LEISURELY THOUGHTS
from Howard
31 December 2002. About eight or nine years ago, my sister Joan started keeping a record of the books that she reads, after she read that Hillary Clinton does that. I started keeping my own list last year sometime, and I like to look back at the list and try to keep it more or less balanced. Joan and I (and Hillary Clinton too, I would imagine) have kind of quirky tastes at times, and it's good to see lists with variety. I asked Joan to look over her 2002 list and pick the one that she enjoyed the most, and here is the one she chose: April 1865: The Month That Changed America, by Jay Winik. Joan loves reading American history, so it was a natural for her (her pick last year was John Adams by David McCullough).
I have looked over my list and have struggled to come up with just one book that I would say is my favorite of the bunch, but this is what I have decided on: Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien. This book, released in 1998, is the one that I most couldn't wait to come back to while I was reading it and that I hated to see end. It is very well written and is off-the-wall and entertaining throughout. My second place favorite that I read in 2002 was The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, an amazing novel about five family members from each of their perspectives.
One of the highlights of 2002 for me was meeting in person Elke, "German Mama" from the Needahand Discussion Group. Jerry and I met her and her husband and went sailing on their boat on the German North Sea in September. She and I of course share John Irving as our favorite author but in our emails have had fun exploring other authors together, some that we didn't know before: for instance, trying some Tom Robbins, discovering British authors Ben Elton and Nick Hornby, and wading through some political stuff that made us angry (Stupid White Men, Fast Food Nation). I asked Elke what the best book was that she read in 2002, and this is what she emailed back to me: "I think the book I liked best last year was Tomcat in Love. Because it hit a nerve. Because it was a new born Tim O'Brien. And because it was such a wonderful experience to read all these short-story-like chapters forming a novel -- that's real craftmanship."
So how about that. She and I are agreeing on our best read of the year. And she and I are agreeing on one other thing: that we are very ready for a new John Irving novel. Let's hope that we don't have to wait too long for his next one.
Enjoy 2003. Please stop back and see us often.
29 December 2002. I hope you are having good holidays this year. We had good Christmases, first with Jerry's parents last weekend in Illinois and then on Christmas Day here in Minnesota with my sons, Jon and Tom, and with my sister, Joan.
And suddenly the year-end is upon us -- Man, do these years go fast! I tend to reflect on a year ending in many ways, but one of those ways, since starting this needahand.com website, is to ask people to pick which book was the best one he or she read during the year. I hope you as a reader of this site will let me know your favorite book of the ones you read this year -- a new book or an old book, fiction or nonfiction, a literary treasure or just mindless fun, something that you read for the first time this year. Please email me at howard@needahand.com or join in a discussion in the Needahand Discussion Group.
Just for the heck of it, I keep you informed during the year what I am reading -- here is what I read this year: click here for Howard's list. I also keep you up to date on what my cool sister is reading: click here for Joan's list. I have my favorite for this year narrowed down to two or three, and Joan has already picked her favorite. I'll let you know in a couple days what they are!
16 December 2002 (Beethoven's birthday). A couple weeks ago, I went to a cousin's wedding in southern New Jersey, my home state (Meanwhile, Jerry was off on a wild vacation in Thailand and Cambodia!). I always look forward to getting back to South Jersey, but I also tend to be very reflective on these trips, pondering such deep questions as "How did I get this old this fast?" and wondering why so many things changed so much over the years and some things not at all. When I moved away from New Jersey 26 years ago, I never would have dreamed that I would live away from there this long.
The book that I took along for reading on the plane and various times over that weekend was one very conducive to such sobering thoughts, a book I have been meaning to read for more than a year, The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene (1904-1991). Excellent book! I like Graham Greene books anyway, but this particular novel had a special significance in John Irving's A Son of the Circus and therefore a book I knew as an Irvingophile I had to read eventually. It turned out to be by far the best Graham Greene I have read and is in the running for the best book I have read this year. (It was also, for those keeping track of such mundane facts, #40 on the list of the Best Fiction of the Twentieth Century -- see 10 January and this link: 100 Best Novels).
