Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 27

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And yet another book that I have been meaning to read for ages: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I never understood what on earth a lauded and supposedly literary type like Truman Capote was doing with a true crime book topping his very short list. I mean, where did this author fit in my categories of writers? What I absorbed about him from culture just didn’t make sense.

Capote lived from the 1920s to the 1980s. He wasn’t just a writer (of different genres), but also an actor. He became famous first with the publication of short stories in many of the highest-caliber magazines. He grew up in the same town as Harper Lee, in the South, but he moved to a writer’s colony in New York and ended up dying in California. Local Color is a collection of travel writing. A Christmas Memory is a short story-turned-illustrated children’s story that you see around here or there at the holidays. Summer Crossing is a novel that Capote wrote and destroyed except a house-sitter saved it from the bin and it was published posthumously. Other Voices: Other Rooms was his first published novel. He adapted plays, acted in plays, wrote articles for The New Yorker, and wrote the memoir Brooklyn Heights, which used famous photography and—besides a pretty interesting life, already—underscored how much of a famous personality he was (which had something to do with his quirkiness and open gayness). The novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (yes, that Breakfast at Tiffany’s) was next, and then In Cold Blood (first serialized in The New Yorker). With his friend Harper Lee, he took six years and devoted extensive research (much on-site) to the writing of In Cold Blood, which would become his most famous output. He adapted some screenplays and lived the life of the social elite, rubbing elbows with the most famous personalities. He was working on a memoir novel, Unanswered Prayers while his drug use and alcoholism spiraled out of control. He published Music for Chameleons, a collection of short stories and nonfiction, became a recluse, and then died of a drug overdose at the home of a friend (Johnny Carson’s wife). Yeah, basically a super interesting but depressing life riddled with random, yet brilliant, productivity in various artistic endeavors. So I guess I sorta get, now, where he fits and why he wrote the randomness that I have seen.

Truman Capote called In Cold Blood a “non-fiction novel” and also “an experiment in journalistic writing.” Indeed, while you’re reading it, you’re not quite sure where to put it. It’s something akin to the fictionalized versions of true stories that dominate streaming TV nowadays: where you know not every single conversation is word-for-word but at least it’s “based on fact.” (Examples: The Dropout, Inventing Anna, and Pam & Tommy.) Actually, having spent years on-sight and immersing himself from an early stage in the process (before the perpetrators were even caught), Capote claimed In Cold Blood was all true and that his memory had been tested to 90% accuracy. However, when some people did fact-check the wildly popular book, there were (according to them and some of the book’s “characters”) some clearly fabricated moments and, well, we can just throw the meaning of quotations out the window. Even still, Capote includes pages and pages of documentation, which might sound truly boring, but a vast majority of time it is not, not at all. In Cold Blood, though perhaps old-fashioned now (as a precursor to interesting, marketable true crime), is riveting. It reminded me, a bit, of Columbine, a similar novel-nonfiction hybrid of sorts and another excellent book. (They both also seek to layer truth so deep that we are able to sympathize across the board.)

It’s 1959, and the Clutter family of four has been murdered in their prosperous farmhouse in rural Kansas. There are very few clues as to who dunnit and zero reason why anyone would have. The Clutters were salt-of-the-earth people, extremely well-liked and kind, and Mr. Clutter—though wealthy—only dealt in checks and kept his money in the bank, a fact everybody in and around town knew. There was no robbery, besides, except for a couple very random incidentals. The book deals in quarters: first, the day of. Second, the evasion of the murderers. Third, the catching of the criminals. Fourth, the trial, etc. I have to admit that the fourth section was the least interesting to me, so it was harder to finish the book than to begin it. At any rate, it was difficult for me to realize what I was reading and connect that to how interesting the whole thing was. There was a beauty in some of the passages that contrasted with the dry, sparseness of other passages. And it’s possible that the construction was genius: the back-and-forth, the chronology, the withholding yet revealing nature of it. I’m pretty sure that as far as true crime goes, you can’t do much better than this classic though perhaps there should have been more verifying. (Or, like James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, made to qualify itself. The truth is that as a reader you never even believe everything is 100% factual, because this is just too much information. And yet, the information given is strangely verifiable and has an unmistakable ring of authenticity.)

Certainly, if you enjoy true crime and haven’t read In Cold Blood, you should. Even if you don’t normally read true crime, if there is some part of you that is interested in these things (like me and The Ken and Barbie Murders), then read it. It’s still good, decades later. It’s engaging, it’s different, it’s smart. It was more novel (haha) at the time, but it’s still—at least for me—fresh. And admirable. I will be handing it to my husband, next, and recommending it to my sister.

Note: It contains somewhat graphic descriptions of crimes, and not just the murders. So, if that isn’t gonna work for you, then please don’t read it. It also touches occasionally on pedophilia.

QUOTES

“’Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that’s one definition of a lady’” (p25).

“’Myrt—don’t say things like that. Who shot them?’ / Without pause in her postmarking activities, Mrs. Clare replied, ‘The man in the airplane. The one Herb sued for crashing into his fruit trees. If it wasn’t him, maybe it was you. Or somebody across the street. All the neighbors are rattlesnakes. Varmints looking for a change to slam the door in your face. It’s the same the whole world over. You know that’” (p69).

“In brief, Nye learned only this: ‘Of all the people in the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered’” (p85).

“When it comes to murder, you can’t respect grief. Or privacy. Or personal feelings. You’ve got to ask the questions. And some of them cut deep’” (p85).

“’Hush your meanness,’ said Mrs. Hartman. ‘We’re all in the same boat. Alvin’s doing good as he can’” (p150).

“’Pickin’ the wings off other people’” (p191).

“’I’ll be damned if I’m the only killer in the courtroom’” (p289).

“’He used to say that all crimes were only “varieties of theft”’” (p290).

“’He was just tellin’ the truth,’ Parr said. ‘The truth can be brutal. To coin a phrase’” (p306).

“’Many a man can match sob stories with that little bastard. Me included. Maybe I drink too much, but I sure as hell never killed four people in cold blood’” (p306).

“’Lowell Lee Andrews felt no emotions whatsoever. He considered himself the only important, only significant person in the world. And in his own seclusive world it seemed to him just as right to kill his mother as to kill an animal or a fly’” (p316).

