PLANET BOOK GROUPIE

Translations

 I confess that I am on of the people who had never heard of Jean-Marie GustaveLe Clézio, the winner of this year's Nobel literature prize. In order to make up for my ignorance I am reading his book WANDERING STAR: a novel.

A partial list of books, translated into English, by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio:

"The Interrogation" (1964)

"Fever" (1966)

"The Flood" (1967)

"Terra Amata" (1969)

"The Book of Flights: An Adventure Story" (1971)

"War" (1973)

"The Giants" (1975)

"The Mexican Dream, or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations" (1993)

"The Prospector" (1993)

"Onitsha" (1997)

"The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts" (2002)

"Wandering Star: A Novel" (2004)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/382590_nobelliterature10.html

Thought you all might be interested in the article in today's Arts section of the New York Times.

October 18, 2008

Translation Is Foreign to U.S. Publishers

By MOTOKO RICH

FRANKFURT — David R. Godine, a small independent publisher from Boston, sat down at a French publisher’s booth here at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the annual gathering of the international literary world. “O.K., what’s great?” he asked.

Mr. Godine — who emerged prescient and lucky this month when one of the authors he publishes in translation, the French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, won the Nobel Prize in Literature — is one of a handful of American publishers who regularly seek out books to translate during the fair every year.

It is a commonly held assumption that Americans don’t like to read authors who write in languages they don’t understand. That belief persists here in Frankfurt, where publishers from 100 countries show off a smorgasbord of their best — or at least best-selling — books.

By and large, the American publishers spend most of the week in Hall 8, the enormous exhibit space where English-language publishers hold court.

Although there are exceptions among the big publishing houses, the editors from the United States are generally more likely to bid on other hyped American or British titles than to look for new literature in the international halls.

According to Chad W. Post, the director of Open Letter, a new press based at the University of Rochester that focuses exclusively on books in translation, 330 works of foreign literature — or a little more than 2 percent of the estimated total of 15,000 titles released — have been published in the United States so far this year.

That apparent dearth of literature in translation in the United States was the subject of controversial remarks by Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, the organization that awards the Nobel Prize, a week before the prize did not go to an American.

“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular,” Mr. Engdahl said in an interview with The Associated Press. “They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”

It is left mostly to small publishers like Mr. Godine, who hustled through the vast halls, getting lost among the Eastern European booths on his way to an Italian publisher, to scavenge for hidden treasures outside the United States.

On Wednesday, when Mr. Godine met with Anne Bouteloup, the director of foreign rights at the children’s imprint of Gallimard, Mr. Le Clézio’s French publisher, Ms. Bouteloup showed him “Voyage au Pays des Arbres” (“Journey to the Country of Trees”) a children’s book by the newest Nobel laureate.

Mr. Godine flipped through the small book. “We probably should do it,” he murmured. He slipped his business card behind the front cover to remind Ms. Bouteloup that he was interested.

About 10 to 15 percent of Mr. Godine’s list is composed of books in translation, many of which he hears about at the fair each year.

Mr. Godine, who has been running his publishing house for 38 years, said he published foreign authors because it gave his tiny press literary credibility. But he said there was also a basic economic reason.

“When you look at how much is paid for a mediocre midlist author” in the United States, he said, “and how much you have to pay to get a world-class author who has been translated into 18 languages, it is ridiculous that more people don’t invest in buying great literature.” Mr. Godine said he had purchased the rights to a foreign book for as little as $2,000.

Fiona McCrae, director and publisher of Graywolf Press, a nonprofit publisher based in St. Paul that has had a breakout best seller with “Out Stealing Horses,” a novel by Per Petterson of Norway, said that small publishers could not afford to buy books by the best authors in the United States but that they often could acquire works from top authors if they looked abroad.

“Philip Roth is not going to suddenly be published by Graywolf,” Ms. McCrae said after meeting with an agent from Barcelona who pitched several Spanish titles to her. “So you see who is the Philip Roth of Italy or who is an interesting writer out of Sweden.” Ms. McCrae also noted that Graywolf is supported by foundation grants specifically aimed at publishing foreign titles.

To help spur more translations, government-sponsored cultural agencies in Europe and elsewhere subsidize — or fully cover — the cost of translating books into English.

