Three Days Before the Shooting. . . (Ellison, ed. by Callahan and Bradley)

I generally stay away from posthumous novels, especially ones completed by someone else. I must have picked Juneteenth a zillion times, but instead I would just re-read Invisible Man. (It’s one of my regular re-reads.) But I’ve always been curious about why Ellison never published a second novel. After reading a great biography of him (Rampersad), I had some idea of the difficulties he faced getting consistent time to work on it. I decided to see for myself.

Some 1,000 or so pages later, I think I understand why he didn’t publish it. The editors say he thought it lacked “connective tissue” and that’s right, I think. There are quite a few great set pieces, but there’s only the barest outlines of a plot. A sampling of notes that Ellison typed for himself (to be found among his papers at the Library of Congress) suggests that Ellison was quite aware of that. He had ideas. He had grand ideas. He had too many grand ideas. I was always curious if he was nervous about pushing out a second book after the huge success of Invisible Man, but that doesn’t come up in any of the notes in this edition.

The other problem is that the great set pieces he did develop (and we are treated to several versions of some of them) are incredibly dialogue heavy. Ellison’s characters make serious speeches. And if they are not talking out loud to someone else, they are having long thoughts. The editors make the point here that Ellison’s papers reveal that he made the transition from typescript to computers, and I rue the day that someone showed him where the italics key was. (I also regret that he lost files.)

Some of these epic set pieces include people having conversations in which one character reports at length about a conversation he had with another character. There are quotation marks all over the place.

So, this is for Ellison scholars, and if you have the ability to pick a book up and put it down without finishing it. But to read it straight through like I tried to do? No. That was not a good idea.

George Wallace: An Enigma (Palmer)

Mary Palmer’s subtitle claims that this book is a “factual account of the life of Alabama’s most controversial and divisive Governor.” On the surface, it is hard to judge how factual it is because, since I was reading a review copy, there was no bibliography. Even if I were to find a published copy, I’d still question Palmer’s insistence on her use of the word ‘factual.’ Her subtitle does not even really reflect Palmer’s goal. I think it would be more accurate to call this book an apologia. Palmer, clearly an adoring fan of Wallace, seems to seek to salvage his legacy. To this end, she lets George (note: it’s customary to call the subjects of biographies by their last names, but Palmer clearly neither wants nor feels such a distance) speak for himself. This is not, even with the occasional insights from others, enough to make this book a factual account.

The alleged enigmas are supposedly two, I presume. Did Wallace like running for office more than being in office? Palmer names this issue a few times, but never explores it or elicits a comment from her beloved George about it. And she does trumpet his accomplishments for him. The other, likely more well-known question, is whether Wallace really changed after he was shot by a would-be assassin. (Palmer’s rendering of the day of the assassination is well done. It’s tough to create suspense when the reader knows what is coming, but she does. And the details, such as the hospital’s neighbor who allowed the press to use his phone for free because he didn’t think he should profit off such a moment, are the highlight of the book.) Did he forego his racist ways?

Palmer allows both Wallace himself and the Reverend Franklin Graham to try to rewrite his most infamous line about segregation, but this revisionism will not hold. Wallace said what he said publicly. The moment of crisis made the man, and that’s what emerged. Did he regret it? As a politician? A person? As a religious man? I don’t really care and Palmer’s obvious bias did nothing to change that. Her notion, seemingly shared by Wallace, that appointing blacks to various city positions somehow compensated for his conduct in Selma and in that schoolhouse door, demonstrates a superficial understanding of the issues at hand. Jesse Jackson apparently forgave him. Wonderful. As for Palmer’s claim that “ironically” (not the first time she indicates that she does not have a clear grasp on what that word mean), his schoolhouse door stand accelerated the pace of school integration, well, to be generous, that’s hardly “factual.”

Palmer seeks to reclaim the narrative about Wallace here, but her writing skills are not up to the task. It is not hard to see that she shares many of Wallace’s pre-assassination attempt beliefs (if,in fact, his ideas did change). Her attempts to explain away Wallace’s racism fall horribly flat and what she calls ‘harsh’ about Wallace’s post-assassination attempt comments about gays is in fact first-class bigotry, a bigotry that no bullet seems to have changed.

So if you want a sentimental and heavily biased look at Wallace’s life, here it is. Otherwise, leave this one right on the discount shelf in the back, where you’re bound to find a number of new copies.

A Person of Interest (Choi)

I love that this book defies easy classification. On the one hand, as the title suggests, there’s a thriller element inherent in it. Something horrible has happened. Who has done it? Is the person of interest really a suspect? Or is he, Hitchcock style, a kind of wronged man? I promise not to spoil it.

On the other hand, this is kind of an interior study, about the complicated ways people behave even without intention or malice. Things get tangled. People are deceptive. Very little goes according to plan. We make decisions that, given the luxury of hindsight, make very little sense. We make destructive assumptions.

That part about making destructive assumptions is another way of saying that I did not figure out who did the horrible thing. And I was lured into an assumption that disturbs me because, I think, Choi wanted to question why we are so ready link violence with a choice one character makes. (I’d name the choice but that would be a spoiler.)

