Avery Corman's The Old Neighborhood

I can unequivocally recommend The Old Neighborhood by Avery Corman, published in 1980. It's one of those books that comes as close to perfect as an author can get. I imagine that when Corman wrote it, he finished it and understood that he had written a little masterpiece. Because it really is a little gem, for reasons that are almost too complex to put into words. The feelings the book engenders are those feelings that make one desperate to hang onto those aspects of life that one doesn't understand are truly important in the making of ourselves until we are much older. When we are young we are often so desperate to get away from the town and/or home where we grew up, for reasons that make sense--we need to let go of our childhood in order to become functioning adults--but at the same time we don't understand until much later how much those times formed us and even how much we miss them. 

I lived in the Bronx from 1980 until 1985, in and around the area where Corman's protagonist, Steven Robbins, grew up and eventually left. So I understand why many people did not want to stay there, even though the neighborhoods north of 200th street and the Grand Concourse were safe for the most part. I enjoyed my time there, but I would never have wanted to settle there permanently. By the time I lived there, much of the lower Bronx looked like a war zone, with decrepit and destroyed buildings and debris everywhere. It was not like that in the 1940s. But still, most young people growing up there in the 1940s and 50s wanted to leave the old neighborhood in their quest to become successful. That meant moving to Manhattan. Steven Robbins leaves his humble beginnings behind after being offered an ad-job in California. He becomes a successful advertising man, marrying a beautiful woman--Beverly--along the way, and raising two daughters with her. They live first in California, where she grew up, and then move to New York when he is offered an ad-job he can't refuse. Beverly is no slouch, and she eventually finds her niche in terms of using her art education. They both become successful after a time, but they end up growing apart as a result. It is Beverly who wants out of the marriage; Steven is perfectly willing to put the effort in to save it. But they're at different places in their lives when they divorce; after a summer apart at Beverly's request, she tells Steven that she wants only more success, whereas Steven, who has not been happy with his success in quite a long time, doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life. He just knows two things--that he doesn't want to work in advertising anymore, and that he doesn't want to lose Beverly, but he does.  

Corman writes matter-of-factly and succinctly for the most part, but there are parts that tug at your heartstrings, especially when he describes Steven's relationship with Sam the Bookie and his experiences playing basketball with the locals. Steven finds the happiness he's looking for when he returns to live in the Bronx area where he grew up after he and Beverly divorce. It draws him out of his lethargy and depression. He rediscovers himself and what matters to him. But eventually the people around him there change, die, or move on, and he faces another emotional life upheaval. He ends up moving to Manhattan and opening a collectibles/antiques store called The Old Neighborhood, where one can find items from a distant past. You can go home again or you can carry home within you, Corman says, and you can be happy. But you cannot hang onto the past anymore than you can hang onto a dead relationship or outmoded ideas. Life has a way of changing you, pushing you onward, and that is where the melancholy seeps in. Because we do change and move on, even if we sometimes think we have remained the same person no matter what. We haven't. Perhaps our values remain the same, because they were formed by the upbringing we had. But we are not the same. Even if we return to where we grew up, we cannot recapture what was. That would be the wrong reason for returning. But we can appreciate it for what it meant and means to us, for what it tells us about ourselves and why it makes us happy, we can savor the memories and relationships, and then let it go like we must let go of all things eventually. Life is about stepping out into the unknown, about taking risks, about trying and failing and trying again. Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we don't. Corman understands that, and he has written a lovely story about a man who found himself and what mattered to him at mid-life.  Well-worth reading. 

Book promotion

It's time again for some book promotion. It's a necessary part of being a writer, whether you've published via a publishing house or gone the self-publishing route. From what I understand, many writers who have published their books via large publishing houses find themselves in the same predicament as me--having to promote their books themselves. Publishing houses require it. So even though some of the downsides of self-publishing are that you have to wear all of the job hats yourself, it heartens me to know that had I published in a traditional fashion, I'd still be expected to promote my books. I've learned quite a bit by publishing my books myself, being responsible for, with some few exceptions--writing, editing, designing a book cover (I've gotten excellent help with that), publishing on a digital platform (the excellent Kindle Direct Publishing platform), book marketing and promotion. I've run ads for my books using Amazon and Facebook; I also have a Books by Paula M De Angelis Facebook page. I've also exhibited one of my books at the international annual Frankfurt Book Fair held in Germany. I have a website as well as this blog, and I use both to give updates about my books. 

The first book that I ever published has been the one that has sold the most of all of the books that I've published. The subject matter--passive aggressive leaders--clearly struck a nerve with many readers. It sold very well for a first-time author, from all of the articles I've read about what one can expect to earn from a first book. So that was and still is encouraging. 

My Amazon Author Page: Amazon.com: Paula M. De Angelis: books, biography, latest update

My blog: A New Yorker in Oslo (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com)

My website: PM De Angelis - Updates (paulamdeangelis.com)

To my many readers who read this blog each day, thank you for your support. Please check out my books; you won't be disappointed. 

Wise words from Matt Haig

Apropos some of my previous posts; Matt Haig sums it up beautifully when he writes that 'happiness isn't very good for the economy'. I would go one step further and say that the media is invested in depressing us. Why? I would guess it has to do with ratings, because the more we watch, the more brainwashed we become, and then they can sell us whatever world view they wish to push on us. They have an agenda for sure. On social media, it has to do with clicks that are given to each article posted. All of the clickbait stories bring in revenue for the advertisers. Again, we’re back to money. How cynical the world has become.

Matt Haig writes:

"The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn't very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more?

How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind.

To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business".

(from his book: Reasons to Stay Alive) 

What Erich Fromm wrote about extremely narcissistic people

I am currently reading The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil by the psychoanalyst and social psychologist Erich Fromm. Published in 1964, it describes his view of what he calls the syndrome of decay and its opposite, the syndrome of growth. The syndrome of decay is comprised of extreme forms of the following: necrophilia (love of and fascination with death); narcissism; and incestuous symbiosis. When these are combined to excessive degrees in a person, he defines that person as evil. Hitler is his primary example, but he also lists others--Caligula, Nero, and Stalin, among others. 

He writes:

There are other examples in history of megalomaniac leaders who 'cured' their narcissism by transforming the world to fit it; such people must also try to destroy all critics, since they cannot tolerate the threat whcih the voice of sanity constitutes for them.........we see that their need to find believers, to transform reality so that it fits their narcissism, and to destroy all critics, is so intense and so desperate precisely because it is an attempt to prevent the outbreak of insanity. Paradoxically, the element of insanity in such leaders makes them also successful. It gives them that certainty and freedom from doubt which is so impressive to the average person. Needless to say, this need to change the world and to win others to share in one's ideas and delusions requires also talents and gifts which the average person, psychotic or non-psychotic, lacks. 

In other words, political leaders who behave like this have a desperate need for their followers to share in their beliefs and delusions. They are never cured of their narcissism, and it's doubtful that they understand that they are narcissists. They simply mold the world around them to fit their brand of it. Their followers reward these types of leaders for their lack of self-doubt (total self-assurance, arrogance), their solipsism (self-centeredness--they are the centers of the universe), and their xenophobia (in this context, fear of anyone who doesn't share the leaders' beliefs, also parochialism, insularity, intolerance). 