At a meeting on Wednesday morning with the Flemish Literary Fund, Jill Schoolman, the publisher and editor in chief of Archipelago Books, a nonprofit Brooklyn publisher of works in translation, discussed her plans to bring out “Wonder,” a novel by Hugo Claus, a Belgian writer who was frequently discussed as a Nobel contender before he died by euthanasia earlier this year.

Greet Ramael, the prose grants manager at the Flemish fund, handed her an application for translation reimbursement for Mr. Claus’s novel.

“The translation costs are often a deterrent or a reason not to translate a book,” Ms. Ramael said.

Some of the larger American publishers said monolingual editors fear making risky buying decisions based on short translated excerpts.

“It is hard enough to publish a book when you have read the whole thing and know you love it,” said Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown, as he sat in his company’s booth waiting for his next appointment.

There is also the oft-repeated American maxim that books in translation don’t sell.

Anne-Solange Noble, the foreign-rights director at Gallimard in France, said American publishers did not support translated books with marketing budgets and then complained when sales failed to dazzle.

Ms. Noble said she was amused — but also appeared irritated — when she recounted running into an American publisher who, on the first night of the fair, described Mr. Le Clézio as “an unknown writer.”

“American publishers are depriving the American readership of the cultural diversity through translation to which they are entitled,” Ms. Noble said. “It is what I call the poverty of the rich.”

Ms. Noble said she was not commenting on the quality of American writers, many of whom — Philip Roth and Claire Messud among them — are published by Gallimard in French and whose photos were prominently displayed in the booth.

American publishers devoted to translating say there is no shortage of gems. On Thursday Mr. Post of Open Letter eagerly plunged into one of the international halls, plucking brochures of translated English excerpts from stands hosted by cultural agencies from Croatia, Latvia, Poland, China and Korea.

Frankfurt, he said, is about renewing contacts with people whose judgment he trusts and who can help him winnow the hundreds of titles he hears about here and elsewhere.

For his part, Mr. Godine said Frankfurt helped him discover, among many others, the Nobel-winning Mr. Le Clézio. “Even a blind squirrel eventually finds a nut,” he said.

 

We have been busy

Please forgive our lack of attention to this blog. We have all been busy. Terri is working and getting her Masters in Science Education; Jenny has married Dennis and is buying an apartment; I have been leading my writing workshops, book groups, trying to keep Planetbookgroupie.com up to date, and firing off emails in support of Obama.

If any of you would like to post an entry on this blog, please send it to planetbookgroupie@gmai.com.

The following is an article I wrote about a book discussion of SAMIRA AND SAMIR by Siba Shakib for my local paper:

We have been talking about forty-five minutes. I remind the group, “Several of you said you can’t accept the way the author chose to end the book. Do you want to talk about that?”

 

But the group isn’t ready to talk about the ending yet. They have more to say about the story. They take the lead, as they should. I am here to guide, to provoke.

 

The book is Samira and Samir by Siba Shakib, the setting the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan.. A first child is born to the tribal commander and his wife. The child is female but if her gender were revealed to the tribal members, the commander would lose face and his position. Although disappointed, the commander allows his  daughter  to live and in turn his wife agrees to raise the girl, Samira, as a boy, Samir. The book, a page-turner is about nomads who spend the summer in the Hindu Kush, the winter in the south.

 

“ When I was reading the book, I kept having to remind myself that it’s set in the 21^st century,” commented a woman sitting in the rocking chair, “the people’s lives are so primitive, and then there’s talk of the Americans and the Taliban…”

 

“Their lives may seem primitive to us,” counters another woman,” but I don’t think  the mines that blow the legs off the children and the grandfather are a sign of civilization.”

 

“It’s like a time warp when you see pictures of American soldiers on television watching the nomads on horses coming through a narrow mountain pass.”

 

A hesitant question comes from the person to the left of me. ”Do you suppose when Samir and Bashir are trading guns in the village,  they know whether they’re in Pakistan or Afghanistan?”

 

Still standing, a late-comer responds,” What does the border matter to them? Those tribes have been going up to the Hindu Kush in the summer and down to the South in the winter before the British set the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan. “

 

“Let’s get back to the book,” I suggest gently. “Earlier someone said Samira is the only strong character in the book . Does everyone agree?”

