Despite the 50-degree weather in Rome, it’s not difficult to tell the holidays are on the horizon. My chestnuts roasting on an open fire days ended when I left Tuscany, but almost every corner has some for sale. Sparkly lights rim the more commercial streets and if you’re lucky you can catch an Italian singing “Jingle Bells.” It’s past time to start shopping for gifts. All I want for Christmas is a 2,000-piece puzzle (for when I get lonely) but for those who like a book and a mug of apple cider, I have suggestions.
The fictional coup pulled by Hilary Mantel in her novel Wolf Hall was recently chronicled in the pages (?) of this blog. Here the reality of another time woven into fiction. Henry VIII is angling for his second wife and is taut wire of lust, insecurity and power. Mantel chronicles Thomas Cromwell’s ascent to indispensability and reconfigures his character in the process. His intelligence and surprising kindness are emphasized. The tone is humorous and carries the reader quickly through this pile of pages. In Wolf Hall the changes taking place in Europe are depicted as what they were; calculated evasions and manipulations by powerful men and canny women.
The narrative unfolded in the pages of Phillip Meyer’s American Rust is full of nitty, gritty reality despite the surreal beauty of Buell, Pennsylvania. Without a note of bitterness the author chronicles the dissolution of a once booming steel town. In the stale limbo of Buell opportunities are scarce and lack of direction becomes dangers. The near impossibility of success leads to mad attempts and criminal failures. Meyer’s characters are fusions of humanity and the metal of the region. They are beautiful and their confusion and missteps tragic.
For those exhausted by the recycled cast of characters running through fiction, Jayne Anne Phillip’s Lark and Termite will prove an uncommon delight. Phillips unfurls her story in a range of different voices and in two distinct periods of time. Corporal Robert Leavitt is enmeshed in the violent turmoil of the Korean War. Time becomes fluid. His memories are of Lola, his lover who is a blurry but strong presence in the novel. Leavitt’s mental return to her throbs with an urgent but gentle sexuality. Ten years later Lark cares for her disabled brother Termite with a wisdom beyond her years. She credits him with a reality of his own despite his inability to speak and Phillips’s entrance into the minds of each character indisputably real and new.
Everything about Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is captivating. In Wells Tower’s debut collection of short stories he focuses those recently set adrift. His characters, largely men, are regular. Their concerns are ordinary ones. But even ordinary navigations can be a struggle. Tower’s people are not always likeable but they are human and the reader is caught up in their plights to find something that will anchor them. The author has an excellent touch with language and will throw in the right sort of zesty verb or cutting adjective to the story interesting and the reader off-balance.
Finally, a little advice about the contents of the archives. Do not ever give or read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. The final pages caught my interest but the preceding hundreds didn’t make them worth my while. If you are in Paris, or going, or have been, or love Hemingway, read A Moveable Feast. It isn’t really finished, a delightful mishmash of his genius and his encounters with other geniuses of the 1920s on the Left Bank. Colm Tobin has an excellent and dark collection of short stories called Mothers and Sons and in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral one learns huge amounts about gloves.
I’ll be dreaming of your white Christmases, book in hand.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Poetry animated by Baker's Paul
After reading a review of Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, I got the impression that the narrator, Paul Chowder, was a bit pathetic. Wrong. Well, not exactly wrong. But his pathetic qualities are entirely delightful. The narrative is lively, humorous and drowning in poetry. Paul’s obsession with poetry is similar to Rob Fleming in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. But while Rob was a professional appreciator, Paul is a poet himself.
By the time the reader is introduced to Paul he has reached his fifties and is more of a struggling poet than a successful one. His current project is writing an introduction to his anthology Only Rhyme. After patient weeks of supporting him, his girlfriend Roz has finally left. He had avoided the daunting task of writing his introduction to his anthology by singing in his office, reorganizing and buying more books of poetry than he can afford.
Baker’s protagonist would be entirely pathetic if it weren’t for his extravagant adoration of poetry and language. The book is both an unraveling of Paul’s current distress and his fervent explanation of bits poems and sketches of the lives of his favorite poets.
