Review of Don Waters

I've been catching up on some friends' (and potential friends' blog posts) and I feel inspired to recommit to blogging.

Zach and I are feeling a mixture of discombobulation and piqued interest as we adjust to living in Canada during all of the excitement and uproar that is the winter Olympics. Tonight we went downtown to see a flick and accidentally walked into a laser light show -complete with ziplines.

I am ashamed to say that for the first time in memory, I haven't read a novel in one month. Instead, I've been savoring a collection of short stories by Don Waters called Desert Gothic. As the title suggests, these are physically gritty and mentally twisted tales that share American west desert settings. They're almost exclusively masculine, several of them gay. Many (if not all) of the characters are deeply, consciously isolated. They're laconic, but not stereotypical. There are chance encounters and sadly deficient relationships between generations and between cultures (mostly immigrant and citizen). "These were men with muscled cables dancing inside thick necks". Communication seems to be the ultimate goal. That and survival since a lot of the characters are terminally ill, have recently lost mothers or partners, or work in societal (and international) margins where violence, drugs, and illness seem common.

There are only two female characters with any lines at all; both of them are one-dimensional, one of them is stock. I consider my admiration for these stories to be signs of personal growth; for about two years I only read female writers.

Perhaps I'm drawn to these stories because their settings are such evocative portrayals of those desert cities and landscapes that are lodged in nostalgic memories. Waters has set out to study and capture the very atmosphere of the desert- that dehydrating, searing sensation of sun on skin- in prose that is both muscular and exact. I would read these stories just for the prose, but fortunately the characters are complex, unique, conflicted and likable.

My favorite three stories are "The Bulls at San Luis," "Little Sins," and "Mineral and Steel." "Bulls" is a border story that hasn't been told before. The desert setting moved me, partly because I have been on those southern Arizona drives and been to border towns like Nogales, but partly because this story retells the border-crossing myth. The end is in danger of being sentimental, but the impact is minimized by the masterful juxtaposition of narrative and back story.

"Little Sins" is such a clever story, although it wanders ever so slightly in the middle. It is the book's only depiction of marriage. The main character's passive aggressive behaviors are amusing and they function in the narrative as an innovative way to develop the contemporary emasculated male character.

"Mineral and Steel" seems pasted together at times, but the relationship between step-father and son is funny. The step-father's character is endearing: a massive man who (sometimes lovingly) makes door handles and only listens to Elton John. The prose carries an otherwise disjointed narrative to a satisfying end.

I have a new found respect for the Iowa Short Fiction Award and plan to read more of their winners.

Unexpected Places

Zach and I are officially moving to Vancouver, B.C. in January. I'm desperately missing hot weather. Meantime I'm still working at my beloved community center where I'm learning patience, faith, and wonder. That last statement was trite, but I don't know how to put it so I'll just leave it at that.

I'm also substituting at the Bellevue school district, where I fill in for the Head Start and preschool programs, and where Dr. Seus books enable four-year-olds to exhibit their best fish faces and to bellow animal noises. During free-play preschool girls carry paper flowers and ask preschool boy(friends) to marry them. Preschool boys build train tracks and draw two-legged elephants, wanting nothing to do with marriage, except one timid boy with big expressive eyes, who tries on straw hats until the brides come to claim the hats, not the boy. He walks to the train station, tries to run his train on the another boys' track (at my urging) and causes a tantrum. He sits back, unbearably wide eyed and quiet. I can't stop worrying about him.

Abandoned

I'm learning the Library of Congress cataloging system this week. I need a full-time job I think. 

Over the top?

The perfect state of being is when you are on the verge of three paths and you are equally excited and perfectly content with all of them. This is where I am. Only it's better because I am also extremely happy with my current (for the next 8 weeks) job. Fridays are swimming days and I'm learning how to take several of the autistic kids into the water with very rewarding responses. I just may have found an alternative calling. Next week I'm rereading the bone people.

Zach and I met our friends Susan and Chris in Ballard tonight for live jazz with the Vampirates. It doesn't make sense, but I'm sublimely happy.

Oh, one more thing- I am very satisfied with my dissertation mark. That helps quite a lot.

This is me sans acorn squash

On Monday I start work at the Bellevue community center. For 10 weeks, and more if it goes well, I'll be assisting various classes for children and adults with disabilities.  I'm rather excited about it and a little nervous. I haven't worked in a year. Updates to come no doubt.

Meantime, I've given a lot of thought to my aspirations and direction- recession time interviews can throw you into that loop. I feel as if I've just left undergrad. I was only an undergraduate for 2.5 years. I took a year off and then completed a one year MA. No comps and a short dissertation- my MA is like my final year of undergrad. 

