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NEVER Would Have Read This Book if a Bookseller Hadn’t Recommended It

February 7, 2010 in book review, bookstore, memoir by Kim | 2 comments

A few weeks ago, Leslie and I and our respective husbands went to hear a friend sing Vitello’s in Studio City.  Knowing Portrait of a Bookstore was right across the street, we left the club with 30 minutes to spare before the store closed (love the late night hours at the store!).  How much damage could we do in 30 minutes?  Well, a lot.  Keith bought most of my birthday present, plus books for himself.  After a very convincing pitch from the bookseller, Leslie bought Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman, a book that generally would not have attracted either of us.  So much for what we know, here are Leslie’s thoughts on the book:

One of the things I like most about independent bookstores is that the employees (many of whom are owners or invested in the business) are truly big readers. Since I’m assuming none of them are getting rich working there, they must really love books.

When I walk into an independent bookstore, I typically ask “What can you recommend?” This may either be for me or for my two pre-teen daughters. In many cases, my question has been rewarded with wonderful surprises.

Recently, Kim and I, along with our husbands, went to Portrait of a Bookstore, one of my favorite independents, is just across the street from a jazz club we visited. Needless to say, we walked out with books in our arms. Well, actually, the guys carried them.

As usual, the woman that was working that evening was just chock full of recommendations. One of the books that she mentioned was Hypocrite in a Pouffy Dress, a memoir, by Susan Jane Gilman. This is a book, had I simply seen on a shelf, I would never have picked up. I’m really fussy about the non-fiction I Read the rest of this entry »

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Night by Elie Wiesel – Social Justice Challenge

January 31, 2010 in Challenge, book review, community service, memoir by Kim | 5 comments

Sometimes I am asked if I know “the response to Auschwitz’: I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don’t even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.  What I do know is that there is “response” in responsibility.  When we speak of this era of evil and darkness, so close and yet so distant, “responsibility” is the key word.  – Elie Wiesel

When I read Holocaust literature as a teenager, I was always the strong determined character who beat the odds and survived.  Tragedy provided a background for my heroic actions as Miep or Corrie Ten Boom.  Motherhood changed all that.  Now I’m the mother who can’t stop the Nazis from forcing her child to dig his own grave.  The mother who trods with so many others in peaceful lines to the gas chambers holding my child’s hand.  Or the very worst, I’m Sophie and I have to choose.  Claire won’t read Holocaust literature anymore, it’s too painful.  I completely support her choice.  If a book comes up that deals with the Holocaust, I quietly warn her to skip it.  But as painful as it is for me to read these stories, there is a part of me that believes if millions of people had to live and die this horror, then the least I can do is witness it in some small way.

My greatest honor as an attorney was the opportunity to work with Bet Tzedek to assist Holocaust survivors in obtaining the “Ghetto Pension” [an aside, if you know if a survivor who has not applied for the 2,000 euro Ghetto Pension/ZRBG pension, please contact Bet Tzedek to determine eligibility, today].  From my limited exposure, it appeared that the survivors who were alive today were swept into the Nazi system late in the war when they were teenagers.  Not too young or too old to fall victim to the selections, strong enough to survive until the war ended within the next 12 to 18 months.  And they barely survived.  My teenage visions of bravery were more illusory than I thought.  Elie Wiesel’s Night supports my very unscientific theory.

The Nazis arrived in Wiesel’s village in Transylvania when he was fifteen.  His experience Read the rest of this entry »

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Franny and Zooey and Me

January 28, 2010 in RIP, book review, classics, short story by Claire | No comments

Why I Love JD Salinger

Kim gets news before I do.  So she shot me an email a few minutes ago, to tell me that JD Salinger had just died.  I’ve said to her in the past that his Nine Stories is probably my favorite book in the whole world, so she asked me if I wanted to write something about him, and maybe include my reasons for loving that book so much, since she didn’t have the same passion for it.  Salinger isn’t about Catcher in the Rye for me, I should be clear on that.  I read it once, didn’t like it, haven’t reread it.  But Nine Stories . . .

Best. Book. Ever.

How do you tell someone why a book gets to you on some deep emotional level?  It’s something both Kim and I have struggled with, I think, as we’ve written this blog and also tried to persuade each other to read certain books.  She loves Atonement; I couldn’t finish it (not because I didn’t like it, but because it was clearly going to be about someone making a false accusation and ruining someone’s life and I can’t bear that kind of a story.  The writing was beautiful).  Anyway, she tried to convince me to finish that and I never did.  So how can I convey to her how Nine Stories is more than just a collection of words to me?

It’s one of the books that made me want to be a writer, I know that much.  And I know that every time I write a patch of dialogue that feels real to me (not as often as I’d like), I think about JD Salinger and how no one has ever written more realistic dialogue, dialogue which sounds like what people might actually say–but resonates in ways that stay with you for a long time.

