The Great American Read: 5 and 6, 12 Angry Men

These posts are from a reading list I started in late spring of 2018 and a film list I solicited from readers in January of 2017. I work slow but I'll finish, dammit!

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

This is a story that at its heart is about two things: poverty and books. The protagonist, Francie, lives with her mother, her younger brother, and father in Brooklyn during the early 1900s when times were extremely rough. Dad drinks, money is tight, Mom picks up the slack and gets them all through it by--guess what--READING TO THE KIDS. It's not a pleasant story, it's full of a lot of tragedy and injustice, but the empathy and heart that comes from experiencing such a story is very meaningful. We've all struggled, we've all gone through unpleasant situations, but the sort of struggle author Betty Smith has written about in this novel is something that many times, today anyway, gets written off as laziness, as ignorance, or just failing to lift one's self up "by the bootstraps," as it were. No one in this story is lazy or ignorant; people work hard, people do the best they can and people fail, people die. As with the title of the book, my favorite moments discuss the hopelessness together with the surprising way optimism persists in this young girl's life. Why does the tree keep growing? Read and find out:

When baby Francis is born, Katie frets to her German mother about the poor quality of life that lay ahead, but the new Oma sees hope:

"Excitement came into her voice. 'Already, it is starting---the getting better.' She picked up the baby and held it high in her arms. 'This child was born of parents who can read and write,' she said simply. 'To me, this is a great wonder.'
'Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, Mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?'
'The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. The she must read every day, I know this is the secret.'"

Teachers had a lot to do with Francie's success,

"If all the teachers had been like Miss Bernstone and Mr. Morton, Francie would have known plain what heaven was. But it was just as well. There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory."

Yet not all of them made an effort to understand the realities so common in the lives of poor students (one such bristled at the subject of one of Francie's stories that described a character with a drinking problem):

"'Drunkenness is neither truth nor beauty. It's a vice. Drunkards belong in jail, not in stories. And poverty. There is no excuse for that. There's work enough for all who want it. People are poor because they're too lazy to work. There's nothing beautiful about laziness.'
(Imagine Mama lazy!)

This is the first novel on the Great American Read list that I feel should be mandatory reading for both kids and adults. People generally agree that literacy is important; can we make the same statement about empathy for the poor? Or while we're at it, the experiences of poor little girl? Oma was right---many secrets to success lie in reading and writing.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

I didn't know how this was going to go, honestly. I read the story as a kid, probably some arranged or edited version, saw the film, and was full well familiar with the environment of most of Twain's works, which is the openly racist South. Even knowing this beforehand, it's still jarring and uncomfortable to read racist words in dialogues or the descriptions of people first and foremost seen (by the white people) as "others." Did I enjoy the book? Mostly I did. On the surface it's a story about a naughty little boy doing naughty little boy things but there are very serious issues going on, too (murder, framing an innocent, abduction, homelessness) and racism underscores a lot of the events. Tom Sawyer as a character, is not mean or hateful, but this book takes place during a time that was, and there's no way to justify it other than to say that it was written accurately for when it happened in history.

Apart from its historical honesty, the writing is very witty and youthful. Every now and then you get a fun kind of acknowledgement (from Twain about Tom as a little shit of a character, which he is):

"The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer . . . "

and often the importance of the natural world. A beetle in church provides entertainment until a dog randomly comes into church and carries it off. Tom knows not only bug and bird species, but how to fish, how to start a campfire, how to survive in the wilderness (but not quite yet how to smoke without throwing up). He has sympathy for an innocent man. He falls in love with Becky Thatcher and impresses her with his artwork. He sympathizes with Huck Finn when his friend realizes his clothes aren't good enough to be a pirate, and so on.

There are many sweet little human moments in this story, and among all the evil and dishonesty, mostly perpetrated by the adults in the town, the overall theme is one of youthful innocence. These moments made me nostalgic for my own childhood---picking dandelions in the ditch of our driveway, hauling barn cats around in wagons, climbing up trees, and running around at night, all with my brother right instep with me--and these moments made the book a worthwhile read.


12 Angry Men

1957: d. Sidney Lumet, starring Martin Basalm, John Fiedler, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Henry Fonda, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec, Robert Webber.

