One topic of discussion was the time period and how it related to Merry’s destructive actions. Swede and his wife, as the hometown sports hero and Miss New Jersey, respectively, provided the embodiment of 1950s suburban ideals while their wild, stuttering daughter reflected the changing morals of the turbulent era of the 1960s and antiwar rebellion. We also explored the foundations of Merry’s personality and crime. The group mostly agreed that no one factor could be identified as the root cause of her problems, but we were undecided as to whether or not she might have abruptly dropped her rage as she had with other youthful obsessions.

The narrator of this novel, Nathan Zuckerman, is a frequent Roth character as well as a fictional stand-in for the author. The whole novel is fiction, but embedded inside is Nathan’s reconstruction of the Swede’s life. We discussed the choices that Zuckerman made while retelling the story as well as Roth’s decision to use him as a framing device. For example, one character that provoked strong reactions from the group was Rita Cohen: her actions, her motivations, and purpose in the story.

Both times that Zuckerman encounters the Swede in adulthood, he only witnesses the Swede’s second family full of accomplished, sporting sons. And yet, the story Zuckerman tells completely omits this and focuses on the events leading up to and immediately following Merry’s crime. The pastoral genre of literature traditionally focuses on bucolic scenes and seeks to simplify life’s motions. It’s interesting to consider how the Swede strives towards this simple ideal, while Zuckerman almost does the opposite in his telling — taking the simple life he first observed and drawing it out to flesh out the details.

“The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong.”

Join the Brown Baggers next month to discuss The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

Further reading and information:

The New York Times book review of American Pastoral notes the “mixture of rage and elegy.” Read the full review here.

Check out the rest of JMRL’s Philip Roth collection here.

Much of our discussion focused on Shadid’s life and work — appropriate for a memoir — and how that gave the book its unique character. Though American born and raised in suburban Oklahoma City, Shadid did not have such a strong separation from his ancestral culture that many second and third generation immigrants sometimes experience. He was surrounded by family with a transported (albeit understandably adapted), shared culture — so with possibly stronger ties to tradition. Shadid also spent 10+ years off and on overseas as a reporter, so not exactly just a tourist.

This also led to an interesting discussion regarding our own place and experiences in the world. We acknowledged also that living in the U.S. — both a privileged and relatively young country — means we are sometimes blind to what is happening elsewhere. Even if we know objectively what political or social changes are occurring, we have a difficult time processing how this impacts daily life or how conflicts through the decades and centuries can carry on in the background of civilian life. Other lively topics of debate were a perceived discrepancy between the work and effort he put into the house vs. his neglected first marriage as well as a review of the book that questioned his objectivity when it came to the intersection of Arab Christianity and Israel.

Group members also tended to prefer either the present-day sections or the historical family background, but it was a fairly even split! Much like Shadid, group members all brought their unique perspectives to reading this engaging memoir.

Join the Brown Baggers next month to discuss American Pastoral by Philip Roth. 

Further reading and information:

For pictures of Shadid and the construction of his home, check out this USA Today photo gallery.

NPR’s Morning Edition also discussed the book. Listen here.

JMRL also owns a copy of Night Draws Near by Shadid. 

Shadid’s obituary in the New York Times gives a good overview of his reporting career.

Our discussion dealt mainly with the major theme, a timely one, of this book of overlapping stories:  the immigrant experience.  Everyone in the group could tell a story like that of themselves or someone they know.  It is the American story.  “Joy Luck” reminded us of another book that we enjoyed in February 2012, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.  Both books delved into relationships of first and second generation Chinese dealing with their different attitudes toward American culture.

In “Joy Luck” the stories are about women.  The men are either banal or evil.  Most of us were confused by the overlapping stories of daughters and mothers who all had difficult names but similar stories.  A number of comments came out of this confusion:  1. Maybe, because women of a certain era in Chinese society were treated as nonentities, they all blended together in reality.  2. Since the stories were mainly about Amy Tan and her mother, she should have stuck with that as the only story.

