A Happy Stumble: "No," by Brian Doyle

By unreproducible means, a work-related quest brought me almost all the way to this essay of remembrance and humor by a magazine editor. In "No," Brian Doyle offers a lovely, meandering, and brief apologia of editorial rejection. He packs it full of insight, weaves it close with experience, and draws it all through a gentle sense of humor. As an aspiring writer and sort of an editor, I caught a glimpse of the farther edges of these professions. Sir Isaac Newton's image of a boy playing with sea-shells comes to mind.

If you like to read words, these are worth reading.

Words about Mitt Romney

My mother posted a link to Thomas Friedman's editorial, "Why Not in Vegas" on Romney's trip to Israel. I was struck by the words and phrases Friedman associates with Romney and his trip. Here's the skip-through:

• not about learning
• satisfy the political whims
• all about money anyway
• abase himself
• wrong with the U.S.-Israel relationship
• add more pandering
• canard
• had time for a $50,000-a-plate breakfast
• did not have two hours to go to Ramallah
• didn’t know what he was talking about
• feeding off this conflict for political gain
• using this conflict as a backdrop for campaign photo-ops and fund-raisers
• making things even worse
• grovel for Jewish votes and money
• blatantly ignoring the other side
• not going to do something constructive

As the great political philosopher Rush Limbaugh so adroitly observed, "words have meaning."

I think they may also have real-world effects. Among the effects Friedman is observing is the deterioration of peace, or of the potential for peace, in the Middle East when American politicians pander instead of speaking uncomfortable truths.

Another effect may be that Friedman finds himself severed from Movement conservatives. I may not have long to wait till he's branded a socialist.

Revision vs. Original Work

At what point does my chapter-book revision become original work?

Black would be the color of text unedited since the last save. Only since the last save. And there's precious little of it. This screenshot it pretty representative.

Just wondering.

Where, indeed: Barry Deutsch's HEREVILLE: How Mirka Got Her Sword

Years ago now, I read a hefty online sample of Barry Deutsch's more-than-charming graphic novel Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword. I call it "more than charming" because it was both a fairy-tale-ish story told in drawings that, despite the muppetlike heads, seemed so obviously perfect for it, and at the same time a rich treatment of humanity.

Find out more from Deutch's website, Hereville. 

I don't put it that way to make it seem grandiose, but the universality of the story, told from the perspective of a little slip of a girl in a tiny town that was part of an often-overlooked corner of a small minority in a big, pushy world, is hard to deny. Deutsch has created such a perfect character in Mirka that, although she is culturally atypical, and kind of an odd kid within her culture, a reader as unlike her as myself has no trouble sympathizing.

Mirka has a strict stepmother, a distant father, a nosy little brother, bullies and monsters to avoid, and a few things that she loves without restraint, an immediate kind of nostalgia that I think only children can feel. Certain things, often small or outwardly insignificant, are indispensable to kids, around the time that they become aware of the potential for change. Having lost her mother, Mirka treasures the familiar, and even though her lodestones are different from mine, they feel as true and real in the story as my own did (at least in nostalgic perspective).

Recently, I stumbled across the full book at the library, and snapped it up. My kids (11 and just-turned-8) tore through it and declared it was good. I snuck in two reads, with mounting satisfaction.

And what do I learn today? Happily, that there will soon be a second Hereville. Perfect.

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE by Kate diCamillo

I became aware of the book through previews of the movie with the same name, about five years ago. It looked like a heart-warming tale, but I didn’t think very much about it. Then I read a story co-written by its author, Kate diCamillo, and Jon Scieszka, in Guys Read: Funny Business. Scieszka, who edits the Guys Read books in a sustained effort to promote…reading, by guys, before they get too old and fall behind in school and drag the girls down, I guess, apparently chose diCamillo as his co-author for a reason. She’s very funny.

The story, “Your Note to the Author Here” consists of letters between an elementary school boy grudingly fulfilling an English assignment and an author who has other plans, made me grin and chuckle for twice as long as it took to read (because I reread it the next day). Not high art, but sometimes we wish high art was this good.

Between that and my awareness of the Winn-Dixie story, I resolved to read Kate diCamillo’s best-known (OK, to me) book at my next opportunity, if not sooner.

The good news is that reading Because of Winn-Dixie costs a Master-of-Arts recipient little effort or time.The other good news is that it does just what a novel should do: it introduces a character (India Opal Buloni), gives her a conflict (she misses her mother), and shows how she grows in response to it. Along the way, diCamillo graces us with poignant details, characters with interesting names, and bits of magic so small and ordinary, we might confuse them with raindrops.

By the end, there’s a little bit of a storm—the kind that blows things over and gets the ground wet, and the kind of collection of magical raindrops that means some pretty big magic has been falling. Opal (everybody uses her middle name) and her dog make friends left and right, back and forth, and brighten their lives a little, or a lot.

