Re-read in honor of James Baldwin’s 100th birthday today. The full title: “Letter to my Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation.”
Contains Re-read in honor of James Baldwin’s 100th birthday today. The full title: “Letter to my Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation.”
Contains one of my favorite Baldwin lines: “If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.”
Also, this: “For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.”...more
I found this collection captivating, maybe because it was written about my home state of California in the late 60’s early 70’s, a time when I was oldI found this collection captivating, maybe because it was written about my home state of California in the late 60’s early 70’s, a time when I was old enough to be impacted by cultural changes but too young to be keeping up with any analysis of them. Didion was a native Californian, born in Sacramento and living in Southern California during this period, and I loved getting her real time astute observations.
In The White Album, she reflects on her own mental state, but also California’s, with all of its different kinds of unrest. She touched on topics from the Black Panthers to The Doors, concluding, “Disorder was its own point.”
What she said about the Sharon Tate murders, which took place not far from her home, was particularly revealing: “I remember all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.”
This is a feeling I also remember, though I was young. There was lots of fear: fear of change, fear of violence, fear of the obvious loss of control.
So this was my favorite of the essays, but they were all good. She tackled the oddest of subjects!
The water shortage, in Holy Water “'The West begins,’ Bernard DeVoto wrote, ‘where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches.’ This is maybe the best definition of the West I have ever read …”
Many Mansions, about the governor’s residence Ronald and Nancy Reagan built to replace the gorgeous older one Nancy called a “fire trap,” and what their style choices revealed about them.
Bureaucrats, where I learned of the inception of diamond lanes on California freeways.
An interesting take on The Women’s Movement “They seized as a political technique a kind of shared testimony at first called a ‘rap session,’ then called ‘consciousness-raising,’ and in any case a therapeutically oriented American reinterpretation, according to the British feminist Juliet Mitchell, of a Chinese revolutionary practice known as ‘speaking bitterness.’”
Finally, I’ll share this quote from The Islands, which was about her trip to Honolulu with her husband and daughter in 1969 in an attempt to save her marriage: “I tell you this not as aimless revelation but because I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: you are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest other people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor.”
I think this explains what I love about reading Didion’s non-fiction. She tells stories through her own unique lens: an outsider, peering in, reporting what she observes while at the same time trying to understand why she feels adrift from it all....more
Before Charles Dickens, there were fictional travel stories and histories that allowed readers to visit places in their minds, but there wasn’t “traveBefore Charles Dickens, there were fictional travel stories and histories that allowed readers to visit places in their minds, but there wasn’t “travel writing” as we know it today. He had a hand in bringing that about.
But what a manic traveler he was! He used his writing as a way of exploring ideas: about history and culture and current events as well as means of travel and changes over time.
These essays, "Out of Town" and "Out of the Season," about, though not specifically stated, his visit to the English coastal towns of Folkestone and Deal, came across more as notes than as an essay with a thesis of some kind. There was no central point, just Dickens riffing about what was on his mind from one minute to the next.
I forgive him though, because his mind is quite an interesting one. He flits from the area’s smuggling history to the battle of Battle of Thermopylæ to description of sailing vessels to commentary on circus animals. He allows the reader to follow him on long walks, and while we get a few beautifully-written glimpses of the place he’s visiting, we mostly see where his mind trails off to.
So I do think the travel genre has improved since Dickens’ time, but this was fun in an unexpected way: seeing a great mind at work during his time off from writing novels.
*Review of title essay only (hopefully more to come)*
This wasn’t so much about the value of books versus cigarettes, but rather Orwell picking an excu*Review of title essay only (hopefully more to come)*
This wasn’t so much about the value of books versus cigarettes, but rather Orwell picking an excuse he often heard for not reading--the expense--and trying to counter it.
It’s interesting to consider why so many people don’t read. Many of us on this site have mentioned that we read more than anyone we know, that we’re the only reader in our family, the only reader amongst our friends. And since it’s such an important part of our lives, we can’t help but wonder why?
As Orwell points out, it isn’t money, and his reasoning can apply to time as well. I tend to think it’s habit. If we aren’t introduced to reading at home, reading becomes something we have to do in school: forced, necessary, and often quickly dropped as soon as we’re “free.” And while it’s possible to learn habits later in life, we all know it isn’t easy.
“There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one’s mind and alter one’s whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later …”
What an apt phrase: “part of the furniture of one’s mind”! We do (sometimes purposefully but usually without thinking) make choices about what will make up the furnishings of our minds.
Maybe we need a new essay: Books vs. Smartphones …...more
“…my mind veers inflexibly toward the particular.”
