A.M.’s Comments (group member since Jul 09, 2020)

A.M.’s comments from the DUCKS reading support group group.

Lee wrote: "I've never taken a survey on the matter but I imagine most of us are more like the narrator than Daniel Tiger here."

I meant to reply to this yesterday! Oh my goodness yes. I regularly deny myself food and toilet time in a way that would be considered abuse if I did the same to the kids. But going to the bathroom IS so boring. SO BORING.

I’m calling this part “The Meaning of Life.”

There’s a lot of anxiety in this section, first about the meaning of life, then the “earthquake cakes” representing the scene of a disaster, then more broadly: snakes getting killed, jellyfish horror, the Silver Bridge collapse, chemical plant explosions, and so on. She was also pretty concerned about disaster in the first section, come to think of it; disaster is likely to be an overarching theme. Eco-disaster starts to come through here too, with discussion of the death of the Great Barrier Reef, and turtles getting deformed with six-pack rings, as well as Fukushima and industrial waste being dumped in the Ohio River.

Narrator was clearly extremely affected by her relationship with Abby, who was (possibly?) her aunt, and so much in here about her mother is almost self-restricted, while her thoughts about Abby are expansive. This self-restriction could be because the loss of her mother is relatively recent and she tries not to think about her too broadly. We also learn that her mother was paralyzed and eventually got breast cancer—so cancer might be genetic in the narrator’s family, though it seems Narrator’s own cancer related to her “sit-me-down-upon” rather than being breast cancer.

We learn that while Narrator was a teacher she broke a wrist falling over a tree root, and that is what FOOSH injury meant when she mentioned it previously (“falling on out-stretched hands”). One of her main concerns at the time was the cost of treatment, including the ambulance. A lot of this anxiety has to do with the way Americans tie health care to employment.

Leo is a popular guy, with his students and his colleagues and, you know, the ladies. Lots of little gifts from everyone. But he can’t even cook a pack of noodles (though he did manage to do all the cooking and cleaning when the narrator was recovering from cancer treatment). While Leo loves teaching, Narrator hated it so much that she wonders if it actually gave her her cancer. Perhaps for these and many other reasons, she is not looking forward to hosting a cocktail party for Leo’s colleagues.

Narrator feels like she doesn’t fit in where they live, and she feels a little resentful of it because she is only there for Leo. But she does think second marriages are often better than the first ones. It seems to me that she tries very hard to give Leo credit. Does he deserve it? We may or may not find out.

So yes, Leo’s a bit of a heartthrob, but Narrator appears to have an admirer, too, in her supplier Ronny, who keeps dropping by for no good reason. I wonder if we will see Ronny later?

We learn that Phoebe and Ethan are Narrator’s siblings and that her Grandma (her dad’s mom, Jewish, disapproved at first of her Catholic daughter-in-law) moved from Detroit to Florida in her older years, and Narrator went to stay with her for a while, even though Grandma strikes me as what we might call a “difficult character.”

There’s a lot of discussion about appearances, from the right time to get a facelift to how much you should or should not compliment your kids. IT IS CLEAR that this woman is as compelled and repulsed by MUA YouTubers as I am. And so much in this about mothers and motherhood, which is to be expected—that is, after all, what the novel is about: How mothers are hated, misunderstood, loved, missed; how they fail, and how much they do that doesn’t fail that is ignored.

I feel more kinship with this woman with every page turn, and even moreso now that I also know she had a very dear little black cat with yellow eyes who has now died. :(

We get two lion interludes in this section, which I hadn’t expected, but I’m glad to see that maybe they will feature regularly. I’m not personally bothered about the single long sentence internal narrative, but I suppose it’s no bad thing to give the eyes a refreshment? The lion is, of course, a mother just doing her best.

Your homework: write a terrible haiku about a zoo animal, in honour of Grandma. Here’s mine:

You thought we forgot?
RIP Harambe. We
still have our dicks out.

Grandma’s Chicken Stock

chicken bones
celery
onion
carrot
potato
ginger
garlic
black peppercorns
a few cilantro seeds
a bay leaf
a pinch of sugar
glass of white wine or vermouth, or half a glass of gin

Bring it all to the boil, then simmer it low for at least 8 hours, preferably 12. The more gelatinous the better. If you cook it long enough it goes golden (but 24 hours is probably too much). Then cool, strain, and salt it (don’t forget the salt), and get it into the freezer as soon as possible.