Paul passes on reasonable bits of advice amidst his diatribes of loneliness and mild self-loathing. He suggests reading your poems aloud in different accents, and paying attention to the stories you hear every day; they just might wend themselves into a poem. Paul walks the reader through the rhythm of a poem with precision, concluding a line with his own triumphant BOOM to emphasize where the aural rest exists. His declarations about his circumstances are often acute and he uses words like “fulth” and “gimbleflap” with ease. I couldn’t help giggling. The exuberant nature of Paul’s approach to poetry would serve in many college introductory courses. (I was fortunate enough to have a more successful and socially adjusted version of Paul Chowder.)
The current that carries the book to its conclusion bears almost no relation to Paul’s love affair with Roz. There are few moments in the text when his preoccupation with his girlfriend rises above mildly dull. She seems very nice and entirely justified in her decision to leave her crumbling poet until he gets back on his feet. She isn’t and wasn’t a must. Paul addresses the necessity of suffering for a poet to be truly successful and admits that comparatively, he has nothing to complain about.
Paul’s meticulous untangling of rhyme, and his enduring battle against the iambic pentameter, burst with giddiness. He gets his perks from poetry and so does the reader. The title of the book is something of a misnomer because although part of Paul’s difficulty stems from the introduction he is attempting to write, his aim remains the poetry itself, not its collection. He shows the reader how a poem often turns on a single stanza. And in a funny moment in the text realizes that it is in fact a single line that mesmerizes him and finally a single word. The miracle is that the reader understands him and in fact agrees.
All passionate reader will identify with Paul’s anecdotes even if poetry never makes it on their reading lists. Baker gets at the pleasures, surprises and lasting effects that words have when strung together properly. Paul enunciates both sizzling criticisms and melting words of awe. His entrancement with his subject is engaging if not rousing. Paul’s intimate knowledge of his favorite poets awakens the reader’s interest in them and inspires one to search again for a half forgotten line in order to pin down why exactly that phrase demanded particular attention.
By the time the reader is introduced to Paul he has reached his fifties and is more of a struggling poet than a successful one. His current project is writing an introduction to his anthology Only Rhyme. After patient weeks of supporting him, his girlfriend Roz has finally left. He had avoided the daunting task of writing his introduction to his anthology by singing in his office, reorganizing and buying more books of poetry than he can afford.
Baker’s protagonist would be entirely pathetic if it weren’t for his extravagant adoration of poetry and language. The book is both an unraveling of Paul’s current distress and his fervent explanation of bits poems and sketches of the lives of his favorite poets.
Paul passes on reasonable bits of advice amidst his diatribes of loneliness and mild self-loathing. He suggests reading your poems aloud in different accents, and paying attention to the stories you hear every day; they just might wend themselves into a poem. Paul walks the reader through the rhythm of a poem with precision, concluding a line with his own triumphant BOOM to emphasize where the aural rest exists. His declarations about his circumstances are often acute and he uses words like “fulth” and “gimbleflap” with ease. I couldn’t help giggling. The exuberant nature of Paul’s approach to poetry would serve in many college introductory courses. (I was fortunate enough to have a more successful and socially adjusted version of Paul Chowder.)
The current that carries the book to its conclusion bears almost no relation to Paul’s love affair with Roz. There are few moments in the text when his preoccupation with his girlfriend rises above mildly dull. She seems very nice and entirely justified in her decision to leave her crumbling poet until he gets back on his feet. She isn’t and wasn’t a must. Paul addresses the necessity of suffering for a poet to be truly successful and admits that comparatively, he has nothing to complain about.
Paul’s meticulous untangling of rhyme, and his enduring battle against the iambic pentameter, burst with giddiness. He gets his perks from poetry and so does the reader. The title of the book is something of a misnomer because although part of Paul’s difficulty stems from the introduction he is attempting to write, his aim remains the poetry itself, not its collection. He shows the reader how a poem often turns on a single stanza. And in a funny moment in the text realizes that it is in fact a single line that mesmerizes him and finally a single word. The miracle is that the reader understands him and in fact agrees.
All passionate reader will identify with Paul’s anecdotes even if poetry never makes it on their reading lists. Baker gets at the pleasures, surprises and lasting effects that words have when strung together properly. Paul enunciates both sizzling criticisms and melting words of awe. His entrancement with his subject is engaging if not rousing. Paul’s intimate knowledge of his favorite poets awakens the reader’s interest in them and inspires one to search again for a half forgotten line in order to pin down why exactly that phrase demanded particular attention.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Cromwell Resurrected
The first point that Hilary Mantel should be commended for in her lengthy historical novel Wolf Hall is the humor. Mantel writes about a epoch filled with scandal, blood, corporeal and spiritual wants. But rather than relying mainly on the sex (unlike the very sexy show the Tudors) or drying the narrative with clunky play by plays, Mantel infuses these stodgy historical characters with the wit necessary to afloat.
