High Lonesome: 40 Years of Stories from Joyce Carol Oates

Photo: from books.google.com at this link

Better known for her Gothic stories, especially the heavily anthologized "Where Is Here?" and a few others, this is still an extremely readable and often striking collection of short stories spanning 40 years, from 1966 to 2006. As with all collections of this length, and shorter, you may find some swings and misses here, but there are far more hits than misses. At worst, a few stories were okay, unimpressive, but not bad, exactly. Some are stunning. Some are memorable, sometimes for the writing, sometimes for the things that happen. (In one, an unhappy woman in her early 20s allows herself to have a messy, unstopped period while she and her family spoke with a priest at a seminary, where her brother would've been kicked out but for that spectacle.) Other stories are memorable for what they don't show, or say. (In one, a young man kills himself in his car. In the glove compartment is found an object that may insinuate he also would've killed someone else, but for some reason didn't. The story ends with a character asking the other what that object had been for--and the story ends right there.) Anyway, there are 11 new stories here (as of 2006), one of them the title story. This one is also perhaps the best of the bunch--a nice comment to be able to make, considering Joyce Carol Oates has been writing now for over 50 years, and apparently hasn't lost a thing. If anything, she may be getting better. So these are all good, and highly recommended, though I prefer her Gothic stories, none of which are here.

A short bulleted commentary:

--"Spider Boy" is very good. Chilling and short, as usual about the unknown side of someone's personality.

--"The Cousins" is an award-winning story.

--"The Gathering Squall" has a nice metaphor, tying a painting in with the story's theme. I tried Googling the painting, couldn't find it. Possibly invented for the story.

--"The Lost Brother" is a good story about the hopelessness of having hope for a lost soul in your family. And perhaps why you shouldn't.

--"High Lonesome" motivated me to start my own story. The best part of the story--the old, desperate, lonely man getting pinched while only wanting conversation from a hooker who's not a hooker--isn't even the main part.

--"Upon the Sweeping Flood" is good and memorable, and has a recurring image of children suffering at the hands of insane adults.

--"At the Seminary" was referred to above. Not to be missed, if only for the scene I described.

--"Where Are You Going...?" is perhaps the most anthologized story here, one the author says she regrets having to include in this volume because it's so prevalent elsewhere. I have it in the tons of other sweeping anthologies downstairs. However, it continues to impress, even after a great many readings. Sly, slow, charming, disturbing, seductive (not in a sensual sense) evil has perhaps never been captured so well, not even by Hawthorne.

--The collection is broken down into the decades. Stories from "The 1970s" are all good, though representative (except for "Manslaughter") of John Updike. Maybe Cheever, too.

--"The Hair" was a very good, very John Cheever, expose of suburban couples and the illusion of social and marital perfection that one couple holds over the other, until the ending. Reminiscent of reality; been there, done that. Got away just in time.

--"Life After High School" was referred to above. Interesting. The woman in the story reminds me of someone I know.

--"Mark of Satan" was a story I was highly critical of on my blog, a long time ago, for reasons that now escape me. I'd read just the last few stories of the whole collection at the time, and responded in anger about this one. I think I mentioned I thought it was a rip-off, but it's not, and I can't even begin to tell you what the hell my problem was. Anyway, it's okay, not great and not bad.

The title, by the way, is a phrase that means "drunk" or "bender," but which sounds depressive to me as well. This all makes sense, because there's plenty of all three here. Most of the characters and stories inhabit upstate New York, Richard Russo's (Nobody's Fool and Empire) stomping grounds, or New York City, when the stories sound a bit like Updike and Cheever.

And I would love to know her writing schedule. She's so prolific, she makes Stephen King seem like J.D. Salinger or Harper Lee. 

How to Succeed in Business While Really, Really Trying -- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Photo: The photo we all know, (but how accurate to his personality is it?) from Ben Franklin's Wikipedia page. All of the photos in this entry come from the same page.

(Copied and pasted shamelessly from my Goodreads page. Yes, Goodreads. Don't judge.)

Actually, I have the 1932 hardcover, with red boards and very small print, that this paperback is taken from; but I couldn't find that in the listings, and I'm too lazy to create my own for it, and if you've been able to deal with this sentence, you should be able to read this book, no problem, though Franklin used bigger words. There are lots of semicolons and commas and pedantic words, but that was the style of self-labelled philosophers at the time, so the reader has to deal with it.

