On Tap

No pun intended! In advance of her appearance in Portland later this month, I purchased Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania today (it also has a Maine connection). I hope Lisa Margonelli's description of it as "undoctrinaire" is accurate.

The Modern Woman

Alright. So I was about to write a long post about using literature as a romantic litmus test, pegged to a press release I received earlier this week about the launch of the UK's Penguin Dating, powered by match.com. More on that later, perhaps.

But I took a break to wander up to the Portland Public Library, and scored this treasure from the Free Books pile: Health and Hygiene for the Modern Woman, by Leonard H. Biskind, MD, published in 1957.

Amazing; I love this stuff. Among the "22 Factual Chapters" are gems like: "Emotions and the Female Pelvis," "Little Girls' Problems," and "The Overweight Problem." Indeed! I must get to reading. Updates to come. For now, I'll leave you with this:

"The close relationship between emotions and so-called 'female trouble' has long been known, but its acceptance has been delayed for a variety of reasons. Now we speak not only of 'female trouble' but of 'troubled females.' There are a number of emotions which, when unrealistic, can cause symptoms of female trouble or aggravate obstetric and gynecologic conditions."

I can so picture Betty Draper reading this book.  

What Happened to Anna K.

Even in her unbridled fantasies, happiness had been difficult to conjure. 

The Anna (Roitman) K. of Irina Reyn's new novel What Happened to Anna K. (Touchstone) is doomed from the start. Literature and movies have blurred her conception of reality. She wants Heathcliff and Darcy, romance, Dostoyevsky-esque intensity combined with fairytale endings. But she recognizes that even in her romantic imaginings, there's always a tinge of sadness, of unresolved conflict, of stormy situation. It's as though she needs to exist at the apex of every story, unable to move toward the denouement. And in this modern re-imagining of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina that takes place within New York City's Russian immigrant community, Anna's intellectual depressiveness is her fatal downfall.

The book(s) that started it all

The folks over at The Millions have posted their responses to the question: What was the book that started it all for you? They've encouraged lurkers to post responses either in the comments or on their own blogs; I'm taking the second route. 

Blogger Edan and I have a lot in common. Here's her entry:

"According to my mother, I could read novels before I was potty trained. I'm not contesting that mythology, but the first time I remember being totally enamored with a book was later than that, at about age 8, when my mother bought me Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. I'd read and liked other books - The Babysitters Club series, of course, and nearly everything by Judy Blume - but Anne of Green Gables felt more magical, and more mature. It took me to a faraway world, specifically, to Prince Edward Island in the early 20th century, and used big, unfamiliar words (I remember asking my mom what the word "abundance" meant on the ride home from the bookstore - I had a small tingling of fear - or was it excitement? - that this book would be difficult). I loved that the story's protagonist had carrot red hair, and, even better, freckles like mine! I took to calling people "kindred spirits" and wondering if I could pull of puffed sleeves. I spent the next couple of years reading Montgomery's entire oeuvre, and I started taping the following warning into my inside book covers:

This book is one thing
My fist is another
You take this
And you'll get the other"

I never threatened physical violence on book theives, but everything else she writes is accurate -- I'd gorged on Judy Blume, Little House on the Prairie, the Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, and even Sweet Valley High, but nothing touched my imagination like Anne, Gilbert, Marilla, and the rest of the Prince Edward Island gang. I plowed through all eight books (through Rilla of Ingleside, about Anne's daughter), as well as the spin-offs about Avonlea. They were magical. 

Other seminal books in my early literary life include Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (note my earlier post about literary tattoos; this book convinved me that being a weird weirdo was okay), Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (which instilled an unnatural belief that every romantic relationship is passionate, fiery, and depressing), and Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond (which made me run around my backyard pretending to be a spunky Colonial girl accused of witchcraft). Throw in The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin for entertainment value. And of course, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and that other Bronte's Jane Eyre (although I hate the anti-feminist ending). And Roald Dahl's Matilda (a clever girl who reads a lot -- what better role model?!), and My Side of the Mountain (I find that young men generally prefer Hatchet, but MSOTM is inexplicably more gender-neutrally inspiring -- also, Jean Craighead George lives in my hometown). 