MOVIES

Image from IMDB.com

Considering the popularity of the book and the fame of its author, it’s no surprise that there was a movie made in 1967. It sits right up there with reviews around the 75th percentile. (IMDBs over 7 we find to be quite reliable). [WILL ADD MOVIE REVIEW TOMORROW]

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There is another movie, too, Capote, about the author. It is much newer and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favorite actors and one I always wished to act for one of my stories, one day, until his early death. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen the movie before, but it gets decent reviews (and I knew I could rely on Hoffman’s acting). This movie (about a real author writing a book that was lightly fictionalized true crime) is supposed to be fabricated, but in an attempt to be true to Truman Capote as a person. We have now gone down the rabbit hole, Alice. [WILL ADD MOVIE REVIEW TOMORROW]

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For all the amazing-ness of All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr made some nontraditional choices: he went with present tense (mostly?), chopped his behemoth up into hundreds of few-page chapters (often even one page), told the story from two different perspectives (which was doubled in strangeness by being omniscient while being, as I said, present tense), and told his story in non-chronological chunks so that we saw the end a couple times before the beginning and middle. There is a principle with writing which I have mentioned before (and told you about my friend and his theory about figurative gold coins). It is that when an author writes in a way that is unexpected, it makes demands on the reader. If that writer does not then make up for the demands with more than enough positives, the reader will be ultimately unimpressed and may, indeed, abandon the narrative altogether. As a writer, you want a reader to slip into your book (or story) and get lost there. I firmly believe that if All the Light You Cannot See had been in the past tense, had been told mostly chronologically, and had longer chapters (therefore longer times between switching between characters), I wouldn’t have been able to put it down. I would have devoured it. This is not the end-all, be-all of writing expectations of course: we like literature to defy boundaries and surprise us and evolve and all that (at least sometimes), but I just couldn’t understand what the point of Doerr’s non-traditional choices was. Why was my ADHD on red-alert all the time? The jumping around, chopping things up, and being distracted by present tense just never justified itself, for me. In fact, I thought the present tense was a little weird with a blind character, because I felt an intimacy that contradicted the physical description I was being given. (Also, why was Marie-Laure’s father called “the locksmith” so much (at least at the beginning)? Why not “Papa?” or whatever his name was?)

All the Light We Cannot See is a #1 New York Times Bestseller, a book that I see prominent in every single bookstore I go in to, and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. And other awards and other awards. Published in 2014, it is about, essentially, two teenagers, one a boy and one a girl. The girl is a blind Parisian who is hiding in her great-uncle’s house on the coast of France during the German siege of Saint-Malo during World War II. The boy is a German orphan with a remarkable aptitude for machines (specifically radio transmitters) which the Nazis exploit in a troubled, conflicted journey through the Nazi youth into the army. He is in Saint-Malo for the siege, as well. Some of the content of the book takes place in both of their childhoods and some takes place after their meeting (even far into the future), but most of it is from the invasion of Paris up to the siege. It’s a serious book, a heavy book, a thoughtful book, a haunting book. It’s a book about war: it has some real tough moments.

The real beauty in this book comes from Doerr’s way with words, his description of things, his flair for originality and aesthetics, and his ridiculous research/understanding of history. Also, his keen observation of human life, but, maybe more importantly, the physical world. Also, the way he plays with magic realism: a flirtation. (He’s just playing with words, see?) All the senses feel this book all the way through. Every moment is thoughtful, every sentence rings with both clarity and beauty. Can we be made to sympathize with a Nazi? He doesn’t start out as a Nazi. Maybe he doesn’t want to even be a Nazi. (This brings up plenty of feelings about Russian soldiers, at this point in history.) Will the story become a romance? (First, you have to figure out how old these characters actually are. Sometimes Doerr gets so good at being creative and fancy that the obvious things get lost. By the “end,” Marie-Laure is 16 and Werner is 18. I think.) There is a villain. There are conflicts. There are themes that draw the two characters together: science, radios, and a cursed gem. (Again, Doerr gets in his own way, sometimes. We nearly lose sight of the villain, the questions we have about the conflicts, and the science, radios, and the all-important gem in the everyday that fills the bulk of the book. With the many pretty words slimmed down, these connecting pieces would have been much more urgent, more imperative and central. Where I think they should have been. Though I would not envied anyone their job cutting content, here.)

In the end, the positives do win with this book, emphatically, even if it is very put-down-able and probably too long to sustain the supporting characters and (there, underneath) traditional plot line (like bad guy, magical relic, etc.). I always picked it back up. I always drug my eyes back from whatever thing I was looking at every few pages. And I know lots of other people who have done the same thing because it’s a great book. (In fact, I’m sure some people aren’t as distractable as I am and I even know one guy who loves the short chapters because then he can read one or two before bed every night. It takes him like a year to read a Doerr book, but he’s a busy man.) And actually, I said that the choices were never justified. By the end, I did feel like maybe jumping around in time (which, once you got the hang of it, was only a chronological past leading up to a chronological “present,” the first moving much faster than the second) did make some magic happen. I mean, we could sort of see the ghosts of the characters’ futures and the places where they might have overlapped. (Once, this did cause me some confusion which then caused me to look it up and ruin, accidentally, one plotline for myself. Oops.) What I’m saying is that I’m sure Doerr and Doerr fans would at least be able to argue the time shifts and I almost enjoyed them (but definitely not the tiny chapters.)

In the end, it took me months to read this “really great” book. I let myself be distracted a few times by easier reads, because I was regretting my love of, even reverence for, the writing in Light. And I kinda wanted to see what would become of these people, though I wished I could find out much faster.

QUOTES:

There is really a very long list of miraculous wordcrafting in this novel, but I will give you but a handful of these. (PS. Though his chapters are short, his sentences are loooong. I had to cut many of them to make them good quotables):

“…across the room is a miniature girl, skinny, quick-witted, an open book in her lap; inside her chest pulses something huge, something full of longing, something unafraid” (p46).

“Voices, it turns out, streak into Zollervein from all over the continent, through the clouds, the coal dust, the roof” (p47).

“…a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollervein: the houses turned to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility” (p49).

“Dr. Geffard pronounces this almost gleefully and pours wine into his glass, and she imagines his head as a cabinet filled with ten thousand little drawers” (p60).

“Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth” (p63).

“Smoke: her great-uncle says it is a suspension of particles, billions of drifting carbon molecules. Bits of living rooms, cafes, trees. People” (p101).

“As though back onshore, all of France is left to bite its fingernails and flee and stumble and weep and wake to a numb, gray dawn, unable to believe what is happening. Who do the roads belong to now? And the fields? The trees?” (p119).

“”’My God, there are none so distant that fate cannot bring them together,’” (p120).

“The weather in this place: you can feel it between your fingers” (p126; an example of how Doerr uses blindness to heighten our senses).

“’Do we have our heads in the sand, Madame, or do they?’ / ‘Maybe everybody does,’ she murmurs” (p167).

“There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That’s how it feels right now, he things, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane” (p189).

“Who knew love could kill you? She spends hours kneeling by herself on the sixth floor with the window open and the sea hurling artic air into the room, her fingers on the model of Saint-Malo slowly going numb” (p226).

“They clomp together through the narrow streets, Marie-Laure’s hand on the back of Madame’s apron, following the odors of her stews and cakes; in such moments Madame seems like a great moving wall of rosebushes, thorny and gragrant and cracling with bees” (p242).

“Who will lie on her back and let her last breath curl up to the ceiling as a curse upon the invaders” (p249).

“Werner is succeeding. He is being loyal. He is being what everybody agress is good. And yet every time he wakes and buttons his tunic, he feels he is betraying something” (p250).

“It’s as if the city has become a library of books in an unknown language” (p348).

“…with everybody in this unit, in this army, in this world, they do as they’re told, they get scared, they move about with only themselves in mind. Name me someone who does not” (p368).

“I am only alive because I have not yet died” (p377).

“Gone or resolved to go: is there much difference?” (p442).

