Not As Messy As You'd Think: "In Praise of Messy Lives"

Book: In Praise of Messy Lives
Author: Katie Roiphe
Pages: 261
Copy: library copy
Read: mid-December
Spoilers: back to essays!

I requested this book from the library because I read a review that discussed how controversial Katie Roiphe is. I was excited--a woman essayist who starts fights! This is the woman for me! Naturally, her book was a complete disappointment.

Her writing style isn't that interesting. She may attack Joan Didion in a long essay, but her own style isn't so different. She uses some personal details, but never fleshes them out (she complains that Joan Didion's memoir is described as "'deeply and intensely personal,' and yet what is striking is how impersonal the book actually is." Roiphe's essays may be "deeply and intensely personal," but they're still strikingly impersonal). She has little in the way of style--I didn't linger over any of her sentences, the way I did with Joan Didion and even Anne Fadiman. Her writing style is academic and utilitarian. There is little color and no music in her sentences. This is the style of modern academic essays, but I expect more from personal essays--especially essays sold to the wider public.

Perhaps the most aggravating part of this collection of essays is the banality of Roiphe's insights. It is no compliment to myself when I say I could have made the same observations as Roiphe. She doesn't enlighten--she points out the obvious. There are few interesting criticisms and almost no intriguing social commentary. George Orwell could take a very basic and very boring part of culture and make astonishing claims about what those things said about society as a whole. Roiphe can't do that.

What intrigued me the most is the fact that Roiphe seems secretly conservative. She writes all about her unconventional family--she is raising two children on her own--and writes at great length about all the criticism she gets. But I never got the feeling that she actually accepts her situation. To me, it seems that she actually agrees with all the criticism. But there's also the sense that she loves to be a martyr. "Look at poor me, raising two fatherless children! Give me your pity and your criticism, because I deserve it!" In more capable hands, Roiphe's life story could have been striking. (I couldn't help but think that if Cheryl Strayed had written Roiphe's book, it would have been absolutely the most stunning book of the year. In Roiphe's hands, everything falls utterly flat.)

Only one essay from this collection has stayed with me. In "Making the Incest Scene," Roiphe writes about the way that incest has become the go-to "dark secret" of modern literature and how no one does it believably. While I think her criticism is spot on, I'm not sure incest is as pervasive as she imagines. Still, while I've thought about that essay once or twice since I read this collection, her analysis and observations in that essay are as superficial as all the other essays. The essay has no point but to point out incest. It goes no deeper.

I really can't figure out what is so controversial about Roiphe. Once or twice I caught myself frowning as I read her essays, but I never felt the need to rail against her. Her essay on Joan Didion bothered me a little, but I thought she made fair points. How does this woman start fights? Perhaps it is the way she writes about her family--I could see some "family values" readers becoming irate about that. Still, how she's earned a name as a "bad girl" eludes me. Orwell says more outrageous things, and he's been dead for almost 63 years. Roiphe is going to have to try a lot harder if she wants to make a lasting impression on American letters.

I don't hate this book, exactly, I'm just disappointed. Yet again another essayist has failed. Perhaps the essay form is just too out-of-date; it seems like no one knows how to do it right anymore. How can a collection this light and shallow cause any sort of controversy at all? Is it because a woman is expressing her opinions? I can only hope that isn't the only reason. Surely women are allowed to express their opinions without being labelled a "controversial writer." George Will writes his opinion all the time, and he's been called "the most powerful journalist in America."

This might be a good introduction to essays--I mean, Roiphe is readable, and shallowness of interpretation might help a person get use to reading cultural essays. Still, I'm not sure exactly who the target audience here is. Women? I hope not. Women deserve well-written essays too. I suppose I can only recommend this to people who want to stay abreast of pop literary culture. I really don't care what is written, it has to be written well. Roiphe needs to learn more about craftsmanship before she can become truly enduring.

--Benvolia

Prettying Up Murder: "The Lady in the Lake"

Book: The Lady in the Lake
Author: Raymond Chandler
Pages: 266
Copy: Vintage Crime paperback I've had for years
Read: November 13-16 (I read this for my Noir mystery reading group)
Spoilers: I won't give away who murders who, if that's what you mean

I think there are two kinds of people in this world: people who think Raymond Chandler is a great Noir mystery writer and people who don't. I'm one of the latter. Now, let me explain.

I think two things go into whether or not you like Chandler. The most important factor is who you read first, Dashiell Hammett or Chandler. If you read Hammett first (and enjoy him), then Chandler is an upstart copycat who has no idea what he's writing about. If you read Chandler first, then Hammett is an insane violence junkie.

