David Sedaris' "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk"

I enjoy David Sedaris's work, so I had high expectations for this new book. But, sadly, I was disappointed. The stories were mildly interesting, but nothing caught my imagination.

Perhaps I was misled by my wild enthusiasm for Anne Sexton's Transformations, a book of fairy tales retold with a twist for a modern audience. I expected Sedaris to pull off a similar trick. But I don't feel he succeeded. He created new stories so there was no resonance in the reader coming from playing off something new against a known tale. With these stories he did create a mildly entertaining atmosphere by using familiar animals but giving them gritty modern speech. For me, this effect wasn't enough. I needed stories with more "bite".

The stories are quirky. They usually end with a "poetic justice" that sweeps the uppity animal off the stage of life: the motherless bear who bores people with stories of her suffering in order to extort free food but who ends up forced to be a toothless dancing bear, the mouse who lovingly raises a snake only to have the snake eat her, etc.

This book ended up being a light entertainment to while away an afternoon, but nothing will stick with me. The stories are readable, but don't expect anything grand from them. This is too bad because when Sedaris writes about his own life, he creates very memorable and searing stories. His personal tales create wistful funny stories that provide glimpses into the human condition.

The Uses of Fiction

Here are some key bits from a post on the NY Times Opinionator blog where philosophers get to strut their stuff. In this case Oxford logician Timothy Williamson addresses 'fiction':

Imagine being a slave in ancient Rome. Now remember being one. The second task, unlike the first, is crazy. If, as I’m guessing, you never were a slave in ancient Rome, it follows that you can’t remember being one — but you can still let your imagination rip. With a bit of effort one can even imagine the impossible, such as discovering that Dick Cheney and Madonna are really the same person. It sounds like a platitude that fiction is the realm of imagination, fact the realm of knowledge.

Why did humans evolve the capacity to imagine alternatives to reality? Was story-telling in prehistoric times like the peacock’s tail, of no direct practical use but a good way of attracting a mate? It kept Scheherazade alive through those one thousand and one nights — in the story.

On further reflection, imagining turns out to be much more reality-directed than the stereotype implies.

...

In the context of discovery, we get ideas, no matter how — dreams or drugs will do. Then, in the context of justification, we assemble objective evidence to determine whether the ideas are correct. On this picture, standards of rationality apply only to the context of justification, not to the context of discovery. Those who downplay the cognitive role of the imagination restrict it to the context of discovery, excluding it from the context of justification. But they are wrong. Imagination plays a vital role in justifying ideas as well as generating them in the first place.

Your belief that you will not be visible from inside the cave if you crouch behind that rock may be justified because you can imagine how things would look from inside. To change the example, what would happen if all NATO forces left Afghanistan by 2011? What will happen if they don’t? Justifying answers to those questions requires imaginatively working through various scenarios in ways deeply informed by knowledge of Afghanistan and its neighbors. Without imagination, one couldn’t get from knowledge of the past and present to justified expectations about the complex future. We also need it to answer questions about the past. Were the Rosenbergs innocent? Why did Neanderthals become extinct? We must develop the consequences of competing hypotheses with disciplined imagination in order to compare them with the available evidence. In drawing out a scenario’s implications, we apply much of the same cognitive apparatus whether we are working online, with input from sense perception, or offline, with input from imagination.

Even imagining things contrary to our knowledge contributes to the growth of knowledge, for example in learning from our mistakes. Surprised at the bad outcomes of our actions, we may learn how to do better by imagining what would have happened if we had acted differently from how we know only too well we did act.

In science, the obvious role of imagination is in the context of discovery. Unimaginative scientists don’t produce radically new ideas. But even in science imagination plays a role in justification too. Experiment and calculation cannot do all its work. When mathematical models are used to test a conjecture, choosing an appropriate model may itself involve imagining how things would go if the conjecture were true. Mathematicians typically justify their fundamental axioms, in particular those of set theory, by informal appeals to the imagination.

