A Little Bird Told Me

I didn't hate The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and Amazon's 2013 Best Book of the Year, but I also didn't love it. I'd seen it on the best-seller lists. For a couple of years I would walk by it, in bookstores and at Costco, admiring the cover (a partial image of the Carel Fabritius painting after which the book is named, revealed by a tear in the paper that hides the rest), but I never even picked it up to look at the jacket copy. I honestly don't know why not. I sort of knew the premise: a young boy (Theo) loses his mother in an explosion in an art museum and in the ensuing smoke and chaos snatches a priceless small painting from the wall which in the years to come serves as a precious talisman and connection to his mother as well as a millstone of guilt that he can neither live with nor do without. Sounds interesting, and I had heard nothing negative about it to put me off.

When it was chosen as the April selection for my book group, I found a copy at Bookman's, Tucson's wonderful used book store chain, and settled in for a long (nearly 800 pages in hardcover, more in paperback) read.

In a blog post entitled "Talking about Books I Don't Like,"  (http://modernmrsdarcy.com/books-i-dont-like/), Anne (sorry, I don't know her last name) cites art critic Peter Schjeldahl's approach to reviewing works he doesn't like, or as he puts it, "work that isn't immediately congenial." He asks himself:

     What would I like about this if I liked it? That is, I sort of project myself into the mind of somebody who thinks, "Wow, this is great, this is what I like." And sometimes that idea in my head persuades me, and I come around. I come around a little bit . . . . If that fails, I say, what would somebody who likes this be like?"

As I learned last week at book group, some of my friends like The Goldfinch very much (though no one seemed to think it was perfect or life-changing). Those who like it have good reasons for doing so, while others have equally good reasons for disliking at least parts of it. So let me be clear, I do like, even admire parts of it very much. For example:

• Some of the writing is very, very good. Tartt can describe a scene fairly economically and at the same time put you right in it, and she's equally good at sketching out the large number of characters in this novel. That's undoubtedly why, in addition to the sheer size of the book, some critics and readers have called it Dickensian.
• The reader will learn things, all sorts of things. For example, The Goldfinch of the title is a real painting, with a real story behind it, though the narrative in the novel is entirely invented. (Actually, I learned that not from the novel but by googling it.)
• Donna Tartt is impressively well informed in a number of areas, from the arts and antiques trade to Russian organized crime. You have to respect a writer who does her homework, and there must have been a great deal of homework involved here; either that or she's led a remarkably interesting and possibly dangerous life.
• The book contains intriguing and in some cases very appealing characters, notably Hobie, the kindly antiques dealer who takes Theo, the protagonist, under his wing, and Boris, a modern-day, adolescent Russian immigrant equivalent to Dickens' Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. (As in Oliver Twist, motherless children and/or orphans abound in this story.)
• While Theo is not a particularly sympathetic narrator - at the beginning the reader feels sorry for him, of course, but as he develops more unpleasant habits it becomes clear that he feels enough self-pity for a whole boatload of tragic orphans - he is well and convincingly drawn. A member of our group who has reason to know of such things also says that Tartt's portrayal of junkie culture and the way junkies think is spot on.

However, none of those things are enough to make me recommend the book, and here's why:

• It's at least half again as long as it needs to be. That's true of the novel overall and even some of the paragraphs. 
• Tartt sometimes seems to be unsure of or lose sight of what kind of book she's writing (the reader may share that feeling). Is it a heart-warming coming of age story in which the protagonist finally rises above tragedy, fear, and guilt? Is it a Quentin Tarantino-style action thriller? Is it Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer making mischief in the lunar landscape of an unfinished and nearly unpopulated Las Vegas suburb? Is it a touching tale of unrequited love? It tries, in fact, to be all those things, which I suppose is why it's so long and perhaps why it fails to be a satisfactory example of any of them.
• Taken separately, various elements work well or at least come close to working, such as the explosion that begins the story; the weird period Theo spends in Las Vegas with his ne'er-do-well father and his father's girlfriend, where he meets Boris, who is arguably the most interesting and appealing character in the story; the scenes revolving around art and antiques and other elements of backstory. But I think it's a problem when the backstory is more interesting than the main story. 
• It's also a problem when you'd rather be reading a book focused on one of the supporting characters: What really happened to Pippa at her Swiss "boarding school" for traumatized girls? What was Boris doing in the years he and Theo were apart? How did Hobie become who he is, living the life he lives? But unfortunately it's a first-person narrative, so we must always return to what's going on inside Theo's head, which after a while was not a place I really wanted to be.
• The opening, with Theo holed up in a hotel room in Amsterdam, didn't pique my interest, as it seems pretty contrived from a stylistic perspective, but the final section, an epilogue of sorts which is supposed to wrap things up and, I guess, show how Theo has grown through his experiences and hold out some hope for his future, is even less satisfactory. Introductions and conclusions are hard to write, I know, and this case illustrates the principle that less is, or could have been, more.