“All of it is burning. Every memory he ever made” (p444).

“Mazes in the nodules on murex shells and in the textures of sycamore bark and inside the bollow bones of eagles. None more complicated than the human brain, Etienne would say, what may be the most complex object in existence; one wet kilogram within which spin universes” (p453).

“She tries to grade a third exam but cannot concentrate; the numbers drift across the pages and collect at the bottom in unintelligible piles” (p505; an example of Doerr’s strong imagery as a flirtation with magic realism, Also…) “After three pages, she has to close the notebook. Memories cartwheel out of her head and tumble across the floor” (p506).

“We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs” (p529).

Whole pages that are amazing: pp333 and 529. Bottom of 365-top of 366.

MOVIE: There is a Netflix adaptation coming later this year, I think. It might be very good, but it simply can’t replace the book and the miraculous literature, but it could benefit from the story-telling and be something great. We’ll have to wait and see.

Image from Amazon.com

This hardly counts as a book review, but if you are anything like me, you will thrill at the revelation that The Antiquarian Sticker Book exists. Actually, these books, but we’ll get to that in a second. I was wandering a bookstore, actually looking for a souvenir. In this interesting area near the journals, I saw this beautiful book with an old-timey air and I picked it up. It was a book of stickers, but super classy. A sticker book for grown-ups?! When I was a kid, I totally collected stickers. For that matter, so did my daughter. Even as an adult, I feel a draw toward sheets of stickers at the store and I still have some old packs stowed away with my art supplies. But these? How genius. I had to have it.

There are three of these books: The Antiquarian Sticker Book, The Antiquarian Sticker Book: Bibliophilia, and The Antiquarian Sticker book: Imaginarium. All with a Victorian, almost steam-punk vibe, they’re hard-back books chock-full of style, with 1,000+ stickers from small to quite large. They’re pretty random and quirky and the one that I ended up getting–Bibliophilia–has whole pages of stylized letters. Unnecessary? Yes. Fun? Absolutely.

My only complaint is that the stickers are very papery. It’s almost not a complaint, because the matte finish gives the stickers a more refined, more adult, and prettier air than the usual, glossy stickers. However, I do feel like they won’t hold up to as much, since they are essentially unfinished paper, so maybe they shouldn’t land on my mug or notebook cover.

Image from Macmillan.com

I imagine that after I am done, the book could be mined for paper (I collage) and also used as an altered book (see HERE if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Still, I am super happy with the stickers and this book, and I might just get the other two, some day.

Or some other brand? It turns out Odd Dot (the publisher) is not the only one on to this market. DK also makes a series (maybe less for grown-ups and more for the science-y type), including The Botanist’s Sticker Anthology, The Birds, Bees, and Butterflies Sticker Anthology, and The Seashore Sticker Anthology. Joan Derrian has The Joan Derrian Sticker Book, Chloe Standish has Sticker Studio: Arcana and Atlantis, Thunder Press has Harry Potter: World of Stickers, and Peter Pauper Press has Loads of Ephemera Sticker Book. There’s a William Morris Sticker Book and–to open another can of worms–an Extraordinary Things to Cut Out and Collage. I can not speak for any of these books, their quality or anything, but they all look very intriguing online. The good news here is that if you believe in reconnecting to the child-you, this might be just the thing to have lying about, especially if you deal with paper or words or art much. There are hobbies I left behind me at some point because I grew up. I am currently rediscovering roller skating, dressing up (cosplay), and collecting stickers because they all bring me a little bit of joy and just about anything is possible these days.

Image from Amazon.com

I mean, when you’re going to write a book about books and book people, you’re asking for trouble. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the majority of book people aren’t that discerning, and writing a book about book people is an obvious sell. Well, I’m a book person, and I approached Book Lovers by Emily Henry with some reservations. I mean, it wasn’t on my gigantic TBR. But it’s new, I thought. The cover looks light, beach-read-y, like a regular, ol’ romance. But it’s on the best-sellers shelf. And the lady at Malaprop’s recommends it. I’m not done with like three other books. You’re on vacation. Yes, true. Maybe I could use a painless read as a break from the bears (good bears) that I am in the middle of.

It went very much like the reading of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, a couple summers ago. But then it also went a lot like me reading Song of Achilles while at a residency last fall. Let’s assume you do not remember everything I said in both those reviews. Song of Achilles was a book I picked up at a local bookstore while out of town, somewhat impulsively. I could not put the darn thing down and I devoured it. I knew it was not the highest-minded literature I had ever read, but it was so engaging and entertaining. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is a book about book lovers and all things bookish. I read it on a recommend but didn’t end up liking it. I wasn’t mad I had read it, it just really didn’t pan out and I felt that part of the reason was because Fikry was all book-snob but his references and recommendations didn’t say “book snob” to me. In other words, it was preaching to the choir but the choir was like, “Can you give me a scriptural reference for that, please?” As for Book Lovers, it was entertaining and engaging and once again, I couldn’t put it down and basically devoured it. However, it fell short by 1) being of maybe not the highest caliber of writing and 2) trying so hard to sell me on this editing world when FOR PITY’S SAKE THERE WERE A NUMBER OF SPELLING AND GRAMMATICAL ERRORS! Yes, Book Lovers is meant to hook book lovers with its taking place in the New York editing world, complete with authors and book stores galore, but this brings with it so many expectations. And on most of that, it didn’t work for me. It reminded me of movies where they talk about great art or a beautiful person or something, and they make such a big deal about it, but then the viewer never gets to see the beautiful person or the great art. Except in this instance, Henry does let you see glimpses of the writing and of the plot of the amazing, fictitious books in question, but you remain, or I remained, unimpressed. The book being edited and drooled over by the agent/editor just sounded awful. The book that won several people fame? Also sounded awful. Enough about that.

Book Lovers is about Nora, who can’t get her happy ending because she is the up-tight, witchy, ambitious, physically fit woman who is the love interest that gets left behind by Prince Charmings after they meet the smalltown sweetheart they were destined to fall in love with and marry. She knows the trope because it’s her life and also because she agents these stories. Which she does very well. Then one day, out of the blue, her kid-sister (Libby) whom Nora raised after their mother’s untimely death, begs Nora to go to the town where Libby’s favorite novel takes place and, against all her instincts, Nora goes with her—for a month. Maybe Nora can find the smalltown sweetheart who will turn her into the heroine of her own storybook. At least, Libby seems to hope so.

Here are some other things to say: the banter was great. Unrealistic? Sure, but great. Funny. High-brow enough. Quick. Witty. Pretty perfect. Which leads me to: the sizzle between the romantic leads was pretty amazing. If the two leads in a romantic movie ever conveyed the chemistry which Henry puts into this pair, it would be the blockbuster of the year. Which also reminds me that the supporting characters are amazingly adorable, spunky, heart-warming. Book Lovers is meant to be some sort of meta-romance/villian’s perspective novel and it hits some of these necessary staples right on the head. I mean, Nora’s sister is a superb sidekick/best friend. The brother-in-law? Cute as a button. The townspeople? A convincing chorus of interesting characters.

