August 2022
Monthly Archive
Aug 31, 2022
An online book group I belong to has spent the past month discussing Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, and I’ve been thinking of the book as a “coming of middle age” novel. The novel’s protagonist, Ray Carney, is a grown man–married with a child–when the novel begins, but he grows into middle age (and his family expands) as the story continues. Readers see Carney’s social and professional ambitions unfold over the course of the novel–his successes, shortcomings, and disappointments–as he settles into the realities of middle age.
There are two quotes about middle age that kept coming to mind as I read the novel. First is Thoreau’s remark about the difference between young and middle-aged men: “The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.” Thoreau, who died in his forties and thus didn’t have much firsthand experience with the indignities of middle age, recognized the way that youthful idealism ripens into more mature practicality. Instead of shooting for the stars, Thoreau’s middle-aged man is firmly fixed on earth.
I also kept thinking about the quip that middle age is when you realize you’ll never read Proust. In youth, we are told (if we are lucky) that we can be anyone we want to be: the sky is the proverbial limit. But in middle age, we are far down the particular path we’ve chosen, and we’ve dug our own ruts. It’s no longer feasible to pursue the road not taken. We’ll never finish all the books on our to-be-read list, never reach the bottom of our to-do list, and never become the superhero, astronaut, or dinosaur-tamer of our childhood dreams.
In a traditional coming-of-age novel, a youthful protagonist gains wisdom and experience from a series of adventures and encounters. Said protagonist loses their childhood innocence during a crisis of faith where they question what they’ve been told or taught. Big lessons about mortality, betrayal, and disappointment are learned the hard way. By the end of a traditional coming-of-age novel, the protagonist will never be the same because they’ve learned the world is more complicated than they’d realized.
In Harlem Shuffle, Ray Carney has youthful dreams of succeeding in ways his father, a petty criminal, couldn’t…but because of his childhood as a criminal’s son, Carney was never entirely innocent. Instead, he’s an entrepreneur who runs a mostly respectable furniture store that occasionally sells used (read: stolen) goods. Carney wants to make it as a law-abiding, “straight” businessman in order to impress his respectable middle-class in-laws…but he is occasionally tempted by the crooked ways of his youth.
Ray Carney doesn’t have a turning-point crisis of faith; instead, he gradually realizes the difficulties of social climbing. Carney wants the American dream–he wants to provide his wife and family with the comfortable middle-class lifestyle he never had as a boy–but as a Black man in 1950s Harlem, he knows the path to success has never been straight. It’s hard to stay on the straight and narrow when a crooked system is stacked against you.
Aug 29, 2022
Several weekends ago, A (not her real initial) and I met at the Worcester Art Museum to see “Fathom,” an exhibit of Kat O’Connor’s aquatic-themed paintings. Neither A nor I was familiar with O’Connor’s work, but Worcester is a good meeting spot between Here and There, and looking at paintings of blurred and distorted underwater figures seemed like an apt end-of-summer activity.
If you’re a teacher, August marks the official end of summer, so the month always passes in a blur, with countless preparatory details. I’ve spent the past few weeks updating syllabi and fiddling over Canvas sites: there are so many ducks to put into so many rows. Starting a new semester feels like jumping into the deep end–with a sudden splash, all’s subsumed in swoosh and swirl–and a well-planned syllabus is a life-line, with dates like knots to keep you connected to Here and Now.
Viewing O’Connor’s work was a welcome respite. Her lush and voluptuous images–some painted in oil, acrylic, or watercolor, and others drawn in graphite–evoke the delicious disorientation of being submerged. Underwater, sound is muffled, colors are transmogrified, and shapes are distorted: nothing is how it seems. Something as simple as a quick summer dip feels completely transformative, a secular baptism into an altered state of consciousness.
Looking at O’Connor’s paintings, I couldn’t remember the last time I went swimming. When I lived in Keene, I’d regularly walk the dog at Goose Pond, where we both ignored the “no swimming” signs. But now that I live in Massachusetts, my schedule is far less fluid. I still regularly walk the dog, sure, but we walk around the block at routine times rather than dropping everything for an impromptu swim when the weather is right.
As I post one syllabus and prep another, I realize how grounded in the practical my life has become. Poets and painters appreciate the weightless spontaneity of the depths, but teachers in August are mired in mundane details. These days, I’m a landlubber, preoccupied with schedules and to-do lists. A syllabus is a lifeline precisely because it is practical: before my students and I get swept away in the flash flood of a typical college semester, I carefully chart out due-dates and deliverables.
CLICK HERE for more images from the Worcester Art Museum. Enjoy!
