Solace in Desolation

As my blog readers have probably figured out by now, I have a lot of favorite books. Almost every book I read becomes a favorite as soon as I finish it. It’s like my children – they are all my favorites. But when I am asked about my most recent favorite book, I always answer with Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It was an almost ideal read for me in so many ways. If you haven’t already read this masterpiece (first published in 2009), I’ll share some thoughts on it here. 

First of all, I learned a new word when I read the book -  Funambulism (fy-nam-ba-lizm): derived from the Latin funis meaning rope and ambulare meaning walker. It is a word for a ropewalker and also a show, especially of mental agility.

To me a show of mental agility describes the book perfectly. The author Colum McCann says, “We are all, in the end, funambulists.”  He says the thing that holds the novel together is the “very low tightrope of human intention that we all negotiate.” We are all trying to get by, dealing with our own struggles. He said, “Some of us walk very close to the ground, but we are hit awful hard. We are, in the end, all funambulists”

In August of 1974, the funambulist Phillipe Petit, a French acrobat, walked on a tightrope between the twin towers of the newly-opened World Trade Center. The Oscar winning documentary “Man on a Wire” tells the story of Petit’s illegal stunt. The image of this particular tightrope walker crossing the space between the Twin Towers is at the start of the novel and becomes the touchstone for most of the characters. We see it again and again throughout the book. The metaphor of a balancing on the thin rope is central for this book. Colum says it was “the catalyst for everything.” But the further along the novel goes, the tightrope walk starts to fade until it disappears from sight all together and what happens on the street corners becomes just as important. But the idea of walking on a thin rope seems to be compared to the risky business of living from day to day. The sign over Petit’s cabin where he trained was NO BODY FALLS HALFWAY. This is definitely a central idea of this book as well.

The book starts on August 7, 1974, the day of Petit’s feat, and mostly revolves around the events of that day in the lives of at least 11 characters all bound by grief. These stories are varied and intense and the narrator’s voice switches throughout the book.  But basically these are all ordinary people living extraordinary lives against the backdrop of a funambulist dancing on a wire. The city of New York is also a major player in this book. A character in the novel, “coming to the city was like entering a tunnel and finding to your surprise that the light at the end didn’t matter; sometimes in fact the tunnel made the light tolerable.” The book plays homage to New York, the adopted home of McCann, a native of Ireland.

Let the Great World Spin is about love and loss, resilience and recovery. We see hope for the hopeless and grace in the midst of suffering in this book. McCann definitely sees the hope for all of us. He wrote the book, it seems from interviews I read, to make some sort of personal peace with the tragedy of 9/11. The title came from the great Tennyson poem, “Locksley Hall:”

“Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

To McCann, that poem asks, “Is there any hope that this desolation can bring me solace?”

I think he concludes that our lives may be destroyed by grief, but we can reassemble ourselves and regain our balance through grace and hope. Early in the book, one of the main characters, Corrigan, is described this way: “…life could be capable of small beauties. He wanted simply for the world to be a better place and he was in the habit of hoping for it.” That is deeply meaningful to me. I hope for the world to be a better place too. 

Paris Lived in the Moment

I just finished a fun little book that I read in advance of publication. I want to be the first to praise Paris in Love by Eloisa James, set for release on April 3. This book was a pleasurable jaunt through a year in Paris with a delightful family of four. The two professor parents, their 14-year-old son, 11-year-old daughter and one very overweight dog gave up their suburban life outside New York City for a fourth story apartment in the 9^th arrondissement of Paris for one year. The author has just lost her mother to cancer and survived her own bout with breast cancer. She consciously decided to live in the moment. This memoir is written in a series of very short blog-like posts (many originally Facebook posts) and essays, which chronicle the family’s adventures in the city of light. The author writes, “For the most part, I have retained the short form, the small explosion of experience, as it best gives the flavor of my days.”

Eloisa James is the pen name of Mary Bly, a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University with degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Yale. She is also the daughter of the revered American writers Robert and Carol Bly. She never directly says in this in her book, but you get the idea that she lives two very different writing lives. Mary Bly is a well-respected Shakespeare scholar and Eloisa James is a best selling romance novelist. I think Mary decided to become Eloisa for a year as she took a sabbatical and focused on the delicious pleasures of everyday life.