The landscape of central Florida suffers from lack of description in this story, and characters are simply, though well, drawn. Most of the details are visual, but they are sparse. This is a book that cuts to the chase, gives readers access to the good story without costing the effort usually involved. It is a book for the struggling reader, the reluctant reader, the impatient reader, strung out on IMAX and in withdrawal from Twitter, the twelve-year-old texting master, the kid who knows all the tricks on all the latest games.

I think it would also be fine for the coping dyslexic reader (short pages, widely spaced lines in my edition, under 200 pages), or any tween or early teen who might respond well to a good story, if only they could get at the meanings of rhe words. This is a special concern of mine, and I think that Because of Winn-Dixie, more than other trade books, threads this particular needle.

funny bad reviews, 50 SHADES OF... series

The first three "critical" reviews I found are worth reading. The exasperation of readers who just couldn't endure any more than the inaugural volume of the trilogy, and can't fathom the ecstatic fans (or main character). 

High points:

From "Did a teenager write this?" by meymoon,

About half way through the book, I looked up the author to see if she was a teenager. I really did because the characters are out of a 16 year old's fantasy. 

From "Bestseller? Really???" by DS from LA

And oh, the repetition...and the repetition...and the repetition. I'm convinced the author has a computer macro that she hits to insert one of her limited repertoire of facial expressions whenever she needs one. According to my Kindle search function, characters roll their eyes 41 times, Ana bites her lip 35 times, Christian's lips "quirk up" 16 times...

From "Not the worst I've ever read...No, wait. It IS." by Ebeth822

Once upon a time...
I'm Ana. I'm clumsy and naive. I like books. I dig this guy. He couldn't possibly like me. He's rich. I wonder if he's gay? His eyes are gray. Super gray. Intensely gray. Intense AND gray. Serious and gray. Super gray. Dark and gray. [insert 100+ other ways to say "gray eyes" here]
I blush. I gasp. He touches me "down there." I gasp again. He gasps. We both gasp. I blush some more. [this goes on hilariously]

 I think I appreciate this series now. It has given me joy. The reviews it inspired are works of art.

SOMEDAY I WILL WRITE ABOUT THIS PLACE, Binyavanga Wainaina

warning: unavoidable spoilers

The joy of reading every sentence in this memoir, at least for this reader, lies in the feeling of connecting directly to a strange and familiar mind. The joy of reading the entire book lies in seeing the title fulfilled at the end. It starts with the sideways, blurred, and myopic views of the author as a child, and proceeds through vivid difficulties across several nations and through dozens of meetings and partings. 

I had difficulty at the beginning deciding if it was a novel or a memoir. The view from the author’s mind was hard to distinguish from surrealism. In retrospect, he seems to have been aware of his difficulty relating to people, even to reality, and aware that people viewed him differently as well.

It is worth quoting the beginning here:

It is afternoon. We are playing soccer near the clothesline behind the main house. Jimmy, my brother, is eleven, and my sister, Ciru, is five and a half. I am the goalie.

I am seven years old, and I still do not know why everybody seems to know what they are doing and why they are doing it.

He runs into the distance when the family parks for a rest on the side of the road. He is looking for the place in the distance where the world becomes fuzzy and indistinct, and is disappointed that when he gets there, it’s all hard-edged, just like where he started.

While the interior life of such a child would be interesting enough in any situation, it reaches a higher level in newly-independent Kenya, where anti-colonialism gave way painfully to post-colonialism, and terrors and divisions lurked around every corner. The unity with which Kenyans achieved independence shattered under the force of the colonial divisions, layered on top of precolonial divisions. Further problems erupted among people when neighboring Uganda’s president, Idi Amin, led his country to slaughter. Among the refugees were the author’s mother, whose name flitted into and out of his life.

The author flits into and out of the life of Kenya as well, passing through the South African bantustan of Transkei, the United States, Nigeria, and Togo. His travels and his maturity correspond with his engagement with the world and people, though not always harmoniously. Still, he achieves a level of normalcy and even accomplishment alongside his increasingly confident interactions with people. The world is not less dangerous, but he has put down his books, stopped seeking the blurry distance.

A recurring theme is how to feel Kenyan. Binyavanga Wainaina is almost autistic in his capacity for focusing on details. This makes for a blizzard of novelistic data that may make a reader feel not up to the task of comprehension. My accustomed diet of manga and YA fantasy novels as a break from editing and writing chapter books for struggling readers may have degraded, or at least reshaped, my reading skills. The author wraps his character’s narrative in recurring and evolving observations on small cues to national identity, and large shifts in public sentiment.

This should not sound like something precious and coy. What emerges from the pages is a hard-won realization of what it means to be Kenyan, both in contrast to other nationalities and in contrast to internal loyalties of language, colonially-recognized tribe, and class.