The end of the world--or is it?

One of the many benefits of participating in a book discussion group is being nudged, occasionally, toward books you wouldn’t ordinarily choose. I know many people who don’t like to join book groups because they are “forced” to read books they don’t like—they’d rather read their own choices exclusively. And I get that. There are so many books, and so little time…

But sometimes the book group nudge is just what you need to discover something wonderful, something you’d never have chosen on your own.

Case in point: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

Typically, if I’m reading a book review and see the tags “science fiction” or “dystopia,” my eyes glaze over and I move on. I know my favorite genres, and those don’t apply.

So, I’d never have read Station Eleven, if it hadn’t been a selection of my book group about  a year ago. Even then, I was not inclined—hmmm, maybe this would be a book I’d just skip and maybe even skip the meeting. But I like the woman who recommended it, and I respect her judgment, so I gave it a try. Am I ever glad! It’s a book that resonated in my mind and dreams for days. In fact, I recently re-read the novel and liked it even more than the first time.

The basic premise: a horribly virulent pandemic flu wipes out most of the population of the world and basically brings civilization as we know it to a halt. No electricity. No Internet. No cell phones. No water or sewer systems. No planes, trains, or cars. No grocery stores. No hospitals or antibiotics. 

And, because the mortality rate is 99%, no chance—or virtually none—that your family, loved ones, or friends have survived.

How would you cope? After a dramatic opening the evening before the flu hits, the novel fast-forwards to Year 20, introducing us to an array of characters who did survive and have coped. Among them are dozen or so people who have formed a traveling troupe to perform classical music and Shakespeare for people in towns around the Great Lakes.

Shakespeare—really? Aren’t there more compelling needs for the remnant of civilization? According to St. John Mandel, Shakespeare and music are as important as ordinary sustenance. This phrase echoes throughout the book: “Survival is insufficient.” (Star Trek fans will recognize the phrase from a Star Trek Voyage episode.)

So, the Traveling Symphony performs, with battered instruments and ragged costumes, transcendent music and poetry for small communities eager to be lifted out of their survival mode. After a few days in each town, the Symphony hitches up its horse-drawn wagons and heads to another town. This peripatetic troupe of  musicians and actors form an extended family: “…it was their only home.”

Only, sometimes, the players are met with hostility or overt violence. A religious zealot threatens them. In this fractured world, who can be trusted?

As counterpoint to this atmosphere of dark uncertainly, the novel opens with a dramatic scene on the last day before the pandemic hits. A well-known Canadian actor, Arthur Leander, dies of a heart attack during a final scene of King Lear staged at a Toronto theater. The novel traces Arthur’s professional rise and personal life, cutting back and forth in time, providing a more conventional narrative to counter the story of the pandemic’s aftermath.

Initially, it’s not clear how the two stories relate. But several strands align over time. Kirsten, a little girl who acts in Lear becomes the fearless leader of the Traveling Symphony. A lawyer friend of Arthur’s becomes the de facto curator of the Museum of Civilization, which contains a collection of objects from “before”, eg, an iPhone, a driver’s license, a laptop, a pair of stiletto heels. A paparazzo who stalks Arthur’s wives grows into a skilled medical provider and resourceful family man. And not least, a graphic novel—Station Eleven—links several characters and is, itself, a survivor—and a metaphor for how to re-build society after disaster.

The book is smart, with an impressive structure and an unfussy, eloquent style. Although the novel is dark and sometimes tense, a current of humanity runs through the story. And, at the end, a hint of hope and light (literally) promises to begin to heal the 20-year collapse of civilization.

First, the summer--then the horror

Bucolic setting in the English countryside—check. Plucky heroine who grapples with misogyny and small-town prejudice—check. Handsome doctor who slowly comes to recognize the appeal of plucky heroine—check.

All the elements above might sound like ingredients for a comforting stew of a romance novel—familiar, basically a feel-good story.

But The Summer Before the War transcends the clichés and offers readers plenty of food for thought, as well as balm for the spirit. Set in 1914, the novel braids the themes of women’s fight for independence and the effect of World War I on the lives and psyches of British people, both on the battlefield and at home.

