A really enlightening read

Hosseini is excellent at portraying the life of a foreign land, what it's like to live there, how things look, what people eat, what the customs are, but I think there are some built-in limits because it's fiction. He just can't satisy our every curiosity because he's too busy telling a story. I found "The Places in Between" to be a very enlightening nonfiction portrayal of Afghanistan, but there are almost no women in it. After reading the NPR story about the "controversy" over "The Bookseller of Kabul" by the female journalist Asne Seierstad, I ordered it and am almost finished. It's truly phenomenal. Seierstad lived with a family in Kabul and wrote an exceptionally detailed account of what their everyday life is like: what they eat, how they eat (with their right hands, segregated by sex), what people think about, what they wear, what it's like, layer by layer, to wear a burka, to walk in one, how burkas are hot and stinky and trap Kabul's famous dust, how you read body language in one, how men buy brides, how family hiearchies work, how they groom themselves, how sexual relations work in and outside of marriage, how they pray and travel, everything. It's just absolutely fascinating, in addition to being well written, and I found it addressed a lot of questions I had while reading Hosseini and Stewart.

East and West

I think all of us — most recently Amy in the first comment on the last post — referred to an idea or notion or mindset being Western. What do you think Hosseini's view is on Western/non-Western? Does he have a coherent idea of humanism that transcends specific cultures? I had the impression that he looked at his homeland with a kind of hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner attitude.

Wives

The two noblest men in the book — Laila's dad and Tariq's dad — each had only one wife. Do you think this was a mere matter of money (they couldn't afford more), or was Hosseini saying something about polygamy? (It's also impossible to believe that Tariq would ever take another wife, isn't it?).

a woman's voice

Throughout the book I struggled with Hosseini's development of his characters. At times they all ran together and spoke with one "voice" instead of having unique speech, thought or emotional patterns.

Did you feel he did a good job of accurately portraying the emotional lives of teenage girls? Mariam was married at 15, Laila at 14, yet to me they sounded the same throughout the book, even when they were much older women. What did he do to make them seem like the immature teenagers they were?

Legitimacy

At her excecution, Mariam thinks to herself
"It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings." (p329)

What made her legitimate in the end? (Hosseini suggests loving and being loved) and did her marytrdom confirm that or erode it?

In what way were her struggles in life different from Laila's because she was harami? Did they play a role in the vast differences between their two endings?

Losing ground

In a way the stories of Mariam and Laila were driven more by what they lost (or never had) rather than what they gained. Considering the many scenes of death and grief (Nana's suicide, Ahmend and Noor's martyrdom, Tariq's "death", Lilia's parents, etc.) where did you feel the loss most powerfully on behalf of the characters? What made this so?

Impressions

I hope you enjoyed "A Thousand Splendid Suns." Shall we begin our discussion?
I have to admit it was fun reading and thinking of questions for the two of you, I'm interested to hear what you have to say.

First off, in picking the book we all seemed excited to "travel" to Afghanistan. Did you feel Hosseini managed to transport us there? What helped you feel you were in another culture? What of that was exciting? What was difficult?

War and Peace; what is it good for?

Amy Preacher (I hope I can still call you that even though the Big Ride is over and there's no other Amy here), I've decided to dedicate a part of this winter to finally reading "War and Peace." I think I've started other winters with this grand intention, but the thing that decided me was all this hullaballo about the new translation (I'll read the long version) and the fact that you've read it (so I have someone to discuss it with) and the fact that I'm reading this riveting novel ("The Emperor's Children," a New York comedy of manners) that makes all sorts of fascinating and intriguing allusions to W&P, making much especially of this Pierre/Natasha dichotomy. I have to know what this is all about! Wish me luck.