As much as it frustrated me at the time, I admired Choi’s consistent efforts to keep the camera in close even when the plot was boiling over. I wanted to find out who did it. She kept us focused on the landscape of the people involved and the details of their lives. A gun rack looms, breakfast is ordered, a birth certificate is revealed. In the end, everything carries the same weight as solving the mystery. We are, Choi reminds us, mysterious human beings, even and perhaps especially to ourselves. This is what makes us interesting.

I will definitely read more of her work.

Invasive Species (Helal)

In my experience, there are poets, from Homer to Billy Collins, who will invite you into their books with a kind of invocation. They will feature a poem of welcome to the reader, a way to honor the muse, and it often has its own section.

Helal is not one of these poets. You open the book and she’s throwing punches. She opens instead with a few lines from Chinua Achebe:

Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.

And she follows through right from the opening poem, “poem to be read from right to left” and “invasive species self-questionnaire.” “the middle east is missing” is destined to be a classic. Required reading, that one. Look, I found it for you. You’re welcome.

One Poem by Marwa Helal

“the middle east is missing”

Normally, I try to read just 2-3 poems in a sitting in order to give myself time to digest them. I inhaled the second section of her collection, “immigration as a Second Language.” Immigration debate? What immigration debate? Read this and it’s over. Helal’s fury pours off the page and there’s no arguing with her. This is not the way to treat human beings. Read “a-sy-lum” and rage. The ending of the poem “Q” is, I think, the center of the collection – “This balancing act of being here and not here.”

Read it. Read it all. Read the footnotes.

Call Me Zebra (Van der Vliet Oloomi)

“Absurdist, unwieldy, and bracingly intelligent.” – Entertainment Weekly

“A sexy, complicated affair.” – Elle

“Darkly comic.” – The New Yorker

“WTabsoluteF?” – Charles

I picked this up because the description reminded me a little bit of Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, and I am, in general, a sucker for a book about books. And some award notice caught my eye – maybe it was because it was a finalist for the PEN / Faulker Award.

I have no real idea what to say here. I suspect I didn’t get it. Because if I did, this seemed like the effort of an author with occasional flashes of genuine skill who was more interested in being clever than anything else. Zebra, the protagonist, is the kind of person who speaks in platitudes, like she knows all of the quotations from a book, but hasn’t read the book. Yet somehow she’s magnetic. Her magnetism seems to rest in her sexuality. Either she has no eye for the practical or Van Der Vliet Oloomi was too focused on being the funniest most obscure one in the room that she thought an occasional nod to the logistics of life (watch the casual mentions to Zebra’s finances) was sufficient. There are a few powerful images here and the notion of a return exile was promising, but she (Zebra, Van Der Vliet Oloomi – who knows?) and the book ends with a rather unprofound and unoriginal quest for love. Honestly, I hope the guy (if there’s a sequel I don’t read) shuts the door in her face. Like I said before, though, I may just not be clever enough or worldy-wise enough to get it.

Rapture (Carol Ann Duffy)

No, not that rapture. The rapture experienced during a sensuous affair. At times, I felt like I was reading Duffy’s private diary. Beautiful and, in the end, you could see it coming, you will want to tell her, sad.

Finding the Words | Carol Ann Duffy

I found the words at the back of a drawer,
wrapped in black cloth, like three rings
slipped from a dead woman’s hand, cold,
dull gold. I had held them before,
~
years ago,
then put them away, forgetting whatever it was
I could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips,
like a pledge, like a kiss,
~
and my breath
warmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words,
and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm –
I love you, I love you, I love you –
as though they were new.

Bridgewater Hall – Carol Ann Duffy

Again, the endless northern rain between us 
like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are,  
which row, which seat. I stand at my back door.  
The light pollution blindfolds every star.

I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet  
and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm, 
a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see 
the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town,

then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark,  
your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk,  
somehow, against your skin, I’d say look up, let it utter  
on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk.

Asylum (Bialosky)

I think that I read this wrong, and that I was the wrong reader. First the latter. Bialosky cites Dante and Celan as two major influences and I have limited experience with Dante and almost none with Celan. And this may have led me to my problem with the former issue. I generally try to read three poems at a time, so I am giving myself time to think about them. Otherwise, it can be easy to rush through poetry, I’ve found. Given what I do know of Dante, though, I now wonder whether I should have read this straight through in order to gain some of the insights that could be gleaned by a narrative approach. Instead, only the occasional line or poem registered and very few seemed to stand on their own. I could see some connections between and among poems but by reading just a few ‘lyric sections’ at a time, I was not really able to make much meaning of those connections or even the order of these lyrics.

I have always been interested in what makes something a poetry book. If the poems are not a narrative or they are not thematically linked, how do you know when you have the right poems in the right order? How does a collection of poems become a book? I heard one poet I admire talk about how she was told that her initial draft for her book needed one more strand to make it complete and so she added it. I read her book shortly after that and her strands seemed to complement each other. The book was coherent.

