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by Jen Maidenberg
I so enjoyed Little Labors, the latest book out from award-winning novelist Rivka Galchen. A stunning, intimate, but thoughtful hybrid work, Little Labors is definitely a recommended read for this summer.
Check out my review and interview with Galchen, up on The Times of Israel today.
I just finished reading Station Eleven, a post-apocalyptic novel by Emily St. John Mandel. I highly recommend it. It’s the one of two five-star ratings I’ve given on GoodReads after going a long stretch without being able to give more than a three-star. (The other recent five-star was Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, more to come on that soon.)
Whenever I read a dystopian novel — and moreso when I read a well-researched, well-written one like St. John Mandel’s — I can’t help but examine my own life and my own “what ifs” in the face of some future life-altering catastrophe I somehow survive.
Lately, as my mind has been busy with the America vs. Israel conversation (a two-sided dialogue I engage with myself at least once a day exploring the pros and cons of leaving or staying in Israel), I considered the events of the novel. The Earth is ravaged by a pandemic, killing off 99% of the population. Those who are not sickened and killed by the flu are left figuring out how — and more existentially, why — to survive. Some survivors are stranded in an airport far from home. They understand quickly they will never return. And this, today, is the question that occupied my mind:
What if I knew I would never see America again? Would never see my parents? My brothers? Any of my friends who live there?
Could I be happy, or satisfied at least, living in Israel, remaining here on Hannaton?
What if it weren’t the apocalypse (meaning: what if I abandoned the upset of knowing my loved ones were ill or gone), but an event that meant the end of international travel?
Could there be such an event? After which my parents were still alive, but inaccessible? Following which we in Israel still lived a somewhat normal life, but simply could not fly anymore? Or buy passage on a ship, even?
No. All I can imagine is disaster. There is no in-between in my imagination. There is no mild cataclysm. Either things are as they are now or the worst-case scenario.
* * *
However, if I were to play fiction writer, for a moment, I might say, “Hold on now. Let’s consider Donald Trump.”
Donald Trump as American president is possibly the in-between disaster I can’t imagine; the wonky future in which the world still runs on electricity and internet and Dunkin Donuts, but international travel is forbidden. Let’s say, for instance, a Trump presidency leads to a law being passed in which American immigration is on hiatus, but citizens living abroad have a brief window to return. Once they do return, however, they are required to remain on American soil for the next four years. America, in this fictional scenario, is testing out a new policy for the duration of Trump’s term. It’s called something like “No American Left Behind.”
“The In-Or-Out” law, the talking heads dub it.
Would I leave then?
Would we pack up our belongings and run back home?
What if there was no time for belongings? Only time for the five of us with one-way tickets and that which we could fill in our suitcases?
Would that be a home we would want to live in anyway?
What’s scarier? I considered. America as a gated-community? Or the idea of being stuck in Israel for an indefinite amount of time with no certainty of ever seeing my family again?
What kind of decisions, I asked myself, do we make in the face of black-and-white? Of choose this or that?
And what kind do we make in the face of seeming interminable uncertainty?
* * *
To be honest, I’m not paying too much attention to the U.S. presidential election, but I noticed on Facebook today someone saying they planned to vote Republican in the primary — vote for Rubio — as a way of derailing Trump’s run. But what if that was the plan all along? Democrats, for all their intellectualism, can be pretty stupid. Conservatives are wiley. Strategic. Cool cats. Liberals, with all their free love tend to act irrationally, emotion-based, don’t think enough before jumping in heart first.
Then, on Twitter later in the morning, someone wrote they thought the media hype equating Trump with Hitler was an exaggeration. I don’t quite align myself politically with this person, so I can’t put my faith in his ease. But as a reader of post-apocalyptic fiction I can say with certainty that there is always the guy on Twitter who thinks it’s not as bad as everyone says it is. This is classic disaster narrative. Bad guy/bad storm/bad killer disease. Makes no difference. The experts keep it quiet at first, but then feel compelled to reveal the danger to the masses as they realize their calculations were too understated. Upon learning of the now likely unavoidable danger, half the masses freak out, and the other half cry hysteria. Usually, there’s the goofy teenager who makes fun of the hurricane/flood/asteroid (he’s the first to go), and often, the old guy saying in his old guy voice “I never thought I’d see the day.”
No matter what, though, there’s always the guy who — just before the shit hits the fan — says most assuredly, “It can’t be as bad as people are making it out to be.” This is the point at which you should start storing water and supplies.
I haven’t started shopping, though. In fact, my storage room/bunker is as empty as it’s been since we’ve lived here. And I wonder why. I wonder if it’s acceptance or if it’s resignation.
And does it matter? Am I saner if I am accepting or saner if I am resigned?