As the 100^th anniversary of The Battle of the Somme nears (July 1), there seems to be a resurgence of interest in the impact of WWI. It was said to be “the war to end all wars,” and thousands of British soldiers enlisted, expecting the conflict to be over and to be home in time for Christmas. Troops were cheered with parades and celebrations in towns all over England as they prepared to embark for France or Belgium. It promised to be a glorious war.

The reality, as we know, was horrifically different.  The British army suffered more than 60,000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, alone. By the end if the war, more than 900,000 forces from the British Empire had been killed, more than 2 million wounded, and 200,000 taken prisoner or missing.  An entire generation of young men was lost. 

The war’s devastating impact resulted in major social and cultural change in the orderly tempo of life in Edwardian England. In particular, many women cast aside traditional roles and took on “men’s work,” running farms, teaching schools, and taking on nursing duties.

This is the context of The Summer before the War. In the summer of 1914, Beatrice Nash, a beautiful, brainy young woman, arrives in the Sussex Village of Rye to take on the job as Latin teacher in the local grammar school, a definitely untraditional role and one viewed with considerable suspicion by many townspeople. Her father has recently died, thoughtlessly tying up a modest inheritance in a trust controlled by an unsympathetic relative. So, becoming a teacher is not necessarily a career choice, but an economic necessity.

Still grieving her father’s death and feeling socially isolated in a new town, Beatrice finds comfort in the support of a local matron who has championed her hiring. Agatha Kent also welcomes two nephews, who often visit from London: Hugh, a doctor in training, and Daniel, a would-be poet. These young men’s lives will be upended by the war, but for the summer of 1914, they savor indolent days in the countryside. However, although the setting is more modest than Downton Abbey and the social stratification less rigid, many stifling social mores prevail.

Fans of Simonson’s first novel, Mr. Pettigrew’s Last Stand, will find similar insights about social constraints and the ways that sympathetic characters overcome them. Although the time periods and settings differ, both novels share a wry sense of humor and a disdain for silly social constraints. And both feature protagonists who are endearing, even if occasionally misguided and tone-deaf.

Over the course of the novel, Beatrice’s courage and independence strengthen, despite (or perhaps because of) social opposition. At the same time, she comes to recognize and appreciate the joys of companionship.

And Hugh endures the horrors of trench warfare, coming to relinquish his dream of a fancy Harley St. surgical practice in favor of a more modest country practice. His cousin Dan continues to write poetry, although he sheds his esthete persona as battlefield reality matures him.

The book’s ending is bittersweet. Some characters forge new lives in the new, post-war world. Others don’t survive.

Years after the Armistice, several of the characters visit a small cemetery in Northern France, where so many British died in battle and are now buried. One of the visitors observes that, despite her current happiness,  she experiences “a thin vein of sorrow that millions  like her would feel down the years.”

[The sorrow] did not stop their feet from walking, or prevent the quotidian routines of life; but it ran in the population like the copper wires of the telephone system, connecting them all to each other and to the tragedy that had ripped at their hearts just as it had ripped at the field outside her window.

One Thing After Another

Faith Sullivan says of her latest novel, Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse, published in October, “It has no plot, no dramatic arc like you’re supposed to have….It’s just about how we live.”

The novel’s narrator, Nell Stillman charts how she lives through six decades in the small midwestern town of Harvester, knitting quotidian pleasures and challenges with tragic events and major changes of the 20^th century.  Throughout it all, Nell maintains a steady presence, comforted by her love of reading—especially books by P.G. Wodehouse.

At the book’s opening in 1900, Nell has been left a young widow with a toddler son, Hilly; penniless, she tries to tamp down panic. Soon, Juliet and Laurence Lundren, an influential couple in the town and the first of many “angels” to appear in Nell’s life, help her procure a job as a third-grade teacher. The position gives Nell a solid position in the community, as well as a modest income. The couple’s intervention is the first of many examples of “the kindness of strangers” that mark Nell’s life, eventually deepening her circle of support and friendship.

But this is no saccharine tale and Nell is no beatific heroine. Small-minded townspeople judge and sometimes threaten her (the school board tries to fire her because of guilt by association—her baby sitter leaves town suddenly, and everyone assumes that she is pregnant). And Nell is shattered when her beloved son Hilly returns from World War I shell-shocked and broken. Throughout the years, through vicissitudes and small joys, Nell just keeps on—and finds solace in reading Wodehouse.

