Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

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Self-HelpI’m a big fan of the designs of the new Faber Modern Classics – which includes Self-Help (1985) by Lorrie Moore – even if the criteria for selection is a bit unclear. Do Ariel, Look Back in Anger, and The Remains of the Day have anything in common? I shouldn’t have thought so, but I suppose Oxford World’s Classics and Penguin Classics don’t have much in common across the series.

Anyway, even if the selection of titles is a bit bizarre (and, sadly, the quality of the paperback doesn’t quite live up to the design), this is still a really intriguing new series. Thanks for sending me this book, Faber! Self-Help had been on my radar for a while, so I thought I’d pick it up to celebrate its 30th anniversary. (I’m kinda terrified every time something celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, because yours truly will be doing the same thing come November…) Oh, and Moore was younger than me when this was published.

Things I didn’t know about Self-Help #1: it’s short stories. I’d assumed, being a shallow type, that it was a self help book, or at least personal essays. The line between short stories and personal essays might be rather slim, of course: every protagonist in Self-Help is more or the less the same person. Their names change and their families and situations change a bit, but they are all intelligent, self-deprecating, introspective, wry young American women. Basically, they’re all (one assumes) Lorrie Moore.

And that kinda works. I’m not a fan of the exclusively-write-about-what-you-know school (A.L. Kennedy responds to this advice brilliantly, which I quoted when I reviewed On Writing) but here it seems ok; the stories come together to form a single snapshot of a certain sort of person at a specific time.

And the stories themselves? The tone is often self-help style, as the title suggest. For example…

Make attempts at a less restrictive arrangement. Watch them sputter and deflate like balloons. He will ask you to move in. Do so hesitantly, with ambivalence. Clarify: rents are high, nothing long-range, love and all that, hon, but it’s footloose. Lay out the rules with much elocution. Stress openness, non-exclusivity. Make room in his closet, but don’t rearrange the furniture.

The first one, ‘How to Be an Other Woman’, is perhaps most representative of the collection as a whole; many of the stories deal with unsatisfying or disintegrating relationships, and this story does exactly what it says: it’s a sombre look at the mechanics of being ‘the other woman’, looking brazenly at the situation without any attempt to find either a moral or a silver lining. It’s also probably my second favourite story in the collection.

My absolute favourite was ‘How To Become A Writer’, because – it’s about being a failing writer. It’s a bit melancholy, but rings true with anybody who feels like there is a writer inside of them somewhere… without, somehow, feeling self-indulgent on Moore’s part, perhaps because of the wit and (again) self-deprecation:

Later on in life you will learn that writers are merely open, helpless texts with no real understanding of what they have written and therefore must half-believe anything and everything that is said of them. You. however, have not yet reached this stage of literary criticism. You stiffen and say “I do not,” the same way you said it when someone in the fourth grade accused you of really liking oboe lessons and your parents really weren’t just making you take them.

All things considered, there is a lot to like in Self-Help – but it does feel a bit like a writing student trying an extended experiment. It’s clearly a first book, and I’d be interested to see how Moore’s writing developed – particularly when she started considering perspectives other than her own life. As, I’m sure, she did…?

So, Cornelia Otis Skinner is the actual best (and a GIVEAWAY, y’all)

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In the early days of discovering authors for myself, it seemed like every one I stumbled upon turned into a lifelong favourite. I still have massive devotion to A.A. Milne, E.M. Delafield, Richmal Crompton, Stephen Leacock, The L-Shaped Room (because, let’s be fair, it’s that book; not Lynne Reid Banks in general) etc. There were so few duds. And these sorts of epiphanies come so infrequently now that I’ve started wondering: is it just the glitter of the new? Or even the opportunity to blitz through an author’s work, when there aren’t teetering tbr piles (real and imaginary) of pressing reads?

Well, thank you Cornelia Otis Skinner, for coming along and proving me wrong. Consider me devoted.

Cornelia Otis Skinner Nuts in May

 

I read Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, which she wrote with Emily Kimbrough, after Danielle lent it to me. I absolutely loved it, and kept an eye out for the authors ever since – but they are tough to come across in the UK. I did manage to read Popcorn by Cornelia Otis Skinner, which I wholeheartedly adored – and brought five of her books back with me from the US. That included a duplicate of Nuts in May – which I’m going to write about today, and offer as a giveaway to people in the UK, who will also have a tough job tracking her down. (Btw, in the US, they’re available cheaply online, so… have at!)

