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A GOOD BOOK

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GILEAD  Marilynne Robinson

Usually, I would not read Gilead, a preacher telling his family’s story. It is draped in religion and is set in a small Iowa community. But I read it, and learned something from the telling.

There are no chapters and only two sections. There are a few hundred incidences. The telling of this story is in the form of an oral history. If a parent or grandparent were telling the story of the family, Gilead represents how that elder might tell: Incident here, reminder of that, this doesn’t necessarily follow but is interesting, the next thing, where was I in the story? Gilead is not chronological, but the telling is pleasing because the reader goes from incidents to more incidents, gaining insights along the way along with some learning.

The telling is by an educated man and the story stays close to that character’s roots – religion. If there be a drawback, the doses of religion and faith, undoubtedly supporting the story with biblical passages, whether noted or not, provide a foundation for the story. There is the family – the audience for this testament – the community and church members. Few names are given, as though confidences are kept. Instead, the setting and way of life imparts the demands, life’s work and worth, on the preacher-narrator. In many ways Gilead is about the preacher’s hope that future generations will learn, will hear his confession and will realize his shortcomings, all a reconciliation and realization he never had with his father. In some ways religion can seem repetitive, but in the style of oral history, some repetition should be expected.

I noted I would not usually read a book like Gilead. In my life I’ve read some primary sources. The Confessions of St. Augustine are overpowering. I’ve read some primary sources, and a lot of history about the development of Christianity and its sects, and some primary sources and sermons in those sects. [Waiting on the bookshelf to read it is Harnack, The History of Dogma, about the rise of Christianity.] Gilead has a historical component of telling the lives of its characters in the Mid-west, after the Civil War to the mid-1950s. Inside are few historical events to date anything. Again true to the character, the author sticks to religion. There are important events of faith, of his life and his family, but they have no time.

The fact that incidences and stories happened and will happen again without reference to time, makes Gilead eternal.  

 

READ IT!

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VERONICA – Mary Gaitskill

Some snippets on the cover say this story is about beauty. There is much more: A realistic painting of life in the big city, and characters who cannot escape the whirl: Death, life, growing and maturing and love round the novel. 

The story is told by a young model for ten years of survival. She is beautiful but doesn’t know how to comprehend it, work with it and protect herself. Innocent and unaware she lets herself be abused, and that is the life in the big city, Paris and New York: One insult after another ending in terror and horror. The reader senses what happens in Paris is originally decadent whereas New York only produces simulation and derivation.

Beauty goes beyond a physical appearance, until the model feels ugly. As her boyfriend hits her trying to force her to admit she is beautiful, she sinks into the experience appearance has given her: living life can make a person, who is conscious, ugly. The reader understands that discouragements, insults and crudities started the abasement before the violence.  

The model remembers everything. Her memory is supported by literary devices. Gaitskill conceives motifs which she carries through the novel: Rigoletto, The worm goes in... These motifs suggest analogies, metaphors and allegories. Gaitskill tells the tale in lustrous language – the turn of the phrase, similes, metaphors or an unexpected noun. The language gains momentum as the reader creeps into the fright of life in New York. Life with her family is real. Having returned from Paris, the model staying with her parents, returns home for the evening: 

“I kissed Ed on the cheek and got out of the car. In the house sat my father, drinking beer and waiting for dinner. La Traviata was on the record player: I said hi and walked through the room. Sara was in the dining room, crouching an inch away from the TV straining the hear over the music. My mother was in the kitchen, stirring a fragrant pot. How I loved her. How I didn’t know…”(97)

An event in New York seem more fanciful: 

“When we came out, Nadia had moved on and the air of the room had changed like the sea in the wake of a great wave. All the little creatures and shells still stirred, fitful and chaotic. An oyster sweating in his cream-colored shell was talking into a microphone about something nobody could hear. A laughing blond bit of seaweed rolled against a scudding black-haired pebble and they slid down the wall, laughing. Patrick said, ‘Honey, let’s go…'” (175)

Readers might wish Gaitskill would jot down more sentences, but she doesn’t need them. She knows the rule about constructing imagery – economy, efficiency and less is more.