I had been planning to move to Vancouver, BC in January to start an MLS program. But now all I want to do is move into a little community and wait for opportunities to come my way. This is a major reversal from the last few years, which have involved chasing opportunities and ideas all over- Denver, the North Cascades, Leeds, Vancouver. If I stay in one place, what will I find? How long will that take? Can you promise I won't end up a full-time circulation clerk? 

Meantime I've had to cancel my travel plans to Denver since I start work on Monday. My dad is 'disappointed', a word that dampens my day. He says, "What will I do with all the acorn squash we harvested for you?" This sadness can only be cured by a foray into monster books. On this bright blue-sky morning I'm settling in to The Little Stranger. Heres hoping for hauntings and MA-worthy jobs in the suburban wilderness.   

Yet another sleepy sunday

Currently my reading tastes have turned to:

Sarah Waters The Little Stranger- The story of a haunted manor in the 1940s. It's a delicious little bridge between manor fiction- such as Austin, Bronte etc... and British war fiction. Waters has a Phd in Victorian literature and has put her research to marvelous use. 

Don DeLillo Underworld- A wide ranging and ambitious novel of Americana.

Eudora Welty The Optimist's Daughter- A 1972 Pulitzer; A southern family novel, inspiration for the works of Anne Tyler. 

Naomi Novik His Majesty's Dragon- A fascinating blend of military history and fantasy; the Napoleonic wars plus a dragon. Recommended to me by my friend Amber.  

I had the best time in Portland and am considering running away to join the Portland Hipster Circus. 

Wish me luck. 

A note from my library cubicle...

One of my own cultural myths about Seattle residents was destroyed today while I was eating alone in a Subway in Bellevue. I had thought that Seattle-ites were aloof, though not exactly unfriendly, maintaining a very secure distance from one another. While eating I practiced the necessary avoid-eye-contact maneuvers with the men in the other tables. I stared at the window ads. I tried to read the coupons through the back of my sandwich wrapper. I routinely checked my cell phone every minute. Suddenly I heard a very distinct click-freeze sound from the table across from me. I realized that the man at the next table was not playing the avoidance game- while pretending to looking at his i-phone he was actually taking pictures! I stood up so hastily that I dropped my bag in a cascade of vinegar chips, and he lowered his phone and looked away. Now I know how those college male swimmers felt when my high school friends and I tried to sneak speedo pictures. Except at least they were ridiculously ripped, tanned, and mostly naked. I was eating a giant subway and squinting at the paper wrapping.   

Commas

In writing my thesis, I've discovered something about my use of commas. I use commas almost as if I were speaking. And I prefer it that way. I've been a little concerned about this, until I came across some passages in one of Anne Enright's books. Then I remembered, creative writers can use commas whenever they want, and no one comments. Therein lies my hope for future writing.  

Literary Distractions

During my final two weeks of dissertation writing, I've consoled my frazzled self with Anne Tyler's The Clock Winder and Beverly Clearly's Ramona the Brave and Ramona Quimby Age 8. There's nothing better than a good book-inspired LOL. And this time through, I realized that certain blogger friends of mine frequently sound just like Ramona. 

'Cleaning up her room seemed such a boring thing to do, no fun at all on a rainy afternoon. She thought vaguely of all the exciting things she would like to do--learn to twirl a lariat, play a musical saw, flip around and over bars in a gymnastic competition while crowds cheered'.

Nine days of academia left and them I'm off into the great unknown. 

What are you like?

Today's dose of pool water has made my short hair feathery. If only it were the 90s it could pass for styling. 

It rained in Seattle for only the second time since June. 

Last week I ate quesadillas five times in six meals, not counting breakfast. Wouldn't mind another one. 

Zach shaved his head again. I felt like crying. 

PBS no longer plays Arthur at 10:00 and 4:00, or any time. Michael Jackson is dead. I feel like an adult.  

I have more books out at university than public libraries. I need to resort my priorities. 

I severed ties with Amazon and am devoted to Abe.com. Shipping duration may weaken my resolve.

I know how to run a youth hostel, to tell strangers where to sleep and what to clean, sweep, wash. It's a better life than most. 

I crave almond paste. Preferably in a croissant, but straight up would also do the trick. 

I fantasize about living under Lake Crescent. Or at least being the designated scuba-explorer. Ever since I unearthed a brown beer bottle that was filled with rocks and sand. Actually, I felt like the kid from ET.   

Backward Glances

I'm reading two books right now, while I'm supposed to be finishing a near 50 page dissertation. Both leave me ridiculously nostalgic for the British Isles. The first is Anne Enright's novel What Are You Like set in Dublin and New York in the 1960s and 1980s. I chose it because I loved The Gathering. Her writing is superb. I spent some interesting time in Ireland, watched some Irish tv dramas, shared cigarettes with some street urchins, and spoke to some Irish academics. As a result, I know next to nothing about the place but feel romantic towards it. 