My sister Joan, a well-read person, as you know, had until recently only been exposed to Graham Greene once, and that was when I dragged her and Jerry to an odd local stage production of Greene' novel, Travels With My Aunt, last year at Theater in the Round here in Minneapolis. But while I was reading The Heart of the Matter, she was reading Greene's The Quiet American, which I read earlier this year and which, unbeknownst to me at the time of my reading, has been adapted into a new and reportedly outstanding film version starring Michael Caine. I read a glowing review of the new film in Newsweek several weeks ago.
So my sister and I have been fired up to see this new film of The Quiet American, and every week we check out the movie listings, and this film has yet to come to Minneapolis.
We shouldn't feel too slighted, apparently. I have found out why it does not come here or anywhere else except for New York and maybe Los Angeles. I read this week in The Nation that the film is being withheld from general release at this time because it portrays "bad" Americans (the story takes place in pre-U.S.-involved Vietnam in the 1950s), and the film company does not want to appear to be "un-patriotic" at a time when we may be on the brink of war.
I don't know about you, but I find that sort of reasoning (censorship?) to be highly disturbing. I hope we can all have the opportunity soon to see this film version of a fictional story written by an exceptional and courageous novelist.
If you would like to know more about Graham Greene, try this website: http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/.
27 November 2002. I have no idea how much credibility the "Irving Reader Poll" on this website has, but as of this writing there have been 1,051 votes on the question, "Which is your favorite?" of the ten John Irving novels. Of those 1,051 votes, only four have been cast for John Irving's third novel, The 158-Pound Marriage, first published in 1974. Statistics like this make me wonder these sorts of things: Were there really four readers who liked 158-Pound Marriage better than the other nine (or maybe one person voting four times)? Are there people who have read 158-Pound Marriage and none of the other nine (maybe because it's the shortest)? Are there people who have read no John Irving novels but just wanted to vote and thought that The 158-Pound Marriage was the coolest title? Or did somebody just accidentally push the wrong button?
The 158-Pound Marriage was the novel written right before the one that would make John Irving rich and famous, The World According to Garp. Garp-lovers and Irving-discoverers like myself at the time, hungry for more John Irving and more Garp, then often went back and read the first three of his books, Setting Free the Bears, The Water-Method Man, and The 158-Pound Marriage from his "unknown" days. And we were usually disappointed because, except for wrestling metaphors and flashbacks to Vienna, there isn't much Garp in these other novels.
But there is a lot of John Irving in these books, and with different expectations I did get much more out of my recent re-reading of The 158-Pound Marriage than I did the first time reading it twenty-some years ago. To appreciate this book, I think that we need to accept that this is a small story, basically about only four characters, and that the characters are not particularly likable. In most John Irving novels, I get the impression that Mr. Irving has a love for his characters: I don't think he even liked these characters. Beyond that, we need to realize that the primary subject of this novel, "spouse-swapping", was much more of a titillating and newly-discussed topic back in the early 1970s than it is today.
It is a dark story, with no laugh-out-loud moments in the middle of it, but it has the beauty of John Irving prose and it has perceptive things to say about relationships and control-freaks within relationships. John Irving always is best when setting up feelings of love and heartbreak. There just aren't any Ellen Jamesians or transsexual football players here to go with them.
20 November 2002. The consistency of my reading habits varies wildly depending on what else is going on in my life. I have found that I get the most books read when I have the right environment around me (a cozy reading spot and Rachmaninoff on the stereo) and the least amount of clutter in my head. If there is disruption around me, I seem to get no books finished, and the ones I start just lie there on the nightstand looking unappealing.
This has been a season of disruption for me because of a house move, major changes in my business (goodbye, Sarah!), and the death of Paul Wellstone, to name a few of the big factors, as well as a general busy-ness that I need to learn to control better. I find that I have not finished a book in well over a month. And I have started three books and am maybe half done with each, and I can't seem to stick with any of them for very long, even though they're all pretty good.
Here are the books I have going at the moment: first is the so-called "cult favorite" novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy O'Toole, a funny story about some colorful and eccentric characters in New Orleans. This was the only book ever written by Mr. O'Toole, who committed suicide sometime after finishing it in 1969. The book was finally published in 1980, and a lady at our morning coffee shop this morning told me that a movie version of it is in the works now.
