One of Those Catch-Up Entries

I've fallen off a little bit lately in writing about books I read, primarily because the better part of my writing time has been occupied with actual writing! I put a lot of time into a short story that I finished for my writing class, and I'm really happy with the result. It's definitely the best work of fiction I've ever written. However, I'm not confident enough about it to put it out there for public consumption, so if you want to read it, you'll have to request a personal copy!

Since my Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius reread, I've read four books, two fiction and two non-fiction. First I read Madeline Levine's The Price of Privilege. Levine is a psychologist, and her book is about the negative effects on children of parents who prioritize money and success over being well-rounded and building relationships. A lot of it seemed self-evident to me, but apparently many parents believe that if they don't hover over their children until they are at the top of the academic ladder, the kids don't have a prayer at living happy lives. The flip side is more likely to be true, however. When kids are pressured to perform at the expense of being allowed to develop whatever skills and talents they naturally have, and when they are taught to value personal academic success and advancement over being productive members of their communities, they suffer greatly in the long run. Levine's advice boils down to this: allow your kids to become who they're going to be. Encourage and challenge them, but don't belittle them. And realize that there is more than one way to be a successful individual: someone who lives paycheck to paycheck but does something they love and has good relationships is far happier than someone who is swimming in cash and living a totally imbalanced life. Hollywood has been hard-selling this message for years, but apparently American parents haven't gotten it yet, or books like this wouldn't be necessary.

Next I read Colum McCann's novel Let the Great World Spin. McCann is a professor in the Creative Writing department at Hunter College, and when I first started to think about grad school that was my program of choice. I wasn't accepted, and while I'm happy at Manhattanville, my greatest sadness in that situation is that I didn't get the chance to study under Colum McCann. He's a really brilliant fiction writer. He evokes so much emotion in his images, and he is so skilled at weaving narratives with multiple main characters. Great World is no exception. The focal point of the book is Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between New York's World Trade towers. But several other characters are the real substance of the narrative, and while they are all subtly pulled together by their awareness of Petit's feat, the reader comes to realize that the ties that bind them run far deeper. The characters include Ciaran Corrigan, an Irish bar owner who loses his brother in a car accident the day of the tightrope walk; Lara, a hippie artist who was in the car that hit Corrigan's; Tillie, a prostitute in the Bronx to whom Corrigan ministers in his priest work; and an upper-class Park Avenue mother whose son was killed in Vietnam. Each of these characters is real in their conflicts and feelings, and McCann's real achievement is the way he gives an authentic voice to all of them. However, I dispute Esquire Magazine's assertion that this book is "the first great 9/11 novel." For one thing, this book takes place entirely in the '70s, long before 9/11. It's true that McCann was influenced that event's impact on New Yorkers and the way it brought the city together, but it's not referenced once. It's a subtle undercurrent, but in no way would I call this a 9/11 novel. And for another thing, the first great 9/11 novel was Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Sorry kids, I'm not backing down on that one. Ultimately, one of my favorite things about reading this book was reading it with my friend Julie, who has started a blog of her own: roomforcreativity.blogspot.com. She is a very different kind of reader, and listening to her thoughts made me think about this book in all kinds of new ways.

Next I read Nobel-Prize winner Toni Morrison's Beloved. I've always meant to read something of hers, particularly this book since it's considered essential. It lived up to what I'd always heard about it in terms of its power and emotional resonance. Beloved tells the story of an escaped slave woman, Sethe, who attempts to kill her four children in order to prevent her former owner from coming back to claim them. It's gory, but Morrison is a brave writer. She doesn't back down from the difficult scenes, and that's why Beloved works. On the one hand, I was horrified, but on the other, it was necessary to get to that place in order to understand why Sethe's story was possible in this country. I've read interviews with Morrison in the past, and at times I struggle with her point of view. She seems to feel not only that whites have treated blacks wrongly over the years (which I don't for one moment dispute), but that blacks are still owed something by whites. That's hard for me, as a person who carries around a lot of latent guilt for the circumstances I was born into. They weren't exceptional, but I'm white, and an American citizen, and I belong to a class of people that assumed I would get a college education. I know that the majority of the world doesn't have those things. But I don't see how feeling guilty that I do have them is productive. So much of that is outside my control, on the one hand, and on the other, it doesn't improve the lives of those who don't have them if I eschew them. Also, I personally have never mistreated someone because of their race, at least that I know of, and so I don't see how it makes sense for me to offer restitution for something my great-great-grandparents may or may not have done. It's an insoluble problem to me. So I am in awe of Morrison's skill as a writer and storyteller, but I don't know what I would say to her in person, or how I would respond to her thoughts.

Lastly, I read Zack Hample's Watching Baseball Smarter. I could write a whole book on how much I love baseball and why, so there's no real condensed way to explain why I read this book. But I love baseball. I love it a lot. It's an indelible part of my childhood, and as an adult it's become something that I actually desire to have substantial knowledge about. It's reached the point where I know just about everything a person can know who watches a sport casually. So I read Hample's book primarily to start adding to my repertoire things that one can't simply pick up by watching a game. And I did learn a lot: most notably, I can now intelligently explain both a balk and the infield fly rule, which were concepts I sort of understood but not really. Something I'm really excited about is the book's detailed description of each kind of pitch a pitcher can throw. I had never really thought about it, but it seems that a layperson actually can learn to tell what pitch was just thrown, based on velocity, location, and movement. I'll never be able to do that as well as a former pitcher could, but one thing I intend to do next season is pay close attention to pitches and see how good I can get at identifying them! This is my official transition from simply baseball enthusiast to insanely hardcore fan. I'm excited. You should be too. Over and out.