Though, to be fair, the reader should deal with it, because this is worth reading. I found a lot to like about this, including:

--Ben Franklin came from almost nothing, and became one of the most known, liked, respected, and wealthy men of his time.

--He wrote plainly about how to get this done, and it amounted to just a few things:

* work your ass off, at printing, business in general, or whatever the hell it is you do

* want to work your ass off; want to succeed

* if you see a good thing, pounce on it, fast, before someone else does

* keep your word, even if it's to your (slight) detriment

* form lots of clubs, and be friends with other good businessmen (and men in general)

* moderate, in all things, except business while young

* want to be a decent person, and strive for it

* if you write well and work hard, you'll be known for it

(This last is surprisingly true, then and now. Most people, IMO, don't write well or work consistently, daily, hard. I'm one of the more active people I know, and I have been disgustingly lazy this summer.)

You may not know that Ben Franklin came from Boston, MA; moved to Newport, RI; then to New York City, then to London, England, then, finally, to Philadelphia. He moved around a lot, mentally and physically, and became a successful (and busy) diplomat after he became a very successful businessman and printer. He never stayed still, and I'll bet his energy was at times difficult for his wife to deal with. (I offer this to you from personal, bitter experience.)

He was one of the most fit and physical guys around in his youth. Written in three stages when he was older (the last time just a year or so before he died), his Autobiography (edited; not in full) comes across as plainly written as he was plainly spoken, and it pulls no punches. It shows he was known for his rowing and swimming prowess when younger, and he speaks highly--as did most guys of his time--of long walks. It seems he was quite different when younger, physically, than the rather robust portraits we have of him as an older man. But who knows? The grim expression of his mouth and lips in portraits (he often looks like he was biting down hard on something) was the common trope in paintings of the time; George Washington looks like he has just finished biting someone's face off, by comparison. So were these guys bitter, too-serious old men, in pain from their wooden false teeth? Who knows, but Franklin's writing doesn't make him seem that way.

(Though, a quick note about his teeth: He was a very successful printer, of course, and he did all or most of the work himself for most of his printing career, so he put a lot of lead in his mouth, between his teeth, when he was setting type. My father, a typesetter himself early in his career [which he missed when he got promoted, though he preferred the better pay and benefits], said he put heavy lead type in his mouth all the time when setting it, and so did everybody else. If he did that in the 1960s and 1970s, Franklin did that in the 1700s--and they shared the same dental fate as well.)

Another quick note: It seems Franklin was a helluva salesman, as all of his money as a printer came, of course, from subscriptions to his newspaper. As you may imagine, he sold those himself, as well. Since he was very strong at interpersonal communication (he joined lots of philosophical clubs, and started a lot of those, and social clubs), this may have been easy for him. As I said, he was well liked; it seems that nobody tired of him asking them to buy subscriptions to everything, from his paper, to his Almanack, to other pamphlets and start-ups of his friends, social and political.

And--he made a lot of money from almost-Ponzi schemes. He'd take on apprentices, or help printers from other states, and when they got situated with their own businesses, they had to give him a percentage of their business for X number of years. This would sooner or later end, but I'll bet it was part of a contract. Lots of guys happily signed up for it, so it seems to be a mostly win-win for everyone involved.

He also had lots of trouble with the wrong friends when he was younger. He'd at first make business decisions or friendships with men who proved to be unreliable, drunkards (a big problem), lazy, greedy, or inept. Surprisingly, he never broke off these friendships. They did, in bitterness of his success, and he was always glad to be rid of them--but he always waited for them to break up with him! I was glad to see this, as I've made similar mistakes over the years. Sometimes I did the breaking-up, sometimes they did, but I was always glad it ended. Who needs the drama?

(Doesn't look like the Ben Franklin we're used to, does it? Painted during his lifetime by Benjamin Wilson, in 1759.)

A benefit for Ben Franklin in Philadelphia at the time: No major papers or magazines yet; no monopoly on the time or money of the successful. The literacy rate, of course, was low, but I'll bet the time spent reading of those who could read was a lot higher than it is now. I know a helluva lot of college-educated people who never read. Don't you? Franklin's paper and other printed material sort of formed a monopoly at the time in Philly.

