A few weeks ago, Cate had a great post about readers reviewing books that clearly weren’t meant for them. The review she quoted contained, among other things, a wildly misunderstood quote from the movie As Good as It Gets. It goes like this: “Some of us have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad.”
The quoted reviewer thought this quote was actually a reference to a particular kind of “great” literature. It isn’t. It’s a quote about how some people have easy lives. Contrast that with this quote from Chang-rae Lee that is explicitly about writing fiction:
All literature is a record and celebration of trouble. Stories naturally want to explore what didn’t go right. Poor choices. Wrong ideas. Wrong emotions. We’re fascinated by those things. What I try to tell my students is that they often want to celebrate life and in that mode of celebration forget that it’s very hard to celebrate life as in a party in literature. And the true celebration of life – in fiction, which is not like life at all – is about identifying those moments when everything has gone wrong.
I love what he says there because it so gets to the heart of what really great literature is. Really great literature celebrates struggle, not ease. Easy lives don’t need celebration. They are nice to live, or at least they can be, but they don’t teach us anything about what it means to be human. At least, not without juxtaposing them with less-easy lives.
All great stories, whether they end happily or not, are about struggle. This is something I teach in my introductory writing course: “Someone wants something, but…” The “but” is crucial. That’s the story. I have had students turn in stories that go, “Someone wants something and then they get it.” These are not interesting stories. They are happy. They may contain lakes (though I’ve never had a student write about pasta salad), and they are pretty. Some people even write stories like this that are then, somehow, published.
These are not great stories. Great stories aren’t about the right thing happening. They are about the wrong thing happening and then what do you do? We learn from losing, not from winning.
on my spring book queue, it was almost as an afterthought. I’d read some articles about the book and it seemed interesting and I felt it was time to give Eggers another shot. I checked it out from the library and it sat around for a while. I renewed it multiple times before I finally picked it up.
, a beautiful and sweeping tale of the late 19th and early 20th century American West. It’s a bleak account of love and grief, quiet in its prose but thundering in its significance. It reminded me quite a bit of 
, partly due to the setting, but also the breadth of human experience contained within.
by Irena Klepfisz (4.5/5). Beautiful, beautiful poetry. Now I need to read Klepfisz’s entire catalogue.
by Mark Helprin (3.5/5). What a disappointment! For the first 300 pages or so, I was riveted, both by the fantastical tale of old New York, and the uniquely gorgeous descriptions. “White as a cut in new glass” is one that persists in my mind. I kept thinking, “This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.” Sadly, it is not; after those first few hundred pages, the story became fractured and increasingly over-the-top, and the end read like Helprin got tired of writing and decided to just wrap things up. It’s still on my bookshelf thanks to the pull of those first 300 pages, but I’ll probably never read it from cover to cover again.
by Kazuo Ishiguro (5/5). Now, this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Quiet and intense, a dark knowledge builds as you read. I could hardly put it down. It defines haunting literature. I already want to read it again.
by Helen Oyeyemi (5/5) - I spent most of my time reading this book unable to decide what I thought. Through the first 50 pages, I thought it felt like one of the best books I’d ever read. Then, for a long time, it felt like the kind of postmodernist pretense I despise. Then, I don’t know, somewhere toward the end, everything flowed together and a very fractured, confusing narrative assembled itself into a really wonderful exploration of the imagination and its consequences if carried to a far extreme. I checked this out from the library, but I’m probably going to have to buy a copy as this screams for rereading.
by William Shakespeare (4.5/5) - I’ve read a lot of Shakespeare, but there are also some glaring holes. There’s just so much. I hadn’t read this one in ages, but it was nice to re-read/teach it. I’ve been reading a lot of heavy stuff lately and something light was certainly in order. It’s not perfect, though. There’s an awful lot of pointless after the third act.
by David Mitchell (5/5) - I had been meaning to read this book for ages. Even before it was an apparently mediocre film. I’m glad I did. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever read. The premise is so ripe for failure. It could come off as fractured and pointless. But it doesn’t. It takes you a lot of different places and at times Mitchell even sends a message through the fourth wall. It’s bleak, but leaves enough hope that I almost cried when I finished it. And it’s all in the structure. Six stories, split into pieces and very loosely connected. But somehow, this is one book about what it means to be human.
by Amy Tudor (5/5) - Sometimes, you get lucky. Seven years ago, when I was finishing up graduate school, I took a writing workshop. In it, I read some of the most beautiful poetry I had ever come across. It was written by Amy Tudor, and eventually it ended up in this wonderful collection. This month, I pulled her book off the shelf to look for something and decided to just revisit the whole collection. What I like best about her poetry is how solidly it is grounded in the world. I see the places she comes from and it becomes so easy to let her take me wherever she wants.
by Kylene Beers (4/5) - I read this once upon a time in graduate school and I looked back through it this month as preparation for the National Board test I have coming up. It’s filled with all manner of great stuff, much of which I had forgotten and which is already being used in my classroom. If it has a flaw, it is that her students feel a bit cherry-picked at times. Still, there is much more to like here than to dislike.
: Poems by Keetje Kuipers (4.5/5). I love browsing our local bookstore for poetry titles. This was one I found there and later requested from the library. Kuipers has a very haunting poetic voice. “Remembering Our Last Meal in New York” is especially fabulous, to the degree of me photocopying it and placing it in the pocket of my journal.
by Shirley Jackson (5/5). Aside from “The Lottery,” which I read in middle school and adored, I don’t think I’d ever really read much Shirley Jackson before. So I was surprised and thrilled by Life Among the Savages, which is an absolutely hilarious and honest account of domestic life.
by Shirley Jackson (4.5/5). Raising Demons is the sequel to Life Among the Savages, and not quite as funny, but wonderful all the same. She truly brings to life the simultaneous exasperation and joy of having small children at home.
by Dorothy Allison (3.5/5). A friend sent me this book and as I’m always pumped for feminist literature, I dove into it right away. I enjoyed the read, and Allison did have some crucial insights re: feminism and class, but after a while the essays dwindled into navel-gazing and I admit, I lost interest.
by Kim Barnes (5/5). I read this book several years ago and recently picked it up again. It’s one of my favorite memoirs, thanks to Barnes’ clean, honest prose. I really appreciate memoirs that tackle big concepts without necessarily being about big events.
by Nathan Englander (3.5/5). The biggest reading disappointment I’ve had in a while. The title story is amazing. During the rest I was falling asleep. Meh. I truly don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
by Zubair Ahmed (4/5). Solidly good poetry. It reads like a dream.
