Literature

Review: These Precious Days

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These Precious Days, Ann Patchett. New York: Harper Collins, 2022.

Summary: Essays on family, friendships, the life of writing and bookselling, and mortality.

I’ve read most of Ann Patchett’s fiction, loving the writing if not always the ways her stories resolve (or not). I personally consider The Dutch House one of her best, along with Bel Canto. This is my first foray into her non-fiction, and I thought these essays revealed more than the character of Ann Patchett, particularly of her love of friendship and love of both writing and bookselling. It was a collection that reflects on marriage, on our families, on the literary world, and on mortality.

The title essay does all of this. “These Precious Days” is a lengthy account of her unlikely and mutually transforming friendship with Sooki Raphael. Sooki was the personal assistant to Tom Hanks, who Patchett met on an interview with Hanks. Further contacts with Hanks, including asking him to narrate one of her audiobooks led to continued contacts. During one of these, she learned Sooki had undergone surgery and treatments for pancreatic cancer. Staying in touch she learned of the cancer’s recurrence and Sooki’s plans to explore clinical trials. Patchett’s husband, a physician at Vanderbilt, learned of this from Ann, and was aware that Vanderbilt was running a number of clinical trials for pancreatic cancer. This led to Sooki coming to live for several months in Ann and Karl’s basement suite (at the height of Covid-19). The essay beautifully recounts the ways this unexpected friendship transformed both of their lives, as well as the beauty of Ann and Karl accompanying this woman in ways that never diminished her dignity while generously supporting her as she fought this beastly cancer.

In other essays, Patchett describes her three fathers and how each influenced her life. She discusses her decision to not have children, the people who insisted she should, and the intrusive questions she sometimes has faced when she would prefer to talk about her work. She writes about her mother, who often was mistaken as one of Ann’s sisters, due to her youthful beauty. She introduces us to Tavia Cathcart, the bombshell high school friend who moved from acting to becoming a premier nature interpreter, and how their friendship evolved as both she and Ann grew into their adult selves.

There is a healthy dose of gentle humor. She recounts her adventures with her friend Marti in Paris, and the tattoo she never got. She tells the story of a caller who insists on bringing her a letter documenting an award she had received from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, found in a nightstand that had once belonged to her. Then there is an incident where Karl comforts a woman worried about her baby’s development by offering the woman $20,000 to adopt the child! No way, and the woman stopped worrying. She describes her year when she gave up shopping. She recalls the Thanksgiving when she stayed at her college and decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her friends–from scratch! She writes about her husband’s love of flying–and of his insistence on finding deals on used planes. She reveals her on again, off again embrace of knitting.

She offers us glimpses of the literary world. Under her hand you find yourself drawn successively into Kate DiCamillo’s works for children and the work of Eudora Welty. In “A Talk to the Association of Graduate School Deans in the Humanities” she chronicles her experience in the MFA program at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with her friend Lucy, her one interview for a faculty position and how failing to get that position gave her the chance to write. She speaks of the joys of owning a bookstore and the important lesson she didn’t learn in grad school–“if you want to save reading, teach children to read.”

Patchett recounts her own memento mori moment upon being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honor reserved to 250 living members. She describes the portrait gallery in the Academy with photos arranged in order of members induction, going back to Samuel Clemens in 1898 up to her own picture in 2017. As she went back in time she realized she was moving increasingly from the company of living members to the deceased. At some point they all were. She realizes this will be true of her. She describes the simple card she receives with the death of another member, forty between her induction and the time of writing, including John Updike, who she had been so thrilled to be seated with at her own induction. She remembers his handing her the certificate of membership, a check, and giving her a fatherly kiss on the cheek.

Patchett brings to these essays the same insightfulness into the complexities and wonders of human beings, their relationships, and their lives as she does to the characters in her novels. One senses we are seeing all of this woven together in another story, that of the author, who writes with increasing appreciation of “these precious days” in her circles of family, friends, and acquaintances. And it nudges us to be mindful of similar “precious days” with the people and in the work we love.