Thomas Cromwell, the corrugated self-made protagonist, is a master of self-control. He possesses a mottled history after his escape from beneath the fist of his father at the age of about 15 (no one had thought it necessary to record his birth). When the reader meets him again it is after his shadowy years in Europe. Years that have schooled him in the ways of bankers, memory, control, as well as Italian, French, Flemish, to name a few.
Mantel succeeds in revealing all that passes beneath the impassive surface of Cromwell’s notably unattractive face. In her prose he has a rich internal life that is constructed from intelligence and shrewd observation. He both notices the person in the room everyone disregards and has the ability to fade from view himself.
Cromwell is made human by Mantel. His house at Austin Friars is first decimated by the sweating sickness, which takes his wife and daughters. Mantel crafts likely moments of tenderness between her hero and his family members.
Cromwell’s unlikely kindness is strewn across the pages of Wolf Hall. He takes in a number of wards as well as those fortune has dealt a bad hand. The man Mantel portrays is not soft; his are never acts of charity. When he fills his home with rouges he manages to transform them into indispensable persons. His generosity fills his house to the brim with wealth of influence, people, power and money. He is a force to be reckoned with.
Mantel’s novel makes it difficult, or impossible, not to like Cromwell. In addition to being clever, he is incredibly knowledgeable. His vast linguistic knowledge and his experience on foreign, military and marketing frontiers prove essential to his growing position of power. The nobles who surround him lack these qualifications. Cromwell’s common birth would hobble a lesser man. His shadowed past manages to count in his favor. Dirty dealings must have accelerated his acquisition of wealth and power but he does not appear to be fueled by greed. Smart calculations propel him forward.
It is perhaps a sign of the changes in England at the time that he was able to reach the heights he did.
Mantel’s excellent prose brings the stink and violence of Tudor times to life. Despite its length, the novel never lags. Mantel’s renders the historical characters at her disposal in all their complexity. Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Katherine of Aragon and King Henry are rendered from the viewpoint of man who served in their time, not by history. Through Cromwell, Mantel snatches at the human filament beneath the label of Queen, peasant, whore.
Aside from the feat of rescuing Cromwell from the historical slop bucket, Mantel pulls off a more literary coup. From page one the reader is directly alongside Cromwell. “He” is always used. Mantel takes seriously the concept that mentioning a character’s name distances the reader from him. Despite the occasional awkward moment, her ploy succeeds in immersing the reader into whatever clandestine mission Cromwell is about to achieve. The reader is on Cromwell’s side as he sculpts laws in favor of King Henry’s desires, changes the identity of the queen and creates the Church of England. Not an easy feat.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
"Spin" carries weight of Twin Towers
Colum McCann weaves stories betwixt and between the disparate neighborhoods and towers of New York in his most recent work Let the Great World Spin. His world of stories pivots on a single event, even as the characters’ lives dip and turn in ways that draw them far from what occurs early one morning in New York City. McCann passes the reader from narrator to narrator with ease. As is to be expected in a book where Manhattan is the backdrop, a wide range of characters appears in the pages of Spin.
Always at the periphery of their narratives hovers the solitary figure of a man traversing a grand distance, at a grander height, on the thread of a wire.
Phillipe Petit’s walk between the World Trade Centers was a fraction of a day decades ago. Its impact had faded from consciousness, having yet to be brought to the attention of the next generation. A different story now envelops the Twin Towers, casting the more innocent event in the dark. September 11 is only mentioned once in McCann’s collection but its shadow hovers behind the text. His stories evaluate the disparate reality of the transience and endurance of a moment. And despite its potential for dominancy, McCann deftly maintains control over the force he has put to use in his collection.