But this isn't supposed to be a list of "the best books I read when I was young," it's supposed to be an identification of "the book that started it all" -- and I interpret that as: the book that opened up the world of words and made me love reading. And for that I have to go back to Beverly Cleary's Ramona the Pest, which I vividly recall reading in bed with my mother at a very young age. Ramona was a champ.

Taking the P&P metaphor even farther

Yesterday, Maureen Dowd compared Barack Obama to Jane Austen's prideful Mr. Darcy, and took the metaphor farther by claiming that we Americans are collectively his Elizabeth Bennet. Fine. Dowd also casts John McCain as Wickham, the manipulative lying cad who somehow pulls the wool over even an intelligent person's eyes.

I've spent some part of the last 24 hours brainstorming how I would fill out the cast...But found it more difficult than I'd anticipated. Any help? 

Mr. Collins (the gross and annoying cousin who fawns over Elizabeth, only to be spurned): I wanted to say Mitt Romney, but he's simply too handsome to play a simpering fool. Guiliani is too strong-willed, and Kucinich didn't fawn either (though they are both slightly troll-like). 

Jane (Elizabeth's kind, beautiful, and rather dull older sister): The America of four years ago (the one that let G-Dubs get re-elected). 

Bingley (Jane's kind, handsome, and rather dull suitor): I would say Karl Rove, but he's not very handsome...Or very kind. Or even very dull. But he did help woo America, four years ago. Here's a better idea: John Kerry or John Edwards -- they're both handsome, kind, whatever, and did, in fact, "win over" the America described above, by virtue of pushing more than half of the electorate away. 

Mrs. Bennet (the overbearing, abrasive matriarch that often ruins everything): Dick Cheney

Mr. Bennet (the intelligent, bemused, somewhat detached father who puts up with everyone else's crap): Sweden? Canada? 

At some point I ceased caring if these make sense in a political context; I just like thinking of Dick Cheney as Mrs. Bennet.

Taking the P&P metaphor even farther

Yesterday, Maureen Dowd compared Barack Obama to Jane Austen's prideful Mr. Darcy, and took the metaphor farther by claiming that we Americans are collectively his Elizabeth Bennet. Fine. Dowd also casts John McCain as Wickham, the manipulative lying cad who somehow pulls the wool over even an intelligent person's eyes.

I've spent some part of the last 24 hours brainstorming how I would fill out the cast...But found it more difficult than I'd anticipated. Any help? 

A package from Red Hen Press

I met with Red Hen Press managing editor Kate Gale a few weeks ago, at the tail end of her stint speaking to Stonecoast MFA students here in Maine.

Book Purging

I am moving in the middle of August, downsizing from a sizeable two-bedroom apartment I shared with another human and two cats to a small one-bedroom that will be just for me and the felines. As a result, I have to streamline my possessions, and the hardest part of this challenge will be purging some of my “literary clutter,” i.e. the books that I’ve collected and mostly refused to get rid of over the years — whether or not I enjoyed reading them (if I even read them at all). Given my space constraints, I’m going to have to be ruthless.

Hobby Tattoos

Many articles and web sites have taken note recently of the proliferation of literary tattoos, and the blogs that love them.

(Here's one of my personal faves:)

Now, I've discovered another group of intellectuals who like to wear their academic discipline as a sleeve (or at least on the small of their back, or on their bicep) -- scientists. At Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium, science journalist and author Zimmer (whose most recent tome, an homage to E. coli bacteria, is sitting on my bedside table) collects images of beinked flesh with scientific themes such as molecular structures, species of fish, or chemical symbols.

Some are more subtle...

...than others. 

Not So Bullshit Nights and Days in Not So Suck City

In 2004, my Phoenix colleague Mike Miliard wrote a great piece about Massachusetts native Nick Flynn, and Flynn's memoir: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (WW Norton, 2004). Flynn's first full-length play, Alice Invents A Little Game and Alice Always Wins was published by Faber & Faber this month, and I had the chance to read it over the weekend. These days, Flynn's a part-time (upstate) New Yorker, and the play takes place on the streets of New York City, where four (strange) strangers meet on the sidewalk during a blackout. It's funny, quirky, short, and smart, with dark undertones (rather like Flynn himself -- well, I'm not sure about the short part). I'll look forward to seeing it staged around here someday soon. It would be especially cool if Flynn's partner, actress Lili Taylor, could reprise her role as Alice, which she played when the show was being workshopped in New York.