Sometimes the only honest response to a question is “I don’t know.” In recognizing that, one may rely just as much on imagination, because one needs it to determine that several competing hypotheses are equally compatible with one’s evidence.

The lesson is not that all intellectual inquiry deals in fictions. That is just to fall back on the crude stereotype of the imagination, from which it needs reclaiming. A better lesson is that imagination is not only about fiction: it is integral to our painful progress in separating fiction from fact. Although fiction is a playful use of imagination, not all uses of imagination are playful. Like a cat’s play with a mouse, fiction may both emerge as a by-product of un-playful uses and hone one’s skills for them.

And I foolishly thought fabulists were simply the hind end of a peacock!

T. C. Boyle's "Wild Child"

I've read a good deal of Boyle's oeuvre. I generally enjoy it. I admire his facility with words and rich descriptions. However, I don't find his stories compelling. I think he is best when he deals with a historical account. That sets a frame in which he can show off his talents.

In this book of collected stories, the one story that stands out for me is "Wild Child", a retelling of the story of the feral child, Victor of Aveyron. Of all the stories in this collection, this is the one that resonates with me the best.

I will continue to read Boyle's writings. They are never disappointing. They may not be brilliant. They are "workmanlike" and he is a solid story-teller and wordsmith.

Dashell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon"

I've enjoyed the film with Humphrey Bogart so I decided to read the original novel. I was surprised at how closely the film hewed to the narrative. Usually a book and a film are only tangentially connected, this was hand in glove.

The only difficulty was with descriptive details. When Hammett starts with "Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostril curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal." I though "geesh!" this isn't the Sam Spade I know.

But that was the only jarring bit of the book. The rest was good. The book's description of the other characters was close enough to those in the film to not noticeably jar as I read.

Too bad Hammett didn't style Spade on Bogart. Oh well.

John Steinbeck's "The Winter of Our Discontent"

One of my favourite passages is the start of Chapter 3 where he describes two patterns of sleep:

My wife, my Mary, goes to her sleep the way you would close the door of a closet. So many times I have watched her with envy. Her lovely body squirms a moment as though she fitted herself into a cocoon. She sighs once and at the end of it her eyes close and her lips, untroubled, fall into that wise and remote smile of the ancient Greek gods. She smiles all night in her sleep, her breath purrs in her throat, not a snore, a kitten's purr. For a moment her temperature leaps up so that I can feel the glow of it beside me in the bed, then drops and she has gone away. I don't know where. She says she does not dream. She must, of course. That simply means her dreams do not trouble her, or trouble her so much that she forgets them before awakening. She loves to sleep and sleep welcomes her. I wish it were so with me. I gith off slepp, at the same time craving it. ...

On the other hand, I know in my bones and my tissue that I will one day, soon or late, stop living and so I fight against sleep, and beseech it, even try to trick it into coming. My moment of sleep is a great wrench, an agony. I know this because I have awakened at this second still feeling the crushing blow. And once in sleep, I have a very busy time. My dreams are the problems of gthe day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.

We love to build categories and place ourselves in them, but I think we all fit into both of the above. We are a little of everything, only we like to pretend to be one thing as a show of pride or to fool ourselves. In fact, we don't know ourselves, so we are more than we think we are and only discover what we are when friends tell us or a book like this points it out. I like that. We learn about ourselves in the mirror of literature. At least we learn aspects of ourselves. We learn what masks we wear as we dance wearing the horns of animals. We learn how sleep steals us away gently and leaves us with a kitten's purr.

Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex"

This is an interesting book. It is a old-style grand novel across three generations. But it is modern in that it slices and dices the story with flashbacks and flashforwards and multi-perspective writing. Some won't like it because it is a bit complex and the early part of the book is set in the Greek remnants of western Turkey at the time of WWI. But I liked the historical sweep. I especially enjoyed the philosophical asides pondering our fate as humans.

The major premise of the book is a derelict gene that causes hermaphroditism. Funny... you have to read 400 pages before you really get into the details of the condition. So this book is not for the faint-hearted. Similarly, this book is not afraid to spell out scientific detail. I love the blend of fact and fiction, history and narrative.

