Summertime

And The Reading is Easy

It’s been a while since I did a roundup of reading recommendations. My ability to engage in sustained reading—on the page and via audiobooks—diminished tremendously during lockdown. I came across one theory regarding this, how many of us were all so hyper vigilant about Covid at the start of the pandemic that our brains lost the ability to concentrate on anything else. And then, too, even if you set aside a deadly plague, more generally there’s the idea that so much screen use has fragmented our attention spans, leaving us consuming short bursts of information, unable to focus for long stretches. 

I’m happy to report that my reading skills have improved exponentially over the past several months. I am once again devouring audiobooks and spend several days each week practicing reading print books. 

Sometimes I get bogged down overanalyzing the reading itself. Why do I do it? Does it actually improve my mind and my life? Is it merely a distraction from the real world? Do I take comfort in the escape from what’s in front of me? 

Probably it’s a bit of all of the above. I do know that reading was my very first addiction. Of course I didn’t realize this when I was a child. But I can look back and see my younger self, most especially in summertimes, utterly losing myself in one novel after another. How wonderful to be able to travel through time and space even as I was stuck in a chaotic house in a small town. Reading really was my ticket out, all those stories I ingested opening my eyes to the greater possibilities of the world. 

Reading is also a way I find connection, offering me a ringside seat to the inner workings of the minds of other writers. Such a very intimate thing, to be privy to all those words and thoughts conjured by another who, while writing, did so as a solo activity. Finding resonance in the written works of others feels like having a private audience. I also know that later I’ll have an opportunity for further connection with others who have read the same thing—via reviews and conversations. 

These connections are not the only magic gifts brought to us by reading. Many years ago I was a frequent Visiting Author at schools around Austin. I would always urge  my young charges to take a few moments to really think about how cool reading is. How writing is merely a series of black symbols on a white page, but that we have been taught to translate those symbols into words, and the words allow us to form images, and the images become movies in our imaginations. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. 

Today I’d like to make two reading recommendations—one fiction, one poetry. Let’s start with the fiction. Last March, I read a Modern Love piece in the NYT written by novelist Victor Lodato. I was so moved by this essay, which is a very sad and very honest account of VL’s attempts to deal with profound grief, that I sent him a thank you note. This is a habit of mine—when I read something powerful or see an amazing photo, I will often track down the author or photographer and send a short thank you note. I know this might make me seem like an overenthusiastic lunatic. I take my chances, try to be careful to convey I am not seeking any reply, only wish to convey my gratitude. I did get a reply though, and in it Mr. Lodato mentioned he had a new novel, Honey, about to drop.

What the heck? I thought, and ordered the audio version. I can usually tell pretty quickly if I’m going to like a book, and I knew from the start that Honey was going to hold my attention. Before long, I was obsessed, wolfing down hours of it each day. Honey, the eightysomething protagonist, is fascinating, hilarious, relatable on many levels and beyond belief (in the best way) on other levels. She’s recently returned home to New Jersey after spending her adult life giving her Italian family wide berth, trotting the globe, though never able to escape the psychic distress of having witnessed her father’s violent way of “solving problems”—think Tony Soprano’s definition of solution. 

Honey is such a rich and complex character as is her wardrobe, which gets its own starring role. The supporting characters are also nuanced, multidimensional, surprising, and intense. Then there is VL’s command of the language. I was so taken by his wit, his stunning metaphors and all the rest of it that I sent another thank you note to him in which I wrote: 

The only real drawback of listening to Honey vs reading it—there were so many turns of phrase, so many beautiful metaphors. If I had a print copy I would need a case of highlighters to mark all the spots that moved me. Basically I would just highlight the entire thing. I did memorize this: flawless azurite cabochon. Mind blowing. 

There was an interview with Rick Linklater in the Sunday Times. I love Rick, and the book I’m now working on is, in part, an homage to his first movie Slacker. He said something about how he can’t just watch movies, since his brain is also observing how the movie was made. I often feel this way when reading (listening to) books, a dual experience of being a reader and also a writer trying to learn more about writing, observing technique. 

I’m really happy I was able to toggle back and forth between these modes during my listening of Honey. And for as much as I enjoyed futilely trying to understand how you so magnificently do what you do, I was especially grateful for the times I was just so swept away by the story that all that fell away and I was fully immersed.

I think that really might be my greatest gauge for how much I love a book—is it so engrossing that I forget all about trying to figure out how the magician cuts the lady in half? Definitely the case with Honey. I really hope you’ll treat yourself and get a copy. 

My second recommendation is for the poetry of Ruth Stone. Though she no longer walks among the living, her work continues to have a life of its own. I’d not heard of her until about two weeks ago when a member of my writing workshop brought her to my attention, reading aloud some of her poems for our group. She also suggested I watch the documentary Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind. That was a five dollar investment that has already paid itself off with great dividends. 

Much of Ruth’s work is driven by and focused on the suicide of her husband. When he died, Ruth was left to raise their three young daughters on her own. A quintessential literary oddball, she gave herself over to her muse, adamantly insisting she did not write poetry, but that it came to her, often fully formed, and her job was to capture it. While very accessible—something I appreciate in poetry—her poems are far more nuanced and complex than they might appear upon first reading. I am so swept away by her work that I think I finally understand how Swifties feel. I’m in full on swoon mode over Ruth—her writing and her person. 

The documentary offered lots of side dishes regarding food for thought. Her daughters and their children all appear in the documentary. They are loving and supportive. I also had to wonder about the long term impact and fallout of having a family matriarch perpetually dissecting and reflecting on the extreme trauma that changed all of their lives. And I couldn’t help but think about what it must have been like for my own son to be raised by an eccentric, determined writer. I know there were plenty of good parts in his childhood, and my career offered him access to lots of unusual experiences as I often took him on assignments with me. There were also challenges because, until as a teenager he asked me to stop, I wrote about my experience raising him with great frequency. Surely there remains fallout for him, of being the subject of my very public musings.

As I watched the documentary, I was grateful for the reminder that The Muse is often a fickle and demanding partner. I do think it can be uniquely challenging for women artists who are also mothers to find balance between these roles, each of which can be utterly consuming. I mean challenging in ways that are very different from the challenges of so many men who pick up the pen and who, history confirms, were often successful thanks in large part to the women in their lives who kept all the day-to-day stuff running smoothly. 

When I was a very young writer, just starting out, I had the great fortune/misfortune of falling in love with Carson McCullers’ work. She completed her first novel, her masterpiece The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, when she was just 23. I remember thinking that if I could not be that good, that young that this would be a problem. Forty years later, I’m so grateful that somewhere along the way whatever competition I’ve felt comparing myself to other writers has fallen away. I’m back to where I was as a very young reader, first indulging in so many delicious novels and poems—inspired, swept away, grateful for the escape. I take in the offerings of these two writers with no need or hope of being like them, only gratitude for their dedication to the craft. 

Your turn—what are you reading? Does Summer Reading hit you different than reading in other seasons? Did your ability to do sustained reading shift during lockdown? Talk to me people. 

NOTES:

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I’ll be teaching a knitting class at the French Legation in Austin on Saturday June 15th. If you want more details shoot me an email.