All that brings me to Schjeldahl's second question: ". . . what would somebody who likes this be like?" That's a hard one. They might be nicer than I am, in the sense of feeling enough compassion for Theo to excuse his self-absorbed whining. They might just be more patient, or they might be more able to put story above style (I can't put in the time to read certain very popular thriller authors, but I often enjoy the movies based on their books). 

Other people have similar mixed feelings about The Goldfinch, such as those reported on in Evgenia Peretz's 2014 Vanity Fair article which raises the question of why critics and others have their panties in such a wad about it (http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/07/goldfinch-donna-tartt-literary-criticism.  Critic James Wood wrote in The New Yorker that "Its tone, language, and story belong in children's literature" (not so sure I'd agree with that, given the recurrent drug use and other elements). He also told Vanity Fair, "I think that the rapture with which this novel has been received is further proof of the infantilization of our literary culture: a world in which adults go around reading Harry Potter." Now just a minute there, James. There's a lot to be said for Harry Potter (more, in my opinion, than for The Goldfinch, though you have likely figured that out), but this post is over-long already.

Perhaps my reservations about the novel are borne out by the fact that the screen rights have been purchased by Warner Brothers and that it will be produced by the folks behind Rush Hour and The Hunger Games movies, which is not necessarily good news for those who would like to see it treated as serious literature. However, Peter Straughan, who wrote the screenplay for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, based on the John LeCarré novel, will adapt it for the screen, so there's some hope. And it will no doubt be shortened significantly, though whether or not that's a good thing will depend on what gets cut and what gets left in. No doubt the Tarantino-esque sequence near the end will get full and loving treatment. 

Two things I'm sure of: 1) devoted fans of the book will be unhappy with some of the cuts and compromises inherent in translating literature into film, and 2) sitting through the movie will be a whole lot quicker than reading 800 or so pages. The hours I spent doing that are hours I'll never get back. Whether or not you agree with me, I'd love to hear your comments.

   

DOODLE FLOWERS

Some days you're the pigeon; some days you're the statue. Sometimes you eat the bear; sometimes the bear eats you. (And no, I haven't seen The Revenant yet.) That's kind of how my April is going, in terms of managing a poem a day. Yesterday, almost nothing. Today, well, at least I've made a start.

Today's poem responds to two prompts. Robert Lee Brewer, in Poetic Asides http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/2016-april-pad-challenge-day-8, suggests we "write a doodle poem," while Maureen Thorson of NaPoWriMo http://www.napowrimo.net/ reminds us that "Poets have been writing about flowers since, oh, the dawn of time," and challenges us to do the same.

FLORA

I've doodled the same little blossoms for years,
five petals, all one looping motion,
like the sharp five-pointed stars
we learned to draw in grade school,
but rounded, soft, each petal ready
to flutter away alone on any friendly breeze.

They occupy corners of shopping lists,
line up across the bottom of class notes,
drift down the margins in delicate clusters
tied together with ribbons of ink.

Sometimes they anchor simple landscapes,
grow out of mounds of spiky grass
along meandering paths up little hills
to mushroom-shaped cottages
with tilted, smoking chimneys and always,
always the same round window over the door,
homes for plump fairy grandmothers
with full cookie jars and mugs of milky tea,
waiting just for me.