But let’s talk about that town. Little factoid: I read this book while in the place it takes place and I didn’t even mean to. This happened to me a couple years ago with Where the Crawdads Sing (soon to be a movie, by the way). I am on a mini-vaca right this moment in Asheville and that is, indeed, where this novel mostly takes place (the runner-up being New York City). Technically, it’s a fake, small town called Sunshine Falls just outside Asheville, but heck, I’m just outside Asheville too. In a tiny house on a farm. So, being from North Carolina (for my whole adult life) and being right where this book is supposed to be happening, I don’t even accept it. There are things about it Henry got right. The pot smoking. And… I can’t really think what else. Even the name of the town is not like it belongs in NC and certainly not around here. Falls? sure. Sunshine? Nope. There’s sunshine here, but nothing named after it. That’s Florida. I had a hard time with the foliage and landscape Henry described, the town itself, how limited the girls were to the town when Asheville (a city with just about everything) was right around the corner, the way people spoke and thought about things, etc. And when part of the plot is that the writer hadn’t even been to Sunshine Falls before she wrote the book… a little too ironic, I thought.

And one more thing. It’s so obvious. I know rom-com novels aren’t supposed to surprise you too much, but you know exactly what’s going to happen from the first chapter and you see the romantic interest from first sighting even though he’s supposed to be hidden in plain sight. We’re book lovers, remember? We’ve been here before. There are some surprises, I guess, but even then you know that there IS a surprise and it’s not what Nora thinks it is, if you know what I mean. There are twists and turns, but Nora’s the only one surprised by them. (Which also makes me want to mention, this is one of those stories where when you think to hard about after the book, you might get depressed.)

I lied. One more thing. Let’s end on a high note. I actually laughed out loud a few times while reading this. There were plenty of sudden moments of humor, as well as sudden moments of insight. It’s actually a really interesting book when seen through the lens of healing or recovery. Nora has some issues, to be sure, and so does every other character in the book, and we walk with many of them as the characters unpack, share, confess, hold hands, and walk through the process to its end. Maybe the book tries a little too hard to model healing, but I was buying it. I even had tears well up in my eyes a couple times.

Conclusion? If you want a few books for this summer’s beach time and you love books and/or the literary world, then Book Lovers is one you should pick up (unless you are one of those bazillion people who have already read it and loved it). Don’t do it because you think it’s going to be Doerr-level writing or Austen-level tight plotting or even really all that believable. Do it because it’s going to be a fun read. Make you laugh. Get your blood pumping. Keep you up late. Stay glued to your side until you’re done, which is definitely top priority for many book lovers.

BONUS: Some recommendations before I get to the few quotes. There is a list of “Nora and Libby’s” book recommendations at the end of the novel, which I thought was a fun touch. See the novel if you want those. (I added most of them to the Best Books List for Romance here on The Starving Artist.) But for funsies, I also decided to make a list of books for book lovers. As always, this list is basically a Frankenstein of several other lists that other people/publications made. It would be ideal as a book club, obviously. And then below that, I made a list of movies for book lovers. Also ideal to sneak movies into that book club. I like when book clubs have unexpected twists.

BOOKS

Matilda, Roald Dahl ***The Starless Sea, Erin MorgensternMr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin SloanBook Love, Debbie TungFangirl, Rainbow RowellMy Ideal Bookshelf, Thessaly LaForceThe Polysyllabic Spree, Nick HornbyThe School Story, Andrew ClementsA People’s History of the American Public Library, Wayne WiegandUpstairs at the Strand, Jessica StrandDear Fahrenheit 451, Annie SpenceThe Lost Book of the Grail, Charlie LovettWhen Books Went to War, Molly Guptill ManningThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann ShafferReading Lolita in Tehran, Azar NafisiThe Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo, Paula HuntleyThe Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy FowlerThe Book of Speculation, Erika SwylerThe Bookseller of Kabul, Asne SeierstadWild, Cheryl StrayedThe Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz ZafonThe Little Paris Bookshop, Nina GeorgeIf On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino *The Reader, Bernhard SchlinkThe Eyre Affair, Jasper FfordeA Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty SmithMr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry , Gabrielle ZevinThe Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, Katarina BivaldInkheart, Cornelia Funke

MOVIES

The BookshopThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society84 Charing Cross RoadFunny FaceNotting Hill ***DevotionThe Jane Austen Book ClubThe Fast Company (trilogy)IrisWonder BoysCapoteMrs. Parker and the Viscious CircleMidnight in Paris Miss Potter *QuillsThe HoursRuby Sparks ***Dead Poets SocietyMoonrise KingdomThe Book ThiefThey Came TogetherYou’ve Got Mail Tolkien * The Man Who Invented Christmas *Bright StarMatilda *Secret Window

QUOTES

“That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one. Wear your emotions on your sleeve and you’re hysterical. Keep them tucked away where your boyfriend doesn’t have to ten to them and you’re a heartless bitch” (p6).

“This place looks like a Cracker Barrel had a baby with a honky-tonk, and now that baby is a teenager who doesn’t shower enough and chews on his sweatshirt sleeves” (p70).

“I can be one of the guys, as long as the guys in question have a favorite song from Les Mis. Otherwise I’m hopeless” (p79).

“’Human beings are a mysterious species, Nora. I once watched a bike courier get hit by a car, get up, and scream I become God at the top of his lungs before riding off in the opposite direction” (p169). “Somehow, it never occurred to me that this was an option: that two people, in the same hug, could both be allowed to fall apart. That maybe it’s neither of our jobs to keep a steel spine” (p337).

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I read it in a day, partly because my son had broken his arm and I had to take him to the urgent care and then bring him home and receive visitors and get him all straightened out (and let him watch movies instead of do school for the day). I also read it in a day because I miss reading whatever I wanted to read and I wanted to pick up some Haven Kimmel from the shelf instead of finishing off the middle grades titles with the dying breaths of our home school. I also read it in a day because I am meaning to read all the Haven Kimmel books and have them sitting on the table next to the chair I was sitting in last night.

I also read it in a day because it’s a quick read for a grown-up.

Kaline Klattermaster is the one elementary to middle grades level book published by Haven Kimmel. It is really geared toward elementary school age and looks that way, but much of the vocab and concepts are a little older. Which is one of the main complaints you see about this under-the-radar book: the main character is a little too big for his britches. It’s actually something I find quite frequently in writing for kids. The kid is too adult-like. I’m not even sure this is a problem. I mean, would you really want a book that was written like a fourth grader wrote it? Perhaps we should be expanding the minds and maturity of children with their reading? I am with the crowd on this one, though. Kaline seems too mature, which is especially strange because his voice is decidedly kid-like. In a good way? I think so. I actually couldn’t decide if this little guy was supposed to be on the spectrum, ADHD, or just the usual hyperactive and precocious. I think it likely many kids can relate to Kaline and man, is he charming. Cute. Adorbs.

And then you have the hang-up I often have when I review these younger-audience books. I am not a kid. Will kids think Kaline is as spunky and endearing as us adults? Probably not. Will they be able to relate to him and his problems (bullies, divorce, hyperactivity, anxiety, etc.)? I think so. As long as they can read past that maturity that I was talking about earlier, which includes a pretty surprising vocabulary mixed in judiciously with his otherwise child-like cadence and thought-process. (There are many capital-letter words in the story to create Kaline’s childlike thoughts and style. Some people didn’t like it. I thought it worked. I guess I actually liked it.)

