Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Hey, in my library I have two bookcases of books I've read. Those sit behind glass. Most of the rest of them... the 100 or so in my bedroom, for example... make up the to-read list, many of them bought on the suggestion of members of the group.

I'm happy to have that addiction fueled. My kids might feel differently when I kick it, but whatever.

I've said it before and I say it again: you're so totally an information designer/user experience person. This is the kind of thing I think about all the time -- design is about emotional connection, not just ease of use, or portability, or coolness.

I have a Kindle. It sits unused. The closest thing to online reading I do is NPR and NY Times on my iPhone.

Hey, wait. We have the same birthday, don't we. :)

I think there are actually quite enough responses here to conclude that gender is as much a construct in "literatuah" as it is anywhere else. Even though I can anecdotally note differences in what *I* read that's still anecdotal and there are plenty of exceptions, as we all just pointed out.

What she seemed to be talking about is discrimination, plain and simple.

There must be something wrong with your hands. ;)

She has some really good points. And - curiously - she makes me want to write out of sheer proving my own ambitious storytelling desires. Many of the books she mentions simply fell flat for me not in their ambition to change the novel or tell a big story, but in how far into being human they were willing to go/avoid, which to me... lacks ambition.

And the women she mentions -- I could be totally wrong because this is anecdotal, I am not writing a thesis and I'm not "trained" to see these things --- it's like they're looking through a different camera. It's like the camera can't zoom out FAR enough, or at least, it's not zooming out as far as the camera the big swinging dick writers seem to be using. Maybe that can be labeled Ambition too.

I am currently assessing the feasibility of this AND a trip to Spain... and hoping the balance sheet works out...

Leo Rising. :)

So -- I'm on chapter 6 and have nothing substantive to say yet about this book.

Other than that I am sailing through the book as though it's my own story, and she does an incredible job with what it feels like to be in a tropical climate and how it feels to be in a foreign country alone... I mean...

Though I will say, I do tire of the Bohjalian-like "medical crisis" stuff sometimes. It doesn't seem to be the central piece of the book, though, so I guess it has that going for it.

I am on chapter 4 -- it is so well written. I will write down some of my thoughts this weekend when I have more time.

Also, JE, can you set up an outdoor shower? Because I love those and that would be an awesome and easy way to add some luxury. ;)

Add Alan to the list. He can't resist and wants to cook for everyone again (as do I).

He and I talked about staying for like 3 nights at Jonny's then moving to other accommodations for that whole creature comfort-shower-bed thing.

Yay! Maren is here! We need to find our other stray members. :)

I need to get through more to have coherent thoughts. So far the writing is tight and emotional and I'm enjoying it.

Welcome to the January Group Read.

I will be starting this book this weekend so I wanted to get the thread rolling for anyone else who might be inclined to join in.

Diane Rehm's interview with her: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/201...

Also, just FYI, her tour information -- she is coming to Chicago in June and I do believe she might be reading at the same bookstore our very own JE read at:

http://www.annpatchett.com/tour.html

Something else occurred to me as I finished the book -- that is the dissonance between aristocracy vs. lack thereof, and how different people deal with it, that the novel is intent on showing. Maybe I'm just paraphrasing Adam Smith.

To have people from countries governed by aristocracy, roots firmly planted in feudalism and people minding their place generation to generation, arrive at a place where none of those rules exist, where you have the freedom to define yourself and it's not going to be by title or having land, must have been jarring for everyone involved. How does one behave? How does one "get" stuff? Certainly they had the abundance of land and natural resources, and with that at their fingertips it was relatively easy for all to live in abundance. It could easily have become a more communal, cooperative society, had the people who lived there chosen it.

But humans, in their need to organize, count, and assign value, had to find another means to compete, to establish rank, because aristocratic, colonial rule was not that far behind them. It makes sense to me that this would end up being transactional and financial.

All that said, we pretty quickly found a way to establish an oligarchy - one only needs to visit Monticello to understand that.

Is it safe to dig into the 99% vs. 1% now? Just wondering.

The biggest issue I have with historical fiction, which I otherwise very much enjoy (I plowed through the Philippa Gregory novels about the Tudors gleefully), is what I would describe as ... an inherent lack of risk taking. I recall David Liss at some point talking about how nitpicky fans of the sub-genre are and how you have to get *all* the little factoids correct, or lose credibility. It almost sounded like he was talking about PR, because if one of your key audiences decries your book as inaccurate... then you have taken away not just earning power but the notion that in reading it you are "learning" something solid about the past.

So what I see is a writer trying to get that right, and that's difficult to do and swing for fences (which I also like much, much more - I want what I read to defy, extend and challenge my perceptions). I feel like he tries with Parrot's life experiences.

I don't disagree that he handled the discussion of American "character" well, actually. I do think that part of Carey's point is to expose the extrapolation that doesn't always hold up in the cold light of day; also, to remind us what the vantage point was of the person who wrote DiA. Take the rocking chair quote I posted above. You could read it and say that a piece of furniture says nothing about the people who use it, how ridiculous, or you could read it and say, yes, like an archeological dig, our objects say a lot about the people who create and use them.

Also, we are talking about a radically smaller population that had some very similar struggles to face, at least at some level, so the generalizations make more sense here -- particularly the social mobility and reinvention of self part. I just couldn't help but to think about my "most Americans" experience when I came home and started reading about American character.

Alan and I are in and each of us are thinking we will ideally spend some nights in the cabin and a few away. If other people are feeling the same way we can organize which nights.

If people want to resurrect the thread I can re-invest the time and energy to run it ...

This week I spent time with a bunch of friends in a house to celebrate the new year, and took my kids with me. My son exposed some of what he has been 'learning' from, shall we say, other sources when he started talking about how "most Americans" this or that or the other thing, along the lines of what I will generously call snobbery but sounded a lot more like bigotry. Things like, "most Americans don't have passports" and what that implies about "most Americans."

It bothered me. Like, a lot.

My friend Alan (new to the group this year, but not participating in this group read) made the quite accurate point that saying "most Americans" is flat out intellectually lazy.

Rather than tell my son how mistaken he was (and seeing how much this state of affairs upset me), Alan decided to start calling the group of kids at the house "Most Americans" -- e.g. "most Americans should be getting their coats on" or "most Americans aren't very good at Mario Kart" to simply, gently, and clearly point out just how logically fallacious it is to make sweeping generalizations.

I couldn't help but think of this book as we all joined in on the joke.

Here, in this compartment perfectly constructed for the contemplation of the American sublime, was placed the inevitable machine, that awful monument to democratic restlessness -- a rocking chair.

Oh Blacqueville, I wish you were here to see these Americans. They are the most turbulent, unpeaceful, least-contented people, far worse than Italians or Greeks. Clearly there is nothing less suited to meditation than democracy. You will never find, as in aristocracies, one class that sits back in its own comfort and another that will not stir itself because it despairs of ever improving its status. In America, everyone is in a state of agitation: some to attain power, others to grab wealth, and when they cannot move, they rock. They dig canals, they tear along the rivers in a rage of machinery, the engines pumping like sawyers in a pit, the shores denuded of their ancient trees. Napoleon restored the fortunes of France by plunder, and a similar economic principle is here being enacted, the mower splintering the scythe, the smokestack eating up the wind. And there will be acres more of it to pillage if Old Hickory has his way.

It is strange, in New York and Philadelphia, to see the feverish enthusiasm which accompanies Americans' pursuit of prosperity and the way they are ceaselessly tormented by the vague fear that they have failed to choose the shortest route to achieve it.

p. 237

Can we lock in some days...? Usually we do last week of July and first week of August... any thoughts on keeping it or moving it?