84, Charing Cross Road

84, Charing Cross Road is a slim volume of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a NYC screenwriter (and collector of books), and the staff of Marks & Co., a second-hand bookstore in London, England. Covering the years of 1949 - 1969, this book not only demonstrates the quirky relationship between Hanff and her chief correspondent, Frank Doel, but it also deftly captures the time period that stretches from post-war food rationing to Beatlemania.

This is such a book of extremes -- Hanff chides and curses, all brash American whiskey-drinking-single-girl-living-in-a-cold-water-flat-with-a-weakness-for-antiquarian-essayists, and Doel responds with professional deference (not revealing until much later that, as copies of his letters went into the company files, he could behave no other way). And despite Hanff's frequent claims of being but a poor writer, she was able to send care packages of meat and other treats through a Danish mail-order company -- luxuries that were much appreciated by everyone in the office for the years that rationing was in place.

As others at Marks & Co. began their own correspondence with Hanff, it became obvious that she played a huge role in their lives and everyone begged her to come to London for a visit, but alas, the timing and financial situation was never quite right. As Doel himself wrote once, "One more summer will bring us every American tourist but the one we want to see". Not long after this, the letters become more infrequent, some of the staff move away and lose touch, and as the years go by, the long awaited visit never happens. Eventually, the planned meeting becomes impossible, and as I later learned, when Hanff finally did make it to London, 84 Charing Cross Road had been turned into a restaurant.

I was totally charmed and touched by this book -- on the one hand, it made me lament the loss of actual pen and paper correspondence, but on the other, it underscores how very lucky we are to live in a world where finding a like-minded person in a far away country has actually become easier. Perhaps that is no less special just because it has become less rare. 

But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.”

Edit from August 7th

This book must have been on my mind for the past week. This is the conversation that I had this morning with my own long-distance correspondent, the lovely Darlene from Texas:

Me: I dreamed about you last night. For some reason I was in Texas and just as I was checking out of my hotel, you called my cell and invited me to visit. I said sure and you directed me to a bus stop. When I got on the bus, it was like from the Third World (rickety, over-crowded, plank seats) and we were driving forever down a narrow, cracked highway. I called you and asked repeatedly, "Are you sure this is the Interstate?" and you kept reassuring me it was. Suddenly, the bus pulled up to a dusty old building in the middle of nowhere and as the bus driver left, people were shouting out, "Do we get off? Is this the stop? Is this even a bus?" And then I woke up. Shall we analyse that like a literary exercise or brush off the psych texts?

Darlene: What a great dream! We could do either. Obviously, you really WANT to visit me in Texas. Yet, it is Texas, and those images of dust and cowboys are hard to shake, and you probably have hidden reservations about what to really expect, lol. To ease your mind, the Katy freeway in Houston is 26 lanes in sections (if you count the frontage roads) giving it the distinction of the widest road in the world. =) Come on down! =) xox

Darlene: Along the same lines, whenever we are out of the country and people ask us where we're from, we never say the U.S. We say Texas (imagine that, but it's a Texas thing). Invariably, they want to know if we have a horse...

Me: When I woke up, the part I remembered most was, "Is this really the Interstate?" because even I've seen the roads in Houston. I wonder if I was worried about having been driven across the border into Mexico, by mistake or by mischief? I wonder if it's one of those dreams (where you think you need to pee but there's something wrong with all of the toilets and that prevents you from wetting the bed) where something doesn't happen because it subconsciously scares you? Like, what if we met each other and we were bored with each other and immediately regretted it? And do you have a horse?

Darlene: If you visit me, you're far enough from the border to not have to worry about abduction or cross-border violence. As far as the dream, what you've seen on TV could very well have influenced that, and parts of the border do look very similar to the landscaping of your dream. I'd say that's a definite possibility of interpretation. Somehow, while I know it's a possibility, I don't think I'd be bored of you at all if we met. There's so much common ground that I'd find to talk with you about such as issues of religion, children, stay-at-home Mom issues and the empty nest (you're almost there sister) that I think all those things would serve as a bridge to closer friendship. We have much in common. Susan is the one that I love online, but am not so sure about meeting in real life. I have no idea what we'd really have to talk about. While I enjoy the relationship we have, our lives are very different. And, no, I don't have a horse, lol. 

Me: I think we would get along just fine if we met (and I don't actually have any fears about being carried off across the border, lol) but if I had to amateurishly analyse the dream, that's what I've got. I read a book last week (84, Charing Cross Rd) about a single-woman screenwriter in NYC who had a correspondence with a second-hand bookshop in London, England from the 1940s-60s. They became closer and closer and the Brits kept begging her to visit, and they wrote each other about everything in their lives, and then time went by and people left the store and lost touch and the woman never made it to England and the letters became less frequent and then her chief correspondent died, and by the time she FINALLY made the trip, the site of the bookstore was a restaurant (sorry if you've read the book and this is all old news to you).  It's a true story and obviously made me think of you and Susan -- remember when we used to know everything about her, too? How does that grow and then fizzle out? How do you stop it? What if the screenwriter had made that trip to England and no one was as clever or as genuine as they seemed on paper? Upon reflection, this is probably where the dream came from. As for meeting Susan, I bet it would be a lot of fun -- but what if she actually smokes dope like the jokes she likes to post on facebook? I'd be aghast! Lol. And too bad about the horse. =D

Darlene: Sounds like a great book. I need to put it on my "To Read" list. Susan would be a lot of fun but I don't drink and party like I used to. That all kind of stopped in 1990 when I got pregnant, lol. I can't promise you clever, but I can promise you genuine. What you see is what you get. By no means am I a boring fuddy-duddy (okay, maybe a little boring) but my wild days are over. And if you do come, I'll find you a horse. =D