1997: d. William Friedkin, starring Courtney B. Vance, Ossie Davis, George C. Scott, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Dorian Harewood, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, Jack Lemmon, Hume Cronyn, Mykelti Williamson, Edward James Olmos, William Petersen.




The story was originally written by Reginald Rose as a teleplay in 1954 but has since been adapted for theater, film, and television. Many countries (Germany, India, Russia, Lebanon, China, and Sri Lanka) have also released versions of the same story over the years. The premise of the story, twelve male jurors deciding the fate of a young man of an unidentified but different ethnicity, is nearly the same in both American films as are the personalities of the characters themselves. Unlike many other courtroom dramas, all of the time is spent inside the locked jury room with the twelve men while they deliberate, and as the title suggests, there are issues.

"He can't hear you. He never will."

I'd seen both of these years ago, and I remembered the lone juror (#8 Fonda/Lemmon) holding out among all the others who were so immediately convinced the kid was guilty. What struck me this time around were the standout differences between the eighth juror and the rest of the crew. #8 is one of two men (the other, #12) whose profession would have required a college education but this isn't the only reason he's interesting. He asks questions, is honest and self-aware, and he explains things very exactly and specifically. An architect would have to be both creative and scientific, and #8 is both of these things, almost teacher-like. He seems to have a greater understanding of the importance of the legal system, the jury's duty as citizens, and an overall worldly kind of approach to right and wrong. This kind of attitude stands in direct contrast to that of many of the other jurors', who are very rigid and defined (at least at first) in their behaviors.

"You oughta have more respect."

While these characters initially come off a little caricatured, it's still kind of exciting to see how they navigate through the whole procedure and how #8 eventually gets through to each man. I gave the 1957 cast nicknames (nerd, ranter, poor guy, old guy, full racist, dumb guy, etc.) and they mostly held true for the 1997 cast as well, but there were some updates in characters and with the writing that blurred the lines a little more. In any case, both casts were quite skilled, and seeing them interact was pretty fun. I personally enjoyed Fonda's easygoing calmness in the first film and the late great James Gandolfini as #6, a kind of early, wise-cracking working man Tony Soprano in the second.




Is any of this outdated? In some ways, yes. Race relations have changed slightly for the better, and juries are rarely made only of men anymore, but there's no denying that the core system that continues to divide everyone and push an us vs. them mentality continues to be old, white, and male. That said, the issues of truth (who's telling it?) and laziness (who's got time for all this?) will keep these films relevant, probably forever no matter who sits in the jury box.

"Assumed? Brother, I've seen all kinds of dishonesty in my day, but this little display takes the cake. Y'all come in here with your hearts bleedin' all over the floor about slum kids and injustice, you listen to some fairy tales, suddenly you start gettin' through to some of these old ladies... well, you're not getting through to me, I've had enough! WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU GUYS? You all know he's guilty. He's got to burn! You're letting him slip through our fingers."

I See What You Did, There: A Prayer for Owen Meany

I not only saw what author John Irving did there but I loved it. LOVED IT. It was a long road reading this book, I don't mind saying. 617 pages, which isn't the longest thing I've ever read but certainly an investment nonetheless. I started it in July, took it with me to China, and then really, really dug into it when I got back. It took a very long time, but this is a story that takes its time and really cannot be rushed, so it worked. I read The Hotel New Hampshire last year and liked it fine, but this is infinitely more my kind of story. Clever, clever. 


A Prayer For Owen Meany
by John Irving

The back of the book quotes the first chapter's first paragraph, stating, "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice----not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

I've struggled all week with putting together some sort of synopsis for this book, and even a little with my decision to cop out by including the above back-jacket blurb instead of coming up with my own. There are several aspects of the story that are straight-forward and quite easy to talk about but the opening passage identifies them all. There are spoilers, big ones, that I'm not touching because "arriving" at them, however fast or slow a reader you are or how deep you choose to invest yourself into a novel is your own business. The only advice you'll get from me is to pay attention, especially to the chapter titles (which, together with the events they describe elevate this story to, well, a lot more than just a story). There is something very clever, I daresay very LOST-like (well before LOST was created) about all this, which is of course why I'm singing its praises. The overall value of the Owen Meany experience is in its cleverness and its emotion, something we Americans need in our books these days.