Acceptance: Yes, this is the world we live in.
Resignation: Yes, there will be disaster.
Acceptance: There is no certainty.
Resignation: Why bother? You will likely not survive the apocalypse, anyhow.
I don’t know which it is. What I do know is that reading Station Eleven has me grateful for my flushing toilets, and for my Google search, and especially for my at-home, self-grinding espresso machine. It had me abandon for a few hours my ongoing, inner turmoil over where to live now or next; which direction to choose.
Neither decision, I suppose, would be the end of the world.
For all my love of time travel and exploration of whether or not we could or should alter the past, I’m surprised I don’t read more fiction in the category of alternative history. Perhaps I will now, after reading The Ambassador (The Toby Press), a novel by the late Ambassador Yehuda Avner and award-winning novelist Matt Rees.
Set mostly in the late 1930s with World War II as its backdrop, The Ambassador imagines the impacts on Europe’s Jews had Israel been established in 1937, as opposed to 1948, when the Peel Commission recommended to the British cabinet to establish a Jewish state. The novel’s main character is Dan Lavi, a young diplomat sent by Ben Gurion to Germany to serve as the fledgling nation’s first ambassador to Berlin. Dan’s there with his wife Anna (an American) and Shmulik, who masquerades as part of the diplomatic team, but is really in Berlin on behalf of the Mossad.
The characters, their dialogue, and even the actions they take that veer from historical events come off realistic and plausible. I was caught up in Dan’s conflict once in Berlin as he struggles between proper diplomacy and his clear distaste for Nazi politics.
“The words of the Old Man, Ben-Gurion’s nasal Polish accent echoed in Dan’s mind, the order delivered in between reports from Shmulik on the first maneuvers of the War of Independence.
‘You will sup with the Devil, Dan. You will do everything the Devil requires. Whatever it takes, you will maintain the transfer of Jews from Germany to Israel.'”
The transfer of Jews from Germany is, in fact, Dan’s primary goal in Berlin. He is there, as he argues repeatedly, to “secure as many Jewish lives as we can.” He does so by working with and catering to the ego of Sturmbannfuhrer Adolph Eichmann, who serves (in this alternative reality) as head of the “Central Office for Jewish Emigration” offering Israeli visas to Europe’s Jews under the controversial “Transfer Agreement.” In this 1938 Berlin, Jews are permitted to leave the country, hundreds per day, for Israel. The Israeli Embassy’s main purpose is administrative, filling out and processing applications of families requesting exit. On the side, however, Shmulik and his Mossad team are investigating rumors of a “final solution” for the Jews, and recommending plans of action to Ben Gurion.
Most interesting to me — especially as a fan of time travel — was watching the story unfold and witnessing how some decisions in this alternative reality led the Jews to the exact same fate they met in our current reality, and how other actions managed to transform a people’s destiny. Less interesting to me were a few brief distracting side stories (based on some historical truth) of lost love and family secrets; though not distracting enough to take away from the main plot.
Any fiction pertaining to the Holocaust is potentially contentious. Still today, there are debates about who, if anyone, has the right to construct fictional tales set in or during the Holocaust. In the preface to The Ambassador, Avner writes “I fought in the war that established Israel. I worked decades in the highest circles of the Israeli government with every Prime Minister up to Rabin’s second term and as Ambassador to Britain and Australia.” One wonders if Avner is not attempting to stave off those critics of Holocaust fiction with this list of credentials. Whether or not he was, it certainly lends credibility to the story and his right to tell it.
“I sat among the crowd commemorating Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, as then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres addressed us. More precisely, he apologized to them. The ones taken by Hitler. ‘We were 10 years too late,’ he said.
And I thought, ‘What if we hadn’t been.'”
The Ambassador will be available in bookstores September 1, 2015.
==
This review was made possible by The Toby Press with an Advanced Reader’s Copy.
There’s January 1, there’s Rosh Hashana, there’s Chinese New Year, and then there’s the day or two after Labor Day (or if you live in the South, three weeks before) when parents get the opportunity to finally breathe deep enough again to consider what they want to do differently this year when it comes to raising their kids.
And then there’s the day after that when we’re all hungover from smiling and liking friends’ first day Facebook photos and feeling good about our lives for a second, and decide we’re parenting just fine thank you for much.
But then come the backpacks on the floor. And the bickering in the backseat on the way to ballet. And the globs of toothpaste in the sink.
Sigh. Someone pass me a Bloody Mary, please.
But wait … what if there was a book with easy, practical advice offered by an expert in a package that not only set you up for quick success, but made you laugh along the way?
Well, my dear friends with children between the ages of 4 and 12; have I got the book for you.