Me: Well, I'm also a little boring anymore, but no more so than what I type. =D

And talk turned to other things...First of all, how nice is it to have someone who will talk about your dream with you? Darlene and Susan and I met on Neopets (of all places) 7 or 8 years ago now, and as it says here, we were the three amigas; the closest friends that internet strangers can be. And how different we are! Darlene is a Texas Republican and Susan is a Michigan Democrat and it was a wonder to me to see them debate so politely during the Bush and into the Obama years -- really fascinating to a neutrally observing Canadian.The two of them stopped playing Neopets at about the same and we moved our friendship over to facebook (where we finally saw pictures of each other -- amazing!) and we remained tight for a while. Eventually, though, Susan stopped including us in everything, and although Darlene and I talk daily (especially through playing Words With Friends) we're not as close to Susan anymore. This long-distance friendship arc is what I saw being played out in the book and, I suppose, it spilled over into my dreams. I would love to visit Darlene someday (and actually think it would be a blast to include Susan, too -- she's a big-hearted, smart-mouthed ball of fun) but it would be pretty awkward to casually mention to Dave at this point that the friends I have been closest to in the world for the past few years are on the other end of a computer screen (and to have to explain we met on a children's gaming site...shudder). These are the women I was thinking about when I wrote above: It underscores how very lucky we are to live in a world where finding a like-minded person in a far away country has actually become easier. Perhaps that is no less special just because it has become less rare. 

None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948

The Jews of Europe were not so much trapped in a whirlwind of systemic murder as they were abandoned to it. The Nazis planned and executed the Holocaust, but it was made possible by an indifference to the suffering of the victims that sometimes bordered on contempt.

What a lot of hard facts there are in None Is Too Many. As a nation of immigrants, Canada might have had our own Statue of Liberty; some beacon of hope announcing, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"…unless we're talking about Jews. As early as 1933, argue Irving Abella and Harold Troper, European Jews could see what was in the air, and desperately reaching out to Canadian relatives, begged them to be their sponsors. But Immigration Canada had a nifty Catch-22 set in place (ostensibly to protect the Canadian workforce during the Depression): Jews could only apply to immigrate as farmers -- to populate the vast empty spaces in the Prairies -- but even if they had the assets and the experience to buy and operate farms, their applications were rejected because everyone knows that Jews don't farm and would just migrate to Toronto and Montreal like the rest of them and upset racial balance. This policy was in place as Hitler's power grew, as the Jews were ghettoized, outlasting kristallnacht and even the eyewitness reports coming back from Auschwitz and Treblinka. 

Prime Minister Mackenzie King seemed sympathetic throughout these years, but the virulent anti-Semitism of what the authors refer to as the "unholy triumvirate" of the Immigration Branch, the Cabinet, and External Affairs used bureaucratic red-tape to prevent refugees in general, and Jews in particular, from finding protection here throughout WWII. In Quebec, Maurice Duplessis used a mere proposal to admit some hundreds of refugees into Canada to inflame the province into electing his isolationist government into power (plus ça change…) Frantic Canadian Jews formed lobbying groups, trying to stir up public sympathy, but were repeatedly told that keeping refugees out was for their own protection; to shield them from the anti-Semitism of the Gentile masses. They were told to remain quiet and patient, to trust in the working of the government, and being powerless, they did. 

Even after the war was over, as hundreds of thousands of Displaced Persons languished in holding camps, the Canadian government dragged its feet over changing its immigration policies. Eventually, C. D. Howe persuaded Cabinet that an economic boom was imminent if Canada could attract a larger workforce, and selection committees were sent to Europe to find "the right kinds" of immigrants. Despite the special horrors that the Jews had been subjected to, Canada didn't prefer them as refugees since everyone knows the men aren't fit for mining or lumber work (the main labour force needs) and the women would likely refuse to work as domestics or nurses (despite having done that work previously in Europe). Even when the Jewish aid groups lobbied to allow in skilled tailors and furriers (guaranteeing them employment and offering to pay all processing and transportation costs) the government only agreed to a strict quota, not to exceed 50% Jewish. This process dragged on until Britain handed Palestine over to the United Nations and the state of Israel was created. Jewish interest in immigrating to Canada faded, and Canada patted itself on the back, having admitted a whopping 8000 Jews from 1933-48.

This book has a slightly angry tone -- which might have rubbed off on me -- but it's a lot to be angry about, and especially because this isn't the history that we're taught in school. By the end, the authors have done a good job of explaining the prevailing attitudes and customs that could allow for this official indifference, and point out only three villains -- Thomas Crerar (for incompetence more than malice), Frederick Charles Blair, and Vincent Massey -- but, as it turns out, it only took these three obstructionists to condemn untold numbers of Jews to their fates.

It was also interesting to learn here that a manuscript copy of this book was given to Joe Clark's government in 1979 and helped to convince them to admit 50000 "Boat People" from Vietnam. 

This is the second book in my Lit class, and after the old hippy went on an anti-Israeli rant at the introductory meeting, and with the current (and polarizing) Israeli-Hamas conflict, I was afeared of being dragged into an unpleasant debate at this week's class -- but silver ponytail, the poet, and quite a few others didn't show up, and curiously, Israel wasn't discussed at all.

I suppose it might have been more interesting if the opinionated ones had shown up because in a book-club-type class like this, the quality of the experience depends entirely on the people talking. After reading this book, the discussion was mostly, "But why couldn't Canada have done more?" and "Was Canada really that racist?" Our Professor is not a history expert, didn't have a lot of facts, and even when the question was, "Did Robertson Davies really never write an editorial in support of the Jews or against the Nazis?", she could only reply, "It would be interesting for someone to go through the old records to find out, but I don't think he ever did." That may end up being true, but since she assembled these books for us under the theme of "the perils of patronage", I would have thought she'd have those answers anyway (if the point is to prove that Davies wouldn't rock the boat with the known anti-Semite Vincent Massey and then was rewarded with the Mastership of Massey College). 

