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

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

ooooh! ooooh! YES! Please do.

I have only kids' instruments and was planning on bringing my giant telescope anyway.

that would be awesome. IMAGINE the sing alongs.

And another thing -- my friend Alan is very into grilling and would like to take on making dinner one night. I like to stand next to him and make dirty jokes about meat.

As such, he asked about food allergies or aversions. So -- of the people coming this year -- do we have anything we need to be aware of for anyone who might decide to cook for the group?

OK guys, logistical thing.

It looks like I will be arriving on Monday, the second day, which means I need to know who will be there first on Sunday, because I need to tell someone who will be picking up the key.

Also, on Sunday the checkin time is 4, but the people who own the place made an error in booking, so there WILL be people cleaning the house between 4 and 6 from the party there before. Just something to be aware of. They asked me to move my date but by the time they figured it out people had already booked tickets, so I told them to figure out what to do because we were arriving that day.

I figured we would just find the patio in short order and, once they were done doing their thing, we could go in and cook dinner.

I'm about to move to Oak Park, IL, where Hemingway was born and raised. :)

Elizabeth wrote: "When I met some of these guys this spring, they told me that to get in the gang, I had to take out someone from Bookish."

Well, all I said was that I don't like copycats, and that they are reading House of Mirth.

I mean, it's not like I put the book with the c4 in it in your actual HAND. I just put it in your car.

Ha! Hazing.

Well, I guess if you count the bingo, then yes. We have hazing.

Hi Gloria,

You are totally welcome to come!

Nightly it adds up to $38 per person, and payment when we get there is just fine.

For food, we usually have a few people go shopping for all the food, sometimes people buy their own booze and sometimes we buy it as a group, and then we all pitch in per person afterwards. We don't get all crazy with the breakdown, just keep things fair and balanced.

I am bringing my friend Alan along.

As friends go, if I had to write his resume, I would say he is one of the most talented writers I know, one of the funniest and fun people I've ever met, and while he has a major puckish element to him, he also has a deep, nearly medieval sense of courtly honor and loyalty.

I love him dearly and I know he will fit right in with us.

In addition to fueling some highly irresponsible, non-grown up like activities. :)

Elizabeth wrote: "With such a large group, this event would be fun anywhere. I am excited about visiting Minnesota for the first time.

My husband's childhood vacations were always to this area. That is why we wil..."

Liz, we always find a way to take care of these things. It always works out. :)

Jennie wrote: "and shel... i haven't forgot your money. i promise. i know i was the one who was all like "and how do you get the money to you, shel?" and such. thank you for fronting the payment for the place..."

Ne Problema, my sweet. No worries there.

SO looking forward to seeing everyone. It will be about two weeks after I move and I will need the break from corrugated cardboard!

Brock, totally still room -- we would love to have you.

It's like 90 minutes from the airport, if memory serves. we will need SOME cars but I think we can carpool back and forth.

on another note, anyone on the fence about coming, there is room. In fact, this is a pretty small year for us -- is it the location? Is it my breath?

Should we consider doing an every other year thing?

So - if you need to ship the bingo set to me so I can drive it up (if that's cheaper)... please do. :)

Wow. Wow. The way I remember books is by what's in them.

Writing it down might be a good way to remember what's in them and what I learned by reading them... this is ridiculously organized... maybe if I bought a nice leather-bound blank book... :)

But I love the list. I mean, I could use a list like this and just go down it.

He read I Feel Bad About My Neck? I was thinking would save that one for when I do actually feel bad about my neck.

TONS of room. :)

Please do come. We have the space.

I don't recall any explicit statements about innate wisdom, though I'm a bit surprised you don't at all see what I do. I think if you read her comments about the book and some of her other stuff you might find some of what I've asserted will feel more true about this work. Actually, that part of my reading of the novel hasn't changed over the last 20 years -- but the point is a whole lot clearer for me.

All along, I've said, this is my reading, what I take from the whole of the text, initially in response to Patty's question about why she can't read, and where she gets her expectations from. And my reading of what innate wisdom is compared to societal rules for Janie is my interpretation of the text.

What I do know is that Janie doesn't measure herself by the stick of others, growing up in these in between places -- unaware she's black, unable to read, her first husband chosen for her... where does her ability to be strong in herself (or ability to be vulnerable, or even, as others have said, indecisive or passive aggressive) come from, when the odds are so stacked against her?

Generally speaking, I am more of a reader response girl when it comes to reading and don't necessarily like to take on the historicist mantle ... but just a short snippet on her view of affirmative action:

"If I say a whole system must be upset for me to win, I am saying that I cannot sit in the game, and that safer rules must be made to give me a chance. I repudiate that. If others are in there, deal me a hand and let me see what I can make of it, even though I know some in there are dealing from the bottom and cheating like hell in other ways."

To connect those dots to the novel, I'm pretty comfortable positing that the inner wisdom theme is also about a sense of innate self-worth not given to us by our position in society, whether that position is manufactured and legislated or not. She had a very grass-roots, one person at a time viewpoint on what it meant to "play the game" of being in society, whereas many of her peers had a more... top-down approach. She also believed that there should be black-only schools and towns to keep the culture strong enough to have its own voice and vision, and a seat at the table.

I'm pretty sure there are more than a few people who would call that a naive belief about what was possible for a group of people systematically held back from playing the game, but her point of view also speaks to an inner wisdom, strength and knowledge that even a group of people held outside of a system can penetrate it, participate, and play that game.

