Commencement: A Beautiful Beginning
Check back for a review of J. Courtney Sullivan's debut novel, Commencement.
Loving Reading Nafisi
I just finished Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, and I feel like I just travelled to a place that will remain in my heart indefinitely. I thought I had to read Nabokov's Lolita first, so I finally picked Reading Lolita up, ironically, two years after Nabokov's weird anti-hero fluttered out of my life and started collecting dust on the shelf. Now I know, of course, that most of Nafisi's book is a personal and professional biography, and not about Lolita at all, so it wasn't a problem that I forgot most of the novel. (Though Nafisi does spin an analysis so complicated in the first 50 pages, you might think you're in an English literature seminar).
Because I am a teacher, I love reading what other teachers' experiences are like, and I can tell Nafisi is brilliant at her job. She even taught me how to read Jane Austen with more appreciation, something I didn't think could happen at this point in my life. (I now know--to my own amusement--that Charlotte Bronte was not a fan of such passionless prose, but Nafisi goes head-to-head with her claim and wins me over.)
Most of all, this book is about the power of fiction, and what it can teach us in different contexts. Nabokov's Humbert is a criminal, sure, but reading him in the context of revolutionary Iran makes most Iranian men who marry young virgins look like criminals. As Nafisi shows in her stories of women's book club and class discussions, fiction serves as an escape for readers who are in suffocating situations. While many of the fundamentalists she interacts with--mostly students--think these books teach lessons about Western immorality, more open-minded students see themselves or who they hope to be in the works Nafisi offers them.
The book also becomes a warning about what happens when fundamentalism goes too far, and the awkward intersection of art and ideological politics. So many students Nafisi teaches feel that they, as Iranians and Muslims, should not be exposed to characters who act out of selfish desires, or women who do not observe and respect their place in society. They want to be taught the simple, direct lessons that their religious leaders have conveyed. It scares them to have to imagine or consider new and different behaviors or lifestyles and the complex moral implications that result. A wandering mind is not clean or neat, because you might not like what you come up with. This is precisely why our minds need to wander if we are to understand humanity a little better: why we need to read fiction.
While I am grateful to have learned so much about the revolutionary history of Iran through Nafisi's eyes, her book also serves as a reminder about how vigilant we need to be about our own civil liberties. Iran was a vibrant, cultural center until the revolution, and has now become a world-wide example of cruel tyranny. The only way we can protect ourselves, it seems, is to continue exploring, discussing, reading--through education, and for some of us, through teaching.
The most recent developments in Iran make Reading Lolita in Tehran all the more powerful, and the pleas of the Iranian people even more heart-wrenching. Reading Lolita will change the way you read.
Because I am a teacher, I love reading what other teachers' experiences are like, and I can tell Nafisi is brilliant at her job. She even taught me how to read Jane Austen with more appreciation, something I didn't think could happen at this point in my life. (I now know--to my own amusement--that Charlotte Bronte was not a fan of such passionless prose, but Nafisi goes head-to-head with her claim and wins me over.)
Most of all, this book is about the power of fiction, and what it can teach us in different contexts. Nabokov's Humbert is a criminal, sure, but reading him in the context of revolutionary Iran makes most Iranian men who marry young virgins look like criminals. As Nafisi shows in her stories of women's book club and class discussions, fiction serves as an escape for readers who are in suffocating situations. While many of the fundamentalists she interacts with--mostly students--think these books teach lessons about Western immorality, more open-minded students see themselves or who they hope to be in the works Nafisi offers them.
The book also becomes a warning about what happens when fundamentalism goes too far, and the awkward intersection of art and ideological politics. So many students Nafisi teaches feel that they, as Iranians and Muslims, should not be exposed to characters who act out of selfish desires, or women who do not observe and respect their place in society. They want to be taught the simple, direct lessons that their religious leaders have conveyed. It scares them to have to imagine or consider new and different behaviors or lifestyles and the complex moral implications that result. A wandering mind is not clean or neat, because you might not like what you come up with. This is precisely why our minds need to wander if we are to understand humanity a little better: why we need to read fiction.
While I am grateful to have learned so much about the revolutionary history of Iran through Nafisi's eyes, her book also serves as a reminder about how vigilant we need to be about our own civil liberties. Iran was a vibrant, cultural center until the revolution, and has now become a world-wide example of cruel tyranny. The only way we can protect ourselves, it seems, is to continue exploring, discussing, reading--through education, and for some of us, through teaching.
The most recent developments in Iran make Reading Lolita in Tehran all the more powerful, and the pleas of the Iranian people even more heart-wrenching. Reading Lolita will change the way you read.
Ms. Hempel is Boring
I recently gave up on the Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. There is no story here, just Ms. Hempel reflecting on a childhood to which I cannot relate, and some fairly insightful comments on the way teaching drains you of energy and imagination. It does, but let's include a story, Ms. Bynum, okay? And don't tell me this is really a collection of short stories and not a novel. That's a serious cop-out.