Mr. Wodehouse, it turned out, was an entirely new experience. He was delicious, lighter than air. Generous to a fault. He made her laugh as no man ever had. Surely, he wrote only for her. His rhythms, the way his wit kissed a phrase and sent it dancing—these armed her like the summer. She laughed aloud and fell in love again and again.

This linchpin of the novel was the hardest aspect for me to relate to—I’ve never been a Wodehouse fan, as Sullivan clearly is: she reports having read his novels for 40 years and having re-read many of them during the writing of her own novel. But never mind. You don’t have to love Wodehouse—you will come to love Nell Stillman.

In contrast to much of contemporary “high concept” fiction, Good Night Mr. Wodehouse is linear, a quiet story that features an entirely reliable narrator, one whose moral compass anchors the story. To stick with a central character for more than six decades, you have to like that person. And who could not like Nell? She is courageous, kind, tartly funny, a good friend, and a determined woman. As she says when she writes her own obituary (“although in perfectly good health”):

She knew the kindness of dear friends and, eventually, the love of a good man.

Sullivan’s publisher at Minneapolis-based Milkweed Editions, summed up the power of the book, saying that the characters would be thought entirely ordinary in real life, “yet, in Faith’s hands as a novelist, they’ve become extraordinary…”

Journey Home

Journey Home

If you read only one book this month, this season, let it be Pax.

The middle-grade novel, written by Sara Pennypacker and illustrated by Jon Klassen, will appeal to readers of all ages—assuming they have a heart. The story feels both mythic and realistic, a cautionary tale about how to overcome old patterns that trap us and to discover the real way home.

Peter, a 12-year-old boy, and his pet red fox, Pax, are separated when Peter’s father chooses to go to war; he forces Peter to release Pax into the wild and then to move 300 miles away to live with his grandfather. Almost immediately, Peter realizes that he has made a terrible mistake and determines to return for Pax, fearing that the domesticated fox will not survive alone in the wild. 

Meanwhile, Pax, confused by the abandonment of his human, struggles to make sense of his new freedom and remains vigilant for the scent of Peter.

Peter’s plan to find and recover Pax is naïve, but along the way, he discovers an unlikely ally who shows him how to become both strong and vulnerable. The eccentric war veteran, Viola, carries her own scars and distrust, but she and Peter come to depend on each other, forging a new family of sorts.

Hundreds of miles away, Pax finds a new family, too: a vixen named Bristle, her brother, Runt, and an older red wolf, Gray. Because Pax had been adopted as a kit and grown up eating kibble and peanut butter, he has no idea how to hunt and feed himself in the wild—nor any idea of how to read behavioral signs of his kin.

At its heart, the novel is a story of a hero’s journey—in this case, two journeys converging. Short alternating chapters tell the tale from Peter’s point of view and from Pax’s. We come to cheer Peter as he grows in skill and compassion, and we are completely won over by Pax’s “voice,” which is completely unsentimental and based on an accurate depiction of red fox behavior. Our heroes face and overcome obstacles, as all heroes must, including encounters with an advancing group of soldiers, who are laying mines all over the countryside. The underlying threat of war—an unnamed country, an unnamed time—lends a dark note to this book, but doesn’t obscure its narrative pull.

Pennypacker infuses her story with astonishingly beautiful prose. Take this description of Pax thrilling to the joy of running free after a lifetime of captivity:

His body was light, the fat burned off from days of scarce food. He ran as foxes are meant to run—compact body arrowing through the air at a swiftness that rippled his fur. The new joy of speed, the urgency of coming night, the hope of reunion with his boy—these things transformed him into something that shot like liquid fire between he trees. Something gravity couldn’t touch. Pax could have run forever.

 Best known for more light-hearted children’s books like the Clementine series, Pennypacker here tackles deeper topics, but wraps them in prose and a story that engage at many levels.  Enriching Pax are marvelous illustrations by Jon Klassen, the artist who gave us I Want My Hat Back. The pair have created a magical book that will linger in your thoughts and heart for a long time.

Xenophobia--then and now

There are many good reasons to read B. A. Shapiro’s new novel, The Muralist, but the compelling tale of xenophobic backlash to immigrants is the most timely.