Spin provides entrance into the lives of a hooker, priest, nurse, artist, Park Avenue mother and many more. The person on whom McCann focuses his lens next is never predictable. He jumps and dodges through his cast of characters. The reader’s view of each one is intimate. With each acquaintance a new angle emerges from which to consider the walker’s feat. In some stories the man in the sky only flutters briefly against the structure of the character’s life. McCann does not suggest that lives were changed by the man’s walk through the sky. But the walk itself is emblematic. It is a resistance, a challenge, and a moment of beauty.
The time the reader spends alongside the walker proves the most magnetic. McCann has measured command over his craft and each story draws the reader into its twists. Swaths of characters’ lives are revealed in most of the stories but with the walker the material relates directly to the moment. He is attuned to the weather, the bend of the wind, the suppleness of his body. The anecdotes that examine the walker express the simplicity of what he wanted to do. In these sections nothing exterior exists. There is only balance, a wire, height and the sky. Desire, pure and simple, is frozen above the heads of people full of their own buzzing lives. The walk fulfills nothing more or less than a determined craving. Politics, Vietnam, death, crime, motherhood, marriage, remain reassuringly outside the scope of what this man set out to achieve. He capers. His body is life and movement as he gambols in space. In McCann’s print, the moment is alive again and it works to extinguish all the rest.
Of course the lightheartedness of the walker’s triumph is meant to stand against the events of 9/11 that occurred almost thirty years later. The bliss is momentary. McCann’s stories bear testimony to this as much as they create a patchwork view of New York. Inevitably the September 11 theme has been abused and can verge on wearisome when mishandled. But McCann’s collection examines the same buildings for chapters on end without succumbing to the obvious. His silence makes the event all the more powerful and the reader is immersed in other lives even as the Towers spin toward their conclusion.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
"Advantages of Breathing" often Intangible, Elusive
The title of Lydia Peelle’s collection of short stories, Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, addresses the silver lining rather than the bulk of her tales. Reasons is about the lives of people who seem to have sufficient grounds to call it quits.
The people Peelle examines are grasping at the bottom rung. There is the obese taxidermist who has recently lost his leg, the unenthused carnie, and the girls whose summer fearlessness astride a duo of ponies is soon swallowed by the perilous dares of fast cars and drugs. The voices of these characters are not whining or sorrowful, but the dullness of loss or emptiness moves alongside them.
The despair arises from the common tragedies that disrupt life. A separation from the loved and familiar; a fork in the road and the doubt accompanying the new path; an attempt at escape and its loneliness. The upheavals are not revolutionary, and yet Peelle dodges the mundane. She probes deeper and brings to the surface people’s facets. Peelle’s characters are caught at the bottom of the hierarchy and amidst the hesitancies of their position.
The narrators have the mark of introspection even when they can’t see their own lives clearly. Despite the seemingly aimless drift that directs many of these characters, they remain fully rooted in life. Most are hoping to break free from where they stand. It is less dissatisfaction that drives them than a notion that there just might be something else. Some are desperate to escape, some merely wonder if they should.
There is another thread that runs through these stories aside from flight. In each of the Peelle’s tales there are animals at the center or skirting the periphery. Somehow the chanced glimpse of a tail or the silent winging of a bird in flight imbues Reasons with an atmosphere that feels particularly American. There is the mysterious, menacing presence of a panther, the myth of the thunderbird, a communion with horses, goats, and reptiles. Peelle’s characters are comforted or haunted by these creatures, be they tamed, feral or mythic. The ubiquitous appearance of animals stabilizes Peelle’s stories. The inclusion of other creatures and acknowledgement of their awareness, suffering and empathetic capacities, diffuses the bleakness of the stories, lending a universal sensitivity to the tales rather than the rampant self-absorption that can stem from human narrations of disappointment.
The animals are embodiments of fears and desires. They read people for their essence when others are blind. By and large the people are lost or foundering and while the animals do not quite provide direction they offer support of a sort and an alternative. Resolutions are unattainable and far from the point in Peelle’s collection. The stories conclude with possibilities rather than answers, and the possibilities are rarely heartening.
In the small spaces of Peelle’s stories, only slices of her characters’ personalities are revealed. Everything shown is cast in the shadow of where their lives have brought them. Despite there being an absence of a visible light at the end of the tunnel, Peelle manages to situate the reader alongside her characters without provoking despondency. It is less a note of empathy that she strikes than one of thoughtful observance. Little of the circumstances of these people’s lives drew parallels with my own, but something kept me afloat despite the weight of what was being experienced and despite the absence of novelty. The impetus to continue forward was quite unidentifiable, but there was a reason.
