More for Moms (and a belated Happy Mother’s Day to you all!)

Two more books discussed in my Mom Salon class over the last month…

Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Game-Accidental-Guide-Fatherhood/dp/B004R96SAQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305562525&sr=1-1

Lewis is well known as the author of such bestsellers as Liar’s Poker and The Blind Side. This book comes from a collection of essays he did on slate.com. Lewis’s wife, Tabitha Soren, suggested he write these pieces, saying something along the lines of: If you’re going to be such a slacker Dad, you might as well make some money on it and do some writing about your experiences! (Ok, I’m totally making that up, but the columns were her idea. And I’m glad to hear they were ok with her, because he does expose quite a lot of their private family life.)

Lewis is an excellent writer, and he crafts a beautiful essay, so it’s a pleasure to read this book, for starters, because it’s so well-written. And even though it’s a book about fathering, I chose it for my Mom Salon so we moms could have a chance to see things from another point of view. (One of the students said her husband saw what she was reading and said “Why are you reading that book?!”)

Lewis begins by telling us that he didn’t have much by way of a role model for fathering, and that his own father, though beloved by his children, was rather absent from family life, particularly when things needed to get done (as they always do when children are involved). So throughout the book, he presents himself as kind of muddling along, taking instructions from his wife – a sort of second string parent who is expected to muck up rather than succeed (sports metaphors are rampant in the this book, and they are apt). He says he is one of these new modern dads who must be forgiven their incompetence.

And so as he begins to father after the birth of their first child, Lewis is not really certain what he is meant to be doing, or what he should be feeling, and he notes:

“. . . this persistent and disturbing gap between what I was meant to feel and what I actually felt. Expected to feel overcome with joy. . . I often felt puzzled. Expected to feel outraged, I often felt secretly pleased; expected to feel worried, I often felt indifferent.” (p. 14)

He notes that:

“. . . all around me fathers were pretending to do one thing, and feel one way, when in fact they were doing and feeling all sorts of things, and then engaging afterward in what amounted to an extended cover-up.” (p. 14)

Lewis’s pieces take us through a multitude of fathering experiences as he and his wife parent three children. He describes an entertaining visit to a French Gymboree class, an attempt to “Ferberize” his child, the jealousy of the older child when a younger sibling appears, his own trip to the hospital after an ice skating mishap, and more. While I don’t always agree with his parenting choices, his pieces are mostly entertaining—many laugh-out-loud—and often insightful. To the degree that I suppose I will be able to understand what it feels like to be a father, I have learned something from this book.

Next book was The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels.

http://www.amazon.com/Mommy-Myth-Idealization-Motherhood-Undermined/dp/0743260465/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305562478&sr=1-1

This book, published in 2004, describes something the authors call “the new momism,” which is the idea of a perfect mother that surfaced in post-feminist America, and how the media contributed to creating this unattainable image.

The book is smart, packed with supporting information from a variety of sources, and includes smart and interesting analyses of popular culture. The tone is amusing and often, as one Mom said, “snarky,” so it makes for entertaining reading (although the pop cult references are a bit dated by now).

Some of what the book is saying also overlaps in some ways with Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother, the idea being that there is this image “out there” of what a proper mother ought to be, and if you don’t match up, well then, you’re not a good mother (you may even be, as Waldman says, a bad mother). Douglas & Michaels describe how they think this new image developed, a model that is in some ways a throwback to the non-working 50s housewife, and why it is so frustrating. According to this image, mothers are supposed to love what they do, all of it, every minute of the day. They take great joy in their roles, and they need no other reward or occupation. If so if you don’t feel this way, well then surely something is wrong with you, so bring on the guilt!

This is, of course, a great oversimplification of their message, but we found it rang true, and that we all struggle with figuring out how to take on the Mom role in a way that works for us and for our families, even if we don’t think we’re matching up to some societal ideal.

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Hello blog readers! Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I actually went a few weeks without reading a book, which is odd for me. But I’m back!

Today’s question is, when a book has been critically acclaimed from coast to coast, need I add my voice to the clamor? When even Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times, that famed eviscerator of authors, has sung a book’s praises, what more is there for me to say here? That I disagree? I tried that recently with West of Here, when for a long time I was the only one standing on my lonely little platform here at Blogspot saying “wait a minute, didn’t anyone notice…?” What’s that advertising slogan that used to say “it’s lonely at the top?” Well, it’s lonely at the bottom too, out here by myself in cyberspace.

The book to which I am referring that has critics goggling is The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, who is twenty-five years old (damn her!) and the youngest writer chosen for last year’s New Yorker “20 under 40” group of fiction writers (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/20-under-40/writers-q-and-a). The story is set in the war-torn Balkans, weaving folklore and myth into a central contemporary tale of a young doctor searching for the mysterious reason for her grandfather’s death. (And yes, tigers are very popular these days, but I am talking about the tiger’s wife here, not the tiger mom!)