A marvelous collection of diverse essays written in the 1960s. I thought these would speak to the Ca“…my mind veers inflexibly toward the particular.”
A marvelous collection of diverse essays written in the 1960s. I thought these would speak to the California girl in me, but when her essay about of being young in New York--a place I’ve never been--came alive in my mind, I realized that what captured my interest wasn’t the subject. It was the writer.
Didion starts with a true crime story, “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” and not because of shock or exploitation but because of the way she developed the piece, I couldn’t take my eyes off the prose. “It was in the breakup that the affair ceased to be in the conventional mode and began to resemble instead the novels of James M. Cain, the movies of the late 1930’s, all the dreams in which violence and threats and blackmail are made to seem commonplaces of middle-class life.”
She continues with more profiles of Californians, including the title piece about time spent in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1967. This was my least favorite, perhaps because I already knew so much about the place. She uncovers a very pathetic view, matching the Yeats poem about World War I that serves as epigraph to the collection.
Next she gives us a section of personal essays, which all felt honest, unusual, and so relatable to me. From “On Keeping a Notebook”: “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”
She heads the last group of essays perfectly: “Seven Places of the Mind.” These demonstrated my favorite kind of travel writing--specifically describing the melding of a place, time and experience. She takes you to a specific spot where her mind took an interesting turn, and whether it was New York or Mexico of her own California, I felt like I was along for the ride.
A brilliant collection; both of a time and timeless....more
“I had never been in the public ward of a hospital before, and it was my first experience of doctors who handle you without speaking to you, or, in a “I had never been in the public ward of a hospital before, and it was my first experience of doctors who handle you without speaking to you, or, in a human sense, taking any notice of you.”
I have been seeing the most horrific images from hospital wards in Afghanistan: babies dying from hunger or because there was no money for medications. This reminder that the world is still such a brutal place for so many was fresh on my mind as I read Orwell's account of his experience in a French hospital for poor patients in 1929. It is difficult but important reading.
Orwell mentions that national health insurance was beginning to help bring about humane treatment of the poor, and I read that the National Health Service was created by an act passed in 1946, the year this essay was written. But as an American who has personally been warned off “Welfare hospitals” in different areas I’ve lived, known countless who avoid needed treatment due to cost, and others who have gone bankrupt after seeking it, I know how far my country still lags behind in improving cruel conditions.
In his Why I Write essay, Orwell stated his wish to make political writing an art. This one--with its blend of personal account, stinging detail, and broader implications--is a demonstration of that wish fulfilled.
“Hung on my bedroom wall is a quote attributed to Joan of Arc: ‘I am not afraid. I was born to do this.’ However my life unfolds, goes my thinking, is“Hung on my bedroom wall is a quote attributed to Joan of Arc: ‘I am not afraid. I was born to do this.’ However my life unfolds, goes my thinking, is how I am meant to live it; however my life unspools itself, I was created to bear it.”
I spent some years studying psychology and working in the mental health community, and I enjoyed being back in these discussions. Learning about the patterns, the cause and effect, the complexity and uniqueness of our thoughts and feelings is important and fascinating.
Esmé Weijun Wang is an excellent writer. She’s self-aware but not self-indulgent, and she has an infectious curiosity. I enjoyed every one of these essays about her journey to and from a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. They range from technical to whimsical, from personal to societal, but they’re all revealing.
In my time working in mental health I met so many frustrated people--people who had to deal with diagnoses and treatments that were often shockingly insufficient. I found some of the later essays here particularly interesting. They describe Wang’s exploration of spirituality and alternative medicine in her search for how to best take care of herself, and she offers this insight: “Sick people, as it turns out, generally stray into alternative medicine not because they relish the idea of indulging in what others call quackery, but because traditional Western medicine has failed them.”
George Orwell’s 11 points to the perfect cup is an education. Except for the fact I’m a milk first girl, I can agree with most of them. The point is dGeorge Orwell’s 11 points to the perfect cup is an education. Except for the fact I’m a milk first girl, I can agree with most of them. The point is details matter, and what this makes me think is in our current throw-away society, our age of excess, we have been encouraged to forget the value of doing something with an eye to thrift, to doing it right, with care....more
A very light Orwell essay, where he reminisces about his time working in a bookshop, which, being the serious writer he was, clearly had its frustratiA very light Orwell essay, where he reminisces about his time working in a bookshop, which, being the serious writer he was, clearly had its frustrations. “I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one.”
He discovered things about both patrons and books that he probably wished he hadn’t. But those of us who have served the public will likely relate to the sometimes mocking thoughts that exist behind our tolerant smiles, and he makes some brilliant politically incorrect barbs about, for example, “vague-minded women” and a “decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts.”