Aug 2, 2022
I’m about halfway through Sarah Winman’s Still Life: A Novel, and I’m completely enthralled after taking a good long time to get into the story.
I have a theory about books and readers. All books have a setting, plot, and characters, but not with equal emphasis. Some books, like mysteries, are primarily fueled by plot: you keep reading to see What Happens Next. Other books focus primarily on characters: not much might happen, or the story might meander, but you keep reading because you become emotionally invested in the inner lives of imaginary folk. And some books are centered in place: you might not connect with the characters or you might not follow the narrative thread, but you keep reading because you’ve been transported to a place–actual or imagined–that intrigues and fascinates.
This is my theory of books, and here’s my corresponding theory of readers: some readers are drawn to plot-driving books, and others are primarily interested in character and/or place. If you’re a plot-focused reader, gaps in the story, tricky timelines, or narrative details that don’t make sense will bother you to no end. But if you’re like me, plot is almost irrelevant as long as a book’s portrait of character and place are strong.
I’d be hard-pressed to describe the meandering plot of Still Life, which spans decades to unfold the aftermath of a chance meeting between a soldier and art historian in wartime Italy. Such a synopsis tells you nothing: what enchants me about Still Life is its ragtag cast of characters, those characters’ loves and losses, and the novel’s evocation of both Italy and England.
Since I’m only halfway through Still Life, I don’t know how the story will end, but what keeps me reading are the characters I’ve come to care for.
Aug 1, 2022
Posted by Lorianne under
Life as Lorianne
1 Comment
While everyone else on my Facebook feed has been playing Wordle, I’ve been playing with Legos.
Although I had a generic set of interlocking plastic bricks when I was a kid, I blame J for my adult onset Lego-mania. Several years ago, J surprised me with the Women of NASA Lego set for Christmas, and I enjoyed building that to display on my desk. The next Christmas I bought the dinosaur fossils set for myself, and next the Lego White House…then by the time Lego debuted a botanical collection featuring a flower bouquet, bonsai tree, and bird of paradise plant, it was clear that building Lego sets had become a thing I do.
In many ways I am the perfect market for Lego sets targeted to adults. I enjoy the process of building. It’s relaxing to follow step-by-step instructions while watching a structure arise brick by brick. In this sense, Lego building is akin to the rug hooking and cross-stitch kits I enjoyed when I was younger. You don’t have to be a great chef to follow a recipe, and you don’t have to be an architect to build a Lego set.
I also enjoy the display quality of completed Lego kits. I’m not building Lego kits to play with them; I’m building them to sit on my shelves. As silly as it sounds, I like looking at the Lego sets I’ve completed. When I was a child, I collected model horses, and instead of actively playing with them like dolls, I enjoyed simply looking at them and creating stories about them in my mind. Like those model horses, Lego sets are fun and interesting to look at, and seeing them reminds me of the process of building them. There is the simple but profound satisfaction of saying “I built that.”
This past Christmas, I bought myself the Lego typewriter as J’s gift to me. (Like many long-married couples, J and I surprise one another with a few small gifts but largely choose our own presents.) The Lego typewriter is the most complicated set I’ve built yet. Although I bought it as a pure display piece, the typewriter has moving parts so that when you press the keys, a typebar rises and the carriage moves to the left.
It takes a lot of fiddly bits to achieve this functionality, and after making a mistake early on that made the entire structure shift askew, I dismantled the entire thing halfway through to start the build from scratch. When I finished the entire thing and felt how solid it felt in my hand, I felt an embarrassing level of satisfaction. In my writing and teaching alike, I trade in intangible words and ideas. Rarely do I get to hold in my hand something I built, or even see the fruit of my labor.
Although it feels a bit silly to admit to playing with toys, I missed out on the jigsaw puzzle craze during the early days of pandemic lockdown. While others were stuck at home playing board games, baking bread, and learning how to play the ukulele, I was teaching remote classes, prepping hybrid classes, then returning to in-person teaching. Having missed out on the “downtime” of the pandemic, now I’m finding simple ways to debrief from another hectic school year. Between you and me, I’ll take “silly” over “stressed” any day.
So earlier this year, I built the Lego Statue of Liberty, followed by the Lego globe J bought me for Valentine’s Day…and earlier this summer, I built the botanical orchids and succulents sets to display in my bathroom. Today, I finished building a replica of Starry Night, which wonderfully captures the three-dimensional nature of Van Gogh’s thick brush strokes, and next I’ll build the Lego jazz quartet and Space Shuttle.
In other words, it looks like the building boom will continue.
Hoarded Ordinaries 