I read a part of this book as a short story in The New Yorker ("Yurt"), which is what made me interested in reading the book. But that is the only story worth reading in the whole novel...or "chronicle," I suppose. The narrative flashes from Ms. Hempel teaching and interacting with middle schoolers to her personal life and her quirky childhood. Perhaps I just don't want to read about middle-schoolers? Perhaps I just don't find them as cute as Ms. Hempel does?
I got super excited when I read the comments on the back from Michael Cunningham and Jonathan Franzen. But I realize now, that this is all politics. Bynum has a good agent. Franzen ends his kind remark with "She's really good," and I can't help but wonder if that was more an effort on his part to maintain his critique's aesthetic rhythm. Similarly, Cunningham says that she's an American novelist who has not "abandoned...grand and reckless ambitions." He doesn't say she's met them.
The author pic on the inside flap is adorable, though, as is the cover art.
I read a part of this book as a short story in The New Yorker ("Yurt"), which is what made me interested in reading the book. But that is the only story worth reading in the whole novel...or "chronicle," I suppose. The narrative flashes from Ms. Hempel teaching and interacting with middle schoolers to her personal life and her quirky childhood. Perhaps I just don't want to read about middle-schoolers? Perhaps I just don't find them as cute as Ms. Hempel does?
I got super excited when I read the comments on the back from Michael Cunningham and Jonathan Franzen. But I realize now, that this is all politics. Bynum has a good agent. Franzen ends his kind remark with "She's really good," and I can't help but wonder if that was more an effort on his part to maintain his critique's aesthetic rhythm. Similarly, Cunningham says that she's an American novelist who has not "abandoned...grand and reckless ambitions." He doesn't say she's met them.
The author pic on the inside flap is adorable, though, as is the cover art.
The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
I recently devoured this book, and to continue the metaphor, felt that I had eaten too much. At first, Messud's wit and quick-paced chapters were alluring. In the beginning, the developing story was certainly living up to the quote from the New York Times Book Review that is written on the cover, that it is a "masterly comedy of manners." Could Messud be the Edith Wharton of our modern age?
It takes a little while to figure out how so many characters, each with his or her own introduction in alternating chapters, relate. But after 50 pages or so, we see that Messud is describing New York at the turn of the 21st century, and particularly, the lives of educated, hip, artistic folks who are turning the corner of the third decade of their lives. For a while, it is fun to read about the penthouse apartment that '60's liberal journalist Murray Thwaite lives in with his lawyer wife, Annabel, and meandering daughter, Marina, who wants to do something really important with her life, but who just can't manage to finish the book for which she has gotten a contract--of course, of course, because her father is a famous journalist--a book about children's fashion. (As her father later regretfully reports to her over a fancy lunch, the book is stupid. Marina thinks he is jealous of her impending success, mostly due to the persuasion of her up-and-coming journalist husband. In Messud's world, everyone in Manhattan is some sort of journalist.) Danielle, Marina's dear friend since college, is much more stable; she has a job as a documentary filmmaker, and is wavering between a project about the Aborigines and government in Australia vs. a documentary on the perils of liposuction in America. Enter the third friend of the college trio, Julius, who is an occasional writer for the Village Voice, and whose penchant for cocaine and adulterous affairs in bathroom stalls results in a tooth-marked scar on his cheek from an angry lover.
But Frederick Tubb--nicknamed Bootie by his mother--is possibly the most central character to the story. He is the young moralist who can't help but see the superficiality in everything, especially college academia. Once he finds out that fellow students, with blissful ignorance from their professors, can easily cheat on exams and want to, he decides to pursue his life of the mind independently of school. Here is where this small-town boy intersects with the cruel, loud world of Manhattan. He is Thwaite's nephew, wishfully, his successor, but even the staunch civil-rights advocate and Vietnam protester has flaws, Bootie realizes; taking a cue from Ralph Waldo Emerson, he attempts to expose them.
The novel continues with the minutiae of daily life in Manhattan and in the Thwaites country house in upstate New York. Adulterous affairs and romantic trysts ensue; bad books are written or are considered, new magazines burgeon among the yuppies; young moralists become jaded and fight back. Messud does a good job of helping you forget that she's set her tale at the turn of the century in Manhattan--it could be now, 2008--but it's not, as we are sorrowfully reminded when the characters enter the month of September in 2001. Yet, while I began to suspect a sort of homage to Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies, where he similarly narrates the goings-on of friendly and more plain, less rich, folks in and around Brooklyn before September 11th, the end fell a little flat. What were all the fast-paced chapters for? What were these characters speeding toward? Had anyone, really, come of age? Is there a moral, and who the heck is the emperor?