Skinner is a humorous essayist who reminded me a lot of Delafield and Diary of a Provincial Lady – which, if you know me well, you’ll realise can hardly be bettered as a compliment. Essentially, her books are masterpieces of self-deprecation. If that’s your cup of tea – and I live for it – you’ll find Nuts in May hilarious. Skinner (or her essay persona, at least) takes us through various aspects of her life, and activities she has attempted, and gives extremely amusing portrayals of how horribly everything goes wrong. Small stakes, of course: the worst that happens (and it repeatedly happens) is embarrassment or awkwardness. Take, for example, this (longish) excerpt from the chapter most redolent of the Provincial Lady, ‘Ordeal for Sons’, wherein Skinner visits her son at boarding school. (Incidentally, subscribers to the New Yorker can apparently read the whole article in its original glory. And I daresay that’s true for other Skinner essays.)

I set forth with my child who, the moment we get to territory totally unfamiliar to me, again disappeared. I wandered on aimlessly, passing stray professors and groups of boys who looked at me as if they wondered if my attendant knew I was loose. Some of the mink-coat mothers also passed and we bestowed on one another that sickly smile which can be taken for recognition or pure imbecility. After a time, my offspring hove in sight armed with skates and a stick and told me to follow him. Hockey was being played on a pond some hundred yards beyond us and the people I had passed were all heading for the barrier, which seemed to be the vantage place for watching the game. Once arrived at the pond, however, my son started leading me off in an oblique direction. When I shyly asked the reason, he said he didn’t want me near the barrier… that I might get in the way, or fall down, or otherwise make myself conspicuous. His method of making me inconspicuous was to station me off on a remote and windy promontory. A strange, solitary figure, silhouetted against the snow, I felt like the picture of Napoleon overlooking Moscow. I could hardly see what was going on, much less make out which of the distant swirling figures was my child, which, perhaps, was just as well as it saved me the anguish of seeing him make a goal on his own side which counted some sort of colossal penalty and made him a pariah for the remainder of the game. On my forthcoming visit I am told the sport will be boat racing and I suppose by way of making me inconspicuous, I shall be placed behind a tree.

Oh, Cornelia. You and me are going to be best buds, I can tell. I mean, sure, I wish you had learnt more about paragraph lengths (this lady loves a long para) but I shan’t fault-find too much, as you’re so darn hilarious.

While her family shows up in quite a few sections (notably when her son believes he has discovered dinosaur bones, and they lug their find to the New York Museum of Natural History), Cornelia Otis Skinner’s name loomed largest as an actress, apparently. It’s a rich vein for anecdotes and amusing stories: she writes wittily about being demanded to appear in unpaid productions, the anguish of opening nights (for one’s friends and family), and the sort of person who comes backstage after a play. More unexpectedly, she writes a section about meeting the Pope. The only section that didn’t win me over was a spoof of John Steinbeck.

I’m at the risk of typing the whole thing out, so I shall just reiterate that she has that rare touch – to make stories entirely about herself and her situation (which is unashamedly middle-class) somehow hilariously identifiable, and light without being disposable. She is frivolous, but great frivolity takes enormous talent.

So, that giveaway part. As I say, I’m afraid it’s UK only – because Skinner’s work is tricky to find over here, and I feel like we Brits deserve a chance to get to know her. To be in with a chance of winning, just let me know your favourite American writer in the comment section, and I’ll do the draw on Saturday 6 June. I’m hoping to nab some suggestions along the way.

 

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Hope you’re having a fantastic weekend! I’ve had a super busy week, and am enjoying sitting down and doing nothing for a bit. If you’re doing the same, amuse myself yourself with a book, a link, and a blog post.

1.) The book – isn’t new at all, but I bought it in Oxfam yesterday, and it was a fun example of the sort of quirky book waiting out there if you hunt… The Adventures of Gabriel in his Search for Mr Shaw by W.R. Mathews. It’s about the Angel Gabriel trying to find George Bernard Shaw, and meeting several interloper-doppelgänger. Because… why not?