The people Peelle examines are grasping at the bottom rung. There is the obese taxidermist who has recently lost his leg, the unenthused carnie, and the girls whose summer fearlessness astride a duo of ponies is soon swallowed by the perilous dares of fast cars and drugs. The voices of these characters are not whining or sorrowful, but the dullness of loss or emptiness moves alongside them.
The despair arises from the common tragedies that disrupt life. A separation from the loved and familiar; a fork in the road and the doubt accompanying the new path; an attempt at escape and its loneliness. The upheavals are not revolutionary, and yet Peelle dodges the mundane. She probes deeper and brings to the surface people’s facets. Peelle’s characters are caught at the bottom of the hierarchy and amidst the hesitancies of their position.
The narrators have the mark of introspection even when they can’t see their own lives clearly. Despite the seemingly aimless drift that directs many of these characters, they remain fully rooted in life. Most are hoping to break free from where they stand. It is less dissatisfaction that drives them than a notion that there just might be something else. Some are desperate to escape, some merely wonder if they should.
There is another thread that runs through these stories aside from flight. In each of the Peelle’s tales there are animals at the center or skirting the periphery. Somehow the chanced glimpse of a tail or the silent winging of a bird in flight imbues Reasons with an atmosphere that feels particularly American. There is the mysterious, menacing presence of a panther, the myth of the thunderbird, a communion with horses, goats, and reptiles. Peelle’s characters are comforted or haunted by these creatures, be they tamed, feral or mythic. The ubiquitous appearance of animals stabilizes Peelle’s stories. The inclusion of other creatures and acknowledgement of their awareness, suffering and empathetic capacities, diffuses the bleakness of the stories, lending a universal sensitivity to the tales rather than the rampant self-absorption that can stem from human narrations of disappointment.
The animals are embodiments of fears and desires. They read people for their essence when others are blind. By and large the people are lost or foundering and while the animals do not quite provide direction they offer support of a sort and an alternative. Resolutions are unattainable and far from the point in Peelle’s collection. The stories conclude with possibilities rather than answers, and the possibilities are rarely heartening.
In the small spaces of Peelle’s stories, only slices of her characters’ personalities are revealed. Everything shown is cast in the shadow of where their lives have brought them. Despite there being an absence of a visible light at the end of the tunnel, Peelle manages to situate the reader alongside her characters without provoking despondency. It is less a note of empathy that she strikes than one of thoughtful observance. Little of the circumstances of these people’s lives drew parallels with my own, but something kept me afloat despite the weight of what was being experienced and despite the absence of novelty. The impetus to continue forward was quite unidentifiable, but there was a reason.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
"Lark and Termite" Proves Exceptional
Writing about this particular book was a challenge. There are myriad, untried ways to pick at a flaw; innovative praise defiant of cliché proves more difficult. Lark and Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips, is, in a word, superb. The characters were ones I had never met before. With the narrative moving fluidly between locations in America and Korea, the uncertain map of these people’s lives brings the reader into contact with new perspectives, tribulations and joys. Phillips handles the demanding intricacies of her characters and the importance of their stories expertly. The narrative is startling corporeal even when it crosses the boundaries between the seen to unseen, the proven and the understood.
The novel opens in Korea alongside Corporal Robert Leavitt. Transferred from a post in Japan to Seoul, Leavitt finds himself tangled in the confusion of the Korean War. Due to its situation between WWII and Vietnam, the Korean War often gets lost in the shuffle of transformative, twentieth century events. It appears as a minor blip on the screen of history compared with the involvement of the world in the 40s and the revolutionary rage of the 60s. A blip if you weren’t there, excruciatingly real to the soldiers and refugees whose lives were destroyed by death or by survival. Merely witnessing the atrocities devastated just as certainly. Entering into the head of Leavitt, Phillips brings this screeching reality to the surface.
Ten years later, the petals of other characters’ stories unfold around Termite, Robert’s son. Termite was born unable to walk or speak and he participates in the world on an indeterminate level. His awareness is quantified differently by his observers. He is tranquil and perceptive, exhibiting a deep response to the sounds around him. Lark, his half sister, ascribes more to him than their aunt Nonnie, though both women care for him with the depths and heights of dedicated love.