Bialosky’s work did not come across to me as coherent. Some of the strands she incorporated seemed to be nodding acquaintances with others, but it was only rarely when one seemed to illuminate the other (her yoga teacher and her sister’s suicide, for example).

So I don’t want to say I liked it or didn’t like it. I am going to say that I didn’t read it right, put it back on the shelf and give it another try one day.

EEG (Drndic)

This was not like anything else I’ve ever read which, from me, is a compliment. Not only is the style different (see spreadsheet, proposed inserted envelopes, lists, fictional psyhciatric charts, etc.), but it’s net in a part of the world I’ve rarely encountered before. It’s largely set in Croatia and the surrounding regions. As for the style, perhaps this is another response to the not-so-novel, “The novel is dead!” claim that seems to pop up at regular intervals. It also may be in response to the subject of at least some of the book, the Holocaust, and the implication that such an event, much like cancer (yes, the book makes the comparison apt) can not be contained (by ordinary prose). The book also makes the Holocaust very human and perhaps not as exceptional as history makes it out to be.

The picaresque approach always troubles me because at some point such books have to find their way to an end. Drndic navigates that well here, if a bit abruptly.

One gets the sense that Drndic (who, by the way, is female!) is more likely to have a cult following than a popular audience. On the back of this Financial Times Book of the Year, she draws comparisons to Beckett (whom I love) and Bolano (whom I find, after limited exposure, a bit too obscure for me).

As for the surprise at the fact that she’s female, the voice here is curmudgeonly male, one so familiar from the seemingly endless list of aging white male writers. I have to think about why I was so surprised and wonder why Drndic (sorry that I don’t know how to make the accent on the ‘c’) chose to feature a male character.

A challenging book, to be sure. If I had them in front of me, I’d probably read all of her work in a row. As it stands now, I’ll likely pace myself. She’s incredibly original, and I like that a lot – no malice intended.

The Body’s Precarious Balance (Dougherty)

Dougherty’s poems insist that you be ready to listen. “[W]ipe your shoes, /straighten your coat, before you lift // your head to say hello” (Beyond the Endless Hum). And you are not to listen for the stuff of symphonies because “[i]t’s never the parting / of mist, // the resurrection, the drama / of heaven // & hell,” but it’s “[t]he soul’s brilliant notes / released” (The Body’s Precarious Balance). “[I]f you quietly listen”, Dougherty assures us, “the breeze. . . says / summer is falling asleep. The bees / will slumber, it whispers” (Poem). And if we listen quietly, we will notice that “the room clatters / with the patter of footsteps against the roof / of our hearts” (Double Helix).

Sometimes what we hear will not be to our liking: “The word regret slit open the silence. . . the stupidity of stupid jobs” (A Prayer) and sometimes the absence of sound will be what we are grateful to hear (Cocoons):

At dawn, I woke thirsty. The snow had stopped. In the watery light of the world, there was this silence: no one worked the block, no one asked, or begged, or pleaded.

Or, “let us sometimes forget the song” in “A Bridge of Light.”

Dougherty’s poems seem inspired by the in-between times, the time between when Tonia thinks about leaving and when she sits by her open bedroom window in “A Last Letting Go.” The pause that takes your breath away and perfect enjambment between “pouring a little bit [of beer] out / for all the brothers / not here” in “A Common Ground on the Asphalt Court.”

Dougherty writes of “the nights that enter our lives to change them” (Nocturne) and the nights when “[t]he moon is the shade of cheap champagne / spilled on a motel carpet” (The Sad Music of Insects).

I never really understand how people decide on the order of poems in a collection, but if you read only four, “Instructions to the Newlyweds,” “Five Songs for the Loneliest Witness,” “Moon-Grief Utterance” and “Awaken” which appear consecutively, you’ll find these are this books brilliant notes, released, and they best exemplify the range Dougherty explores here, like light and dark and beginnings and endings. But he is not just concerned with the extremes, but the spaces between them, “[i]n the synapse / Between centuries” (Out of the Womb of the Earth Grows the Book and the Broom) and the tunnel between a star and infinity in the (deliberately?) adjacent poem, “Dying.” In a 1 ½ page prose poem called “The Coat,” Dougherty takes us through the full gamut of his vision and when we learn that “[t]he moth will not return to watch her eggs hatch,” it breaks our hearts with the truth of it and makes us wish Tonia was like that moth.

Dougherty pulls the camera back at times with the pointed commentary of “The Evening News” and the Ginsberg-inspired, “An Iron Spiral.” (You may not be able to say “a rolled-down-window-waltz of red-light-chance-encounters” as quickly as Chuck Berry probably could have, but you know exactly what Dougherty means.) All told, this collection paints our lives the way that the speaker observes a woman pleading for money at a traffic light:

She struggled for her story, struggled for just the right words that might mean a small amount of money – those glittering coins we gather for what payments we must make.

“Forget / the NOW / of the newspaper,” Dougherty writes (Beyond The Endless Hum) and listen.