I'm a sucker for a story and this one is good. It is a little slow getting started, but the good news is that the drama gets more gripping the further into the stories you go. The intial stories of the first generation immigrants in interesting but not gripping. The second generational stories resonate with me because they relate to my parents' generation. The third generation, which deals with Caliope, AKA Cal, and the story of her perigrination from girl to boy was very interesting. Add to this more twists to the plot than you can imagine and it was a real rollercoaster ride for me. Lots of fun.

This is not a great psychological novel. It isn't a great historical novel. It is a grand novel centered around the fascinating biological fact of hermaphroditism. But even this key theme, is really only dealt with in a couple of dozen pages. The material about Zora and Dr. Peter Luce is the only real discussion of the genetics and condition. The material about Caolipe is discrete and indirect. So this isn't really a book about hermaphroditism. It is a historical novel about three generations of an immigrant family that happens to harbour a defective gene.

As I read the material on Dr. Peter Luce I kept thinking of Dr. John Money, the opinionated sex "expert" at John Hopkins, famous for his claim that you could change gender identity by simply raising a child under an assigned sex. Dr. Money ruined a lot of lives. This novel happily avoids the ugly reality of cases that suffered under the hands of a ideologue like Money. If you want to see how ugly this reality can be, read David Reimer's story in the book "As Nature Made Him":


You can watch an eight minute CBC documentary on David Reimer's short life, the deceptions of Dr John Money, and the suffering of David. Notice how his mother found out only after Money did his "experiment" on David that most of the gender re-assigned kids committed suicide. Notice also, that the documentary pointed out the "Dr." John Money's office at John Hopkins University failed to respond to a request by the CBC for an interview. Most academics are proud of their work and eager to have access to the general public, but Money refused. Money died in 2006, but he was eulogized by the scientific society and he never accepted the horrors he had inflicted on other (nor has the scientific society). Here's an NPR piece about Money.

David Sedaris' "When You are Engulfed in Flames"

This is another in the series of autobiographical novels by David Sedaris. He appeals to a reader who loves his quirky humour, his slightly oddball lifestyle, and the semi-sweet stories of his family. His writing style is what I would call "niblets", i.e. small, sweet, and golden little tales of his adventures in life. After reading half a dozen of his books I almost feel like "family" myself.

I love the way he downplays his own "abilities". I love stories about his family. I even enjoy the bits about his "partner" Hugh. He draws a sketchy picture, but that is part of his charm. He highlights the oddity and humour in life. I always root for the underdog, so I find it easy to root for Sedaris in his epic encounter with Life.

Oh, and I love some of his titles. My favourite is "Dress Your Children in Corduroy and Denim". The title of this one is from some oddball English he saw in one of his travels.

T. C. Boyle's "Drop City"

I like T. C. Boyle's writing. He's got a solid story teller's art, he loves words, he's got a knack for descriptive narrative. Drop City attracted me as a boomer to "re-live" my past. I lived through the era, but did not participate meaningfully in the iconic events of the era and certainly didn't get involved in the more manic elements of "the times".


This novel paints the tale of the outrageous fringe elements. Actually it is two tales woven together and brought together to close off the tale. As is typical with modern novels there is no closure, but the lead characters come together and there is a bit of an accounting that gives you a sense that the book can be closed on the tale.

There are a few anachronisms that caught my attention. But I recognize how hard it is to describe the past given our lexicon of the present. Mine is a minor complaint. I loved the recreation of the past. He's got the emotional details right. His colourful vocabulary paints the right kind of picture. And the story is solid. Not a classic tale that will be studied centuries from now, but be honest, 99% of the current writers are forgetable. So Boyle is in the top 10%. He will linger a while. But with the filtering of time he will disappear. We all disappear. But he gets our attention for now.