Thanksgiving

I LOVE the scene in the fallout shelter where he makes a feast for the boy. The boy is taking it all in. Is this coffee? he asks. Like it's this legendary drink he has only heard tell of but never hoped to experience! Can you imagine smelling coffee for the first time? When I was a little kid, my mom would always store coffee in a yellow Tupperware container, which she still uses. (Can you imagine owning a piece of Tupperware for 30-some years?) So, after the trip to the grocery store, I would always stand by as she opened the metal coffee can for the transfer to the Tupperware. And that first whiff of coffee as the can-opener popped the tin was so glorious. It was like some magical genie escaped his Maxwell House and filled the air with sweetness and promise. Even my sister, who never developed a taste for coffee, would stand by and marvel at the smell. Is this coffee? Yes.

And then he shows the kid butter! Here. You put the butter on your biscuits. Like this.

Wow.

And the kid is digging it but something's wrong.

Do you think we should thank the people? he asks.

Like, all on his own, the kid invents the idea of saying grace! It's magical.

The dad says What people?

And the kid says The people who gave us all this.

So then the kid says:

Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldn't eat it no matter how hungry we were and we're sorry that you didn't get to eat it and we hope that you're safe in heaven with God.

A guest concern

A co-worker of mine is reading "The Road" right now. Last night she told me she was alarmed at the discovery of a first-person passage in the book but she didn't have time to explore it. Then today she sent me this urgent e-mail.

Hi Kim

i checked out that passage again (page 87 in the paperback) and now it is clear to me that it is Papa speaking (the night before i'd had a glass of wine before picking up the book, and anyone knows drinking and reading don't mix!).

but it is still a departure from the form, because while there is use of "I" in dialogue, this is a first person observation. perhaps it is establishing the father's point of view -- all i know about this from rob is that if we hear a person's thoughts, that person cannot die.

I love this book!

susan

Thoughts on this? Hehe

The last god

A couple passages seemed to deify the boy in a way. Do you think it was just the normal love of a father for his child (not, granted, that these were normal circumstances), or did you feel there was something else going on?

The couple that I noticed:

The night after they shoot the guy, the father replenishes the fire as the boy sleeps: The boy didn't stir. He sat beside him and stroked his pale and tangled hair. Golden chalice, good to house a god.

Then when they meet the old man:
When I saw that boy I thought I had died.
You thought he was an angel?
I didnt know what he was. I never thought to see a child again. I didnt know that would happen.
What if I said he's a god?
The old man shook his head. I'm past all that now. Have been for years. Where man cant live gods fare no better. You'll see. It's better to be alone. So I hope that's not true what you said because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope it's not true.

Then after they give the old man something to eat, at the boy's insistence:
The old man says: Why did he do it?
He looked over at the boy and he looked at the old man.
You wouldn't understand, he said. I'm not sure I do.
Maybe he believes in God.
I dont know what he believes in.
He'll get over it.
No he wont.

And THIS floored me. They come across the next guy in the road and the boy wants to help him, too.
Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
He was just hungry, Papa. He's going to die.
He's going to die anyway.
He's so scared, Papa.
The man squatted and looked at him. I'm scared, he said. Do you understand? I'm scared.
The boy didnt answer. He just sat there with his head bowed, sobbing.
You're not the one who has to worry about everything.
The boy said something but he couldn't understand him. What? he said.
He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.

I nearly wept when I read that. I am the one. What did you take it to mean?

Writing style

This is one night when it's just muddy and cold and they haven't eaten, but they have a fire:

...they sat there in silence with their hands held out to the flames. He tried to think of something to say but he could not. He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.

And this was the morning after the passage Erin cited in the comment on the last post. I think it's insightful about his feeling for the woman and their past and how the past should be "handled." Normally we think the past is preserved in remembering and in story telling, but this is another take:

Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from. Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

I love that. It also seems relavant to his writing style, which is sparing — simple sentences, or often just sentence fragments, a plain, unassuming, yet stunning, vocabulary. I had the feeling, after reading the passage above, that when he's writing he's calling on a rich, probably overwhelming, storehouse of experience and distilling it to an essence, not just to create a story, but so as to do the least amount of violence to the original thing. There's the thing. And then there's the story of the thing. And the poetic feeling of "truth" that we readers experience is the emotional loyalty between those two.

