Order The Books
Emily's Book Reviews
The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
By Don DiLillo
Scribner | 2011 | 209 pages
January 2012
Literary icon that he is, Don DiLillo is not everyone’s – pardon the cliché – cup of tea. But if New Yorker fiction turns you on, then stay with me here because a DeLillo experience is beyond a mere read. It’s an immersion in the melding of exquisite language and the illumination of being, that culminates into a unique creative entity. If that sounds excessively high minded and opaque, that’s what happens when you try to synthesize the DeLillo oeuvre. He is a serious commentator on the world as it is, and in that pursuit, an observer of the minutiae of life. And how opaque can that be !!!
“ ‘What do you really see? What do you really hear?’ DeLillo ponders when i ask how he stays tuned in to the dream waves of American life.” (in an interview with John Freeman in 2006) “That’s what in theory differentiates a writer from everyone else. You see and hear more clearly,” he says.”
The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories is DiLillo’s only collection of short stories, appearing in the book sequentially dated from 1979 to 2011. And one wonders if the choice of the subtitle, “Nine Stories” is an act of co-incidence or is he playing with J.D. Salinger’s second published book (1953,) titled “Nine Stories by Salinger.”
DiLillo is themes, and symbolism and reality. He’s not much for action or plot, nor do we get much in-depth revelation of the innards of character. We get people simply executing their daily life routines and joyously, DiLillo leaves it up to the reader to interpret the video-like vignette he presents. The stories abound with diversity of geography and societal status and peopled circumstances. No one story reminds us of any other.
DiLillo has been around long enough (his first novel was published in 1971) for his oeuvre to have been studied, critiqued, analyzed, acclaimed, compared, and damned (rarely.) His publications are too numerous even to count, genres including novels, essays, short stories in prestigious magazines, plays, screenplays, and essays. I’ve lost count also of the numbers of books published about him, and his awards probably require a special structure for safe keeping. References to him and to his works are several pages long, and plan to spend several days if you Google his name and desire to read everything therein referenced.
In the process of having 3 decades of his work subjected to intense scrutiny the DeLillo “themes” are interpreted fairly consistently: reflections on reality, the effects of terror in all of its range, characters enmeshed in circumstances they cannot control, people searching for meaning in life, the excessive influence of media in our daily lives, characters indulging in obsessions. But in an interview with PEN in September 2010, DiLillo himself strips it down to: “The theme that seems to have evolved in my work during the past decade concerns time- time and loss. This was not a plan. Novels have simply tended to edge in that direction…. time is a mystery and perhaps best examined (or experienced by my characters) in a concise and somewhat enigmatic manner.” I love his revealing reference to “enigmatic” (thesaurus: mysterious, unknowable, inscrutable, unfathomable) because for me, this is at the core of his characters and indeed of his story structure.
And just for a sliver of insight into the man, in an interview with the German publication Die Zeit following publication of Falling Man, his novel of the post 9/11 fallout, DiLillo was asked: “What is your political orientation?” to which he replied, “I’m an independent. And I would rather not say anything more about it.” The interviewer persisted, “Why not?” to which DiLillo answered, “Well, in the Bronx, where I grew up, we’d have put it this way: Because it’s none of your fucking business.”
Briefly, to some of the nine stories, in three parts, bundled according to their dated origin, Creation (1979) concerns the failed attempts by a young couple to return from their Caribbean vacation as they experience inability to book flights, her frantic need to leave the island, and his enigmatic (that word, again) responses.
In Human Moments in World War 111 (1983) , two astronauts view the earth during their orbital mission and converse with each other about big life issues, ”The banning of nuclear weapons has made the world safe for war… Earth orbit puts men into a philosophical temper… it makes a man feel universal … orbital routine gives our time a shape and substance.”
Along his route, The Runner, (1988) is told of a father kidnappinghis young son, but in retrospect, the bearer of the tale equivocates, “The car, the man, the mother, the child. Those are the parts. But how do the parts fit together? Because now that I’ve had time to think, there’s no explanation.”