Another theme we mentioned from “Joy Luck” is that of hope vs expectations.  Hope seems less active than expectation – at least in the lives of these characters.  Mothers and daughters in the book had difficulty relating as the mothers expected so much more for and from their daughters who were in the more open American culture, a culture so different from that in which the mothers grew up, and they worked very hard to assure their daughters’ success.  It was painful to read about the mothers’ disappointments as their American daughters didn’t grow up to be prodigies or wealthy as their mothers expected and hoped.  The pain was for both mothers and daughters.  Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” came up briefly at this point.  This made sense to those who have read it.

This is the last week of JMRL’s Big Read programming.  Hope you enjoyed some of this annual event.

~ The Reluctant Blogger

Both of the central characters present interesting philosophical musings. Although their attitudes may be influenced by their surroundings, the idea of pondering these concepts is familiar to many different societies. Some group members noted the similarity to the Norwegian novel, Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder, which is an original plot blended with an introduction to different philosophies and schools of thought. While many of the Brown Baggers ultimately enjoyed the novel as a whole, occasionally the intellectual detours of Paloma and Renee felt more like a lecture or textbook excerpt.

While considering the book’s popularity and background, our group also discussed the class system in the U.S. as compared to France. Initial reviewers doubted the success of this novel in the U.S., but our group members felt they could still understand the critique of the French class system. We debated whether or not the U.S. is truly a classless society and compared Renee’s reluctance to elevate herself to higher class pretensions to the success-focused attitude the comes with pursuing the American Dream.

In addition to the discourse, group members enjoyed an elegant feast worthy of a tea with Renee and Manuela, or dinner in Kakuro Ozu’s apartment. Look at these adorable hedgehog rolls made by a group member and one of our moderators!

A few days after the Brown Baggers meeting, many of our group enjoyed a screening of Le Hérisson at JMRL as part of the UVA French Film Festival. It was wonderful to be able to watch this film adaptation of the novel and discuss it with other members of community — and it was quite a full house! JMRL has added this film to the catalog, so anyone who wasn’t able to attend  should make sure to check it out!

Dickens’ use of language is always impressive.  Alliteration, repetition, and lots of playful words join with the characters’ names like Lord and Lady Deadlock, Mr. Krook, Miss Flight, and Mr. Guppy being only a few.   Of course, since Dickens was apparently paid by the word, we are bombarded.

The reader weaves and ducks through the plot of this apparently dense novel as it winds through various seemingly unconnected events, coincidences (the latter also so Dickensian), and characters, and we are suddenly in the midst of a murder mystery that I, for one, did not see coming.

At the beginning of the book a principal character says: “And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.”  I don’t think you will say this if you get to the end of Bleak House, but good luck.

The PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater” production of Bleak House is very good.  You might give that a try first.

For February, there’s still time to start reading (or listening to) our next selection, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. If you enjoy the novel or can’t make our normal Thursday session, JMRL will also be showing Le Hérisson (The Hedgehog) on February 24 at 1 pm. This adaptation of the novel was directed by Mona Achache and will be shown as part of the UVA Department of French Film Festival. Following the film, there will be a discussion of the book and film. Refreshments will be served — hope to see a good crowd! 

It may not seem so at first, but the group picking process does have some method to it. With a group of varying tastes and preferences, a yearly list isn’t complete until it contains a mix of non-fiction and fictional titles, books old and new, and from authors of different backgrounds. There’s still time to get cracking on our January selection, Bleak House by Charles Dickens and we have some exciting additional programs planned for our February and March selections.

A list of our titles is below, or you can always double check JMRL’s wiki for previous and upcoming selections.

February: Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
March: Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan – Big Read 2013 title
April: House of Stone: a Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid
May: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
June: Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
July: A Train in Winter: an Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France by Caroline Moorehead
August: Canada by Richard Ford
September: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
October: Master of the Mountain by Henry Wiencek
November: Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
[no December selection - meet to pick books for 2014]
January 2014: Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

JMRL has a number of them represented in its collections, and the names of some are not obscure.  There is Jorge Luis Borges, the wonderfully lyrical poet from Argentina, who won in 1978, or Octavio Paz of Mexico who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  One of my favorite Latino writers is Mario Vargas Llosa.  I laughed throughout his book “La Tia Julia y el Escribidor” or “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.”  He also won the Nobel after he was awarded the Cervantes Prize.

