The purpose of a fairy tale

Found a link on BookSlut to an article in The Guardian by Neil Gaiman on writing fairy tales:

The book came out, first in illustrated and then in unillustrated form. There seemed to be a general consensus that it was the most inconsequential of my novels. Fantasy fans, for example, wanted it to be an epic, which it took enormous pleasure in not being. Shortly after it was published, I wound up defending it to a journalist who had loved my previous novel, Neverwhere, particularly its social allegories. He had turned Stardust upside down and shaken it, looking for social allegories, and found absolutely nothing of any good purpose.

"What's it for?" he had asked, which is not a question you expect to be asked when you write fiction for a living.

"It's a fairytale," I told him. "It's like an ice cream. It's to make you feel happy when you finish it."

I haven't read Stardust, but any book, described by it's author as 'like ice cream' is deliciously tempting. The entire article here.

How to spend the afternoon not reading either of two books you can't put down....

Thinking that I'd finish one book (Alan Bennett's wonderfully delightful novella, The Uncommon Reader) and then get back to Ian McEwan's Atonement which is just getting to the 'can't put down stage' as I know it's approaching the ugliness of humans bit that McEwan is so good at writing, I thought I'd let my college-age son drive back to school as I read. He had borrowed my car while I was on vacation.

Just a few miles onto the interstate, far enough to get past the city speed limits, he states:

I wouldn't have bought this car. There's a lot that I don't like about it. He proceeded with a long list of ridiculous issues that surely are more important to college-aged freshman males than they are to their mothers. Little 'issues' like the staid color navy blue, the crappy factory-installed stereo with no mp3 player, the lack of power seats, the funky day-glo indigo color of the dashboard lights (which I have to agree is weird but I didn't test drive it at night) or the ridiculous expense -- given their relative safety value -- of side-curtain air bags. This last comment, I'm sure, was a test to see if I was listening. It was only a lead-in for the next comment, one that was too good to have been sacrificed to a book:

But it does handle nicely on the road. Why, when I took a road trip to St Louis last weekend, I was amazed how you can get over 100mph before you even know it! The car doesn't even shake until you're way past that.

Good German engineering. I said, trying to mask a "Pull over this second! You're never driving one of my cars again! Ever!" tone of voice that was combined with a rising sense of panic as I noticed that we were sandwiched between two semis with little breathing space.

Silently, I cursed that my reading glasses didn't allow me to see the speedometer from the passenger side seat. Couldn't decide for the next 60 miles if reading was a distraction from the certainty of imminent highway disaster, or if it only made the quick glances from page to pavement more agonizing.

I'm grateful that Freshman aren't allowed vehicles on campus at Big 10 Engineering school with a train for its mascot. And I'm happy that it only took my dear son three days and two parking tickets to realize that having to move a car parked on city streets every day was more hassle than it was worth.

Back to work tomorrow and, sadly, back to reduced reading time. Ah! if only vacations could be the routine, and I could always spend my afternoons reading and my evenings taking pictures like this from boats at dock or at sea:

Challenging

I'm a failure at blog challenges. And I don't care that I am.

Last year, when I started blogging (and blogged regularly, unlike this year...but that's another post) I was intrigued about the idea of a 'challenge'. Just trying to read books instead of flat-lining in front of the tv each evening was a challenge to me, but I was curious about this idea of a group of bloggers reading a certain type of book. So I signed up for several challenges and group blogs.

And then failed to keep up with the required reading. Oh I had some 'good' excuses -- behaviors that should have been seen as likely to fail. Like deciding to read The Red and the Black -- in French! I had neglected to apply my weight rule of selecting books (a direct inverse relationship between the weight & portability of a book to the likelihood of my reading it) to the LaRousse's French-English Dictionary, a necessary accompaniment. Don't think I made it past page 50.