2.) The link – Our Vicar told me about a few A.A. Milne stories being done on Radio 4 – hurrah! I haven’t listened yet, but I’m sure they’ll be fun.

3.) The blog post – Lyn at I Prefer Reading is doing a great series of looking at individual shelves from her bookcases, and what do bibliophiles love more than having a shufti at other people’s books? The second post is here; yes, I chose it because Miss Hargreaves is there. And The L-Shaped Room, which I’m currently massively enthused about making EVERYBODY read.

From one Cunningham to another

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I’ve been reading quite a lot of non-fiction at the moment – I’m in one of those moods where fiction isn’t working as well as it should be – and I decided to extend that to films too.

Bill Cunningham New York

I haven’t watched a lot of documentaries, but one of my all-time favourite films is a documentary (Life in a Day, which I wrote about here), and I’ve really enjoyed others like Stories We Tell and The September Issue. So I looked through an article on the best documentaries available on Netflix in the UK (this article, since you ask) and settled on a couple: Catfish and Bill Cunningham New York. Both were well-worth watching, but I’m not sure I have all that much to say about Catfish. All of my thoughts about it would hinge on whether or not it’s fake, and the internet jury seems to have remained out on that one. If any of y’all know the answer, lemme know.

But I did want to bring Bill Cunningham New York to your attention, if you don’t know about it, because it turned out to be rather lovely. It came out in 2010, when Bill Cunningham was 81 and still working full-time as the photographer for two pages in the New York Times – ‘On the Street’ (street fashion) and ‘Evening Hours’ (charity social events). With admirable restraint on the part of the director, Richard Press, the film largely skews towards looking at the former – which gives rather less opportunity for gratuitous shots of socialites, but is clearly where Cunningham’s passion lies.

I hadn’t heard of Cunningham before seeing his name in this list, but he is so extraordinary that a novelist would have to event him if he didn’t exist. For decades he has cycled the streets of New York, taking photos of everyday women, men, and dogs, and bringing together pictorial features on a certain trend that he sees a lot of – whether that be a colour, a style, or even people walking gingerly through piles of snow. He doesn’t use a digital camera, and still takes his films into a shop to be developed. His old-fashioned nature extends to manners: he believes all the people he photographs to be beautiful, and is horrified at the idea of using street photography to criticise others – indeed, he has resigned from magazines when they re-wrote his copy to mock.

You might expect Cunningham to be an aesthete himself. No such thing. He wears the same style of blue smock everyday – a cheap workman’s outfit. His apartment, in Carnegie Hall at the time of filming, is filled with ugly filing cabinets, with a bed lying alongside them. Cunningham’s one joy is other people and the clothes they wear.

Press’ documentary is not quite a hagiography, but it is refreshingly willing to allows its subject to be good. Only one prurient moment, asking about Cunningham’s relationships (he has had none) feels out of kilter with the tone of the piece; most of the time, the film looks at Cunningham’s unique work and place in the fashion industry. Interviewees include Anna Wintour (fun fact for fact fans: I lived next door to her son at Magdalen), Iris Apfel (soon to get her own documentary), and lots of people I hadn’t heard of from the fashion industry. Oh, and his neighbour – Editta Sherman, then a 96 year old photographer (who has since died, at the age of 101), who spent most of her time of film putting on hats and pouting at the camera or complaining that the documentary wasn’t about her instead. And she definitely warranted one.

The film is certainly celebratory, and it is rare to see somebody so completely nice and contented on film. At the same time, he remains rather distant from most people, and his past is still something of a mystery that the film didn’t exert much energy into uncovering. We see one or two snapshots of his youth, but hear very little about father or mother, or even how he sustains himself considering he refuses to accept money for jobs: he has a horror of being ‘owned’. A sub-plot (as it were) about Carnegie Hall residents being evicted is intriguing, but not particularly concluded – and certainly isn’t exploited in the sensationalist way it might have been in some hands.

Yet, somehow, a documentary that isn’t invasively curious about its subject works unexpectedly well. Bill Cunningham New York is interested in the man’s legacy and contribution to fashion and photography, and in one moment in time. It is rather joyful to watch, with enough poignancy to avoid being mawkish. I’d heartily recommend it.