The second factor is how snobbish you are about genre fiction. Chandler tries hard to make his writing read like literary fiction--using overblown figurative language, obvious allusions, and complex murders that require bizarre coincidences that are only barely plausible, laboring under the impression that complexity equals literary. If you think genre fiction is pointless money-grubbing (read this thoughtful if still painfully elitist piece on the debate between genre and literary fiction--it'll at least give you ammunition, even if it doesn't change your mind), then you can read Chandler happily because he's trying so hard to escape the genre. That being said, he seems to genuinely love Noir mystery, so his desire to escape could really be an attempt to elevate the genre. Unfortunately, to my mind, he reinforces the so-called problems of genre fiction rather than transcending them. Hammett, on the other hand, never tried to escape his genre. He more or less created the genre and then broke the mold. No one--granted I haven't read everything but that's why I'm leading a Noir mystery reading group--no one does Noir better than Hammett. I think that kills Chandler. He wants to be the literary version of Hammett, but that's impossible. Hammett existed happily enough within the confines of genre. Chandler can't stand genre.

The Lady in the Lake is a page turner, I'll give it that. The timescale is off-the-charts unrealistic (almost The Da Vinci Code bad, minus the airplanes), but it's easy to ignore that detail. The case starts out as a simple missing persons, but the body count builds rapidly (interestingly, only one person is shot to death--the rest are killed in a more hands-on way) and the mystery deepens. That the solution requires...well, I don't want to give everything away. But the solution is divisive. Some (probably those pesky Hammett fans) will find the solution absolutely ridiculous. Others (probably those staunch Chandler fans) will find the solution ingenious. I doubt anyone will find it boring.

The violence is mostly off-stage. Sure Marlowe gets beat up a couple times, but all the deaths happen before Marlowe arrives or while he's unconscious. That being said, the first murdered body is described in rather gruesome detail. Eat your lunch after you've read the first 60 pages. But other than that first body, the violence and death is pretty understated. Think Greek tragedy, not Stephen King.

The novel is written in the first person, which is always a difficult move for a writer of mysteries. The author can't give too much away, which means the detective can't think too much. This runs the risk of making the detective seem like a bumbling idiot. Unfortunately, this novel suffers a little from that. It's difficult to tell whether or not Marlowe actually knows what he's doing. He just seems to sort of wander around, getting beat up and finding dead bodies. Then the big pay-off scene comes around and he suddenly knows everything. (For the record, Hammett also uses the first person occasionally, but his detective doesn't seem quite so bumbling to me. Chalk it up to bias, I suppose.)

Two final notes. The diction is awkward. Marlowe tends to use fairly sophisticated diction, which is jarringly out of place in a Noir mystery. He's also a bit of a snob, commenting on the quality of his food and drink, a move that makes him a little dandified.  And then there's the figurative language.

"The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips."

"One drop of that in the hollow of your throat and the matched pink pearls started falling on you like summer rain." 

The first is the way Marlowe describes the time he spends waiting outside the office of his soon-to-be client, the second describes a perfume. Both sentences occur within the first six pages. Did you wince a little? I winced. That kind of language shows how hard Chandler is trying and how completely he is failing. (Okay, okay--he fails to me. Not everyone agrees.) I can't really see a hard-boiled detective thinking like that. The figurative language reinforces the sense that Marlowe has either slipped down a few pegs socially, or that he has no idea what he's doing--that he's just playing at detective.

Alright, who should read this? I think young people (say 16 or 17+) will love Chandler. He's a little gross and a little violent, just enough to titillate a young reader who hasn't read many mysteries yet. People from LA are likely to love Chandler, just because he celebrates the area. Established mystery readers are going to either be Chandler fans or not, so be careful. Ultimately, the Noir mystery genre is a little more of a man's genre--the women are pretty stock, often deeply sexualized, and often either evil or dumb. Some women won't care--they'll just like the mystery--other women will be offended. That's a deeply personal opinion, so I'd never try to really influence anyone one way or the other. Just keep it in mind.

--Benvolia

Battles with the Spree: Nick Hornby's "Housekeeping vs. The Dirt"

Book: Housekeeping vs. The Dirt

Author: Nick Hornby

Pages:153

Copy: Sonoma County Library paperback

Read: first week of October

Spoilers: essays--so what's there to spoil?