The second book is a collection of stories by my favorite Canadian writer Alice Munro. I picked this book because I am thinking ahead to our pending move to Canada, because Munro is unparalleled, and because I wanted something firmly set in the present and in North America. Well The View From Castle Rock is a narrated history of Munro's Scottish Calvinist family from the about 1799 onward. I spent a lot of time wandering through rural and small-town Scotland, wrote a paper on Scottish Calvinism, and have just learned that my grandmother's family shared an occupation and a town with Munro's ancestors. Both were cattle thieves just north of the border with England. My family members were notorious; eleven of them prosecuted on the same day. Munro's more lucky and apparently more literary. 

An Unexpected Party -- Queer Lodgings

In May Zach and I were trying to decide how we could stay in England through September. My reasoning was that I really wanted to focus on writing the dissertation. I also wanted to travel England in the summer while reading classic novels. None of that was to be. 

In June we ended up flying to Denver via Chicago. Zach got a job interview in Seattle on July 12 and departed on the 11th. I stayed in Denver to see my visiting sister and spend some more time with my dad and my second sister, Laura. While there, I wrote daily and tended my dad's corn and squash plants- nothing else took to the sandy soil. On July 25th I joined Zach in Seattle. We fully intended to stay there and write. His parents were heading to Thailand for three weeks for LST. We thought the big empty house and beautiful Seattle summer would be perfectly conducive. We didn't count on extreme heat spells or the alluring temperate rainforest on the Olympic peninsula. 

Yesterday morning, after a sleepless night in a 92 degree house, we threw clothes, books, and papers into his mom's car and headed for the coast. We had a few hostels written down on a subway napkin and a cooler full of ice with exactly one bottle of water and three bottles of beer. As we passed through Port Angeles and Forks, we remembered taking the same journey almost exactly four years ago. In 2005 we took a magnificent hike up through the Hoh rainforest to Cape Alava. 

We ended up spending last night in the Rainforest Hostel 22 miles outside of Forks, WA, home of the Twighlight books/movies/and paraphernalia, and much much more. Couples' accommodation is a well-kept RV. Our host is a Vietnam-Vet with passionate pacifist convictions and respect for the native populations and traditional gardening. He's asked us to run the hostel for him next week while he attends the 2009 Tribal Journeys festivities in Suquamish. We have a ton of writing to do but I don't think we can pass up the opportunity to spend a free week on the cusp of the rainforest. There is nothing like hiking through a couple of easy miles of rainforest and stepping out right on the Pacific ocean. We'll spend one more night here, try to catch the sunset on Ruby Beach, and return to Seattle for the weekend. Its there and back again beginning Monday. Someone up there likes us. 

Puget Sound

From behind the many desks- mostly library desks- at which I've sat during the past five years, I've met a lot of people with smoldering ambition to start over or move to a new city. My frequent relocations seem to get people excited. They talk about their family living in the west, or the northwest. They talk about their young adulthood, when they had the opportunity to live out of boxes and suitcases. At the time, I always feel a pang of loneliness because I'm leaving the little close knit groups of circulation workers and librarians, of urbanites who know their cities like I might have known them had I chosen to stay. But I also feel a certain lightness. Like I'm passing through and am therefore ultimately untouchable. And consequently, when I arrive in a new place, there is a romantic period of intrigue, as I learn the streets and visit the trendy coffee and sandwich shops, that will eventually give way to vagueness as the shops and streets blend together. 

I met another group of people this past year. These are permanently-temporary people, those who spend a season in Stehekin and then move on to another mountain park, as well as urban professionals who retreat to the seclusions of the mountains for a year or two. And I met a lot of global students in Leeds, those who have lived in the middle East and Africa and western Europe in the span of two or four years.  

So the goal, I think, as I enjoy the beautiful Puget Sound, Cape Alava, and the North Cascades, just a few perks of my new town, is to live like this is home. Hopefully Vancouver will be. 

Films and Historical Fiction

Over the past month or so I've been reading some historical fiction. It's a bit of a relief from the sort of high-art post-modern mass I've been reading this year. 

David Gutterson's classic Snow Falling On Cedars is impressive for the sheer bulk of research and imagination that obviously went into the novel. The novel borders on genre (mystery or romance) once in a while, but its deep investment in the representations of place pay off. The result is that it succeeds in transporting the reader wholly to the communities inhabiting the islands in Puget sound in the first half of the last century. The book leaves a lasting and honest impression. It also speaks strongly to beliefs about American masculinity and nationalism, perfecting its picture of the laconic, war-haunted frontiersman. 