Franklin started the first public library in the colonies, and the first volunteer fire departments. He helped set up successful postal delivery and was the first Postmaster General. We know about his kite and electricity experiments (not covered in his book), but he also had hundreds (!) of other patents, for things like printing presses (obviously), wood-burning stoves, and who knows what else. He just glosses over this accomplishment.

He spent a lot of time with his personal blueprint for personal and moral success, which I'll go over in a different blog. (Go to stevenbelanger[dot]blogspot[dot]com.) This section of his book is what most people remember about his Almanack--another huge success never gone into in his book. In fact, there are no aphorisms here--no, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Ever see the magnet that has the second half crossed off and replaced with, "Tired as hell"?

Anyway, the very surprising thing about his Autobiography is what's not in it. You would think that a successful printer would print a lot about his business success, political success, scientific success, social success, personal success, or his moral, social or political views--but he never did, outside of his Almanack (which everyone knew he wrote). But his press was never a publishing house. There were lots of successful, literate guys with libraries--which he mentions frequently and of course approved of--but it seems he was just too busy to print his own Autobiography.

He finally did when he was much older--while he was bored in France or in England in one of his diplomatic posts later in life. He had a very detailed outline, starting from his very early Boston days, but he only finished a very small percentage of it while alive. No Almanack. No Declaration of Independence! No Revolutionary War! No coverage of his diplomatic successes, before or after the war. (The British and French, apparently, loved him. So did a lot of women over there, if you catch my drift.) He was already a widower when the war came, and I think he re-married afterwards, but was never at home. I'm guessing that he spent a lot more time in France and England in his life than he ever spent in Philadelphia. This is definitely true after the war; he was a very successful diplomat in France. He served in this capacity from 1776 to 1785, and he died in 1790.

I could go on. Very, very interesting life. Very interesting guy. Highly recommended.

Appreciation From Time to Time

Very enjoyable sequel to Time and Again until the ending that almost ruins the whole thing.  This book violates a rule that Finney seems to have established with the first book: a sense of wonder and fun is more important than a sci-fi plot device or message.  The ending is a cruel trick on a character who deserved much better, just to re-state a message already mentioned many times over. 

This also does an injustice to the sinking of the Titanic, treating like an "ah-ha" morality trope, rather then the world-changing tragedy (as the book itself says) that it was.  Also unfortunate were that the two characters who witness the sinking of the Titanic don't describe it--an impossibility, as it jarred for life every single survivor.  Here it's unmentioned, and the narrator offers a sort of epilogue and the thing ends.

There's also false advertising, as the back of the book blares the news that the novel revolves around the main character's attempt to change the course of history by changing the fate of the Titanic.  But, actually, the Titanic doesn't show up in the book until the last 20 pages or so, and the main character's only on it for 10.  Despite the ad copy, this book has almost nothing to do with the Titanic at all.  In fact, this book could have very easily ended without including the fateful voyage at all.  Had it done so, it would have been a much better book.

This time, everything I'd written about the wonder of the 1880s of Time and Again also fits here.  The era is 1912, of course, and it mostly focuses on Broadway, its plays, and an odd but entertaining digression about vaudeville performers and other circus-like performers.  They evidently graced the Broadway stage in the time, as did many other types of performances that may surprise you.

Again, the main reason to read this is the description of NYC in 1912.  The plot doesn't matter.  The tropes don't matter.  The messages don't matter.  If you can lose yourself in the world described here, and forget the ridiculousness of plot and morality--passed off here as philosophy, but don't be fooled, it's morality--then this book is still worthwhile.  It's taken me a few hours to get over the ending, and the movie Titanic has been on HBO all day, and is on now as I write this, which doesn't help at all, but the two books really are fantastic escapism into another time and place.  They are worthy of reading and of wonderment.