I don't typically expect lessons from my novels, but Messud's begs for one by the end. Is there some relevance to the turn of the century, the turn of their 30th-year, and the turn of the world's expectations about safety, evil, war, terrorism? All that we're really left with is the discomfort of acknowledging that Messud's portrayal of these characters shows them to be so absent of morality, integrity, and worldliness, so full of ambition, money, and fleeting pleasures, that by the end, little can be done to negate the criticisms made by fundamentalist organizations. Is she just telling elite New York like it is, or missing New York completely? The only redeemable characters in this novel are older women: Judy, Bootie's mom, who worries about him and misses him terribly as she continues the job of teaching second-graders; Annabel, a children's lawyer, whose concern over one of her teenage clients keeps her up at night; and Randy, Danielle's mom, who rushes to her daughter's side during a depression to offer succor. If anything, maybe what we can take from the end of Messud's novel is that if these Manhattanites are to be exposed as the fools they are, at least they'll have their mothers.
I want to believe that the book is a satire, but I can't laugh at the characters; I can only feel disdain for them as the prettiness is stripped away and the core shows itself to be rotting. I suppose this is the point, the harsh one. Even though I'm not a huge fan of New York--its bigness, loudness, overweening pride about itself on bumper stickers, t-shirts, the mouths and minds of its inhabitants, I still don't know that it's that point I want to swallow post-9/11.
It takes a little while to figure out how so many characters, each with his or her own introduction in alternating chapters, relate. But after 50 pages or so, we see that Messud is describing New York at the turn of the 21st century, and particularly, the lives of educated, hip, artistic folks who are turning the corner of the third decade of their lives. For a while, it is fun to read about the penthouse apartment that '60's liberal journalist Murray Thwaite lives in with his lawyer wife, Annabel, and meandering daughter, Marina, who wants to do something really important with her life, but who just can't manage to finish the book for which she has gotten a contract--of course, of course, because her father is a famous journalist--a book about children's fashion. (As her father later regretfully reports to her over a fancy lunch, the book is stupid. Marina thinks he is jealous of her impending success, mostly due to the persuasion of her up-and-coming journalist husband. In Messud's world, everyone in Manhattan is some sort of journalist.) Danielle, Marina's dear friend since college, is much more stable; she has a job as a documentary filmmaker, and is wavering between a project about the Aborigines and government in Australia vs. a documentary on the perils of liposuction in America. Enter the third friend of the college trio, Julius, who is an occasional writer for the Village Voice, and whose penchant for cocaine and adulterous affairs in bathroom stalls results in a tooth-marked scar on his cheek from an angry lover.
But Frederick Tubb--nicknamed Bootie by his mother--is possibly the most central character to the story. He is the young moralist who can't help but see the superficiality in everything, especially college academia. Once he finds out that fellow students, with blissful ignorance from their professors, can easily cheat on exams and want to, he decides to pursue his life of the mind independently of school. Here is where this small-town boy intersects with the cruel, loud world of Manhattan. He is Thwaite's nephew, wishfully, his successor, but even the staunch civil-rights advocate and Vietnam protester has flaws, Bootie realizes; taking a cue from Ralph Waldo Emerson, he attempts to expose them.
The novel continues with the minutiae of daily life in Manhattan and in the Thwaites country house in upstate New York. Adulterous affairs and romantic trysts ensue; bad books are written or are considered, new magazines burgeon among the yuppies; young moralists become jaded and fight back. Messud does a good job of helping you forget that she's set her tale at the turn of the century in Manhattan--it could be now, 2008--but it's not, as we are sorrowfully reminded when the characters enter the month of September in 2001. Yet, while I began to suspect a sort of homage to Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies, where he similarly narrates the goings-on of friendly and more plain, less rich, folks in and around Brooklyn before September 11th, the end fell a little flat. What were all the fast-paced chapters for? What were these characters speeding toward? Had anyone, really, come of age? Is there a moral, and who the heck is the emperor?
I don't typically expect lessons from my novels, but Messud's begs for one by the end. Is there some relevance to the turn of the century, the turn of their 30th-year, and the turn of the world's expectations about safety, evil, war, terrorism? All that we're really left with is the discomfort of acknowledging that Messud's portrayal of these characters shows them to be so absent of morality, integrity, and worldliness, so full of ambition, money, and fleeting pleasures, that by the end, little can be done to negate the criticisms made by fundamentalist organizations. Is she just telling elite New York like it is, or missing New York completely? The only redeemable characters in this novel are older women: Judy, Bootie's mom, who worries about him and misses him terribly as she continues the job of teaching second-graders; Annabel, a children's lawyer, whose concern over one of her teenage clients keeps her up at night; and Randy, Danielle's mom, who rushes to her daughter's side during a depression to offer succor. If anything, maybe what we can take from the end of Messud's novel is that if these Manhattanites are to be exposed as the fools they are, at least they'll have their mothers.