I got very interested in a voyeuristic way in Eloisa/Mary’s writing life. I loved reading about her procrastinating by buying lingerie and chocolates on the streets of Paris, and entertaining what seemed like an endless stream of visitors from home. Hearing about her children’s complaints and adjustments to life in Paris was reassuring (since I have my own querulous teenagers). It was enjoyable to read about her imperfect parenting and struggles to keep her children happy while letting them live through failures – both academic and social. Throughout all these distractions, Eloisa/Mary continued to write. She became my writing hero as she completed an academic article and a book despite the endless temptations she faced in her year in Paris. I don’t think I could buckle down and focus on not one but two writing projects with the temptations of Paris just outside my window. So, I give kudos to Eloisa James/Mary Bly for this enjoyable book brimming with an appreciation for life.

The Book is Always Better Than the Movie

As the magic hour for The Hunger Games movie draws near, I want to reflect on the book The Hunger Games before the book gets lost in the media movie hype. Or has it already faded into the background? Tonight’s midnight premiere is already sold out in many markets and the social media is all atwitter constantly updating followers on the movie, soundtrack and merchandise (!?) promotions. I don’t want the book to be forgotten, but without even seeing the movie, I know it is infinitely better.

I read the book about a year and a half ago at the urging of my sixth grade creative writing students. They promised I would love the book. And, of course, I couldn’t put it down and quickly read the entire trilogy on my Kindle – the first time I’d used my Kindle to immediately download a sequel the second I’d finished its predecessor. So that says something for the usefulness of the Kindle and other electronic readers. But it also tells you just how gripping these books are. The first one, The Hunger Games, was by far the best. But I liked it for probably different reasons than my students. I was struck by the themes of poverty and loss as well as the evils of mindless television propaganda.

Most of the people I know think reality TV is bad, even though many of us are still occasionally watch accidentally like our heads turning toward a horrible car wreck. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is about extreme reality TV. It's about a dystopian future where reality TV literally kills children.

In this future society, the country that was once known as North America has been divided into twelve districts, each one charged with a specific role in society. Every year, each district draws from all the children’s names to choose two "tributes" - a girl and a boy - to "play" in the hunger games. This reality "survivor" show pits these chosen children against each other in a battle for their lives in a large outdoor arena controlled by the Capitol. Only one survives.

The main character is 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen (I'm not sure what’s up with the strange names in this book), as she takes her sister's place for the games from District 12, the most impoverished area of the country now called Panem. The story is told through her voice. Readers see her thoughts and her deepest feelings. I know the book is always better than the movie and this is why – the characters' motives are clearer when you read their thoughts and feelings. Katniss has suffered a lot in her life, but her memories of her younger life and her deceased father recall her happier moments. We are able to see Katniss' inner struggles as she is taken to the Capitol to prepare for the Games. A love triangle begins to develop in this first book as Katniss’ friendship with Gale Hawthorne, her best friend in her district, is challenged by her allegiance with Peeta Mellark, the other young person chosen from her district for the Games. From a wealthier family, Peeta has been a secret admirer of Katniss since they were young. Gale is from another impoverished family and he and Katniss became friends as they struggled to provide food for their families hunting in forbidden land in their district. The love interests and the action in this fast-paced book definitely held my interest and the unresolved issues in the first book spurred me to quickly read the next two books in the trilogy.

I recently read an interview with the author Suzanne Collins in the Observer, in which she stated what she wanted from her readers. "I want them to ask themselves questions about how elements of the book might be relevant in their own lives, such as, 'How do you feel about the fact that some people take their next meal for granted when so many other people are starving? What's your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news?”

Be warned: the violence of The Hunger Games book is overwhelming at times. Children die and the conditions of life in some of the districts are harsh. But in this case, I think the violence is not gratuitous. I think it shows how people become immune to the horrors of death and violence on television. Collins says that today's youth are overexposed to overly managed “reality” on television. "Too much of people's lives are put on television and we're desensitized to actual tragedy unfolding before us." Regarding the combat violence and death in the books, the author observed: "You have to commit fully to writing violent or emotionally challenging scenes. You make that decision at the beginning and stick with it or you write another kind of book."

I’ll be seeing the movie in a few hours because I’m lucky enough to be invited to an exclusive advanced screening at 7 pm, hours before the midnight screenings. In many ways, I’m afraid to see the movie. I worry that the takeaway for most of the movie viewers will be the cute boys (are you a Gale or a Peeta lover?) and the destruction and death. Tomorrow everyone will be talking about the violence and the horror and the heartthrobs of The Hunger Games. That will be a shame because the book is about so much more – the real issues of hunger and poverty vs. greed and power. It’s also about the desensitizing of a nation of TV and movie viewers, who will sit slack jaw staring at a movie screen filled with violence and death and only remember the cute boys in the film.