Review: Nourishing Narratives

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Nourishing Narratives, Jennifer L. Holberg. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: Making sense of our lives and our faith through the stories that shape us.

Stories have a powerful way of shaping our lives. Some are the stories we tell of ourselves. Some are the stories that have captured our imagination. And there is the story of our faith, the larger story of God in which we find ourselves. Jennifer L. Holberg, a professor of English and co-director of Calvin College’s Center of Faith and Writing found her own life shaped by stories from childhood and loves exploring their shaping power with her students. In this work, she reflects on the ways stories have shaped her and how they are central to a vibrant Christian faith.

She opens the book by sharing some of the story of discovering the power of story in her life and the work she does with students to read stories in nuanced ways that nourish their lives. She draws on sources as diverse as old cookbooks, the Exodus narratives, and the poetry of Mary Oliver and Gerard Manley Hopkins to explore the idea of enough. Carrie Newcomer’s lyrics open a chapter on the grace of the ordinary, going on to explore Mary Oliver’s “Summer Morning” and “In the Storm,” in which the tails of ducks form a roof to protect sanderlings, “a hedge of feathers” that is a miracle amid the ordinary. And then she speaks of the faithfulness of her own father, a military officer who modeled Christ, put family first, and remembers the anniversary of her doctorate each year.

She uses Tennyson’s In Memoriam to explore the nature of friendship and loss, remarking the power of churches bringing casseroles and cakes when you are in trouble, the need to be vulnerable, and the generous gift that enabled Harper Lee to write To Kill a Mockingbird–the generosity of a friend. In another chapter, she spotlights the biblical Martha and Matthias, the thirteenth apostle, those ready to serve as faithful witnesses.

I found the chapter on “Small Steps at Very Great Cost” particularly striking. Holberg writes of our experiences of the pandemic. As a single person who was used to being alone, a bit of a hermit, she enjoyed it in a way, yet like many of us was deeply concerned with the rents in our social fabric. She quotes a poem of Tracy K. Smith, “An Old Story” with the phrase “When at last we knew how little/Would survive us–how little we had mended.” but concludes with the reappearance of creatures and color thought gone forever, expressing the renewal out of the ashes that we hope for. She speaks tellingly of the power of our words, the stories we tell, not to save, but to shape; likewise the small acts of great service, the considering of the other’s interest. And to those who would hurl the epithet “sheep” at those who embrace the servant way, she considers this an honor. She is following the Lamb of God.

The whole thrust of this book is to draw together the constituent elements of hope, because such hope, nourished on story is what sees us through. She concludes the book sharing of her love of working with students. She is not one to bemoan “this generation” but rather shares her hope for them as they explore stories together to know they are loved, to know they are enough, and to know their voice matters.

I think I would have loved to have Holberg as a teacher. She loves literature, not as material just to analyze and critique, but when read closely, to read our lives and offer hope. She writes both with informal elegance and spunk, sharing vulnerably her own stories, even challenging the silence around women’s health issues and menstruation. Through the many poems and stories, we see the biblical story, the pilgrim journey in the way of the cross, the hope of those who forsake all to follow Christ. She sums up what she has drawn from these stories (and particularly from The Divine Comedy) in three phrases. Don’t be afraid. Love in abundance. God’s got this.

These are good watchwords and evidence someone who has mastered, or been mastered by, her subject matter. How we need these words for our time. What strikes me as I consider this is that they reflect the kinds of stories to which Holberg has given herself–true, noble, good, and beautiful stories. Not all stories are such, nor would all lead to these watchwords. On what narratives will we nourish ourselves?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Literary Advocacy

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stowepainting

Harriet Beecher Stowe

A book group that I am in, the Dead Theologians Society, has just begun reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I think this has always been a controversial book. In its own day, it galvanized opinion around the abolition of and defense of slavery. Later, it was debated on its literary merits (and perhaps still is). More recently, there has been a discussion of its racist stereotypes, even while being a key anti-slavery work. I am not qualified to opine on any of these matters and so I will leave them to others.