Check out The Times of Israel today, which is featuring my author interview and book review of Get the Behavior You Want Without Being the Parent You Hate by Dr. Deborah Gilboa. Then go download the book on September 10 when it goes on sale.
One of the reasons why I love to experiment with “found poetry” is that it allows me to make an artful experience last longer.
I just finished reading Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” for instance, and was struck often throughout by meaningful gems I wish I could spend more time contemplating.
In the absence of a classroom full of fellow philosophers or a literature professor, I turn to found poetry, otherwise known as “erasure poetry” or “blackout poetry.”
There is no correct way of digging in, but this is how I’ve been doing it with books. (You can also find poetry in songs or in newspaper articles. Why not?)
Instructions for finding poetry:
1. Xerox copy the page of the book or the document that stopped you in your tracks.
2. Read it over a few times. Perhaps, out loud.
3. Listen.
4. Circle with pencil the words calling out to you.
When you’re certain (or certain enough) you’ve dug out something new or relevant or useful from the beauty or wisdom already expressed by the author, smudge out the words around those in paint or black ink or, like Mary Ruefle, with white out.
5. There. You’ve found something. A poem, perhaps, or an idea or a pathway.
Something.
Like most creative writing, a first draft of a found poem might only be a writing prompt for something more significant.
At the very least, you got to spend more time with beauty or wisdom … and upcycled it into your own life.
I’ll be honest: I’m still not done reading Rachel Zucker’s The Pedestrians.
I have about 5 or 6 more poems to go before the end. The book is sitting on my nightstand in my bedroom; next to which is my middle son who just slipped off to sleep. My other two children are on two different IPADs watching two different age appropriate American television programs. (Go ahead: rate my parenting.)
I could finish The Pedestrians right now. I could snuggle up to the middle son in his sweat lodge and read.
But, I had a thought just now I couldn’t suppress:
Rachel Zucker makes me want to read more poetry.
But more important, she makes me want to write more poetry.
And I couldn’t just keep that to myself.
I had just finished one of the selections in the book titled “paris dream.” It’s one of 13 dream-like poems (others are titled “brooklyn dream,” “egg dream,” “daycare dream.”) Each time I read one of her “dream” poems I notice how I am simultaneously drawn into the poetry and into the dream itself; into the conscious and subconscious levels of the language. I find myself savoring Zucker’s dream in the way I sometimes delight in my own in the minutes just after I wake. I felt the urge to analyze it and was pleased.
I could keep reading Rachel Zucker’s dreams, I thought.
And while I am generally attracted to poems that are “dream-like” (Mark Strand’s work is a good example), Zucker’s dream poems compel me to dig into my own dream journal — the one I started keeping again last week after a two-year hiatus — to fashion gems out of the scribbles there. I’m trying already, but Zucker inspires me to try harder.
I fell for Zucker after reading Museum of Accidents, the themes of which are marriage, parenting children, the writing life, and a brand of existential anxiety found only in the modern first-world. The collection is a brave confessional told through the eyes of a deeply sensitive and somewhat over-thinking (some might say over-brooding) creative woman. I connected to both the content of her poems and the way in which she expressed herself.
I found myself giggling at her often brutally honest depiction of her husband, her marriage, and their sex life; giggles reminiscent of those that spurted out when my college roommate sat on my bed Freshman year and started talking about masturbation. Translated, both set of giggles meant, “You do that, too? AND we’re allowed to talk about it?”
It was through my reading of Zucker, along with poets Eula Biss and Maggie Nelson, that I really started finding my own brave voice in my poetry; and weaving into my prose darker and more daring language and themes.
Pedestrians is just as honest as Museum of Accidents, but I find it less brutal. I don’t know if it’s me that’s changed or Zucker or both of us. In her poems in this collection, I hear a kind of acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness in her life. Take, for instance, the way she unearths and confesses “we still love each other” in “real poem (gay men don’t snore)”
Or the tenderness and compassion she offers herself in the first sentence of “real poem (personal statement)”:
“I skim sadness like fat off the surface
of cooling soup.”
If we’re to assume the narrator is Zucker herself (and it’s difficult not to since she refers to her husband by name in this collection); I sense that it’s not that Zucker’s sorrow and longing have been replaced with gratitude; but it’s that Zucker has stumbled upon the space in which they may exist together.
And that, perhaps, along with the intimacy she invites in the dream poems, appeals to me. Moreso, as I said above: it makes me want to read and write more poetry. And not for the sake of being heard, or for the sake of future publication or celebrity.
But because poetry is where I go about discovering the goodness in my own life, in my own loves. It’s where I best display tenderness, compassion, and devotion, even when I am being brutally honest.