Sound familiar? Look at some of our current world leaders and would-be leaders. Again I ask, how did we get to this point? Perhaps the better question is why. Why did we get to this point? Why do so many people want to abdicate personal responsibility in order to follow these types of leaders, to become little more than toadies? I can only conclude that following such leaders is preferable to thinking for oneself and to taking charge of one's own life. It's easier to place one's decision-making in the hands of someone who promises you complete and utter security and certainty (a fantasy), who promises you the past (also a fantasy), and who promises you that nothing has to change--lack of change and growth. Lack of change and growth is important to those who do not want to focus on personal development or bettering themselves, which involves change and growth. 

Fromm's book is worth reading. He's a good writer who can take complex ideas and clarify them for his reading public. When we were young adults, his book The Art of Loving, was very popular. I remember reading it then, but I never ventured further with his other books until now. Reading The Heart of Man is helping me to understand the current political situation. It may not provide solutions, but it's good to know what we're dealing with and what's at stake. 

More books that influenced and changed my ways of thinking

I discovered C.S. Lewis when I was in my early teens, when I read his sci-fi adventure series The Space Trilogy (aka The Cosmic Trilogy), which was comprised of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. The discovery of Lewis was for me a true gift, because I later discovered that he also wrote books having to do with spiritual themes and the difficulties of life. He wrote The Screwtape Letters, which is one of the books (published in 1942) that has stayed with me to this day. It is a satirical Christian apologetic novel dealing with the relationship between two demons, Screwtape, an experienced senior demon and the head demon of Hell, and Wormwood, an inexperienced junior demon who is trying to recruit his first soul to Hell. Wormwood is schooled by Screwtape via a series of letters in which Screwtape tries to impart his wisdom as to how to tempt humans such that they end in Hell. The descriptions of the landscape of Hell and of who is found there and why, made a huge impression on me. I remember reading it and being amazed by the genius of Lewis' writing. It is a novel that will definitely make you think about the ideas of sin, hell, heaven, temptation, evil, and the actual sins that humans commit that threaten their souls. 

A Grief Observed is another book written by C.S.Lewis, published in 1961, following the death of his wife Joy Davidman from cancer. It is an honest, raw exploration and description of his grief and despair at losing someone he loved very much. It details his doubts about his faith and his anger at God about losing her, as well as his understanding that he is but one of many who has suffered in this way. I read it when I was in my early twenties; by that time, I was no stranger to the realities of illness and death of loved ones. It is a book that I recommend to others who have lost loved ones to illness and death. Lewis wrote many other excellent books dealing with spiritual themes, among them Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, The Four Loves, and The Problem of Pain. I recommend them all. 

My mid-twenties brought with them major life changes, none of which were particularly happy. But as often is the case, the painful occurrences in life are the ones that help to bring about necessary change, and that was the case for me. But before that happened, I experienced a lot of doubt, anxiety, and internal conflict. I don't remember how I found out about The Meaning of Anxiety by Rollo May, published in 1950, perhaps it was via my father who thought highly of his writing. All I know is that the book was immensely helpful in changing my way of thinking about anxiety; it made me realize that anxiety preceded change and that it was part of the process of change, not necessarily something to be avoided. May was not talking about crippling anxiety, rather about a kind of free-floating anxiety that is part of the human condition. Reading his book was a life-changing experience for me. 

I discovered Henry James when I was in my twenties. His novel, The Portrait of a Lady, published in 1881, is the story of Isabel Archer, a free-spirited young American woman who inherits a lot of money and who subsequently finds herself trapped in a prison of her own making--marriage to an egotistical and mean-spirited man who loves her only for her money. Her suffering is compounded by the fact that there were two men who really did love her and whom she turned down as suitors, choosing instead a man who did not love her. It is an interesting novel in that it reflects James' exploration of the psyche of a young woman who loses her independence gradually and who becomes a pawn in the schemes of her husband and his mistress. His description of her marriage to this man will make your blood run cold; I have never come across a better description of a bad marriage, and this from a man (James) who never married. Recommended reading. 

When we were young, there were some books that we were told we could not read or that were kept from us because they dealt with adult themes (mostly sexual in nature). Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H.Lawrence was one of those books. It was first published privately in 1928 in Italy; after publication of the unexpurgated version in England in 1960, it was considered obscene for its frank description of the sexual relationship between a married upper-class young woman and the gamekeeper on her husband's estate. Her husband had become paralyzed from the waist down following a war injury (that occurred after they were married) and subsequently would not pursue any sexual relationship with her. He did encourage her to discretely take a lover so that she could produce an heir for the family, something she was initially reluctant to do. I did not find the book to be obscene in any way, unless you get hung up on the language used between the lovers. It was clear to me why the book was considered so groundbreaking in its presentation of sexuality. Lawrence was clearly interested in depicting a sexual relationship between a man and a woman that was physically pleasurable and spiritually satisfying. His viewpoint was that this type of relationship was possible and desirable, and that it formed the basis of real love. Not surprisingly, that view did not sit well with the moral gatekeepers at that time. Some aspects of the novel are controversial, but in my opinion, it is not the frank sexuality portrayed, rather the mores of the time--encouraging a wife to take a lover to produce an heir, the refusal of the husband to engage in any sort of sexual activity with his wife so that she could become pregnant, the physical (and ultimately emotional) abandonment of the wife by the husband, and her eventual abandonment of him. Both plodded on in a loveless dead marriage until the wife could no longer do so. It is an amazingly liberating novel to read, even by today's standards. 

Book review--The Beast and the Bethany books (1-3)

The Beast and the Bethany books (1-3) are books for pre-teens that don't disappoint in terms of their subject matter. Vainglorious egoist Ebenezer Tweezer has taken care of and served the huge beast in his attic with different kinds of food for over five hundred years. The beast has rewarded him with all of the material comforts one can think of as well with an elixir that keeps him young. But when the beast decides it wants to eat a child, Ebenezer finds himself in a bind, both morally and practically. Ebenezer goes on a search for a suitable child, and when he meets the bad-tempered orphan Bethany (that not even the orphanage wants), his dilemma is solved, or so he thinks. But when she comes to live with him, all hell breaks loose. A rude, destructive Bethany and an evil beast in the attic of Ebenezer's house can only lead to trouble. A lot of trouble. 

The author Jack Meggitt-Phillips has quite the imagination, and the books are easy to read, much as were JK Rowling's Harry Potter series of books. The pages just fly by. They are also surprising books given the world we live in at present; the beast decides it wants to eat a child after having developed a taste for humans. And before it gets around to Bethany, there are several humans that disappear down its gullet. But Bethany has other plans, once she finds out what's in store for her. Books 1-3 are a fun roller coaster ride into a strange world, where people (and parrots) travel via puddle portals, where rare parrots sing beautifully and lay eggs that contain all kinds of food, where material items vomited out by the beast have minds of their own. The author has been compared to Roald Dahl, which is apt, but I also found myself thinking of Neil Gaiman's books for children/young adults (The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Coraline). Book 4 remains, and from what I can judge of the ending for Book 3, we are moving toward a beast that has begun to develop a conscience after having spent time in prison and having its memory erased; it has begun to want to be a good beast. That will be an interesting ride. 

Updates on my blog--A New Yorker in Oslo and on my book--A Town and A Valley: Growing Up in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley

Last month this blog had almost 41,000 visitors, most of them Americans. That is the highest number of visitors ever; I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of visitors. Thank you to everyone who has checked out the blog, read a few posts, and enjoyed what they've read. I've been told by several people that it's not possible to leave a comment on the individual posts; that's not true. If you'd like to leave a comment, you can. Please do, I enjoy hearing from readers. 