Enlightenment for Readers

The publication booksellers turn to for news on the book industry is now publishing a version for book lovers. Shelf Awareness: Enlightenment for Readers is a FREE emailed newsletter with reviews on the 25 best books publishing each week along with author interviews, book excerpts, giveaways and more. Right now they’re running a contest for new subscribers. Check out the button on the right side of my blog from Shelf Awareness to sign up for the new publication and to be entered for a chance to win a great book.

The first giveaway is the new book by Anne Lamott, one of my writing mentors. I've never actually met Anne Lamott, but I feel like I know her. She is not afraid to show the cracks in her soul. Like Leonard Cohen wrote, "There's a crack in everything. That's how the sun gets in." Anne Lamott lets the sun shine in our lives through her honesty and human faith. Not only is she honest about her own life, but she's also candid about writing. Lamott's Bird by Bird is my number one favorite writing book. She talks about shitty first drafts and all the voices in your head discouraging you. I've used this book with college students and with middle school students to help take away their fear of writing and, mostly, their reluctance to expose themselves.

And of course, Anne Lamott loves books. She said, “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

So if you want a chance to win a free copy of the new Anne Lamott book, Some Assembly Required, click on the Shelf Awareness button right here on my blog. Or go out and get the book at your local independent bookseller when it is released on March 20, 2012.

Mark Twain + Harper Lee = Coming of Age in Australia

Picking up from my last post, John Green said in a recent vlog that when he was in college he thought adult life would be a series of very interesting conversations about great books. That is what I want this blog to be about – a series of very interesting conversations about great books. So indulge me and please, please comment.

This week I want to share a book that you may not know about – Jasper Jones. It’s a brilliant book by a young Australian writer, Craig Silvey. The book was published in Australia in 2009 and was shortlisted for two of Australia’s biggest literary awards and won the Indie Book of the Year Award in Australia. In Australia and other parts of the world where it was published first, it is considered an adult literary masterpiece. But when the book was finally published here in the United States in April 2011, it was classified as a young adult novel and won the Michael L. Prinz award honor book for excellence in young adult literature. I really can’t tell you why the US publisher Knopf labeled it for young readers. I feel it reads like a classic – for all ages. This book reminds me of both Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird in one delicious book. When I heard Jasper Jones called an Australian To Kill a Mockingbird, I really didn’t believe it would be as good as my all-time favorite book. But it was.

The story is set in the summer of 1965 in a small mining town in Western Australia. The main character, Charlie Bucktin, is a serious book-loving boy of 13, who wants to be a writer when he grows up and calls Harper Lee and Mark Twain two of his favorite writers. His best friend, one of the most vivid characters in this book, is a Vietnamese refuge named Jeffrey Lu. He is absolutely devoted to cricket in spite of his small size.

The book starts with Jasper Jones, the town bad boy, summoning Charlie out of his bed in the middle of the night. Only a year older than Charlie, Jasper is much more worldly and basically on his own in life. Charlie barely knows Jasper, but he is sucked into a mystery involving Jasper and the daughter of the shire president, a very powerful man in their small town. The mystery surrounding the young girl’s death propels the reader through the book, but it’s also a romance, coming of age story and a moral tale of racism and adultery, and a story of a friendship. The characters are vivid and the story is gripping and intense, but also has its light moments. Get your hands on a copy of this book (I got mine in Australia, but you can find it online), read it and pass it on.

Building a Fire in the Darkness

As a life long lover of books and the practice of writing, I was heartened (to say the least) by the audience at two events (in one weekend) recently where I heard the young adult author John Green speak. At the first event on a Friday night, I saw a packed audience of mostly teenagers stand up and actually cheer for him. Not only cheer, but scream and dance and sing for this author.

Just before I saw Green live and in person, I read two of his books at the request of my daughter, a nineteen-year-old college student. She has been reading John Green’s books since she was fifteen. She was so touched by his books that she wrote him an admiring fan letter when she was in high school. She said he “changed her life.” When I entered Pasadena High School near Houston, Texas for the reading on a Friday night, I realized she was not alone.