APRIL IS THE POETRY MONTH

It's here again, National Poetry Month, along with one of my favorite daily practices, the "poem-a-day-for April." There are some good websites out there offering daily prompts if you need inspiration; two I like are Robert Lee Brewer's "Poetic Asides" blog,  http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides, and NaPoWriMo,  http://www.napowrimo.net/, but I'm sure a google search would turn up others.

To be honest, I haven't gotten off to a roaring start this April, producing rough drafts at best and nothing at all yesterday, though I'm a bit happier with this morning's effort, responding to NaPoWriMo's prompt to write a food poem. I'm not ready to call it a finished product, but I've decided to share it anyway, and I'd be very interested in any comments you might care to make. Interpretations? Observations? Anything?

Last night I dreamed about meringue.

Not delicate little cookies, not billowy

oversweetened clouds atop a

lemon pie. No, this meringue filled

a big Rubbermaid storage bin,

and the more I scooped into a

normal-sized bowl, the more what was left

swelled, threatening to overflow

its blue plastic boundaries.

I couldn’t keep up. There was no

time to stir in the vanilla, no time

to taste, to see if it needed more sugar.

How many egg whites were in it?

Some number beyond my comprehension.

On the counter a pan of little tarts

awaited their topping.

They didn’t need much. Two eggs’ worth, tops.

So where did it come from, all this stuff?

And why did it keep growing?

I knew if I stopped scooping

it would inflate, expand, balloon

over the sides, onto the floor,

filling the kitchen, then the house,

then squeeze out through the cracks around

the doors and windows, up the chimney,

down the drains, cover the yard and

flow out into the street, condemning

everything and everyone in its path

to sugary suffocation.

KOREATOWN

I have a serious cookbook addiction that I must have inherited from my grandmother, who read cookbooks the way some women read romance novels. Mine started when I was just a year or two out of high school, with a subscription to the Time-Life Foods of the World series; I still have all of them, the hardbacks full of wonderful narrative, history, culture, and gorgeous pictures (rather faded now) and the spiral-bound paperbacks containing all the recipes, a couple of which (Scandinavian Cooking and The Cooking of India) have their covers secured now with clear packing tape.

 

Korean food is a fairly new and delicious discovery for me; Joe and I were introduced to it by a few of our students. Tucson has a few Korean restaurants of varying quality - Takamatsu, Seoul Kitchen, Korea House, Kimchi Time - and apparently some of the Japanese restaurants, like Takamatsu, also serve Korean food. I've heard good things about Kampai Sushi, but haven't tried it yet. Interesting trivia note: according to one of my Korean students, most of the sushi chefs in Tucson are actually Korean (that included her husband after he graduated from the university, until he was able to get a job in his own field).

So as you can imagine, I was delighted to receive a review copy of Koreatown: A Cookbook from Blogging for Books http://www.bloggingforbooks.com. Just the cover makes me hungry, and I love the clever design, with the name broken up so the word EAT occupies the center of the image! And the rest of the book is just as gorgeous, full of great, tantalizing photos, recipes, interviews with other Korean chefs and fans of Korean and Korean-American food. Grandma would have loved it.

After an entertaining and informative introduction, each of the co-authors introduces himself with a two-page essay. Deuki Hong grew up in Manhattan's Koreatown and has been cooking professionally since he was fifteen; most of the recipes are those he grew up on. Food writer Matt Rodbard titles his essay "How a White Jew Boy from Kalamazoo Fell Hard for Korean Food." The two make a great team; the writing throughout the book is breezy, entertaining, and deeply appreciative of Korean food and culture.

But the food is the core of the enterprise. I'm a fairly adventurous cook but somehow I've felt intimidated by Korean cuisine, probably because of a Korean friend's remark that cooking for a dinner party was going to be so much work and that Korean food was complicated. But it's really not any more so, I don't think, than any other national cuisine. My friend just doesn't like to cook.

The book arrived during Lent, and because Joe and I have been on-and-off vegetarians, we decided those 40 days would be a good time to go meatless. So I didn't cook any of the meat recipes during that time, although there are many in the book, since Korean food today can be quite meat-centric.

