I DID NOT know a thing about Mary Szybist when I picked this off the shelf at the Tattered Cover in Denver last Labor Day weekend. Nice cover (Botticelli). National Book Award, hmm. Intriguing title. Graywolf Press. Okay, what the heck.
It turned out to be excellent. The annunciation to Mary is the book's main motif, handled in a cerebral-mandarin-feminist vein reminiscent (for me) of Lucie Brock-Broido, but a little warmer, more accessible, more poignant than that sounds (see "To Gabriela at the Donkey Sanctuary" or "Entrances and Exits" or "Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle").
It's a complicated moment, and Szybist sees it from a number of angles--the power of being acknowledged, singled out, chosen for a world-historical role, but also the sense that one is being commandeered, turned into a means rather than an end, not given a choice--think of "My Life had Stood--a Loaded Gun" seen through the iconography of Mary and Gabriel.
Remarkable formal ingenuity and variety--an erasure poem, a sonnet, a concrete poem, a poem that is a diagrammed sentence--and hardly any move happens twice.
What really hooked me, though--"On a Spring Day in Baltimore, the Art Teacher Asks the Class to Draw Flowers." I would not have thought, going in, that a poem looking at a teacher's sexual misconduct through the lens of Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" could possibly work, but this one was subtly devastating...if that even makes sense. Can devastation be subtle? Having read this poem, I would say yes.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
Amor Towles, _A Gentleman in Moscow_
OUR BOOK CLUB read Towles's Rules of Civility last year; I did not like it, but the rest of the club did, so his Gentleman in Moscow wound up on our list for this year, and I did not like this one, either, but the rest of the club did, so I am probably on a collision course with whatever his next novel turns out to be. Same thing happened to me with John Irving a few years ago.
What exactly did I not like about A Gentleman in Moscow? The premise is not all that plausible--a Russian aristocrat at the time of the Revolution gets a sentence of house arrest in a luxury hotel (rather than the gulag) because he wrote a protest poem at the time of the 1905 uprising. But the plot of Calvino's historical novel The Baron in the Trees is even more implausible--the son of a noble Italian family climbs a tree to escape parental punishment and spends the rest of his life up there--and I absolutely loved The Baron in the Trees.
Calvino's novel, however, bizarre as its premise is, is startlingly insightful about the era in which it is set, the late 18th century, the era of the French Revolution, Lyrical Ballads, Goethe, Beethoven. Towles's novel...not so much. Russian noblemen, apparently, were gentle souls with refined tastes and exquisite senses of honor, the Bolsheviks puritanical, philistine, and brutal...as far as insight into the time and place where it is set, A Gentleman in Moscow is right in there with The Scarlet Pimpernel or The Klansman.
The Walter Scottiness of Pimpernel or Klansman persists as well in the unrelievedly arch tone of the narrative. Chosen at random: "When we first encountered Miss Urbanova in the Metropol's lobby in 1923, the haughtiness the Count noted in her bearing was not without foundation, for it was a by-product of her unambiguous celebrity." It's like that from beginning to end.
Then there's some cloak-and-dagger stuff in the last hundred pages or so as our hero sets up an opportunity for his adopted daughter, a world-class pianist, to defect while in Paris for a concert, while he himself...oh, never mind.
What exactly did I not like about A Gentleman in Moscow? The premise is not all that plausible--a Russian aristocrat at the time of the Revolution gets a sentence of house arrest in a luxury hotel (rather than the gulag) because he wrote a protest poem at the time of the 1905 uprising. But the plot of Calvino's historical novel The Baron in the Trees is even more implausible--the son of a noble Italian family climbs a tree to escape parental punishment and spends the rest of his life up there--and I absolutely loved The Baron in the Trees.