My book, A Town and A Valley--Growing Up in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley, was purchased by the Warner Library in Tarrytown and can be found in the Local History section. It has also been purchased by the Historical Society in Tarrytown. For those readers who would like to know more about the area of New York State where I was born and where I grew up, the book might be of interest to you. It can be purchased on Amazon: 

A Town and A Valley: Growing Up in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley: De Angelis, Paula Mary: 9798842022946: Amazon.com: Books

and also on Barnes & Noble: 

A Town and A Valley: Growing Up in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley by Paula Mary De Angelis, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Generosity of spirit

I recently published the paperback version of my book, A Town and A Valley: Growing Up in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley, and have been trying to promote it, along with another book that I published last May (The Gifts of A Garden). Both books are available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org, among other online booksellers. 

Publishing a book is only the start of the huge job that looms ahead--marketing a book. Writing a book pales by comparison, although it is the most important job that the writer can do. But getting your book out there, getting it seen and read by others, that's important too. After all, writers write books that they hope people will read, even if the number of people who read them is small. What matters is that you've shared something you wanted to share, with others. There isn't always a huge audience for all books, nor should there be necessarily. But if no one sees your book at all, that can be frustrating and ultimately creates feelings of futility concerning writing. 

I've often written about the challenge of being creative and the internal tug-of-war between wanting to share the results and being afraid to do so. Sharing means exposing yourself not only to normal criticism (which is fine), but to destructive criticism on the part on internet trolls. There are so many of the latter whose sole aim is to tear down, not build up. But ultimately wanting to share wins out over the fear. Don't hide your light under a bushel basket, to paraphrase the biblical saying. I've interpreted this saying to mean that one should not hide one's creativity from others, if you truly have something to share. But goodness, kindness, and generosity can be substituted for creativity. If we are good people, we are asked to step up to the plate. And so it goes with talent as well. If God has given you a particular talent, make the most of it and share the results.

However, even if you haven't hidden your talent, even if you've spent a lot of time marketing your book on social media and personal websites, etc. it still isn't enough. You can't do the job completely alone. Authors need help from readers who liked an author's book and who post a positive comment about it on Amazon or Goodreads or social media. That happened to me recently--a rare and treasured experience of generosity of spirit on the part of a man I don't know who had read my book and who happens to be the moderator of a Facebook page about Tarrytown & Sleepy Hollow. I messaged him to ask if I could post a little notice on the page that I had published my book about Tarrytown, and he wrote back to say yes. So I posted it, and he followed up with a photo of the book's front cover and some amazing words about the book and about me. He wrote that 'Paula is too modest. She is a fabulous author and this book is great'. He also wrote 'Such great memories in your book'.

His generosity of spirit and his words made me happy. If only people truly understood how words can influence your feelings and thoughts, about yourself and others. I have some wonderful friends and loved ones who read my books; Jean, Trond, and Brendan (who passed away a few years ago) are/were my most faithful supporters and have read everything I've written. Knowing that they like my books has given me the motivation to keep writing over the past years. The praise from the Facebook moderator likewise gives me needed motivation to continue writing. 

I've often written about the world of academia and its lack of generosity of spirit. Very few people wish their colleagues well; that has been my experience at least. The competition for grant funding is fierce and those who 'win' are often ignored by those who 'lose'. I used to congratulate those who had gotten funding; after all, they did a good job and were recognized for it. In all my forty-odd years of research work, I've been congratulated perhaps twice when I got funding, once by someone who didn't think I was good enough to get funding, the other by a former boss. Among peers, almost never, and I have no idea why. I stopped caring after a while. It costs nothing to open your mouth to praise someone else and to wish him or her well. But that type of generosity of spirit is rare, at least in my experience.

More generally, how many times have you experienced wanting to share a small success or happiness, e.g. a particularly nice photo that you have taken, only to hear from the other person you showed it to that they have taken photos that are just as nice. They veer the conversation over to themselves or to something that they have done and for which they want praise. They don't want any attention focused on you. It's a spirit-crushing feeling when you realize that you are the recipient of envious and petty behavior. So I am grateful to those people in my life who have shown me that generosity of spirit when I have shared my creative pursuits with them. I am grateful for those who wish me well and who can celebrate the small successes that I occasionally experience without their feeling envious or resentful. I pay it forward and for the most part always have. I can say this much about myself; I am not afraid to let other people know that they've done a great job. So it's nice to hear from others when I've done a great job as well. 

The Gifts of a Garden is available on Amazon

My latest book, available on Amazon in three formats: e-book, hardcover, and paperback. 

The Gifts of a Garden: De Angelis, Paula Mary: 9798435180572: Amazon.com: Books

(front and back covers shown; design by Paloma Ayala) 

Men who leave and men who stay

We're back in Elena Ferrante territory today. Apologies to her for paraphrasing one of the book titles in her Neapolitan quadrilogy--Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. I finished Days of Abandonment today; it was written in 2002, prior to the Neapolitan quadrilogy. The latter books are more riveting than Days of Abandonment, but Days of Abandonment has its riveting moments as well.

Men don't come off very well in Ferrante's books. They are mostly sexual predators at heart, constantly looking at other women, faithless, disloyal, and uncaring opportunists. They are not child-friendly nor are they really interested in family life. As Olga in Days of Abandonment says to Mario, who has abandoned her and their two children for a woman almost half his age (Carla), "you are an opportunist and a traitor". Which he is. Unfortunately he is not much more than that as written by Ferrante. The book is really about Olga and her breakdown after he leaves her. She must cope with all of the mess while taking care of her two children Gianni and Ilaria and the family dog Otto. She doesn't do a very good job of any of it and she knows it. Her identity unravels and she is forced to do the work of finding out who she is at the age of thirty-eight. She doesn't particularly like what she sees--a woman who gave up her writing career and her identity to marry Mario and have children. The roles of wife and mother became her identities. She thought her marriage was happy; perhaps it was. Even if marriages are happy, one partner can always be unfaithful and stay in the marriage, or be unfaithful and leave. Mario does both, actually. He starts his affair with Carla when she is still a teenager and leaves Olga for her when Carla turns twenty. He closes the door on one life and begins another. He does not tell Olga where he is or with whom he is living. She doesn't even get to know where he is living and does not find out about Carla until midway through the book. And then all the pieces come together for her. The description of her breakdown is disturbing and uncomfortable, perhaps as it should be, but it dragged on too long for my taste. Otto dies after being poisoned with something he ate that was laced with strychnine while Olga was out walking him in the park. Her son Gianni becomes ill with a high fever. She feels like she is falling apart. But this experience made its point. 'The only way out is through'. By the time Olga has gotten through it, she discovers she no longer loves Mario. It's as though she has stepped outside her own life and become an observer. She watches as her children visit Mario and meet Carla, she listens as they praise Carla, she eventually deals with Mario adult to adult, she reclaims her identity as a writer, she listens to him complain that his children will ruin his relationship with Carla, and she finds that she really doesn't care about any of it. She understands that Mario is an opportunist and a traitor and tells him that. She no longer needs him. In other words, she grew up. She grew out of a stale banal marriage that her husband abandoned years ago in secret. She stepped out from under Mario's shadow. The patriarchal dominance that has ruled her life for so long is gone. She finds that she does not want to date or be social or be with other men, at least not if she has no say in how these events are to happen. But eventually she starts an affair with the older musician who lives below her and that is how the book ends. She is nearly forty and she is writing again. The rest of it is just the life around her in all its messiness and discomfort. She learns to live with both. Days of Abandonment is an angry book, but the anger is directed both at Mario and at herself for giving up so much of herself. No one asked her to do that; she chose the prison of the wife/mother identity and became entrapped. She could have continued writing, she could have insisted that Mario help more with the children. So many things she should have done, but she didn't. She tries to understand why Mario left her, and discovers that she really didn't know him. She constructed the idea of a happy marriage around them; his idea of what their marriage was did not seem to interest her. Or if it did, she ignored his attempts to break free. But in any case, nothing she could have done would have kept Mario from straying. He was a man who leaves, not one who stays. 