And, now I’m on a documentary spree, I’d love some more recommendations. I’m intending to watch Actress, Finding Vivian Maier, Dear Mr Watterson, and Life Itself at some point…

A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

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A Home at the End of the WorldI read Cunningham’s second novel on the flight to America, having bought it on my previous trip. I loved The Hours and enjoyed Land’s End, and wanted to read more by him. This novel is mostly told from the perspective of two men, Bobby and Jonathan. That is to say, they start as boys. The opening lines, from Bobby’s perspective, are:

Once our father bought a convertible. Don’t ask me. I was five. He bought it and drove it home as casually as he’d bring a gallon of rocky road. Picture our mother’s surprise. She kept rubber band on the doorknobs. She washed old plastic bags and hung them on the line to dry, a string of thrifty tame jellyfish floating in the sun.

A couple of pages later, we shift to Jonathan’s perspective…

We gathered at dusk on the darkening green. I was give. The air smelled of newly cut grass, and the sand traps were luminous. My father carried me on his shoulders. I was both pilot and captive of his enormity. My bare legs thrilled to the sandpaper of his cheeks, and I held on to his ears, great soft shells that buzzed minutely with hair.

So, Bobby is five and Jonathan is five. And, it turns out, A Home at the End of the World was first published on my 5th birthday,  7 November 1990, which is a fun coincidence. But, instead of 1990s Merseyside (where I spent that birthday), these boys are in Ohio in the 1960s.

Had I known the extent to which this novel incorporated the ‘coming-of-age’ genre, I might have fun a mile; it’s not a subset of literature that I often enjoy. In describing this novel, I can’t really deny that it is firmly in that genre. And yet it’s done rather better than I could have hoped for; events and emotions follow on from events and emotions, and Cunningham entirely captivates the reader while they’re relayed. Usually I just roll my eyes or wait for some horizon where they become adults and the prose can start describing a destination rather than a journey. Here, the journey of growing up was made to feel an apt focus.

There are some significant events – including deaths – that affect the lives of both boys. One of the most powerful comes early in the book, when the older brother Bobby idolises dies in a freak accident, running full pelt through glass doors. Their relationship was mostly founded on taking drugs together, so he was hardly a stablising influence on Bobby’s life but Cunningham conveys the closeness of brothers extremely well – and the ways in which Bobby responds to it.

Throughout the novel, he is shown as sensitive, attuned to others, and with a deep-set need to belong. Jonathan, on the other hand, values independence – struggling to accept the overtures of his friendship his mother offers. As Bobby and Jonathan grow older, their close friendship turns into a sexual relationship, albeit one that neither of them want to directly discuss even between themselves. The alternating first person narratives give the reader a chance to see how both characters feel and think about their experiences, while at the same time witnessing their diffidence. Cunningham handles the tension between first-person insight and objective events really beautifully.

Here was another lesson in my continuing education: like other illegal practices, love between boys was best treated as a commonplace. Courtesy demanded that one’s fumbling, awkward performance be no occasion for remark, as if in fact one had acted with the calm expertise of a born criminal.

In a coming-of-age novel, this might be where events would have ended – but, for Cunningham, it is simply the beginning. One chapter of their lives end, and another begins – indeed, takes most of the novel – as Jonathan moves to New York. Bobby remains behind, even moving in with Jonathan’s parents; the men lose touch, until Bobby decides to move to New York too.

Another thing Cunningham portrays brilliantly is the way that friendships peter out. In fiction, once characters bond they often seem ineluctably close forever after. Far more realistic is the awkwardness between Bobby and Jonathan – an affectionate awkwardness, but where all the affection is based on memories. Still, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his housemate Clare. The three of them form a delicate trio. I shan’t write any more about what happens, but suffice to say that plenty more happens – all of which (as throughout the novel) is played well for plausible emotional impact and character rather than simply the shock of plot.

Easily the greatest achievement here is Cunningham’s writing. I jotted down, in my pencil note at the beginning, that the writing was ‘seductive’ – by which I meant that it seduces the reader into the world of the novel. And that, I think, is by gradually building up composite portraits of its characters (particularly, of course, Jonathan and Bobby) through a sort of restrained intimacy. The first-person narratives feel like they’re telling us everything, but they are not confessional voices: they reveal parts of the people, and keep enough back to reel us in.