This week I discussed this book with my “Hot Off the Press” book discussion class. Overall, we’re not actually that far off what the critics are saying. We really do think the author is phenomenally talented, and many of us admired the writer’s writing style and storytelling abilities. But prominent raves notwithstanding, we did have some problems to point out in this book. The author weaves back and forth a lot in time, and some of us, myself included, found this confusing at points. And I usually enjoy this technique. The complicated plot of The Time Traveler’s Wife thrilled me and I loved putting the pieces in chronological order. I especially enjoyed putting pieces together in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad, which is a terrific book. But in The Tiger’s Wife I often found the switches in time disorienting.

I think the author has a wonderful ability to create quick and colorful character sketches in the folklore/historical sections of the book, as when she gave us the stories of Luka the butcher, Darisa the bear, and the Apothecary. Given this ability, I wondered why her central character, Natalia, the doctor who searches for the missing pieces of her grandfather’s story while she tends to war orphans, is so flat. Natalia is admirable as a character and her observations are insightful, but as for personality and emotion, my readers and I found her lacking. And while we do get some sense of Natalia’s grandmother, Natalia’s mother, although she is referred to numerous times, is not developed at all as a character.

One brilliant aspect of this book is how it is a war story that never mentions war. By giving us war’s shadow, the life that happens or has been obliterated in the unseen spaces war leaves behind, we are left with a clear sense of the toll war has taken on this part of the world.

I expect more beautiful work from this author in the future, and expect her to grow in skill. In this instance, however, while she has turned out a significant work of fiction, I wish she had gone back to the drawing board one more time. I believe I read that she said she worked on the novel for three years, and in the life of a twenty-five year-old, that’s a lot of years, but a bit more reworking might have addressed the book’s flaws. David Wroblewski worked on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle for fifteen years. The difference in literary polish and command shows.

And so, to get back to my initial question, which was whether the [literary] world needs yet another critic? Well, hopefully I’ve added some thoughtful and even useful comments to the mix. If I can say something interesting or unique, raise a good point, even make you smile, sure, why not?

The Thinking Mom

One of the book discussion classes I run is called the Mom Salon, where we read and discuss books having to do with various aspects of mothering (which means, gentlemen, watch out, because you know we’re talking about you!).

This week’s Mom Salon selection was Mothers Who Think, a collection of essays from the Salon.com column of the same name. The column was started in 1997 in response to the editors’ feeling that: “the complicated range of dramas and emotions that really defines motherhood” wasn’t being probed, and they say these writings are “an antidote to the saccharine, oversimplified literature of motherhood.”

I think it’s true that there’s still something of a conception out there that motherhood is supposed to be all bliss and reward, and that we’re not supposed to admit to the times when we feel cranky or angry or we’d like a brief vacation from the job. The book analyzes this from many different directions in a smart, thoughtful way.

There’s Anne Lamott, whose writing I love, talking about how we could never get away with talking to adults the way we address our children. She writes: “Can you imagine hissing at your partner, ‘You get off the phone now! No, not in five minutes…’? Or saying to a friend, ‘You get over here this second!’. . .

There’s a beautiful essay by local (Philadelphia) author Beth Kephart about her son falling in love with soccer at age 8. One of my favorite essays is by Erin Aubry about her parents’ New Orleans heritage and how it played a big part in her upbringing in LA, especially through her mother’s cooking. The book is filled with good writing and funny and powerful stories about mothers good and bad, successful and suffering.

I really like what one reader wrote to the editors: “Thanks for reminding me that I’m a woman who is also a mother, not a mother who is also a woman.” I forget this sometimes, and it’s nice to be reminded!

p.s. Moms, if you want me to start a Mom Salon for your friends, just send me a FB message!

And the winner is…

Ugh, too long since I’ve been involved in a novel. Missing that happy feeling of being immersed in a good book! Have decided upon First Light by Charles Baxter. I keep hearing he’s such a good writer, and this book has been recommended several places.

In the meantime, I’ve also been percolating on ideas for a new book for myself to write. Not a novel – yet. Still too intimidated by that. I’ll stick with what I know, non-fiction, for the time being. Not quite ready to tell you what ideas I’m considering, but for one idea I have I’m envisioning a small trim-size hardcover, the sort of book you give as a graduation gift. I see it as being illustrated with tiny delicate and expressive watercolors of various scenes. I thought about it for a while, and then realized what I was thinking of was the work of Elisha Cooper.

I discovered Cooper through his first book, A Year in New York. It is also one of those lovely tiny hardcovers chronicling the year he spent in New York City working as a messenger for The New Yorker and doing watercolor sketches of scenes he saw all around the city, from Zabar’s and Central Park to Coney Island to markets and subways and tiny neighborhood scenes. I just took out my old copy and have been happily leafing through the pages and admiring his art.