There is autobiographical content in her novels to be sure. Exactly where, in which novels, remains a mystery and that's fine with me. Ferrante writes under a pseudonym for reasons that only she alone knows. This places most of the focus on the stories, where it should be. But after having read a number of her books--the Neapolitan quadrilogy, Troubling Love, Days of Abandonment, and The Lying Life of Adults, it seems to me that she has dealt with a number of emotional and psychological issues (traumas?) that have preoccupied her throughout her life, through her writing. Men cannot be trusted to be faithful since they leave their wives for other (often younger) women. Love is mostly about sexual bonding and less about loyalty and empathy. Mothers and daughters have volatile relationships; mothers love their daughters but are also jealous of them, particularly if the daughters have the chance to pursue higher education while they did not. The relationships between mothers and children generally are also precarious; they are fraught with frustration, weariness, irritation and real anger in addition to the maternal bond of love. Ferrante makes it clear that children change everything in a marriage, for better and/or for worse. Her ambivalence about the roles of wife and mother is clear throughout her writing. She has no qualms about bringing up the 'worse'--being chained to these small beings who demand attention and love, the banality of childcare, the reduction of woman's role to wife and mother and not much else. Ferrante is an Italian novelist but her novels are international bestsellers, which is illustrative of just how relevant her themes are on a global level. The interesting thing is that Days of Abandonment was written in 2002; it could have been written in the 1970s, when the women's movement was dealing with many of the same issues--women's identities, self-realization, marriage versus single life, having children or not. It tells me that the issues that women face now are not so much different than those they faced in the 1970s or those that our mothers faced in their generation. Men left their wives and children back in the 1950s and 1960s too, for many of the same reasons as they do now. If you ask them directly, they will answer selfishly. They want a woman who is sexually exciting, who is interested in sex. They want a woman who pays attention to them. What they want is often at odds with what they get from marriage and family, where there is often limited time for both sex and personal attention. And so it goes. As long as couples have children and children become the focus of marriage, there will always be men who leave and men who stay. And perhaps women who leave and women who stay. Perhaps it's worth repeating that one should choose one's life partner carefully and marry a person who is faithful and loving. But how do you know that when you marry? How can you be sure of how the future will turn out? You can't, so you do the best you can and commit to the choice you make. How it turns out is often the stuff of novels. 

Pushing back against the hype

I have always had a deep mistrust of anything that is hyped, be it a book, a movie, a song or a lifestyle trend. It doesn’t matter what; whenever ‘experts’ use their pulpits to push ad nauseam this or that wonderful book/film/song/lifestyle trend, my hackles go up. I don’t mind reading what professional reviewers of books, movies, and music have to say, but frankly, as I’ve gotten older, I no longer really trust what they have to say. They have a lot invested in keeping the status quo going, and that means promoting the same modern authors, movie directors, and musicians over and over.

Take books alone. Whenever I read about the new ‘hot’ book being pushed by professional reviewers for the mainstream media (often in top-notch publications), I find it on Amazon and read the ‘verified purchase’ reviews submitted by ordinary readers, not those of the publishing houses, media houses, established reviewers or journalists invested in keeping the status quo going. I read the 5-star reviews and the 1- and 2-star reviews. Many people dismiss the latter as the rantings of disgruntled or envious individuals, and while that may be the case sometimes, in my experience it is not the case most of the time. In the same way that not all the 5-star reviews are believable; you get the feeling that this is too good to be true. The 1- and 2-star reviewers are surprisingly honest when they write ‘I couldn’t get into this novel no matter how hard I tried’, or ‘I got to the halfway point and couldn’t get any further’, or ‘I’ve read other books by this writer that are very good, but this one missed the mark’. And so on. I read those reviews because that’s often how I feel when I am reading a book that was pushed on me by the media or by literary pundits. I think to myself, I am going to write a review of this book that I don’t like, even if most readers did like it. And sometimes I do. I mostly post them on Goodreads, but sometimes on Amazon as well. Nowadays it’s difficult to push back against the hype, but sometimes you have to, and I say that as a writer that has gotten reviews that both like and don’t like what I’ve written. As long as the less-than-stellar reviews are not rude or unprofessional, I accept them as being part and parcel of being a writer. You can’t win them all, but of course you hope for stellar reviews. But accepting the negative ones about my own work means that I am also free to write about what I dislike when it concerns others' work. I am free to be negative about a book/movie/song as long as I remain polite and professional about it.

I can’t tell you how many Kindle books I’ve downloaded to my iPad to read over the past decade or so. I persist with some books that I simply cannot abide, merely to finish them so that I can have an opinion if the book comes up in conversation with someone. But I have given up on two or three books in my lifetime; I found them either so boring as to put me to sleep or so chaotic and unintelligible that I simply didn’t want to waste my time trying to sort out the plot or the lack of one. I lost interest, plain and simple.

I am currently reading Joan Didion’s works, and have gotten through Play It As It Lays (fiction) and Slouching Towards Bethlehem (essays). I’m halfway through another collection of essays The White Album. I have not prioritized reading her books earlier. Joan Didion is considered to be one of America’s great writers, an icon as it were. She spent years as a journalist documenting an era in American life (the 1960s and 1970s) where everything seemed topsy-turvy, where conservative values were tossed out the window, albeit by a minority of the population, in favor of free love and a hippie lifestyle. She writes about the hippie lifestyle in California at that time, as well as the privileged life in Hollywood where anyone who was ‘anyone’ hobnobbed with actors, actresses, celebrities, movie directors, agents, and wanna-bes. Her writing is permeated by a sense of anxiety about the meaninglessness of life. She and her husband wrote screenplays for major movies and were quite successful at it. It all sounds glamorous but it isn’t and wasn’t; she makes sure that you know that. She managed to remain outside of all of the nonsense and hype for the most part, documenting it as the keen observer she was during those years. She’s a very good writer, I'll grant that, but what she writes about holds very little appeal for me. I’ve never really wondered about or been interested in most of the lives or topics she documents and I’m not sure what that says about me. I grew up in the era she writes about, but in New York and not California. I remember a lot of unrest and political turmoil from that time, but her presentation of California creates a feeling of hopelessness. It seems to be a wasteland of sorts. I did not like Play It As It Lays because of those feelings of hopelessness and nihilism. What was the real point of the book? It portrays a wasted life in a wasteland filled with wasted people who are wasting their lives, living in a bubble where they think they are so important. We all know they are not. Perhaps that is her point, to show that these people are lost. If so, she succeeds, but I don’t find anything really uplifting in her writing. It could be due to her desire to remain detached, I’m not sure. Her writing comes across as rather flat emotionally, indicative of a depressive state of mind. Adam Kirsch wrote in The New York Sun in 2006 that “She always seems to be writing on the brink of a catastrophe so awful that her only available response is to withdraw into a kind of autism.” That is a very good description of her writing, in my opinion. For all the chronicling of her life and the lives of others, she remains an enigma and that is rather strange considering that she often writes about herself and her life. Perhaps that is not enough to discover who you really are. As a writer, you can hide behind your descriptions of yourself, especially if you don't want to be known. Perhaps the best explanation for why she is who she is can be found in her essay On the Morning After the Sixties in the collection of essays The White Album. She writes 

"We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate. To have assumed that particular fate so early was the peculiarity of my generation. I think now that we were the last generation to identify with adults. That most of us have found adulthood just as morally ambiguous as we expected it to be falls perhaps into the category of prophecies self-fulfilled: I am simply not sure. I am telling you only how it was. The mood of Berkeley in those years was one of mild but chronic “depression...Only one person I knew at Berkeley later discovered an ideology, dealt himself into history, cut himself loose from both his own dread and his own time. A few of the people I knew at Berkeley killed themselves not long after."