Kyle suffers an ongoing sense of doom as she experiences a series of mild earthquakes in Greece, “she lived inside a pause,” as her friend Edmund gives her The Ivory Acrobat, (1988) of the story title, replacing the roof ornament that had shattered during a tremor.“It’ll only get broken when the next one hits…”
In the book title, “The Angel Esmeralda,” (1994) Sister Edgar often walks the south Bronx streets witnessing the varieties of life degradation looking for ways to help the people trapped therein. Her cohort Gracie goes “half berserk, ” at the sight of a tour bus sign, “South Bronx Surreal,” as she calls out, “It’s not surreal. It’s real. It’s real. You’re making it surreal by coming here. The bus is surreal. You’re surreal…. Brussels is surreal. Milan is surreal. The Bronx is real.” Yet when the young child, Esmeralda, is raped and killed the neighborhood finds a way to mourn.
Baeder-Meinhof (2002) takes place in a museum and follows the young couple who meet there as they return daily to view particular pictures. Midnight in Dostoevsky, (2009) my personal favorite, deals with two male college friends who love to engage in invented scenarios and witty dialogue about the imagined lives of others as they engage after their Logics class with Professor Ilgauskas, who reads Dostoevsky day and night In a diner. Hammer and Sickle (2010) takes place in a minimum security prison as the inmates watch two young sisters, (unbeknownst to the other observers, the daughters of one of the inmates,) discussing market conditions and the state of the business world. And The Starveling (2011) my next favorite, is about an obsessive serial movie-goer, who observes and then follows (stalks?) a woman in the various movie houses he attends, as she too is engaged in the same serial viewing activity. This is somewhat reminiscent of DiLillo’s recent work, (2010) “Point Omega” in which filmmaker, Richard Elster is possessed with an ongoing incessant need to review the film “Psycho,”
This short collection is an ideal way to “taste” DiLillo, whose work will live with Roth’s and Updike’s and Bellow’s and Hemingway’s and any number of other great writers who sing America and try to make sense of her.
LOST KINGDOM: Hawaii’s Last Queen, The Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure
by Julia Flynn Siler
Atlantic Monthly Press | 2011 | 296 pages
January 2012
Aloha! I’ve spent time in some of the most exotic places in the world, experienced traditions, people, history, and mores as far from my Brooklyn upbringing as my imagination had ever dared to take me, but I’ve never been to Hawaii. And since the wretched economy has placed me on travel hiatus, I plunged headlong into this other world, ready to lap up its story, (and its sugar) as I tried to retrieve old memories of James Michener’s 1959 classic, Hawaii.
Lost Kingdom is history in action, worthy of Broadway staging, complete with front-of-the-book “Cast of Characters,” including appropriate references. And lest you cannot make context connections, there is a convenient glossary of translations from the Hawaiian dictionary.
Author Julia Flynn Siler, a prize winning journalist, is no newcomer to bringing historical dynasties into full vitality on the printed page. Her 2007 The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of An American Wine Dynasty won many awards.
Lost Kingdom takes us from Captain Cook’s arrival on the island in 1778, (bringing “deadly diseases, liquor and firearms”) to the establishment of the territory of Hawaii in 1898. It is a story of a sovereign monarchy and descendants of peaceful Polynesians that were transformed into a target for what has been called American imperialism. And in case we have lost our sense of history, corruption and greed are not germane only to the 21st century. Missionaries and white entrepreneurs were responsible for much of the treachery that caused the demise of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Lili”uokalani, descendant of the Kamehameha dynasty, was born in 1838 and married John Owen Dominis, the America born son of a ship captain who became Prince Consort when Lili”u (pronounced Lee lee ooh) ascended to the throne in 1891. Theirs was surely less than an ideal marriage and it produced no children.
