Summer Reading

I spent much of the summer elsewhere. After I finished my second year as an MFA candidate in fiction at Ohio State, I taught at a boys’ school in DC for six weeks and then moved on to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. At the start of summer, I embarked on a reading regime of John Updike (the Rabbit tetralogy) and Richard Ford (two–thirds of the Bascombe trilogy) and Edward St. Aubyn (the Melrose novels). I see the theme, in retrospect: books by white men who don’t treat women very well; books full of serious passages of interiority and cultural reflection. Lovely and serious literature. And I had nearly read all of Adam Johnson’s novel The Orphan Master’s Son when I realized that I could not read another torture scene; I had stopped understanding what was literally going on in the book. My brain was broken.

Literature is beautiful and powerful and important. As a fiction editor for The Journal, I look for writing that feels inspired and unique and like a hand reaching out to me, the reader, to say, Let me tell this story.

But dear lord I was tired.

So I turned to mysteries. Those books relegated to their own section of the library, with their titles in large font and shadowy houses on the cover. Those books that come out in hardcover every year or so, then are quickly printed in mass-market paperbacks with gray pages. Books that pose a clear problem at the start—Here’s this dead body!—and end with a solution. Often, the books are fast-paced, with snarky narrators. The writing is often quite good. And most importantly: the books are fun. They are a pleasure to read. I had forgotten books could be like that.

I became enraptured with Sujata Massey’s Rei Shimura mysteries, featuring a plucky Japanese-American antiques dealer living in Japan trying to deal with the death that pops up around her all the time. (This is a constant theme in the mysteries, I noticed: if the character is not a Detective Inspector or a private investigator, at some point the author is obligated to reference the lead character’s necessary proximity to death.)

Jon Loomis, a poet, has written three Frank Coffin mysteries, all set in Provincetown. Frank is a detective, hoping for a quieter life in the often kooky and gender-bending town, but—as is necessary—death keeps finding him.

I also spent an inordinate amount of time on Netflix, watching the British mystery series Rosemary & Thyme (about Rosemary Boxer, a professional gardener, and Laura Thyme, a former policewoman, who travel around fixing people’s gardens and solving mysteries; you do get the pun of the title, yes?) and Inspector George Gently, in which a London-based, grizzled DI takes a job in a small town after the death of his wife, only to find his new, young constable challenging. Death, of course, follows George like a shadow.

And then there is Murder She Wrote. Has any show ever so much glamorized the life of a writer? There’s Jessica Fletcher, teacher-turned-writer, working diligently on her mystery novels—it’s meta, as only CBS can do—all while traveling around and solving murders. It’s worth noting that in the world of the show, Jessica is well known and makes quite a bit of money from her books.

I’m sure I’ll plunge back into capital-L Literature soon. Perhaps this is the year I’ll read War and Peace. Or more Turgenev. Or I’ll crack open those collections by Mavis Gallant, VS Pritchett, and Peter Taylor.

But it’s not all bleak. I’ve recently read two collections that are killers. Ben Stroud’s Byzantium is almost too good for words; it’s the sort of collection that reminds me of the silliness of those “the short story is dead” arguments. And my former teacher, Erin Flanagan, has a new collection It’s Not Going to Kill You, which is wise and skilled and beautifully written. But even more than that, stuff actually happens in these stories. Plot stuff—as if Stroud and Flanagan decided to throw caution to the wind and have fun with fiction. It’s wondrous.

I am addicted to a show about meth—is there a counseling group for that? But really: it’s a problem. It may sound counterintuitive, but as I watched pasty, middle-aged Walter White stumble through the desert in his underwear at the beginning of the first episode I knew that Breaking Bad was going to become my new favorite TV drama. To my concurrent excitement and dismay, the final season is almost here; soon I’ll find myself in a state of withdrawal, scrounging the internet for lingering Bad memes and scanning the channels for another worthy distraction. But for now I’m biding my time, re-watching one episode of Season 5 a night in anticipation of seeing the shit hit the fan as the final season unfolds.