Clever, not as in "here are a bunch of long, fancy words and metaphors that prove that I, John Irving, am well above you lowly peasants slogging through my never-ending chapters," but clever as in everything you read about, every character's experience, every current event that gets described, every bit of dialogue matters. EVERYTHING. Why is that clever? You have to get to the end.

And emotion, as in the description of feelings, thoughts, and reactions that are complicated, sad, and sometimes very strange and often quite funny. You spend so much time with the two main characters that you begin to feel for them as only someone who has spent years invested in their lives can (which basically by the end, you have and will). Some recent authors of popular books can do this well, but many cannot. You can read an entire stack of mediocre stories with flimsy characters and cheesy dialogue and have nothing in the end to show for it but a pile of conquered books that don't mean anything (and don't misunderstand, I'm all for reading no matter what the level or topic) but you can also read something that stays with you long after you're done, something that touches your heart and opens up an empathy and appreciation for writing you didn't know was possible. I loved all these characters, I loved every blasted thing that came out of their mouths, and I love John Irving for writing it all. That's emotion. I look at the book, which I keep now among my most treasured, and think of all my favorite moments big and small: the damned armadillo and dress mannequin, the pickle in the champagne, Owen's voice in ALL CAPS, the endless books and films described, Owen's newspaper articles, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Hester always drunk and vomiting, all of it, and I didn't just enjoy it, I believed it.



Listen here: 
"Although it was only two o'clock in the afternoon, Hester had already consumed several rum and Cokes: she was sound asleep in her bedroom---as oblivious to Owen's and my discussion as my mother was. 
'LET'S DRIVE TO THE GYM AND PRACTICE THE SHOT,' said Owen Meany.
'I don't feel like it,' I said.
'TOMORROW IS NEW YEAR'S DAY,' Owen reminded me. 'THE GYM WILL BE CLOSED TOMORROW.'
From Hester's bedroom---even though the door was closed---we could hear her breathing; Hester's breathing, when she'd been drinking, was something between a snore and a moan.
'Why does she drink so much?' I asked Owen.
'HESTER'S AHEAD OF HER TIME,' he said.
'What's that mean?' I asked him. 'Do we have a generation of drunks to look forward to?'
'WE HAVE A GENERATION OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ANGRY TO LOOK FORWARD TO,' Owen said. 'AND MAYBE TWO GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T GIVE A SHIT,' he added.
'How do you know?' I asked him.
'I DON'T KNOW HOW I KNOW,' said Owen Meany. 'I JUST KNOW THAT I KNOW,' he said.

Even now, looking back over the pages I bookmarked, I'm smiling and enjoying the book all over again. On the strength of this, I cheated on the Great American Read booklist and grabbed myself The Cider House Rules at the library just because I wanted more of this guy (and ended up loving that just as much if not more). Read John Irving. It's a lengthy journey but you're in good hands; he knows exactly what he's doing.

I now believe that Owen remembered everything; a part of knowing everything
is remembering everything.

His Being Has Many Facets: A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

The backstory of this novel is very interesting. Published in 1980, its author, John Kennedy Toole, was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for it the following year. The genre is described as "Picaresque" (from the Spanish word "picaro," meaning rogue), which often focuses on the struggles of an eccentric character who attempts to make his way in a hostile world. The cinematic genre of French New Wave would later take this concept and run with it, showcasing plotting or dishonest male characters who must continue to find ways to beat an upper-class or legal system that aspires to keep them down. John Kennedy Toole is said to have based parts of this novel on his own experiences in academia and food-vending as well as those of a professor colleague; he died by suicide in 1969. His mother took the unpublished manuscript to an author acquaintance and with his help, the novel was published.