Nonnie is the novel’s pillar of strength. For reasons initially unrevealed she is caring for both of the children of her inexplicably absent and incapable younger sister, Lola.
Lola is never seen head on. An image of her is constructed through the lenses of those shattered or made whole by her. Lola is depicted as a force. For Robert she is the constant for him to cling to on the battlefield. He calls up a gentle, pungent procession of memories of their love affair. Moments both carnal and tender. And in the context of the bodily and mental destruction he is facing, they are wrenching. Even in these scenes there is a hint that Lola’s entirety is not simple, but Robert’s resonance with her lends a profundity to her person that might not be grasped through another’s perception.
Every relationship in Philips’s novel possesses a multitude of gradations. No one is simply a lover, brother, mother or aunt. This awareness of overlap in human rapports constructs the reality in the narrative. And within this reality, Lark’s relationship to her brother is situated. Philips crafts an incredible connection by these two. They are linked through the blood of their mother but Lark’s affinity for her damaged brother exceeds sisterly bounds. Lark reads the emotions of Termite without effort. But ultimately her awareness of his conscience merely corroborates his interior, Philips allows Termite his own lens.
The story is measured and Philips navigates time and her broad array of voices with ease. I left one character with reluctance only to find myself caught up in the intricacies of the next. Stratums of understanding exist in this novel and its richness caused it to figure as much more than a blip on this reader’s list.
The novel opens in Korea alongside Corporal Robert Leavitt. Transferred from a post in Japan to Seoul, Leavitt finds himself tangled in the confusion of the Korean War. Due to its situation between WWII and Vietnam, the Korean War often gets lost in the shuffle of transformative, twentieth century events. It appears as a minor blip on the screen of history compared with the involvement of the world in the 40s and the revolutionary rage of the 60s. A blip if you weren’t there, excruciatingly real to the soldiers and refugees whose lives were destroyed by death or by survival. Merely witnessing the atrocities devastated just as certainly. Entering into the head of Leavitt, Phillips brings this screeching reality to the surface.
Ten years later, the petals of other characters’ stories unfold around Termite, Robert’s son. Termite was born unable to walk or speak and he participates in the world on an indeterminate level. His awareness is quantified differently by his observers. He is tranquil and perceptive, exhibiting a deep response to the sounds around him. Lark, his half sister, ascribes more to him than their aunt Nonnie, though both women care for him with the depths and heights of dedicated love.
Nonnie is the novel’s pillar of strength. For reasons initially unrevealed she is caring for both of the children of her inexplicably absent and incapable younger sister, Lola.
Lola is never seen head on. An image of her is constructed through the lenses of those shattered or made whole by her. Lola is depicted as a force. For Robert she is the constant for him to cling to on the battlefield. He calls up a gentle, pungent procession of memories of their love affair. Moments both carnal and tender. And in the context of the bodily and mental destruction he is facing, they are wrenching. Even in these scenes there is a hint that Lola’s entirety is not simple, but Robert’s resonance with her lends a profundity to her person that might not be grasped through another’s perception.
Every relationship in Philips’s novel possesses a multitude of gradations. No one is simply a lover, brother, mother or aunt. This awareness of overlap in human rapports constructs the reality in the narrative. And within this reality, Lark’s relationship to her brother is situated. Philips crafts an incredible connection by these two. They are linked through the blood of their mother but Lark’s affinity for her damaged brother exceeds sisterly bounds. Lark reads the emotions of Termite without effort. But ultimately her awareness of his conscience merely corroborates his interior, Philips allows Termite his own lens.
The story is measured and Philips navigates time and her broad array of voices with ease. I left one character with reluctance only to find myself caught up in the intricacies of the next. Stratums of understanding exist in this novel and its richness caused it to figure as much more than a blip on this reader’s list.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Flavor appears too late in "Broccoli"
It took me awhile to hunt down Lara Vapynar’s short stories Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love. It is a short collection and one I never felt I was able to sink my teeth into, despite the subjects.
Vapynar is a Russian immigrant and the tales she tells are those of other immigrants. Food has obvious cultural significance and in each story the characters are trying to connect with or rediscover some part of themselves through the dishes they create and consume. The familiarity of a dish or the taste of a specific ingredient has the ability to transport people into the past and back to whence they came. This is certainly one of the fascinating attributes of food; it has the remarkable ability to link a person with other moments in time and with the people who shared the meal.