What I like most about Breaking Bad is its ability to convey moral complexity. This is a show that isn’t afraid to challenge the way we think about the world, blurring the distinctions between “good” and “evil” as our central protagonist gradually morphs into one hell of an antagonist. And yet our loyalties do not switch quite as seamlessly. Badness has a seductive quality, and no matter how appalled we are by Walt’s actions as the series progresses, we cannot help but root for him just a teeny, tiny bit.  We keep watching because it’s a rush to see someone break all the rules and get away with it. It’s a rush to watch the shy, humble schoolteacher who can’t hold a gun without cringing become a black-market badass.

I have no doubt that in its final season, Breaking Bad will take the classic good versus evil dichotomy and artfully melt it into an intriguing hue of gray. We will be forced to ask ourselves, as viewers, where our own loyalties lie. Because while we might think we want to see Walt slammed against the hood of a cop car and handcuffed, we all know that deep down there’s a guilty little part of ourselves that wants to see him ride off into the sunset wearing a smug sliver of a grin, whispering for the last time “I won.”

I have to admit that I’ve never really understood the concept of “beach reading.” Not that I don’t enjoy a good mystery or romance now and again, but I never saw the point of the distinctions we make between the lowbrow and the high, between what one should read while slathered in sunscreen sitting in a plastic chair and what one should read while curled up at home or in the library. Time to read is always a privilege, and whenever I find myself blessed with such time, I fill it with as many books—from any particular genre or style that happens to strike my fancy—as possible. Once upon a time, that meant I found myself reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (exposed nipple on the cover and all) while at the beach with my family. It was a little awkward.

But, regardless, without further ado, my favorite books (and TV and music, etc.) from the summer of 2013:

The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy

There are a number of words that come to mind to describe this delightful 1958 novel about a young American gallivanting abroad. First, the nouns: romp, joyride, lark, caper. Now, the adjectives: effervescent, intoxicating, silly, sweet. Sally Jay Gorce, a 21-year-old Missourian, is spending two years abroad, sleeping with an aging relic of the lesser aristocracy, and yearning after an actor named Larry. It sounds simple and yet, there’s intrigue! And surprises! (Like, legitimately, not many twists really surprise me, but I think I was reading this book at a coffee shop when the third-act switcheroo came about and I was all, “Wahhhhhhaaat?” aloud. Part of this, admittedly, may have been due to certain not-entirely-correct assumptions I had about what people were allowed to write about in 1958.) Anyway, download it, check it out from the library, buy it from your local bookshop, surreptitiously take it from a friend’s apartment. (Just kidding—don’t do that last thing. Just ask. They’ll probably be happy to give it to you.)

The Patrick Melrose Cycle, Edward St. Aubyn

A definite swing in the opposite direction from The Dud Avocado (though this one also takes place in France!), this series of five novels (the first four of which, Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother’s Milk, have been collected in one volume, while the fifth, At Last, was only released last year) follows the life of its titular aristocrat as he evolves from an abused and neglected little boy to a troubled man approaching middle age still haunted by the memory of his toxic parents. The books are certainly not light, but St. Aubyn brings a restrained hand to his sad (and somewhat autobiographical) tales. The major revelation of the first novel is that young Patrick is sexually abused by his domineering and dissolute father, and St. Aubyn manages to make the reader feel the horror of such abuse without ever making that horror even a little titillating. And while St. Aubyn is primarily concerned with Patrick’s mental agony and self-sabotage, he always cuts the psychosexual drama with a healthy amount of social satire, skewering the leisure class that Patrick both longs to escape and desperately clings to.

The Rules of Civility, Amor Towles

Beautifully written and elegantly structured, The Rules of Civility is a rare book: an engaging story with elements of wish fulfillment (spoiler alert: our hardscrabble heroine does land a wealthy husband, though maybe not the one you expect) that nonetheless touches upon (ever so lightly, as is his way) those eternal questions of love and loss that are the primary goals of literary fiction. Towles has just released a follow-up of sorts, an e-book-only collection of stories that follow the stubborn and beautiful Eve Ross as she makes her way in 1940s Los Angeles.

Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan

This is basically as good as everyone said it was, and I am honestly just a bit embarrassed that it took me this long to read it. Sullivan writes in a way that looks easy but is unimaginably difficult, bringing warmth and humor and heart to topics such as the biggest Christian Rock festival in the nation, the legacies of disgraced musicians like Axl Rose and Michael Jackson, and the surreal experience of letting your house be used as a set for the teen soap One Tree Hill. Oh, not to mention the provocative (if heavily fictional) essay that suggests animals could be turning on humans in response to climate change, or the exploration of America’s considerable stash of hidden caves, or what it’s like to watch your brother reconstruct reality after several hundred (or is it thousand?) volts of electricity fry his brain. He blends personal anecdote and historical truths with astonishing ease, and with such subtlety that I never felt he was inserting himself into a story unnecessarily. Worthy of the hype, worthy of your time.