What isn't worthy, again, is Finney's treatment of his female characters, who are again very minor, very in love with the main character, and frankly treated like little girls who can't help themselves.  Both girls (Julia from the first one, and the unnamed woman [!] from this one) are better women than their author treats them, and deserved better.  You'll probably tire, as I did, each and every time the main character apologizes to the reader (and to Julia, by association) for kissing this book's heroine, which he does consistently and, apparently, uncontrollably.  Again, she deserves better than the ending she got, and the name she didn't get, and I'm getting annoyed about it all again as I write this.

Whatever.  Feel free to just let those things pass and to lose yourself once again into the very well-realized New York City of the past.  Again it'll seem like you're walking down Broadway yourself, seeing what he sees and living the life he lives.  It's worth it to do this.

If you do, let me know if the ending bothered you as much as it did me.  I can overthink things sometimes, which you already know if you've read my reviews. Too bad Finney died at approximately the same time this book was published.  As he re-wrote the ending of the first book to make this one possible, so too could he have changed the ending of this one in the beginning of a third.  These are now as stuck in time as his two New York Cities are in theirs.  It's a curious statement of the solidity and permanence of history, as their own unique--yet similar--times and places, to be experienced and appreciated, never to be either again.

Time and Again the main character states an appreciation for the moment he has just experienced, the thing he has just seen, the air he has just breathed, appreciated for the unique and temporal experiences that they were.  If only I could do the same, as often as I should.

A Sense of Wonder--Time and Again

I read this book partly because I'm researching a book of my own that takes place partly in 1892--ten years after the 1882 of this book, but still, I didn't have any 1880s information at all.  Turns out, Finney infamously uber-researched for this book.  In fact, it seems that the sole reason he wrote this book is to simply describe 1882 until it felt like he lived there.

This he does.  If you're at all interested in the past--and the 1880s in particular--you should read this book.  If you live in New York City and want to know how Broadway and Fifth Avenue and the many buildings constructed in that time became alive in their own right, and then grew into the life's fabric of the city, you should read this book.  If you're even a little bit a traveler or an explorer at heart--if you're even a little curious or interested in history and people at all--you should read this book.  And if you think it's interesting to understand the people of the era--the actual, flesh-and-blood people of a time--more than just the important historical facts themselves (as I do), then you should read this book.

In short, this was quite a little pleasure, a rare, quaint joy that reading should bring but often does not, even when reading a good or important book.  This gets you away.  Not just into 1882 NYC, but the mid- to late-Victorian Era of your own town and city.  Have you ever wondered what it was like in 1882 where you are?  This book may give you an idea.  Chances are, it was like this, just maybe on a lesser scale.

But the air was clean and the people were evidently a little more carefree than the early pictures would have us believe.  There were horses and sleighs everywhere; children played outside, even in the winter.  There were no screens to enslave us, no computers to weigh us down.  People awoke early, at sunrise, and went to bed just after sundown.  There were telegraph wires everywhere, like electric wires today, so the landscape wasn't as bare as you might think.  The el rattled the city, and electric trains shouldered aside horse-drawn carriages and coaches.  Everyone walked, and people probably spent more time with each other.

This is romanticized history, of course.  You won't see how the very poor live here; in fact, the author just barely refers to them at all.  Most of the action takes place in the richer Broadway, Fifth Avenue part of Manhattan.  There aren't minorities here, either--these things, and the way Finney handles female characters, make the book seem a little less sophisticated than what we may be used to today.  They aren't jarring, and they aren't what this particular story is about, but there it is nonetheless.

It was written by the guy who wrote the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (that was the other reason I wanted to read this), so there's a slight sci-fi aspect here, but it is very slight.  This is more historical fiction than it is science fiction.  It's a bit of fantasy, too, if you think of 1882 NYC as another world, which it sort of is.

My favorite thing about this book (and books like it) is the sense of wonder that it instills in the reader.  Finney clearly was enjoying himself as he wrote this, and the writing and tone exude a sense of wonder that he himself must have been feeling while writing this.  You get the feeling that if Finney has the chance to walk into 1882 NYC and to stay there, he would have as well.

Would you want to stay in the 1882 of your own place?

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

photo: cover of French version, second edition, from the book's Wikipedia page

Very effective book--about the French populace not recognizing the culpability of the French police being the Nazi's stooges in 1942--that would have been great without the emphasis on the present-day relationship struggles and the moralizing/browbeating by the author, through the main character.  Though the real incidents portrayed via Sarah were real and horrifying, there isn't too much room for moralizing and browbeating in fiction.  I could've taken quite a bit of that, as it is that warranted, but this book crosses the line and becomes a bit of a soapbox.

