A Reader's Place

I was at an exhibit a few weeks ago at Morven–the historic house and museum in Princeton–to see an exhibit about the Bell Telephone Company, whose history is so much a part of twentieth-century New Jersey. The exhibit was especially focused on Bell Laboratories, the R&D arm of AT&T, which has a distinguished history of innovation in the field of telecommunications. Having lived in Monmouth County for many years, I was very much aware of the presence of Bell Laboratories locations all over the county and the milestones in telecommunications that took place there. The first ship-to-shore transmissions took place near the shore and the first transatlantic telephone call was made from Deal Test Site, now a park where you can see the remnants of the old buildings where the research was done. Marconi ran tests in transatlantic radio telegraphy from Atlantic Highlands at the northern end of the Jersey Shore.

Like many large companies in the previous century, diversity in hiring staff at Bell Laboratories was not company practice. No Jews were hired until after World War II and no Blacks were hired until the 1970s. (Bell Laboratories was founded in 1925.) The exhibit at Morven had several panels about the diverse staff who enriched the company’s research and culture. I was very interested in one particular panel about Marion Croak, a Black woman who joined the Labs in 1982. It is quite astounding to me that her name is not more well-known. Here’s the blurb that was next to her photograph:

“Marion Croak began her career at Bell Labs…in the Human Factors research division. She became interested in converting voice data into digital signals, which would allow people to speak via the internet instead of telephone lines. This Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology allows the videoconferencing that has become commonplace. Today she is a Vice President of Engineering at Google. She holds over 200 patents.”

So there’s no specific book attached to this post, but just a reminder that women’s contributions, and minority women in particular, rarely get the attention they deserve. Lately, there have been a number of books reminding us of this. I probably don’t have to mention Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, and there’s been a spate of books recently about women spies in World War II: American, British, French, and Russian. In researching Marion’s biography, I found that she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, a site worth looking at.

Correction: The first Black employee at Bell Labs was the engineer W. Lincoln Hawkins. He was hired in 1942.

Here’s a short bio of his career there; the link to the bio is at the end.

“The first Black scientist at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1942, he had a long and distinguished career as a chemist. His most important innovation was as co-inventor of an additive to stabilize the plastic protective covering of telephone cables, a process that has saved billions of dollars for telecom companies around the world. In addition to 14 U.S. and 129 foreign patents, Hawkins was the first Black inventor to be inducted into the National Academy of Engineering and received the 1992 National Medal of Technology. Hawkins long served as a mentor to young minority researchers. He retired in 1976.” https://life.att.jobs/article-distinguished-black-inventors-history/#:~:text=Lincoln%20Hawkins,distinguished%20career%20as%20a%20chemist.

The other day I was taking a drive with a friend back to my old neighborhood and we passed a sign, one of those huge LED signs powered by a generator, that announces upcoming roadwork or detours. As I approached it and passed it, the sign broadcast only one message: “FIND ALTERNATE ROUTE.” Was it trying to tell me something?

“Find alternate route” certainly could be the mantra for the main character in Till the Wheels Fall Off by Brad Zellar, a book that takes a deep dive into the insomnia- and ADHD-raddled brain of Matthew Carnap, from childhood into adulthood. When the book opens, Matthew has returned to his dying hometown, Prentice, Minnesota, after trying his luck in the Twin Cities and not doing so well. Matthew’s father died in Vietnam before ever seeing his son, and Matt’s been raised in Prentice by his single mom, with help from his Dad’s brothers, especially Rollie Carnap. Matt’s mother has never recovered from the death of her husband and is well-meaning but inattentive. The heart of the novel is the five years in the 1980s that she spent married to Russ Vargo, who owned Screaming Wheels roller rink. Matt and his mother moved into the small apartment behind the rink. Claustrophobic, certainly, but Matt and Russ developed an intense bond over the music at the rink.