I want to believe that the book is a satire, but I can't laugh at the characters; I can only feel disdain for them as the prettiness is stripped away and the core shows itself to be rotting. I suppose this is the point, the harsh one. Even though I'm not a huge fan of New York--its bigness, loudness, overweening pride about itself on bumper stickers, t-shirts, the mouths and minds of its inhabitants, I still don't know that it's that point I want to swallow post-9/11.
Castles: Egan’s The Keep vs. Walls’ The Glass Castle
Jennifer Egan’s The Keep is a novel of ideas you can tell she’s been ruminating on for a while. For one, the main character, Danny, is compulsive about “keeping connected”: he starts to go a little crazy if he’s away from his cell phone or internet for too long. He lives in New York City and spends his time going to clubs, checking email, texting friends, and for some reason, wearing eyeliner (a detail I didn’t think is necessary), all because he can’t bear to be outside of the buzz.
But it’s also a novel about the imagination. The setting is a medieval castle somewhere between Germany and Czechoslovakia that can’t be found on a map. It’s a place that represents the part in our minds between what we can comprehend and what we can’t, a dream world, perhaps. And there’s just something about a medieval castle that evokes the imagination like nothing else. Egan’s descriptions help: crumbling walls, decaying pools, torture-chamber basements, and stone rooms with velvet sheets atop mattresses open to the rain and the birds. There’s also a baroness whose appearance changes depending on the amount of 19th century wine you drink. The main idea that Egan wants to communicate is that we must find some escape from the daily barrage of visual images, the constant hum of modern technology. This theory manifests itself most in the character of Howard, whose dream is to make the castle an old-age hotel. No television, no phones, no consumption. Just fireplaces and comfy clothes and one’s own thoughts. If you like to read but constantly feel the pull of a ringing phone or new Inbox messages, this seems just about as close to heaven as you can get, while it makes Howard’s cousin, Danny, nauseous.
Lastly, Egan’s novel is an exploration of storytelling. The text is layered, a story with an intricate plot told by three different voices. Throw in a mild discussion of the prison system, drug-addiction, writing as a process, and the difference between Europe and America, and The Keep becomes a great contemporary novel.
Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle, a memoir, is on the other hand, a less involved story. I wish it were a little more about ideas, particularly what parents’ obligations should be to their kids. Walls is a gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, and The Glass Castle ends up just being one big dish on her loopy parents and childhood. Presented in short vignettes, Walls doles out snapshot after snapshot of the irrational philosophies and decisions her parents made while she was growing up with her siblings. The potential of the book, however, is evident in the beginning, as Walls describes seeing her homeless mother rummaging through trash cans in Manhattan. Then she flashes back to her first memory of childhood, her dress catching on fire while she makes hot dogs at the age of three. This is surprising stuff, and anyone reading wants to find out what the parents were thinking, how Walls became an established writer living in New York City. But like gossip columns, Walls doesn’t really talk about herself. Instead, she tells of her father’s drunken rages, her parents’ disinterest in keeping food in the cabinets, and what it’s like to live in an abandoned train depot, sleeping in cardboard boxes rather than beds (all while the parents are perfectly capable of obtaining family money or getting legitimate jobs). I skimmed the parts about their move to West Virginia where they lived with even kookier grandparents and a perverse uncle. Walls doggedly describes the minutiae of her family’s rocky existence, but after a hundred pages, I became tired of gaping at the Walls family. I just felt impatient for some substance.
Walls’ memoir would be a lot more interesting if it was actually a memoir about herself. At least half the book could be devoted to how a child deals with the mental trauma and memories of an unstable childhood. How does it feel for Walls to go shopping in a grocery store, to cook dinner and eat it regularly? Does she hold onto any of her parents’ philosophies about life? What effect does it have on one’s psyche to lie to close friends and lovers about your upbringing? And more interestingly, does Walls want to have kids, or did her parents’ neglect turn her off from that possibility altogether? Is she angry? Walls touches on some of these questions, but does not seriously delve into any. If anything, maybe the memoir’s release is a little premature in Walls’ journey toward resolution about all of this, because The Glass Castle, while glowing with potential, is really only a superficial treatise about a family run by people with serious psychological problems, and not about the healing that most adults seek when coming to grips with an unhappy childhood.
But it’s also a novel about the imagination. The setting is a medieval castle somewhere between Germany and Czechoslovakia that can’t be found on a map. It’s a place that represents the part in our minds between what we can comprehend and what we can’t, a dream world, perhaps. And there’s just something about a medieval castle that evokes the imagination like nothing else. Egan’s descriptions help: crumbling walls, decaying pools, torture-chamber basements, and stone rooms with velvet sheets atop mattresses open to the rain and the birds. There’s also a baroness whose appearance changes depending on the amount of 19th century wine you drink. The main idea that Egan wants to communicate is that we must find some escape from the daily barrage of visual images, the constant hum of modern technology. This theory manifests itself most in the character of Howard, whose dream is to make the castle an old-age hotel. No television, no phones, no consumption. Just fireplaces and comfy clothes and one’s own thoughts. If you like to read but constantly feel the pull of a ringing phone or new Inbox messages, this seems just about as close to heaven as you can get, while it makes Howard’s cousin, Danny, nauseous.