Calvino's novel, however, bizarre as its premise is, is startlingly insightful about the era in which it is set, the late 18th century, the era of the French Revolution, Lyrical Ballads, Goethe, Beethoven. Towles's novel...not so much. Russian noblemen, apparently, were gentle souls with refined tastes and exquisite senses of honor, the Bolsheviks puritanical, philistine, and brutal...as far as insight into the time and place where it is set, A Gentleman in Moscow is right in there with The Scarlet Pimpernel or The Klansman.
The Walter Scottiness of Pimpernel or Klansman persists as well in the unrelievedly arch tone of the narrative. Chosen at random: "When we first encountered Miss Urbanova in the Metropol's lobby in 1923, the haughtiness the Count noted in her bearing was not without foundation, for it was a by-product of her unambiguous celebrity." It's like that from beginning to end.
Then there's some cloak-and-dagger stuff in the last hundred pages or so as our hero sets up an opportunity for his adopted daughter, a world-class pianist, to defect while in Paris for a concert, while he himself...oh, never mind.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Zadie Smith, _Swing Time_ (4)
ALMOST DONE, BUT I could not say farewell to this novel without gushing a bit about the structure as well. Not as audacious as that of NW, a bit of a retreat in that respect perhaps, but the way Smith toggles between the narrator's childhood story and her adult-life story demonstrates its own kind of mastery.
The novel opens with "It was the first day of my humiliation"--the narrator has burned her bridges with Aimee, but we do not know how or why, and so one thread of the story begins, with our wondering how the day of humiliation came to arrive.
The prologue ends with the narrator receiving an accusatory text message, "Now everyone knows who you really are," which the narrator calls the "kind of note you might get from a spiteful seven-year-old girl with a firm idea of justice," then tells us, "And of course that--if you can ignore the passage of time--is exactly what it was." And so chapter one launches on the day the narrator met Tracey.
The braiding of the stories somehow raises the stakes for both of them, the switching between them always carrying the effect of a heightening or an illumination, even though they do not intersect until almost the very end of the book.
Just getting better, that Zadie Smith.
The novel opens with "It was the first day of my humiliation"--the narrator has burned her bridges with Aimee, but we do not know how or why, and so one thread of the story begins, with our wondering how the day of humiliation came to arrive.
The prologue ends with the narrator receiving an accusatory text message, "Now everyone knows who you really are," which the narrator calls the "kind of note you might get from a spiteful seven-year-old girl with a firm idea of justice," then tells us, "And of course that--if you can ignore the passage of time--is exactly what it was." And so chapter one launches on the day the narrator met Tracey.
The braiding of the stories somehow raises the stakes for both of them, the switching between them always carrying the effect of a heightening or an illumination, even though they do not intersect until almost the very end of the book.
Just getting better, that Zadie Smith.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Zadie Smith, _Swing Time_ (3)
THAT'S NOT ALL. The reviews of Swing Time I saw did not place it alongside Citizen, The New Jim Crow, The Sellout, The Underground Railroad, or Between the World and Me, but I think one could so place it.
The books mentioned above look directly at slavery, the most brutal dimension of the African-European encounter; in Swing Time, slavery hovers just out of the range of the novel's peripheral vision, but you feel it there. At one point the narrator refers to the "triangular trade" that drove the growth of slavery in the Americas, and the novel itself has a triangle of locations: London, where the narrator grew up, New York City, where Aimee lives, and the Gambia-like country in west Africa where Aimee wants to create a school. As in the old sugar-rum-slaves triangle, the circulation of capital and people involves assumptions and calculations about race that can't be articulated, because articulating them would instantly reveal their moral shoddiness.
Any number of deft touches--the narrator's Caribbean-born mother's academic and political careers, the narrator's discovery of the films of Jeni LeGon, the narrator's developing friendship with Hawa, a young woman in the African village--turn into miniature revelations of the infinite ironies surrounding the general moral catastrophe of the African-European encounter.