Russ is obsessed with the music of the 70s and 80s, making mixtapes and playing them from the High Tower above the rink and after hours as well, skating late into the night to the sounds of his favorites. He can’t get enough. The nine-year-old Matt, happy to have someone paying attention to him, becomes Russ’s disciple; the music becomes his obsession as well. That’s not a bad thing but it does prevent Matt from thinking about what his life might be like after high school. He hangs around with a stoner named Greenland but manages to avoid trouble. Russ and his mother divorce, leaving Matt feeling stranded and alone once again After high school, for five years he takes to the road in his uncles’ business servicing coin-operated condom machines around the Midwest before giving up the “rubber route” and landing a writing job in Minneapolis.

When he returns to Prentice in his late twenties, empty-handed and depressed, Uncle Rollie sets up an apartment for him in the press box of the high school football stadium. It’s a good start for Matt in putting his life back together. I won’t tell anymore about what happens in the last third of the novel. The writing is wonderful and evocative, nostalgic and full of longing. The Kirkus reviewer said it had “lots of sentence-level snap” and I agree. It was a pleasure to read.

There isn’t much plot until the end and the novel is filled with playlists and Russ’s judgments about which bands are worth listening to. I’ve rarely read a book that does such a good job of conveying the power of popular music on our brains. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby comes to mind, of course, but also Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins-Reid. And especially the memoir Love is a Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by the music critic Rob Sheffield.

I thought I’d pass this along for those days when you can’t seem to get out of your own way to accomplish the tasks that seemed so incredibly important when you went to sleep the previous night. My friend Pnina sent it to me a few months ago and I printed it out and posted it near my desk. I didn’t ask her about the origin, but I’m sure she’ll tell me when she sees this post! (Photo by Gerald Reisner)

I am reading a mystery novel

I am collecting my thoughts

I am contemplating my future

I am remembering things past

I am so happy to be in my room

I am trying to concentrate

I am enjoying a pastry

I am being inspired by a book

I am listening to my music

I am planning my evening out

I am watching a great film

I am thinking about a career change

I am meditating

I am reflecting on my decisions

I am tasting a glass of wine

I am enjoying my tea

I am stimulating my curiosity

I am writing a love letter

I am dreaming of a bright tomorrow

I’m a big fan of Rebecca Solnit’s writing about social issues (Call Them by Their True Names, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions) and when I read the reviews of Orwell’s Roses it sounded very different from those books. Was it really about the roses Orwell planted in his garden? As a person with a black thumb, did I want to read about gardening? But I know that for a writer like Solnit, almost anything can be a jumping-off point for insightful social commentary. The book does indeed start with the roses that Orwell planted in his garden in Wallington, England. Solnit spins off into Orwell’s life and political thought but always circles back to the meaning of roses, for Orwell and for all of us. You will be surprised and enlightened, as always, by her writing.

And then there’s Orwell’s own commitment to writing well. Solnit quotes him: “But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.” Solnit writes that the passage above “has long served me as a credo…Clarity, precision, accuracy, honesty, and truthfulness are aesthetic values to him, and pleasures.”

Solnit led me to one of Orwell’s essays about writing, “Politics and the English Language,” about obfuscation and fuzzy thinking. It’s a timeless piece that every writer should read.

I borrowed a library ebook of Orwell’s Roses but decided that a hard copy was necessary so that I could re-read some of the chapters, and think about the ideas without an expiration date hovering over my enjoyment of the book. It was well worth the price.

A recent New Yorker cartoon shows a teenage girl shouting at her mother: “Nature or nurture, it’s all your fault!” Jean Hanff Korelitz’s new novel is about nature and nurture, how we chart our own way in the world despite our families, and many other subjects as well, but not in the way you might expect. The well-known Philip Larkin poem, “This be the Verse” is apropos. Readers of Korelitz’s last novel, The Plot, will remember how she skewered the writing trade. The satire was hilarious and the main character’s comeuppance at the end was delicious. The Latecomer is also filled with satire, but the novel is more character-driven. It’s about the Oppenheimer family–parents and three children who spiral away from each other in wider and wider arcs and a fourth child, who, well, let’s just say she changes the dynamics. Read it and find out.  