The problem for me is that it's hard to tell if this mood describes many people at Berkeley during that era in American life or just a few. When you are depressed you have a tendency to 'see' that in the world around you. She is honest in saying that perhaps she doesn’t really know what she thinks or feels about a particular situation. Perhaps she says it best when she describes herself as a writer but not an intellectual, not a thinker. When I googled the definition of an intellectual, I found that she is literally correct. The formal definition of an intellectual is ‘a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society, and thus gains authority as a public intellectual’ (Wikipedia). Didion observes and writes about what she sees in society in a coolly detached way, but she does not reflect very much upon her observations, which is what an intellectual might have done. She is an observer and a reporter. I miss the reflections and critical thinking. But that’s me. She is an example of a writer that has been praised to the hilt but one that I cannot really relate to no matter how hard I’ve tried, and I've read two essay collections and one novel by her. I find myself just wanting to be finished with the essays in The White Album. I know that their essences will not stay with me because they have had very little impact on me. 

Other authors who have been hyped in recent years and whose books I really did not like/did nothing for me are Sally Rooney (Normal People), Camille Pagán (I’m Fine and Neither Are You), Andre Aciman (Call Me by Your Name), Dana Spiotta (Innocents and Others), Anna Burns (Milkman), Michael Crichton (Prey), Teresa Driscoll (I Am Watching You), Camilla Läckberg (Gullburet—The Golden Cage), Charles Lambert (The Children’s Home), Matt Marinovich (The Winter Girl), Ian McEwan (Machines Like Me), Stephenie Meyer (Twilight #1), Sayaka Murata (Convenience Store Woman), and Scott Sigler (Infected #1), among others. These are modern novelists, but I am not a huge fan either of some of the ‘classic’ writers who were pushed on us as teenagers and young adults. I think of J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Philip Roth (any of his books), and others. We had to reflect on the symbolism in some of these books and write about it for class; these books did nothing for me and I found analyses of them tedious.

You can agree with me or not; it’s fine. That’s what makes the world an interesting place—the heterogeneity of individual opinions. You can say that I have eclectic taste, and you might be right. You can say that I’m opinionated at times, and that would be true. But I’m not going to follow the crowds running headlong to overpraise overhyped writers. A number of the modern writers I’ve listed in the previous paragraph are mediocre in my opinion. But they enjoy a huge following and they sell a lot of books. There’s no accounting for taste. But I do know what I like and don’t like. Writing about what I don’t like helps me push back against the hype. It’s becoming more necessary for each day that passes.

 

Deception and the end justifies the means

Last night I watched the Netflix film The Woman in the Window with Amy Adams as a pill-popping, wine-drinking agoraphobic female psychologist who lives alone in a big house in Manhattan, except for a tenant who rents the basement apartment from her. The story revolves around her trying to get the police, her tenant, and a few others to believe that she has witnessed a murder in the apartment building across the way from hers. It's based on the book of the same name by A.J. Finn (pseudonym for Daniel Mallory). I haven't read the book, so I cannot comment on whether the film remained completely true to the book, or whether the film is better than the book, or vice versa. 

As I usually do once I finish a book or a movie (or both), I googled them to read more about them and the author. One thing led to another, and I came upon an excellent article in The New Yorker (A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions | The New Yorker) about the author (book editor turned novelist) and his climb to the top of the publishing world. His debut novel, which was published in 2018, is The Woman in the Window, and it made him a millionaire. So far, so good, I thought. Kudos to those debut novelists whose books become best-sellers. It's the hope and dream of most novelists, however, most of them never realize the dream. Very few novelists write best-sellers. That's a statistical fact. 

But as I read further, I realized that for this author, the end justified the means. He used every means possible to get to the top, to become famous, to become a best-selling author. He essentially lied his way to the top and used the people he needed to use to get there. He lied about being sick, about family members being sick/dead, about his education/degrees, and his work experience. He made himself out to be much more important than he was. Some of you may be shrugging your shoulders saying, so what, many people do that. If you read the article, you'll realize that most people don't do what he did, and if they did, we'd be living in a very difficult world where you wouldn't be able to trust anyone, essentially. I don't know why he did what he did, or if he even understands that what he did hurt people, but if he does, he knows that what he did was morally questionable and wrong. When confronted, he ended up blaming some of his behavior on being bipolar. I don't know enough about bipolar disorder to comment on it one way or another, so I leave that to the experts. I do know something about narcissistic personality disorder, and this type of behavior is not uncommon in those who have that disorder. So I don't know. What I do know is that it struck me while reading the article how little the publishing world polices or punishes their own. And when their mistakes catch up with them, they go the 'no comment' route in order to avoid the bad publicity and embarrassment. 

It also struck me that the publishing world rewards their own. Editors know other editors and suggest books for perusal and publication. They take care of their own. It's who you know that moves you ahead. A.J. Finn the editor turned novelist may have gotten ahead just fine without all the lying; there were plenty of people willing to move mountains for him. The publishing world is another elitist profession that protects its elitism by keeping the common people--average ordinary authors--at bay. Traditional publishers do not accept manuscripts directly from authors; most go through literary agents who wield a lot of power in terms of acceptance/rejection of manuscripts. They work together with publishers to keep out the 'riff-raff'. It is strange to realize that most authors will never enjoy what A.J. Finn enjoyed--editors willing to promote his book. Most authors who behave honestly and who follow the traditional rules of publishing will never see their book published by a traditional publisher. 

This is why I am all for the rise of independent publishers and self-publishing, at the expense of traditional publishers. Yes, the market is now flooded with sub-optimal books by first-time self-published authors who think they are great authors, but eventually they find out that they are not, because no matter what they do, their books don't sell. It's hard to be a little fish in a huge ocean. Absolutely no one will notice you. And that is the current state of affairs for most self-published authors. But there is also a lot of poor writing published by traditional publishers; many books promoted by traditional publishers are just garbage. The same holds true for vanity publishers, who promise first-time authors the moon--a best-selling novel and a film script based on their books. Vanity publishers have no qualms about taking 20,000 dollars from authors to 'help them publish their books, to distribute them globally, and to initially promote them on social media'. These are all activities that the author can do himself or herself for less than 50 dollars on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP); one need only use KDP to self-publish a book, arrange for global distribution, and sell the book on Amazon. I wrote a post about self-publishing already in 2010 (A New Yorker in Oslo: Publish Your Book using CreateSpace (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com); just as an update, CreateSpace eventually became KDP for those who are interested. Once the book is out for sale on Amazon, it's easy to tweet about it or share the link on social media. So what are vanity publishers using the 20,000 dollars for? They're getting rich from taking advantage of first-time authors who don't know any better. They're also criminals for lying to authors. 