I didn’t spend all my summer reading, however. And, if I’m being honest, the art/culture that had the greatest impact on my psyche, and kept me better company during those unusually soggy summer months, was Bob’s Burgers.

The animated series, which follows hamburger restauranteur Bob Belcher (voiced by Archer‘s H. Jon Benjamin), his wife Linda (voiced by John Roberts), and their three kids as they navigate life along something vaguely resembling the Jersey shore, is funny, warm, and uses original music better than just about any show on TV. (The AV Club even wrote about it.)

To wit: my favorite episode, the episode I returned to again and again, was “Topsy” from the show’s third and most recent season. In it, the youngest Belcher, Louise (voiced by Kristen Schaal) plots revenge on her new science teacher, a Thomas Edison impersonator who refuses to let her recycle last year’s science fair project (a classic papier-mâché volcano) and orders her instead to do one on his favorite inventor. Louise, incensed (as well as egged on by a trouble-making librarian), decides to stage a reenactment of Edison’s shameful electrocution of a circus elephant named Topsy. She enlists her older sister Tina (voiced by Dan Mintz) to play Topsy, and brother Gene (voiced by Eugene Mirman) to play Edison. Gene, however, has other plans, as he instead decides to compose a love song—”dramatic yet danceable!”—between the legendary inventor and the doomed elephant that he calls “Electric Love.” Oh, and have I mentioned that Gene and Tina can’t sing, so they have to enlist the honeyed-voiced help of their landlord Mr. Fischoeder (voiced by Kevin Kline) and their emotionally unstable Aunt Gayle (voiced by Megan Mullally)?

Hijinks, oh how they do ensue. “Electric Love” is a sweeping, melodic number worthy of Tin Pan Alley, whose comic lyrics (“I never noticed the curve of her trunk/And I never noticed his electric junk”) do nothing to detract from its majesty. Basically, when the curtain pulls back to reveal members of the marching band and the school choir, who then all join together in the final chorus? My heart, dear reader, it sings.

And my heart wasn’t the only one. Stephin Merritt, of the Magnetic Fields, was so taken with the song that he recorded a cover (along with Kenny Mellman) on a segment called “Bob’s Buskers.” I still prefer the original, myself, but I applaud Merritt’s always excellent taste.

Speaking of Merritt, one of his innumerable side projects, Future Bible Heroes, released a new album this summer, Partygoing, that’s full of all the synths that have been missing from the last few Magnetic Fields records. And its title (ish) song, “Living, Loving, and Partygoing” is (I assume) a reference to Henry Green’s informal trilogy of novels (called, respectively, Living, Loving, and Partygoing) that I swear I’ll read someday. But the title track isn’t my favorite: that honor goes to a sprightly little number called “Keep Your Children In A Coma.”

Now the semester is under way, my reading and watching and listening have all been seriously curtailed, but I’m hoping to finish Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and to get started on OSU MFA alum Doug Watson’s The Era of Not Quite (reviewed by The Journal’s own Elizabeth Zaleski in the latest issue) before it gets too chilly outside.

Ten Great Books I’ve Read This Summer, in No Particular Order:

1. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
2. Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, Yoko Ogawa
3. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, ZZ Packer
4. Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Stephen King
5. The Toughest Indian in the World, Sherman Alexie
6. The Outlaw Album: Stories, Daniel Woodrell
7. Woman Hollering Creek And Other Stories, Sandra Cisneros
8. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories, Kevin Wilson
9. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
10. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

Right now I’m in the middle of Gillian Flynn’s wildly popular Gone Girl, and I’m intrigued but still undecided. Next on my list? Holly Goddard Jones’ The Next Time You See Me, which arrived on my doorstep from Amazon not ten minutes ago. If it’s even half as wonderful as her story collection, Girl Trouble, I’ll be happy. Also in that package from Amazon are Andrew Hudgins’ memoir, The Joker, and David Small’s graphic memoir, Stitches.

