Book Review: U and J

I've decided to use personal essays for my U and J letters in the A-Z Challenge, in part because I seem to have an inability to find appropriate books I wish to read and in part because I really like personal essays and need to get back into reading them.

Upside Down and Backward by William T. Vollman
Vollman discusses the popular trend of looking at the unreal instead of the real through sections on a camera obscura, personal experiences as a journalist, and thoughts on television. As Vollman writes, "freshness wilts", and what was once miraculous about the real world has been replaced by the imitation which is touted as something which "will soon be better than the real thing". Like Vollman, this idea terrifies me.

The essay is mildly reminiscent of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and dystopic novels such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In one section Vollman describes a night scene in Kabul and then says: "Have I 'understood' Afghanistan? Not by a long shot. But at least I saw it. I didn't just watch it on CNN." The difference between authentic and inauthentic experience is one I've contemplated often. I envy the concreteness of a real experience even as I overwhelm myself with inauthentic experiences through reading.

The Joys and Perils of Victimhood by Ian Buruma
In his essay, Buruma points out an issue that I have never considered, but now find myself a real dolt for not taking issue with earlier. Buruma discusses the popular trend for religious, ethnic, sexual, etc. groups of people to identify almost solely as victims. In a world where multiculturalism has become the norm - where the ethnic distinctions between groups of people are diminishing - certain groups are heaving a rallying cry for their historical victimhood in some sort of "Olympics of suffering". While Buruma acknowledges the historical suffering of many groups - he is Jewish - he worries that "when a cultural, ethnic, religious, or national community bases its communal identity almost entirely on the sentimental solidarity of remembered victimhood, for that way lies historical myopia and, in extreme cases, even vendetta." He also worries that this push for a more "feeling" type of history will obscure the fact that historical truth does exist; it's not all about how people felt, real things happened.

I could not agree more. I have often wondered about this overly passionate attachment to past ethnic/cultural sufferings. I can not dislike the English because I'm Irish. Japanese-Americans can not hang on to the internment; African-Americans can not wallow in slavery. We did not experience those things. And while we most certainly can not forget the atrocities that have happened in the past, dwelling on them, identifying ourselves as victims, is counterproductive.

I would recommend both of these essays as they are well-written, insightful, and intriguing.

Book Review: Another Personal Essay

"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"
by Mark Twain (Read it online)

Twain sarcastically criticizes Cooper's work. The best part of this essay for me is the list of 18 "rules governing literary art" which Twain says are all violated by Cooper. For example, rule 10 says: "They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together." Apparently Cooper was also an incapable observer with no knowledge of Nature. Twain believes that "if Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact."

I have never read anything by Cooper, that I know of, but it matters not even a little to understanding and appreciating this essay. I just adore writing like this. This essay comes from a book called The Malcontents: The Best Bitter, Cynical, and Satirical Writing in the World edited by Joe Queenan. The collection is 1048 pages in length, and I'm picking and choosing from it and my other personal essay collections which includes Best American Essays 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002, and The Art of the Personal Essay which is another chunkster.

Book Review: 3 Non-Fiction Essays

This is not really a book review. There is no book. Instead, it is a review of three personal essays I bound together for my Introduction to Literature course: three essays I still remember fondly ten years after reading them.

The Bone Garden of Desire by Charles Bowden (Read it online here)
Bowden weaves food, flowers, lust, and death in this poetic personal essay. The essay is fragmentary, moving horizontally forward and backward through time even as it moves vertically through the topics. I'm not sure why I assign those particular directions, but I do. Something in the tone, the interrelation of these primal topics, and the melancholy seduces me.

Bookmarks by Rebecca McClanahan
McClanahan exposes herself through her musings on a gray-haired woman's marginalia. The concept of marginalia is one I find fascinating, being a reader and a (gasp) occasional marker of books. I too have looked at a note in the margin and wondered about the writer/reader. The thrust of this essay, however, seems to be the author's failed marriage and her subsequent depression and acceptance.

Refugium by Barbara Hurd
Hurd ponders the necessity and danger of refuges, particularly in swamps. Full of metaphors, the essay offers an enticing view of the isolation and possibilities of self-discovery inherent in refuges. She paints a picture of the swamp that is both terrifying and oddly appealing.


All three essays, like many personal essays, blend together the personal with the factual/historical. Bowden mixes his friends (Art, Paul, Dick, Chris...) with historical figures such as Homer, King Solomon, and Apicius. McClanahan and Hurd thread quotes and commentary from books throughout their essays. It is this mix that I adore, and it is this mix that adds to the fragmentary nature of the essays.

One of my draws to the personal essay is the artful way essayists use fragments to reveal a whole in a way different from a continuous narrative. There is something about the presentation of snippets of time - it never pretends to be the whole story in the way chronologies do - that seems to be both more contrived in its juxtaposition and yet simultaneously more honest.

I taught Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut in the first few weeks of class. Slaughter-house Five contains three separate stories, all told out of order: 'real' life, war life, and abduction life. The use of non-chronological fragmentary story-telling is essential to the theme of the novel in this case, and I wonder how necessary it is to these three essays? Now, I'm off to ponder this question. Perhaps I'll see if my students have an answer...

Book Review: The Year of Magical Thinking

Title: The Year of Magical Thinking
Author: Joan Didion
Published: 2006 Pages: 227
Genre: Nonfiction

Buy  |  Borrow  |  Accept  |  Avoid

Plot Synopsis
Part essay collection, part stream-of-consciousness, The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion's personal accounting of her grief the year after her husband died.

My Thoughts
I don't know that I have anything intelligent, witty, or critical to say about this. The palpable grief revealed in these pages left me thinking too long and too hard about how I would deal with my own husband's death. The deep-sinking-sickness in my torso is a small scratch to the horror of the real experience, but it was enough to make reading this book uncomfortable.

I will say, however, that I was impressed by Didion's honesty and her consistency. This is not a self-help book or a "one woman's journey of personal discovery" book; for me at least, this was an honest and heart-wrenching look, not at how one recovers from the death of a spouse, but at how one does not recover. And that feels so much more real to me than the myriad other books out there on the subject that hold on to hope as the central message.

Memorable Scene: When Joan's daughter, Quintana, needs a tracheostomy, Joan refuses. Her mind is convinced that if the operation isn't performed, Quintana will be fine. She can see the illogic but can't feel it: "This was demented, but so was I."

Memorable Quote: Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.

Question: How much of a difference do you think it makes if the reader of this book is married or single?

Other Reviews
If I've missed yours, let me know!

Sophisticated Dorkiness
Shelf Love
Care's Online Book Club
Stone Soup
Stephanie's Written Word
Asylum
Dear Author
She Treads Softly