One sad thing about getting older is finding out how many people lie, or are willing to lie to get ahead, to make money, or to be successful. There are people willing to sell out their relationships and family in order to make money. There are people who were perhaps willing to cheat or be dishonest when they were young, who became cheaters and dishonest people as adults. It's disconcerting to read about them, and even more disconcerting to know them personally. I find it sad that most professions are built on the backs of honest hard-working people who never really found out how or even that they were taken advantage of until they were older, and by then the only feelings they can feel are disappointment and sadness. It's too late to do anything about it. It's hard not to feel sad when you realize that in many professions--academia, publishing, business, journalism, medicine--there are those who don't mind shamming others, who don't mind lying and cheating their way to the top, who don't mind stepping on others or holding them back, and who don't care what others think of them. Perhaps that is the way of the world, and perhaps that has always been the way of the world. Nevertheless, it is still quite jarring.  

Elena Ferrante's The Lying Life of Adults

I begin Elena Ferrante's novels with a mixture of fascination and dread. Fascination, because everything I've read by her has gripped me. Her novels are riveting and her words flow on the pages, moving me along and immersing me in her Italy, her Naples, and her family dramas that she has carefully constructed. Dread, because I know that this immersion will stir up the mud in my own life and memory; it will murky the waters that I think are so clear, and yet when I dive deeper, I know they aren't.

How is it that one person, one writer, can speak to me and to so many people at the same time? She has an uncanny way of getting right to the core of what drives families apart and what keeps them together. She describes the behaviors, utterances and dramas that comprise the push and pull of family life, mostly without judging them, and that is where the fear comes in. Because you know that the behaviors she writes about are real and often violent to the spirit and body. Sometimes she judges them, but only within the contexts of her characters, the ones who want to escape the oppression, claustrophobia, and violence of family life. She allows them to judge, and we follow their attempts to escape, which are seemingly successful, but we know that somewhere down the line, the past will knock on their door and demand its due. At some point, they will face the same situations that they ran from, and come face to face with their early selves—the ones who said that they would never tolerate this or that behavior, the ones who said that they would never behave like their parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. They experience the human frailties, deceptions, betrayals, frustrations, rage, and even violence (psychological and physical) that can be part of family life. The characters in her books are flawed human beings, like we all are. Perhaps that is part of her appeal. She explains some parts of our lives for us; I know she does that for me. I finish her novels thinking, yes, that helps to explain this or that family member’s behavior, or utterances, or bizarre points of view.

Everyone lies in Ferrante’s novels. Adults lie, but so do children and teenagers. The Lying Life of Adults is really the story of how teenagers become adults who lie to themselves and to others. It is the story of how we become the adults we profess to hate. Giovanna, the main character who is a teenager, is acutely aware of the hypocritical behavior of the adults in her life. She has two friends she confides in, Angela and Ida, the daughters of her parents’ friends Mariano and Costanza. Her attempt to develop a relationship with her hated aunt Vittoria, her father’s sister, has far-reaching repercussions for her parents, her parents’ friends, involved children, and her own life. Vittoria is a destructive force of nature. She is (presumably) the opposite of Giovanna’s educated, intellectual and refined father, Andrea, who hates his coarse uneducated sister (the feeling is mutual), and yet, that is what Ferrante wants to show us, that at their core, both Vittoria and Andrea are the same. They are egotists and liars, they think nothing of destroying others’ lives by wanting what they want (Vittoria wanted Enzo--the husband of her friend Margherita, and Andrea wanted Costanza—the wife of his friend Mariano). They justify their betrayals of spouses and families and lie to themselves about how ‘noble’ their intentions are. Nella, Andrea’s wife, is crushed by his betrayal and their eventual divorce, but tries to live her life following the divorce as best she can. Mariano, who has cheated on Costanza often, is also lost; eventually Nella and Mariano find each other despite Nella’s protests to the contrary. Giovanna is witness to all of these happenings. At the same time, she becomes friends with Vittoria (who worshipped Enzo), Margherita, and Margherita’s children (Corrado, Tonino, and Giuliana). Vittoria dominates Margherita and her children’s lives; she tells them how to live and what to do and not to do. The relationship between Vittoria and Margherita is strange and one I found hard to understand, but for the purposes of the book, I accepted it. But I know very few people in real life who would have become friends with their husbands’ mistresses.

Vittoria brought to the surface memories of my father’s eldest sister Carmela, who was also not much-liked in my family. Unlike Vittoria, she was considered to be good-looking; she was a refined woman with many intellectual and cultural interests. But she was a drama queen, and no family gathering ever ended pleasantly when she was present. She was unhappily married to one of my father’s childhood friends, which didn’t help matters. My father probably felt pressured to take sides, and he took his sister’s side against his friend. My mother and my aunt did not get along at all; my mother found her domineering, controlling, and nosy. Carmela and her husband eventually divorced; she lived alone afterward until she died, but did have a lover whom she could have married but chose not to. After one too many unpleasant family gatherings when we were children, my father and mother decided not to see her anymore, and by extension, we were not to see her either. After my father died, my sister and I made an effort to re-establish contact with her. We found her to be a decent person, but of course by that time she was old and in a different frame of mind. I think she was happy to see us again, but our lives were busy and we didn’t see her often. She died eight years after my father.

I could relate to those feelings that Ferrante describes—remaining loyal to parents while wondering why we all couldn’t just get along, and feeling guilty for wanting to have some kind of relationship with my aunt. My aunt made an effort to remember our birthdays with gifts and cards, but they were never well-received, and eventually she ceased to make the effort. I remember when my grandmother died, I was around twelve or so. Frustrations and anger came to the surface, people said things they probably regretted, and the war only intensified. It was difficult to deal with all those feelings as a child. But I knew even then that this kind of family life was oppressive and claustrophobic, and I wanted no part of it. And for the most part, I have managed to escape it, but not without many mistakes and poor decisions of my own before I got to a place in life with which I could be comfortable. Reading Ferrante reminds me of my early family life, and it’s a mixed blessing, as I wrote at the beginning of this post—I am fascinated by what she manages to stir up in me, and fearful of it at the same time. Like a moth to the flame, as the old saying goes. I know I will get burned. Unlike the moth, I survive being burned, but it is a strange experience nonetheless.

 

The appeal of science fiction

I'm a diehard sci-fi (and sci-fi horror) fan--books, films, and series. I don't remember the first sci-fi book I read that got me hooked on the genre. Perhaps it was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle when we were children. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells was another book that fascinated us as children. My parents were good at introducing us to different literary genres. The Andromeda Strain was published in 1969 and I probably read it around 1970 or so. I also read C.S. Lewis' The Space Trilogy when I was a teenager, and This Perfect Day by Ira Levin. To enjoy sci-fi, one must be able to let go of one's own world and enter into new and unknown worlds created by the authors and accept that those worlds may be nothing like one's own. That was never a problem for me. The appeal of sci-fi is likely different for each person, but there are some common elements. Part of the appeal was likely escapist when I was younger; now the appeal is more a fascination with dystopian themes and with other worlds, unknown worlds, the universe, time travel, parallel worlds--in short, fascination with stepping outside of the natural laws and our world (outer and inner) in order to experience other worlds. Judging by the interest in sci-fi, I think we will always be fascinated by the possibility of doing just that. I think man has always looked up at the stars and wondered what was out there. Or looked around at ordinary life and happenings and asked--what if they were different or changed, or completely unlike what we could ever imagine? Man has always been both fascinated by and afraid of the unknown and of the dark. Monsters and aliens may live there, and they may not be friendly to mankind. Even so, I would love to be able to travel through time to other worlds if I could do so via a transporter or through a wormhole, just as long as I could return to the safety of my own world when I wanted. That's asking a lot, but in the sci-fi realm, anything is possible.  