Or thinking that I'd read War & Peace, but wanting the paperback version of the Briggs translation not yet available in the US. I carried the copy I picked up in Waterstone's throughout England and then on to Italy. Had I traveled home 2 days later, I wouldn't have been able to bring it on the plane due to the terrorist threats, but it wouldn't have mattered in the long run -- I still haven't read it!

Or last year's RIP Challenge hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings. That was a challenge that I thought would be challenging since I don't read horror, Gothic novels or fantasy. I thought it would be good to 'stretch' my reading repertoire. I rushed out to the half-priced store and bought 7 books: Hawthorne's The Fall of the House of Usher, a collection of Poe's stories, James' The Turn of the Screw, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, the short stories of Washington Irving. Like in the original lyrics to The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle, I'll have to add '...and the rest' as I don't recall the last two and I'm not near my bookcases to confirm the titles.

I even wrote a post about "the other side" and my expectations for this foray into works of the creepy, crawly and spooky:

I once heard anxiety described as "fear stretched thin". Anxiety is fear's half-sibling, twilight to fear's night. It bears similar characteristics, a familial resemblance, a safer variety like a quickly moving stream that you think you can surely navigate although you know there is a slight possibility that you might slip and fall into the unswimable rapids. It is the feeling, rather than the knowledge, that fear is around the next bend of the road, on the other side, waiting for us to cross the center line.

I read Hawthorne's work for about 20 minutes or until I fell asleep, whichever came first. I started to re-read The Turn of the Screw and initially was surprised that I liked it. I had hated it when it was required reading in college course and have avoided James ever since (I've been told that is unfortunate, but I have yet to be convinced.) I loved reading Neverwhere and now wonder if I had already started it when I wrote the post I referenced above because I mentioned the Underground station. And one of the best short stories I read last year was Irving's The Devil and Tom Walker. I don't understand how I missed being given this wonderful story to read in school (though the portrayal of the shrewish wife is a bit politically incorrect, to say the least!)

But, participating in the challenge? I didn't post about one of them! The closest I came was a blog entry, saved in draft form, with the words in the body "Irving. Devil. Tom Walker & his shrewish wife" Obviously, my notes to myself served no purpose as I probably didn't read them again until today!

So, this year I've stayed away from reading challenges although many have tempted me, and some have even lead me to consider works I might not have considered otherwise. I easily could have participated in the Non-fiction Challenge, as I've read mostly non-fiction this year. At least I met the reading portion of the challenge, if not the blogging portion. And I've probably met at least a portion of the requirements for a few other challenges.

I started this post thinking I'd write about a book I just finished reading that is indirectly tied to last year's RIP challenge. If it hadn't been for Carl, I probably would not have picked up Coraline or anything else by Neil Gaiman. But this post became something other than I intended. And I'm loosing steam with my writing: it's closing in on the dinner hour and the beach is 10 feet from my doorstep and I think I need to go for a walk. So, maybe I'll write about Coraline another day. But, in case I don't, I'll write this: it's a fairy tale and a horror story, not just for kids despite it being marketed as such, and is a great way to pass any afternoon reading. I'd recommend it, whether for a reading challenge or not. It would probably be a great story to read to your children, especially during this season of the creepy, the crawly and the spooky.

On reading that Lessing has won the Nobel Prize

Doris Lessing is one of those writers of whom I always feel that I should have read more. I've only read one of her short stories and it instantly comes to mind when I hear her name.

Our Friend Judith is commonly anthologized. My first reading of it was in the text used for an Intro to Lit class I taught as a grad student. I had never read anything by Lessing at the time but I was not unfamiliar, if perplexed, with her reputation. In my undergraduate classes, she was praised by professors in Women's Studies classes, and merely mentioned by professors in Literature classes. "Oh yes, Lessing. Well, the feminists seem to like her a lot".

My first reading of the short story was, therefore, influenced by these comments. In retrospect, I'm not sure that I ever had a professor mention Lessing that had actually read her work. The syllabus was mandated; Our Friend Judith was for the unit discussing character and an unreliable narrator. It is a good story to teach these concepts.

