The Violent Bear it Away

Mary Flannery O’Connor. Let's make one thing clear. I love you. You had glasses, arm braces, and were an awkward wallflower. I had glasses, was heavy, and was not a wallflower (but probably should have been for all the comfort my awkward chatter could provide). Flannery O’Connor gave me tangible refuge during my last years of high school. Mr. Jones, my eleventh grade English teacher from Georgia, taught her with an admirable commitment. We were in Chicago but we were going to read a Southern writer. Case closed. And how grateful I was after reading “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” “Greenleaf,” and THE perfect “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” How expertly she depicted her peculiar world of South Catholicism, with dual devotion and contempt. How Mormonism needs a Flannery O’Connor!

That being said .. Flannery.. “The Violent Bear It Away” was one of the most labored, interminable novels I have read in my life. Completely unendearing characters and wicked irony work well in 10 to 15 pages. But 250 pages is nothing short of intolerable when you have to live with these characters on your pillow case, grasping for something (ANYTHING!) endearing or even interesting about them. Young Tarwarter, The Schoolteacher, and Bishop were each wholly unrelatable and dogmatic. Was I supposed to be feel something when each met a dismal fate? Was being victimized (in some cases, brutally) supposed to add depth to otherwise contemptible characters? I just did not buy it. If you need me, I will be in a cozy chair curled up with “Fifty Short Stories by Flannery O’Connor.”

Song on iTunes: Stuck in the Middle with You by Three Dog Night

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Dear Reader,

Charlotte Gray, that great Canadian author, once said: "You can kid the world, but not your sister." And she's right. Sisters understand us in a way that no one else can really broach. They have been with us through experiences that even our parents have only guessed at. When I think of my own relationship with my sister, it is a personal and significant one. She was there. She was there when I went through menarche and suddenly in unexpected pain, sobbing. She was a shoulder to cry on when the dreaded first boyfriend dumped me. She watched me walk across the stage at Brigham Young University. And I watched her walk across that same stage 9 years earlier. I watched as her best friend in high school wordlessly ended their friendship. I was her maid of honor when she married a wonderful man. The truth of the matter is, we respect each other's scars and celebrate each other's golden moments.

Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is the story of two sisters (young adults) who live secluded in a dilapidated mansion along with an invalid uncle. The sisters are utterly untrusted by the neighboring villagers, and perhaps with good reason. Their family (parents, a brother, and an aunt) were gruesomely poisoned at the dinner table years before the novel begins. It is a very chilling story about the nature of sisterly love and devotion, perfect for a rainy afternoon.

song on iTunes: Cinder and Smoke by Iron and Wine

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Dear Reader,

I want an iPod Touch. I want an MBA. I want to be a CFO. I want an iPad. I want a Blu-ray dvd player. I want a PhD in Art History--summa cum laude naturally. I want a BMW--hybrid naturally. I want to pre-order a Blackberry Storm 3. I want a condo on the beach. I want a perfect score on the GRE. I want an associate professorship. I want a flat screen with DVR. And I want it all yesterday.

Have you ever thought about envy? About what it does to us, I mean? "The Talented Mr. Ripley," first published in 1955, is 50 years ahead of its time in this regard. It chronicles a small group of wealthy, twenty-something American ex-pats and their exploits during one year in Italy. Everyone who lives in this world lives large. Villas in the countryside, dining out every night, swimming in the ocean/sunbathing on the beach, excursions to other cities, shopping, and (of course) romantic trysts with each other.

They are completely blissful until Tom Ripley arrives. He is broke, lower class, from Boston. He isn't educated and he isn't much. But there is something charming about him, endearing even. He eventually joins this group of wealthy peers, fascinated by their large inheritances and Ivy League educations. As much as they like Tom, however, he never truly fits in. I couldn't stop reading as Tom falls in love with these people and observe as his anger rises and rises and rises. Finally, he erupts into violence against someone who essentially challenges his social validity and wants to expel him from the group.

Which begs the question: how far would you go for an iPod Touch? For that PhD in Psychology?

song on iTunes: Here Comes Success by Iggy Pop

Ordinary People

Dear Reader,

I don't know about you, but I am getting sick of so-called protagonists who have everything they could materially want, but are so freaking self-involved and neurotic that they either commit suicide or cause serious injury to self or others. I have had it UP TO HERE with novels/films about elite prep school life in New England, and the terrible pain of the privileged hero. And you KNOW exactly what I am talking about: Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, The Emperor's Club, The Chocolate War, The Bell Jar, Mona Lisa Smile and on and on and on. For your reading pleasure, I give you ...

THE THREE MOST PRIVILEGED, ANNOYING PAINS IN THE NECK:

1. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye.
Yes, the world was full of phonies but you had parents who loved you enough to pay for not one but THREE prep schools as you continually failed out because you were too lazy to study. You had a nervous break down and then went to a ridiculously expensive private hospital in California to recover. Which begs the question: can I have a nervous break down? I'd like to chill in beautiful, sunny CA for several months while probably being snarky and cynical to all the phony orderlies.