So of course one of the first things I tried was Bibimbap, although as it says opposite the picture, "This Is Not a Bibimbap Recipe." I've had bibimbap many times in restaurants; it seems to be many people's intro to Korean food, for good reason. In restaurants it's usually like a rice bowl on steroids, the sticky rice topped with a number of vegetables, some thin-sliced cooked beef, and an egg (in my experience, not a raw egg as in the above photo, though the raw egg yolk does look cool there). But really, as the authors assure us, you can make bibimbap with whatever's on hand, so I used leftovers from the first two dishes I'd made. Kongnamul Muchim, which translates to crunchy sesame bean sprouts, is one of my favorite banchan (the small dishes that precede and accompany the main course at Korean restaurants). If you look at the cover image above, the bean sprouts are at the top center, occupying the letter "O." I also had some leftover Doenjang and Kimchi-Braised Kale (the recipe served 4 generously and there are only 2 of us); amazingly delicious on its own, it lent a wonderful rich earthiness to the bibimbap. And chopped kimchi, of course, with some shredded carrots and, because it was Lent, just an egg, no meat. Ah, heaven! I love leftovers anyway, but this lifts the tasty to the sublime.

Another thing I love about Korean food is the unfussy way it's eaten. At the first Korean restaurant we went to, years ago, the waiter who brought my bibimbap said, "Just take your chopsticks and stir it all up. Mix it up!" No dainty little bites of one thing at a time - we loved it and felt instantly comfortable and well fed.

The first Korean recipe I tried at home (not from this book) was Pajeon or scallion pancake (above). We'd had some at Seoul Kitchen as a complimentary appetizer (with its spicy dipping sauce) and loved it. What I made at home was good, but not as good, and now I know why. According to Deuki and Matt, Korean cooks, including those in restaurants, all use prepackaged Korean pancake mix (no, Bisquick or Krusteaz won't do) with sparkling (unflavored, of course) water. That was hard for me, since generally speaking I don't do mixes. But they are right; the results were so much better.

In fact, this book and all the recipes I wanted and still want to try necessitated a trip to one of the local Korean markets where I bought enough ingredients that we put them all into a "Korean box," but you probably don't need to go quite that far immediately. Kimchi (if you've never tried it, don't resist; even just a little, chopped up and stirred into a bowl of rice, elevates the eating experience), along with some gochujang (spicy fermented pepper paste), and gochugaru (red chile powder) will get you started. A very informative section on ingredients at the beginning of the book will help you know what to look for.

This beautiful book is a marvelous introduction to a cuisine that is only now getting the attention it deserves, as enjoyable to read and look through as it is to cook from.

WHEN IN ROME

Recently I've read two very good novels about ancient Rome. Well, one of them is about the place destined to become Rome, but that's close enough. Anyway, I've realized that I'm rather partial (at the moment) to good fiction, especially mysteries, set in ancient Rome; fortunately several very good authors are out there working hard to feed my habit. Several years ago I was introduced to the work of Steven Saylor, whose Roma Sub Rosa series kept me entertained for quite a while, till I'd read them all. In the first, Roman Blood, the reader meets Gordianus the Finder, whose fortunes improve dramatically when the great orator and senator Cicero comes to him for help.

Gordianus is smart, personable, and very, very human, with a personal life that is just as interesting as the cases he works to solve. (But isn't that the case with all appealing fictional detectives?) Through his association with Cicero, Gordianus (and the reader) becomes acquainted with all the great names of that period of Roman history, including but not limited to Julius Caesar, Crassus, Sulla, and a lot more I didn't know much about before reading these books. I also learned a good deal about Roman law, culture, family life, food - Saylor really does his homework, as all good historical novelists must.

I was very disappointed to come to the end of the series, but I've recently learned that in addition to two very BIG (as in massive) non-Gordianus novels of the period, Roma and Empire, Saylor has begun a new mystery series called the Seven Wonders. These stories - The Seven Wonders, Raiders of the Nile, and Wrath of the Furies - are prequels to the first series, recounting the adventures of the younger Gordianus.

If I had to pick a favorite Roman series, though, it would probably be the Medicus novels of Ruth Downie. These mysteries are set in Roman Britain, where the general dampness and gloomy weather parallel the mood of Gaius Petreius Ruso, a doctor with the Roman Legions. He's a reluctant sleuth who finds himself taking responsibility not only for his patients but also for an independent-minded British slave girl, Tilla, and of course solving murders. Downie's first six Ruso novels - Medicus, Terra Incognita, Persona Non Grata, Caveat Emptor, Semper Fidelis, and Tabula Ras - will be joined by a seventh, Vita Brevis, later this year.