What intrigued me in this week’s reading was a statement by Stowe in her Preface to the work:

“The object of these sketches is to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race, as they exist among us; to show their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so necessarily cruel and unjust as to defeat and do away the good effects of all that can be attempted for them, by their best friends, under it.”

If awakening “sympathy and feeling” was her object, Stowe wildly succeeded. In the first year of publication (1851), the book sold over 300,000 copies in the U.S. and over one million in Great Britain. It was the best selling novel of the nineteenth century, and second only to the Bible in overall sales. It is legend, not fact that when Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he said of her, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.” Slave-holders in the South roundly criticized the book, even while it helped fuel the growing abolitionist sentiment in the North. Part of the impact of the book was the exposure of the systemic evil of slavery enshrined in law, that permitted cruel slave owners to do their worst and diminished even those kindly disposed.

The question I am curious about is whether literature, and particularly the novel form, could still have such impact? Or has visual media (or something else) displaced the written form? I’d love to hear from others on this, particularly on the visual media question, because I would confess I am pretty ignorant of what is happening in that world. I really am a book guy. I am aware that there is both a genre of apocalyptic writing (much of it popular among young adults) and series like Game of Thrones that explore dystopian worlds. What I am curious about is how this translates into discourse about our own society.

It strikes me that there are certainly contemporary published works that have led to significant public conversations. On the question of race, I think of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me as well as his other books and Atlantic articles. Both have evoked significant national conversations (and controversy) around race, incarceration, and other issues. But are there works of fiction that have provoked similar, and widespread conversation?

Someone in our group noted that sales of George Orwell’s 1984 have spiked after weekend controversies over “alternative facts”. The Associated Press reports that Signet Classics has ordered an additional 75,000 copy press run of the book, which portrays a totalitarian society controlled by “newspeak.” What is intriguing to me is that this is not a current work creating a conversation, but an older work, in which people are recognizing resonances with our current situation.

It strikes me that part of the challenge is the divide between popular fiction and serious literature. To this day, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is criticized in part because it is a popular work. In addition to the invidious stereotypes, others criticize its sentimentality at points. But readers loved it. I wonder if there is a bar against exploration of serious issues in popular literature, one that Stowe transcended?

Finally, while I don’t think you can blame the Civil War on Stowe’s book, it is striking that it contributed to inflamed feeling all around, and to a breakdown of political discourse leading to southern states withdrawing from the Union and the outbreak of hostilities. One wonders what the consequences of a book like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or a popular video equivalent, would be given the fragile state of our public and political discourse?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. I sense we are in a time of great ferment. Can fiction, as well as other forms of writing “awaken sympathy and feeling?” And to what ends. What are your thoughts?

 

 

 

Review: The New Pilgrim’s Progress

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The New Pilgrim's Progress
The New Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

John Bunyan acknowledged in his own day that his friends were mixed on whether he should publish this book. I encountered similar mixed feelings about this work when I mentioned that our reading group was reading this. Even though The Guardian rated this Number One on its list of 100 best novels in the English language, this admiration is not shared by all. For some, it is simply that they don’t like the writing style (Bunyan was not highly educated), the use of allegory, or the Puritan theology.

Bunyan uses the device of a “dream vision” (I’m told he may be the first to have done this) to narrate Christian’s journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Troubled by his sin, he meets Evangelist who directs him to the Wicket Gate. After adventures in the Slough of Despond and a near fatal distraction by Worldly Wise Man, he makes it to the Wicket Gate through which he is admitted to the straight and narrow King’s Highway. The remainder of the book describes his journey, distractions, trials, rescues, and comforts he experiences along the way, and his final experience of crossing the river to the Celestial City with his companion Hopeful. He also encounters various fellow “pilgrims” along the way who in one way or another turn back, or turn aside to destruction with names like Pliable, Ignorance, and Atheist. Perhaps most terrifying is his battle with Apollyon, a demonic figure who he finally vanquishes with his sword. This edition did not include Part Two, which narrates the same journey by Christian’s wife, sons, and maid Mercy.