The rogue in this story, not Spanish but quite American, is Ignatius Reilly. He resides in New Orleans with his mother, is educated, and spends his time writing extensive monologues in Big Chief tablets, itemizing his health calamities (which mostly focus around his pyloric valve), and lamenting the direction his life has taken at hands of the goddess FORTUNA and her spinning wheel. I could go on about the plot, where places and language are highly influential, the characters, which are equal parts realistic and caricatured, or some of the situations of racist, sexist, and homophobic language (of which there are several), but it really is a great example of a work that's way more than the sum of its parts. To be clear; the story isn't mean or hateful but does convey opinions and ways of talking that were probably honest for the time during which it was written, and these are jarring and offensive, period. More than all of this, though, the overall reading experience here is outlandish, but in the best possible way. In other words, this is a ridiculously bizarre story about a ridiculously bizarre collection of people written by an extremely intelligent person. John Kennedy Toole had obviously seen some things in his life in order to put this all down on paper. The words are assembled and delivered in such ways that you almost find yourself wondering how someone could think this way to even come up with them. Just thinking now about an actual person saying some of these lines in life makes me want to both laugh out loud and cringe. Hard.

Art by Sloppygee
(DeviantArt) 

For example, some witty narration:

1. "When Fortuna spins you downward, you go out to a movie and get more out of life. Ignatius was about to say this to himself; then he remembered that he went to the movies almost every single night, no matter which way Fortuna was spinning."

Easy enough. Or this, as a former professor discovers some previously disregarded correspondence:


2. "As he turned over one essay, his eye fell upon a rough, yellowed sheet of Big Chief tablet paper on which was printed with a red crayon:

Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. I doubt whether you would know that St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli. His death, a martyr's honorable one, made him a patron saint of teachers. 
     Pray to him, you deluded fool, you 'anyone for tennis?' golf-playing, cocktail-quaffing pseudo-pedant, for you do indeed need a heavenly patron. Although your days are numbered, you will not die as a martyr--for you further no holy cause--but as the total ass which you really are.
                                                                                                Zorro

A sword was drawn on the last line of the page."

Yes, things begin to heat up, becoming toward the end quite serious:

3. "'Are you referring to a psychiatric ward by any chance?' Ignatius demanded in a rage. 'Do you think I am insane? Do you suppose that some stupid psychiatrist could even attempt to fathom the workings of my psyche?'
'You could get some rest, honey. You could write some stuff in your little copybooks.'
'They would try to make me into a moron who likes television and new cars and frozen food. Don't you understand? Psychiatry is worse than communism. I refuse to be brainwashed. I won't be a robot!'"

"You may send a map of my new route to the
mental ward at Charity Hospital. The solicitous
nuns and psychiatrists there can help me
decipher it between shock treatments."

The thing about this novel is you will know from the very first page (or actually the stuff above will also serve as indicators) whether or not you're going to enjoy it. I didn't particularly like any of the characters, though they were certainly well-written and always over the top, but I very much enjoyed reading this book. More than once I found myself wondering what in the world would happen next, or how this particular dilemma would resolve, happy to dive into whatever that day's chapter was.

The events were funny and entertaining, but really this all came together with the dialogues (which were not for one second realistic, but whatever). A lot of screaming, a lot of belching (these were actually the most common dialogue tags throughout the story), and a lot of sarcasm. You must enjoy sarcasm if you're having a go at this book. At its core, this is really the tale of a very abrasive yet misunderstood guy who gets himself into bad luck situations but the whole thing still manages to unfold like a weird, smart-talking dumpster fire, each chapter crazier than the last. I do encourage Americans to read this, with caution and I don't know, maybe equal parts patience and humor. Try to have fun with it. It's interesting, it's clever, but I can't deny that my suspicion is that the common reaction will be similar to the one-word response a good friend of mine once used to describe one of my ex-boyfriends, which was "GRODY."

Give it a try; I'd love to hear your takes on this one!

When dishonesty is the best policy: 1984

I've fielded over the years various interested-yet-confused questions about why I read so much, how I remember so much of what I read and watch, and how on earth (with all I have going on) I manage to find the time for all of this! I don't know how I ended up such a dedicated lover of stories, but I have a feeling it came from having parents (one is a book person, the other a TV/film person) who loved stories themselves. Learning music at an early age probably helped with the memory bit, but honestly, remembering my favorite passages of writing or lines of dialogue makes me pretty happy, too. I might never be a stage performer or a great public speaker but if you need the exact wording of Violet Newstead's sexist bigot speech from 9 to 5, are wondering in which Harry Potter book Snape flapped off, "looking ludicrously bat-like," or are curious about the differences between the Song of Ice and Fire novels and their television show counterpart, Game of Thrones, I GOT YOU. 