Lastly, Egan’s novel is an exploration of storytelling. The text is layered, a story with an intricate plot told by three different voices. Throw in a mild discussion of the prison system, drug-addiction, writing as a process, and the difference between Europe and America, and The Keep becomes a great contemporary novel.
Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle, a memoir, is on the other hand, a less involved story. I wish it were a little more about ideas, particularly what parents’ obligations should be to their kids. Walls is a gossip columnist for MSNBC.com, and The Glass Castle ends up just being one big dish on her loopy parents and childhood. Presented in short vignettes, Walls doles out snapshot after snapshot of the irrational philosophies and decisions her parents made while she was growing up with her siblings. The potential of the book, however, is evident in the beginning, as Walls describes seeing her homeless mother rummaging through trash cans in Manhattan. Then she flashes back to her first memory of childhood, her dress catching on fire while she makes hot dogs at the age of three. This is surprising stuff, and anyone reading wants to find out what the parents were thinking, how Walls became an established writer living in New York City. But like gossip columns, Walls doesn’t really talk about herself. Instead, she tells of her father’s drunken rages, her parents’ disinterest in keeping food in the cabinets, and what it’s like to live in an abandoned train depot, sleeping in cardboard boxes rather than beds (all while the parents are perfectly capable of obtaining family money or getting legitimate jobs). I skimmed the parts about their move to West Virginia where they lived with even kookier grandparents and a perverse uncle. Walls doggedly describes the minutiae of her family’s rocky existence, but after a hundred pages, I became tired of gaping at the Walls family. I just felt impatient for some substance.
Walls’ memoir would be a lot more interesting if it was actually a memoir about herself. At least half the book could be devoted to how a child deals with the mental trauma and memories of an unstable childhood. How does it feel for Walls to go shopping in a grocery store, to cook dinner and eat it regularly? Does she hold onto any of her parents’ philosophies about life? What effect does it have on one’s psyche to lie to close friends and lovers about your upbringing? And more interestingly, does Walls want to have kids, or did her parents’ neglect turn her off from that possibility altogether? Is she angry? Walls touches on some of these questions, but does not seriously delve into any. If anything, maybe the memoir’s release is a little premature in Walls’ journey toward resolution about all of this, because The Glass Castle, while glowing with potential, is really only a superficial treatise about a family run by people with serious psychological problems, and not about the healing that most adults seek when coming to grips with an unhappy childhood.
Ann Patchett's Run
I love Ann Patchett. She's one of my favorite writers. When I heard she was coming out with a new novel back in September, I emailed friends. I put it on my birthday wishlist. And I read it after two others that felt like grudging work--Songs Without Words (see review below) and The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. (I considered writing something lengthy about Fortress, but my impression is that Jonathan Lethem has a lot of mirrors in his house with which to gaze upon himself approvingly, and does not also deserve the strenuous pitter-patter of my fingers on the keyboard.) So a return to Patchett's writing was refreshing. Bel Canto, her last novel, could be my favorite ever, if it's possible to pin one down, which it probably isn't. Every sentence seemed to communicate the beauty that all art aspires to, which left me inspired.
Therefore, the opening paragraphs of Run felt familiar to me. Run is definitely not Bel Canto, nor should it be. I enjoyed reading it, absorbing the gentle caress Patchett seems to give every character through vivid description, the way every sentence and paragraph seems packed on top of the other in what becomes deceptively elaborate architecture. The first chapter, which is the topic of most interviews Patchett gives about the book, is a beautiful story about a statue's history that both makes an angel of the main characters' mother as well as communicates the dynamics of families past and present.
I liked Run, but if I had to explain why I didn't love it, or why it hasn't stayed with me in the way that other novels do, I would say that it is too much about ideas. The amusing quirk of Teddy, younger brother to Tip, is that he recites political speeches from memory. And Doyle, their father, dreams of his sons having a major role in politics. But despite this, it's not didactic enough to be a political novel, even though Patchett has said in interviews that she's attempted a fictional response to the conservative ideology of traditional family values. Perhaps her message is that families are families whether they are blood-related or not. But can this simple question be addressed appropriately when her characters are two black boys adopted by the rich white Catholic mayor of Boston? What does this mean about race in America, the reader may wonder. Is Patchett making a comment? If not, shouldn't she?