Some of my favorite sci-fi authors and their books are as follows:

• Ray Bradbury--The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451
• Stanislaw Lem--Solaris
• Philip K. Dick--Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
• Michael Crichton--The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Timeline
• Neil Gaiman--Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The Graveyard Book
• John Wyndham--The Day of the Triffids
• C.S. Lewis--The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength)
• H.P. Lovecraft--The Best of H.P. Lovecraft (falls into the horror fiction genre, but many of his stories would qualify as sci-fi horror)
• Isaac Asimov--Fantastic Voyage, The End of Eternity
• David Lindsay--A Voyage to Arcturus 
• Aldous Huxley--Brave New World
• George Orwell--1984
• H.G. Wells--The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man
• Ira Levin--This Perfect Day

Some of my favorite sci-fi films and series are:  

• Forbidden Planet
• The Blob
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Soylent Green
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Star Wars
• The Man Who Fell to Earth
• Westworld
• Alien
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers
• Aliens
• Blade Runner
• Brazil
• Deep Impact
• Event Horizon
• Jurassic Park
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park
• Men in Black
• Alien3
• Alien Resurrection
• The Day After Tomorrow
• I Am Legend
• WALL-E
• Jurassic Park III
• 28 Days Later
• District 9
• Pitch Black
• Minority Report
• Solaris 
• Another Earth
• IO
• Extinction
• I Origins
• Prometheus
• Interstellar
• The Martian
• Oblivion
• Edge of Tomorrow
• Alien: Covenant
• Arrival
• Ex Machina
• A Quiet Place
• Blade Runner 2049
• Jurassic World
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
• Raised By Wolves (HBO series)

A free Kindle book preview of Survivable Losses

I'm posting a free Kindle book preview of Survivable Losses, the collection of short stories by Francesca Stokes. If you like it, please consider purchasing it on Amazon. Thank you. 

Some of my favorite spiritual writers

Faith and religion are two different things; the latter is an organized attempt to systematize and support the former, but it is my contention that a strong faith will outlast religion in the long run. My father had a strong faith in God, and fed it with spiritual literature, some of it by Catholic writers. He shared that interest with me, and I have read many of the books he recommended. Some of his favorite authors (and now mine) are Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Evelyn Waugh, C.S.Lewis, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Merton, and Willa Cather. He also was a fan of Graham Greene and G.K. Chesterton, but I have not read their books as of yet. All of the books I've read by these writers have left an indelible impression on me. They made me think and reflect on many of life's situations, problems and (often-tragic) outcomes. Not all of them are directly spiritual in tone (inspirational); some of them are heart-wrenching, others witty, still others poignant and spiritually-challenging. The books are all excellent in their own right, and worth reading.

Francois Mauriac's books:

• The Viper's Tangle
• The Desert of Love
• Therese
• A Woman of Pharisees

Georges Bernanos books:

• The Diary of a Country Priest

Evelyn Waugh's books:

• Brideshead Revisited
• A Handful of Dust

C.S. Lewis' books:

• The Screwtape Letters
• Mere Christianity
• A Grief Observed
• Surprised by Joy
• The Four Loves
• The Problem of Pain

Thomas Hardy's books:

• Jude the Obscure
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• The Mayor of Casterbridge
• The Return of the Native
• The Go-Between

Thomas Merton's books:

• No Man is an Island
• Thoughts in Solitude
• Wisdom of the Desert

Willa Cather's books:

• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• My Antonia

Second anniversary

The second anniversary of my brother’s death is approaching, and I have been aware of its approach for well over a month now. My anxiety levels are heightened; the memory of that day at work when I received the news that he had passed away will live forever in my mind and heart. I have no idea how parents who lose their children feel, just that I know it is probably an indescribable feeling, one that stays with you for the rest of your life. It does not feel right or normal (in the natural way of things) to lose your sibling at the age of fifty-four. Nevertheless, when I look around me and talk to others, I see that it is far more frequent than one would like to admit. I have friends who have lost their siblings to cancer and to other illnesses.

But the anxiety is also connected to my own heightened awareness of time passing. There is no question in my mind now that I will spend the rest of my life writing. Each day, each week, each month is the continual quest to find time, more time, and even more time—to write. And the more I want the time and the more I want to write, the less time is given me. Work duties pile up, there are suddenly more students to guide, a new technician to plan work together with, and a new article to write about a very interesting topic—DNA repair in inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer. Do I mind? No. But the little voice inside of me is always talking to me, telling me to write and to find the time to write. It doesn’t help that getting older involves getting tired much earlier in the evening than before. I used to guard the three or four hours after dinner and before I went to bed very carefully; I was selfish with my time. Now those hours have been reduced to maybe two good writing hours, because I am more tired. And so it goes.

Do I regret choosing a research career over a literary one? It may seem that way to you, my readers, at times. But no, I don’t. I’ve realized that my creative energy went into something really amazing—the opportunity to hypothesize and to test my hypotheses, and some few times the results led to some really good publications, articles that I’m proud of. Research science in its purest form is a truly creative endeavor. So I am glad that I was able to engage in this type of work activity for so long. But that hasn’t stopped me from wanting to write and from actually writing--poetry, short stories, novels and other types of literature. I’ve been writing since I was fourteen years old. But it is poetry that is closest to my heart, closest to describing the person I really am. I have published four volumes of poetry, and am currently working on a fifth, which will be a volume of poems having to do with death, mortality, and grief. It derives its inspiration from my brother’s death, and some of the poems are about him and about coming to terms with the loss of a man I truly loved, despite what life threw at us over the years. His life was far from easy; I know that now. He shared very little of what really transpired in his life during the last five years of his life. I don’t know why, and that reality will haunt me forever. I think he wanted me to read between the lines, and I just wasn’t on that page together with him. So his death has taught me to be more silent, to listen more, and to try to understand the road that each individual person I know is on. Each person’s journey toward the end of life is a different one, even though we all end at the same place. 

I've also had the unique pleasure of discovering a new young writer, the daughter of a friend here in Norway. My friend had told her daughter that I write poetry and that I have published some books. Her daughter, who is nineteen years old, has just written her first book about her teenage struggle with anorexia, and wondered if I would like to read it and comment on it. I have read it, and it is an impressive first book. While the topic will not appeal to all readers, I can truthfully say that she has written a gripping and realistic book about an illness that is nearly impossible to cure, and has done so using notes and journals that she has kept since she was fifteen. When I talk to her, I remember my own teenage years, some of the influences that started me writing, and the need to write. Unless you have experienced that need, you will not understand it. It is a psychological need that spills over into the physical realm; the need to write is something that rides you, doesn’t leave you alone, causes anxiety, spurs you on, needles you, taunts you when you are lazy, and criticizes you when you let yourself be distracted. It keeps you on target, keeps you focused on the goal. If you don’t pay attention to it, it will lead to sleepless nights, distracted unfocused days, irritability, depression and anxiety. My friend’s daughter understands this already at nineteen years of age. So that is why I cannot say that my current anxiety is coupled only to the second anniversary of my brother’s death. It is coupled to the need to write and to the barriers that stand in the way of doing so. Because my brother’s death, like the need to write, are reminders that time is passing, that life is short, and that time is not be wasted. Time is a gift that is given to us, and we have to use it wisely.