Just as irrational hysteria today grips too many Americans who want to close the borders to Syrian refugees (even stop the orphans, cries Chris Christie!)—and, per Donald Trump—even bar anyone of the Islamic faith—in the days before the United States entered World War II, a vicious policy blocked immigration of Jews who were suffering under Nazi subjugation.

In June 1940, a memo from Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long advised: “ We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls, to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.”

This proposal, cruel and probably illegal, was never countermanded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Because of this policy, which blocked the valid entry of German and French Jews into the United States, some experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in concentration camps.

It is this historical context in which Shapiro’s fictional tale is embedded. Her novel also intertwines the story of abstract expressionists, early in their careers—Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner—who are moving from more realistic work required for WPA mural assignments to a more emotional form of painting. The novel’s fictional protagonist, Alizee Benoit, belongs to this group of muralists, showing leadership as she evolves from a muralist to a more symbolic painter.

Alizee also has another mission. She becomes active in efforts to promote immigration of French and German Jews to America, including many in her own family. Her efforts bring her in contact with Eleanor Roosevelt, who is sympathetic to the cause, but ultimately unsuccessful in influencing her husband to support expanded legal immigration.  

The novel toggles back and forth between 1939-40 and 2015, where Danielle, an art historian with a major auction house and the great-niece of Alizee, is drawn into the mystery of her paintings and also her disappearance in 1940. What happened to this enigmatic muralist? Did an anti-Semitiic cabal do away with her? Danielle’s determination to pursue the mystery leads eventually to France and a wholly unexpected conclusion, both poignant and satisfying.

The novel effectively blends fact and fiction and is, at its heart, a good read. But the parallels with today’s attitudes towards “the other” will resonate long after the pleasure of the story fades.

William Zinsser RIP: 1922-2015

I was never taught how to write. Like most people, I suppose, I just wrote. Despite degrees in English literature and journalism, I never had a class in creative writing. I had a certain facility, but mostly, I bumbled along, teaching myself.

At some point, I discovered William Strunk and E. B. White’s classic, The Elements of Style, and fell under the spell of their good sense and clear instructions. I followed their advice to emphasize verbs, choose the active voice over the passive, and, most important,  “omit needless words.”

Soon after, I found On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser. Happy day! If Strunk and White were my avuncular, slightly old-fashioned guides, Zinsser was a wry graduate advisor, the kind of teacher you want to spend hours talking with at a coffee shop. Or pub.

In fact, Zinsser taught a popular writing class at Yale, and his talks there were the basis for On Writing Well. First published in 1976, the book has gone through numerous editions and sold more than 1.5 million copies.

A 2013 profile of Zinsser in The New York Times described the book’s impact:

In newsrooms, publishing houses, and wherever the labor centers on honing sentences and paragraphs, you are almost certain to find among the reference works a classic guide to nonfiction writing called “On Writing Well,” by Mr. Zinsser. Sometimes all you have to say is: Hand me the Zinsser.”

I have certainly reached for “the Zinsser” over the years of my own writing and teaching. His classic advice—“get rid of clutter,” “Beware…the long word that’s no better than the short word”—does not dim with time.

Zinsser wrote about usage, simplicity, unity—and he encouraged writers to be authentic and reveal themselves and their enthusiasms. From the personal transaction “at the heart of all good nonfiction,” he wrote, come two important qualities: humanity and warmth. “Good writing,” he said, has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it’s not a question of gimmicks…[but] a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.”

Not least, like the good writer he was, Zinsser doesn’t just tell—he shows. Two facing pages reproduce the final manuscript of his book, showing dozens of his editing marks, all in the service of making the writing tighter. And this was his fourth or fifth draft. Instructive and humbling.

Through his long career as a journalist, teacher, film critic, editor, and writer, Zinsser honed his own writing skills and coached countless others. Even at the age of 90, two years before his death, and blind from glaucoma, he continued to coach writers, the famous and not so famous. He listened as students read their work in progress, helping them “organize their thoughts by condensing, reducing—learning what not to include,” said The New York Times article.

Zinsser ended one chapter in On Writing Well with the rhetorical question—“Can  [principles of writing] be taught?”

“Maybe not,” he answers his question. “But most of them can be learned.”

I keep learning. Hand me the Zinsser!