These are questions that may or may not be layered into the text, depending on your interpretation. It may be why the novel doesn't have the same resonance as her previous ones, too. After all, Patchett is not really a political writer; she's a writer of human beauty, of family and poetry. Still, plenty of this exists in Run, and it's easy to see why Patchett is one of America's most talented and insightful writers.
Therefore, the opening paragraphs of Run felt familiar to me. Run is definitely not Bel Canto, nor should it be. I enjoyed reading it, absorbing the gentle caress Patchett seems to give every character through vivid description, the way every sentence and paragraph seems packed on top of the other in what becomes deceptively elaborate architecture. The first chapter, which is the topic of most interviews Patchett gives about the book, is a beautiful story about a statue's history that both makes an angel of the main characters' mother as well as communicates the dynamics of families past and present.
I liked Run, but if I had to explain why I didn't love it, or why it hasn't stayed with me in the way that other novels do, I would say that it is too much about ideas. The amusing quirk of Teddy, younger brother to Tip, is that he recites political speeches from memory. And Doyle, their father, dreams of his sons having a major role in politics. But despite this, it's not didactic enough to be a political novel, even though Patchett has said in interviews that she's attempted a fictional response to the conservative ideology of traditional family values. Perhaps her message is that families are families whether they are blood-related or not. But can this simple question be addressed appropriately when her characters are two black boys adopted by the rich white Catholic mayor of Boston? What does this mean about race in America, the reader may wonder. Is Patchett making a comment? If not, shouldn't she?
These are questions that may or may not be layered into the text, depending on your interpretation. It may be why the novel doesn't have the same resonance as her previous ones, too. After all, Patchett is not really a political writer; she's a writer of human beauty, of family and poetry. Still, plenty of this exists in Run, and it's easy to see why Patchett is one of America's most talented and insightful writers.
Parenting Books: Evaluating the Different Philosophies
Now that I'm a parent of a three-month old, I am getting quite an education on different styles of parenting. It starts with the nurses in the hospital, who in my case, kept offering to give my son a formula bottle so I could sleep after my C-section. "No way," was my horrified response, because I had already been told by lactation consultants that bottles cause nipple confusion in newborn infants, which would result in my newborn never latching onto the breast. Next, the nice but somewhat militaristic pediatrician informed us that a newborn has fat reserves to be healthy without much food for up to four days, and no one should offer bottles. I realize now, however, that many new mothers take the opportunity to enjoy undisturbed sleep while a nurse feeds their baby with little, if any, ramifications.
Doctors and nurses aren't the only ones with opinions, though. Family and friends chip in with passionate child-rearing wisdom of their own. Pacifier, no pacifier. Huggies or cloth diapers. Blankets or no blankets. Bathe every day or only twice a week. Let him cry or don't. No one seems to tell you when you have the baby that there are, in fact, varying styles of baby or child-rearing, and parents have to decide what works best for them. Instead, new parents become overwhelmed, their insecurities exacerbated. Some authors (usually doctors, when it comes to parenting books) seem to desire this effect in their reader, and cause what I term reader-dependence. Others assume a level of at least a high school education and common sense in their readers, empowering them to make decisions.
When I was in the hospital, I devoured a borrowed copy of The Breastfeeding Book, written by William and Martha Sears. In my vulnerable new-mom state, I wanted to get my hands on as much information as possible. While the focus is on the myriad advantages of breastfeeding for both mom and baby (or toddler, as the Sears family would have it), their philosophy of attachment parenting abounds from many a chapter. (If a reader is hurting for more advice and information, thirteen titles in the Sears library are conveniently suggested on the back cover.) For instance, the Searses believe that the purpose of breastfeeding spans nutrition for a baby to discipline for a toddler. It's acceptable, in their view, to breastfeed a child until she or he is four. Not to mention that the child should share mom and dad's bed until he is one or older so that he knows he is loved and cared for. (It's perfectly understandable if child wakes up several times a night to eat from mom, too.) Parents should carry their babies in a sling and prevent crying altogether. While breastfeeding (which you can probably safely stop without the child feeling abandoned by the time he enters middle school), a mother should avoid giving her child bottles or having other members of the family enjoy feeding the baby. That's solely the realm of the mother, just as waking for night feedings can only be accommodated by mom.
I'm scared to hear what the Searses have to say in The Discipline Book, so I think I'll keep my blood-pressure low and avoid that section of the bookstore.