And that encounter is in the marrow of the novel: Tracey and the narrator become friends because of the near-match of their skin tones, and Aimee's fame and fortune presumably rest, as do Madonna's, Elvis Presley's, the Rolling Stones', and just about every other world-famous Caucasian pop musician, on a canny appropriation of the legacy of African music.
The books mentioned above look directly at slavery, the most brutal dimension of the African-European encounter; in Swing Time, slavery hovers just out of the range of the novel's peripheral vision, but you feel it there. At one point the narrator refers to the "triangular trade" that drove the growth of slavery in the Americas, and the novel itself has a triangle of locations: London, where the narrator grew up, New York City, where Aimee lives, and the Gambia-like country in west Africa where Aimee wants to create a school. As in the old sugar-rum-slaves triangle, the circulation of capital and people involves assumptions and calculations about race that can't be articulated, because articulating them would instantly reveal their moral shoddiness.
Any number of deft touches--the narrator's Caribbean-born mother's academic and political careers, the narrator's discovery of the films of Jeni LeGon, the narrator's developing friendship with Hawa, a young woman in the African village--turn into miniature revelations of the infinite ironies surrounding the general moral catastrophe of the African-European encounter.
And that encounter is in the marrow of the novel: Tracey and the narrator become friends because of the near-match of their skin tones, and Aimee's fame and fortune presumably rest, as do Madonna's, Elvis Presley's, the Rolling Stones', and just about every other world-famous Caucasian pop musician, on a canny appropriation of the legacy of African music.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Zadie Smith, _Swing Time_ (2)
WAIT, THERE'S MORE. A second deeply appealing aspect of Swing Time is that we meet Archie and Clara Bowden Jones again, in a new guise, as the parents of the narrator. (Irie Jones is mentioned in passing as a neighborhood contemporary of the narrator and Tracey.)
The narrator's father is a bit of a pothead, which I don't recall Archie being, and her mother has a drive and ferocity (she attains a degree, becomes an activist and eventually an M.P.) that I don't recall Clara having, but the differences in the parents' ages, ethnicities, and stance towards the universe seem recognizably parallel to those of Archie and Clara, so you just have to wonder...
...are Smith's parents going to wind up having as many fictional avatars as Bess Finkel Roth and Herman Roth?
One certainly hopes so.
The narrator's father is a bit of a pothead, which I don't recall Archie being, and her mother has a drive and ferocity (she attains a degree, becomes an activist and eventually an M.P.) that I don't recall Clara having, but the differences in the parents' ages, ethnicities, and stance towards the universe seem recognizably parallel to those of Archie and Clara, so you just have to wonder...
...are Smith's parents going to wind up having as many fictional avatars as Bess Finkel Roth and Herman Roth?
One certainly hopes so.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Zadie Smith, _Swing Time_ (1)
IT OFTEN HAPPENS (as occurred to me reading Brenda Shaughnessy's So Much Synth a few weeks back) that when you fall in love with the first book you read by an author unfamiliar to you, or the first album your hear by an unfamiliar artist, subsequent work by that author or that artist somehow never delivers that same buzz.
For me, Zadie Smith may be the exception. I fell in love with White Teeth back in 2001--its exuberant humor, its carbonated style, its portraiture of multicultural London--and have read every novel that followed with delight. The subsequent novels did not deliver the very same buzz, true, but they all delivered a buzz of their own, more than enough to keep me coming back for more.
I loved Swing Time. Let me count the ways.
The twists on the "my brilliant friend" theme. Smith gave us a relatively straightforward version of the theme in the relationship of Keisha/Natalie and Leah in NW, and here she ups the ante. The unnamed narrator of Swing Time gives us a braided narrative concerning her two brilliant friends--but one is not exactly brilliant, the other not exactly a friend.
About half the chapters are about the narrator's girlhood friendship with Tracey, whom the narrator meets in a dance class. Both girls have one white parent and one black parent, and both are fascinated by dance, and a close friendship forms; for a while, they are inseparable. As they get a little older, and Tracey gets on track to become a professional dancer while the narrator is university-bound, the relationship is strained and eventually broken. But reunions sometimes occur, and the intensity of the girlhood friendship makes every later reunion, whatever the interval in time, feels charged.