 

“Well, she is a star,” an athletic young woman says, “ She can ride like the wind, she‘s good at making friends, and she’s smart enough to outwit the village shop owners. She even wins at buzkashi, she’d be a winner anywhere. By the way I love it when Samir’s mother tells the commander that maybe some of the warriors he’s fought were really women. He’s …”

 

A voice from the other side of the sun-filled room interrupts, “ You’re right, the mother is a terrific character.. Samira would never have survived if her mother hadn’t been clever enough to  bring the commander around. The book is filled with strong women. “

 

Heads nod in agreement and on we go. Someone comments on the simple but poetic language.

 

The end of the discussion is drawing near. “OK .let’s get back to the ending.” I summarize the choice Samira faces.

 

Should she continue her life as Samir, a warrior, a commander? Should she go into battle against the Taliban or a neighboring  tribe? Fighting and killing is a tribesman’s life even when he doesn’t know what he is fighting about. Her other choice is to become Samira, teach in the little mountain school, marry Bashir, a friend whom she loves, a friend who has discovered her gender?  There would be no more buzkashi, nor more riding horses with wild abandon.

 

Were this story a fairy tale, either choice would be possible, but this is no fairy tale. According the author, the story is  based on the life of a real woman.

 

(Warning: if you are going to read this book and don’t want to know the ending, read no farther because I intend to disclose the ending.)

 

Samira knows there is a world outside winter in the south and summer in the Hindu Kush. She has had some education in a mountain school and can read. She has seen the silver birds that fly high over the mountains and knows that people fly these birds.  The author makes Samara’s choice for her. She decides to leave her home, her tribe, her mother, (her father has died in battle) and Bashir whom she has just married.

 

“No, she wouldn’t do that, ” say several  people.

 

“Of course she’d go, how can she stay?” asks someone across the room. “If she reveals she’s a woman, she’ll be stoned along with her mother. “

 

“She wouldn’t go. What would she do? Where would she go?” People are talking at the same time. Of course, no one is right, no one is wrong. Maybe there’s another way to look at the choice the author has made for Samira.

 

“Let’s just suppose, “ I suggest, “that sitting in this room, instead of us, are our grandparents or our great grandparents. Suppose  I were to ask them whether it was possible for Samira to leave her life with the tribe and find another one in a new country.” The room was quiet. I added, “ What do you suppose they might say?”

 

No one spoke for a moment and then a torrent of responses

 

“My grandmother was 13 and came here alone on the ship.”

 

“During the gold rush, my father went on a wagon train to California. He was only 15."

 

“ My mother traveled from Russia all the way to Hamburg to get the ship to America..”

 

Suddenly  the reader’s point of view and experience emerge as a factor in what we think about Samira’s choice. In previous sessions we have talked about the importance of  a character’s point of view, but never that of the reader. We connect our grandparents experience with Samira’s and we understand.

 

For the moment we are walking in Samira’s shoes in a country we read about every day in the newspapers but can only imagine. It’s doubtful that any of us will  meet a nomad from Afghanistan. Even more unlikely is that we will meet a young woman who was raised as a boy. Samira and Samir is just a book, letters on paper, but we are a bit different for having read it and shared our thoughts.

 

 

Samira and Samir is available at http://www.bookcloseouts.com/

 

 

"I'm In"

by Jenny

“I’m in,” in ER–speak refers to getting an air tube in the trachea of one of the many patients at NBC's fictional County General Hospital.

Besides George Clooney and Julianna Margulies’s sexy, tortured relationship on ER, those words are what have stayed with me from my three-year affair with early ER. I know, I’m merely one of millions of viewers, but Thursday nights were unusual in that I took the effort to pull my tiny TV out of my closet and perform minor acrobatic feats with the wires to get rid of the TV snow (as opposed to the Chicago snow of the show) that were part of my non-cable plan.

While I hope to never have to utter such words as “I’m in,” after performing said procedure, I always think of them when starting a new book. The “I’m in” refers to the moment when I’m no longer swimming along the surface of the book, but have taken the plunge and am now effortlessly submerged in the author’s world. I’m committed and no longer pushing myself, but being buoyed by story and characters and writing. It doesn’t always happen. And I’m not patient. If I know nothing about a book, I’ll give it forty pages until I feel that wonderful pull to keep moving forward. If someone I trust has told me it’s a must-read, I’ll give it one hundred.