What does any of this have to do with George Orwell or the Great American Read book list? I love words, I love stories, and I love that there are people out there, right now, talking about words and stories. Controversial stories, I think, are the very best ones; they force us outside our comfort level and expose us to "truths" we may not have considered. I hope these acts--reading challenging material, seeking different narratives, learning of others' truths--never vanish from our world because these things are necessary! Not just for the sake of literacy or even happiness but to know and to understand each other as people. Without stories life would be just gray emptiness, boring apathy. It would be like Oceania in 1984. 

INGSOC=English Socialism in Newspeak
(Wikipedia)

1. Nineteen-Eighty Four by George Orwell


The word Orwellian means "of or relating to the works of George Orwell (especially his picture of a future totalitarian state)." If you've read anything else of his, maybe Animal Farm or even the nonfiction work Down and Out in Paris and London, you know that status, power, the plight of the labor force, and the search for truth all have had a strong influence on his writing. 

What most people remember about this novel is Big Brother, maybe the Thought Police, or perhaps even Room 101 where bad citizens were taken after they were caught defecting or committing thought crimes--in other words, the main events, as it were. These items make up the action-heavy parts of the book, all the spying, the disappearing, and the torturing; it's well-written and engaging content, no doubt about it. What makes this novel a slightly challenging read but yet deserves equal attention to the memorable scenes are the pages and pages of descriptive language of the places, the objects, and the reflections of the main character, Winston Smith over what his life and country has become. The wars and the dystopia are very interesting, but this story, at its core, is really about the loss of humanity seen through Smith's eyes, and you have to be observant to catch all this and put it all together. 

Photo by Errata Security

The setting is Oceania, a global superstate made up of the Americas, the British Isles, disputed parts of Southern Africa, and Australia/Oceania proper. Oceania is always at war with one of the other two superstates, but exactly which one changes several times throughout the course of the book. The government that controls the citizens is known as "The Party," and the philosophy it enforces, "IncSoc," (English Socialism). Language has changed to something called "Newspeak," literature has been largely destroyed, and food consists mostly of rationed portions of supplemented, mass-produced, facsimile product and Victory Gin. Citizens' roles and opportunities are defined by how advanced they are within The Party, which rules over all.  

Proles are unskilled, unaffiliated with The Party, and poor but have managed to hold onto what are widely considered to be unsavory human acts such as folk singing and breeding
Low Party members comprise the workforce, enjoy a minimally comfortable standard of life but are constantly monitored by Thought Police, telescreens, and even their own children for signs of disloyalty
Inner Party members dictate policy and enjoy the highest standards of living while encouraging lower members (and their children) to report each other for any perceived slight toward The Party
Big Brother is the celebrated icon, leader, and champion of The Party, referenced often and seen in propaganda but never in person
Emmanuel Goldstein is a mythical leader of Oceania's opposition to Big Brother, the subject of many hateful demonstrations (i.e., Hate Week, Two Minutes Hate) whose human existence has never been officially confirmed
Winston Smith is a low party member, employed by The Party's Ministry of Truth. 

Winston Smith
played by John Hurt
(Wikipedia)

On the surface Smith is a loyal party member, dutifully spreading lies for his department, eliminating contrary evidence against The Party, and participating in patriotic events, but something is at conflict inside Winston Smith from the very first chapter. Nearly everything The Party puts out is a lie, represented as the truth, the whole truth, always having been the truth (even when evidence exists to the direct contrary). As we read what his days are like, what rules are enforced, and how he responds to all this, we begin to recoil a little--most of us aren't accustomed to cheering on explosions that kill fleeing prisoners, seeing violent acts committed by children toward their parents, or being witness to direct government falsification of facts or destruction of questionable evidence on the regular. Such are the first topics Smith begins to write about in an illicit diary he secretly obtains in an old shop, but as time goes on we see that despite everything The Party has taught him, he finds himself seeking out forbidden objects, images, and memories. He wakes from a dream murmuring "Shakespeare" for no apparent reason; he longs for his own mother and sister long since vanished or killed; he talks with a shopkeeper about lyrics to a song about the churches of England. All of these things that were once valued, literature, the family unit, singing, and religion, have been replaced by The Party's sterilized version of them (with the exception of religion, which is now unnecessary), and Winston Smith isn't having it. 