Claus Spreckels, German immigrant/entrepreneur, was responsible for the development of Hawaii’s sugar crop into a major industry, and not incidentally, he emerged as the richest islander of the period. In transactions that were considerably less than philanthropic, he loaned money to the royal family, which drove them deeply into debt and eventual downfall. As an aside, Siler informs her readers that author Danielle Steele owns the Spreckles “Sugar Palace” mansion now located in San Francisco.
The book brings readers into several insurrections and uprisings as commercialism and the strong influence of missionaries conspired to weaken the royal hold on its people, despite Lilli”u’s efforts to retain power. If you haven’t yet seen the movie, The Descendants, this book can serve as a kind of prelude to where the George Clooney character is coming from.
With the United States, Great Britain, France, and indeed Japan, all looking to sink their tentacles deep inside “Paradise” and its sprawling largesse of the sweetest of sweets, sugarcane, President Grover Cleveland, along with the Queen, attempted to block the U.S. move to annex Hawaii as a territory. By 1898, however, it was clear that the U.S. government, despite the objections of many who bewailed the loss of the monarchy, as well as those who did not want to see us as an imperialistic power, had quelled a counterrevolution, thereby acquiring the new territory.
And intertwined in the political and economic struggles of that land, we get the cultural and geographical appeal of the Hawaii that has attracted tourists to its shores for decades. Characters are fleshed out as real people and events unfold cinematically. If historical biography is your métier, or if Hawaii calls you to her bosom, or if you merely want a good, well researched book of action, character and authenticity, give yourself the treat of Lost Kingdom.
LOST MEMORY OF SKIN
By Russell Banks
416 pages, Harper Collins Publisher, 2011
December 2011
This book may go down as Russell Banks’ best-to-date, in competition with his 16 previously published and acclaimed novels and two books of non fiction. (Not that it doesn’t have flaws) It is hefty in size and concepts and ambivalence and although it is hardly to be labeled a book of “action” one gets the sense that stuff is happening on each page. Banks plows into the heart and guts of his characters with a word palette that is meticulous in detail and color and composition and dimension, so that by the time his canvas is complete, three “D” people walk out of his pages in full flesh with their thoughts and feelings and contradictions spread across their bodies in clear signage. The book is a remarkable blend of character and social issues.
“Lost Memory of Skin” is essentially about losers who are not what they seem to be. The protagonist calls himself The kid. He is a 22 year old skinny convicted sex offender whose personality “had no specialty.” He must wear an ankle locator for the 10 years of his probation, and must never “locate” any closer than 2500 feet from where children might reasonably be expected to assemble. He therefore winds up living under “The Causeway,” in fictitious Calusa, (Miami?) living among a motley group of other banished-from-society sex offenders. He is obsessively caring of his beloved full grown pet iguana, “Iggy.”
Along comes “The Professor,” an obese, “three times fat, ” sociologist bent on studying the habits and lives of this segment of underworld society. He hooks up with “The Kid,” in a kind of arrangement wherein the kid agrees to “be studied.”
In a discussion with his wife, Gloria, (“Glory-Glory-Hallelujah”) the professor tries to explain the psychology of sex offenders, “We cast them aside. We treat them like pariahs, when in fact we should be studying them up close … as if they were fellow human beings who have reverted to being … gorillas, and whose genetic identity with us .. can teach us what we ourselves are capable of becoming .. if we don’t reverse the social elements that caused them to abandon a particularly useful set of sexual taboos in the first place.” The professor is lofty if not entirely credible as the person he purports to be. And in his eagerness to uncover the elements of character that converge into producing a full fledged sex offender, his reliance on pornography could well be a clue into his own inner being.
There is a strong section of relevance to the reality of the way that “texting” has overtaken our language, wherein The Kid’s email messages illuminate the naked truth of its escalating distortion.
The Kid is unsophisticated and compassionate, searching for connectivity, yet wary of human contact, uneducated but uncannily perceptive, perhaps even smart. except for the time he was stupid enough to get caught in a sting while considering the possibility of having sex with a minor.
As the second part of the book unfolds, Banks switches from character to plot and teases us with a bit of mystery, shrouded in Socratic philosophy, and an endless, and repetitive dissection of the age old search for “truth.”