And then there’s the Glass family.  Or should I say, first and foremost, there’s the Glass family, who are more real to me than most of the people I know.  Seymour and Buddy and the twins and Franny and Zooey and Boo Boo.  Did I leave anyone out?  Probably.  They weave in and out of Nine Stories, sometimes front and center (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish”) sometimes off to the side but still influential (“Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut”).

Oh, god.   “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut.”  What woman can read that story and not weep for what she thought her life was going to be as opposed to what it is?  In that story, Eloise remember being in love with Walt Glass (who died during the war) and then looks at her life now, married to a guy who’s nowhere near as sensitive or smart as Walt was.  Miserable, drunk, disgusted with what she’s become, she is suddenly, savagely cruel to her own daughter.  And then she says to her friend, desperately, tragically, “I was a nice girl . . .  wasn’t I?”

Well, now I’m crying.  Salinger has that affect on me.  Seven words, that’s all it took.  Seven words–something someone might actually say–and an entire tragic life is summed up, right there. Read the rest of this entry »

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Agnes Grey and the Role of the Governess

January 20, 2010 in Challenge, book review by Kim | 1 comment

I thoroughly enjoyed Agnes Grey by the youngest of the Bronte sisters, Anne.  Agnes’ astonishment at the values of the people she serves as governess, but faithful determination to do her best job, impressed me.  I have encountered people similar to Rosalie and the Bloomfield family. Luckily, I’m not employed by such people and can simply chose to ignore them.  Not so for Agnes, as a governess she lived with them and worked for them.  At a Literary Luncheon discussion of Agnes Grey led by Dr. Alice Villasenor, she brought interesting insight to Agnes’ plight in English society.

The English governess occupied a unique and lonely role in society.  She must be educated enough to teach others, but poor  enough to needed a job.  She wasn’t in the same social class, but she ate at with the family.  She was present, but could be treated with disdain.  She wasn’t a servant, but she wasn’t a friend.  Agnes’ experience walking home from church exemplifies this quandary:

But when I did walk, this first half of the journey was generally a great nuisance to me.  As none of the before-mentioned ladies and gentlemen ever noticed me, it was disagreeable to walk beside them, as if listening to what they said, or wishing to be thought one of them, while they talked over me or across, and if their eyes, in speaking, chanced to fall on me, it seemed as if they looked on vacancy – as if they either did not see me, or were very desirous to make it appear so.

It was disagreeable, too, to walk behind, and thus appear to acknowledge my own inferiority; for, in truth, I considered myself pretty nearly as good as the best of them, and wished them to know that I did so, and not to imagine that I looked upon myself a a mere domestic, who knew her own place too well to walk beside such fine ladies and gentlemen as they were . . . though her young ladies might choose to have her with them, and even condescend to converse with her, when no better company were at hand.

It was an isolated life, not part of the community of servants downstairs and excluded from the family life upstairs.  Agnes goes weeks without having a conversation outside her role a governess.

The governess’ presence at the dinner table served as an uncomfortable warning and threat.  The governess was a constant reminder that if a daughter didn’t marry, she would have to earn Read the rest of this entry »

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Art History Challenge – Life Studies by Susan Vreeland

December 31, 2009 in Challenge, book review, short story by Kim | No comments

Nothing like completing a reading challenge at the last minute!  My goal was to read six art history books, fiction or non-fiction, during 2009.  I finished my sixth book last week, Life Studies by Susan Vreeland.  It’s a collection of short stories divided into three sections:  stories concerning Impressionists and Post-Impressionists; a lovely tale about friendship and art; and current art stories. 

I think I made the mistake of reading the book like a novel, one story after another.  After awhile the stories felt a little repetitive and dull.  I probably would have enjoyed all of them more if I had read a story, moved on to something else, and then returned for another story.  That being said, there were three stories that I’ve thought of multiple times:  “In the Absence of Memory,” “The Adventures of Bernardo and Salvatore, or, The Cure:  A Tale,” and “The Things He Didn’t Know.”

Modigliani was a brilliant painter and a drunk.  He died leaving a young daughter who is raised by his mother and sister.  “In the Absence of Memory” concerns her effort to reconcile being the daughter of a great artist and an awful man.  Vreeland paints heartache, desire, betrayal and confusion in this small short story.  The plot follows the daughter from elementary school, when she is teased for being the bastard daughter of a drunk, to Modigliani’s show at the Venice Biennial, to her visit to Modigliani’s haunts in Paris.  It’s a daughter’s quest to understand a father she never knew.

In Hollywood language, “The Adventures of Bernardo and Salvatore, or, The Cure:  A Tale” is an art road trip meets The Bucket List.  Bernardo decides one day that he is ill and will die.  Salvatore, his best friend, does all he can to cajole him out of bed.  Bernardo mentions that he would like to see the Read the rest of this entry »

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