Having said that, this book is worth the read just for the scenes with Sarah, culminating upon her return to her apartment--though, really, culminating with a car and a tree in Connecticut.  The tragedy of the tragedy ends with that car and tree, as we want our victims to live long and prosper.  That doesn't happen too often in real life, and it doesn't happen here, and the tragedy is multiplied because of that, and because of the reasons behind the suicide.  You never want the victim of unspeakable horrors to commit suicide, but the reality is that they often do.  All of this is very sad, and it will stay with you, whether you want it to or not.  Sarah's character will be a long-lasting one in the world of fiction, and Sarah's key is one of the better metaphors and symbols to come along in a long time.  In fact, as such, it is shockingly underused in the book.

That the book focuses instead on the relationship between the main character and her husband is an author's mistake, I think, that is further highlighted by her comment in an interview at the back of the book that she did not want to write a book of historical fiction.  Her aim was to include a bit of that, but to focus instead on creating a parallel to a modern-day relationship and its problems.  It is this parallel, unfortunately, that very much doesn't work.  You expect them to cris-cross at some point, and of course they do, but when they do, the moralizing starts, which degrades the effect of the tragedy.  Part of the tragedy, in fact, is that the tragedy was largely ignored.  It needed to stay tragic, rather than become fodder for a soapbox.

This failure with the parallel--and, I think, a failure on the author's rationale, as she states in the interview at the end that she thinks her readers want a book more about relationship struggles (and, hell, maybe they do, though this reader doesn't)--is that it counts too much on that moralizing, and on over-sentimentality, and on a large dose of coincidence.  The main character's marriage ends in divorce, it is said, because the husband couldn't handle her devotion to the tragedy, and to her unborn baby (though the marriage was actually in trouble long before that, and one supposes that the husband would've had a problem with her focusing her attention on anything and anyone at all but him, and he was cheating on her for many years even before the timeline for this novel started); another man's marriage falls apart because his wife couldn't handle his preoccupation with the same thing--even though Sarah was this man's mother, so he had a much better reason for his preoccupation.  Anyway, the main character and this man, separately, move to NYC after the failure of their marriages, and they both think about each other and keep track of each other without letting on to the other.  They fall for each other right away, though the man was also upset with her, and his marriage was fine at the time.  That they get together at the end, and the name that she gives her new daughter, will not surprise even a six year old reader, especially since the main character goes out of her way, several times, to narrate how beautiful this man's fingers and hands are...

...sigh...It becomes Schindler's List Meets Sleepless in Seattle.  I do not exaggerate.  (Well, perhaps a little.)

Could've been an outstanding book had the author book-ended the main story with the suicide, perhaps, or otherwise focused more on that.  Focusing the entire second half of the book on the aforementioned things, rather than on Sarah at all, or on the tragedies in her childhood, and then at the end of her life, actually degrades the real-life tragedy and drags the whole thing into quasi-sappy melodrama.

Sarah deserved a LOT better than that.  Sarah, in fact, transcends the trappings of this novel she's trapped in, and will live within you, outside the rather narrow confines of this book's borders.  She's a character, much like Shakespeare's Juliet, that is superior to the work she's placed in.  You'll be grateful, though, that the book exists as a vehicle for her to be born in, and then to survive and surpass.

For a look at a movie review from the New York Times that agrees with my assessment of the book the movie's based on, go to http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/movies/sarahs-key-directed-by-gilles-paquet-brenner-review.html.  Its final word is the same as mine, in terms of the essential fault of the book and film: both stories couldn't co-exist in the same vehicle, and the one about the pitfalls of today's relationships trivializes the truth and tragedy of the horror that really did happen in Paris, France in July, 1942.

My Teenage Mysteries--Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer

When I was a teenager I was a voracious reader of all things Stephen King, Peter Straub--and Mickey Spillane.  Donald Hamilton, too, but the Matt Helm series wasn't as much of a (questionable) influence upon me as the Mike Hammer series.