After a major hurricane has caused The Kid to evacuate from his Causeway Home, he retreats to the Panzacola Swamp, (The Everglades?) where he finds temporary paradise as he navigates a rented houseboat into the solitude of the glades and feels a strong affinity to the local birds and swamp animals. Graphic and accurately historic in his descriptions of the area, Banks calls forth some of the works of renown Everglades activist. Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
The first page of the book quotes Metamorphoses: “Now I am ready to tell how bodies change,” which is all the hint you will get regarding the book title.
Indeed, it should have ended several pages before it actually did, and knowing how writers tend to fall in love with their words, I am surprised that Banks’ editor didn’t slash some of the redundancies. But they are well worth slogging through to savor true craftsmanship.
FICTION RUINED MY FAMILY : A Memoir
By Jeanne Darst
Riverhead Books, published by Penguin Group 303 pages
November 2011
I’m a really good soldier. I follow my marching orders fastidiously. “Here’s the book. Read it. Review it.” I do it.
But I’m into page 60-ish and thinking “Why am I burdening my eyes with this? I’ve already read Jeanette Wall’s, “The Glass Castle,” and dysfunctional family memoirs don’t get much better than that.”
So I take a short break and tap into the back cover blurbs , “It had me laughing out loud,” from Ira Glass, “It unfolds like a Eugene O’Neil play … only it’s also funny…” from Tad Friend. And get this one, “Jeanne Darst is funnier than a blotto WASP in a Lilly Pulitzer wheelchair.” (blotto WASP?) from Wendy Burden.
So I tried it again, and was glad that I did not give up. Her breezy style, is at first, somewhat off putting, (“Mom was an awfully swell looking lady,” “I heard Don DeLillo lived in town (Bronxville, N.Y.) but I never saw his ass.”) However, she did display some Dave Barry type wit, and as she chronicled her adventures as a high-wired kid with ludicrously bad judgment, it had dollops of insightful writing hidden in its creases.
Jeanne is the youngest of four daughters. “a book hater, an accomplished reader, a paperwork junkie, and (Jeanne as a child) an idiot detective.” The family lived in St. Louis until Dad moved them to Bronxville, New York.
The mother is a major la dee dah. (something like “blotto”) She came from debutantes and prosperity, the youngest person, child equestrian, on the cover of Sports Illustrated, 1956, nee Doris Grissy. The father, Stephen Darst, is an eternally hopeful freelance writer. He has yet to sell a book, and is perennially working on one about the life of the Scott Fitzgeralds, which proves to be an underlying core theme that Jeanne struggles to unravel.
A strong influence on Jeanne, her writer- father was a language purist and cautioned her against many writer-sins. “As a kid, I was terrified of clichés ….I was under the impression they could .. ruin your life, your hopes and dreams, bring down your whole operation if you didn’t watch it. They were gateway language leading straight to (God forbid?) a business career, a golf marriage, needlepoint pillows … and a self- inflicted gun shot to the head that your family called a heart attack in your alma mater announcements.”
Tipsy, outrageous Mama finally became too much for Dad to handle, and in the inevitable struggle when marriages reached bottom, Mama was good to go. Finally, “With everyone else at college, Mom and Dad waited for me to graduate from high school so they could sell the house and get divorced. I felt like I was a slow eater and the check had been paid and everyone had coats on still sitting at the table, waiting for me to be finished,” one of Darst’s several visually exacting analogies.
Dad had lots of rejections and no money, and during the period when the couple was waiting to split, Mom would be making family meals, while Dad was eating olives and chicken livers as the rest of the family ate lavishly. “(Dad) was fending for himself probably for the first time in his life. And I would rather not have watched, “ while Mother “seemed like Idi Amin, eating her lamb in front of (him).”