Second, to appease the political/historical side of me, I am reading a book about the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Five Days That Shook the World: Seattle and Beyond. My reason for reading this is to try to figure out why these protestors (and subsequent anti-WTO protestors) are so demonized by the press. I don't think this book is giving me the answer to that question, but it is intriguing reading anyway (And scary too, if you happen to be a person not too crazy about a police-state mentality).
And, third, for mental "comfort food", I am re-reading what may be John Irving's least popular novel, The 158-Pound Marriage. And, despite my slowness in getting through this shortest of Irving novels, I am relishing being back in Irving-land. And I will have more to say about The 158-Pound Marriage when I am finished with it.
I'm hoping that my brain will settle down soon, and I'll be back to a more accomplished and satisfying reading routine. There are several excellent spots in the new house for settling in with a good book, and Rachmaninoff piano concertos are ready on the stereo. Maybe I just need a beer to go with them.
06 November 2002. If you know me, or if you have read this humble little column for any length of time, then you know that I am active politically and, this year specifically, have been highly involved in the U.S. Senate re-election campaign of my political soul-mate and hero, Senator Paul Wellstone from our state of Minnesota. If you read or listen to the news, you also know that Paul Wellstone, along with his wife, Sheila, and daughter, Marcia, and five other persons, were killed in a mysterious and horrible plane crash about twelve days ago.
This terrible tragedy has left Jerry and me absolutely heart-broken on a personal level, as well as politically directionless for now. Paul and Sheila Wellstone were people that we came to know fairly well during this campaign and to love as the sweet and wonderful individuals that they were. We will miss them as our friends and as our political voices at a time when there don't seem to be any others.
The twelve days from that day to this have been days full of tears and gloom, sometimes of highs and lows. We felt that we had to stay active in the election campaign (which yesterday ended -- for us, anyway -- badly), and we drove ourselves to exhaustion with campaign activity for other candidates during that time, partly at least to keep the memory and dream of the Wellstones alive. We were honored to be involved in the Wellstone memorial ceremony last week and were on the platform for that inspiring event. I will always be proud to be a Wellstone Democrat. At the same time, the shock is still there: we still have not fully realized that he is gone.
And what does any of this have to do with this website?... Well, how about the time that Paul and I had a little conversation about John Irving? Irving and Wellstone are both inductees into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, you know. While I wanted to find out which Irving books Paul may have read and liked, he went on this long tirade about wrestling and what a shame it was that John Irving was a wrestler in New England when everybody knows that the best wrestling programs in the country are in Minnesota and Iowa, and on and on. It was just he and I in the room, and, as he passionately spoke about wrestling, with the same passion I saw in his political speeches, I just smiled and enjoyed his company and the time listening to him. And I thought to myself, Maybe that's just how wrestlers are.
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24 October 2002. Today is Jerry's birthday, but there won't be any party or much time for celebrating (even though he deserves all of that), because we are in the midst of moving to a new house. The past several weeks have been all packing and sorting at the old house, as well as arranging for painters, carpet-layers, and floor sanders at the new place -- Needless to say, no time for "leisure" and very little time for "thoughts" other than an occasional What the heck were we thinking??. Did we really need to move when we liked the old house so much? Such complications. Sometimes I think I was meant for a very simple life, maybe living in a small apartment over a hardware store (but then where would I put my Steinway?), working as a full-time (and presumably starving) writer and radical political activist. But I do have to say the new house is beautiful, more than I ever aspired to, still in our same great neighborhood across the East Hennepin Bridge from downtown Minneapolis (our area was named in the May 2002 issue of Travel and Leisure magazine as one of the five "hottest" neighborhoods in the U.S., you know), and maybe this home will inspire me to become the starving (because of the new mortgage payment) writer and political activist from there. In the meantime, I'll keep going to work (Have you ever seen that many parentheses in one paragraph?).
