David Klein's Blog, page 70

3 Things I Must Work on in Singles Tennis

How to attack a short ball from an opponent when I have time and choice.

My opponent hits a weak return of serve, or a short floater in the ground game. It’s going to bounce before I get there. But I do have time to move up into position for an attacking shot. Too often I put an inside-out forehand into the net. I’m hitting down on the ball, trying to strike a winner. If I compensate for that, I too often hit the ball high and long. What’s a better way to handle this situation?

How to handle a drop shot that I have to race and lunge to return.

My opponent, seeing me behind the baseline and thinking me slow, hits a drop shot. I can get there on a sprint and lunge, but the ball is low and close to the net when I make contact. I will have to lift a return over. I have little body control, and there seems no possible return that my opponent won’t destroy for a winner. What do I do to stay in the point?

How to handle the heavy groundstrokes.

My opponent almost always hits better groundstrokes than I do. Deep to both sides and heavy with topspin. I don’t have the skill or strength to outhit them and I need a way to change the structure of the point. What shot can I make off a hard groundstroke that will get them off the baseline so I stand a better chance?

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Today in a Cemetery

I visited Lee, Massachusetts today and found myself in the Fairmount Cemetery. It’s an old graveyard, with sections of leaning, faded granite slabs, many greened with lichen. Names and dates you’d need a rubbing to read.

Other, newer sections were populated with obelisks and polished slabs.

I walked among the gravestones and the air was cold and occasionally the sun peeked out and I turned toward it to stop shivering. I wasn’t moving enough. I kept stopping to look at graves.

Cemeteries beckon me. Residing within them is the peace that accompanies finality and some of that peace infuses me. Contrast that with the all-around-you reminder: life is short, to dust you shall return. I find that a useful nudge.

I’ve had some special experiences in cemeteries. I got engaged in a cemetery in Williamstown on a perfect New England autumn afternoon when the world was spectacular. Once, in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, when I was visiting the lake where my mother’s ashes are spread, I was sure I saw a ghost, not of my mother, but of another woman.

Today I had an experience as well. I was with my friend Jim and we passed a sparsely populated section with only a few small gravemarkers and he said maybe this is the children’s section.

I stood still for a long while. I’m mourning a child right now who recently died. A child, a baby, an infant, a newborn. A beautiful person named Ezra born to a beautiful family I love very much.

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AMERICAN DIRT, Jeanine Cummins

I managed to get my hands on an advance reader copy (ARC) of AMERICAN DIRT, by Jeanine Cummins, a novel that has received a lot of hype and seems destined to become a best seller based on early reviews and reader enthusiasm.

Plenty of five-star ratings on Goodreads. Don Winslow calling it a GRAPES OF WRATH for our times.

The novel is a story of chase and escape. Lydia and her eight-year-old son, Luca, are forced to leave their Acapulco home and attempt the migrant journey to el Norte after a cartel murders their entire extended family because Lydia’s husband, Sebastián, a journalist, exposed the violent drug lord Javier in a high-profile article. Lydia didn’t realize until it was too late that the gentleman (he reads, he writes poetry, he flirts with her) she’d befriended at her bookstore was actually the vicious drug kingpin.

I can see why this novel is getting a lot of pre-pub attention. It checks off a lot of boxes: the migrant story, the immigration issue, a sympathetic female heroine, her resilient young son, danger and escape. It’s also highly readable: simple prose, straightforward plot, emotional tenor rather than intellectual rigor. The opening scene is vivid, the scenes of trying to climb on top of moving trains are harrowing, the terror is at times palpable, the bond between mother and son is powerful.

And yet.

To me, the entire novel felt manufactured, written specifically for a white woman reader. It never felt fully authentic. The characters, especially the supporting cast, seemed like types. Part of this might have to do with the omniscient point of view that made all the characters seem alike, none of them having a distinctive voice. There was even something sanitized even about the violence, perhaps to make it more palatable to its target audience.

I realize I’m in the total minority here. But if I were a writer from Central America—perhaps one who’d written a similar story that has been ignored, or one who has first-hand experience with the migrant’s journey—I’d be pissed. Undoubtedly the pendulum has swung and the market is being flooded with novels from previously marginalized and underrepresented voices. This isn’t one of them.

As an author myself, I believe any writer can take on characters and subjects they don’t have first-hand knowledge or experience of, and should not be accused of appropriation—as long as the writer can pull it off.

I don’t think Cummins does pull it off. In her Acknowledgements, she thanks a number of writers she recommends if you want to learn more about Mexico and compulsory migration. Maybe I should read some of those next.

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The Most Important Novels in My Life

I have set myself a task for 2020: reread the ten most important books in my life. To qualify for the list, the novel (or novella or short story collections; I’m including those also), must meet one or more of the following criteria:

It was so profound and meaningful to me that I’ve read the novel multiple times.It significantly influenced my own development as a novelist.The experience of reading the novel is inexorably linked to and illuminates a moment or period of time in my life.

It’s going to be challenging to pick the ten books. I’m not concerned that I’ve forgotten any important book, because if I have, then that book by definition wouldn’t qualify for the list. I’ve started with 25 titles, from which I must cull down to ten.

Why am I doing this? I’m interested in how the passage of time and accumulation of life experiences have changed how I feel about a book that I once placed on a high pedestal. Has the book stood the test of time? Have I? What’s changed?

For now, I’m listing my initial list of 25, in no particular order, and without explanation. When I get down to ten, I will provide context as to why I chose each one to read again.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, John IrvingAMERICAN PASTORAL, Philip RothSELF-HELP, Lorrie MooreA FARWELL TO ARMS, Ernest HemingwayA VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD, Jennifer EganTHE SLAP, Christos TsiolkasTHE EXORCIST, William Peter BlattyDUNE, Frank HerbertCAT’S EYE, Margaret AtwoodTHE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, Milan KunderaTHE ROAD, Cormac McCarthyIN THE GARDEN OF NORTH AMERICAN MARTYRS, Tobia WolffLITTLE CHILDREN, Tom PerrottaSMILES ON WASHINGTON SQUARE, Raymond Federman10:30 ON A SUMMER NIGHT, Marguerite DurasTHE CATCHER IN THE RYE, J.D. SalingerA PALE VIEW OF THE HILLS, Kazuo IshiguroLOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, Gabriel Garcia MarquezBELLEFLEUR, Joyce Carol OatesTHE HOURS, Michael CunninghamLEGENDS OF THE FALL, Jim HarrisonTHE THINGS THEY CARRIED, Tim O’BrienMARIETTE IN ECSTASY, Ron HansenTHE ACCOMPLICES, Georges SimenonWHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE, Raymond Carver

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