Great fun if, like me, you’re a lover of both books and sarcasm. ...more
“There is, therefore, a temptation to write afterthoughts into these pieces, to embellish them with later and better thinking. I have not done that, b“There is, therefore, a temptation to write afterthoughts into these pieces, to embellish them with later and better thinking. I have not done that, but left them as they were--mantelpieces littered with to-do lists, and messages form people I used to be.” From the Introduction
This collection of essays spans a 30 year period: 1987-2017, so it’s understandable Mantel might have been tempted to make some changes. But no changes were needed. Watching her mind at work, pondering all manner of subjects from monarchy to witchcraft, was awe-inspiring.
My lack of historical knowledge hampered my appreciation of some of the essays, but even when I didn’t know much about the references I still couldn’t help admire her thinking.
Two, on very personal topics, were my favorites. One covered meeting her stepfather when she was four years old, where to my memory, she totally nailed the viewpoint from that age. Another, the frank depiction of her horrific experience in the hospital after surgery, felt like a public service announcement wrapped in a horror story. “None of us thinks the complication rate applies to us.”
Overall, what I enjoyed most was her approach to writing about history, summed up for me in these two quotes: “Biography must surely begin with an act of imagination.” but also, “To accept an untruth, to assent to a lazy version of history, is not just negligent but immoral.”
How tragic that we’ve lost such a brilliant mind....more
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
I didn’t know what to expect from this essay going into it, and thought Orwell would be calling me “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
I didn’t know what to expect from this essay going into it, and thought Orwell would be calling me on my grammar. Far from it. This is really about clear, honest, thinking.
Anyone who reads or listens to the news knows how often the same phrases are used, over and over and over again until they are meaningless. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who has stopped in the middle of an article or news commentary and said to myself, “Wait, does he or she even know what that word means?”
Sure, many writers intentionally mislead us, but Orwell explains how this kind of writing can occur from laziness--letting phrases pop in our minds instead of coming up with true ones. Whether purposeful or not, this type of writing (especially the amount of it we consume on a daily basis now) can give a dangerous vagueness to our thinking.
“… the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
He offers practical suggestions though, and hope. He ends the essay with six rules, and my favorite is his first one: “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”
“Since 2015, police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide, an NPR investigation has found.” Reported on NPR 1“Since 2015, police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide, an NPR investigation has found.” Reported on NPR 1/25/21
This collection of essays was published in 2016, written before most if not all of those deaths. The book is already full of lists of murdered people--the cover art is actual tally marks--yet since its writing, we have this unthinkable number of 135 more.
“It seems the rate of police killings now surpasses the rate of lynchings during the worst decades of the Jim Crow era.” From Where Do We Go From Here by Isabel Wilkerson
Both horrifying and inspiring, this collection provides diverse approaches to the subject of race in America today. In her Acknowledgements, Jesmyn Ward explains she asked the contributors to “write toward the hurt.” It contains letters and poetry, as well as essays and personal accounts.
White Rage, by Carol Anderson, was particularly chilling. “For every action of African American advancement, there’s a reaction, a backlash.”
My favorite was Kevin Young’s Blacker Than Thou. Young is a poet whose work I will now be seeking out. In his collection of snippets, he displays a unique and compelling voice. He touches on all kinds of things, including Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who identified as Black and became a big news item in 2015. “While black folks often hear the beat, and set it, doesn’t mean when anyone else hears it, that she gets to be black.” He also penned this heartbreaking line: “I came out as black as a teenager. Before then, I was simply a boy. After, I was sometimes, still.”
As important as it is to “say their names,” it’s equally important to hear the stories of those who continue the struggle to survive. There is so much to say, and I hope to see more enlightening collections like this one.
“…art is a creator and a destroyer and no less a player in the great stage of the world than politics or violence.” From This Far: Notes on Love and Revolution by Daniel José Older...more
“Take a step that will lead you toward the realization of your dream, and then take another, and another, and another.”
Beautifully illustrated by Gina“Take a step that will lead you toward the realization of your dream, and then take another, and another, and another.”
Beautifully illustrated by Gina Triplett, this Tulane University commencement speech is a shining star of inspiration. I love Jesmyn Ward and am so thankful she persisted to become the success she has become, so she can inspire the rest of us. She weaves in her life story as she tells her listeners to keep hoping, keep working, and to follow the example of her grandmother:
“When I was young, her life looked like a failure, a result of bad decisions, something to be averted. When I became an adult, I realized her life couldn’t be described in such glib terms, that life was a tumultuous sea, and that my grandmother had spent her days afloat on a raft, and that she’d paddled and bailed water, and read the map of constellations in the sky to find land, reprieve, and to survive.”