The language allows Gaitskill to shift the voice. The story becomes less of a telling of the model’s experience, struggles and growing. It slides to the model’s impressions of those things: The model stumbles and never finds love; Veronica lingers and dies of AIDS. But love and illness are combined: Veronica’s bi-sexual lover gave her AIDS, and yet Veronica describes the relationship with him, which would make any couple in marriage happy.

Because the model doesn’t see Veronica fade everyday, the reader can believe the model cannot relay the on-coming doom. Gaitskill chooses an easy foil to produce a crushing literary impression and an entertainment disapproval. The model goes to a club and hears a rock band. She realizes:  

“I drank and bit the rim of my plastic cup and lost myself in the music on the sound system. I had succeeded. I had become like this music. My face had been a note in a piece of continuous music that rolled over people while they talked and drank…No one remembers a particular note. No one remembers a piece of grass. But it does its part. I had done my part….    The band came on stage.” (209)

“The room was full of life that wanted forms to hold it [dandified feelings], and it wasn’t picky. Neither were we. We watched as if we were witnessing the preservation of a place in our collective heart – a place that had once been primary that we no longer knew what it was or where it was. And now we felt it: secret and tender, and with so many chambers…   There was Veronica alone in her apartment, locked in full engagement with forces the musicians lightly referred to. The song said nothing about any of them, but they were part of it anyway.” (210)

“…I wanted to tell her [Veronica] this. I wanted her to know that even though she was dying, she was still included in the story told by the music.” (211)

From her distended thinking, the model is returned to reality. Hearing the delight and sensations, Veronica says, “This isn’t a rock song, hon.” (211) 

Growing and maturing by experience is the most pitiful way of life. Throughout Veronica the model goes to jobs, goes out to eat, goes to clubs, drinks, does drugs and meets the wrong, unsavory people engaging in the same or similar activities. There is sex but no love anywhere, beyond a rock song and its collectivity. The model has seen much and lived the sad life of Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism: “Experience keeps a dear school, yet Fools will learn in no other.” Poor Richard’s Alamack. In the end the model has hepatitis. 

There need be no explanation why the model never avoids the desultory lifestyle. That is not the story. But within the story one senses that New Yorkers have pets, small dogs and cats, not only to have an animal to love, but also as an excuse to stay home and avoid the scene.

Parents may not like Veronica, but if they are conscious and aware, they know it represents reality. That world has only become more intense and detached. Veronica is a book for every teenage girl in America, filled with nothing in mind but dreams – marvels, glitter, beauty, wonders – to  read: In a few years the hounds of hell will be upon you – your body, your mind, your mental well being, your financial well being, your health. LIFE – Get ready for it. Beauty doesn’t protect you. Beauty makes you a target. Youth is gone with the first life experience.

An attempt to write about New York failed, yet it is assigned in most American high schools: The Great Gatsby which I previous reviewed, “Loathing Gatsby.” On literary merit, as a depiction of New York and as a reflection of society, Veronica should replace Gatsby as the book to read in high school. There is no character as weak and unreal in Veronica as Gatsby and Daisy are in Gatsby. Yes, Veronica is frank, detailed, obnoxious and objectionable. But what sort of literature do Americans want their children to read? Do Americans want their children to be educated to the world? Should American children know they can read, anticipate and be prepared? Literature can do that. Or should Americans take their dreaming daughters to the water and toss them in and watch them drown?

Veronica is a distaff book. The model activities and thoughts return her to her family. There is realization, understanding and reconciliation. The book ends with “I will call my father and tell him I finally heard him. I will be full of gratitude and joy.” But in the book the exploration for love by the model and by anyone else is incomplete, in the society reflected by the ersatz entertainments tearing participants and the audience apart.

There is no great explanation of what love is and how it should survive – perhaps living in New York with pets. What are men supposed to do? That answer seems carry an ample supply of condoms. Veronica presents a hopelessness about the state of love in society. Love needs a platform protected from the whirl. This is an issue that Americans can resolve.