The yawning stretch of summer made me anxious, so I returned to old loves and bad habits. I drank obscene amounts of coffee and kept irregular sleep patterns—too much or not enough, usually at the wrong time of day. Soothing my nerves meant consuming Appalachian murder ballads and spacey electronica, “true” ghost stories, murder mysteries, and sexytime TV. I read gritty, interesting (as well as ho-hum and silly) nonfiction essays/memoirs, graphic novels, and short stories. I forgot nearly everything I learned in guitar class last spring, but I sang to myself more often while I played air-guitar, my heart twisting in my throat. I also came up with at least three top-secret, totally legit band names, despite the fact that I haven’t touched a string since May.

Early on, an intense affair with David Foster Wallace’s  A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments made me woozy with wordlust and repent my sins (namely, tasteless suicide jokes and footnote-bashing). In particular, D.F.W.’s essay detailing the Illinois State Fair was masterful—all meat, no filler, just clean prose with exquisite details and a wicked sense of humor. It became painful to so fiercely enjoy his work, posthumously—it was the sort of sickness that makes you keep plucking at a splinter in your thumb, feeling a swoop in your stomach but unable to stop. David Foster Wallace: better than splinters.

I devoured two of Cheryl Strayed’s gorgeous books, woodchipper-style. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar made me want to play Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” on repeat, mostly so I could feel productive while being all torn up and weepy. Ditto for Strayed’s brutally honest memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, except that Rufus Wainwright’s cover of “Hallelujah” seemed more applicable (sins, redemptions, a quest for peace, etc.).

I also revisited Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, a travel narrative that manages to combine sex (or love, whatever), the death sites of rock stars, and some interesting sidebar conversations with people he met along the way. It seemed natural to follow this up with Steve Almond’s Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us.

In between there were stacks of books that I read through or just skimmed for pleasure, on various subjects—composting, coal mining, a cultural history of the rabies virus, memoirs.

To calm myself, I listened to beloved tracks—albums like Moby’s Play, Neko Case’s Canadian Amp (especially “Poor Ellen Smith,” since it falls in the murder ballad category), and a new favorite, Of Monsters and Men’s My Head is an Animal. I also zoned out to Hearts of Space radio while I work. It sounds like a cross between moody driving music and a meditative yoga workout mixtape.

I finally became acquainted with the weirdos of Twin Peaks, which was oddly enjoyable. It was apparently a summer to forgive unrealistic dialogue and improbable scenes, because I also enjoyed the 1994 cult classic The Crow. I needed clunky diversion this summer. This lead to the late-night guilty pleasure of watching the trashy Deadly Women and the slightly more sophisticated Paranormal Witness. I’m still catching up on last season’s Louie and Mad Men. I’m so disappointed in a certain character right now.

Favorite new cocktail: Dark and Stormy (ginger beer makes it classy)

Favorite random sandwich: Brie, honey, blackberries

I read pretty compulsively. Someone actually challenged me to quit reading for one week this summer—so that I’d have more time for writing and other creative pursuits I neglect in order to sit inside with my books—and I failed miserably. So I’m just going to touch on a few favorites rather than trying for a comprehensive list here.

Right now I’m working through Patricia Smith’s latest collection, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah. I’d read her previous four books, all of them more than once, and I was a little afraid this one wouldn’t be as spectacular. I’ve thought of her as a guiding star for years, and so many writers fade after bright early works (or maybe I’ve just got an abandonment thing?) but she’s taken this formal turn that’s really fascinating. The new book has a crown of sonnets, a longish poem in syllabics, bops, some kind of modified villanelle, etc. You could see that developing in Blood Dazzler, but it’s in full effect here.

And I recently read Angelo Nikolopoulos’s first book, Obscenely Yours, for the second time. A thread of “auditions” runs through it, and the book’s structure is heavily informed by pornography and cruising. He’s dancing with these very tenuous forms of connection. I love how cleverly, how flirtatiously his lyrics transgress.