Spillane was the best-selling author of anything English throughout all of the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.  You can look it up.  It wasn't close, and it may--or may not--surprise you that the larger percentage of his readers was female.  Particularly, bored housewives who wanted a bit more spice in their lives.  Mike Hammer was particularly cartoonish and unbelievable, but the cool thing about the books was that you really didn't think about them as you read them.  My favorite example of this--and I recognized this when I was a teeanger (and I'm talkin' 12 years old here)--was when he would say unbelievably outlandish things when a friend died, or rant and rage in front of a reporter, or not know someone on page 20, but then say he knew that character later on (this happened in I, the Jury, which Spillane supposedly wrote in about a week or two, maybe less).

And the sex and violence was incredible, in an eye-popping way.  I seriously expected every voluptuous, sex-crazed woman to still be a virgin into her thirties, and I was a little surprised when I didn't see women literally throwing themselves at guys.  My favorite Spillane title was The Erection Set; my favorite ending is when the guy beds this jaw-dropping walking sex-bomb, who happens to be a virgin into her thirties because she'd been waiting for the guy her whole life (they were childhood friends), and it turns out that she was an undercover (pun intended) cop and he was an undercover CIA operative, or something.  And as they're having sex, the bad guy opens the door, and says something like, "Nice.  Very nice," but he said a little too much, because by that time the hero had grabbed the gun off the nighttable and shot the bad guy's arm completely off, and as he's screaming and blood's pumping everywhere, the main character shoots the guy a few more times and kills him.  While the cordite's still in the air, and the blood's seeping into the carpeting and running through the floorboards, the woman says, "Now f--- me, like a dog," or something shocking like that, and of course he does.

Whew!!!  The fact that tens of millions of people, most of them female, apparently, would read this was shocking, but only until I read them, at which point the sex and violence was so cartoonish that it was entertaining.  (I know this isn't politically correct, but that's the way it was for me and tens of millions of others.)  The mysteries were not mysterious; the women weren't exactly femme fatales (except maybe for Charlotte in I, the Jury), and the writing wasn't exactly Raymond Chandler.  And yet there was a New York City feel, and there was tons of atmosphere, and overall the unreality was grounded into some sort of reality.  And, somehow, it all worked.  As you can see.  I remember all of these things, no problem (including Pat Chambers, his best friend), and I haven't read any of them since I was maybe 18.  (I still have all of them in a box in the garage, along with all the Matt Helms and, I think, Hardy Boyses and Nancy Drews.  I'm seriously jonesing reading some of them again; maybe during vacation.)

Plus, there were the Miller Lite (and Gillette, I think) commercials, of course, and the 80s tv show with Stacy Keach and Verna Bloom (I think; one of my first crushes!).  In my novel, Cursing the Darkness, Foster's secretary, Colleen, certainly has a Velda feel to her, so much so that the 1st person narration references Mike Hammer and Velda.  I'd be lying if I said that they weren't both influences.  The series would make GREAT graphic novels today, if anybody could secure the rights to do that.

I would both urge teenage readers to read them, and yet frown upon it at the same time.  I'm sure I got the exact same reactions from my 11th and 12th grade English teacher (same woman); I can see them now, as I did read a few, including The Erection Set, while in her classes.  My parents weren't thrilled at these books, either, though, if I remember right, I read the first few because my mother had them, thereby backing up the female readership statement earlier.

I remember that Spillane tried to keep the series going in the 80s and 90s, and that Max Collins, I think, finished a couple--one called The Goliath Bone, I think--but Spillane had lost a lot of breathless steam by then, and they didn't quite feel right anymore.  He tried to tone them down a lot, and Mike Hammer and Velda got married, which was like Philip Marlowe getting married, but even less believable.  It was like he was trying to recreate his bad writing, thereby proving that you can't write badly if you're trying to.  Or something.  Anyway, they weren't ridiculously breathless anymore, and that's what really drove them to begin with.

Needless to say, the series couldn't be written today.  I can't decide if I think that's a shame or not, just like I can't decide whether I'd recommend them for teeange readers or not.  Ultimately I'd say that it is a shame, and that I'd recommend them, but it goes to show you that I'm just as much a product of my time as Mike Hammer and Mickey Spillane were a product of theirs.