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Saturday morning
Jan. 23rd, 2010 01:40 pmIt is chilly and sunny today, perfect weather for walking. And I will walk later, but for now I am sitting at my table by the window with a mug of Assam and a plate of apple slices with peanut butter. Sparrows and cardinals dart around the feeder; a pot of chicken stock simmers on the stove. Sometimes, in my eagerness to get back to Ms. E and Philadelphia and home, I forget that there are things I will miss about this little apartment when I leave it in May. My wood paneled bedroom, and this seat next to the window, these solitary weekend mornings that stretch into afternoon.
I finished reading Ann Patchett's Run a few days ago, and my opinion of it has not improved since my last post. It felt like it had been put together hastily, like a few more drafts might have made it a very different book. The characters did not come to life for me--they stayed flat on the page, pinned there by the one or two dominant traits that Patchett used to identify each of them. Tip was studiousness and fishes, Teddy was compassion and Catholicism, etc. Perhaps it's a case of misdirected energy; Patchett spent a lot of time fleshing out backstory for a few of the characters, but the backstory ended up making little or no difference to the novel as whole. Certain secrets were revealed, but learning them didn't change how I felt about the people who had been keeping them, nor did they seem to have an impact on the overall narrative. Worst of all though, was the sense that, in this story about black children adopted by white parents, Patchett seemed unwilling to truly wrestle with the racial implications of her subject matter. Are we supposed to be happy that Kenya ends up being adopted by the Doyles in the end, so that she can enjoy all the advantages that Tip and Teddy have enjoyed? What sort of a solution is that?
And now I am reading two books at once: Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout's novel-in-stories that won last year's Pulitzer Prize, and The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness by Paul Schneider. These are both, in different ways, research for the book that I am writing. I've only barely begun the Strout, so it's too soon to have an opinion, but the Schneider is incredibly fascinating! I had planned to just skim a few relevant chapters, but it's so interesting that I'm reading it cover-to-cover, like a novel.
I finished reading Ann Patchett's Run a few days ago, and my opinion of it has not improved since my last post. It felt like it had been put together hastily, like a few more drafts might have made it a very different book. The characters did not come to life for me--they stayed flat on the page, pinned there by the one or two dominant traits that Patchett used to identify each of them. Tip was studiousness and fishes, Teddy was compassion and Catholicism, etc. Perhaps it's a case of misdirected energy; Patchett spent a lot of time fleshing out backstory for a few of the characters, but the backstory ended up making little or no difference to the novel as whole. Certain secrets were revealed, but learning them didn't change how I felt about the people who had been keeping them, nor did they seem to have an impact on the overall narrative. Worst of all though, was the sense that, in this story about black children adopted by white parents, Patchett seemed unwilling to truly wrestle with the racial implications of her subject matter. Are we supposed to be happy that Kenya ends up being adopted by the Doyles in the end, so that she can enjoy all the advantages that Tip and Teddy have enjoyed? What sort of a solution is that?
And now I am reading two books at once: Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout's novel-in-stories that won last year's Pulitzer Prize, and The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness by Paul Schneider. These are both, in different ways, research for the book that I am writing. I've only barely begun the Strout, so it's too soon to have an opinion, but the Schneider is incredibly fascinating! I had planned to just skim a few relevant chapters, but it's so interesting that I'm reading it cover-to-cover, like a novel.