(Trust me. That makes a lot more sense if you mull it at 2 a.m. in a hot bath with a cup of tea)

But, my question: Did you enjoy McCarthy's writing style? Was it hard to get used to? Did the unconventional prose, with all the fragments and contractions without apostrophes and direct speech without quotation marks sit well with you? Why do you think he drops quotation marks? Is it to integrate the speech fully into the narrative? (There must be a lot written about this because he seems to do it in all his books).

McCarthy's words

I can't get enough of McCarthy's writing. I was looking back at some places I marked in the book. I'll share them:

In those first years the roads were peopled with refugess shrouded up in their clothing ... Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

And:

No list of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.

And while he's preparing the boy's sleeping area that night (punching indentations in the sand for his little hips and shoulders!):

All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

Oh, there are a few more, but I have to go to work now! Did any passages in the book especially move you?

Into Afghanistan

Yikes....my first pick! I was enthralled with "Kite Runner" and have been waiting for another Hosseini novel. This has only been out since May but I can wait no longer! It is only available in Hardcover right now, sorry about that.

I think there are some similarities to Kite Runner, a country in turmoil (obviously) and an unlikely friendship that tests cultural norms, but this time between two women. I hope you enjoy.
Do we start discussion the first part of December?

Good People and Bad People

In an earlier comment, Erin said, "When we're stripped of our most basic needs, we see what really matters: food, water, shelter, safety, love, companionship. Or we become marauding cannibals." Did you have the sense that most people who were left were of the latter sort, the Bad People, or did you think most people might be Good but there were just enough Bad ones out there that, for survival reasons, you had to assume the Bad People were everywhere and that you were in "constant peril," as Erin said?

I couldn't get a good feel for what McCarthy thought about basic human nature, really. On the whole, it seemed sort of bleak, but then we have this shining example of selfless love between the dad and son. The father figure could seem rather cold and dismissive when it came to others, but I always had the sense that he was being that way to protect his son. He didn't want to share with others because it would mean less for his boy. The scarcity of food and warmth and comfort made it so difficult to be good and trusting. And I wondered where, exactly, the boy got his unerring sense of goodness. Was it from the example of his father's love? But his father wasn't always good to others (not in the boy's sense). Where would the boy have learned his goodness — it seemed almost Christlike sometimes, something even the father seemed in awe of — or is McCarthy saying goodness is not something you acquire, like reading and writing, but something you just have or you don't? Did you have any sense of this?

The coast and imagination

I assumed they were heading south to be warm, but why specifically were they going to the coast? It seemed sort of like he wanted the boy to see the ocean, but the ocean wasn't going to be blue and alive. Still, he gave the child enough sense of the ocean's magic that the boy, when he beheld it, wanted to run on the beach and touch the sea, even though it was cold and gray. I found that very moving, but I wondered where the impetus to paint the world's former beauty for the boy's imagination came from. Did he just want him to have an internal sense of beauty and glory and magic, even if nothing in the outer world would ever compare? Just something for his soul?

Miss Frank, you were saying?

Do you discern any reply in this book to Anne Frank's conclusion that, in spite of everything, people are really good at heart?

I just read this Reuters story about McCarthy's appearance on Oprah, where he apparently said: The message readers might take away from "The Road" is that one should "simply care about things and people and be more appreciative. ... Life is pretty damn good, even when it looks bad. We should be grateful," McCarthy said.

Did you take that message from the book?

Slouching toward Nothingness?

Did you have the sense that this was it? That the remaining survivors would live out their days in this nightmare world and then that would be it? No more. Or did you have a glimmer of hope that somehow the world could someday begin anew? I chided myself for it, but I kept having this burbling optimism that a corner of this dead, gray, cold, unrelenting awfulness would turn out to have color, warmth, life, like they'd stumble on some part of the earth — some meadow teeming with plants and animals and beauty — that was mysteriously untouched by the devastation.