2. Gene Forrester, A Separate Peace. A prep school student whose rich Southern parents sent him to New England for an education. Yes, you were jealous of Finny because of his easy rapport with the other students and his physical ability. But you were a wonderful student. Instead of being grateful for your gifts, what did you do? You may or may not have pushed Finny off of a tree limb, paralyzing him, and leading to his eventual death. You spent THE ENTIRE REST OF THE NOVEL whining, torturing yourself about whether or not it was your fault. You know what? Just graduate, go to the Ivy league, and spend the rest of your mulling in high rise luxury already.

3. Neal Perry, The Dead Poets Society. Oh please. Your working class father is sending you to private school to become a doctor, and he is thus a tyrant and that makes your violent suicide somehow justified? In a word: nonsense. The reality? Neal would have graduated high school eventually (yes high school does end), and then *GASP* he could have GOTTEN A JOB and MOVED AWAY to studying acting somewhere NOT IN NEW ENGLAND. In my opinion, Neal killed himself because standing up to his father meant a working class life. It's easier to blow your brains out than get a job bagging groceries or laying brick or selling men's suits.

I think it's ridiculous that I went to a Chicago public high school and yet novels like "Catcher in the Rye" and "The Bell Jar" were required reading. Their anxieties could not have been more foreign. Polo, boarding schools, uniforms? What WERE those? One of the reasons I like Judith Guest's "Ordinary People" is because it is about a middle class family in the Midwest dealing with a very real loss.

The family's oldest son, Buck, has died. You know, the better one. The one who was light-hearted, easy to be around, and popular. When Buck dies, the ramifications for the rest of the family are fascinating to follow. Beth, the matriarch, is an especially interesting character. She certainly isn't lovable, but she has a steel backbone that's hard not to admire. She has built a reputation that her family is happy, stable, and well-adjusted. When others constantly ask: "How is your family, is there anything I can do?" the reader sees her character unravel more and more, hating the fact that she is the object of so much negative attention, of someone else's pity. I like Beth because she doesn't love easily, and feels incessant pinpricks of guilt because she probably loved her dead son more than her surviving son. The narrative itself has flaws, but it's worth plowing through to get to know the character of Beth Jarrett.

song on iTunes: Deep Inside of You by Third Eye Blind

Bread Givers

Dear Reader,

How are you doing? I am well, I read Anzia Yezierska's "Bread Givers" instead of sleeping last night. Did you ever have a book that you couldn't stop reading? Seriously, a book so enthralling that you could not just settle down and turn the light off? That was this book for me. It is about a Polish-born immigrant girl named Sara living in nineteen-twenties New York. More than anything, she wants a college education and to become a schoolteacher. After witnessing her father arrange three disastrous marriages for her older sisters, Sara breaks away from the family and moves out. As she is unmarried, this is considered a social disgrace. She starts attending night school, and eventually gains entrance into an exclusive east coast college. Sara pays her way for tuition by working late nights in a laundry.

What I love about this story is that it doesn't have a happy, tie-it-all together ending. Sara starts out college with a reputation of being the socially awkward Polish Rube and finishes college as the Polish Rube. What's the difference? Her degree and the knowledge she's gained. And I love Yezierska's beautiful, raw realism. Almost none of Sara's dreams are realized (like gaining campus popularity or earning her Father's respect), but the one she wanted MOST does: she gets her baccalaureate degree and starts teaching. And that, my friend, is life. And that is a happy ending.

song on iTunes: The Wind by Cat Stevens

The Hunger Games

Dear Reader,

"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins is a post-Apocolyptic novel aimed at young adults. And, to be quite honest, I was not in the mood for it. My good friend Anna and her boyfriend raved about it. Anna read through the night to finish it, telling me she couldn't stop and simply had to know what happened next. My co-worker Whitney, during a lull in conversation one day, asked if I had ever read it. I told her I hadn't, as its popularity guaranteed that it was always absent from the library and I did not have any spare cash.

Whitney, not to be easily silenced, e-mailed me a pdf version of this novel I kept hearing about***. She insisted that I start reading it. Reader, I had the entire 300 pages read in two days. It is the engrossing story of Katniss and Peeta, and their struggle to survive in the arena as they fight other children to the death. They do this as the citizens of their nation (called "Panem") watch them on television, place bets, and root for their favorite child warrior (called "tributes").

This novel is chilling, a brilliant blend of "Lord of the Flies" and "The Road." More than just another piece of Post-apocalyptic media (a genre wildly popular right now), it's a serious observation about the effects of reality television on American audiences. When we root for a team or a celebrity or an average Joe, what exactly are we rooting for? For that person to win or for someone else to falter, for someone else to be humiliated? Among other things, Collins closely examines the motivations behind reality television in this book. My advice to you? FIND IT AND READ IT. JUST READ IT!

***You might be having the vapors, dear Reader, because I read this book initially in an illegal format (pdf). Well, chillax. One of the first things I did with my next paycheck was buy both "The Hunger Games" and its sequel "Catching Fire" in hard cover. HARD COVER.

song on iTunes: Firestarter by The Prodigy