Two events set the novel in motion. The first is a car accident, the second is infertility. The accident saddles Salo Oppenheimer with a crushing burden of loss and guilt that his wife Johanna does her best to alleviate. Johanna, desperate for the liveliness of family to fill their large Brooklyn Heights house, decides to try in vitro fertilization. After many failures, three of four viable eggs are implanted in Johanna’s womb. The fourth one is frozen, just in case. All goes well this time, and Johanna and Salo are the parents of triplets Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally. But the triplets share only their gestation in Johanna’s womb; once they are aware of each other’s presence, intense disdain drives them apart. This is not a happy family. Johanna is devastated and Salo, unable to engage, retreats into his own world of art collecting and guilt. When the triplets go off to college, Johanna remembers her last (frozen) egg and decides to take one more chance at a happy family. Phoebe is the fourth Oppenheimer child, the eponymous latecomer. 

This is a difficult book to summarize; there’s lots of plot and intense character interaction. I haven’t mentioned the satire that permeates the story, skewering liberals and conservatives alike. Mormonism, hoarding, art collecting, chickens, Cornell, and progressive private schools all make significant appearances. New York City is summoned up in a most satisfying way. Many readers will recognize quotes and references to other books. In the middle, you’ll wonder where it’s all going, but Korelitz ties it up nicely. Will the Oppenheimers ever be content to be part of the same family? That’s what kept me turning the pages. 

Other complex family novels that I’ve enjoyed: 

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt

and, for those of you who need an absorbing thousand-page novel, one of my all-time favorites, A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

I’m sure you’ve all read–or read reviews of–those novels where a young girl goes missing. It’s become a sub-genre of domestic fiction and coming-of-age novels. When I read a good review of such a book I sigh. Do I have to read this one? Well, yes, I did have to read the brand-new Dirt Creek because it’s set in Australia. For me, Australian noir has replaced Scandinavian noir. Trust me on this. It’s a long way from the bitter cold and long nights of Nordic mysteries to the sun-parched, drought-ridden, cheerless towns of the outback, but it’s a trip you need to take. I’ve appended, at the bottom of this post, a few other titles I’ve enjoyed in recent years. I’ve been to Australia and it seemed like a cheery place, full of those funny greetings (G’day mate!) and strange animals, but hey, what does a tourist know about the dark corners?

There are the familiar tropes in Dirt Creek: a popular twelve-year-old girl goes missing; her friends and their families have secrets they keep from the authorities; a policewoman with her own issues is sent from the big city to solve the crime. Scrivenor’s success with these familiar plot devices comes from the characters she creates and the narrative structure. Esther, the girl who goes missing, is more than just a good friend to Ronnie and Lewis, outsiders in their school. She’s the one who makes them feel safe and understood. Their parents and extended families are a mess. Their town, called Durton–dubbed “Dirt Town” by the teens–lives up to its name.

Each chapter focuses on a different character, building a picture of the town along with relationships and motivations. One of the characters speaks in the first person and there are chapters in the third person as well, kind of a chorus of the town’s children, whose voices reflect, look back, and create tension. Here’s an example from one of the third-person sections: “We understood, even then, that bad things happened. And we understood that sometimes people made them happen, sometimes those people were close to us, or even ourselves.”

But more than that, Scrivenor locates emotions in the bodies of her characters, describing exactly how events made them feel: the stone lodged in the stomach, the sensation of choking, the claustrophobia in the lungs. We know that Esther won’t come back, but it’s the way each person is bound up in the story that makes it so compelling.

Other Australian noir that I’ve read and enjoyed:

The Dry by Jane Harper. Flatiron Books, 2017. (now a movie) This was the first book in the detective Aaron Falk series.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper. Flatiron Books, 2018. Second book in the Aaron Falk series. (The third in the series, Exiles, is coming out in January, 2023.)