Although this novel is not flawless (I think death and dying is used a little too often to maintain its impact, for instance), it’s difficult to fault the creation of character, the exploration of perspective, or the realism of behaviours. He really is an exceptional writer. (And which others do you think I should read?)

Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week

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I’m not sure if this had its genesis in blogs or elsewhere, but I spotted on Facebook that this week is Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week! There are few authors I’ve had such varied success with (adored Lolly Willowes and her letters with William Maxwell, but loathed The Corner That Held Them, and didn’t especially like Mr Fortune’s Maggot or Summer Will Show) so I’m excited about trying some more. I have lots of collections of her short stories, but have read none, so may start there.

Join in, do!

 

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Maybe I should drop those hyphens in this post title, now that I’ve lost them in my URL? Hmm.

Anyway – a few bits and pieces to beguile and delight!Bloomsburys-Outsider

1.) The blog post – Jenny has written a lovely review of Marilynne Robinson’s Lila over at Shelf Love.

2.) The link – vote for your favourite Agatha Christie! I love how she basically unites almost all readers, cos she’s just so fab, but we might be divided in the book we like best. If you don’t see yours pictured, there is a drop-down menu at the bottom. (I voted for And Then There Were None, btw.)

3.) The book – is an enormous new biography of David Garnett, Bloomsbury’s Outsider by Sarah Knights, with, er, quite the striking cover. Mine is on its way, so I’ll report back in due course…

Letter From New York – Helene Hanff

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Letter from New York

Any of us who love books about books have surely read the lovely 84, Charing Cross Road, a collection of letters between American Helene Hanff and a London bookseller. Her other books aren’t as well-known, but I heartily recommend Q’s Legacy if you’d like to read more about the success of 84CCR – and now I can also recommend Letter From New York (1992). I took it to America to read there, and… read it in Worcestershire instead.

These letters were broadcast monthly on Radio 4 back between 1978-1984 (and nothing shrieks ’80s more than Hanff’s unstinting belief that formalwear necessitates a black velvet pantsuit and white satin blouse). They are, indeed, not letters so much as thoughts, and concern life in New York – but, more precisely, life in Hanff’s apartment block.

It reminded me a little of one of my all-time faves, The L-Shaped Room (if you’ve not read it – go and do so. I’ll wait.) in that I sort of fell in love with a building and its inhabitants. Not as much as I did with The L-Shaped Room (have you read it yet? I mean, you didn’t just glide past my previous parentheses did you? DID YOU?) because that will never happen, but Hanff is great at writing enough about her friends and neighbours to make you feel like you know them well. If she described them completely, she would seem (and make the reader feel) like an observer; by referring to them as though we already know them pretty well, Arlene, Richard, Nina, and the rest became friends. Here’s an excerpt…

Big excitement here a couple of weeks ago because the New York Times ran a story about Arlene, with a photograph of her that also included Richard.

Since you know that Arlene and I are opposites, when I tell you that I detest large cocktail parties and dinner dance,s you won’t be surprised to learnt hat Arlene earns her living organizing large cocktail parties and dinner dances. She runs the parties as fund-raising events for Democratic politicians who need money for their election campaigns. Her most famous fund-raiser was a birthday party for the Mayor of New York aboard the Queen Elizabeth II – ‘the QE Two’ to Arlene [Simon adds: …and to everyone else]. She phoned the office of the ship’s public relations chief, who was ‘at sea’ off the Bermuda coast and talked to her via ship-to-shore phone, and Arlene talked him into letting her use the ship for the Mayor’s birthday party. She hypnotized the chef into creating a replica of New York’s City Hall in margarine and a birthday cake bigger than the undersized Mayor.

As you see, Hanff deals not solely (or even much) with the grand moments in New York life – rather, we get the refreshing minutiae of her own life. That might be her neighbour’s dog being borrowed to perform as a greeter at an apartment party; it might be watching a bee in a roof garden; it might be a ticker-tape parade. All of it flows from Hanff’s pen lazily and contentedly; the tone you may remember from 84, Charing Cross Road, albeit mellowed a bit.