Naive readers will state that the story is about nothing much, except for an old spinster who gets upset about a cat. When I was teaching this story (in the mid-80's), some students might state that the story is about a woman who is independent and her friends who are envious that she is. Some would have picked up on a 'feminist' twist to this story, perhaps because they had run to the library to read criticism in order to sound as if they knew what they were talking about. But few realized from the first reading that the story was more about the busybody narrator and her gossiping friend Betty than it was about Judith.

I reread this story the morning after reading that Lessing won the Nobel Prize. Twenty-odd years after reading it for the first time, I still like it and I am still admiring of the structure of this story. Maybe some day I'll read more of Lessing's work. Maybe it is similar to this brief story. Maybe then I'll understand if there is a reason --other than the blatant sexism of my 70's era Literature professors --for their comments.

If I Lived on this street....

.... I would have to smile every time I looked up at the building with these wonderful creatures:

But would I notice them every day? How many times have I walked by these and not noticed them? Do they tell me the true character of the building? Do they reveal or mask the likely lives of those that live in the building or those who pass by each day?

A few weeks ago I had a car service pick me up at the airport. It was the same service I use frequently. Yet, had I never used them before, my impression would have been that they weren't very good. The driver was late. He went to the wrong terminal. He complained. He drove without his seatbelt, the alarm buzzing seeming only to irritate me. It was the dirtiest limo I have ever been in. I told him to take the Queensboro to Westside Highway to Canal and the Holland Tunnel. He insisted he take the BQE to the Midtown Tunnel, across Midtown to the Lincoln. I rolled my eyes as we merged onto the BQE and I spied the worse mid-morning traffic jam I'd ever seen in New York.

But, he did know to get off the expressway and take city streets to get me to my destination on time. I saw a part of Queens I probably never would have been in. "What a different city than Manhattan" I thought. Later, after I arrived at my meeting (on time!) I marveled at his bizarre brilliance in taking a most unlikely route: through several sidestreets in Queens to 59th Street Bridge (for all of you readers over 45 who remember the tune....hum a few bars of the Simon & Garfunkle song and feel groovy), north a few blocks, then east to FDR, past drab Lower East side buildings and past the skyscrapers in the Financial District, south to the very end of Lower Manhattan, through funky Tribeca, and then north on West Side Highway.....to Canal and the Holland. The quickest LAG to NJ trip I've ever made! Sometimes the quickest route is not a straight line between two points.

So what do apartment-building statues that look like the offspring of gargoyles on the Gothic-styled cathedral around the corner, an old song from the 60's, and a dirty car/effective driver have to do with anything other than they all made me smile in a small way on the same day? And what does this have to do with books? (Yes, books... this is a quasi-book blog so this lazy blogger should talk about them sometime!) Well, they all seemed to fit with the book I was reading the same week -- Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

One gives nothing away to say that Invisible Cities is about Marco Polo explaining cities he has visited to Kubla Kahn. And one doesn't divulge a plot spoiler by saying that all of the cities described are the same place. Kubla Kahn knows Marco's deceit, and he plays along with the game, even describing his own cities, pointing out the obvious features that Marco has overlooked. It doesn't even matter that the city is Venice -- Venice, Italy, or Venice, California, or Venice, Florida, or some Venice that only exists in your mind. Or that it is in the 11th century, or the 16th, or some century yet to come.

The chapter titles bemuse and bewilder: "Cities and Memory", "Cities and Desire", "Cities and Signs". "Thin Cities". "Trading Cities". "Cities and Names". "Cities and Eyes". "Cities and the Dead". "Cities and the Sky". "Hidden cities". "Continuous cities" . . . . All describe a city that once existed, or never existed, or exists now and will exist in the future.