NB: Never use parsley in chicken stock, because it gets bitter if it's cooked too long. And no need to cut the vegetables small, just make sure they fit into the pot.

Here's a recipe for (Coconut) Rice Pudding Pie from epicurious.com, a website I'm certain our narrator would frequent:

Coconut Rice Pudding Pie

YIELD: Makes one 9" pie
ACTIVE TIME: 1 hour
TOTAL TIME: 3 hours

INGREDIENTS
For the crust:
3 cups sesame sticks (about 10 oz.)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
7 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
For the pudding:
1 Tbsp. gelatin
2 cups full-fat coconut milk
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup granulated sugar, divided
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 tsp. kosher salt
3 large eggs
2 cups cooked jasmine rice

For the caramel:
3/4 cup full-fat coconut milk
1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
2 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
For the rum whip and assembly:
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup dark rum
2 Tbsp. powdered sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
Toasted coconut flakes (for topping)

Special Equipment:
A standard 9"-diameter pie plate

PREPARATION
Make the crust:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Pulse sesame sticks and granulated sugar in a food processor until finely ground. Add butter and continue to pulse until dough sticks together when pressed with your fingertips.
Transfer to pie pan and press evenly into bottom and up sides with a flat measuring cup. Chill in the freezer until firm, about 15 minutes. Bake crust until golden brown and set, 12–15 minutes. If the crust has slouched while baking, use measuring cup to fix. Let cool.

Make the pudding:
Mix gelatin into 1/4 cup warm water in a small bowl; set aside to bloom.
Heat coconut milk, cream, and 1/2 cup granulated sugar in a large heavy saucepan over medium-high until simmering, about 4 minutes, then reduce heat to medium-low.
Whisk cornstarch, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup granulated sugar in a medium bowl. Add eggs and continue to whisk until well combined. Whisking constantly, slowly pour half of milk mixture into egg mixture to temper. Pour egg mixture back into pan, stir in rice, and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping bottom and sides of pan until thick and big bubbles are rising to the surface, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in gelatin until dissolved, then transfer to a large bowl or resealable container. Let cool slightly. Place plastic wrap directly on surface of pudding to prevent a crust from forming and chill at least 2 hours and preferably overnight.

Make the caramel:
Bring coconut milk and brown sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium heat, whisking to combine. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, stirring often with a rubber spatula, until reduced to a thick, glossy sauce, 10–15 minutes.
Remove from heat and whisk in butter and salt. Pour caramel into cooled crust and tilt to coat bottom of crust. Freeze until set, about 15 minutes.

Make the rum whip and assemble the pie:
Beat cream in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until soft peaks form, 3–4 minutes. Add rum, powdered sugar, and salt and continue to beat until stiff peaks form. Chill two-thirds (about 3 cups) of the whipped cream until ready to use. Fold remaining cream into chilled rice pudding.
Fill pie shell with pudding. Chill at least 2 hours and up to overnight.

When ready to serve, re-whip rum cream until it holds stiff peaks and pile on top of rice pudding. Sprinkle with toasted coconut and slice to serve.

Mr Deeds Goes to Town
The Wild One
Rebel Without A Cause
The Tales of Hoffman
The Graduate
Airplane!
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Deception
High Noon
Friendly Persuasion
My Fair Lady
Death of a Salesman
The Contender
It’s A Wonderful Life

. . . and no “Blunt Force”--but there is a “Blunt Force Trauma”

For Tuesday 14 July, we're reading up to round about location 1754, stopping with “the fact that it’s silly to have nothing but coffee all morning” (after a long discussion of types of pies). The coffee phrase is toward the bottom half of page 115 in my print copy.

Lee wrote: "it brought to my mind the title poem from Carl Phillips's latest, Pale Colors in a Tall Field: Poems, which goes in part...

Thank you so much for this gorgeous poem, and I'm glad (?) to hear there are other forgetters out there.

Lee wrote: "clickbait headlines..."

Holy cow, that is a labor of love, Lee!

Ok, how on earth are we going to write about this? I'm going to try to do some factual assessment and note some bits that resonated with me personally.