Worth reading

Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find your voice

The first thought I had after finishing Sue Monk Kidd’s latest novel, The Invention of Wings, was that it can often take a lifetime to find your voice and the courage to use it. Sarah Grimké would no doubt agree; Kidd’s fictionalized account of the lives of the first American women abolitionists Sarah Grimké and her sister Angelina (Nina) is by turns touching, disturbing, and enlightening, pointing out the almost insurmountable difficulties and painful consequences involved in taking a stand in life and fighting for what you believe in. It is impossible not to be moved by this novel; the writing evokes both questions and the desire to make (some) sense of what must have been a horrific existence for the slaves in Charleston South Carolina in the 19^th century (1803-1838). Despite being ‘protected’ by the wealthy families who owned them, the slaves’ lives and daily treatment depended upon the whims and moods of their owners. Their psychological well-being and physical comfort did not matter at all. Punishment was meted out rather arbitrarily for minor infractions, e.g. the Missus was having a bad day and one of her slaves ’disobeyed’ her orders, wasn’t listening properly, or was too slow in responding. The actual punishments were little more than exercises in the public torture of other human beings, and inflicted permanent damage on many of the slaves who suffered these tortures. It is established very early on in the novel that Sarah wishes to have no part in the ownership of another human being—in her case, 10-year old Handful (Hetty) who becomes Sarah’s slave against her wishes, forced upon her by her family on her 11^th birthday. Sarah does not want to be like her family at all, but she is trapped within it. One might think that the desire to treat another human being the way one would wish to be treated, would be simple enough to achieve within one’s own family. One might expect that one’s family (churchgoers and law-abiding citizens) would support you in your quest to treat other human beings, who happen to be non-white, fairly and kindly. But that is not the case in Sarah’s family (or in society at large). Their cruelty knows no bounds, toward slaves who endure the physical cruelties, and toward their enlightened daughters Sarah and Nina who must endure the psychological abuses meted out to them for wishing to abolish slavery. In Sarah’s case, her independent and outspoken voice becomes muffled after she is dressed down by her father in front of the family—told that her dreams and aspirations of becoming a lawyer are simply out of the question. She is then forbidden to use her father’s library to read her beloved books in an attempt to educate herself. She suffers ridicule in front of her family for her aspirations to make something of herself; her father and brothers essentially tell her, rather cruelly, that she is a fool to have had such aspirations, even though her father appeared to encourage them only when he assumed that she did not take his words seriously. It is after this humiliation, and really the only time in the novel, that her mother shows her any compassion whatsoever and lets down her guard as far as describing to Sarah what women can and cannot aspire to within the framework of their society. You get the sense that her mother does not like that women’s lives had limitations put upon them, but she retreats again behind her mask of upholding the society she finds herself in, for all it is worth, because it is that society of wealth and political correctness that gives her status and keeps her materially-comfortable. Her mother’s role in life was to bear her husband many children, which she did. Sarah’s dressing-down by her father and brothers is followed by the societal humiliation she has to endure when her fiancé is exposed as a serial user of young women for sexual gains; he proposes to them and then tells them that they can now become intimate because they are engaged. After these incidents, Sarah is completely browbeaten and unable to find the voice she once had. She struggles along, as does Handful, each of them trying to find the wings they need to escape their stifling existences. When her sister Nina is born, Sarah becomes almost like a mother to her, and Nina grows quite close to her. Eventually she comes to share her sister’s abolitionist (and feminist) views, which puts both of them at odds with their family and with Charleston society. Sarah moves to the North and becomes a Quaker; Nina eventually follows her and the two of them embark on their mission to abolish slavery. Sarah finds her voice again after many years, but struggles with self-confidence, in contrast to Nina who is a born orator and who does not seem to lack confidence at all. The bulk of the novel is really Sarah and Handful’s stories, and how Sarah steps up to the plate to keep her promise to Handful’s mother Charlotte to free Handful.

Sometimes a person is born with a voice that he or she has no problems using as he or she grows up. One takes a vocal stand against injustice and bullying, against the immoral ideas and situations in society. And then something happens to stifle that voice, at least for a while. Bullying, cruel slander, psychological abuse, physical abuse, a bad marriage, divorce, loss of a job, financial ruin—all of these can destroy a woman’s voice as well as a man’s. Self-confidence wanes; self-doubt rules. No matter what others say to you, the fact remains that regaining confidence and finding your voice again are your own roads, and you must walk them alone. The novel makes it clear that heroes and heroines are never superhuman; they are ordinary human beings like you and me, with the familiar everyday problems with which we all must deal and tackle. They struggle with self-doubt and misery, with depression, with anxiety, with confusion. They struggle with finding their voices and using them to rail against the injustices in the world. They hold onto their beliefs in the hope that better days will come along; and better days do come along, but at quite a cost, for Sarah, Nina, and Handful. Along the way, you will come to really like these characters and to want to understand them. You will come to appreciate how difficult their lives were because they lived according to their principles, as well as how difficult it was to change the obstinate and unenlightened world around them, at that time, and at any time. Our own civilized society still has much to learn about how to treat the poor, immigrants, the mentally ill, the elderly, or those who just do not fit in no matter how hard they try. Those who support them and fight for them deserve our help and praise, not our criticism and ridicule.

My father’s reading list prior to 1936

As promised, I will continue to post the lists of books my father read during his life. He was a prolific reader already during his childhood and teenage years. In 1936, when he was eighteen years old, he started to annotate his reading list according to the specific year that he read a particular book. My post today will include some of the books he read prior to 1936. The first one on his list was Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Here are the first fifty books he recorded as read, so many of them typical of a young boy’s life…….

Quo Vadis—Henryk Sienkiewicz

Fortitude—Hugh Walpole

Robinson Crusoe—Daniel Defoe

Tom Brown’s Schooldays—Thomas Hughes

The Black Arrow—Robert Louis Stevenson

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Mark Twain

Call of the Wild—Jack London

The Man without a Country—Edward Everett Hale

Men of Iron—Howard Pyle

Daddy Long Legs—Jean Webster

The Riflemen of the Ohio—Joseph A. Altsheler (also author of the next thirteen books)

The Young Trailers

The Forest Runners

The Free Rangers

The Scouts of the Valley

The Border Watch

The Sun of Saratoga

The Horsemen of the Plains

The Last of the Chiefs

Shadow of the North

Sun of Quebec

The Guns of Shiloh

The Tree of Appomattox

Apache Gold

The Arkansas Bear—Albert Bigelow Paine

Just So Stories—Rudyard Kipling

Story of a Bad Boy—Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Story of Roland—James Baldwin

Robin Hood and His Merry Men—John Finnemore

The Sky Pilot—Ralph Connor

Boy’s Life of Edison—William H. Meadowcraft

The Tragedy of the Italia—Davide Guidici

Uncle Tom’s Cabin—Harriet Beecher Stowe

Scouting with Daniel Boone—Everett T. Tomlinson

The Palm of the Hot Hand—King Phillips

Pinocchio—Carlo Collodi

Jim Davis—John Masefield

The Black Buccaneer—Stephen W. Meader

Boots and Saddles—E.B. Custer

The Perfect Tribute—M.R.S. Andrews

Twice Told Tales—Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Spy—James Fenimore Cooper

The Black Glove—Geraldine Gordon Salmon

The Gold Bug—Edgar Allan Poe

The Pit and the Pendulum—Edgar Allan Poe

The Other Wise Man—Henry Van Dyke

The Crisis—Winston Churchill

Richard Carvel—Winston Churchill

The Mansion—Henry Van Dyke