I know many readers feel they must finish whatever they start—thank goodness I’ve never felt this way. Just as with attending clown camp, working as a cashier, and majoring in Russian, I’ll quit if it’s not for me or I just don’t like it. No doubt there are a bunch of books that had I given them more than the allotted forty pages I would have found worthwhile, but there are too many wonderful acquaintances to make to spend time with an unsatisfactory companion. Indeed there are no guarantees when deciding to call it quits with a book that the next one will be that new friend with whom you connect immediately. But as my grandmother told my mom after she had suffered a breakup and was asked out on a date, “Go out, you might meet someone.”

The Gathering

My three book groups had interesting and varied conversations about THE GATHERING. Some people disliked the book. "It was too dark." I expected to hear that. Many of the reviewers reported that the darkness was a complaint voiced by readers. "The protagonist is a whiner. She should get on with her life. Why does she hate her husband so much?"

The unexpected comment, voiced by several readers was, " She drove me crazy. She told a long story and then said,' Oh, that probably didn't happen at all.'" A few people found it puzzling that Enright's book won the Booker and a favorite of theirs, THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST didn't.

A few people loved THE GATHERING, the writing, the unpeeling of the onion, the uncertainty of memory. One thrapist particularly found it rewarding reading.

In spite of the unpopularity of Enright's book in the groups, the conversations were stimulating, particularly in one group. What do we remember? Has it always happened the way we remember it? Did we have recurrent dreams etching a false memory in our brains? Did someone tell us a story that became part of our memory? On and on, the conversation went. Did we ever imagine how our grandparents met, allowing an overheard conversation to serve as a sprouted seed for our own beanstalk?

When something hideous happems in our childhood, do we try and file it under trash and forget it? Later, when we are adults, looking for the reason for a tragedy, resurrect the memory. but not the memory exactly right? And so we talked, beginning to recognize how the protagnist worked her way towards an acceptance of her loss, both of her brother and the exactitude of her memories. Some people liked the discussion but remained negative about the book.

Enright's fist paragraph tells us exactly what she is going to tell us, but as we read the book, we don't remember  what she has said is her goal. She tries things out on us and we buy in, then she says maybe she's wrong..and we are frustrated. We want to trust the memory she doesn't trust. She isn't lying to us but some readers feel she is playing with our minds. She is as dependable a narrator as most writers or readers are. In fact, perhaps she is more dependable because she tells us of the possibility of her misremembering. We don't want to believe that she remembers wrong..perhaps that is the human condition..then do we trust our memories?

I asked the group, "Whyis the entire book written in from Veronica's point of view with the exception of a chapter towards the end, which is written from her grandmother's point of view. Enright is such a careful writer, it;s hard to believe the choice didn't have good reason.

The writer's choice is not something we often think about when we read a book. The book is published, respected or disrespected, but it is complete. It exists. To think that the writer had other choices threatens the idea of a completed book. Writers know that there are always choices to make. Do they tell the book in the present tense. From whose point of view? In first person or third? The choices continue.

Across the Universe

I feel like I've been globe-trotting lately. Literarily, I've been to Japan, India and Southeast Asia, Ireland, Spain, the Dominican Republic and Paterson, New Jersey. Those trips left me energized, quite unlike an actual trip to Arizona, from which I'm still recovering. Oh well, it was nice to be warm while reading.

Last I posted, I was diving into Kawabata's SNOW COUNTRY. I surfaced from that dive a bit frostbitten. OK, so I'm a warm-weather woman. Here's my bald impression: Kawabata's writing style reminds me of those long-ago college parties where you get that out-of-body, jittery sensation after drinking the punch. I don't know, it felt very Felliniesque, like circus jugglers could drift into the dining room at any moment and the characters wouldn't bat an eye. Or am I thinking of Bergman? In any case, the protagonist is steeped in what I imagine is a particularly Japanese ennui, living an empty life and pursuing his own selfish interests in his association with the country geisha, who in turn is living her own version of hell and deteriorating precipitously. Into the mix drift in and out the circus jugglers in the character of Yoko, the beautiful (so, of course, doomed) younger geisha. So what is my problem? Sounds like a recipe for a great story. It is a great story, but I found some of the dialogue weird, disjointed. It seems like one character will say something, and the other will respond with a declarative statement having no bearing on what the first guy said.  I'm sure this is purposeful, the characters are clearly unable to make a meaningful human connection, but I found it hard to read as prose. So I'm going to read it again.