--------

I’m calling this first 50ish pages “Reasons You Can’t Stay Focused.”

What we learn: Narrator is an ex-teacher, now caterer, and cancer survivor. She has a previous husband, Frank, with whom she had a daughter, Stacy, and now she has three more children with her new husband Leo: Ben, Gillian, and Jake. She worries the most about Stacy, who, as a teenager, is causing her more stress than her other kids. The family is in a precarious position financially because of the healthcare bills that accompanied the narrator’s cancer. She hates Donald Trump and seems to have a pretty good grasp of current affairs despite being busy all. the. time. Her husband Leo sounds perfectly pleasant—but also pretty lazy around the house, despite being capable.

I deeply enjoyed the extended Laura Ingalls Wilder riff. It’s interesting how she reflects on how she never has time to read, then goes into a reverie about all these childhood comfort books. She’s clearly a reader (or clearly was, earlier in her life), and she partakes enthusiastically in popular culture—at least, she has a taste for the classics, when it comes to films and theatre, and she’s clearly Extremely Online given her apparent encyclopaedic knowledge of clickbait and viral YouTube videos.

As a non-rememberer myself, I was personally extremely taken by the conversation about lack of memory. Like me, she reckons she cannot remember a damn thing—but her memory for bits, here and there, is truly excellent. I suspect her only real memory problem is a total inability to focus because she has four children and a cheerfully idle husband, and what she lacks is time to herself to think—which is why we find her in this part starting her baking so early in the morning, before her children wake up.

I was also struck by the near-prescient fleeting thoughts of a global pandemic. I wonder if Stacy really does welcome one now, and I wonder if Leo has figured out exactly what it takes to run a household since he's probably been working from home . . .

Has anyone got the inclination to try Abby’s BBQ sauce? I’m thinking of writing it on an index card and tucking it away as if it’s an old family heirloom of my own.

Abby’s BBQ sauce

1 lge. onion
2 tbsp. butter
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 tbsp. Worcestershire
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1 jar chili sauce (substitute Hunt’s and add chili powder or paprika)
salt & pepper

Brown the onion in butter, then add everything else and cook slowly for 20 minutes until it thickens. Lasts a couple of weeks in the refrigerator. Suitable for use on ribs, chicken, p. chops, hamburgers, and hot dogs.

If you have the energy, please do note anything you like here!

Films referenced (please add anything I've missed to this if you have the stamina!):

Some Like It Hot
The Wizard of Oz
Rebel Without A Cause
Freaky Friday
On the Waterfront
It’s Complicated
Bring It On
Dr Zhivago
Marnie
The Perfect Storm
The Odd Couple
The Contender
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House
Reefer Madness
The Music Box

Welcome to Week 1, Day 1. We will start discussion on Monday 13 July, and, as always, we are planning to read for 5 days out of the 7.

So if you don't want to read the first section until (say) Tuesday, that's fine--just feel free to pitch in whenever you reach whatever bits we are talking about, and fingers crossed the two days off each week will mean you never get too far behind.

On W1D1 we are reading to about Kindle location 877. I have a physical copy of the book here that has 1030 text pages (with a fair few pages of glossary at the end there), and we are stopping at the bottom of page 61 in this edition, with the words "Not so fast, Goldberg!" (Preceding that are the phrases "hydrangea danger" and a bit about how words don't seem to mean what they used to, these days.)

I'm posting this on Sunday so will wait to add my comments on this part until tomorrow, but I have gone ahead and added all of the books that she references (the ones I noticed, anyway) to the group bookshelf--with the one exception being the book about the Bourgogne disaster, which I can’t find in real life. If you notice other books I didn't spot, please add them! I'm also making a list of film references, but you don't have to be like me.

Rory wrote: "the fact that I read a goodreads comment saying that the author was a "miss little clever clogs," the fact that I read another goodreads comment saying that the author isn't a real writer because s..."

YESSSSS I have also read those comments. GOOD LORD

Lee wrote: "I enjoyed the Infinite Jest reading group of a few years ago, until I couldn’t keep it up anymore, and I’ve been intrigued by this book, so I’m pleased by this endeavor, and we’ll see what happens...."