This is the first book by Nick Hornby that I've read, and it isn't a bad introduction. While Hornby is perhaps better known for his fiction, he is a truly delightful essayist. He has an engaging voice and he isn't afraid to give his opinion (though The Believer requires all book reviews published in its pages to be positive--forcing Hornby to engage in some amusing acrobatics when he reads something he doesn't like), two important characteristics of an essayist. That his subject is rather narrow (he focuses on his opinions of books and rarely ventures further into social commentary as, say, George Orwell might) is his only limiting factor. However, Hornby is a surprisingly fascinating character, so his essays don't suffer dramatically; nevertheless, I must admit that I've forgotten most of his opinions, and it's been less than two weeks. He's amusing, but fleeting.

Perhaps the best aspect of his essays is his honesty about magazine-writing. He describes the many battles he has with his editors: the differences of opinion, the attempts at control and manipulation, and so on. To what extent he is exaggerating is difficult to ascertain, but even his exaggeration is amusing. (For instance, the number of editors fluctuates sensationally from, for example, 55 to 15 to 430. To this moment I have no idea how many editors he has, though in one quasi-honest passage he says there are 64. But I still don't believe him completely.) He seems like a particularly difficult person to deal with (at the very least, that is the personality he develops throughout the pages of his reviews), but he's always amusing in his crankiness.

Hornby reviews a variety of books, but each review is so short it's hard to decide whether or not you want to read the book yourself (though I'm not entirely sure getting you to read any of these books is the point--I think Hornby uses his essays to explore what is interesting to him by way of what he reads each month, which isn't a bad alternative). To be honest (since this isn't The Believer), Hornby's essays are incredibly scattered, occasionally making them difficult to follow. At times this collection felt like a very small piece of something much larger, with references that didn't make sense to someone jumping in to the middle (this is the second collection of articles from his column--perhaps his first, The Polysyllabic Spree, would clear up some of the things I missed).

At any rate, Hornby is a good writer and he has an excellent voice. His articles might be best for those who read omnivorously and who read a lot. His essays aren't aimed at the average American reader, which isn't to say they're written academically. But there is an obvious strain of elitism and snobbery that runs through them, a strain that might put off some readers. Then again, almost all essayists have those that love them and those that loath them.

--Benvolia

Books for Summer: "Practical Magic"

Title: Practical Magic
Author: Alice Hoffman
244 pages (Hardcover)
Copy: Keene Public Library (Although, I have a copy somewhere in my parents' house.)
Read on: 15 June 2011 (I think I first read it in May or June of 2008, sitting out on the lawn, eating countless pastrami sandwiches. My aunt provided both the book and the pastrami and owned the lawn. It was the right kind of New England summer for it, too, just as it is through most of the book.)
Spoilers: 4ish

Every June, somewhere around solstice, I get the urge to read Practical Magic. Alice Hoffman has a very distinctive voice, one that feels very similar to mine. (No, this is not wholly hubris, people have remarked on the similarity, especially in regards to her work Ice Queen) It is a voice that combines the simplicity of a fairy tale with something much more complex, adult, and ultimately realistic. Practical Magic showcases this voice in the story of the Owens sisters, who encounter almost every kind of love.


I'm usually a little bitter about books about sisters. Sisterhood is much more complicated than books make it seem, especially the books that feature "friends so close they are like sisters". (I have a lot of very dear friends, but I would never wish on them the extremely mixed blessing of being my sister.) Equally as aggravating and inaccurate are the books that take the other direction and feature books about sisters that destroy each others' lives (see, for example, the first three parts of In Her Shoes, by Jennifer Weiner, now a major motion picture! as of five years ago). 

But Hoffman maintains a lovely balance and each set of sisters in the novel is believable as sisters. Three generations of Owens sisters, all of then with varying degrees of magical powers, all learn from themselves and from their family how to love. They learn to love each other as sisters, as nieces, as daughters, and mothers, and aunts. With the exception of the elder aunts, who are content in remembering their lost loves, they learn to love the men who wander precipitously into their lives. Almost missing from the novel is fatherly love. Sally and Gillian--the main set of Owens sisters--are orphans. Sally's husband dies early in the novel and in their relationship, leaving the novel without a true father figure. 

Despite this minor flaw, this remains one of my favorite summer reads. I'd recommend it for anyone with sisters. Or anyone in a long term relationship. Or anyone between long term relationships. It is a novel that inspires love, second chances. The last phrase of the novel says it all: "Fall in love as often as possible". Fall in love with the book, if not anything else. 


-Mercutia