I can't say enough positive things about Geraldine Brooks's 2006 Pullitzer Prize-winning novel March. It engages with a so many fascinating topics and ideas: civil war history, transcendentalism, american religious reform, pacifism and tolerance, abolitionists, racial relations in the south during the war, and some critiques of paternalism that are essentially anti-colonial. Brooks also does an amazing job developing March's character as a self-obsessed tunnel-visioned eccentric who none-the-less holds all the right convictions. Brooks's prose is seamless enough to render plot development inconspicuous. Perhaps this is partly because the plot is necessarily contained within Little Women's plot and Louisa May Alcott's father's personal letters. 

Zach and I saw Away We Go last week. I can't decide if the film is an uncanny representation of us, or we are just a typical double-M-Arts couple. The film is funny but we liked best the fact that the characters are committed and in love without any of the typical dramatic complications that usually accompany romantic comedies.  

Early early this morning I saw the sixth Harry Potter movie with my sisters. Fun times, sore necks. 

 

Summer at Last

I realize last week was the summer solstice, but it simply had not felt like summer in Leeds. Somehow cardigans and goosebumps overwhelm 11 pm sunsets. 

Yesterday, Zach and I arrived in Chicago and were picked up by his uncle Steve. Thunderstorms, family visits, and humid heat instantly transported me to summer-thinking. I am really really happy to be back in the states. It's going to be a great, albeit unsettled, season. 

Between gardening, frequenting city libraries, catching films at the Mayan and the Esquire, moseying around parks and trails and city centers, reading Ramona Quimby books, and eating lots of crunchy tex-mex, I do hope to write a good dissertation. At some point. Lifting my sweet iced tea to lazy summers. 

Newz

On friday I gave my first ever paper at an academic conference. The amazing thing was that once I began reading I didn't feel nervous at all. It was like I separated myself from myself. I got some good feedback and met some cool people. (btw- Did you know 'to get' is out of date verb in England?) 

Maynooth is a gorgeous campus. I'll post pictures some time. We stayed in a gothic style white stoned hallway that looked like it came out of a Harry Potter book. The brief time we spent in Dublin was great as well. We saw a lot of street musicians (of which I am a major fan), including a four person band with an electric drum set.  As usual I asked myself, why didn't I try to study in Ireland? 

Discussing postcolonial history, literature, and film in Ireland is different from doing it in Leeds. The Irish experience of colonialism is a constant frame of reference. I also met a PhD student from Michigan who is studying Irish history. Twas an eclectic mix. I'm developing a thing for Irish historians. 

I also had some of my theories about Indian literature dispelled. I met a PhD student from Madras who enlightened me about the Booker Prize, Arundhati Roy, and Rohinton Mistry. 

I met a delightful Parisian and social historian. I also met a fantastic South African MA student who wears dark eye-liner, rolls her own cigarettes, writes plays, and loves Coetzee. 

And one unrelated piece of news is that when finally had access to internet I found that I have been accepted to the University of British Columbia's Library Studies program. What am I going to do? 

 

Priorities

Tomorrow a charity truck is coming by to pick up our used possessions. When we return from Dublin on Saturday we'll have to survive 4 days with minimal living ware. I'm learning more about my mate from the different ways we sift through possessions. 

In the kitchen Zach kept two frying pans, small and large, a cutting board, and silverware. He surrendered all our dishes, cups, pots, and bowls. I traded his large frying pan for a small sauce pan and retrieved one plate and one mug. In the bedroom, I surrendered our fleece blankets and kept our sheets, duvet, and all four pillows. I also kept all of our towels. Zach threw away the wash clothes. 

From our walls I removed and packed away our blanket from Morocco. I placed our pictures between pages in my notebooks. I left a string of Christmas lights. Zach removed the Christmas lights and the double-sided tape from the mirrors. 

Speaking of secret lives.

Have I mentioned that I'm really enjoying reading all these short stories? I have a spark of a career dream. What if it were possible to be a librarian by day and a creative writing teacher by night? I think I'm on to something. 

This weekend I had a temporary but intense fling with Dexter. By season two he's starting to seem like Clark Kent. How is it possible I got roped into this show? It must be the Cuban tacos. 

Taco Time

I haven't written in three days because three days ago Zach came back to the UK! We met in Oxford outside the Sheldonian theatre where I had been waiting in an ungodly line for Coetzee to sign my books. As soon as Zach called I ditched the autograph line and made for the door. 

Zach lost his wallet in Oxford, possibly at the hotel, probably in a taxi. The biggest loss was a wad of international cash but really, it's not so bad. 

Less than two weeks until our departure. In the meantime we're packing up our life once again and counting down the days until tacos reenter our vocabulary and our digestive tracts. 

I've been reading the short stories for the Commonwealth Foundation competition. I feel quite torn because many of the stories aren't suitable for this competition, but they're almost all really interesting. I wonder if it's possible to teach or be peripherally involved in creative writing in the future?