Literary Safari

I’ve been at the College Perk Coffeehouse since 10 am today, reading and writing, and reading and writing. It’s a beautiful day! After working on a particular personal essay that must not exceed 500 words, I finally submitted it to the powers that be – and now, I know that I must lean back and remind myself that even if it doesn’t get accepted, the most important thing is that I was able to finish it.

I don’t remember the last time I hung out on a single couch all day, just reading and writing for myself – and, not for work. I’m really enjoying the stimulating aroma of coffee beans being ground, the clink of cutlery being washed, the running stream of water, and of course, the people watching.

A couple of gals just finished a poetry-writing session a few minutes ago. Makes me want to do a freewriting jam of my own. Hey, why not? Nothing’s stopping me. Nobody is going to talk to me in the middle of this and I have nothing pressing calling me. (The girl who thought she lost her cell phone is back – with phone in hand. Oh good. I’m glad I was around to see the completion of her story – 20 mins ago, she ran out of here with her laptop in hand, hoping she hadn’t lost her entire address book.)

Yes, back to freewriting – why not do one right now? I think I’ll open up my copy of Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer … and use a random line as my
starting point – less pressure for a silly girl who thinks too much otherwise

“Tell me about when you were young and what it was like with her then.”

OK, that’s my starting point – I’ve already lost the page number!

(more…)

I’m reading The Subtle Knife, part II of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I’ve taken a long break from the science fiction and fantasy genre–years in fact–and I’m really enjoying being back in the thick of it. There’s adventure and plot here, mystery, magic, and science too! It’s hang-on-to-your-seats-and-don’t leave–this-book-until-you’re-done kind of reading … with smartness to boot.

I suppose it was Ursula K. LeGuin who got me on this fantasy/sci fi kick recently. I interviewed her for Writing last spring and had read Voices and Gifts, her young adult novels in preparation for the interview. I have yet to read the acclaimed Earthsea series, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, but that’s what discovery is all about, right? There’s nothing like finding new authors whose work you relish and admire.

In our interview, I had asked Ursula LeGuin, “What are the qualities of powerful writing?”

She answered:

I’ll mention just one characteristic: Exactness, accuracy of description and language — combined with the suggestion of something in some way greater than what is described. A vivid vision, with implications that go beyond it. A clarity that casts shadows.

What I’m enjoying so much about Pullman is that he writes intelligent YA fiction. His storytelling assumes that young readers can understand complex ideas and plots. At the same time, he can get inside the minds of his young protagonists with accuracy and spiritedness.

I’ve changed a lot, I suppose, over the last few years. When I first started editing Writing, I shied away from YA literature. My theory was that kids have enough exposure to this and that they don’t need to be inundated with YA stuff in the magazine. They need to be introduced to authors they don’t know – authors who write for adult audiences.

I certainly don’t think so anymore. There’s a good deal of fluffy stuff out there, but there are also gems I’ve discovered along the way — gems that illustrate the qualities of good writing in subtle (no pun intended!) and powerful ways.

I’m off to the National Book Festival in DC this weekend and look forward to discovering many more gems!

I love going to the library. Somehow, I always stumble upon great finds there–books that miss my line of vision at bookstores. One of my latest finds was The House of Paper, written by Carlos Maria Dominguez and illustrated by Peter Sis. (Yes, “they” are right when they say we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but still, anything that has the golden touch of Peter Sis always gets my attention!)

The size and feel of the book reminded me of one of my favorite books by Jose Luis Borges (also illustrated by Sis)—The Tale of the Unknown Island. I actually haven’t picked up my copy of that book in several years, but its memory immediately floated into my mind.

As it turns out, The House of Paper is indeed reminiscent to and an obvious homage to the magical realism of Borges, with whom Dominguez studied.

The House of Paper is a novel that explores the relationship that bibliophiles have with their books; our passion, attachment, and inane disability to part with a title, even though we may not have read it in years–and certainly have no plans of doing so. What if you were so obsessed with your collection of books that you literally set about building a house out of them?

In this novel, which starts out in England and takes you on a literary investigation to Buenos Aires, a Cambridge professor is hit and killed while reading a poem by Emily Dickinson. After her death, her colleague and successor discovers a copy of Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line; a strange copy at that – it’s covered in cement! He sets to find the sender of this book, whom it turns out is a maniacal bibliophile in Uruguay whose obsession has led to his mysterious disappearance. [Read an excerpt]

As I was reading the book, I repeatedly reflected on my own relationship to my books, particularly in light of excerpts such as this:

I often ask myself why I keep books that could only ever be of any use in a distant future, titles remote from my usual concerns, those I have read once and will not open for many years, if ever! But how could I throw away The Call of the Wild for example, without destroying one of the building bricks of my childhood … It is often much harder to get rid of books than to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again.

I can definitely identify with this–and think it would be an interesting exercise to make an inventory of the books that have been the building bricks of my life.

(That’s been done before, I know – in Rereadings, edited by Anne Fadiman whose Ex-Libris is also a must-read).