comes up with natural selection. My favorite, however, is the idea that the medium warps the message. Personally, I follow a pretty typical pattern: I was raised a Christian until I bailed out at sixteen. Now I have a hard time separating God from organized religion. I don’t often have the desire to go to church, mostly because, from my experience, the other churchgoers have identical smiles plastered on their faces like zombies. It’s creepy. I want religion without the creepiness. Just by saying that the medium bungles the message, Mr. Moore is able to find the words that I have been looking for to describe why organized religion repels me. Priests and kings have had two thousand years to distort Christ’s message, which is a heck of a head start. Not that Christopher Moore is saying that he is God’s mouthpiece or anything. Personally, I think Lamb just tries to remind people of a few good ideas: love each other, and be nice. Love should be the basis for all our interactions with other people. Also, Jesus dying for your sins means that it hurt. It was not like ordering coffee. That last comment was meant for those that believe, of course. To all those that don’t, Jesus was a nice guy who probably would have liked you anyway. Seriously, though, the Romans crucified a lot of people, and, as far as painful ways to die go, this one takes the cake.

In terms of how the story ends, and I cannot call this a spoiler, Joshua’s death is painful to read. The Bible relates his teachings and brief moments of his life, but Mr. Moore gives his readers a person, as much as the son of God can be considered a person. Readers of Lamb have almost four hundred pages to connect with Joshua before he is killed, which is four hundred pages of seeing Joshua’s personality and his love for humanity. His death is senseless, and Mr. Moore does an excellent job of making the loss of such a life feel real. Forget watching passion plays, just read Lamb.


Next Week: Tales of Desire by Tennessee Williams

Disappointing Demon

After reading a novel, have you ever turned to the back cover, read the rave reviews from reputable sources, and thought to yourself, “What were they reading?” I tried my best, I struggled through the book, analyzed my own reactions for fear of being too quick to judge another writer’s hard work, I even delayed my review by a day to allow the book time to marinate, all to no avail. I hate to write the sentence, but I did not like John Gardner’s Grendel (152 pages, $8.00). Don’t get me wrong, I picked the book up because I loved the concept of a story written from the perspective of Beowulf’s Grendel. I just did not like what I saw.

In terms of the protagonist, I found him to be too whiny to be relatable, and too senselessly violent to be sympathetic. I understand the idea that Grendel struggled with his identity--trying to come to terms with his given purpose--but Gardner’s execution of this resulted in an obnoxious character. Grendel, as a monster, does wrestle with his identity. He wonders what purpose he serves, and beats his fists at the universe for want of a direction. He is obsessed with humans, and Hrothgar in particular, right from the beginning, but cannot interact with them. Instead, he watches them progress from scattered hunters, to warring tribes, to warring tribes with better technology. He both envies and hates these humans, and his feelings of confusion lead him to visit a dragon. The dragon has the advantage of being able to see all time, and Grendel comes to him in hopes that the dragon will be able to give him answers. After a rather long-winded conversation, Grendel learns that his purpose is to drive the humans. Through his violence against Hrothgar’s people, Grendel reminds them of their mortality, and, in a way, stimulates their progress. Grendel bemoans this fact at first, and then embraces it with quite a lot of bone-crunching enthusiasm. His internal struggle becomes a war against Hrothgar and his people. Looking just at the themes, if the book were not so graphically violent, I would say that this would make a good addition to high school reading lists.

I think the graphic violence is where I start to disconnect from the novel. I suppose I should rephrase that. It’s not that graphic violence is present, it’s that there is so much senseless violence. For example, Grendel spots a mountain goat making its way toward Grendel’s territory. The goat obviously poses no threat. Huge monster with claws and teeth generally beats tiny mountain goat, horns or no horns. Grendel, completely aware of this, decides to stone the goat to death. He enjoys it, despite the fact that the poor goat keeps trying to struggle up the mountain no matter how severely injured he is, and Grendel takes his time killing something that could never hope to harm him. He doesn’t even eat the goat like he normally would. Now, I get it. The goat struggling up the mountain no matter how hard Grendel beats him represents the way the humans recover no matter how much Grendel raids the village. Grendel stoning the goat also comes after Mr. Gardner’s depiction of one of Grendel’s raids against Hrothgar’s people in which hero after hero attacked the beast despite the rising body count. Grendel’s need for violence and enjoyment of violence is ever present in the novel. Writing about a monster means displaying his brutality, but I was never one who could stomach brutality. For what it is, Mr. Gardner has done well, but I simply could not enjoy the novel.