The comment the Prof most responded to was, "I remember back then that there were big names -- the Masseys, the Eatons, the Thomsons -- and even though they weren't in government, the common people thought that everything would be okay because these important people were going to take care of everything." The Prof then went on a tangent about Ideology and who gets to decide what the common thoughts are -- and if anti-Semites were considered the "important people", then their beliefs became the common ideology with reinforcing signals; the "ideological hails". Her example: It had long been believed that there are only two genders, male and female. When someone has a baby, what's the first thing you ask? Before you even count toes and fingers, it's "is it a boy or a girl?", right? But now scientists know that there are an infinite number of genders between male and female. And what are the ideological hails? How about when you go to a movie or a concert and you need to use the washroom? How do you know which one to use? You look for either a male or a female sign -- the ideological hail -- and you have it reinforced over and over that it's an either/or. But what if your bits don't look like mine? Or what if you have bits of both genders? Why does anyone need to sort themselves like this? It's just ideology.

Scientists now know that there are an infinite number of genders between male and female? Says who? Talk about top-down ideology -- this is such progressive liberal University jibber-jabber and it was hard for me to neither snort with incredulity or shake my head with dismay: this is who is educating the kiddos. She also had a tangent about bias in news reporting, and after giving a decent example from a small town newspaper, she concluded with, "That's why you should always get your news from the CBC. The mothership!" I had to look down at my hands so that the Prof couldn't see my gaping mouth and bulging eyes -- the CBC as an example of unbiased reporting indeed!

I had my hand up to make a point, but I was never called on, and as the others kept shouting out, I eventually gave up. I was looking to make a devil's advocate-type statement: Perhaps it wasn't exactly anti-Semitism that kept our borders closed. As this book stated, the population of Canada leading up to WWII was 8 million and they were suffering the hunger and joblessness of the Depression. As 6 million Jews were eventually murdered in the Holocaust, how could we have possibly absorbed them all? With what resources? And how would that have changed the nature of our English/French/Christian country? As several of the officials in None Is Too Many complained that Jews are notoriously pushy -- that they had repeatedly used every immigration concession as a wedge to bend and break the rules and bring in more people than agreed to (a fact also admitted to by the Jewish aid groups) -- they must have been honestly afraid of opening the dam. Now, this was totally devil's advocate -- of course I believe we should have done more and we failed the Jewish people utterly -- but I would have liked to have talked about it (certainly more than the gender stuff). In the introductory class, the Prof talked about refugees and sneered at the current (Conservative) government's toughened stance on admitting them -- and I would have liked to have talked about that: I would have liked to have gotten into talking about the countries like France and Holland that have large and restless Muslim populations, and how having allowed them to immigrate as refugees in large numbers, these countries are losing their former cultural dominance. What are the limits of compassion? Especially when talking about groups that don't wish to assimilate (which was another point made by officials about Jews in this book, and which would seem to be the case with some Muslims). I wanted to make the point that a huge percentage of the world lives in conditions  much worse than we have it here -- people are starving and have no economic opportunities; people are being hunted down for their beliefs -- but how could we possible bring them to Canada in their millions? We couldn't afford it and we couldn't risk losing the essential nature of our liberal democracy. But...this was the discussion we didn't have, and I found the one we did have dull.

All these thoughts about refugees -- and specifically the Boat People let in by Joe Clark's government as a result of None Is Too Many -- reminds me of another story, but since this is too long already, I'm going to put it back on a related novel, All the Broken Things.

All Five Titles:

Robertson Davies : A Portrait in Mosaic

None is Too Many

The Rebel Angels

What's Bred in the Bone

The Lyre of Orpheus

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Language does this to our memories -- simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.

I should start by saying that I didn't know what the twist is in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves when I began reading, but since I knew there was a twist, I figured it out before the reveal (it's no longer on the book jacket, and I came into this about as unaware as possible, so I don't know what it would take to really surprise a reader). It is said that this is the book that Karen Joy Fowler "always had in her to write" and that seems about right: her father was a psychologist (studying animal behaviour at the University) in Bloomington, IN, and her mother was a pioneer in the co-op nursery school movement. The family (including Fowler's older brother) moved to California when she was eleven, and she eventually attended UC Davis. This is the family dynamic of the main character, Rosemary, and the two main settings of the book. Throw in looks at memory and humanity, animal rights, and some madcap hijinks with a Madame Defarge marionette, and that's the story.

The book's structure is as interesting as the plot. Rosemary narrates her story in a chatty, conversational tone and explains that she's going to start in the middle, then jumps to the end of the beginning, the beginning of the end, the actual beginning, and then the end. This feels organic since the nature of memory is a major theme -- digging up and examining buried grief, evaluating "screen memories", creating a persona by choosing what will and won't be shared with others -- and it maintained tension by not solving all the mysteries too soon. The second theme -- humanity and animal rights -- was trickier to pull off because, even though Fowler doesn't quite end up lecturing the reader, she has so much information that she needs characters to sit together and infodump all of her research to each other. Even if Rosemary (and Fowler herself) is the daughter of an animal behaviourist, I wasn't equally interested in everything she had to say: the "uncanny valley" phenomenon was cool (and germane), but solipsism, theory of mind, and episodic memory were not. The writing, however, was consistently interesting, with bits like this:

I was still breathing into the popcorn bag and my sobbing came as all manner of lovely ocean sounds, sometimes waves and sometimes seals.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves didn't really work for me, and maybe it's because in the end, Fowler didn't take a stand. In this interview on her website, Fowler says:

A century ago the anti-vivisectionists battled with the medical community over the use of animal subjects in experiments both critical and trivial, and lost. Since then any objection to such experiments has been seen as sentimental, childish, and unprogressive. My novel is my attempt to think about this again. Also to ask what it means to be a human animal. I’ve got no easy answers and I’m not trying to proselytize. I hope readers will also be interested in thinking about these things.