Happy birthday, Jerry.... :-)
08 October 2002. Most people that read my "leisurely thoughts" have come here because they are readers, specifically John Irving readers, and they must wonder at times why I go off on tangents about what I am doing other than reading. I guess I do it because none of us has a life of only reading: The books that we read are only one piece of who we are, and I try to place the books that I'm reading into the context of the other things happening in my life that maybe are even pointing me to the books I am reading or the frame of mind that I am in. And reading (and writing, for that matter) take a lesser percentage of my time than I wish they did. I may focus in these pages too much on what I'm doing rather than why I am thinking or feeling, and I bet that sometimes I come off as being a bit bedazzled by the pop culture of the moment. I hope that isn't the case, but I do admit to having a variety of casual entertainment interests, sometimes giving them just a bemused glance, rarely anything obsessive.
So, occasionally a week happens, like the one last week, when I have both my book autographed by Salman Rushdie and my hand squeezed by Cyndi Lauper.
Salman Rushdie was in town last week for an interview appearance, held in St. Paul in front of about 900 people at the Fitzgerald Theater (named for St. Paul native son, F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Jerry, Joan and I attended. None of the three of us have ever read The Satanic Verses or Midnight's Children or anything else by Mr. Rushdie, I think because at least to me his works seemed to be intimidating and difficult. He was here in part to promote his new book of essays called Step Across This Line, and each of us bought a copy to be signed. I have to say now after the interview and readings that my previous impression of him as unapproachable is totally unfounded. He was very funny, witty, conversational. The excerpts that I have read from Step Across This Line are entertaining and insightful, and now I am ready to try one of his novels. I would appreciate hearing from any of the needahand readers who have read Rushdie and their recommendations about which novel would be good to start with.
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And, speaking of pop culture vs. literary merit, Joan and I both have just finished the current top fiction bestseller, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, which has received acclaim and is very much a talked-about book now. And we both have to say, What is the fuss all about? Neither one of us was particularly impressed by it. The story: a young girl is raped and murdered and then watches from heaven the after-effects on her family, friends, and murderer. It is an intriguing and imaginative premise, but I know that I was glad to be done with it.
Joan has been going through a difficult couple of weeks, and maybe it wasn't the time to be reading a book with such a downer of a subject. Her beloved cat Ornery, her companion of fourteen years, died last week, and I am finding, in watching her and trying to be there for her, that grieving for a pet is not that much different than grieving for a person. My sister is one of my best friends, and it is hard to see her go through such an tough time.
01 October 2002. Everybody used to have their favorite Beatle, and John Lennon was always mine. Paul McCartney wasn't even in second place with me -- that would have been George Harrison. And, as much as I enjoyed the McCartney concert last Monday night, there was a certain amount of sadness in it too, with John and George both gone now. Paul sang mostly Beatles songs, which I was happy to hear (because my head is partially still stuck in the 1960s and also because I generally consider most of his post-Beatles work to be pretty lightweight), and I have to give him credit for a terrific performance. He still has a very high energy level, and his voice sounds great. If he comes to your city, I encourage you to go see him. The tickets are way overpriced, but, hey, this is a legend we're talking about.
The Xcel Energy Center arena in St. Paul, by the way, built a couple years ago, is a remarkable place to hear a concert. Great sightlines, good acoustics -- and it's attracting away from the arena in Minneapolis the big names, at least "big" to baby boomers like me. Last week it was McCartney, followed the next night by The Who and Counting Crows. Then last night it was my fellow Jersey boy, Bruce Springsteen. Friday night, it is Cher, here on her "Farewell" Tour, with opening act Cyndi Lauper -- (Don't ask me why we're going to that one!).
So maybe I'm a nostalgia freak, but at the same time I know how much times have changed. There aren't any John Lennons speaking out these days, and, in this era of gutless, corporate-owned, poll-driven politicians, that leaves a void. It would have been so wonderful to have somehow had John back on that stage last week, maybe even with Yoko(!), singing "Imagine" and "Give Peace A Chance."
21 September 2002. My brother Ron lives in New Jersey and is coming, by air, to see us today. The big deal about that is that in his 50 years he has never flown before, so this is a major first for him. And the only way we were able to talk him into this two and a half hour flight from Philadelphia to Minneapolis was to bribe him into coming by buying him air tickets and, most importantly, something he would never be able to resist -- a concert ticket to see Paul McCartney Monday night in St. Paul. Ronnie is a big-time McCartney fan (who isn't?). So it will be good to have Ron here for several days to hang out with. Tomorrow he and I are going to the Vikings-Carolina Panthers football game.