Tracey's talent as a dancer makes her a brilliant friend, but her brilliance lacks enduring wattage. She does become a professional dancer, but not a particularly successful one, and not for very long. Somehow, though, the gift she once had remains the fact around which the friendship orbits whenever they meet.
The other chapters are about the narrator's employment as Number One personal assistant to Aimee, an international pop diva with a career somewhat reminiscent of Madonna's--Tracey and the narrator idolized her as girls. Aimee wants to start a school for girls in an unnamed country in west Africa (Gambia, perhaps, judging from the characterization of its president), and the narrator is assigned a variety of responsibilities to that end. (Smith's satire of this classic celebrity-led Africa project is note-perfect, by the way.) Complications ensue, and eventually the narrator is persona non grata in Aimee-world, though her whistle-blowing temporarily makes her a kind of 15-minute celebrity herself.
Aimee is brilliant, but not really a friend. Smith unfolds the peculiar role of the personal assistant skillfully. The narrator is an employee of Aimee, not a friend, but the relationship takes place at a level of intimacy that is a simulacrum of friendship. She is chosen for the job by Aimee on the basis of a kind of affinity, like Jesus choosing disciples. She is so busy minding things for Aimee that she has no time to make actual friends, and is often the object of Aimee's solicitude (abundant dating advice, so Aimee becomes the closest thing she has to a friend. But a friend--it becomes painfully clear--Aimee is not.
The nuances of the narrator's consuming but also critically flawed relationships with these two women--that's one reason I loved Swing Time.
For me, Zadie Smith may be the exception. I fell in love with White Teeth back in 2001--its exuberant humor, its carbonated style, its portraiture of multicultural London--and have read every novel that followed with delight. The subsequent novels did not deliver the very same buzz, true, but they all delivered a buzz of their own, more than enough to keep me coming back for more.
I loved Swing Time. Let me count the ways.
The twists on the "my brilliant friend" theme. Smith gave us a relatively straightforward version of the theme in the relationship of Keisha/Natalie and Leah in NW, and here she ups the ante. The unnamed narrator of Swing Time gives us a braided narrative concerning her two brilliant friends--but one is not exactly brilliant, the other not exactly a friend.
About half the chapters are about the narrator's girlhood friendship with Tracey, whom the narrator meets in a dance class. Both girls have one white parent and one black parent, and both are fascinated by dance, and a close friendship forms; for a while, they are inseparable. As they get a little older, and Tracey gets on track to become a professional dancer while the narrator is university-bound, the relationship is strained and eventually broken. But reunions sometimes occur, and the intensity of the girlhood friendship makes every later reunion, whatever the interval in time, feels charged.
Tracey's talent as a dancer makes her a brilliant friend, but her brilliance lacks enduring wattage. She does become a professional dancer, but not a particularly successful one, and not for very long. Somehow, though, the gift she once had remains the fact around which the friendship orbits whenever they meet.
The other chapters are about the narrator's employment as Number One personal assistant to Aimee, an international pop diva with a career somewhat reminiscent of Madonna's--Tracey and the narrator idolized her as girls. Aimee wants to start a school for girls in an unnamed country in west Africa (Gambia, perhaps, judging from the characterization of its president), and the narrator is assigned a variety of responsibilities to that end. (Smith's satire of this classic celebrity-led Africa project is note-perfect, by the way.) Complications ensue, and eventually the narrator is persona non grata in Aimee-world, though her whistle-blowing temporarily makes her a kind of 15-minute celebrity herself.