On a side note, Mr. Gardner’s portrayal of Hrothgar’s people is an interesting illustration of a zero-sum game. In other words, a success for one tribe means a loss for another. At least, that is the way the humans view the situation. Hrothgar’s systematic conquering of the surrounding tribes is motivated on the surface by a desire to create solidarity and stop wars. Of course, the real aim is to keep enemies close. No tribe outside of Hrothgar’s is allowed any kind of success. Tribes bring various offerings so that the advantage of resources is all on Hrothgar’s side. Hrothgar attempts to maintain absolute control to ensure the survival of his own tribe. Despite the fact that the tribes are supposed to be allies, Hrothgar is murderously suspicious of any tribe that has resources he does not possess. The zero-sum game is a concept we can see in action every day. In foreign affairs, a country gaining control of a certain resource translates as a loss for other nations. Immigration translates as loss of labor for natives. In sports, we either win or we lose. It's Us versus Them. Mr. Gardner shows how the zero-sum game mentality limits Hrothgar’s tribe. They are consumed with paranoia and envy. Hrothgar cannot enjoy his success or prosperity because he must keep an eye on his allies.

I see literature as serving two functions: to entertain and to instruct. For me, Mr. Gardner’s book falls entirely in the latter category. As much as I love exploring ideas, I don’t think I will reread this one.

A Little Night Music

I would like to introduce (or reintroduce, as the case may be) readers to the best science fiction writer I have ever encountered: Ray Bradbury. You may remember him as the author of works such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and, my personal favorite, The Martian Chronicles. If not, I pity you, wonder what you have spent your time reading, and I might even look at you as though you had just offered to read me a few pages from Danielle Steel’s latest “novel”. I would then rap you on the head with a rolled up newspaper, and confine you to the “naughty corner”. But I digress.

A few weeks ago, I picked up a Ray Bradbury novel I never knew existed, and I have been hoarding it on my shelf until this week as though it were the last Snicker’s bar. It is called The Halloween Tree (145 pages, $5.50), and it is a book intended for young adults. I did not know this when I picked it up. First of all, I did not know Bradbury ever wrote anything for young adults. Second, I got it out of the science fiction section. The books for teenagers are on the other side of the store together with the Twilight paraphernalia, which I sprint past with haste lest sparkly vampires attempt to make me read any of the series. Again, I digress.

The point is, none of you should immediately run to your local bookstore (as you do after reading any of my reviews, right?) to buy a copy of The Halloween Tree, and then curse me for writing a review of a novel for adolescents. No cursing is needed because Bradbury is a brilliant writer with universal appeal. He is a writer that seems to completely immerse himself in his words; he plays with them as if utilizing them effectively was the easiest thing in the world. He is a master at weaving exquisite sentences that employ every sense without being crowded or pretentious, and you will never regret reading one of his works.

In The Halloween Tree, eight boys set out on Halloween night to save their friend, who has been kidnapped. The boys must travel through time to retrieve their friend with the help of Moundshroud, a tall, evil-looking man living in the neighborhood haunted house who promises them “No treats…Only- trick!” (21). The boys visit the time of the ancient Egyptians, the druids, the Romans, and on and on searching for their friend, Pipkin. In every time, they see traditions, rituals, and myths built around death. Bradbury explores traditions from other cultures and times to get to the heart of Halloween as it exists today. In the process of doing so, he introduces death as an all-powerful source of religion and culture. It's not a new storyline, but what is? Bradbury takes it apart and makes it new like a pro.

I particularly enjoyed the presentation of death as a beginning, not an end. The ancient Egyptians, for example, buried their dead with everything he or she could possibly need in the afterlife. The concept of an afterlife in itself implies a new beginning; we shed the material in favor of the spiritual. We don't know for sure whether or not the afterlife exists, and, unfortunately, it's one of those things that you just don't know until you get there. Even then, it's not like you can come back and reassure the rest of us. Bradbury notes how much of faith is due to the omnipresence of death, and I must confess that I had never thought of it quite that way before. I think it might be something we are all vaguely aware of, but Bradbury takes the idea and uses The Halloween Tree as a frame. He does so without judgement; he merely places it before his readers for their own perusal, and moves on. How to judge something like that about ourselves? Is it really wrong that some of our core beliefs involve death?Or was Novalis right in his Hymns to the Night when he said that our obsession with death limits our own lives? According to Bradbury, striving to be more self-aware and to understand our motivations is enough. It might have to be.