These are things that I already think about: I've never taken my children to the circus or Marineland; wouldn't go to a zoo if it wasn't involved in a significant breeding program; will never go on a dolphin ride at a Caribbean resort (especially since The Cove); try my best to buy cruelty-free products; and we don't eat mammals. Beyond the few shocking stories about medical research labs, there's little guidance about how the reader should react to this book. **here's the spoiler** Since Fern, like all captive-raised chimps, is eventually too strong to handle, she should never have been brought into a home to begin with -- in the end, she can only be interacted with through bullet-proof glass despite the early efforts to anthropomorphise her relationship with Rosemary: they were never sisters, and that undermines the tragedy of Fern's banishment. And Lowell, who appears to be a freedom fighter, is eventually shown to be mentally unstable: is it not possible to take a principled stand without becoming a fanatic? **end spoiler** The serious themes are also somewhat diluted by the chatty tone of the book and the John Irvingesque zaniness brought in by Harlow and Ezra (and that curious marionette). And, my personal pet peeve, if the main character in a book that deals with memory is named Rosemary, don't have another character point out, "Rosemary for remembrance. Awesome." A straight-up-the-middle-of-the-road-three-star-book.

And here's where I reveal my hypocrisy: despite not eating mammals, Dave is now working at a pork processing plant and has gotten both girls a job there for the summer. Kennedy is on the kill floor in Detection: the freshly gutted and scalded carcasses go by and she marks out any flaws that need to be dealt with (smears of poop, boils, hair, dangling testicles). Mallory is on the cut and pack side, trimming and packing pig wings (her official title is Pig Boner, haha).

Is this crazy, ironic hypocrisy for people who won't eat pork? Here's my consolation: this plant is a farmer owned co-op operation, not some huge and mindless factory farm/evil corporation. Confronting the reality of where food comes from is a lesson everyone should learn (I worked at a chicken processor as a teenager, myself), and I am consoled by Dave's assurance that where he works is as cruelty-free as possible (for a place in the killing business...)

And here's my other beef : I read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves because it was on the newly-released Man Booker longlist, and that makes me sad. This is the first year that the literary prize is open to American authors, and this book doesn't fit in with what I've come to expect from my favourite book prize. The longlist this year is dominated by Brits and Americans and doesn't have the interesting African or Indian or Caribbean (or Canadian...) books that I've used the Booker prize to introduce me to in prior years. One of the judges said (can't find the actual quote now) that this year's books all look at new ways of storytelling, and for that reason, I can see why We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is on the list -- the higgledy-piggledy format is the best part.

Since the main character, Rosemary, has a penchant for big words, here are a few I found delightful:

Refulgent: shining brightly.

Oneiric: of or relating to dreams or dreaming.

Lacuna: an unfilled space or interval; a gap; a missing portion in a book or manuscript. (This last I've read before, but I'm unsure if I knew the definition)

And the last point: I really did like the idea of the "uncanny valley" theory which explains why people think this is funny:

And this is terrifying:

And I say terrifying because my 11-year-old nephew made me promise to never trick him into looking at a picture of Jeff the Killer. And of course I had fun with that -- googling images of cute kittens and saying, "Would you like to see some cute pictures , Conor?"

"No way, Auntie Krista. You're not tricking me into looking at scary pictures."

"Come on, they're adorable. Would I trick you?"

"Please don't trick me." Both hands in front of his face, peeking through his fingers and squirming, "I'll look, but you better not be tricking me because I won't forgive you ever." Peeks. "Oh, hahaha, they are cute. But you better not ever trick me into looking at pictures of Jeff the Killer."

And still, I look at that picture and wonder why it would be more frightening than a picture of an actual monster, but, there you go -- uncanny valley effect in action.

*****

Man Booker Prize Shortlist 2014, with my ranking:

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

J by Howard Jacobson

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee

To Rise Again At a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

The Death of Ivan Ilych

"It is finished!" said someone near him. He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.

"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"

He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.

Ivan Ilych had an enviable life: a favoured son, he had just the right education, chose just the right career, made just the right marriage, wore all the right clothes, had all the right friends, and lived in just the right apartment. Everything around him was very comme il faut. How ironic, then, that an accident that occurred while he was hanging just the right curtains would precipitate an early and horrifically painful death.

For a brief novella, Tolstoy packed in all the details of a typically modern middle-class lifestyle; all upper-class pretension and never quite enough money. Even Ivan Ilych's family brought him little joy and the magistrate retreated from domestic life, spending his evenings in games of whist and bridge. Upon his death, his wife's chief concern was how to maximise her widow's pension and described his final agony:

"Oh, it was awful! For the last few hours -- not minutes, mind you, but hours -- he cried out constantly. For days he shouted in anguish. It was intolerable. I do not even understand how I withstood it. You could hear him three doors down. Oh, what I've been through!"

And yet, those last days of Ivan Ilych's life led to a sort of redemption. After suffering through the Kubler-Ross stages of anger, grief , and denial -- after realising that his "life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible" -- he learns that compassion is the only route to happiness and accepts his own death as a final act of compassion towards his suffering family.

There's obviously a moral in this: I am older now than the character of Ivan Ilych and have been known to climb a ladder and fuss over my own curtains -- without realising I was at risk of loosening my kidneys -- but, like the doomed magistrate (and like every soul on Earth) I, too, will die. And, although I have been forewarned, like the doomed magistrate, I, too, will likely not dwell too much upon my own mortality until I'm in the throes of death. This small work is a perfect little gem.

The Sound of Things Falling

Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather sympathy we learn to feel for the pain of others.

I was reading an online article about a traumatised police officer who committed suicide last week and was struck by this comment that another reader posted: "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder isn't a mental illness, it's a psychological injury -- and those suffering from it deserve and require as much medical treatment as those who sustain physical injuries". I had never considered that before: We certainly wouldn't stand by while a cop who had been shot was obliged to walk around with a bullet in his leg. But how do you care for an entire generation that's suffering from PTSD -- as are the bogotanos who grew up with assassinations and bombings during Pablo Escobar's reign -- how do you heal those wounds? When the main character of The Sound of Things Falling, Antonio Yammara, is shot during the drive-by murder of his new and little-known friend, Ricardo, we get an intimate look at how such psychological injuries affect individual lives and whole communities.