Important words for all of us, and the perfect way for me to start this new year....more
Adrienne Rich was a fierce poet, but also an academic, and this is an academic collection. It includes lectures to students, speeches to administratorAdrienne Rich was a fierce poet, but also an academic, and this is an academic collection. It includes lectures to students, speeches to administrators, presentations to commissions, articles, essays, reviews and columns. At times it was a bit too academic for a general reader like me, but what brilliance.
She spoke from experience, of patriarchy and feminism, motherhood and teaching. But the parts I enjoyed most were when she applied her knowledge and experience to literary analysis.
On Wuthering Heights: “The bond between Catherine and Heathcliff is the archetypal bond between the split fragments of the psyche, the masculine and feminine elements ripped apart and longing for reunion.”
On Jane Eyre: “Coming to her husband in economic independence and by her free-choice, Jane can become a wife without sacrificing a grain of her Jane Eyre-ity.”
On Poetry: “But poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.”
My favorite was her essay “Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson,” from a 1975 Brandeis University lecture. Understanding Dickinson from Rich’s intellectual-feminist-poet point of view is a treat no Dickinson fan should miss. A revelation.
For those who think this collection may be dated, I offer this: “One of the most powerful social and political catalysts of the past decade has been the speaking of women with other women, the telling of our secrets, the comparing of wounds and the sharing of words. This hearing and saying of women has been able to break many a silence and taboo; literally to transform forever the way we see.”
The “past decade” referenced was 50 years ago, but it sounds remarkably like a certain movement going on right now. As we know, silences continue, and there are many more secrets we must go on sharing in order to move the transformation forward. We still have much to learn from Adrienne Rich....more
I have not read the silly novels she critiques, but still, I get her point.
“Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike I have not read the silly novels she critiques, but still, I get her point.
“Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well-dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues.”
Eliot was angry that depictions of women (and men, for that matter) by these silly lady novelists were not real, that novelists need to take the time to really look at people, all people, people doing real things, before providing us a picture of them.
Then she went and did just that.
“A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man … does not give you information, which is the raw material of culture,--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence.”...more
“The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose.”
A light but fascinating biographical essay about Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, an ar“The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose.”
A light but fascinating biographical essay about Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, an artist and author convicted in 1837 of being a serial killer. Wilde muses on his life, and on the intersection of art and morality.
Fans of The Picture of Dorian Gray—check this out: I found a special bonus at the end. Wilde is talking about how Wainewright’s crimes had an effect on his art. Note that this essay was published in 1885, five years before that novel:
He writes of Wainewright, “… it is said that ‘he contrived to put the expression of his own wickedness into the portrait of a nice, kind-hearted girl.’” Then he adds, “M. Zola, in one of his novels, tells us of a young man who, having committed a murder, takes to art, and paints greenish impressionist portraits of perfectly respectable people, all of which bear a curious resemblance to his victim. The development of Mr. Wainewright’s style seems to me far more subtle and suggestive. One can fancy an intense personality being created out of sin.”...more
This has to be one of the most inspiring books I have ever read.
“I claimed the right and the range of authorship. To interrupt journalistic history wThis has to be one of the most inspiring books I have ever read.
“I claimed the right and the range of authorship. To interrupt journalistic history with a metaphorical one; to impose on a rhetorical history an imaginistic one; to read the world, misread it; write and unwrite it. To enact silence and free speech. In short to do what all writers aspire to do. I wanted my work to be the work of disabling the art versus politics argument; to perform the union of aesthetics and ethics.”
Just look at what Toni Morrison is doing with the above paragraph. She is claiming. She is interrupting. She is imposing. She is enacting. And check out the result: a fusion of art and morality.
If you’ve enjoyed Morrison’s novels, you know that she isn’t blowing smoke here. This is exactly what she does with her fiction. And the astonishing thing to me is that in this collection of her non-fiction, she tells us how she does it, and why.
These essays, spanning from 1976 to 2013, come in a range of formats, from academic lectures to writer’s conference keynote speeches; from commencement addresses to eulogies. She discusses racism, individual artists, the writing process and her own novels. Some common threads I noticed throughout this variety of approaches were
our political/social reality-- “In 1995 racism may wear a new dress, buy a new pair of boots, but neither it nor its succubus twin fascism is new or can make anything new. It can only reproduce the environment that supports its own health: fear, denial, and an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the will to fight.”
how art fits into that political/social reality-- “I do not want to go into my old age without Social Security, but I can; I do not want to go into my old age without Medicare, but I can, I’ll face it; I do not like the notion of not having a grand army to defend me, but I can face that. What I cannot face is living without my art.”
and how she addresses that reality in her writing-- “…the crucial distinction for me is not the difference between fact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth. Because facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot.”