Aimee is brilliant, but not really a friend. Smith unfolds the peculiar role of the personal assistant skillfully. The narrator is an employee of Aimee, not a friend, but the relationship takes place at a level of intimacy that is a simulacrum of friendship. She is chosen for the job by Aimee on the basis of a kind of affinity, like Jesus choosing disciples. She is so busy minding things for Aimee that she has no time to make actual friends, and is often the object of Aimee's solicitude (abundant dating advice, so Aimee becomes the closest thing she has to a friend. But a friend--it becomes painfully clear--Aimee is not.
The nuances of the narrator's consuming but also critically flawed relationships with these two women--that's one reason I loved Swing Time.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Lucy Ives, _Anamnesis_
HER FIRST FULL-LENGTH book, from 2009, but the writing-aware-of-itself theme seen later in Orange Roses and even more recently in The Hermit is very much to the fore:
Write, "Bright sun came through in a pink stream"
Write, ""It was just like living in the country"
Cross this out
Crickets
Sorority girls falling down
Cross this out
In the cold seasons I only want to do want I want, what I want to do
Cross this out
The (self-addressed?) imperative "Write" occurs on most of the pages of the book, hitting a kind of crescendo at the end. It kept making me think, probably inappropriately, of the "Recite!" that recurs through the Quran, but perhaps not utterly inappropriately, because the text seems to come from a powerful sense of needing to say something and an immediately triggered response that the statement one has just now come up with fails to get it said--the imperative "cross it out" comes up quite as regularly as "write."
Anamnesis could be usefully read alongside Ben Lerner's Hatred of Poetry, I think, in that embodies the idea that part of what makes poetry poetry is bearing up under the burden of its own inadequacy. It also stands in an interesting relation to the old Beat maxim "First thought, best thought" in that the first thought is so often rejected, but in a way left to stand--that is, despite all the injunctions to "cross it out," nothing is crossed out, the gesture of the rature imagined rather than made.
What does the title mean? "Remembering," in effect, or perhaps "Not-forgetting" or even "Not-not-having in mind." The world has a specific meaning in Platonic doctrine, the Christian liturgy, and medicine, but I'm guessing it serves to emphasize that what gets written has always a complex relationship to what is recalled, and what is recalled has a complex relationship to what was experienced.
Reading Lucy Ives is like having a conversation with someone about 11% smarter than you are.
How is all this self-awareness going to play out in the forthcoming novel, a "witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker's disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever"? I will just have to wait until August, I guess.
Write, "Bright sun came through in a pink stream"
Write, ""It was just like living in the country"
Cross this out
Crickets
Sorority girls falling down
Cross this out
In the cold seasons I only want to do want I want, what I want to do
Cross this out
The (self-addressed?) imperative "Write" occurs on most of the pages of the book, hitting a kind of crescendo at the end. It kept making me think, probably inappropriately, of the "Recite!" that recurs through the Quran, but perhaps not utterly inappropriately, because the text seems to come from a powerful sense of needing to say something and an immediately triggered response that the statement one has just now come up with fails to get it said--the imperative "cross it out" comes up quite as regularly as "write."
Anamnesis could be usefully read alongside Ben Lerner's Hatred of Poetry, I think, in that embodies the idea that part of what makes poetry poetry is bearing up under the burden of its own inadequacy. It also stands in an interesting relation to the old Beat maxim "First thought, best thought" in that the first thought is so often rejected, but in a way left to stand--that is, despite all the injunctions to "cross it out," nothing is crossed out, the gesture of the rature imagined rather than made.
What does the title mean? "Remembering," in effect, or perhaps "Not-forgetting" or even "Not-not-having in mind." The world has a specific meaning in Platonic doctrine, the Christian liturgy, and medicine, but I'm guessing it serves to emphasize that what gets written has always a complex relationship to what is recalled, and what is recalled has a complex relationship to what was experienced.
Reading Lucy Ives is like having a conversation with someone about 11% smarter than you are.
How is all this self-awareness going to play out in the forthcoming novel, a "witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker's disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever"? I will just have to wait until August, I guess.
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