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Finished Too Much Happiness (Alice Munro); started Cherry, the Mary Karr memoir I somehow missed.
Alice Munro has the remarkable ability to write novels that are only 35 pages long. If they're 35 pages long, then by definition they're short stories, snorts the pragmatic reader. But I see the difference between novels and short stories as more fundamental than merely length.
Novels are immersions into their fictional protagonists' lives, replete with a hierarchy of major and minor crises and their resolutions.
Short stories recount a single crisis in a fictional character's life.
Through her instinct for revelatory detail, though, Munro is able to turn the bare elements of her brief plots into iceberg tips. Munro defines her characters so completely and with such a light touch that the perspicacious reader is able to see the rest of the iceberg glimmering under the shimmer of her prose.
Strip the prose away and you see that what Munro is primarily interested in is power struggles, those traits that make her protagonists vulnerable to the potential for psychological and at times – as in Dimensions, the opening story in this collection – physical violence. Her stories focus on the way these power struggles transform and reconfigure their protagonists' inner landscapes.
Most – though not all – of Munro's protagonists are women; many are women of limited education and understanding living within a patriarchal society. This infuses Munro's writing with a feminist sensibility that is much less didactic and therefore (to me at least) much more palatable than Doris Lessing, her precursor in Nobel Valhalla. In fact, Munro's closest literary analogue is probably Jane Austen, another unsentimental subversive.
The scavenger hunt was something of a bust. A scavenger hunt for children – Find Aldo the Elf in a number of commercial establishments.
The woman who did the signups stared at me in contempt and amazement as I supplied my non-kiddie specs. I dropped out as soon as I figured out I was at least 55 years over the desired demographic. Did give me the opportunity to tromp around a part of Poughkeepsie I was completely unfamiliar with – the erstwhile Little Italy, which still has a couple of interesting cafes and Italian bakeries as well the Rossi Rosticceria, where I had a grilled eggplant, artichoke and dried tomato sandwich that was just amazing.
When I lived in the Bay Area, I used to do Jayson Wechter's Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt every year. This was before it grew into such a major event. It was just so much fun running around Chinatown and North Beach after dark on the crest of the parade. Susan -- who's much smarter and more organized than I am -- actually started winning the Treasure Hunt. Her secret? She came up with the idea of putting her teammates in teeshirts that said "Parade Monitor" thereby enabling them to cut across parade lines and barriers with impunity.
When Max told me on the phone yesterday that he was going to a dance party at Susan and Jeff's last night (Susan is his godmother), I was hit by jealousy so palpable, it almost gave me a stomach ache. I'm longing to go out dancing! Neither of the two gentlemen I'm currently dating are at all interested in dancing. They don't even walk much. The only aerobic exercise they're interested in is sex.
I've been to so many dance parties at Susan's house over the years that I could picture the setup exactly. Jeff would have devoted a week to making the perfect dance tape. Their beautiful house and garden would be decorated with strings of whimsical lights. People would be dancing, talking smoking dope, flirting, making witty conversation, having fun. Marybeth would have come up with Kim – my luminous and beautiful friend, the most perfectly empathetic human being I've ever met.
I felt my banishment then, most acutely. My separation from people I love and who love me despite my numerous quirks and shortcomings. Do they love me because we were all young together and share so many memories, or do they recognize something in me that the people around me now don't see? Both, I suppose. The ability to make new connections really does wane as one grows older.
Well, I'll be back there again in two years.
This is my last unoccupied weekend for the rest of the month, and I know I'm going to be chomping at the bit for solitude once the cavalcade of social commitments begins. So it's sentimental self-sabotage to mess up this last vista of untenanted time with sauadade. It is what it is, though.
Alice Munro has the remarkable ability to write novels that are only 35 pages long. If they're 35 pages long, then by definition they're short stories, snorts the pragmatic reader. But I see the difference between novels and short stories as more fundamental than merely length.
Novels are immersions into their fictional protagonists' lives, replete with a hierarchy of major and minor crises and their resolutions.
Short stories recount a single crisis in a fictional character's life.
Through her instinct for revelatory detail, though, Munro is able to turn the bare elements of her brief plots into iceberg tips. Munro defines her characters so completely and with such a light touch that the perspicacious reader is able to see the rest of the iceberg glimmering under the shimmer of her prose.
Strip the prose away and you see that what Munro is primarily interested in is power struggles, those traits that make her protagonists vulnerable to the potential for psychological and at times – as in Dimensions, the opening story in this collection – physical violence. Her stories focus on the way these power struggles transform and reconfigure their protagonists' inner landscapes.
Most – though not all – of Munro's protagonists are women; many are women of limited education and understanding living within a patriarchal society. This infuses Munro's writing with a feminist sensibility that is much less didactic and therefore (to me at least) much more palatable than Doris Lessing, her precursor in Nobel Valhalla. In fact, Munro's closest literary analogue is probably Jane Austen, another unsentimental subversive.
The scavenger hunt was something of a bust. A scavenger hunt for children – Find Aldo the Elf in a number of commercial establishments.
The woman who did the signups stared at me in contempt and amazement as I supplied my non-kiddie specs. I dropped out as soon as I figured out I was at least 55 years over the desired demographic. Did give me the opportunity to tromp around a part of Poughkeepsie I was completely unfamiliar with – the erstwhile Little Italy, which still has a couple of interesting cafes and Italian bakeries as well the Rossi Rosticceria, where I had a grilled eggplant, artichoke and dried tomato sandwich that was just amazing.
When I lived in the Bay Area, I used to do Jayson Wechter's Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt every year. This was before it grew into such a major event. It was just so much fun running around Chinatown and North Beach after dark on the crest of the parade. Susan -- who's much smarter and more organized than I am -- actually started winning the Treasure Hunt. Her secret? She came up with the idea of putting her teammates in teeshirts that said "Parade Monitor" thereby enabling them to cut across parade lines and barriers with impunity.
When Max told me on the phone yesterday that he was going to a dance party at Susan and Jeff's last night (Susan is his godmother), I was hit by jealousy so palpable, it almost gave me a stomach ache. I'm longing to go out dancing! Neither of the two gentlemen I'm currently dating are at all interested in dancing. They don't even walk much. The only aerobic exercise they're interested in is sex.
I've been to so many dance parties at Susan's house over the years that I could picture the setup exactly. Jeff would have devoted a week to making the perfect dance tape. Their beautiful house and garden would be decorated with strings of whimsical lights. People would be dancing, talking smoking dope, flirting, making witty conversation, having fun. Marybeth would have come up with Kim – my luminous and beautiful friend, the most perfectly empathetic human being I've ever met.
I felt my banishment then, most acutely. My separation from people I love and who love me despite my numerous quirks and shortcomings. Do they love me because we were all young together and share so many memories, or do they recognize something in me that the people around me now don't see? Both, I suppose. The ability to make new connections really does wane as one grows older.
Well, I'll be back there again in two years.
This is my last unoccupied weekend for the rest of the month, and I know I'm going to be chomping at the bit for solitude once the cavalcade of social commitments begins. So it's sentimental self-sabotage to mess up this last vista of untenanted time with sauadade. It is what it is, though.