Patty, I think part of the beauty of this book is that it posits all of these as possibilities, but I don't see a super clear answer. What DOES the "natural" life look like -- and does it even exist anywhere?

To me, this wisdom is all over the place. And begs a question... how is wisdom acquired... is it through experience or innately instilled in us at birth? And how do we share it? And what is wisdom, anyway, other than a personal experience that many people share and the unique lens an individual might have into that experience? A bigger question than one novel can answer. But in this book, I believe one of her points to be that innate wisdom plus direct experience are the teachers that matter most. To put it another way, just being, and sharing what it is for Janie to just be by telling Phoeby her story, is sharing her both her innate and earned wisdom. Gnawing on the bone of not experiencing is what creates the gossip and the supposed "knowledge" about her in the community.

Ultimately, it's passages like this where I believe Zora achieved a rare clarity and was able to write about it that I'm talking about... and I bet you knew I would go here:

"Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons... [this house is] full uh thoughts, 'specially dat bedroom. ...

Dey goin tuh make 'miration cause mah love didn't work lak they love, if dey ever had any. Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore."

"Lawd!" Pheoby breathed out heavily, "Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie. Ah ain't satisfied wid mahself no mo'. Ah means tuh make Same take me fishin' wid him after this. Nobody better not criticize yuh in mah hearin'."

..."Let 'em console theyselves wid talk. 'Course, talkin' don't amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can't do nothin' else. And listenin' tuh dat kind of talk is jus' lak openin' yo' mouth and lettin' de moon shine down yo' throat. It's uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and you' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh deyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves."

... Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

Patty wrote: "Ok, I agree, but what do you think it's saying about innate wisdom, and do you think it's true? "

Good question. I spent some time observing whether or not I might be projecting... about whether or not I'm reading the book and making it conform to my point of view the way people tried to get Janie to conform to what was expected, but ... no, it's not that. I knew when I first read the book that there was something beautiful and true about it... but until reading it again now, I couldn't have articulated what.

When I first read the book, in college, I shared Hugh's frustration. Why doesn't she just... and come ON now...and oh, please...gimme a break... but that was the lens of a young woman beginning to feel my own power in my relationships, and my "place" as a woman. And in a way, she falls prey to what her Nanny worried about.

NOW I view Janie's innate wisdom, and resistance to learning about things as other people "tell" them, as an expression both of inner truth and of the unspoken things that pass between all life (plant, animal, mineral). I believe we are all communicating, all the time sharing a deeper truth and wisdom with one another, and that there is a oneness to our experience, a startling amount of commonality, and that we do all KNOW things that we don't verbalize or communicate. That is the layer of Janie that I now "buy into" that I didn't before -- the layer that I find honest about inner truth vs. societal morays.

I also believe that we, as a society (at least at this time in history), discourage interactions that ARE emotionally honest, that we have minimized clear and true connection in favor of a dissecting, task-based, quid pro quo thing that works at the physical plane but not at a deeper level of what it means to be alive.

Janie understands what it means to be alive, not just living, and at different points that make sense to her, she fights for it.

THAT is the veil that is continually held up to Janie's face, and she sees through it with varying degrees of success.

My personal belief, unrelated to the book but connected to how I resolve the truth I find in it, is that these two things are not exclusive to one another in life as we live it -- to live one's truth you have to be able to pierce the veil, and see it for what it is. Not allow it, or those who believe that is life, to take away that truth and beauty. I believe we are all a perfect creative act and our lives are about living that way, not the way others or institutions tell us to. BUT that does not mean we cannot operate within societal rules, expectations and whack images of what we are supposed to be. It just means they are not us, and we are not them.

Also - about the dialogue -- I suppose I didn't find it irksome, and really, found it driving home points around societal pressure to conform to a dysfunctional way of relating to one another. What I found startling was the difference between what Zora described in the internal world of her characters, AND the sameness of their speech. As though what people feel inside HAS to be squashed, and mushed, and pushed into the shape of relating to one another in this dysfunctional way. People saying what they mean and meaning what they say - speaking their emotional truth - is discouraged in this way of relating she describes.

And all of THAT is a complete 180 from what I would have said about any book even 12 months ago.

I also just watched the film Howl, in which this point is driven home when Ginsberg talks about when he is really clear, as a writer, what he's doing. That he's taking the most inwardly personal experience, and sharing what it means to be human in a way that transcends time. That the times when he wept at the typewriter were times when he knew he had hit upon one of those truths. It made me cry, the beauty of that. Of hitting upon what it means to be human and giving that words that transcend time and what we call history, and all of our intellectual disciplines and structures? This book does that, too.

This also has something to do with empathy and favorite characters...!

I just started reading last week and I think what I mentioned before holds true -- That the main character can't read I took to be a statement of how we as human beings know all about love and life without having to read and be academic about it.

I think some of it -- just a bit -- is a jab at her peers.

But mostly I think it's set up this way to say something about innate wisdom. That something is up to the reader, I think.

I just read this passage last night!

Her nanny (to me) represents the reality of what it means to be a woman. Much of this book is about fighting to be oneself against some tremendous odds. About speaking one's truth. About being.

In that sense the Harlem Renaissance people got it all wrong by saying this book wasn't serious enough. It's dead serious, or I should say, life serious. It's about the challenge of what we know inwardly to be true, and how "society" seeks to take that truth away.