Scrublands by Chris Hammer. Atria Books, 2019.

Breath by Tim Winton. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008.

Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldblum. Picador, 2011.

In pre-pandemic times, I used to meet occasionally in the evenings with several women at the cafe French Roast in Greenwich Village. A glass (or two) of wine, maybe a salad or tartine, and good conversation. It’s not so easy these days to meet people in a casual way and I miss those gatherings. One of the women at those French Roast gatherings was Fatima Shaik, the author of Economy Hall. I’ve been remiss in not writing sooner about this book, since I had the pleasure of interviewing Shaik for the Women’s National Book Association several months ago. She used to tell us about the years she spent doing research for a history book about New Orleans and how she had become immersed in the story. I knew I’d read it once it was published.

Economy Hall is indeed an immersive book and I understand why Shaik spent all those years uncovering the history of the group. It was a vibrant organization in the Treme district that served as a social club; a support network; an educational and charitable organization; and a way for the Creole community to display its learning and unique style. Many of the founding members came from Haiti, where they had been involved in uprisings. They spoke several languages, appreciated music and literature, and enjoyed good food. New Orleans didn’t want these rebellious Blacks, but they came anyway and created a vibrant free Black community. It’s quite a story, from Economy Hall’s founding, in the 1830s, to the 1950s when it had a second life as a popular venue for jazz. Detailed minutes–which Shaik’s father wisely rescued from the trash–provided a wealth of information but also difficult choices about how to present the material.

How does a writer decide when the research is done, when there’s enough information to tell the story? Which of the thousands of details and anecdotes are needed to invigorate the tale? And from whose point of view should the story be told? Shaik decided to let one of the members of Economy Hall tell the history: Ludger Boguille, an early member with ties to Haiti. For many years Boguille was the recording secretary, taking minutes of the meetings–in French–in a beautiful, almost calligraphic hand. Focusing on an individual was a great choice to bring the reader right into the life of the Society: the friendships, the fabulous social events, the feuds among members, and the painful striving for recognition by the white community.

It’s a great story, well told and I highly recommend it!

I have to confess I’ve been in a reading slump. I start a book and then wonder if it’s worth my time. I close it and go on to another and then have the same experience. I just closed Emma Straub’s new book, This Time Tomorrow after reading about sixty pages. Sigh; I’ve liked her other books very much, especially All Adults Here and Modern Lovers. This one was too slight for me right now. A friend gave me The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and I closed that one too. 

So what has caught my attention? My older son recommended The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. I hadn’t read any of McCarthy’s books before, tried The Road, but was put off by the incredible bleakness. The Crossing is also bleak, but it’s very haunting. I felt literally sucked into the story, grim though it was. The plot is minimal, the dialogue cryptic, so the reader needs to concentrate to get the juice out of what’s going on. The characters’ motivations are opaque: never stated, only felt. It’s about two brothers, Billy and Boyd Parham, and the trips they make from New Mexico to Mexico in the 1930s. I won’t say more; it’s quite an experience to read it. My son says it’s the best of the three books in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy and he’s pretty reliable about literature, but I may still pick up the other ones. 

I also enjoyed The Colony by Audrey Magee. The characters and setting are unusual and the author tackles some interesting issues of cultural appropriation in a novel way. It takes a while for the story to warm up. Mr. Lloyd, an artist, comes to an isolated island off the coast of Ireland to spend the summer painting the beautiful cliffs. He’s channeling Gauguin, hoping to go off in a new more naturalistic direction that will catch the London buyers. His wife, a gallerist, won’t sell his works anymore or share his bed. The local folks have agreed to rent him a cabin and provide food. Lloyd is joined by a French linguist, Mr. Masson, who is surprised and annoyed to find the artist there. Masson is studying the Gaelic language on the island and is worried that speaking English to Lloyd will corrupt the islanders’ language. Two cranky, disappointed men face off in this short novel of ideas. The islanders are more appealing, especially the teenage James, who may be a better artist than Lloyd. 

