More Good Reads (and yes, i’m still making my way through Madame Bovary… so to speak)

March 7, 2008

I’m almost finished with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Boo-ra. Let me just say how terrifying, how sad, how beautifully written The Road is.

Quick plot synopsis from NYTimes:

In “The Road” a boy and his father lurch across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. The imagery is brutal even by Cormac McCarthy’s high standards for despair. This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. “The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

I’m reading it for our book group. Ted finished it a couple of weeks ago but I was still reading The Three Junes (and Madame Bovary) and had just started reading a memoir (more on that in a minute).

When Ted finished The Road (at about 2:30 a.m. one morning) he was visibly (and audibly) shaken– so much so that I woke up. I thought, do I really want to read this book? I mean, I cry at commercials, I got teary when Christian won Project Runway this week, I look at my cat who is 17, has arthritis, and still snuggles up to me in bed and I get weepy. Did I really need to read The Road?

Yes, I did need to read it. It’s heartbreaking, yes. It’s hard to stomach at times, yes. But it’s so damn compelling. It’s one of those books where I don’t want to get to the end (i’m afraid of what waits for me there) but I also don’t think I want to know. I’m terrified on each page but i’m mesmerized as well.

Two (of many) killer sentences/images from the book:

He got the binoculars out of the cart and stood in the road and glassed the plain down there where the shape of a city stood in the grayness like a charcoal drawing sketched across the waste.

and, this description of the little boy, the son:

He was a long time going to sleep. After a while he turned and looked at the man. His face in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian.

And it’s yet another inspiration simply by way of its structure. Short, sharp, incredible paragraphs. No chapters at all, just this cataloging of moments on this horrible journey through a post-Apocalyptic U.S. –Scary as hell.

Whewww.

Anyway, no less devastating and completely enthralling is Felicia Sullivan’s memoir, The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here. I’ve blogged about FS before. We’ve commented on each other’s websites. We went to the same MFA Program. You know the story by now.

I’m roughly about 80 pages in (sorry! I should be further I know but I got waylaid in having to finish The Three Junes!). You may also know that I teach Intro to Creative Writing. Last week the class read an excerpt from Felicia’s book– the first chapter/section, titled “Fighting Shoes: Brooklyn 1985.” We were midway through the Nonfiction section of the class and had already read excerpts from Nick Flynn, Alison Bechdel, Mary Gordon, David Sedaris, Bernard Cooper, Alice Walker, and Nicole Krauss. (yes, i’m hardcore in my class).

I asked the students to write out their thoughts on all of these excerpts– thoughts, questions, ideas, notes, passages they liked/disliked– from a few lines to paragraphs, whatever they wanted.

They loved the humor in David Sedaris, were shocked by the quick/no punches pulled ending of Mary Gordon’s essay, were intrigued by Alison Bechdel’s story and drawings, were warmed by Nicole Krauss‘ nostalgia, Bernard Cooper and Alice Walker’s straightforward, confident voices.

But when it came to Nick Flynn and Felicia Sullivan, the class discussion shifted to that of Structure (as well as content). Many of the students had never read a memoir, and those who had had never read anything quite like Another Bullshit Night in Suck City or The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here.

Two of the students had bought Felicia’s book and brought it in to class when we talked about it.

“Is it OK to jump around like this?” They asked.

“It’s kind of like reading poetry,” A few remarked.

“This is totally how I like to write,” said one guy in the class, holding up the excerpt from The Sky. He’s young, bright, funny, Hispanic, writing about his apartment complex and growing up without adult supervision.

I asked him to elaborate.

“These bullets of memory, shot out like that. 1985. And then bringing it back to real time.”

We talked more about the structure of Felicia’s book, and I gave them a copy of an interview she did with Smith Magazine where she describes the episodic structure.

I could see the students writing down the word “episodic.” My heart glowed.
Here’s an excerpt from her interview:

From the onset, I knew I could never write this book and the events that happened in my life in chronological order. The past is very much the present for me and vice versa. My mother is still very much a presence in my life, and sometimes I shiver when I look in the mirror because I resemble her more with each day’s passing. I’ll remember a certain word she always used—brazen, a certain tick of hers—smoothing flyaways—while I’m at dinner or on the subway coming home from work.

Additionally, the structure speaks to memory fracture, disorientation, and the constant feeling of unrest—all the things I’ve felt for the great period of my life and feel sometimes still. The story of my life is a great puzzle and this book was about trying to assemble the pieces in a way that makes sense to me.

Reading this in class, it was like a whole new world opened up for my students: the structure of a piece of writing reflecting the themes, ideas, story.

Their written comments were so detailed and inquisitive:

I love the focus on her mother’s Adidas, the “bits of rubber had frayed from the sides: the soles were so worn that the cotton from her slouchy socks poked through.”

During the reading of Mary Gordon’s piece, I relayed to the class how Gordon, one of my mentors, told us to “pay attention to the shoes a character wears.”

Here’s another comment by a student–

The ending of this chapter is telling me about the theme of this book: “This is how I always felt, waiting for my mother.” It gave me shivers to read that line.

I know the feeling.

Now– go out and BUY Felicia’s book.