Here is the idea: Can’t-sit-still Kaline has ADHD (officially, I guess that’ the word). His COPD father has gone missing and his mother has taken over, but she is a free-spirit and an artist whereas his father kept a tight, secure ship. Now he’s in a class with three big bullies who steal his stuff systematically and his mom keeps sticking him with his neighbor who is a STRANGER. Kaline turns to his imagination and to a surprising, new friend to survive a turbulent phase of childhood.

As much as I love Haven Kimmel, I have mixed feelings about Kaline Klattermaster’s Tree House. Yes, charming. Yes, I love Kaline and some of the other characters. It doesn’t go too deep (especially with character development) which is usual for literature geared toward this age audience. It has Kimmel’s characteristic quirk and precociousness. (Kaline looks quite a bit like the “Zippy” of Kimmel’s first memoir and I wonder if he isn’t also based on her own son.) I love how imaginative this kid is, and how caught in between the worries of the adult world around him. However, the story lacks a clearer, more conventional trajectory. The title refers only to a small, and not that important, part of that story. The parents seem to make some pretty bizarre choices that seem to only be there to create a suspense that is lacking with that missing conventional trajectory. (The illustrations were fine, there just weren’t enough of them to really comment on.)

It’s an okay story with a very endearing main character which probably has a place on your bookshelf between Flora and Ulysses and Ramona Quimby, Age 8. I think it would be interesting to see how real, live kids would react to this story, but my guess is it’s best read aloud together at bedtime so everyone can take something little away from it. You’re not going to find it at every bookstore, but I think it’s worth a read.

BONUS PICTURE BOOK REVIEW: ORVILLE, A DOG STORY

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And while I was at it, I read Haven Kimmel’s only published picture book. Kimmel is the author of Orville: A Dog Story, but she is not the illustrator. Yes, you still have some quirk here in Orville, but you also have Kimmel’s characteristic melancholy. And yes, that is a little awkward for a picture book. Again, the story is meandering. Sure, there are some interesting characters and really great word-ing, but we lose our way a bit and the great words and innovation can be distracting in this meant-for-children setting. Even so, I would probably find this story kind of endearing because of its unique way of saying things if it weren’t for the illustrations. I’m guessing that Robert Andrew Parker was paired with Kimmel by her publisher because that’s usually how it goes. Well, I do not like these illustrations and I’m not the only one. While they are colorful and artistic, they are really blurry. That’s not the right word, exactly, but they are way too abstract for meaning to be actual things, and I found them to be difficult to look at, like I was getting a migraine or having a stroke. Disturbing, that’s the word. (Take this was a grain of salt: some people love them. Not at all my cup of tea.) So, because it’s a picture book (and one that will stay on my self), I can’t get past the illustrations (which maybe I shouldn’t, actually) to recommend this book. It is entirely possible you would feel differently.

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Put out by Dover Thrift Editions and edited by Bob Blaisdell in 2014, this is a slim volume of fourteen short stories. Too slim, probably, considering what it is trying to accomplish: an introduction to “contemporary” (till 2014) Native American (or indigenous) literature (as opposed to mythology. Boy, are there a lot of books on Native American mythology). Then again, the slightness of the volume might attract someone who’s not going to buy some giant, though thorough, anthology. I bought it to choose a couple short stories to include with the other more classically taught short stories in my ninth grade(ish), English, home school co-op class. I ended up choosing two which were short and appropriate (for them), “Train Time” and “The Man to Send Rain Clouds.” It allowed for some discussion of Native history (like after ancient history, sheesh!) and a teensy dose of reality.

I did enjoy reading the collection, myself, but it did seem a little small and, well, mellow. But that’s not fair because the evenness of the writing is a part of the style of many Native American writers. And the negativity? Just part of telling a story from the posture of the oppressed. As we learned in class, the writing of a minority population is often a statement, not just a story. A message. Often political. These stories exemplify many of the messages that have come from Natives in more recent decades: the white man lied to us, he stole our children, robbed them of their culture and abused them, he continues to disrespect us and rape our sacred spaces, he does not take us seriously or acknowledge the truth of history, and on top of all that we are still ravaged by the blow-out of poverty, alcoholism, disease, intermarriage, and forced religion. But you hear all these messages between the lines of fiction as told by various authors with varying amounts of Native blood and Native “experience.”

My favorite story by far was Sherman Alexie’s “War Dances,” but I also thought “Only Approved Indians Can Play in the USA” by Jack D. Forbes and “Borders” by Thomas King were stand-outs. And many of the stories give a reader plenty to both enjoy and to think about. I guess I don’t have a whole lot else to say. If you like short stories and haven’t read much Native literature or are looking for marginalized voices, then this is one way to go. There are also Native magazines and plenty of places to see contemporary Native American art, film, etc. As for movies, I would recommend the quintessential Smoke Signals (also by Sherman Alexie) and there is a list of books to read on my blog HERE.

Until then, enjoy fourteen stories that can’t say it all, but can begin to.

So the reading plan for the end of home school co-op English 1 was a choose-your-own scenario. However, despite knowing all along how many weeks I had, my plan failed me and we did not have time for that whole thing. Instead, I chose for them a short book that would work well with the group that I had (five teen boys in a Christian-based co-op). That book, I had read many years before–about when I was their age, I suppose–and was The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.

As a matter of fact, I believe that I also re-read The Screwtape Letters in college, when I took a one-credit survey course on C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald taught by the school librarian. (I also took another one of these classes on Alfred Hitchcock. I wish I had discovered them earlier.) At any rate, come April 2022, I already knew I liked the book. It was recommended reading for the grade I needed, so we did a quick and creative read to finish up the year while writing our final paper/presentation (on an author of choice) and taking our final tests (on poetry and Latin and Greek roots).

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Ignoring their disappointment at not being able to read a book of their choice, the class discussions on The Screwtape Letters have been interesting, for sure. I suppose you could read this book even if you were not a Christian (it is chock-full of conventional wisdom and cultural insight), but it seems pretty specific. Here is the set-up: Screwtape is a senior demon of sorts in a somewhat-business-like/bureaucratic version of hell. His “nephew,” Wormwood, is fresh out of demon college and has been assigned his first patient (referred to only as “the patient”, a young, English, human man) to tempt away from the “Enemy” (God) and into the corrals of lost souls in hell. The patient has just found church and World War II is breaking out. The novel is strictly epistolary, with thirty-one letters from Screwtape to Wormwood responding to Wormwood’s unseen reports, giving the advice of the experienced to the continually inexperienced bumblings of an underling, including more general musings about the human race, “the Enemy,” and the nature of human experience and its position in eternity.