Everything one needs to know about this novel is presented in the very first chapter, but the format is more or less the same throughout. Descriptive language and exposition, reflection, small bits of action, and usually a significant reveal are all interwoven in each chapter together with occasional pieces of IngSoc philosophy presented as listed rules or writings taken directly from Party (or oppositional) sources. Paranoia and repressed emotion are constant.

From the first page: 

"The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for an indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran."

"It's inner party coffee. There's
a whole kilo here."

Things change for the positive for a bit with the coming of Julia, a younger party member who becomes Smith's love interest, but only briefly. There are glimpses of happiness and color through objects such as a coral paperweight or real sugar and coffee, but these are only moments; the greasy, foul-smelling world that has become reality persists aggressively and in the end, Smith is made to question (in the infamous Room 101) even these most sacred memories and whether or not he really experienced them.   

Although it's a great story, one gets a very wrinkle-nosed feeling reading it. Nearly all of the smells described are of cabbage, surfaces are always greasy, and there's bodily harm being done pretty frequently throughout (specifically beatings, humiliation, starvation, torture, and early on rape is mentioned but never committed). The vibe is dismal and gray. 268 pages isn't too bad, it's probably only a few more than this review ended up being, but this is still a book that you have to want to read. Films such as Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), The Matrix Trilogy (The Wachowskis, 1999, 2003), and V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2006) introduced different "enemies" into the narrative but still have their roots in the same kind of story. John Hurt played Winston Smith in the British production of the film, 1984 (in 1984). 

If you're intrigued but still on the fence, read Animal Farm, first. The story is very similar and half the length. If you enjoy that, you'll probably enjoy this. I think Americans should read this, and in summarizing why I'll again reiterate how important I think the little things are, the things that make us us. Our words, our books, our food, our songs. We're all human, but we are also our own unique selves (Americans just ❤❤❤❤ being individuals!)  This story explores what it feels like to be symbolically made into a human robot and to be denied one's own thoughts and feelings. The idea of burning literature is upsetting to me, but even more so is the idea of printing a volume of lies to prop up in its place (think this doesn't happen today? It IS happening). Children are turned against parents, human biology and impulses are disregarded, and opinions become punishable-by-death offenses. 

Be an informed American. The minute someone in power starts telling us who we are and taking our books away, we're done. 

A Thousand Acres

This is not a part of The Great American Read's checklist but I think it should be. Jane Smiley won a Pulitzer Prize for this in 1992 for fiction by an American author preferably dealing with American life. It's not a happy story, nor is this the first time I've read it. I told another parent at a school event that this was one of my favorite books and she said she couldn't believe anyone would read it more than once. Funny enough, the first time I read it I was so rocked by the main "reveal" that chapters later when an act of violence was initiated by one of the main characters against the other, I completely missed it. It's also possible that I was sleep-deprived, but in any case, I was happy to catch it the second time around. 

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

You may or may not already know that this novel is pretty closely based upon Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear, but you definitely don't need to have read it to appreciate this book. Smiley's work tends to focus around farms and families, and the dynamics of both elements are expertly examined here. In more of a re-imagining than an adaptation, Smiley's tale somewhat defies Shakespeare's--it's still the story of a powerful man divvying up his land, it's still a tragedy, but this book takes its time in explaining why its characters do what they do. If the takeaway from King Lear is SPOILED CHILDREN BECOME GREEDY ADULTS, the main message from this book is perhaps, POWERFUL MEN ARE OFTEN ALLOWED TO BE AS TERRIBLE AS THEY LIKE (and yes, in this case it's very).