So what was the fuss all about? Green’s first book, Looking for Alaska, is about an outcast high school kid who goes to prep school in Alabama in an effort to “seek the Great Perhaps.” Like most teens, he was waiting to start his life. This character Pudge Halter, is fascinated with last words. In fact, he collects them.

Pudge’s life at boarding school definitely gets interesting as he meets his friends and in particular gets to know one gorgeous and crazy girl named Alaska. Their adventures and experiences at Culver Creek Boarding School are anything but boring. Not to spoil the book for anyone who hasn’t read it, but death is a major theme in this book. It’s really about teens grappling with the Big Issues like death.

Green started this book just after working as a student chaplain at a children’s hospital. The stories he heard there and the people he got to know inspired this book about teens and death. Even though just before the student chaplain stint he was thinking about becoming a minister, Green admits his relationship with God is complicated. But in this book, Looking For Alaska, he manages to leave a positive feeling with the reader. In fact, the characters find redemption. Green said in an interview, “I believe there is hope for us all, even amid the suffering – and maybe even inside the suffering. And that’s why I write fiction, probably. It’s my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to build a fire in the darkness.”

Those teenagers on that Friday night in Pasadena certainly GOT Green’s message of hope in all his books. At one point in the reading, I kid you not, the audience actually sang the pop song, “Don’t Stop Believing.” Green’s fans call themselves Nerdfighters and have an entire subculture called Nerdfighteria. According to Green, Nerdfighters are nerds who fight anti-intellectualism. Basically they are smart and read books. And thankfully, there are a lot of cool teens who read John Green. His fans had been anxiously awaiting Green’s fourth novel, The Fault in Ours Stars, which was released in January and debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Chapter Books and remained in that spot for five consecutive weeks. And you’ll be interested to hear Green personally signed all 150,000 copies of the first printing (already has double that number printed reprinted). My daughter went to our local bookstore on the day the novel was released to get a signed copy. She was not alone. The New York Times called the book “near genius.”

So this was the second Green book I read last month. Like in Looking for Alaska, death is also the theme in The Fault in Our Stars, which I finished just before Green’s appearance in Pasadena. In this book, two young cancer patients fall in love. Obviously Green also received the inspiration for this book from his time as a student hospital chaplain. He said TFIOS is the book he has been trying to write for the last ten years. The main characters - Hazel and Augustus - meet at the Cancer Kid Support Group and this irreverent book tells their story in a way that makes you laugh and cry a whole lot.

Green's genre is realistic teen fiction and he said that he finds teenagers interesting because a lot of interesting things happen for the first time to teenagers. He said how they deal with those events stick with them for the rest of their life. Cancer might seem like a cliché for a teen novel, but it’s not the stereotypical teen cancer novel. The characters feel real and even though the story is deeply sad, it resonates with humor and a joy for life.

So I haven’t told you about the second event that same weekend in January where I heard John Green speak. This was two days later on a Sunday morning. Green spoke to another packed audience at the American Library Association convention in Dallas. The librarians also cheered for him. They know him through his enthusiastic teens, but also because they are just as excited about his books as his younger readers. Green had been up late the night before signing books until 1 am at his reading in Austin and then driving in his tour bus (yes tour bus) to Dallas, arriving at 4:30 in the morning. He was tired, he said, but grateful to librarians for supporting him when the wider public did not know about his books.

His talk that Sunday morning in Dallas was about using social media to create community. Green said the people build real life connections on line and if librarians can infiltrate those discussions they can raise the level of discourse. Green has very astutely (or by accident, who knows) created a community among his readers, teens, librarians, booksellers through the media. His vlog -- http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers/featured -- has 600,000 plus subscribers! He uses YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr to reach his audience and it’s like a huge subculture of smart people who love books – nerdfighters united.

And here’s the thing that I think makes John Green so popular with his readers. He is accessible. Why did my daughter write him a fan letter when she was 16? Because she knew he would hear her. He has a meaningful interactive discussion going on with his readers. And he writes awesome books. I just ordered his other two books, Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines, on Amazon, and I can't wait to read them. John Green and his readers constantly say DFTBA, which is "initialism," as Green calls it, for Don’t Forget To Be Awesome. John Green is awesome and so are his readers. Become one and DFTBA.

Words are Sacred

The playwright Tom Stoppard said, “I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.” I hope to show my respect for words in this blog and to maybe nudge the world a little by sharing my love for books and writing. Enjoy, and share your thoughts!