The Sound of Things Falling recently won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (among other honours), so I was expecting a knockout reading experience. Right from the start, with the newspaper story about shooting a hippo that had escaped from Escobar's famed personal zoo -- they posed with the dead body, the great dark wrinkled mass, a recently fallen meteorite -- I was immediately intrigued and primed with anticipation…but it never paid off for me. There were many such poetic bits, much intriguing and quotable philosophy -- There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken -- but the pacing was very low key, in mid-book becomes the story of different characters, and I lost whatever emotional connection I had been forging with Antonio.

At one point, noting that Elaine's name is the same as the daughter's in The Graduate -- and seeing as both are the subjects of forbidden love -- the novel says, "that must mean something, wasn't it too much of a coincidence"? I took that as a signal from the author, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, to look for meaning in coincidence, and there are many in this book (or if not coincidence, at least significant parallels). Pregnant Elaine lays in a hotel pool "tricking gravity" and pregnant Aura sits in the tub, "that happy, weightless world" (and are these comments on gravity as the enemy; the ultimate cause of plane crashes?). Aura says Antonio's fear is "contagious" for Leticia and Ricardo recalls, "My grandfather passing a hand over Dad's scar on his face and telling him not to make me catch his fears." Aura and Antonio/Elaine and Ricardo are both forbidden loves. Elaine has an irrational fear of a plane crash on her first flight to Colombia. Maya was raised in Bogotá but refuses to ever return, while Aura was taken from Bogotá as a child but now studies law there to compel herself to stay. But while there were these many parallels, nothing really made the leap to dramatic irony, and therefore, didn't seem to have greater meanings.

That leaves just the plot for me to evaluate and, despite the danger inherent in shootings and drug dealers and plane crashes, this wasn't an exciting book. The pacing was slow (to demonstrate Antonio's numbness?), and when Ricardo's mysterious past was revealed, it wasn't much of a surprise. In this interview with NPR, Vasquez describes his inspiration:

The Sound of Things Falling began with my exploration of this pilot who had smuggled marijuana into the US in the early '70s. But 10 years before I started writing his story, I'd found the transcription of the black box recording of an American Airlines plane that crashed in the Colombian mountains in 1995. Later, I found the letters of an American Peace Corps volunteer who writes home telling his family about that strange place, Colombia. Before that, a friend had told me about her grandmother who was present at an aerial exhibition in the 1930s, which ended in disaster. And in 2009 I found, in a Colombian magazine, a photo of a dead hippo... Things started coming together, or rather writing the novel was the art of putting together things that didn't necessarily belong together.

Putting together "things that didn't necessarily belong together" is how all history works, I suppose, and in this book, Vasquez paints a broad picture of Columbia. What I wanted, however, was more specifics: more interior life; more emotion. But, others have chosen The Sound of Things Falling for their fancy awards, so I'm willing to concede that it may have gone over my head.

One Summer : America, 1927

Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs. The Federal Reserve made the mistake that precipitated the stock market crash. Al Capone enjoyed his last summer of eminence. The Jazz Singer was filmed. Television was created. Radio came of age. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. President Coolidge chose not to run. Work began on Mount Rushmore. The Mississippi flooded as it never had before. A madman in Michigan blew up a school and killed forty-four people in the worst slaughter of children in American history. Henry Ford stopped making the Model T and promised to stop insulting Jews. And a kid from Minnesota flew across an ocean and captivated the planet in a way it had never been captivated before. Whatever else it was, it was one hell of a summer.

I'm sure that Bill Bryson thought that his research proves that 1927 had one hell of a summer, but if the above sounds like a long list of subject matter, it's about a quarter of what he squeezed into this book. Even the main events -- Charles Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis and Babe Ruth's record-breaking homerun streak -- were long and tedious, and ultimately, boring tales to me. Add on stories that can't possibly have wide appeal (obscure eugenicists and early television engineering) and I found this book to be just annoying. And to be clear: I'm a person of eclectic tastes, I enjoy history and biographies, but this was just tortuous; it must have been the writing.

It's also a bit misleading: Although the title purports to be about the summer of 1927, Bryson divides the book into chapters covering May to September, and to elongate the tale even further, he provides the full histories of the subjects he selects, recording events from the late 1800s to the 1930s (and beyond in the epilogue where he describes how everyone died). This works for figures like Babe Ruth (it's interesting to read that he was raised in an orphanage and then dominated every position in baseball -- although I've probably heard all that before) but it felt like a stretch to learn everything about Henry Ford and the history of the Ford Motor Company when, in the summer of 1927, the auto-plants were shut down for retooling in order to eventually launch the Model A. 

Hidden in the dross were a few good nuggets: Henry Ford sued the Chicago Tribune for libel after the paper called him an "ignorant idealist". On the stand, Ford couldn't recall who Benedict Arnold was ("A writer, I think?"), when the Revolutionary War had been fought ("1812, I think?"), but did remember voting for James Garfield (who had been assassinated three years before Ford had reached voting age. The jury found in Ford's favour, however, and awarded him 6¢). I liked the irony of Cargill turning Fordlandia (a spectacularly failed rubber plantation in Brazil) into a profitable soybean farm (as Ford was apparently obsessed with the utility and healthfulness of soybeans). I also enjoyed the irony of Al Capone's brother working as a bodyguard for President Coolidge. I was fascinated every time Ty Cobb was mentioned ("I don't care if he has no feet!") and wish that Bryson had focussed more on "the most unstable man in baseball" than on the good-hearted, righteous (and therefore, boring) Lou Gehrig. And after recognising the contributions that Lindbergh made to aviation (and going into minute detail about his flight and its fame-building aftermath in the summer of 1927), it was interesting to learn that he became a great fan of Hitler's, made a career-ending Anti-Semitic speech at an America First conference, and went on to have seven children with three different European mistresses (the last fact so discreet that it escaped the notice of Lindbergh's official biographers).