Lee, I wouldn't be friends with anyone who wasn't a ridiculous aesthete, obviously. All types of books are welcome here. I have both the ebook and the physical book, but so far I've found it most useful to read in my kindle cloud reader (I KNOW this is LUDICROUS) because it makes highlighting, note-taking, and cross-referencing so easy, all in one place. I think if I were just reading for fun I'd probably be using my Kindle in all honesty, but that's mainly because I often read in bed and the Kindle is less likely to break my nose.

JoEllen wrote: "I finished this last month shortly after reading Infinite Jest. It was perfect timing, and it's such a beautiful novel. For about a week or so I felt a little lost missing that time with the narrat..."

I'm absolutely delighted! Thank you for joining in :)

"A wildly ambitious and righteously angry portrait of contemporary America" - The Observer

“Ulysses has nothing on this” - Cosmopolitan

Fact: Lucy Ellmann is American but has not lived in the US since her teen years. I noticed at least one Britishism in my first pass (Coco Pops! Lady, we eat COCOA KRISPIES)—but I have also not lived in the US since I was 22. So why has she written about America?

She has very good reasons. There is an interview with her in the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...) where she says, “The narrator is in some ways the person I might have been, had I never moved to Europe. But anyway, I never really left the U.S. in my head. Marrying an American reinforced my American affiliations, even my accent. My husband and I had both lived in Britain for years, but pairing up seemed to consolidate our Americanness. Brits born after we ourselves arrived in Britain now rush to explain the U.K. to us.

"I have family in America, and dear friends. The country’s fate concerns me. It concerns the whole world! America’s always in your face. We were in France when Obama was elected and people treated us to champagne. For breakfast! Everyone hoped it would mean an end to war. Huh, fat chance.

"It matters to everybody what America does. And from the outside the horrors are blatant. It is an obtuse entity, endangering the whole world. Why the hell can’t it learn to know itself?”

I’m not going to criticize Ellmann for writing a character that she is not (this isn’t YA Twitter), but I *am* going to look for all the Britishisms. I’d be interested to know if the ones I find are localizations or if they appear in the US version too. I do know the UK publisher published it first.

In that same interview, there is also this exchange:
“Q: As of this writing, you have one comment on Amazon that says “How the hell is one supposed to read this? My eyes would fall out of my head.” What advice would you offer?

"A: Don’t read it — that sounds pretty awkward. But what’s the big deal, you know, if you’re a real reader? How many books do people read in a year? “Ducks” is equivalent in length to four moderately sized novels. So it takes four weeks, not one. Many people have read it in a week, I hear. For me, it takes a month and a half — but I’m a slow reader.”

Phew! I thought I might be pacing it too quickly by suggesting a 4-week readthrough. But we are all real readers :)

There’s a very boring review with very boring commenters here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

. . . which leads nicely to the final Q&A in that interview:

“Q: Are we dwelling too much on your book’s length and heft?

"A: Yes. The length is a necessary adjunct to what I wanted to get across, and the way I wanted to do that. Conventional narrative techniques and dutiful compression would not have suited this project. It had to be long. I’d prefer to talk about content.

"Can I say that I also suspect it would not be such an issue if I were not female? Men can take liberties; a woman writing a long book is considered audacious, if not outrageous. Our novels, like us, are supposed to be petite. So many male reviewers have complained about this book’s size that I fear male upper body strength may not be all it’s cracked up to be. But come on, guys, it’s just a novel, not 7,000 volumes of Wikipedia.”

The boring review says that "'Ducks' will almost certainly be compared with other monumentally difficult books, such as 'Ulysses'"--and indeed it is, right on the cover of the first UK edition. But "monumentally difficult" is, of course, a matter of taste . . .

I can't believe I've actually lured people in! I'm delighted. Come one, come all.

Hello anyone who is interested in reading Ducks, Newburyport (or maybe already has?). Thank you for accepting my invitation. Rory and I have both started once but got distracted, so we are planning to restart next week (TBC).

We are planning to do it slowly; obviously if you want to read ahead by all means you can (what am I, the book police?), but we will limit discussions to the 50ish page chunk that is "due" at the time, if you see what I mean. I know nothing about running a Goodreads book group so I'm sure it will all become clear, both to me and you.