What I found most valuable in this reading was the insight into the ways we may be tempted or even self-deceived on our journey. There is also the tremendous encouragement of the divine interventions to rescue Christian when he realizes he has strayed. And we see portrayed the dynamics of spiritual life and spiritual warfare, things that make ever more sense the longer one has been on this journey.

We talked in our group about who would benefit from this book the most. Our sense was that it may actually be of the most benefit for those who have been on the journey for some time and recognize the temptations and spiritual wisdom Bunyan shares. Bunyan also assumes a greater knowledge of the Bible than many have in this biblically illiterate age. This edition includes helpful notes that fill in those gaps. We also recognized that in some cases younger readers may benefit, particularly if the book can be read and discussed in a family setting. Much may not make sense at the time, but may subsequently in life.

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Perfect Sentences

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Anyone who writes knows the struggle of crafting a good sentence. In an email from Publishers Weekly, there was a post on 5 Perfect Sentences II (there is a link to the first instance).

That got me to thinking about “perfect sentences” that I can remember. Two that stand out to me are:

Sabatini

Rafael Sabatini

1. “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini. The apposition of “laughter” and “mad” and the crystallization of a character in this brief summary is masterful.

Alan Paton

Alan Paton

2. “There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills.” Cry, The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton. Reading that, I wanted to follow that road into the hills to discover the loveliness. It led me into Paton’s wonderful novel about South Africa.

I can’t say any of the instances in the Publishers Weekly post were examples I would have thought of although I can see why they were chosen. But it suggests to me that there are a number of others one might come up with.

I’m curious, particularly for the writers out there, what makes a perfect sentence? And for the readers out there, what examples of perfect sentences can you come up with?

Review: Why Read?

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Why Read?
Why Read? by Mark Edmundson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

English departments are under attack in higher education. To be precise, courses that involve reading literature are under attack. Some people still prize being able to express oneself well in writing–maybe what we’ll have down the road is simply “Writing Departments.”

Not if Mark Edmundson has his way. Why Read? is an extended essay on the value of reading, an expansion of a widely circulated Harpers Magazine article. His answer might be quite surprising to those who have been around English Departments of late. He argues that reading is important for great writers’ exploration of the big questions of life–why are we here? what is a life well lived? why should character matter? He believes books can change us and the test of a good book is that we can live its truth.

Against all the critical approaches that deconstruct literature, he argues for reading authors sympathetically–indeed “becoming” the author while retaining one’s sense of oneself–so deeply entering into the author’s world that we in some way identify with him or her. Likewise, he even suggests identifying with characters in novels. And he teaches at the University of Virginia for goodness sake!

He has a simple test for what he thinks ought to be canonical–it tests and transforms us and has done so for many people over a period of time. He includes writers from beyond the Western world without embracing trendiness.

What was striking for me is that Edmundson speaks of great works of literature as Christians would speak of the Bible. In fact, he acknowledges that in a world that no longer believes in the transcendent (and this is where he thinks we are going, and evidently where he is) these books help us define our truth and shape and expand our lives.

What is fascinating to me is this recognition of the power of words to change us. Edmundson and so many writers dealing with the current crisis of higher education seem “god haunted”. They are trying to recover or replace what was lost when we ceased believing that there was a connection between the God who speaks creation into existence and reveals himself in words, and the belief that the study of those words and the world of discourse beyond scripture has a power to change us. People like Edmundson still want to believe the latter while denying the former. I question whether this is ultimately sustainable, much as I share Edmundson’s love of these works.

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