One Summer : America, 1927 really didn't work for me: too long; too dull; too unfocussed; thoroughly lacking in any of the charming storytelling that Bryson is loved for. I think I'll just stick with his travelogues from now on.

War and Peace

I always wanted to read War and Peace -- always assumed that one day I would -- but put it off and put it off, fearing that it would be fusty and old-fashioned and not quite to my liking. What a pleasure, then, to have enjoyed it so much.

I knew that the story involved Napoleon's invasion of Russia, but not that so much of the action -- the real power-brokering -- would take place in the drawing rooms and the ballrooms of Russia's aristocratic class. Characters (right up to the Emperor, Tsar Alexander himself) go off to war because they seek honours and rewards, and also because they admire the way they look in uniform; it's all a grand game until one first encounters the smoke and reek and confusion of an actual battle. On the field, multiple generals issue conflicting orders, each trying to jockey for favour and undermine the commander-in-chief, yet meanwhile, the front-line soldiers must, without proper instructions, decide whether their side is winning or losing; whether to advance or retreat. Back in Petersburg and Moscow, the fashionable ladies host stylish parties and, while arranging good matches between the young people, attempt to predict and agree with the prevailing, popular opinions; their efforts freighted with as much significance as those taking place far away on the fields of battle. 

Within the narrative of this cast of 500+ characters, Leo Tolstoy often pauses to philosophise about his theories of history and the natures of power and free will. I was sometimes deflated by these pauses, and most especially when he would compare the "science of history" with physics or chemistry or mathematical maxims -- and especially because I didn't buy his analogies. But here's the thing: these theories were the whole point of War and Peace and with it Tolstoy changed the study of history from concentrating on the "Great Man" (as had been the fashion at the time) to considering all of the events and all of the people that came before and attended a major historical event. I may not agree with his idea that there's an inevitability to history (such that the French invasion of Russia would have happened without a Napoleon or an Alexander), but it's so tied up with the plot and the characters -- they're only there in order to demonstrate these theories -- that it's an all or nothing proposition (and that includes the Second Epilogue that so many readers advise skipping: why begrudge Tolstoy an extra 15 pages after visiting with him for over a thousand?). 

My favourite scenes:

After the battle of Austerlitz, Nicholas -- his heart burning with patriotism and a nearly romantic love for his sovereign -- chances upon the Austrian Emperor jumping his horse back and forth across a small ditch, evidently trying to show Tsar Alexander how easy it would be for him to do so, too. Alexander is so upset with the ugliness of the fighting he has just witnessed that he can't even attempt the jump and a junior officer comes to his aid. Instead of judging the tsar harshly for this, Nicholas' heart spills over with love and he only regrets not having helped Alexander himself. (pp 238-39, my edition)

At the Viliya River, Napoleon orders that a ford be found to cross. As Napoleon turns his attention to his maps, an enthusiastic colonel of the Polish Ulhans leads his men straight into the river down below, drowning many of the soldiers and their horses. Believing their beloved Emperor to be watching, they turn towards him and smile, deliriously happy to die for his wishes. When an aide-de-camp points out the sacrifice, Napoleon only glances disapprovingly at the distraction. (pp 517-18)

After a day of hunting wolves, the young Rostovs are invited to take supper with their "Uncle". When he begins to play Russian folk tunes and Natasha is invited to dance, there is a tense moment as her brother fears that, having been educated in the French style, she wouldn't know the peasant ways. In typical Natasha fashion, she performs the dance brilliantly, bringing tears of admiration to everyone's eyes. (p 432)

This last was particularly amusing to me because I had never before considered (or truly known) how horrifying it must have been in European court-life at the time to be invaded by the country they deferred to in cultural matters. As demonstrated in War and Peace, all of the nobility were educated in French, spoke amongst themselves in French (in a later scene, out of patriotism a group of nobles attempt to speak only Russian for an entire evening, and can't do it), attend French theatre and operas, perform French dances -- their thinking was so French that it must have felt like the ultimate betrayal when Napoleon marched on Russia.

War and Peace is a big book full of big ideas and much more enjoyable and accessible than I had expected. Along with the brainy bits like this: Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals, there are funny bits like this: Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered, and the whole is unlike any other book that I have ever read. My reading enjoyment would probably qualify this as a four star book (only because of the historical theory pauses) but it would be unfair to compare War and Peace to modern storytelling -- judging it for what it is, this is a work of genius that deserves five stars.

Another of my favourite scenes is when Pierre, after being taken prisoner by the French, looks to the stars and has an epiphany about love and existence:

Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!"

And what's most interesting about that is that today on facebook, my mother posted this link. In it, when Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked what the most astounding fact about the universe is, he replied:

"The most astounding fact is the knowledge, that the atoms that comprise life on Earth – the atoms that make up the human body – are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core, under extreme temperatures and pressures. 

"These stars, the high mass ones among them, went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy: guts made of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and all of the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become parts of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems – stars with orbiting planets – and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that, yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up, many people feel small – ’cause they’re small and the universe is big – but I feel big. Because, my atoms came from those stars.

"There’s a level of connectivity. That’s really what you want in life. You want to feel connected, want to feel relevant. You want to feel like you’re a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. That’s precisely what we are, just by being alive."

Pierre  knew all that because Tolstoy knew all that, and isn't that a bit of genius right there?

Robertson Davies : A Portrait in Mosaic

"If I had to choose a (mythic) character standing for myself, it would be the Ugly Duckling. You see, no one thought much of him when he was a duck. But when they found out he was a swan, opinion changed. I may not be the world's foremost swan, but I am not a duck."