Hanff’s writing has three faults, in my mind. Only one of them really counts as a fault: the other two are that she prefers dogs to cats (there is a lot about dogs in Letter From New York) and that she prefers the city to the countryside. Those factors made it trickier for me to connect with her, but the only real ‘fault’ I noticed was that she has trouble with section endings. Each letter has a pat ending, a quip or neat sentence, that often felt a bit forced, or looped back to something she’d only mentioned for the first time a paragraph or two earlier. It’s a small thing, and it didn’t really affect my reading, but it brought about the only instances of Hanff’s writing feeling unnatural in a book that is largely characterised by being natural.

If you’ve enjoyed 84, Charing Cross Road, then Hanff will feel like a friend whom you should revisit. If you haven’t – good grief, go and get a copy! (And read The L-Shaped Room while you’re at it.)

 

3 little links…

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Here are three things I’ve written in other places this week… fill your boots!

1.) I reviewed Aldous Huxley’s The Genius and the Goddess at Vulpes Libris.

2.) 5 things you didn’t know about Mrs Dalloway over at OUP Academic Tumblr (although, spoilers, I think some of you definitely will know these)

3.) My favourite: 12 nouns that are always plural. The most geeky English language thing I’ve ever written AND the most cat-themed thing I’ve ever written. *drops mic*

Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks

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Seeing VoicesI am currently knee-deep in Oliver Sacks’ autobiography (as it were) and loving it – and being rather surprised by it – but that will all be revealed in the next issue of Shiny New Books. For now, I thought I should quickly write about the latest Sacks I’ve read before I forget, and before it gets tangled up in my head with his autobiography. The book is Seeing Voices, and was first published in 1989. It deals with deafness and language, essentially – looking at the development of sign language, whether it ‘counts’ as a real language, and how the deaf and hard of hearing have been treated over the past century or so.

This might be quite a short review, because it is my least favourite Sacks book to date – and I am such a cheerleader for his work that I don’t want to dwell on one that (to my mind) didn’t live up to Hallucinations, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The Mind’s Eye, and The Island of the Colourblind. And possibly all the others that I’ve yet to read, most of which are waiting on my shelves.

The irony is that sign language and the senses are things I’m really interested in. Losing, compensating, or confusing senses are topics I find fascinating. And there are certainly sections of Seeing Voices that did fascinate me. Let’s look at them first. Primarily, the protests at Gallaudet University, then (and possibly still) the world’s only liberal arts college for deaf and hard of hearing. These protests came after the election of a new president (from a shortlist of hearing and hard of hearing candidates) ended up with a hearing president; the students and some of the staff went on protest, demanding that they be represented by somebody who knew what it was like to be deaf.

This request doesn’t seem at all outlandish now (although may rear issues of ‘positive’ discrimination; that’s another story), but at the time it was a big step forward in terms of helping people recognise that people who could not hear were still people – intelligent, capable, leadership-demonstrating people at that. Sacks is seldom better than when he feels impassioned on behalf of others who have been downtrodden or underestimated – and he writes in support of those protesters. Elsewhere in the book, more passionately still, he writes about those schools that decided deaf children should learn to speak audibly rather than learn sign language – and the deprivation of communication this forced upon generations of children.

If all of this was great, and classic Oliver, then what didn’t I love so much? Well, as other reviewers have noted in 1989 and since, Seeing Voices is aimed at a rather more scholarly audience than Sacks’ other works. Which is not to say that it’s academic writing; it is still closer to popular science than to a conference paper. But it is the least accessible of the books I’ve read, and I found his focus on scientific and philosophical terminology, not to mention hundreds of endnotes (which take up almost half the book) rather off-putting. Perhaps this is because Sacks mostly deals with theories and histories in Seeing Voices? He is far more captivating when dealing with individuals – whether patients, friends, or Sacks himself.

So, there was a lot of interest here – but the book mostly brings out more of Sacks’ scientific side than his compassion or his storytelling ability; the two attributes that make him such a phenomenal and significant writer, in my opinion. Alternatively, this may make Seeing Voices more appealing to some.

And I have to finish off with this sentence, which amused me:

To be the parents of a deaf child, or of twins, or of a blind child, or of a prodigy, demands a special resilience and resourcefulness.