The World According to . . .

It’s come around to such that I only read fun novels (i.e. novels not directly related to work) when I’m traveling. On the plane, that is. For the round-trip to Seoul this time, I read Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist on my way there and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace on my way back. Having a good novel really helps me do the ten-hour flight thing. Otherwise, I’d be so much more miserable. Both novels were really good, and they also jerked me back to the realm of reading for pleasure.

The novel I read for fun after finishing a writing task was John Irving’s The World According to Garp. It’s the fourth? Irving novel I’ve read. The one that I like the most is still A Prayer for Owen Meany, but Garp was pretty good too. I’ve been meaning to read it for a while; I picked it up this time because it recently came up in a conversation with the date. The date, who is not in English, has read Irving.

As someone who loves to read and to write, of course I like books about writers and their lives (and the relationship between their works and their lives). The part that I found the most charming was how Garp’s first story got him Helen: “The Pension Grillparzer” wouldn’t make Garp enough money to buy a good car. Garp, however, expected more than money or transportation from “The Pension Grillparzer.” Very simply, he expected to get Helen Holm to live with him–even marry him.” The woman marries him because she’s won overy by his writing. The relationship between Garp and Helen, husband and wife, is also that of a writer and a reader. And I just find the way they relate through writing and reading so . . . . ideal. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone fell in love with me through my writing? I’ve read this that you wrote, and now I’d like to marry you. Uhhhh…. well, on second thought, in real life that might be scary. But still the idea of bonding over reading and writing is something that I can’t get over.

The date described the book as not being very kind to the women’s movement. He’s not a very ideologically inclined person, which is not necessarily bad, but I do wonder what he thinks each time I make a “feminist statement.” He must think I’m an ideological fanatic. The only literary critic he mentions is Harold Bloom too, though I think that’s more a result of his undergradaute curriculum than anything else. I must have a conversation with him about feminism in Garp when I see him this evening. I think debating whether the book is feminist or anti-feminist is beside the point. That’s exactly what is ridiculed in the book. But I don’t think the book primarily makes fun of feminism either. It ridicules ideological extremism, but it also displays a good understanding of sexism, and especially institutional sexism.

One thing I can’t get in the novel is Garp going crazy over Helen’s affair with her graduate student. I mean, I can see why one would go berserk over the spouse’s betrayal, but didn’t Garp himself engage in a couple of affairs himself? It’s not like he was such a clean slate himself. But for someone who’s had a couple of affairs with young babysitters, he is remarkably self-righteous in condemning Helen of her affair. I just don’t get it. The only thing I can think of is that Helen’s affair resulted in a substitution of Garp with the lover in her priority of reading. Since the relationship is built on Helen being the first reader of Garp, her affair is truly a betrayal. Eh, that’s the only explanation I can come up with.

The next two books on the read-for-fun list are William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Writing and War

“I explain the reasons for and benefits of silent eating. “Use your other senses to know the people around you.” (Oh, to me, talking is a sense.) “Without talking, you can still communicate with your fellow diners. Look at them. Smile at them. Rest from your usual social personality. Without the distractions of conversation, see your food.” Naked lunch. “Feel the energy and atmosphere of the room. Listen to the sounds”–birds are singing!–”and smell the food and the cut grass. Hear the noises of your chewing, and be aware of tastes and textures. Slow your eating, enjoy each bite.”

It’s not a passage from a weightloss guidebook. It’s from Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Fifth Book of Peace (271), where the war veterans attending the writing workshop at the Community of Mindful Living are asked to a meditative, silent lunch. I have to admit that the idea of silent eating is a bit strange, although the call to “rest your social personality” is attractive. The book’s been interesting, if a bit slow going, so far. I always enjoy Kingston’s formal innovations and experiments–what she does differently in each book formalistically in relation to the content.

Despite the narrator’s (presumably Kingston herself, but you can’t be sure; remember the autobiographical controversy around The Woman Warrior) insistence that the workshop is not about healing–”Healing, I avoid that New Age word. It implies that something’s wrong, that they’re unwell, and need fixing” (265)–it (and the whole book) seems very much about healing. I think the iffiness that we (or at least me and the people around me) feel at the suggestion of healing is interesting. I remember getting a question at the MLA on healing in Theresa Cha’s Dictee. Although I steered away from any therapeutic implications in my readng of the text, and made that clear in addressing the question, I have to admit that healing through literature is something people who take literature seriously always have hanging in the back of their minds. It’s just that we don’t know how to talk about it in a non-New Agey way.

Kingston’s book is fueling my desire to be a part of writing group. Creative writing and not critical writing. I’ve thought about it when I was in Seoul–since I had a few fleeting ideas about stories I’d like to write–but I’m a bit hesitant to look into the possibilities of joining a writing group. It is quite a bit of a commitment. Do I have the time to do it at this point? I had the urge to write fiction a couple years back when I was in Chapel Hill too. And I did scribble a couple of short (really short) stories that are, ahem, embarrassing. It’s hard to keep on writing on your own when you have other commitments and interests. I am, however, always enamoured by the idea of sharing one’s writing with other writers who are interested in listening.