Book Details
Title: Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, Darth: And Other Pop Culture Correspondences
Author: John Moe
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Review
It was in one of my favorite online magazines, Fast CoCreate (a Fast Company publication) that I first heard about John Moe’s anthology of satiric correspondences which fictionally “exposed” the behind-the-scenes letters and diary entries of some of pop culture’s most famous characters and relationships, including the title characters’, Darth Vader and his son, Luke. I am a big fan of satire and pop culture, and as a writer was curious to see in which direction Moe, a regular contributor to McSweeney’s would take this. I imagined a mix of fan fiction and Dear Abby. I was excited for the book.
So I jumped on the opportunity to read it when Books for Bloggers made it available to me in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, though, I think this book was better off a collection of articles than an anthology of more than 50 imagined conversations and correspondences, most of which went on too long. My overall reaction to the book is that the ideas were funnier than the selections themselves; or that the selections would start off funny, but then went on too long.
For instance, I liked the idea of psychoanalyzing Bruce, the shark from Jaws as the author does in the second piece in Dear Luke, but tired of the concept after 3 or 4 journal entries (it continued for a total of eight). The list of “Jay Z’s 99 Problems” was funny, too, but again went on too long. (David Letterman stuck with a top 10 for a reason; Moe takes his list to 99. Is there a pop culture reference I’m missing? Probably.)
As I mentioned, there were spots in the book which I laughed out loud: Moe is a funny writer! Most of his ideas were really clever; it’s just that the execution could have benefited from a more serious editing job, especially for length. The best selections in the collection were the shorter ones, such as the “welp” listings of fictitious restaurants, including the Cheers bar, the Regal Beagle (which made me giggle just to see its inclusion), and Moe’s Tavern. Similarly, I laughed out loud at the concept alone of Gunther writing a letter to Rachel on the coffee shop chalkboard. But the letter itself (spoiler alert) is funny, too! Gunther explains to Rachel that she and her “friends” are all ghosts; dead after drowning in the fountain from the opening credits. He writes to her in chalk because, “as everyone knows, that’s the only thing that can get a ghost’s attention.” (I always though ghosts preferred writing in the fog of mirrors.)
If I were to highlight the selection that worked best in terms of length, ingenuity and wit it would be “Exchange Between Neal Hefti, Creator of the Batman TV Theme Song, and the Show’s Producer” in which there is a correspondence that eventually leads to the explanation of why the theme song to the television show had no lyrics except for “Na na na na na na na na na Batman!” During that one, I laughed out loud a bunch of times.
I’m bummed to give this book less than a stellar review because Moe deserves accolades for his creativity and success in execution in many of the selections. But I think the publisher might have been a little too over zealous in expecting readers to push through to the end of this collection.
Disclaimer: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.
I just finished reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a story of a man who sets out on a journey, both metaphorical and literal, in search of inner peace and acceptance. A friend, after hearing about “the boxed set series” project I’m working on, recommended the novel as a complementary “research tool.”
It was a good suggestion.
Harold is in his mid-sixties when he receives a letter from a former colleague – a terminally ill woman with whom we understand from the beginning he has unfinished business. On his way to the post office, to drop off a return letter to the woman, he instead decides to deliver the message himself, by journeying on foot across England.
In addition to the truisms delivered throughout the book – wisdom worthy of highlighters and stars in the margins – I walked away with a sense of hope … and of more time. After all, if I am facing and acknowledging my past now at 39, I’m a few steps ahead of Harold, aren’t I? Doesn’t this mean I might actually find my inner peace SOON?
I smile even as I write the words. I know how silly this mindset is – how contrary it is to the intention of finding inner peace.
“Finding it” requires work. “Soon” implies a deadline. Neither of which allows for the relief that I associate with inner peace. Did I learn nothing from Harold Fry? My imaginary book club asks me right now.
What I did learn from Harold is that we always think we are wiser than we are; that “now” we finally get “it.” And this is where we trip up.
At least, this is where I trip up.
So often, I cringe at or even attack my younger self, as if I am oh-so-much-wiser now than I was then. (I’m not.)
As if I am not making the exact same mistakes now that I did then — just with different supporting characters, and saggier boobs. (I am.)
What if the way to inner peace actually is acknowledging we will never truly be wise? Just more aware. Just more willing to learn from our past and from our present. Just more compassionate of ourselves and others when we trip up (again and again and again).
And what if the work to do was actually not such hard work? What if the assignment was to simply be more open to not knowing.
Not knowing the way to inner peace; and saying, “cool.”
Allowing for the possibility of finding it in unexpected places, faces, and moments.
***
I imagine a fat, happy Buddha smiling at me and nodding.
“Yes, my young padawan, that is Buddhism 101.”
What can I say? I’m a slow learner.
Very, very unwise, indeed.
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