What a gift this collection is—an opportunity to sit at the feet of this wise woman and soak up as much as you can. I can’t recommend it highly enough for everyone, but if you are or aspire to be a fiction writer, and particularly if you have admired Morrison’s style, then you need to read this. The generosity and clarity with which she shares her insights … well it’s just astounding....more
“Revolution is our inherent character, and courage has never yet forsaken us.”
This reads like the tract it is, and while I enjoyed the introduction mo“Revolution is our inherent character, and courage has never yet forsaken us.”
This reads like the tract it is, and while I enjoyed the introduction more than the work itself, it is important and in places, inspiring. People needed to be brought around to see the efficacy, the inevitability of American independence. Because revolution is scary.
He made some laudable points, important to continue to reflect upon.
“Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”
“As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government has to do therewith.”
It did strike me, as I read Paine’s complaint of how far removed the monarch is from the people, that we have a similar problem today. If we believe all people to be created equal and believe that they should be equally represented, then the 99%, as we call them of late, are sadly underrepresented. Paine’s comments about how the king, by virtue of being king, is removed from what most people experience rings very true as it applies to our 1%, and it makes me think our revolution isn’t finished yet.
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”...more
It is easy to understand why Joseph Campbell, the much-loved professor of mythology and literature, included this book on his students’ required readiIt is easy to understand why Joseph Campbell, the much-loved professor of mythology and literature, included this book on his students’ required reading list. It is a profound little masterpiece that sheds light on complex ideas using simple explanations and examples, like Campbell did.
Kakuzo Okakura lived primarily in Japan but travelled widely and wrote in English. He is attempting to provide a kind of bridge between East and West, and with these essays that explore the historical, spiritual and cultural aspects of tea drinking, I believe he succeeds.
“With Luwuh in the middle of the eight century we have our first apostle of tea. He was born in an age when Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism were seeking mutual synthesis. The pantheistic symbolism of the time was urging one to mirror the Universal in the Particular. Luwuh, a poet, saw in the Tea service the same harmony and order which reigned through all things.”
The universal in the particular. This book expands on that idea, explaining how an appreciation of art, and flowers, and tea, can help us understand how to live.
“Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.”...more
I’m a big fan of Eudora Welty. I don’t always love her books, but I always love her voice. And in this collection, she uses that voice to share in-depI’m a big fan of Eudora Welty. I don’t always love her books, but I always love her voice. And in this collection, she uses that voice to share in-depth knowledge about writers and writing. It’s broken down into four sections: writers, writing, book reviews and a selection of miscellaneous essays.
In the Writers section she digs deep to unearth little gems about significant authors. For example, on Chekhov, I love this: “It was his plainest intention that we never should hear him telling us what we should think or feel or believe. He is not trying to teach us, through his characters; he only asks us to understand them.”
The Writing section, “On Writing,” is something I’ve read before, but feel I could read it forever and never grasp it all. If you give it some concentration, you come away with quite an education. Here’s an idea worth spending some time on: “Making reality real is art’s responsibility. It is a practical assignment, then, a self-assignment: to achieve, by a cultivated sensitivity for observing life, a capacity for receiving its impressions, a lonely, unremitting, unaided, unaidable vision, and transferring this vision without distortion to it onto the pages of a novel, where, if the reader is so persuaded, it will turn into the reader’s illusion.”
Most of her reviews were about authors I don’t yet know. She did, however, convince me to re-read Charlotte’s Web, and had—not surprisingly--some brilliant insight into Faulkner. I found his quotes she shared about why he wrote such long sentences fascinating. Basically, he believed the past wasn’t past, but existed within each person, and the long sentence was an attempt to get their past and future into the present moment. How cool is that?
The essays at the end were some that don’t necessarily have broad appeal--an address to the Mississippi Historical Society, for example. But what came through in all of them was her sense of place—that aspect of her fiction that so many of us love.
“All the years we lived in that house where we children were born, the same people lived in the other houses on our street too. People changed through the arithmetic of birth, marriage and death, but not by going away. So families just accrued stories, which through the fullness of time, in those times, their own lives made. And I grew up in those.”
Those stories that Eudora Welty grew up in made her the unique writer she was. I learned so much from her, and thoroughly enjoyed spending time in this collection....more
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