He uses the tricks of the trade a number of times to pull me into the tale and uses plot twists and turns to turbo-charge my emotions. OK, I'm a sucker for that. I love novels as an escape. But I especially appreciate novels with historical detail because they let me "be there" even if I wasn't there. Here you get to ride the wave of idealism of 1970 (at the tag end of the hippie "boom" just as it was going bust) to see the bitter end of the "back to the land" era of hippiedom. And this novel takes that tale to dead serious end. It takes you from halcyon California to the bitter realities of frigid Alaska. Living at the fringes of the frozen north, I can appreciate all too well the life-and-death struggle against the cold. This is a tale of flower children who come up against the grim reality of a "struggle for existence".

This isn't the glitzy over-the-top ride that Tom Wolfe's non-fiction essays gave you of the 1960's culture: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Pump House Gang, or The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. But Wolfe's observations were of the disintegration during the early 1960s while Boyle's book deals with the aftermath of the smash-up with the people who were the loose-ends of the hippie crash. They were crazy times full of hope, but like Drop City, gravity takes over and the dreams come crashing to earth. Reality has a nasty way of pulling you back to earth.

So... mark this up as yet another fine bit of writing by T. C. Boyle.

Over the years I'm slowly working my way through his body of work. I can't complain about anything he has written it is all quite good. And the historically based works "The Inner Circle" and "Drop City" are an excellent way to be a fly on the wall of a past historical era. (To prove I'm not a sycophant, I must admit that I found the novel "Talk, Talk" to be a bit below standard, but I finished it and didn't begrudge the time spent, but looking back it wasn't as much fun as other things he has written.)

Charles Frazier's "Thirteen Moons"

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier is hard to get into, doesn't deliver a strong story, and doesn't have much "history" for a historical novel. My prejudice is that the author is more an academic than a novelist. He is more in love is texture and tone than with storyline. He plays with the reader at several points by saying that the story could have been A, B, or C and he doesn't know which it was. Hmm... the author doesn't know the plot line? Instead, he is trying to be "sophisticated" by letting you know that he views writing as "literature" which a meta-activity, not dingy wordsmithing for Charles Frazier. He is an "artiste".

I had seen an interview with the author and had expected the book to contain more history of the Cherokee removal and how a remnant was left behind in the Appalachian Mountains. The book's setting assumes this historical setting but doesn't provide the reader with much useful detail. I think I'm a typical male reader. I prefer non-fiction to fiction, so my taste in fiction is either toward full-bore entertainment or fiction laced with facts that makes me feel that I'm using my time wisely with the book. This book is just too much style and not enough substance for my taste. There is a lot of tale over many years but I come away saying "so what?". As a reader I want reward. I want to be wrapped up in a story and come up at the end gasping for breath after being pulled under a strong tide of storyline. Here I'm dabbling in the shallow end of the pool and never really get "into" the story. The author plays with me too much for me to hand myself over to his storyline.

I get introduced to characters, but I never really get the feeling that I'm able to get under their skin. I meet Will the bound boy who become the aged narrator, Featherstone who plays villain and patron, Claire as lover and stone-cold woman, Bear as father figure but as a figure who pops in and out of the story line and remains elusive. Characters come and go. The story line meanders. So what? If this is an academic exercise to show that life is without a driving theme, that it meanders, so what? I want my fiction to be more than just a mirror showing me how insipid life can be at one minute and how deadly another. I want moral, purpose, character, theme, progression, and a simulacrum of fact so that I can walk away feeling I lived in somebody else's shoes. I don't get that with this book.

Frazier wants to play on both sides of the street. On one hand he plays with the idea of storyteller and disdains the novelist who drives a plot along. On the other hand, he contrives a plot that is as fantastical in its happenstances (Will meets Claire 30 years later at Warm Springs) that are as flimsy and fanciful as any contrivance of a simply storyteller. This confusion of his craft makes this book fundamentally unsatisfying for me. I either a good story, or if you want to be a post-modernist, then give me something that dazzles my mind with its novelty and tongue-in-cheek playfulness with conventions. This book muddles between the two.