Watching, waking, leaking, planning

Life is busy of late. My reading is very piecemeal. Somehow I've managed to get myself to this point where, unnaturally for me, I'm reading four books or more at the same time. I'm highly distractible these days, and the lack of reading focus exacerbates the feeling of being unmoored. This blog in fact brings some kind of structure and routine to my life, and I miss it when I ignore it. That ends today.

Here's some of what's been going on.

Watching
My mother is a feminist, but she doesn't know it. And she's far more open-minded than she believes herself to be.

Thank gawd for television. If it weren't for television, my mother might not recognize Margaret Atwood for the Canadian icon she is. Somehow, Peter Mansbridge and I convinced my mom to give the television adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale a try, arguing that it's deeply relevant commentary on our Trumpian times.



It's dark and riveting, and my mother agrees.

My mom asked me in our first telephone debriefing, "It's almost like... is this science fiction?" I said the only thing I could say. "Ummm, nnnoooo."

Waking
Impulse purchase at a checkout counter: We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that I should own a copy of this, leave it lying around the house for visitors to pick up. But I don't have many visitors. I thought about wrapping it up for my teenage daughter, but then thought better of it. She'll find her own brand of feminism without my pressing manifestoes on her. So I sent it to my mother.

If you haven't already, watch Adichie's TED Talk. (Or just listen to Beyoncé. See also.)

Leaking
As part of this year's Blue Metropolis literary festival, Barbara Gowdy was interviewed by Kathleen Winter, substituting for Heather O'Neill at the last minute. I've read only one of Gowdy's books, The White Bone, and it devastated me to the point that I deliberately stayed away from everything else she published for fear of further devastation or, worse, disappointment. But O'Neill was in fact the main draw for me to attend this event; had I known she was absent, I might not have made the effort, but I'm glad I did.

Gowdy's latest is Little Sister, about a woman who through paranormal means ends up inhabiting another's body, but, if I understood correctly, that body is not a mere vehicle (à la Being John Malkovich) — it's a catalyst for a much deeper experience.

The conversation was fantastic, weaving around this idea of fluidity, that so many boundaries have lost their rigidity, particularly in terms of identity, and everything is leaking into everything else. They also discussed, admiringly, George Saunders' Lincoln at the Bardo, which covers some similar territory (as well as the phenomenon of how similar, or even the same ideas, can crop up independently of one another). I'm very much looking forward to reading both the Gowdy and the Saunders (eventually).

Planning
The flights are booked: the kid and I are planning a holiday, splitting our time between Edinburgh, London, and Brighton (with daytrips to the likes of Stonehenge and Oxford).

I'm full up on English literature, but I'd like to read some novels set in Edinburgh. Any recommendations?

He died in the hall with the radio on

I've been working my way through a collection of short stories, Tenth of December, by George Saunders.

I have the impression that Saunders is a big deal. (I read and loved The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip a long time ago.)

The thing is, I don't get on well with short stories in general. I don't know why. Too short to connect, to develop a relationship with? But then there are several specific short stories that I have actually liked. It's the idea of short stories I don't like. That is, I like the idea of reading a story that's short. I just don't like them. Most of them are forgettable, they don't stay with me. I generally don't choose to read short stories.

With that massive disclaimer out of the way, I'll say these stories were quite all right. In fact they were just the thing, the right kind of bedtime reading this past week. I will consider reading more Saunders. The stories are very human and tragic, and several of them have a futuristic or science fiction-y aspect that while not central is essential to the backdrop of the story. Or maybe it is central. That is, the stories start off being very familiar, until suddenly they're really not.

One of the stories ("The Semplica Girl Diaries") I would've loved to experience at novel length.

Another story I loved is shorter than short. (I like really short short stories like this one; I like them better than short stories. They have a meditative aspect like poetry. All that's inessential has been stripped away.) I give it to you here in its entirety.

Sticks

Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he'd built out of metal pole in the yard. Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veteran’s Day a soldier, on Halloween a ghost. The pole was Dad's only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first time I brought a date over she said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.

We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dressing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby. We'd stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom's makeup. One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.

That's it. That's the whole gut-wrenching story. Doesn't it make you just — ?

All of the stories in this collection are available online:

Victory Lap
Sticks
Puppy
Escape from Spiderhead
Exhortation
Al Roosten
The Semplica Girl Diaries
Home
My Chivalric Fiasco
Tenth of December