 

EDITION

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A lifetime ago, longer as a writer, I wrote two novels: of Little Human Hearts and Bitch.. When I wanted them to be, neither were ready for publication. of Little Human Hearts is the first, and I’ll write about it here.

I self-published of Little Human Hearts, a story of the late 1950s in Mendocino County. A bright, intelligent eight-year-old boy has his first love affair with his third grade teacher and doesn’t know it. He tells the events of that school year.

I appreciated after self-publishing that the story was not ready. The text fit Mark Twain’s description: the spelling is “majestically lawless.” The word processing was done by a friend who cut and paste the same material twice to the same spot. I was impatient to get the book out and missed it and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The FIRST EDITION drew a review from the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Bruce Anderson: “ON SALE at Copy Plus is a book called “Little Human Hearts” by a youngish man named Karl Rauh. Mr. Rauh grew up in Anderson Valley in the late fifties. His book is based on events and personalities of the time, both in Anderson Valley and on the Mendocino Coast as seen through the eyes of an eight year old boy. I would think – based on my own quick reading – a number of the characters and episodes would be remembered by many old timers…”

I did not grow up in the Anderson Valley. I wrote the book, inserting characters into the setting and contriving events. I had no plausible marketing plan. I exhausted myself moving and trying to distribute the book to bookstores, some which didn’t pay after selling the inventory. I didn’t want to self publish again.

An opportunity came along. A new publisher was accepting submissions. of Little Human Hearts was accepted. I entered the text into word processing and caught a lot of mistakes, but not all. I made a few. Unknown to me the publisher italicized the jokes (humor) in the book. Rather than of Little…, the title became Of Little… The spelling was less lawless. The Second Edition was launched.

The characters were set; the setting was laid out, but the story. How did everything hang together, cogently? Was it coherent, at all? Unknown to me was a review by a reader on vacation, now appearing on Amazon: “This strange and curiously interestingly book I found tucked into the reading material of a Lake Tahoe hotel lobby. I wound up reading it for hours in that bed…Beneath the surface…are smoldering of adult trouble…It is very simply written, easy to skim quickly and yet it goes into such charming details…like hiking in a redwood forest, the sense of awe it inspires, the silence it brings to the visitors, all this he writes about with complete naiveté, like a child…Some readers may find the simplistic writing a bit annoying, but it is a valid style to convey the boy’s memories…”

This review indicates that I was able to advance the boy’s voice completely. But the story was wrong. The marketing of this edition was horrible. Not many people saw it. The First and Second Editions are online for sale at high prices.

In 2009 unprompted by me, the publisher relinquished all rights to of Little Human Hearts. I knew a Third Edition was necessary, but I had lost all feel for the book and the story. The setting was no longer attractive – Mendocino is cold, wet and humid. I’m a desert person – hot and dry. It took some concentration to contrive the energy to edit. What I brought were abilities to tell a story and better capacities to edit. I had to enter of Little Human Hearts into word processing again. While doing that I realized there were three sets of relationships – boy-teacher, boy-sibliings-other children, boy-parents. The emotional charges from one relationship had to enlarge, explicate, and  contrast with the other relationships for the book to develop and tell its story.

Along the way I believe I learned a few things: A daughter who talks to her father a lot, and he challenges her so she enjoys that engagement (female-male) is less likely to fall for the first creep who throws her a line. Next, children who squabble with siblings are doing what comes naturally: They emulate their parents; they strive for attention; they are learning to act and react within this small scale of society. The role of the parents are to limit certain activities and certain speech but never to end the squabbling.

I now sense that the emotional stimuli from the three relationships support and improve the story, allowing the reader to build and arrive at the denouement satisfactorily. I eliminated all the italics; no author needs a signpost saying, I’M TRYING TO BE FUNNY HERE! I was happy the Copyright Office gave me a copyright for the Third Edition, of Little Human Hearts, iBookstore, Michael Ulin Edwards.