Looked him up on Amazon, and it looks like he’s been quite busy since this book came out in 1995, writing children’s books and a book on fatherhood. You can always tell what authors are doing in their lives by the books they write! But this older book is worth a look –it’s a gem!

So Much for That!

I’ve been stuck lately choosing my next book, and haven’t read anything all week! I kind of did myself in by amassing a huge pile of potential next reads. They all look so good, I just don’t know where to start!

Many of the books in the pile are galleys of books I’ve chosen for my next book discussion class, “Hot Off the Press.” You can see these books in the nifty display to the right that my husband made for me with an Amazon widget. I’ll be reading all of those quite soon!

There are also a whole bunch I picked up from the library, including the new novel from Lionel Shriver, So Much for That. I like Lionel Shriver – I really enjoyed and recommend her book The Post-Birthday World. It’s a kind of “Sliding Doors” approach (great movie from 1998 with Gwyneth Paltrow) where the main character, in alternating chapters, lives out two alternative realities that could occur based on choice she makes one night (at dinner, handsome dinner companion, boyfriend out of town, lots of wine – you can imagine what that choice was to be made).

So I read the first 61 pages (3 chapters) of Shriver’s new novel. I do like it so far, and yet I don’t think I’m going to continue right now. The story in large part hinges on an almost-fifty year old woman’s discovery that she has a rare and advanced type of cancer, and the affect this has on her relationship with her husband, from whose point of view her story is told. So far, lots (lots!) of clinical detail about her medical condition, and even about health insurance plans (to the point where I wondered if there was a political message here). I’m starting to feel that I’m not really emotionally ready to spend 430 some pages with a woman around my age going through this. I’ll wait on this one.

And so, my next selection will be…

Hurrah for the New York Times!

In my recent posts (below) about Jonathan Evison's new book West of Here, I commented on how I seemed to be out of step with popular critical opinion. The book was receiving rave after rave, while I seemed to be the lone dissenter, lamenting the book's overambitious scope and plethora of stereotyped characters. One of my students who read the book in my class even wrote to me and said "did they read the same book we did?" I was beginning to wonder if perhaps our manuscripts had indeed been switched at birth, until today's review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review came out. The people shopping at Trader Joe's must have wondered why I was sitting in my car, reading and yelping, but I couldn't help but shout for joy when I read Mike Peed's review. I feel vindicated at last!
Read for yourself:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/books/review/Peed-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=west%20of%20here%20book%20review&st=cse

The Bird House by Kelly Simmons

Last week I went to hear local author Kelly Simmons read from her new book The Bird House. I really like Kelly’s first book, Standing Still, and Kelly herself is smart, funny, and terrific to listen to. I enjoyed hearing her read from the book. I always like hearing an author’s words in their own voice. I feel like it adds to my appreciation of the work. I’ll never forget the first time I experienced this. It was in college, and I had been busily discovering and reading Margaret Atwood in my frenzy of feminist lit crit, loving early complex works like Surfacing and The Edible Woman, when she came to campus. She stood at the lectern in front of a large crowd in a big high-ceilinged room in College Hall, opened her mouth and began to read. I remember being stunned, thinking, at first, but that’s not how the book sounds, realizing I had created my own sound for it in my own head as I read it. But then I realized, it’s her book, and that’s her voice, and that’s how she wants it to sound. I was enchanted.

I even like hearing authors read when I don’t understand what they’re saying, like when I heard Eduardo Galeano read in Spanish (in NY at the 92nd St. Y). It’s beautiful when authors bring their understanding and their meaning and emphasis to words that they put down on the page. An author can’t control how a reader interprets their work – once it’s left their hands it’s free to be understood in any way—but in reading, they can control how it sounds.

After Kelly read she answered questions and talked about some interesting things. Here are some random notes:

1. Writers she admires: Ann Beattie and John Irving;
2. Her story is based on a writing assignment her daughter received years ago that been percolating in her head ever since. Her daughter had to interview a relative and Kelly thought, “Uh, oh, that could spell trouble. What if a family secret came out while the child was interviewing a grandparent?” And hence the genesis of this new book;
3. She often writes, and “wastes,” a 150 pages before figuring out a story;
4. She wrote 8 novels in the last 15 years. This is only the 2nd one being published. She figures those others will probably continue living in a drawer or hard drive;
5. Her writing came about as a result of her work in advertising. She wanted to do some creative work that “didn’t have other people’s fingerprints on it. Love that!
6. When asked what distinguishes a Kelly Simmons book, she and the audience came up with the following: the central voice is a raw essential angry female voice; she plays with time; she has an unreliable narrator.

Thanks for a great Q&A and a great new book, Kelly!