As for journals, I’ve admired Indiana Review and The Kenyon Review since I began paging through literary journals in college. Memorious and Guernica are some of my favorite online magazines right now. And Forklift, Ohio has a really neat aesthetic both in terms of the poems and the magazine as a physical object. Their summer issue has a green chalkboard-cover, and also includes a piece of chalk and a recipe for white bean salad. The previous issue was peppered with vintage recipes for concocting bulk perfumes.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve sat through the first four seasons of The Wire utterly hypnotized. I don’t usually watch much TV, but I started out thinking of it as research for a series of poems I’m working on in the voices of queer gangsters and their lovers. And they do a wonderful job with the queer characters, but I’ve actually become more interested in how the show treats informants. We tend to see informants cast as minor characters, cowardly or amoral, but in The Wire they’re complex and relatable. And if you look at the Whitey Bulger trial that’s been in the news recently, it seems like the informant system has really altered the nature of “justice” in this country in ways we’re still grappling with.

At the same time, I’ve been revisiting a number of movies from my childhood. I fell in love with Beauty and the Beast around the time I figured out how uncool it was for a little boy to dig a musical about a princess, so I revisited that as an adult with very different concerns. And I recently wrote an ekphrastic poem about The Land Before Time, which actually scared the shit out of me as a kid. I think as writers it’s important for us to respond actively to media and history, rather than just consuming.

I’m teaching a fiction workshop for the first time this fall, and while putting together my syllabus I realized that a couple of the stories I’m having my students read are ones that make me sob every time I read them. I wondered if maybe I should put an asterisk next to these assignments, with a note to not read these stories in public or in the presence of a skittish boyfriend, but decided I’ll probably just mention it in class, where the opportunity to embarrass myself is richer.

But it got me thinking about how great it can be to cry sometimes, whether out of a desire for some innocent catharsis, or just to feel anything at all after months of being dead inside. So when I was asked to share some favorite things, I immediately thought about these crying stories. If you’re hankering for the sweet ache of despair, prepare a cool, wet cloth for your soon-to-be-puffy eyes and tuck in to these stories.

“Safari” by Jennifer Egan

“Safari” is a perfect counterargument to those who claim that literary short fiction is limited to airless narratives about writers and professors, written by writers and professors, for writers and professors. I mean, a rockstar gets mauled by a lioness! Don’t worry, I’m not really giving anything away—that’s not the sad part. It’s the final few paragraphs where the magic really happens. The ending gives the reader selective access to the future, and it’s as if Egan is giving us the point of view of god, if there were a god, and if he cared what happened to people. Man, knowing the future would probably be the saddest superpower.

“Puppy” by George Saunders

I don’t know how much I would appreciate the virtuosic point of view shifts in this story were I not a writer, but I think the overall emotional impact would be the same: devastating. The reader is given enough of the interiority of two characters to completely understand why they think what they’re doing is right, and the ways in which they’re tragically wrong. Somehow, I care more about what is happening to the people in the story than to the titular pup, which might be a first for me.

“In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amy Hempel

I’d like to remind you that since you aren’t my student, you don’t have to read any of these stories, because this one is, uh, really sad. It forces me to recognize that everyone I have ever loved (myself included!) will die one day. I mean, we all know this all the time, but how often do we really feel it? Basically never, thankfully. But forcing ourselves to acknowledge our mortality is probably a good thing to do, occasionally, by reading this story. Thanks, Amy Hempel!

Let’s say you read these stories, and get to thinking about how at this moment you’re the youngest you’ll ever be again, and how you’ll die one day. You want to cling to those last scraps of youth, and simultaneously stave off death, right? Better head to the gym! You’ll need some music to listen to. So I figured I’d share a couple of the songs that are currently keeping my workouts bearable.

Animal Collective, “Purple Bottle”

Shout Out Louds “Hurry Up Let’s Go”

Broken Social Scene “Stars and Sons”

Snowden “Black Eyes” (This song has the additional perk of reminding one of the dashing Edward Snowden.)

Yelle  “Je Veux Te Voir”

Alternatively, maybe confronting your own mortality just makes you want to get pretty wasted. Keep it classy while you get trashed by indulging in innumerable French 75s. Fun fact: you can totally make these by the pitcher-full if you have company, or if you’ve read yourself into a super-sized sadness. Pour a bottle of champagne into a pitcher, add about 5 oz. gin or cognac, 2.5 oz. fresh lemon juice, and 2.5 oz. simple syrup. Stir gently, then serve in champagne flutes with a lemon twist. Don’t serve over ice, like some recipes suggest—what sort of a brute are you? Drink up, and pretend you’ll live forever.