I can't tell you any more about the book without it sounding like a dry compendium of cities and their social ills. I can only tell you that it is a truthful description of a place that is familiar and people you know even if you've never met them. I can only tell you that it should bring a smile to your face or a tear to your eye. It might make you think that you'll pay closer attention to your city the next time you take a walk, or drive, or hurry somewhere. It might make you look for the city that was and the city that is and the city that might be, if only on maps in your imagination.

Of Islands and Oranges

My job took me to this island, the island of the City Like No Other, many times over the last 6 months:

As much as I love New York, I was more than ready to spend some time on a different type of island:

When I logged into Blogger this morning, I was surprised to realize just how long it had been since I posted to this blog. I composed dozens of vignettes this summer, mentally thought of writing about different scenes, sights, sounds and smells in NYC, but few have made it to paper and none have been posted here. Perhaps they will be posted in the future.

For now, I'm enjoying my time at the beach, listening to the surf pound, the birds squawk, and the occasional squeal with delight as the waves break around a child's ankles; feeling the warmth of the sun absorbed by the sand as I walk at the shoreline, watching the coral and pink skies at sunset, eating fresh seafood, drinking fresh squeezed orange juice, and -- what else? -- reading!

On impulse the other day, I picked up a copy of John McPhee's Oranges. How many books can you think of that are categorized as both 'Food' and 'Literature', as this one is?

Oranges is a thoroughly delightful work of non-fiction that seemingly describes all there is to know about the luscious orange (at least at the time it was published in 1967): where they came from and how the introduction around the globe of this succulent, sweet fruit has followed the courses of history; how oranges have inspired poetry and wars and been used as religious symbols in art and influenced architecture (think orangeries); how they have have been coveted as objects of beauty; how crop failures due to insects and freezing weather have wrecked havoc on the economy of towns; how the engineering inventions to make concentrated orange juice almost destroyed the market for the fresh fruit, and how an adequate mechanical means for harvesting had yet to be invented. After finishing the book this afternoon, I read a bit on the web on oranges. Consumption of oranges has decreased in the last few years. The acreage of orange groves has decreased since McPhee wrote his book 40 years ago although the number of trees and yields per acre have increased. Brazil -- the originating place of the navel orange -- is now the leader in orange exports, exporting almost twice as many as the US. But, apparently, oranges are still hand-picked in the field, a difficult task described by McPhee when he profiled the 'Orange Men' of the Florida groves.

One curiosity spawned by this book is the origin of the word orange. McPhee writes about the origin of the English word, evolving from the Sanskrit, then likely, after many linguistic transformations, being confused with the Provencal place name for the town that eventually became known as 'Orange'. In many parts of the world, there are two words for oranges, differentiating between sour oranges (like the blood oranges of Seville that are so delicious in marmalade) and sweet oranges. Sweet oranges in many languages are known as "portugals" because they were developed in that country. But -- and this is my curiosity -- what about the derivations of the word for the color orange? The fruit can be a range of colors. The word orange to represent the color wasn't used until the mid-1500's. In Thailand, oranges are as green as limes. Yet, the Thai word sohm is used for both the fruit and the color.

Did Western Europeans have a word for the color orange before oranges were brought to Spain by the Arabs in the 12th century? Or did they need to invent a word for the color of the fruit that grew in the luxurious gardens of the Alhambra? Apricot, bittersweet, coral, peach, red-yellow, salmon, tangerine, titian are all listed as synonyms for the color orange. Three of them, interestingly, are names for other types of fruit. In some languages (e.g., Dutch, German, Russian) the word for orange has a similar origin to the word for apple, as oranges were once called 'Chinese apples' by the Romans. As different as apples and oranges: whether fruit or hue, they are very different things on my mental map.

I started to read McPhee's In Suspect Terrain about 15 or 20 years ago. I never finished the book, although sometimes, when I travel through northern Indiana and southern Michigan, I think about the theoretical existence of undiscovered deposits of diamond pipes under the Great Lakes that I learned about from McPhee's book. After reading Oranges I think that I will read other books by McPhee. Looking to read "Literary" nonfiction? McPhee would be a good choice.