I read all of the Robertson Davies canon in my twenties and I even went to see him read from his final novel, The Cunning Man, of which I purchased an autographed copy that happy evening. I also own a couple of anthologies of the great Canadian's musings (The Merry Heart and The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies), so when a literature course was announced through my local library that is to focus on Davies, I promptly registered. Robertson Davies: A Portrait in Mosaic is the first book on the syllabus.

In contrast to the other biographies I have read, Val Ross composed hers in the oral history format -- where short paragraphs from diaries, lectures, letters, memoirs, and the results of direct interviews (from Davies and over a hundred people who knew him) are assembled in an approximate chronological order with very little editorialising from Ross herself. Although the result is an impressive collection of research, I found the format to be jarring and discontinuous; as though I were reading Ross' research notes and not a finished biography. (And I do understand that this format is becoming more and more popular, but as presented here, it's just not my cuppa tea.) Called a "portrait in mosaic", this book reminds me of a mosaic project that Mallory did for me years ago: one with sharp, unpolished edges that, even when seen from a distance, strains to resolve into a coherent picture: 

Can you tell that's a handprint? Can you believe I own such an apt analogy?

Ross, in the periodic comments she made, tried to provide focus, but if she was attempting to remove herself from the book entirely (I imagine that's the point of this format?) she didn't quite succeed. Sometimes she made inferences from outside of the source material (on Davies' father: With a war on and a family to support, much responsibility rested on Rupert, who must have feared that his family would face ruin if he fell ill. Then he did fall ill.) and sometimes by interposing her own judgements (on Davies' wife's family: Her mother, Muriel Larking, was just 22 years old when she married Paul Matthews. "Just 22"? I don't find that shockingly young even today.) 
The main thrust of this biography is that Robertson Davies was a hard man to get to know: with his theatrical appearance and subversive sense of humour, even his closest friends were held at a remove. This was likely an act of self-preservation as both his wife, Brenda Davies, and his good friend, Arnold Edinborough, note that Davies had "one skin too few". When it came to biographers, Davies was even less forthcoming as he tried to control what information became public. To a filmmaker, he quoted his father's advice:

When you meet a man in business for the first time -- be an observer. Let him conduct the meeting and do the talking. Listen to him closely -- not just to his words, but his phraseology. Observe his gestures, his deportment -- and his manner of dress. Then, imagine the direct opposite of everything you have just seen or heard. That's your man!

And so was Robertson Davies merely playing the part of a curmudgeonly old geezer? Not according to his friend, Sarah Edinborough Iley: 

People spoke of him as always acting. I don't believe such people ever really knew him. They said he was an actor. That was crap. They'd met a persona, not the man, and they didn't seem to be able to tell the difference.

I do appreciate the research that went into this book -- and the difficulty that must have been involved in memorialising someone like Robertson Davies who played with his public image -- but it just really didn't work for me; likely because I'm on the brink of becoming a curmudgeonly old geezer myself. 

So, more on this literature course. The info I saw from the library was:

Brush up on your English Literature at Idea Exchange!

Ever considered taking a literary course? Well now is your chance! Community Lit is a FREE university-level course offered at our Queen’s Square location. This adult learning course is open to anyone wishing to expand on their literary knowledge.

The course includes 8 sessions, running weekly on Wednesdays from July 16 – August 20 from 6:30 – 8:00pm. Each session focuses on a particular issue relevant to the text. There will be no evaluation of any kind, with much more class involvement than a traditional lecture. Community Lit will be taught by University of Waterloo English Literature Instructor, Diana Lobb, PhD.

After spending a year and a half writing book reviews on goodreads, I thought it would be really interesting to take a course like this -- if nothing else, it would get me out of the house for a little bit each week and let me dip my toe in the book club vibe (with the added benefit of having a literature professor choose the books and guide the discussions). It wasn't until after I signed up that I was sent the syllabus, and my heart thudded with glee when I saw it -- no course could have been more tailor-made for me:

The Perils of Patronage: Robertson Davies, Vincent Massey and The Cornish Trilogy

Instructor: Diana Lobb, PhD

Course Description: Author, playwright, journalist, cultural critic and educator: Robertson Davies was a man of many talents with a very powerful patron – Vincent Massey, first Canadian born Governor General of Canada. In The Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels, What's Bred In The Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus), Davies intertwines the world of the modern Canadian university with the history of the Holocaust. Given that, against strong objections Massey installed his protégé, Davies, as the first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto and Massey's (and possibly Davies' own) anti-Semitism, the relationship between Massey and Davies offers an interesting context for reading how these books speak to the perils of patronage.

July 16th

Introduction

July 23rd

Robertson Davies: A Portrait in Mosaic

July 30th

None Is Too Many

August 6th

The Rebel Angels

August 13th

What's Bred In The Bone

August 20th

The Lyre of Orpheus

Robertson Davies? The king of Canadian letters who I did have the great joy of seeing perform a reading from his last book before he died? I love that guy! And a look at anti-Semitism? I'm always interested in this strange and vile phenomenon. A reading list with 5 can-lit selections, 2 of them non-fiction? These are books that I would be interested in reading anyway! (And although I did read the Cornish Trilogy 25 years ago...that was 25 years ago...)

So I attended the introductory class this past Wednesday, and arriving early, I was interested to see what my classmates would be like. To my bemusement, the majority of them are senior citizens, and the majority of them are loud-mouthed, opinionated senior citizens. Oh boy.

The Prof began by explaining that Robertson Davies intimately knew Vincent Massey (the first Canadian-born Governor General and a scion of the Massey tractor fortune). When Massey decided to build a college at the U of T, he made the offer conditional on Davies becoming its first Master (which the school didn't like because Davies was not an academic -- he not only didn't have a proper university degree, but he never actually graduated high school). Massey was a known and vocal anti-Semite, and although Davies was also known to toss off a good Jew joke himself at times, it's always been unclear whether that reflected his beliefs or whether he was simply "playing the game"; currying favour with the elites. The reading list includes a biography of Davies (here reviewed), None is Too Many (on Canada's refusal to accept Jewish refugees during and immediately after WWII), and then the Cornish Trilogy (which includes many references to the Holocaust).