Junot Diaz's short story "Wildwood", published in The New Yorker last June, was a treat that I found easier to relate to, though I'm not Dominican, nor have I ever lived in Paterson, NJ, nor had I ever really run away from home as a teenager. I insisted that my mother read it, and when she was done she asked why I found the story so compelling. I don't know, something about this resonates with me: "If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.  You don't know the hold our mothers have on us, even the ones that are never around - especially the ones that  are never around.  What it's like to be the perfect Dominican daughter, which is just a nice way of saying a perfect Dominican slave. You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said anything that wasn't negative, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams." Woops! That's not the part that resonates, here's the part that resonates: "Just know that I would die for you," she told me the last time we talked. And before I could say anything she hung up.

OLD FILTH, by Jane Gardam, is my newest favorite book. I'm a complete sucker for gorgeous writing. This book is a rose, brilliant as it unfolds petal by petal, so enthralling that when the inevitable thorn draws blood all the reader can do is suck on it and admire the beauty of such exquisite pain. I also adore learning something, and while I was somewhat familiar with the British Raj, the term "Raj orphans" was new for me, and knowing a little about those children of the Empire satisfies a curiosity about things not of my time nor of my world. It's fascinating history brought 'round to the contemporary with an ageless theme - children will grow up, and abandonment will dictate a fractious outcome, even as the casual observer (and we all observe the lives of others casually) sees only a seamless facade. Beautifully wrought by a talented author.

My literary travels include Ireland via Anne Enright's THE GATHERING, a dark, brooding, turbulent tale, and Spain courtesy of Tariq Ali's SHADOWS OF THE POMEGRANATE TREE, another fascinating historical novel about the reconquest of Muslim Spain. The books couldn't be more different, and both are well worth reading. Wish I could expound forever, but I'm feeling a bit travel weary. Time to go home.

Terri

planetbookgroupie.com is online!

Harriet

I am grateful to Omar who created the website for me  and told me about the Adobe Contribute program which allows me to edit the site myself.

Today I finished the Books We've Read page on the website. Now I face the daunting task of working on the About the Books page. Fortunately, i have a secret weapon, the Contribute program..

Last week I read A PIGEON AND THE BOY, by Meir Shalev, a  beautiful book, and an excellent translation. I had reserved the book at the library because of a review I read, but I never expected the treat I would find in Shalev's pages, two beautiful stories, about love and home and much more.

About 10 of my reader friends have read it at my suggestion and each loved it. Some have already bought copies as gifts for their friends. Perhaps there is the beginning of a "word of mouth" event happening because I see that 13 of the 16 copies in  the Westchester Library System are out.

Another good sign is that two people who read Shalev's book have included it as a selection for their book groups. It's still in hard cover, but  buy it anyhow. You'll want to loan it to your friends so you can talk to them about it. I will definitely use it in the book groups I lead. It's unusual for me to hawk a book this way but I am afraid the book won't get a wide audiences and that would be a sadness.

After I read the "Pigeon book, I looked for Shhalev's first book, THE BLUE MOUNTAIN. published in 1991. There were only a few copies in the Library System, and they were out.I looked on the web for one I could buy and only a few used ones were available It looks as if it's out of print which is too bad. Perhaps if the new book does well, THE BLUE MOUNTAIN will be reprinted.

By the way, Shalev will be part of a program at the 92nd Street Y, the evening of March 24th.

Another good book I read is BETWEEN TWO SEAS by Abate, an Italian writer, also a good translation. Try it out.

I'm so pleased that Terri and Jenny have written on this blog. I will keep looking for books and tell you about the good ones I find. Please make comments on the blog. They can be as long as you want.

That's it for tonight. It's late, I have a horrible cough and  as you might guess, there's a book waiting for me up on my night table. Night, Harriet

“An Island off the Coast of the United States”
Jenny 3/3

My first confession: The book I want to tell you about isn’t a translation. It’s not written by someone with a culturally/ethnically different (from mine, I mean) background. In fact it’s written by a white guy who used to be a lawyer.