I appreciate Vapynar’s acknowledgment of the power of what we fill our bodies with. But unfortunately the power instilled in the dishes she honors does not manifest in many of her characters.
The immigrant’s dream of America is often an unfulfilled or poorly sketched one. Anything put on a pedestal is bound to fall short of the heights expected of it and America’s superior virtues have been questionable for almost as long as they’ve been praised. For most of Vapynar’s characters the prevalent sentiments are loneliness and disappointment. These emotions rarely incapacitate but certainly affect the young woman who loses her husband to the novelties of America and the rug layer whose wife in Russia is content to stay apart as long as he continues to send money.
Solace is sought or appears in unlikely places. A nanny who doubles as a prostitute to make more money for her family in Russia soothes a man whose resolve has faltered with her borscht; two elderly women slave over meatballs to win the heart and stomach of a Russian widower in their English language class. There is humor amidst the adjustments necessarily made for a new life and the author has an eye for the ironic twist.
Most of the dishes described by Vapynar were unfamiliar to me. To my delight, the author included the recipes for the meals her characters consume and cherish at the conclusion of the book. It was in these post-scripted moments of the collection that Vapanyr came alive as a writer. Her relationship to these foods evoked far more than the supposed predilections of the characters she created. The reality of the food and its familiar and nourishing comforts twinkled with their real worth from these final pages.
Within the boundaries of the stories themselves everything has a much more abstract form. The background for these stories, New York of course, never emits any energy of its own. It remains a two-dimensional backdrop of hardly any consequence, a strange lens through which to view that bustling city. As a result, the characters who play against this static setting are flat themselves. Vapnyar’s are portraits of hypotheticals, not of people. Thus the appearance of the animated recipes at the book’s finish is particularly heartening. Unfortunately the taste of her expertise came too late and I was left with the sweetness of the final course could not disguise the blandness of those that preceded it.
Vapynar is a Russian immigrant and the tales she tells are those of other immigrants. Food has obvious cultural significance and in each story the characters are trying to connect with or rediscover some part of themselves through the dishes they create and consume. The familiarity of a dish or the taste of a specific ingredient has the ability to transport people into the past and back to whence they came. This is certainly one of the fascinating attributes of food; it has the remarkable ability to link a person with other moments in time and with the people who shared the meal.
I appreciate Vapynar’s acknowledgment of the power of what we fill our bodies with. But unfortunately the power instilled in the dishes she honors does not manifest in many of her characters.
The immigrant’s dream of America is often an unfulfilled or poorly sketched one. Anything put on a pedestal is bound to fall short of the heights expected of it and America’s superior virtues have been questionable for almost as long as they’ve been praised. For most of Vapynar’s characters the prevalent sentiments are loneliness and disappointment. These emotions rarely incapacitate but certainly affect the young woman who loses her husband to the novelties of America and the rug layer whose wife in Russia is content to stay apart as long as he continues to send money.
Solace is sought or appears in unlikely places. A nanny who doubles as a prostitute to make more money for her family in Russia soothes a man whose resolve has faltered with her borscht; two elderly women slave over meatballs to win the heart and stomach of a Russian widower in their English language class. There is humor amidst the adjustments necessarily made for a new life and the author has an eye for the ironic twist.
Most of the dishes described by Vapynar were unfamiliar to me. To my delight, the author included the recipes for the meals her characters consume and cherish at the conclusion of the book. It was in these post-scripted moments of the collection that Vapanyr came alive as a writer. Her relationship to these foods evoked far more than the supposed predilections of the characters she created. The reality of the food and its familiar and nourishing comforts twinkled with their real worth from these final pages.
Within the boundaries of the stories themselves everything has a much more abstract form. The background for these stories, New York of course, never emits any energy of its own. It remains a two-dimensional backdrop of hardly any consequence, a strange lens through which to view that bustling city. As a result, the characters who play against this static setting are flat themselves. Vapnyar’s are portraits of hypotheticals, not of people. Thus the appearance of the animated recipes at the book’s finish is particularly heartening. Unfortunately the taste of her expertise came too late and I was left with the sweetness of the final course could not disguise the blandness of those that preceded it.
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