Explore these writers in English or give them a try in Spanish.  If we don’t have the Spanish version, you can probably find it at the University of Virginia or request it though JMRL’s interlibrary loan system.

Other Cervantes Prize winners at JMRL are:

Juan Carlos Onetti of Uruguay

Rafael Alberti of Spain

Ernesto Sabato of Spain

Carlos Fuentes of Mexico

Álvaro Mutis of Columbia

José Jiménez Lozano of Spain

~ The Reluctant Blogger

It’s not unheard of for members of the Brown Baggers to arrive at our discussion without having finished the chosen title. But generally when this is the case for the majority of members, it’s because the book was dull, dry, or otherwise unenjoyable. Not so in the case of We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen – in this instance, the 650+ page length of the book was the culprit behind so many still-bookmarked copies that appeared during our chat. Those who had yet to finish were still planning on completing the book, while those who had assured them it was worth the time and effort.

Group members also agreed that the style of We, the Drowned made this a book to savor slowly. As indicated by the title, the book is told mostly in the first person plural form. While unfamiliar at first, this gives the book almost a mythic quality by evoking a Greek chorus. Homer’s Odyssey was one comparison we considered; we also discussed how certain reviews of this book noted hints of magical realism in the style of Garcia Marquez. We agreed that this book was not as fantastical, but it did echo some of his works by spanning generations and exaggerating certain tales.

We also compared this book in some ways to Moby Dick, which the Brown Baggers read this January. Now that we’ve reached the end of our 2012 selections, perhaps it is only appropriate we have come full circle back to the sea. Some of the major themes of this work focused on not only the battle against the elements, but the very concept of survival — for the men at sea or the women and children left at home. Group members also found the exploration of familial relationships intriguing, especially those between fathers and sons, and how they related to community traditions and shared rites of passage.

The Brown Baggers really enjoyed this book overall – won’t you join us in December to help us select our chosen titles for 2013? We’ll be meeting Dec. 20th at noon. In the meantime, get a head start on January’s selection, Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

More information:

Amazon has a very interesting Q&A with the author, Carsten Jensen.

A relevant New York Times article about the first person plural (published before We, the Drowned): http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/books/the-last-word-we-the-characters.html

More about the town of Marstal can be found on Wikipedia.

The official website of the Marstal Maritime Museum is in Danish, but can be browsed using a translation service such as Google Translate.

Among the many themes in this book (race, family, religion, bioethics, medicine) bioethics got the discussion nod.   Henrietta Lacks’ cancer genes at her death were collected and have been in the mix for many important medical discoveries.  They proved to be super genes.  Her family never gave the OK for this to happen nor did they get any compensation from all the medical advancements due to experiments with these genes that occurred from the 1950’s to the present.  “The book is filled with stories of people used as research subjects, sometimes without their knowledge, sometimes with ill-informed consent, sometimes because of their inability to understand (patients with mental illness) …”*  The reading group was appalled by all this and voiced concern that this could still happen today.

Because this book was written by a white woman about African Americans, there was some comparison with “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, which the group read last year.  We felt that Skloot was more sympathetic to her subjects and was less intrusive but more helpful than the fictional character in “The Help.”

Henrietta’s family is full of colorful and complicated individuals.  The Lacks genes in and out of these people have made their lives very difficult.  Skloot does seem to help them find some closure, but their lives will always be on the edge.

We did like the book.  With the parallel stories of the Lacks family and the medical history surrounding Henrietta Lacks genes, we found that some followed one story line more than the other.

*(Courtesy ofUW–‐Madison’s Go Big Read Discussions Planning Committee and the Institute for Cross—College Biology Education Book Group)

~ The Reluctant Blogger

The film, directed by Cherry Arnold, has won four film festival awards, and is narrated by James Woods.  Plus, Central Library’s McIntire Room has been completely renovated with a new state-of-the-art projection system.  Also — free snacks!

For a quick view of Buddy, visit his site at:  http://www.buddycianci.com/index.html