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I have decided that I need to give up Elizabeth Berg.  I think I have read about 6 or 7 of her huge body of novels.  Her voice is comforting and clever, and yet I am finding her insubstantial somehow.  I think I have decided that she is entirely too sweet, and it strikes me as unbelievable somehow.

Recently I finished The Year of Pleasures, the story of a 50-something woman who finds herself widowed and grieving.  She has no close family or friends to help her in her grief process, so she uproots herself and sets off on an adventure to settle in a small town where she might reconnect with society around her, specifically a cast of eccentric (but always kind) people.  I had a few problems with this.  First of all, it is a little unbelievable that anyone might completely cut him or herself off from EVERYONE around him or her and yet still possess the social skills to form friendships.  This character though is funny and charming, adventurous and willing to bond with all sorts of new folks.  Although she has neglected all friendships since getting married, she is able to summon a full-on gaggle of old “best friends”, roommates whom she had cut it up with “back in the day”.  She is accepted back into the fold and it is a non-stop girl-fest once they find her vulnerable and in need.  The explanation for her cutting off her friends after college?  She was too in love, too involved with her husband.  That is it.  Too in love?  I don’t think so.  How about Too dependent?  How about Too Unhealthy?  How about Too Lame?

It is hard to imagine that the friends want her back, but more so, it is hard to believe that she is capable of offering much to the friendship.  Somewhere along the way, the main character is bemoaning the loss of her husband and a friend attempts to comfort her.  ”You don’t know!” she whines.  The friend then quietly tells her about her daughter who died.  Hmmmm, I think.  Why would anyone want to be friends with someone that self-involved?  Someone who didn’t even ask or listen or notice that a friend had lost a child?

So Elizabeth Berg, you are not quite cutting it.  You are lovely and slightly cloying.  Sorry my dear.  Oprah may love you, but you seem like junk food to me.

In other news, I finished Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves.  In contrast, Erdrich achieves an eerie sort of darkness that I find lush and compelling.  I always feel in a sort of trance reading Erdrich, and her newest is just as mystifying and ummmm—-erotic?  I am at a loss to describe this author sometimes.  She is such a beautiful writer, but strikes me as someone I DEFINITELY DO NOT WANT TO MEET.  She is creepy in that way; dangerous, changeable, divine.  I love her, I love that she writes so honestly about the uglier side of humans, but she freaks me out a bit.  (I will never forget her writing in her memoir of motherhood that when one of her babies was crying incessantly, she would swear at it in a sweet and loving voice.  ”You fucking, goddamn baby!”  This idea is totally fascinating AND repellant to me.  I absolutely relate to the love/hate experiences of dealing with crying babies, but could never quite pull that off.  Subsiquently, I am fascinated with a woman who swears at her babies.)

When Michael Dorris was alive, it was sometimes suggested that he was the genius and she the one who brushed up and organize his brilliant crumbs.  Now that he has been gone for some time and she has churned out 5 or more novels, it is clear that SHE is a genius all by herself.  Well, at least it is clear to me.

Last month I was forwarded one of those “100 Great Books” lists where you are suppose to go through and mark off what you have read.  I’m not usually a fan of spammy e-mail, but this thing sort of focused me a bit and I went to seek out some books I have never read.  ”Who is that Joseph Conrad guy?  And that James Joyce who everyone is always talking about!”.  The sad thing, (or maybe not?),  is that I was an English major in an early adoption time for multicultural literature.  By that I mean that I my university hadn’t worked out the kinks in their canon requirements and I managed to waltz through school never reading Hemingway, Conrad, or any other of a host of “dead white guys”.  If something was written by a lesbian or a person of color, well you can be sure that I read it!

This wasn’t much of a problem until I applied for grad school and realized that I really needed to be better versed in the literature taught in high schools and colleges.  Hence, much frenzied reading of “the classics”.  You can’t do that all at once however, so I am still hacking away at some of them.  Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad was high up on my list.  This is getting too long, so I will say only that I thought it was totally awesome and totally not a book to waste on high schoolers.  People read this in high school?  My girlfriends agreed that they had read it in high school.  Needless to say, no one remembered what it was about.

In that vein, I am revisiting Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  I am a huge Dickens fan, but well on my way to running out of Dickens.  Maybe when I finish his body of work, I can start into biographies about him to get my fix.  Anyway, I read Tale of Two Cities in college, but—well, I think I was too dumb for it.  I wasn’t ready for it.  I didn’t understand his humor at the time.  I took it all at face value.  I think I missed a lot of the point of the book because I just wasn’t mature enough.  I was too young for Dickens.

This is sort of an interesting issue to have to think about in regards to my profession.  Aren’t I in the business (or won’t I eventually be back in the business) of having young people read literature for their betterment?  What if they aren’t ready for it?  Okay, gotta get off here.  You can weigh in though.  Is it good to be “forced” to read classics?  Does it improve us as humans?  Would we eventually find that quality literature if no one forced us to?

In: Current musings, Reading | | #