Told from eldest daughter Ginny's perspective, the story focuses on the decline of her family after patriarch Larry Cook bequeaths his beloved thousand acres of prime Iowa farmland to Ginny and her two sisters, Rose and Caroline. Worth mentioning is the fact that Mother Cook has been gone for some time, having died when Caroline was just a child, and that Ginny and Rose share responsibility in caring for Larry in addition to their own families. Unfortunately, the big acreage giveaway doesn't go exactly as Larry intends--his fierce pride is wounded when Caroline hesitates to accept her share. With the entire town standing by, Larry writes his youngest daughter off entirely; her acres go to Ginny and Rose, relationships become strained as a result, and on and on it goes. Larry becomes sullen and combative, infighting breaks out among the sisters and their husbands, and disturbing memories are resurrected, suggesting that Larry Cook wasn't the husband and father everyone thought he was (or maybe he was but everyone just got used to looking the other way). 

The experience of reading this novel was a little different this time around because I'm so much older now, and my patience as a reader has been lengthened and inspired by my experience as a writer. I love the bits where nothing is happening but descriptions of the land or the explanations of farm procedures that some might

find monotonous. My father wasn't a farmer but my mother's people were, and we lived on a farm for the first ten years of my life. Trust me, the upkeep of paint on farm buildings, the length of the grass, and the condition of the animals and their enclosures were no small details when it came to a farmer's (or farm wife or daughter's) responsibilities. After we moved to town I picked rock, rogued and detassled corn, and rode the bean bar just like every child of hard-ass parents in Olivia, Minnesota did. Even now, years later, it resonates. 


So much of the telling of this story is wrapped in the language of the work being done, that even something as serious as a death in the family (through our eyes as readers as well as Ginny's) can't be separated from the chores that surrounded it and continued after its acknowledgement: 

"It must have been about six. Ty had eaten his breakfast and headed for the hog pens. I had been upstairs making the beds, so I didn't see the sheriff's car go by, but when I went outside with the blankets to hang them on the line for the day, I saw Rose stumbling up the road. That was the oddest thing, how she didn't seem to know where she was going. I was so struck by the strangeness of it that I didn't go out to meet her, but let her come. . . 

She'd been making muffins. The milk and eggs and butter were in the bowl of the mixer. The flour was half measured in the sifter. A green apple and a measuring cup lay on the floor where she'd dropped them or knocked them. I picked them up and finished making the muffins."

It's a story about work and secrets and grudges. Very German, yet very womanist, as our alignment is always with Ginny; Ginny's perceptions, Ginny's reactions, Ginny's redemption. If you enjoy Shakespearean tragedies or heavy family dramas with descriptive language and reflection, you will likely enjoy this novel. At 399 pages it is a bit of an investment, but if you put the time in and finish you'll be in perfect shape to tackle another series of Smiley family struggles in The Last Hundred Years Trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age.  

The Great American Read

Because I felt like I needed a few more things to do over here.

The Great American Read is a couple of things, a television series about favorite American novels hosted by Meredith Vieira on PBS that airs Tuesday, May 22, and also a sort of endurance challenge of reading, complete with a printable checklist, whose entries will provide the focus of the series. It would seem logical that I would be more excited for the series given that my focus is after all television, but that's not the case.

It's the list. Remember how I posted a few months ago that I had been waiting my entire life for the geography map and flag quizzes on Sporcle? I've been waiting equally long for someone to do something like this on a mainstream scale with books because it's my firm belief that Americans need to read more fiction. Granted, some of the selections that made it to this list are going to be a huge challenge for me to take seriously (I won't name names but rhymes with Knee Bell Sames)
but just like that time I asked you, my lovely constant readers, to shoot me your ideas for the WORST FILM EVER MADE project--GOD that was painful--I'm committed to finishing this to the end. In looking down the list I see titles that I've read before (some multiple times), titles that have always intimidated me, series I never finished, and some that I've never picked up. Nonetheless, this is an IN-IT-TO-WIN-IT situation and we're doing them all, book by book (or as Anne Lamott said, "Bird by Bird.").

Moving alphabetically (per the checklist) the first up is Orwell's 1984.
See you there?
See you there.