We Tried and We Failed

Warning: Don't peruse Burned By Love if you're going through a breakup. I guarantee it'll make you feel worse.

When I first stumbled across it a few weeks ago, there were only a handful of entries. Today, the promotional site, set up to help publicize Andrew Davidson's debut novel, The Gargoyle (Random House, 2008), has 45 confessionals and counting. After being linked from the New York Times book blog, Paper Cuts, today, will there be an influx of intellectual sob stories?

Ripped from the newspapers

Daughters of the North

“Sister, how bad does a situation have to be before a woman will strike out, not in defence, but because something is, as you say, worth fighting for?”

The heroine of Sarah Hall’s 2007 novel, Daughters of the North, is known only as Sister. She, like Hall’s prose, is raw, brave, and surprising, both to herself and to the reader. After escaping from a post-flood tyrannical society, where coils are shoved into women’s vaginas to keep them from having children until their lottery number comes up, Sister joins the mostly female community at Carhullan, a farm outside the offical realm of the new government authority. There, she becomes a hardened warrior.

The book, which has garnered high praise (including a James Tiptree Jr. prize earlier this year), is remarkable for its lovingly accurate portrayal of women. The female body and mind are given their due here; their potential is realized. It feels somehow violent, and rough — there’s no hint of an apology — and although the story takes place in some dystopian future, the themes it raises are powerful in the present.             

“It was no better and no worse than the treatment I gave the others, when the roles were reversed. It was no better and no worse than the treatment soldiers had always undergone in preparation for deployment. And Jackie saw to it that we were no different from them.

She did not make monsters of us. She simply gave us the power to remake ourselves into those inviolable creatures the God of Equality had intended us to be. We knew she was deconstructing the old disabled versions of our sex, and that her ruthlessness was adopted because those constructs were built to endure. She broke down walls that had kept us contained. There was a fresh red field on the other side, and in its rich soil were growing all the flowers of war that history had never let us gather. It was beautiful to talk in. As beautiful as the fells that autumn.”

I have a feeling I will ponder this book for some time.

Cigarettes, Sedaris, and Me

In today's Portland Phoenix, I have a short piece about Ken Gloss, proprietor of the Brattle Book Shop in Downtown Crossing, who'll be in Portland next week. Unfortunately, he tells me my signed first edition of David Sedaris' Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim is worth peanuts.

Good story though. See how it says "To Deirdre / Don't ever quit"? Well, this reading/signing took place at the Brookline Booksmith, and it was packed. When he'd finished reading from the book, the masses began to assemble, ready to swarm for the author's signature. But Sedaris, lamenting the fact that smokers are increasingly ostracized in this health-crazy world, said that anyone who could produce evidence of their smoking habit could jump to the front of the line. Back then, I was a real smoker (not just a fake drunk smoker like I am today), so I gripped my P-Funks and proudly weaved my way forward.

Thus, when he wrote "Don't ever quit," he was referring to my cigarette habit, as opposed to, say, my burgeoning writing career or my young, ambitious life. How inspirational!  

(Also, it was at that reading that someone asked [or he volunteered, I can't remember] about what he'd been reading recently, and he responded that he loved Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family, which I proceeded to read, and count today as one of my favorite books.)

Sam Mendes goes literary

You know you're a huge nerd when news of George Eliot's Middlemarch being made into a movie (by a competent director) makes you shiver with excitement. Holy crap! So awesome. Except if they get Keira Knightley to play Dorothea, which would break my heart. Sorry, Keira, I do buy you as smart and spunky, but there's something missing -- a sense of refinement, perhaps? or maybe quietly yearning self-awareness? -- in your characterization of nineteenth century female heroines.

Speaking of Sam Mendes, he's also directing wife Kate Winslet and her old co-star Leonardo DiCaprio in a film adaptation of Revolutionary Road. I've never read it, but it comes highly recommended by several folks and I just got a copy of it. If I ever finish The Brothers Karamazov (my noble summer reading project), Rev Road comes next.