Our Minnesota Vikings are off to another pathetic start (0-2 so far), but Jerry and I have season tickets again this year and have fun going anyway. The game last week versus the Buffalo Bills was a pretty good one, except for us losing, of course, and went into a prolonged overtime -- in other words, not a game you would want to leave early. The problem with that was that my sister Joan and I had concert tickets immediately after to see Olivia Newton-John (thanks, Cindy!) on the other side of downtown Minneapolis, and the timing to get from one to the other was already tight without overtime. ( Joan won excellent concert seats by getting right a radio trivia question.) I had to literally run from the game at the Metrodome to meet Joan at the Orpheum Theater, probably about a mile, stopping at my car to shed my Randy Moss jersey, and I arrived just as Olivia was starting her first song. So there I was, sitting within spitting distance of Olivia Newton-John, surrounded by aging fans of the movie Grease, and sweating like a pig. There's nothing like making a grand entrance.
18 September 2002. I've finished reading three books in the last week and a half -- vacation helped me catch up on my reading a little.
I finished The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, the book that won the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction (whatever that means). I resisted reading it, mostly because Jonathan Franzen acted like such an ass last year by insulting Oprah Winfrey and her "book club" readers (see 04 November 2001), but my friend Paul told me that I just had to read it, so I did, and I do have to admit that it is very good. 567 pages and no bad ones. The story is about a dysfunctional family (overused term, I know) -- parents and three grown children -- from the point of view of each of them. This book is highly literary but very readable, with just the right amount of emotion and sentimentality. I can also understand why Oprah recommended it. Please let me know if you have read it: I would love to discuss it with you.
Then I finished the non-fiction Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, an excellent exposé of the dirty deeds of the fast food industry and its government and political collaborators. This book immediately convinced me to boycott at least McDonald's, if not all the fast food chains. That was on a Friday. The next day, Jerry and I were on a five hour train trip from Amsterdam into northern Germany and had one change of trains, in Rheine, Germany. We only had about twenty minutes there, and we needed to find some food in that short time. So we went running through the train station and outside the station and could only find one place where we could grab a sandwich and still catch our next train -- of course, it was McDonald's. So the first leg of that boycott lasted almost twenty-four hours.
My friend Elke gave me a copy of Cat's Eye by Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, the first Atwood that I have read, and I liked her writing and story-telling style. And now I have moved on to a current bestseller, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold.
12 September 2002. Jerry and I are back in the USA after thirteen beautiful days in the Netherlands and Germany -- eight nights in Amsterdam and four nights on the coast of the North Sea in Germany. The days in Amsterdam on a houseboat brought us the most nearly perfect weather we have ever had in Amsterdam, which is usually known for having weather very similar to Seattle's. We are never ready to leave Amsterdam, probably our favorite city in the world, and good weather made it even tougher to pack up and move out of the houseboat.
But from there we were off by train to the adventure of meeting Elke ("German Mama"), my email pal from the needahand discussion group, an acquaintanceship that started just because she and I had the same favorite author and developed into a strong friendship that I value (One of these days I will pin down what it is that John Irving fans have in common). Email relationships are one thing; meeting maybe takes some courage. Elke and her husband Peter welcomed us though, these two strange American guys named Howard and Jerry who spoke practically no German, into their home and their lives, and we had a terrific time with them. Sailing on the sea is their passion, and they shared that with us by taking us sailing on their beautiful boat, Helena, and introducing us to the fishing and vacation village in the East Frisian region of northern Germany where they live. Elke's English is excellent, so she was able to be our translator with Peter, but, by the next time we see them, Jerry and I both hope to know more German than we did this time. I even bought the book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning German (So far, though, the book is a bit over my head!).
Then we took the train back to Amsterdam to fly home from there yesterday. When we were checking in at the airport, I was interviewed by a Dutch TV news reporter, asking me what kinds of thoughts I was having as an American traveling on 11 September. I never worried about flying on that date (because, even though our attorney general ashcroft doesn't seem to realize it, terrorists are not predictable), but it was a sad anniversary for our country, and, even though I never get enough of Europe, I think it felt good that that was the day we came home.
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