The book is not meant to be literal, but is still full of theology. The introduction from Lewis is helpful here. It explains why he wrote The Screwtape Letters and why he chose a fictional, hypothetical version with both levity and a dose of creepiness. Like some of his theological writing, we are meant to think and learn. Like his fiction, we are meant to be entertained. Either way, we are not meant to be afraid or to shrug all of this off. It is very thought-provoking, to the point that I marveled: how did Lewis think so much, hold so much in his brain? Also, different stages of life are going to give you different experiences of this book. Lewis addresses many life stages and scenarios and I found myself reading the bits about marriage aloud to my husband so that he could chuckle (because it’s true!) too. Sound like it doesn’t have much of a plot? It kind of doesn’t, but there is a story arc here, going on subtly both behind the scenes and very slowly within them. I read it fairly fast. (My copy also contained “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” written much later, in the back. It was interesting, but not on the same level, I think, as the Letters.)

These is a little warning here: this book is written “backwards,” right? We are viewing the world from the perspective of a demon, so the devil is “Our Father Below,” God is the “Enemy,” and likewise vice is celebrated and love considered gross, pathetic and even impossible. It takes some adjustment to read this way. For me, I was several chapters in before I didn’t need to re-read sections once I realized I was reading it wrong or backwards. Truth is lies and vice versa. Screwtape is capable of hitting on truth and observation, occasionally, but is also prone to deception and perversion. It’s worth it, but it does take some work. Without it, this book wouldn’t work, so…

As far as C. S. Lewis is concerned, most people probably know him as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He is, actually, more than an author of fiction and in Christian circles he is just as famous for his (lay-)theological writings (which I have already said), apologetics and even memoir-like storytelling. He was writing in England in the early twentieth century, which is where World War II finds its place into his fantasy. He was a literature professor at Oxford and Cambridge and yes, it is true, he was buddies with J. R. R. Tolkien. They were even in a writing group together, the Inklings. His more famous books are:

The Problem of PainThe Case for ChristianityThe Abolition of ManMiraclesMere ChristianitySurprised by JoyReflections on the PsalmsA Grief ObservedThe Weight of Glory and Other AddressesThe Pilgrim’s Regress (fiction)The Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength (sci-fi)The Great Divorce (fiction)The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle (children’s fantasy) Till We Have Faces (myth retelling)The Dark Tower (fiction)Spirits in Bondage (poetry)

SOME FAVE QUOTES (and remember that our perspective is backwards):

“Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention” (p18).

“It is about this that he is to say, ‘Thy will be done,’ and for the daily task of bearing this that the daily bread will be provided. It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only of the things he is afraid of” (p29).

“Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part” (p35).

“The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience” (p35).

“He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one” (p41).

“…and then to set him to work on the desperate design of recovering his old feelings by sheer will power, and the game is ours” (p42).

“I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked” (p56).

“Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts” (p56).

“But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed” (p63).

“He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things” (p64).

“We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present” (p70).

“In the second place, the search for the “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil …. critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise…” (p73).

“The real fun is working up hatred between those who say ‘mass’ and those who say ‘holy communion’ when neither party could possible state the different between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five minutes” (p75).

“…because they do not find themselves ‘in love,’ and, thanks to us, the idea of marrying with any other motive seems to them low and cynical. Yes, they think that. They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life, as something lower than a storm of emotion” (p84).

“Like most of the other things which humans are excited about, such as health and sickness, age and youth, or war and peace, it is, from the point of view of the spiritual life, mainly raw material” (p89).

“Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours” (p96).

“…men’s belief that they ‘own’ their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!” (p97).

“Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are ‘pleasures forevermore’” (p101).

“Instead of the Creator adored by its creature, you soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian” (p107).

“’Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game” (p109).

“It is often impossible to find out either party’s real wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants” (p122).

“…that creation in its entirety operates at every point of space and time, or rather that their kind of consciousness forces them to encounter the whole, self-consistent creative act as a series of successive events. Why that creative act leaves room for their free will is the problem of problems, the secret behind the Enemy’s nonsense about ‘Love’” (p128).

“…it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always danger that the characteristic errors of one many be corrected by the characteristic truths of another” (p129).

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I first read this Christian book by the former Franciscan priest Brennan Manning in college. It was written in 1990 and I caught wind of it like ten years later. His life trajectory went something like: Depression-era-New Yorker; soldier; priest; uncloistered missionary to the poor; alcoholic; writer. The book came highly recommended to me (by young adult academic-Christians in the late 90s) and I just gobbled it up. It still reeks to me of the mildewy carpet and saggy mattress (not to mention the broken windowpane and box monitor PC) of my off-campus house. As I am reading my way through the un-reviewed books on my shelf, I thought I would revisit this one in a devotional (like half a chapter a day with contemplation and prayer) capacity.

I still love The Ragamuffin Gospel. I am entranced a little by Manning, by his relatability and authenticity. I am also comforted (and, I suppose, a little convicted) by his insistence that God’s grace for salvation is not earned but bequeathed, generously, without prerequisite. I think the whole idea of this book is best illustrated by the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son (which is referenced later in the book). Sure, the son made terrible life decisions, walked away from his family, and destroyed his inheritance and legacy, but he was still shuffling back up the road composing his groveling speech when the homecoming party plans were already under way and Dad comes running up the road. The other main message here is that one of the pillars of Jesus’ life (and therefore ministry) was hanging out with–actually befriending–the “ragamuffins.” He got a lot of flack for it, and sometimes so do we, but He wasn’t wrong. Manning lends both his education as a priest and his experiences with very real people and his own sinful self to give a human dimension to his message of divine love.

That might be all I really have to say, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty here to process. That just means, I guess, that I have little to nothing to critique. For me, it’s a cornerstone of free-will and grace, twentieth-century Christian reading. (I listed it HERE in “Books That Changed My Life.”) I appreciated reading it around 2000—kinda blew my mind, given where I was coming from emotionally and spiritually—and I appreciated reading it in 2022. I would not be opposed to reading it again. I find Manning a pleasant and trustworthy voice, a friendly narrator on a journey through his life lessons and doctrine.

__________

QUOTES (some of the many I underlined):

“It is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags” (p12).

“’If we but turn to God,’ said St. Augustine, ‘that itself is a gift from God’” (p23).

“There we are—the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to the faith” (p29).

“Yet the gracious God enfleshed in Jesus Christ loves us” (p36).

“Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games, or pop-psychology. It is an act of faith in the God  of grace” (p46).

“The Kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves” (p51).

“Our puny works do not entitle us to barter with God. Everything depends on His good pleasure” (p55).

“Salvation is joy in God which expresses itself in joy in and with one’s neighbor” (p61).

“We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon” (p63).

“Hypocrisy is not the prerogative of people in high places. The most impoverished among us is capable of it …. [Jesus] is comfortable with sinners who remember how to show compassion, but … He cannot and will not have a relationship with pretenders in the Spirit” (p69).

“At the cross, Jesus unmasks the sinner not only as a beggar but as a criminal before God” (p72).

“Turn away from the sins of skepticism and despair, mistrust and cynicism, complaining and worry” (p76).

“I will hear what a woman says and not what she means and wind up giving sage advice to a non-problem” (p81).

“I am lovable only because He loves me” (p83).

“When a man or woman is truly honest (not just working on it), it is virtually impossible to insult them personally. There is nothing there to insult” (p85).