 

Tilla and Ruso are very well-matched (it does take Ruso a while to recognize this) and they make a great team in the setting of cultural contact and conflict in which they find themselves. This series also offers fascinating insights into the history and culture of early Britain and how the Roman Empire operated as it expanded into very different territories far from Rome.

  The first of Lindsay Davis's many novels about Marcus Didius Falco, The Silver Pigs, sends him to Britain to uncover the truth about a conspiracy to steal silver ingots, the "pigs" of the title. Falco is a bit rougher around the edges than Ruso or Gordianus, and his neighborhood's definitely lower class, at least in this first book, but that's part of his charm, and it certainly broadens one's knowledge about life in ancient Rome.  I confess this is the only one of Davis's novels I've read so far, but I enjoyed it very much. My husband has read at least a dozen, and when I've whittled down my To Be Read pile some more, I plan to pay Falco another visit, or two, or . . . . 

Robert Harris's novels about Cicero are a more recent discovery. I picked up the first, Imperium, some months ago thinking Joe would like it (he did), and only lately got around to reading it myself. I wasn't sure I'd be interested, but decided to try a few pages . . . and I couldn't put it down. The narrator, Cicero's slave Tiro, was a real person who apparently did write a biography of his master which has been lost. Tiro also invented a form of shorthand, something that figures importantly in the story.

Imperium is sort of a hybrid of courtroom drama(s) and biographical fiction. Harris's Cicero does not contradict Saylor's portrayal of the great orator, but rather expands our picture of this brilliant and complex man as seen through the eyes of the individual who probably knew him best. Harris focuses sharply on politics and personalities, of which Tiro is an astute and gossipy observer, making Imperium both fascinating and highly entertaining. I found a used copy of the second book in the trilogy, Conspirata, last week and the final book, Dictator, was released a couple of months ago to rave reviews. One critic called it "Triumphant, compelling and deeply moving . . . the finest fictional treatment of Ancient Rome in the English language. . . . " I haven't read all those other "fictional treatments," of course, and maybe the critic hasn't either, but still, that's pretty high praise.

And now, at least in my opinion, I've saved the best for last. The final novel I want to talk about is neither a mystery nor is it technically set in Rome or outposts of Rome's empire. It is, rather, about the mythic events that preceded the founding of Rome. Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin tells the story of the Latin princess Aeneas marries when, years after the fall of Troy and his tragic affair with Queen Dido of Carthage, his ships arrive in ancient Italy.

Lavinia appears only briefly in Virgil's Aeneid and she does not speak at all there, but LeGuin gives her both a voice and a fully drawn, fleshed out character, bringing this mythical princess and her long-ago world vividly to life.  I have admired LeGuin and her writing for decades. She regularly transcends the categories of science fiction and fantasy to which some uninformed readers have tried to limit her, even while she continues to work within those genres.

Lavinia is an example of that transcendence of genre boundaries. More than fantasy, it is nevertheless not history, nor is it an epic like the Iliad, which is mentioned mostly in passing. It is a coming of age story and more; its heroine tells her own story of how she figures in an important cultural and historical change. There are moments of high drama, but mostly in terms of interpersonal, often family relationships; there are battles, but they are largely in the background. Among the most beautifully rendered scenes are Lavinia's conversations with the shade of the dying Virgil, who regrets the way he overlooked and shortchanged her in the Aeneid. Although Lavinia is so far in the past as Virgil would perceive it, or Virgil so impossibly far in her future, these scenes, in which time becomes slippery, blend smoothly with the more traditional chronological narrative of the rest of the story - the story that Virgil is only now coming to know - so that the reader may not even notice how extraordinary LeGuin's accomplishment is. Flanked by figures known for heroism (Aeneas) or artistic brilliance (Virgil), Lavinia, who before LeGuin was nothing but a name, creates herself for her poet, stakes her own quiet claim to our attention, and becomes the most real character of all.