Last month I was listening to one book and reading another and since they were both about families and adultery it was a little head-banging to go back and forth. One was Monica Ali’s new book Love Marriage and the other was Tom Perrotta’s 2004 novel Little Children. I read Love Marriage on my e-reader and listened to Little Children (read by a terrific narrator). I enjoyed both but wanted to write about Little Children. I’d never read anything by Tom Perrotta and Little Children is often listed as his best novel, so I figured I’d start with that. It’s hilarious and I’m now a Perrotta fan.  His writing reminds me of Carl Hiaasen–dark humor with social commentary–but in Perrotta’s writing there’s more character development and the plotting has more depth.

The story is about two unhappy, suburban, thirty-ish couples and the neighbors who orbit around them. Handsome jock Todd, a stay-at-home dad, is ostensibly studying for the bar exam (which he’s already failed twice) but instead of spending his evenings studying in the library, he’s watching the local skateboarding teens or playing football with a team of local cops. Todd has no intention of studying for the exam but can’t tell that to his hard-working wife who’s already exasperated by his lack of ambition.

Todd takes his son to the playground every day but the local mothers won’t talk to him; they call him the “Prom King” and keep their distance. A dad at the playground breaks all their social norms. Sarah, tired of the playground moms’ rigid attitudes, and ready for an adventure, approaches Todd to chat him up and scandalize the other moms. What ensues, as any reader could guess, is an affair that shakes up their lives. Meanwhile, Sarah’s husband, Richard, has his own sordid secret life. And Larry, one of Todd’s football buddies, is on the warpath about a convicted pedophile who’s just moved back to the neighborhood.

I know the above summary doesn’t sound particularly funny, but Perrotta takes all these folks with their obsessions and opinions and mixes them into a wicked comedy without losing sight of their humanity. There’s a scene in the local church with Larry and the pedophile that is so hilarious you won’t be able to forget it. Some characters get their just desserts, some learn hard lessons, and some get away unscathed.

I’m giving a zoom talk the evening of April 13, 2022 on the way that memoir writers use novelistic techniques to make their memoirs, well, memorable. If you’re just reading this today, you can sign up here. I don’t know yet if the program will be recorded to be available later, but if it is, I will let you know.

Here’s a list that includes some of the memoirs I’ll talk about; they’re all great memoirs and I’m hoping you’ve read some of them! Many of them are older titles, but I love ’em. The cookbook is filled with great anecdotes as well as great recipes. I’ve cited the original hardcover editions but many are available in paperback.

More on this subject in forthcoming posts!

Beckerman, Ilene. Love, Loss, and What I Wore. Algonquin Books, 1995. 

Bruder, Jessica. Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. W.W. Norton, 2017. 

Conroy, Pat. My Losing Season.  Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2002.

Conway, Jill, Ker. The Road From Coorain. Knopf, 1989.

Dubner, Stephen. Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son’s Return to His Jewish Family. William Morrow, 1998. 

Fuller, Alexandra. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.  Random House, 2001.

Giobbi, Ed. Italian Family Cooking. Random House, 1971.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Wait Till Next Year.  Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Gornick, Vivian. Fierce Attachments: A Memoir.  Reprint. Beacon Press, 1997. 

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language.  E.P. Dutton, 1989.

Karr, Mary. The Liar’s Club.  Viking Press, 1995.

Painter, Nell. Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. Counterpoint, 2018. 

Remen, Rachel Naomi. Kitchen Table Wisdom. Riverhead, 1996. 

Smarsh, Sara. Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. Scribner, 2018.

Noah, Trevor. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood. One World, 2016. 

Umrigar, Thrity. First Darling of the Morning. Harper Perennial, 2008

Wolff, Tobias. This Boy’s Life.  Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.