Then the Prof opened the floor to anyone who would like to introduce themselves.

One man said that he retired last fall from his job as a political speech writer and has happily returned to his first love, poetry, for which he won some prizes while in university. He's considering returning to university and thought he might take this course to see if he's still up to snuff. Coincidentally, he wrote this poem last week (opens notebook and begins reciting):

I didn't fight the great war

to stand in Timmy's

and listen to the Blackies

I fought for Queen and Country

My country

not Angola, Rwanda, Botswana...

It went on in that vein for a while and he explained that it wasn't finished, but he was intrigued by all the old veterans who hang around the coffee shops --veterans that this guy assumes are judgemental about the multiculturalism they see around them. All I could think was how crass it sounded for this man my father's age to write in the voice of a man my grandfather's age -- a man who did fight in WWII but is long dead.

A man with a silver ponytail said, "Well, isn't this timely since we all know that everybody's favourite game right now is to kill a Palestinian. And it's like I came up to punch you and you pulled out a machine gun. Like I punched you and you pulled out a machine gun. And the news won't even report on what's going on over there now. There's one Israeli soldier dead and if you ask how many Palestinians are dead, they shrug and say, "I don't know". Like they don't even matter..." This went on a long time, and I was giving him the squirrelly eye as he was ranting. I had feared that with a look at anti-Semitism that there might be some of this, but honestly, I expected it to come from the Prof (what with all this BDS stuff on campuses) and wonder if silver ponytail would have read any articles like this this week.

An old woman said, "I'm not from Canada -- I'm a newbie here -- but I just want to say that you all think your history is so clean, but it's not. It's dirty. It's dirty and you don't even know it." Mr. Poet asked her where she's from (and I assumed she was an American because she didn't have an accent) and she replied, "Germany. I came in 1974." "Then you're not a newbie," guffawed the Poet. German: "I simply mean that I didn't learn Canadian history in school."

When the Prof was trying to make the point that Canadian history is interesting, she mentioned that there's a pergola made from 200 year old headstones not far from the library, and she believed they were from a cemetery that was moved; a cemetery that was once used for the victims of an influenza epidemic.

Several of the seniors, instead of really introducing themselves, would say, "I have more information on that cemetery if you're interested" or "That was actually a Typhoid Fever Epidemic" or "The Typhus was brought to town by a travelling circus and the original advertisements -- painted on large pieces of wood -- were used to build the Dickson School. When I worked there, you could go up to the attic and see the paintings of the tigers and the clowns."

As usual, I have such difficulty speaking in front of crowds -- and the seniors put everything right off track -- and I didn't end up introducing myself. I wanted to say, "I'm a stay at home Mom and I do a lot of reading. Over the past year and a half I've become addicted to reviewing these books for goodreads, and I thought it would be helpful if I could back up my opinions with a bit of a scholarship." And then I would have totally mentioned seeing Robertson Davies in person (as the Prof said that she had, too).

When I was telling Ken and Laura about this last night, Ken said, "So, at what point did you stand up and walk out? There's no way I'd spend even another minute with those crazy old people."

But I shrugged and laughed. This is learning, too. Maybe, if I screw up the nerve to speak, someone there might even learn something from me.

Update from July 25th

We had the discussion last night for this book and the Prof started by asking people to comment on whether or not they enjoyed the book and why. Not wanting to never say anything, I was the first to put up my hand and said, "I didn't really like this book. I found it choppy and a little dull. I expect a biographer to also give historical context and describe other things that are going on -- not just what these people said directly, but also explain exactly who these people are."

The Prof said, "So, it was too 'bitty' for you?"

"Yes, too bitty. It might have been better if the snippets were longer -- it might not have been so off-putting then."

Then, the next 4 or 5 people to speak were old ladies who said that at first they, too, were confused by the format, but once they got the hang of it, they all thought the book was wonderful.

O.o 

I didn't say I was confused. I said I didn't like it. 

Most of the commentary after that involved people who decided that they didn't like Robertson Davies the man after reading this biography, which I didn't get, but then, I've always been in awe of the man and could never not like him. He was a giant and has my leave to have been quirky.

There are things that I would have liked to debate with the Prof (but wouldn't since she's, you know, the expert on Canadian Literature and all...) but here are a couple of things:

In the first meeting, she mentioned that Davies (through the Massey Report and the implementation of its recommendations) had an outsized effect on Canadian culture. And isn't that amazing, coming from a man from small town Ontario who affected a British accent? Now, I remembered seeing Davies speak live, and I didn't remember it as a British accent -- just a theatrical one (and remembered it being like Gale Gordon's accent, someone I also met at around the same time). In this book, Val Ross described Davies' accent as "mid-Atlantic", so of course I looked that up. Essentially, it said that this accent was common in boarding schools and prestigious colleges all over North America, and that even many American Presidents spoke with a mid-Atlantic tone. In this week's meeting, the Prof pointed out that Ross calls it "mid-Atlantic" but stressed that it still shows a preference for British mannerisms. But does it? Davies' father was from Wales and he attended Upper Canada College (the snootiest boys' boarding school in Toronto), and then studied at Oxford and worked at the Old Vic in London. Couldn't his accent have been every bit as natural as, say, Grover Cleveland's?

And my second beef: the Prof  said that this Anglophilia is also demonstrated by the fact that Davies was able to start the Stratford Festival, and she several times repeated, "Isn't it amazing that Canada's national theater is a Shakespeare theater?" I would have liked to push back with, "I don't know anyone outside of Ontario who would think of the Stratford Festival as Canada's national theater." And also ironic that she said that she's going to see a play at Stratford tonight: Mother Courage; definitely not Shakespeare. 


All Five Titles:

Robertson Davies : A Portrait in Mosaic

None is Too Many

The Rebel Angels

What's Bred in the Bone

The Lyre of Orpheus