“Faith will become vision, hope will become possession, but the love of Jesus Christ that is stronger than death endures forever” (p86).

“We get so preoccupied with ourselves, the words we speak, the plans and projects we conceive that we become immune to the glory of creation” (p88).

“We fail to be stretched by the magnificence of the world saturated with grace” (p90).

“I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all” (p103).

“For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change” (p113).

“…all her sins appear to her as but an atom in the presence of His mercy” (p118).

“Quite simply, our deep gratitude to Jesus Christ is manifested neither in being chaste, honest, sober and respectabl3, nor in church-going, Bible-toting and Psalm singing, but in our deep and delicate respect for one another” (p121).

“Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone in our sin…” (p135).

“We are not pro-life simply because we are warding off death. We are pro-life to the extent that we are men and women for others, all others; to the extent that no human flesh is a stranger to us; to the extent that we can touch the hand of another in love; to the extent that for us there are no ‘others’” (p140).

“The pro-life position is a seamless garment of reverence for the unborn and the age-worn, for the enemy, the Jew, and the quality of life of all people” (p142).

“Living by grace rather than law leads us out of the house of fear into the house of love” (p147).

“I am what I am in the sight of Jesus and nothing more” (p154).

“Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else” (p167).

“To be really a disciple of Jesus one must be as committed to the message of the Kingdom as He was, and to preach it heather or not the audience finds it relevant” (p171).

“But we have turned the tables; we try to live so that He will love us, rather than living because He has already loved us” (p184).

“’There is always an enormous temptation to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end’” (Annie Dillard, p187). You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God” (p193).

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Another month, another book that I am reviewing because I taught it to my ninth grade(ish) co-op students. I can’t remember how I found this poetry anthology last summer, but I am sure glad that I did. Rather than have to pull poems from the whole world of poetry or require the students to purchase a daunting book (like some of my faves: Immortal Poems of the English Language, Best Remembered Poems, and Sound and Sense) or one that was too expensive and too expansive (like a Norton anthology), I just held this little gem up in front of them and told them to get a copy. It’s a wonder how it worked for them—it’s small, the poems are generally short, and almost all the poems are really approachable (and even a couple of the classics are on the more-approachable end of the spectrum). When I said “poetry,” my class was daunted, shaking in their boots and bored already with the irrelevance. By the end of their first reading, they were coming around a bit. It is possible that they even enjoyed some of the poems. Certainly, they didn’t hate the unit.

So this book is a great one for middle schoolers or early highschoolers. Even adults who are intimidated by poetry. However (and maybe this is a positive for some applications), it does not have any “teachings.” None at all. No notes. No biographies. No introductions or information on poetry in general. I added all the teachings, the vocab, and the occasional YouTube video about an aspect of poetry. The individual poems can be looked up online and for most there is an abundance of info and even teaching helps. As for poetry in general, you’ll just have to look elsewhere if you are teaching or if you are curious. In a way, this adds to the approachableness of the book. Just, as a teacher, it would have been nice to have some as-approachable content, too.

This book is also great for reading. Filled with authors and poems that just about anyone will recognize covering the past couple centuries at a breakneck speed (though not chronological), it’s a pleasant read. Especially if you don’t have much (or any) poetry in your collection, this is a wonderful volume to have on the shelf, or, even better, by the guest bed/guest toilet. Obviously, it can be taken in small bits, but if you want a brief walk through the poem, this is a jubilant frolic. Sure, there are plenty of omissions, but this isn’t a Norton anthology and it’s not supposed to be. I’m sure my students appreciated that and so did their mothers’ pocketbooks.

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When I was in high school (maybe on my way to college) I received one of those memorable gifts. I have received many memorable gifts. (Gifts is one of my love languages after all (along with service and then, I suppose, quality time.) For me, a memorable gift is often more than you expected and makes you feel understood. My leather-bound, gold-edged Complete Shakespeare—from my aunt—was one such gift. It also goes to show you what sort of teenager I was and how little has actually changed. I have not read all of the plays (like some that look more boring; yeah, I’m talking to you Richard II and Richard III). But I have read many, some more than once, and the poetry. (My favorite, like any good fan of Sense and Sensibility, is 116.)

Well, Macbeth is not my favorite Shakespeare play, but I chose it because A) it’s one of the few Shakespeare plays that gets read regularly at the high school level and B) I am teaching five 14-16 year old males and I thought Macbeth’s gore and existential/moral darkness might interest them (especially as opposed to Romeo and Juliet). As a bonus, we were able to discuss “manhood” at just about every turn and boy was I glad when we finally got to ol’ MacDuff when he says sure, he’ll seek revenge like a man, but not until after he feels some gol-darn emotions and mourns like a man. (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have one seriously messed-up idea-web of what it means to be a man, which plays out real toxic-like in their marriage.) Anyhoo…

First, let me say, the boys didn’t hate reading Macbeth. They were really intimdated at first, but when they caught on in class discussions they were interested in both the story and characters. They didn’t hate learning about Elizabethan theater or Shakespeare, either, but they weren’t as interesting as a murderous basket-case and his murderous basket-case wife. Which I might want to explain, in case you are not a Shakespeare buff. (Also note that on my book spine staircase, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare has a stair.) Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known, well-read, and oft-performed tragedies. (It is considered the “cursed play,” so some superstitious folk call it “The Scottish Play,” at least in theaters.) In this tragedy, we meet Macbeth, who looks like the hero straight-off but it won’t stay that way for long. He’s a Scottish thane (lord) and a general/war hero. Three witches (aka. The Weird Sisters) give him a prophecy out of the evilness of their hearts: he is the Thane of Cawdor, he will be King of Scotland, and his children will not be kings but his BFF—who is standing right there—’s will. We’re already all twisted up into a juicy story when a guy comes along and tells Macbeth that he’s the Thane of Cawdor. Duh, duh, duuuuh! Will Macbeth leave well enough alone and let the other prophecies come true on their own or will he immediately feel like he has to kill the king to get what he (and his wife) wants and then become a megalomaniacal paranoid who can’t stop with the sea of blood until the third prophecy is made impossible? One guess. Macbeth features some classic icons like the three witches chanting spells around their cauldron (“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble…”), a floating dagger (“Is this a dagger I see before me?”), a crazy queen/wife sleepwalking through the castle, twists based on tricky turns of phrases (which may not hold out today as well as in Renaissance England), and more Quotables than you can shake a stick at (“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,” “Out damned spot!” “There are daggers in men’s smiles,” “Screw your courage to the sticking place,” “What’s done cannot be undone,” etc. Not to mention some silioquys, like Macbeth’s “Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

I am aware that not everyone loves Shakespeare or is able to easily read it. The language is about as archaic as English gets for the average, American reader and most people are forced to read it in high school. Perhaps it is not their favorite experience. In order to make this process more enjoyable and easier for my students, I pushed a number of sources beyond the original text. I’m cool like that. They were forced to read the original first (arms crossed and fingers crossed) and then, for each act, I pointed them in the direction of a number of resources. Since I had a subscription to LitCharts, I used the LitCharts synopsis as well as ShakesCleare, a great line-by-line translation in plain English. I encouraged them to find resources online, as well as read along with audio options, graphic novels, and movie adaptations. (Some of them had also seen the play performed, before.) I’ll talk about all this in the below reviews. They all had the Folger edition of the play, as it was, which has notes running on the left-hand page, an introduction, definitions, etc.