I have many concerns about this parenting philosophy. The first is that it assumes parents should have no other pleasures or obligations aside from meeting their child's every need before the child even knows she has it. The child is the center of attention in the house, and adults' needs or desires always come second. Having also read bits of The Birth Book, where the Searses fearmonger about the C-section rate and the problems of pain-medication, I recognize that these theories about birthing and parenting only serve to subjugate the mother. The couple is a little passive-agressive, so their subtle messages are at first easy to miss. In my ninth month of pregnancy, anxious about the oncoming labor, I spent an afternoon reading bits of The Birth Book. Then I felt sick at my decision to receive pain medication, because it would indicate that I did not intend to fulfill my natural role. I also began to distrust all doctors, who were really Hyde-like evil butchers rubbing their hands maniacally in the scrub room, eager to cut open women's stomachs. But as far as parenting after delivery goes, the Searses' philosophy isn't great for the father, either, who never gets his wife to himself. A mother who never gets a break from feeding her child, sleeping with her child, or carrying her child is sure to feel weary and exhausted, unless she has a somewhat Freudian obsession with having her nipple sucked. But in Sears World, moms are only too happy to serve, sacrifice, and serve some more. In Real World, moms are probably better moms when they get a break or a full night's sleep once in a while. (And I can't help but mention the danger of co-sleeping that Dr. Sears touts as the optimal sleeping arrangement, and which most pediatricians would advise against.)
On the other side of the parenting turf war are Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam. Apparently there has been a lot of controversy about their book On Becoming Baby Wise, where the authors criticize attachment parenting and suggest letting a baby cry before going to sleep. This book cites The American Academy of Pediatrics as well as the groundbeaking guide for children's sleep, Dr. Marc Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Apparently, it is widely recognized that some children will cry a little upon going to sleep, because they're tired but do not want to miss out on the fun of hanging out with their parents. But since quiet, undisturbed sleep is so important to a developing brain, Ezzo and Bucknam suggest putting the baby on a schedule of feeding and sleeping. Ezzo's philosophy is that a child is part of a family, not its center, and so he or she should get used to delaying gratification and developing independence. Ezzo points out that if a mother always nurses her baby to sleep, the baby can never sleep without his mother present. Similarly, if the mother feeds the baby without discerning whether the child is actually hungry, the mother and her breasts are the sole source of comfort, rather than other members of the family. This inhibits the mother from taking a break, or sleeping, or spending time enjoying her husband's company, which is a priority for Ezzo, since a happy marriage is the solid foundation for happy children.
Ezzo's writing tactics are different from Sears', and this is why I think there is so much division among parents. Ezzo likes the idea of a schedule or routine; he thinks the baby benefits from knowing what to expect as well as the parent (or to be specific, the mother, who in this book seems to be home). This makes a mother's job a smidge easier; she can plan her day and manage her household, rather than be managed by a needy infant. Ezzo asserts that this kind of parenting solves the growing problem of what he calls "me-ism," a child's belief that he or she is the center of the universe and everyone will work to accommodate him or her. But most importantly, Ezzo assumes the parent reading his book has some intelligence. He advocates being flexible. While a parent may have the child on a feeding schedule of every three hours, the child should be fed if hungry a little earlier than that. The parent must assess the situation, and he assumes parents are capable of doing that. Sears, on the other hand, doesn't appear to trust the parent to assess; if the parent assesses wrong or lets a child cry too long, the child will suffer irrevocable emotional damage which we can not yet quantify, but which will surely be there. To Sears, parents are reactionary figures; to Ezzo, parents are the leaders of their household.
In the world of parenting literature, it's important to realize that no one book has all the answers. Parents read these books because they love their children and want what's best, but in the information age, it's almost impossible to figure out which information is helpful and which is just plain bad. This means that sane parents are the savvy ones, those who trust themselves to make wise decisions. The parenting books worth reading, then, are the ones that encourage their readers to think, assess, and recognize the methods that work best for their particular households. In my house, I'm absorbing the information I learned about sleep from Weissbluth, enacting a little bit of Ezzo, throwing Sears out the door, and trying to ignore parenting websites and magazines. They only serve to make me obsessive and want to buy things.
Doctors and nurses aren't the only ones with opinions, though. Family and friends chip in with passionate child-rearing wisdom of their own. Pacifier, no pacifier. Huggies or cloth diapers. Blankets or no blankets. Bathe every day or only twice a week. Let him cry or don't. No one seems to tell you when you have the baby that there are, in fact, varying styles of baby or child-rearing, and parents have to decide what works best for them. Instead, new parents become overwhelmed, their insecurities exacerbated. Some authors (usually doctors, when it comes to parenting books) seem to desire this effect in their reader, and cause what I term reader-dependence. Others assume a level of at least a high school education and common sense in their readers, empowering them to make decisions.
When I was in the hospital, I devoured a borrowed copy of The Breastfeeding Book, written by William and Martha Sears. In my vulnerable new-mom state, I wanted to get my hands on as much information as possible. While the focus is on the myriad advantages of breastfeeding for both mom and baby (or toddler, as the Sears family would have it), their philosophy of attachment parenting abounds from many a chapter. (If a reader is hurting for more advice and information, thirteen titles in the Sears library are conveniently suggested on the back cover.) For instance, the Searses believe that the purpose of breastfeeding spans nutrition for a baby to discipline for a toddler. It's acceptable, in their view, to breastfeed a child until she or he is four. Not to mention that the child should share mom and dad's bed until he is one or older so that he knows he is loved and cared for. (It's perfectly understandable if child wakes up several times a night to eat from mom, too.) Parents should carry their babies in a sling and prevent crying altogether. While breastfeeding (which you can probably safely stop without the child feeling abandoned by the time he enters middle school), a mother should avoid giving her child bottles or having other members of the family enjoy feeding the baby. That's solely the realm of the mother, just as waking for night feedings can only be accommodated by mom.