My second confession: I haven’t finished the book yet. I’m only on page 178 of its 300 pages.

My third and final confession: It doesn’t take place somewhere unusual, well, to me, anyway. It’s a
“New York-y” book—takes place in Manhattan, casually mentions the No. 6 train, established restaurants, and characterizations that seem purely New York. But since the late (and missed) Spalding Gray once said that he likes to think of Manhattan “as an island off the coast of the United States,” I pose this, my first blog, as a book that SHOULD be translated into other languages or at least read in English in parts of the country that still fears and feels no connection to New York City.

MAYNARD AND JENNICA by Rudolph Delson is told in thirty-five different voices (with sound effects from cicadas, frogs, crickets and an emergency brake on the aforementioned No. 6 train) all somehow connected to our hero and heroine’s stories. The cast of characters ranges from Jennica’s family to rambunctious kids on a subway car to long-dead relatives of Maynard’s.

The overall effect is of a group of people at a cocktail party, in a lovely but too small room, all trying to give their take on our protagonists, Maynard and Jennica. Much of the book is told in M and J’s voices. They are both eccentrics; Maynard, the outward odd duck and Jennica seemingly conventional but sporting a variety of neuroses. Theirs is a love story of two difficult people finding each other in the vibrant and complicated city. I find myself smiling and occasionally laughing aloud at their foibles, observations, and tiny triumphs over the odds of finding love.

I’m now in the midst of M and J’s reactions to the September 11 attacks on the towers and while the love story remains the focus, the tone of the book has darkened some. Maynard, a native New Yorker, in response to the county’s refrain of “We are all New Yorkers now” freaks out:

“You rubes—you have always coveted citizenship to the capital, and it was denied to you because you were weak. The price of being a New Yorker? You couldn’t afford it. You couldn’t afford—the exuberant vermin; the feral addicts; the mindless thugs; the cosmic filth; the ceaseless noise; the heedless noise; the butchering rents; the roads, the public works, the libraries, rusted and stained and stricken with consumption; the parks, rank and unweeded; the friends who give up and move to San Francisco or San Diego; the usurious whims of fashion; the insults; the decades of bad coffee; the decades of bad plumbing; the appalling poor, wailing at you on the subway; the appalling wealthy, kneeing you in the shops; the blasphemous demolition, year by year, of everything you love; the recidivism of the public schools; the rapacity of the taxes; the spite of the blue laws; the indignity! Or—the dignity! Not a one of you can afford the emotional tax of not being as discriminating or worldly as your neighbors! You failures couldn’t last here a week!”

And while Maynard’s polemic stinks of superiority and condescension, there is a tiny part of me that fesses up to feeling this pride in choosing and loving living in this ever so difficult city. I wonder how many of us, worldwide, identify strongly with the place, town, city, state, province, territory, or whatever, we live and whether Planetbookgroupie might be a place to look at books that open and explore those places and the differences and more important similarities that we all share.

Check out MAYNARD AND JENNICA, it may make you smile and possibly check on how much rentals are on the Upper West Side.

Terri's Blog Debut

I've chosen what I'm sure will turn out to be the most beautiful day of the winter to make my blog debut - it's probably close to 60 degrees in New York. Oh, well, every February I resign myself to it being February and try to ignore it with a swift turn of the deadbolt. I'm already committed to being a shut-in this month anyway and I can think of no better way to spend the afternoon than talking about books.

FEAR OF STONES, a collection of short stories by Kei Miller, was a welcome escape to a warmer clime, though much of the subject matter is not of the feel-good variety. Fine with me, Hollywood pap will fill to overflowing any need for an improbably happy ending if that's what I'm looking for, which generally I'm not. Give me something real over emotional masturbation any day. FEAR OF STONES delivers. Miller's book gives us the smells and flavors of Jamaica - it's people, culture, cadences, mores, history - while sketching out the struggles of ordinary people wrestling with big and universal themes like love, identity, religion, spirituality, abandonment and disenfranchisement. The stories are bitingly witty, some are laugh-out-loud funny, and most have a hard nugget of heartrending truth at their core. But what makes FEAR OF STONES so compelling is Miller's deft and beautiful use of the English language - he arranges words like a florist and the result is a poetic bouquet of gorgeous description. At the Soho reading that Harriet and I attended in November Miller told us that the words have to want to jump off the page and be alive for him to feel that a story is ready. Get a load of this, from "Read Out Sunday:"

"But some people just too wretched and cannot be saved no matter what. Either that, or they too simple minded. Because now that Sue found out sinners could be forgiven, and virginity could be restored, she proceeded to lose hers every Saturday night and restore it every Sunday morning. After all, the things Sue enjoyed most in life were church and sex, but until now she had felt she could never really have them both. Well, now she could and did, screaming in pleasure one night, and bawling in repentance the next morning."