So, if you have an interest in Shakespeare, this is a must-read. If you are teaching high school English, it is a good option. Overall, I was a little bummed by this play and it is not my favorite (which I think I already mentioned). I laughed until my students thought I was insane at some of the scenes—especially the banquet scene—where Lady Macbeth is coming up with some ridiculous excuses to keep her husband’s reputation intact. But most of the play is dark and full of death. It’s also lacking in hope, and humanity is pretty easily convinced to turn depraved and lethal, leading to horror for all. There is a hero, in the end, but by then nearly everyone is dead, destroyed, or a hollow husk of their former self. The real question here, I suppose, is about prophecies and fate and how people interact with their destinies. I can’t imagine I’ll be coming back to it, especially after having watched a few of the movies. (I honestly couldn’t keep going with adaptations. I would have finished with The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), but that one is not widely available yet and I couldn’t stomach another dark, depressing version. Which they all are, even when they get all cinematographic.

FURTHER MACBETH REVIEWS

Image from Amazon.com

NO FEAR SHAKESPEARE GRAPHIC NOVEL:

So, there are a lot of Shakespeare plays made into graphic novels out there, especially for the “big” plays. Macbeth is no exception, and somehow I narrowed it down to the No Fear Shakespeare version and Gareth Hinds (who I seem to either have a thing for or not be able to avoid). Despite the fine reviews elsewhere, I was not impressed by the No Fear Shakespeare graphic novel. Sure, it would be helpful to kids who are having a hard time understanding the original, but other than that it has no real merit. And since there are many other ways of understanding Macbeth (including other graphic novels), I would not rush out to get a copy of this. I suppose its one redeeming feature is that it sticks closely with the original story and says and shows it as obviously as possible, since the point of it, I believe, is as a learning tool. Other than that, the illustrations are lackluster, I totally lost track of who was whom, I was mystified by how much sweating and how many candles there were, and I felt not the least bit more enlightened as to the meaning of Macbeth. Just, ehn.

Image from Amazon.com

GARETH HINDS’ GRAPHIC NOVEL:

Well, Gareth Hinds has gotten a kind of fame over the last decade or so for his graphic adaptations of classics. (Bloody, dark classics, I might add.) I have read his versions of Beowulf, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. He did Macbeth earlier, and quite frankly it’s not as innovative or even pretty as the others. It’s sketchier, and I mean that literally, lacking the finished, colorful look of the Homer epics. Beowulf was also sort of sketchy, though more inky, but it has this artistic flare to it, an atmosphere of sorts conveyed in the panels. So, what I’m saying is I don’t know if there are better graphic novels of Macbeth, but I found this one to be disappointing because his later graphic novels are more realized artistic visions. It’s okay. It shows promise and it shows us the story, but without much to make it a special. Except the notes at the end. I enjoyed those inordinately.

Image from LitCharts.com

RESOURCE: LITCHARTS AND SHAKESCLEARE:

I bought a subscription to LitCharts at the beginning of the school year (at, I think, $10 per month) to be able to access the resources for most of the novels that we would be reading (and a few others I might use). I have found the resources to be super handy. If I had gone for another subscription, I could have had access to teacher resources (technically, they have those, but I didn’t find them to be much different from the student resources and there were no teacher plans, activities, or worksheets or anything), but I guess I wasn’t thinking that way. I wanted something that my students could likewise use, and maybe even something that they could invest in in the future, for some college literature class, perhaps. Overall, I would say the information is accurate and that it makes literature pretty accessible. Synopses, etc. can sometimes be quite long-winded, and there isn’t much creative teaching going on (like a timeline or infographics or something). There are also no quizzes or whatever. What you have is something like 20 pages of background, themes, quotes, synopses, etc. For Shakespeare, as well, there is access to the ShakesCleare version, which I found to be super helpful. It goes line by line, converting Shakespearean language into modern language and I dare any average person to read it and not understand what is happening. (Sure, they might miss some literary stuff, but that’s what the LitChart is for). Eamon (my 14-year-old) and I used the ShakesCleare to re-read the scenes together after he had listened to (he’s an auditory learner) and read along with the original in his Folger. So just a little plug for LitCharts, ShakesCleare, and reading helps in general. Though I grew up in a generation that balked at and had a fear of reading helps (SparkNotes!) put in them, I fully endorse using these in high school and college (and teaching) along with a reading of the original. In other words, I’m a fan of study guides and I totally get that not everyone is a naturally skilled reader.

Image from Amazon.com

MACBETH (1948):

 I know it’s a hard sell to get teens (okay, anybody) to watch movies from the 1940s, but this Orson Welles’ version of Macbeth is probably the best for general audiences. In other words, it’s not full of gore and even sex. (Obviously, there was no actual sex or nudity in the original play, especially on-stage (though plenty of innuendo, at times), but movie makers manage it, anyhow.) It’s still dark and drags on (especially since it is black and white and very old-fashioned) but it follows the story-line pretty close and would provide a visual to help with understanding Macbeth without blowing it up considerably to somehow find meaning in the pieces of Shakespeare’s play (which is obviously what some of the other versions do).

Image from IMDB.com

MACBETH/THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (1971):

 I would have recommended Roman Polanski’s version, too, for understanding, as it’s not too crazy-adapted, but it’s a bit violent and sexy (Playboy Productions?) for the classroom. It won some awards (like the Best Picture Oscar) way back in the 1970s and does have a 70’s flare, but it’s also mostly Macbeth. Considered by many to be the best version of Macbeth on film, it usurped the 1940s version I was just talking about. If you are curious, there are some interesting backstories related to this movie in regards to the director. So if you’re mature and don’t mind some gore and nudity, then this is probably the best version to key you in to the real Macbeth.

Image from IMDB.com

MACBETH (2015):

 This somewhat popular version is visually stunning and well-acted by Michael Fassbender and Marion Cottilard and cast, but the directions and screen-writing made it a different story with a different meaning. Plus, it can be pretty confusing and much of the would be lost on people who are not familiar with the story, since so much is shoved into a short-ish movie. So, like I said, it is a slightly different story with a quite different meaning. Great reviews, awards, but… phew! It’s a depression slog (not to mention violence and depravity both in close quarters).

Image from IMDB.com

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (2021):

 So I haven’t seen this one because—thanks in part to its Oscar for Denzel Washington, I’m sure—its still only available on AppleTV. Despite being completely over the Macbeth movies by now (they are so dark and depressing), I will be screening this one once I can.

Actually, there are a few more adaptations that I would like to see, but they are all of the “based on” variety, as opposed to more versions of the play. They are: Scotland, PA and Throne of Blood. I’m also sure the Patrick Stewart/BBC version is great, but I couldn’t figure out a way to currently watch it.

Images from Wikipedia.com, IMDB.com, and Amazon.com

Stay tuned for a scene-by-scene synopsis by yours truly.