I'm scared to hear what the Searses have to say in The Discipline Book, so I think I'll keep my blood-pressure low and avoid that section of the bookstore.
I have many concerns about this parenting philosophy. The first is that it assumes parents should have no other pleasures or obligations aside from meeting their child's every need before the child even knows she has it. The child is the center of attention in the house, and adults' needs or desires always come second. Having also read bits of The Birth Book, where the Searses fearmonger about the C-section rate and the problems of pain-medication, I recognize that these theories about birthing and parenting only serve to subjugate the mother. The couple is a little passive-agressive, so their subtle messages are at first easy to miss. In my ninth month of pregnancy, anxious about the oncoming labor, I spent an afternoon reading bits of The Birth Book. Then I felt sick at my decision to receive pain medication, because it would indicate that I did not intend to fulfill my natural role. I also began to distrust all doctors, who were really Hyde-like evil butchers rubbing their hands maniacally in the scrub room, eager to cut open women's stomachs. But as far as parenting after delivery goes, the Searses' philosophy isn't great for the father, either, who never gets his wife to himself. A mother who never gets a break from feeding her child, sleeping with her child, or carrying her child is sure to feel weary and exhausted, unless she has a somewhat Freudian obsession with having her nipple sucked. But in Sears World, moms are only too happy to serve, sacrifice, and serve some more. In Real World, moms are probably better moms when they get a break or a full night's sleep once in a while. (And I can't help but mention the danger of co-sleeping that Dr. Sears touts as the optimal sleeping arrangement, and which most pediatricians would advise against.)
On the other side of the parenting turf war are Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam. Apparently there has been a lot of controversy about their book On Becoming Baby Wise, where the authors criticize attachment parenting and suggest letting a baby cry before going to sleep. This book cites The American Academy of Pediatrics as well as the groundbeaking guide for children's sleep, Dr. Marc Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Apparently, it is widely recognized that some children will cry a little upon going to sleep, because they're tired but do not want to miss out on the fun of hanging out with their parents. But since quiet, undisturbed sleep is so important to a developing brain, Ezzo and Bucknam suggest putting the baby on a schedule of feeding and sleeping. Ezzo's philosophy is that a child is part of a family, not its center, and so he or she should get used to delaying gratification and developing independence. Ezzo points out that if a mother always nurses her baby to sleep, the baby can never sleep without his mother present. Similarly, if the mother feeds the baby without discerning whether the child is actually hungry, the mother and her breasts are the sole source of comfort, rather than other members of the family. This inhibits the mother from taking a break, or sleeping, or spending time enjoying her husband's company, which is a priority for Ezzo, since a happy marriage is the solid foundation for happy children.
Ezzo's writing tactics are different from Sears', and this is why I think there is so much division among parents. Ezzo likes the idea of a schedule or routine; he thinks the baby benefits from knowing what to expect as well as the parent (or to be specific, the mother, who in this book seems to be home). This makes a mother's job a smidge easier; she can plan her day and manage her household, rather than be managed by a needy infant. Ezzo asserts that this kind of parenting solves the growing problem of what he calls "me-ism," a child's belief that he or she is the center of the universe and everyone will work to accommodate him or her. But most importantly, Ezzo assumes the parent reading his book has some intelligence. He advocates being flexible. While a parent may have the child on a feeding schedule of every three hours, the child should be fed if hungry a little earlier than that. The parent must assess the situation, and he assumes parents are capable of doing that. Sears, on the other hand, doesn't appear to trust the parent to assess; if the parent assesses wrong or lets a child cry too long, the child will suffer irrevocable emotional damage which we can not yet quantify, but which will surely be there. To Sears, parents are reactionary figures; to Ezzo, parents are the leaders of their household.
In the world of parenting literature, it's important to realize that no one book has all the answers. Parents read these books because they love their children and want what's best, but in the information age, it's almost impossible to figure out which information is helpful and which is just plain bad. This means that sane parents are the savvy ones, those who trust themselves to make wise decisions. The parenting books worth reading, then, are the ones that encourage their readers to think, assess, and recognize the methods that work best for their particular households. In my house, I'm absorbing the information I learned about sleep from Weissbluth, enacting a little bit of Ezzo, throwing Sears out the door, and trying to ignore parenting websites and magazines. They only serve to make me obsessive and want to buy things.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