This story must have screamed "I'm ready!" at him.

I just finished reading another beautifully written book -FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE  by the Irish author Niall Williams. Again, the writing is gorgeous, poetic, very Irish. Sometimes I felt carried away by the evocative language - it's quite dense and reticulated, like a hardcore jazz riff, but I like hardcore jazz and the story itself is substantial enough that it brought me back around to it.The story is by no means beside the point. The idea that the threads of the events in our lives are the fabric of a larger picture, that no matter what we do or don't do, life will work itself out the way it's supposed to, kind of appeals to the fatalist in me. Good story.

On Harriet's recommendation, I'm starting on a classic which I've never read before - SNOW COUNTRY, by Yasunari Kawabata. I'm off to Japan for a while...

It's Wednesday

I was trying to catch up on some old NEW YORKERs I never read and came across a wonderful Louise Gluck poem. Just in case any of you missed it, here it is. I can't seem to get it spaced as printed in the magazine. The stanzas should be single spaced. Nevertheless, the poem still works for me. Hope it does for you.

Marriage

by Louise Glück New Yorker October 22, 2007

All week they’ve been by the sea again

and the sound of the sea colors everything.

Blue sky fills the window.

But the only sound is the sound of the waves pounding the shore—

angry. Angry at something. Whatever it is

must be why he’s turned away. Angry, though he’d never hit her,

never say a word, probably.

So it’s up to her to get the answer some other way,

from the sea, maybe, or the gray clouds suddenly

rising above it. The smell of the sea is in the sheets,

the smell of sun and wind, the hotel smell, fresh and sweet

because they’re changed every day.

He never uses words. Words, for him, are for making arrangements,

for doing business. Never for anger, never for tenderness.

She strokes his back. She puts her face up against it,

even though it’s like putting your face against a wall.

And the silence between them is ancient: it says

these are the boundaries.

He isn’t sleeping, not even pretending to sleep.

His breathing’s not regular: he breathes in with reluctance;

he doesn’t want to commit himself to being alive.

And he breathes out fast, like a king banishing a servant.

Beneath the silence, the sound of the sea,

the sea’s violence spreading everywhere, not finished, not finished,

his breath driving the waves—

But she knows who she is and she knows what she wants.

As long as that’s true, something so natural can’t hurt her.

************************************************************

I have found someone to do the Web site and I hope it won't be too long before it's up. Meanwhile, in case your groups would like to read along with us, here is a list of the books our groups will be discussing this spring.

SNOW COUNTRY by Yasunari Kawabata and LINKS by Nuruddin Farah (in one group)

SHADOW OF THE POMEGRANATE TREE by Tariq Ali 

and   

FEAR OF STONES by Kei Miller (the other two groups)

All three groups:

OLD FILTH by Jane Gardam

THE GATHERING by Anne Enright

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK by Geraldine Brooks

Janet Maslin has written a review of PEOPLE IN THE BOOK by Geraldine Brooks in today's NEW YORK TIMES. She writes that Brooks's contemporary story thread is unnecessary. I agree with her, but I think the bulk of the book, the trail and extraordinary survival of the Sarajevo Haggadah, bolstered by Brooks's research, makes the book worthwhile reading. The criticism reminds me of the ending of Sebastian Faulks's BIRDSONG, which had a contemporary "wrap the story up." I wish he hadn't done it, but some of the people in my groups liked the ending. Few books, like few or no people are perfect. If authors and publishers waited to print the perfect book, not only wouldn’t there be agreement, there would be no books on library shelves. If a book has faults, it still may be good reading. I think PEOPLE OF THE BOOK will be read and I think it should be.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE and THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE are more positive and enthusiastic than Maslin is.

Posted by Harriet

Correction

Michiko Kakutani's name contained a typo. My apologies. H