The story weaves in an out of Jeanne’s adventurous, risk-taking life, and her never-ending “career” moves: a go-fer at a law firm, a co-owner of a housecleaning business, an acting teacher, a topless appearance on a TV show, a limo driver, a website designer, a window box gardener, a playwright, all the while owning the soul of a writer. But also, all the while, speeding on her own road towards alcoholic self destruction.
Her mother died of a stroke after years of addictive behaviors. “I had wanted her to die … If she died, then I would have had a mother who loved me but just happened to be dead. If she continued living, then I had a mother who was killing herself slowly while I did nothing.”
Several events in her life lead to an awakening, many lending themselves to high humor, and Jeanne eventually straightened out and became a kind of fringe member of the establishment. And also, sober.
But her core issue remains and she struggles with coming to some symbiosis with her parental relationships. Her father’s obsession with Fitzgerald, and particularly Zelda’s life, is seen as a metaphor of his own relationship with his wife.
The question of how much a writer should indulge in his work, to the exclusion of family, is one that leaves Darst pondering. And in her quest, she manages to combine light heartedness with the truth of her angst.
STATE OF WONDER
by Ann Patchett
Harper Collins Publishers | 2011 | 353 pages
September 2011
You may wonder why a woman in her 60s, 70s or even older would want to get pregnant. Or you may wonder why a scientist would want to risk her life in the pursuit of discovering the cause of death of a colleague or why a pharmaceutical company would want to continue to employ someone whose research is so secret that even the people who pay her are not privy to any information about what she is doing. Or you may wonder about the long term psychological effect on a Doctor after having blinded an infant during delivery. And you may even wonder why a man who loves his wife and three young children would be willing to risk the perils of jungle life, making the conscious choice to stay there beyond the “call of duty.” The question is, which of the above, or things not yet mentioned, does Ann Patchett expect you to “wonder” about?
What is a sure bet, is that if you are holding a copy of State of Wonder in your hand, or reading it on an e-book, you cannot put it down.
My 1987 trip down the very waters Patchett describes, and my reckless (in retrospect) jungle walks, machete in hand, were so intertwined with Patchett’s that I could feel the sting of the mosquitoes and I could hear the hiss of the snakes.
Patchett is a master plotter and has the rare writer’s gift of storytelling with the combined eloquence of prose. She opens up all your senses: “…there were layers and layers of scents inside (the Hammock) and the smell of her own sweat which brought up trace amounts of soap and shampoo, the smell of the hammock itself which was both mildewed and sun baked with a slight hint of rope, and the smell of the boat gasoline and oils, and the smell of the world outside the boat, the river water and the great factory of leaves, pumping oxygen into the atmosphere…”
Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Manaus, the Brazilian shove-off point of the Amazon River and its myriad of tributaries, ostensibly to learn the details of the mysterious death of her colleague, fellow scientist Anders Eckman, whose wife cannot abandon their three young children to make that trip.
Leaving the Minnesota headquarters of pharmaceutical company VOGEL, and her somewhat boring lover-boss, Mr. Fox, Marina is also intrigued by the thought of reuniting with sharp-tongued Dr. Annick Swenson, a former mentor and teacher who is spearheading a secret research project for VOGEL.
And oh! The people we meet in the Amazon, to say nothing of the mosquitoes and sloths and tarantulas and snakes and capybaras. “At dusk, the insects came down in a storm, the hard shelled and the soft sided, and the stinging and chirping and buzzing and droning, every last one enfolded its wings and flew with unimaginable velocity into the eyes and mouths and noses of the only three humans they could find…”
The jungle darkness aligns with the dark story of the Lakashi women who eat tree bark to preserve their fertility, and of their neighboring tribe of cannibals.
Questions of scientific efficacy as well as ethics thread throughout the tale, as does Marina’s professional past and indeed, her own heritage. The cast of indigenous people sharpens the contrast and the diversity of humanity and the pace of the action is electric, in a setting with a scarcity of electricity.
My only gripe is the surprise ending that is too much like a wrapped Christmas present, but by the time you reach the closing, you’ll be happy enough to be in civilization and feel deserving of such largess.