When they were cooking coffee and biscuits and ham in the oasis of the fallout shelter, I got this sensory overload, like I could taste and smell the food, feel it warm and fill my body. It was so vivid and engulfing, so about the promise of life.

Names and causes

Did you find it peculiar that there were no names? I think at least one person was mentioned by name, but that was not a "real" name. The boy and the man were just the boy and the man. And the boy did call the man "Papa." This made the story more minimalist in a way, more essential. Was it just part of this idea that you wouldn't have a name if no one addressed you? That your identity is just bare bones, like man, boy, Papa, Bad People, Good People.

And why is there no real explanation of how things got this way? Of what exactly happened to blot out the sun. Is the idea that causes, like names, are moot points in the overwhelming fact of how things are now?

Back story

Were you satisfied with the background provided about the boy's mother? Or did you feel it needed to be fleshed out a little more? Did you have a good sense of the man's feelings for that woman? I sometimes sensed a great longing in him but also a strange forgetting. Maybe that was part of this great truth that many things in the world simply did not exist anymore and their profound absence was almost like they had never really existed to begin with.

Fate and faith

Did you correctly guess the ending, that the man would die and the boy would fall in with the Good People? I think I had a weird kind of faith that that would happen. There wasn't much in the book to give rise to that faith, except maybe the sheer power of love between the two. Do you think the man himself had that faith about the boy's fate?

Reading "The Road"

I gather we all read this book quickly, in one or just a few sittings. If I had to put it down to go to work or do an errand, I couldn't wait to get back to it, and while I was in it I savored every word, often reading and rereading the spare conversations punctuated with poignantly resigned "okays" and "I knows." What about it, exactly, kept you riveted?

More Lahiri

I read about half of "Interpreter of Maladies" last night. It's very engrossing. So far the stories have been a mix of Indian and American settings with all sorts of issues involving cultural expectations, marriage, the class system, families, loss, etc. The title story is truly wonderful — with a rather brash Indian-American family coming into contact with a gentleman Indian tour guide. You can definitely see the same hand that penned "The Namesake."

Gogol the architect

Why does the narrator continue to refer to Gogol as Gogol, even after he changes his name to Nikhil? I thought maybe she was making a comment on the impossibility of changing your identity after a certain point in life, especially by just having a legal pronouncement made.

What do you think is the significance of Gogol being an architect? I always think of an architect as someone between an artist and an engineer. His dad was an engineer. And wasn't his grandpa an artist? There was a notion that Indian immigrants to American always went for the successful, scientific-type jobs — employment that provided for their families but didn't necessarily nurture the soul.

The real Gogol

I read Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat" because it played such a huge role in this novel. I'm a little stumped, though, about what the connections are between the two stories. There are common themes about names and compassion and self-identity. Did you read it? Any ideas?

One for The Road

This novel won the Pulitzer, but more importantly, Oprah has given it her seal of approval, so now we must read it. I read Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men" not too long and loved, loved, loved it, but it's the only book of his I have read.

In this one, there's a father-son story, a long journey and a whole catalog of post-apocalyptic horrors, including cannibals. Enjoy.

Love interests

The women in Gogol's life seemed to serve as milestones as he matured. What were your thoughts on the three love interests that we meet?

Small moments

Something I really enjoyed about "The Namesake" were the many small, seemingly mundane moments and details that carried great significance for the characters. Beginning with Ashima stepping into Ashoke's shoes before she's even met him. And then Ashima's address books, carefully recording every move in each family member's life.

Writing style

What did you think of Lahiri's writing style? Did you find it too impersonal, too matter-of-fact? Did it hinder your ability to understand or sympathize with the characters?

The New York Times reviewer said:

It is not a good sign that when Gogol exits his life story for the entire duration of his wife's love affair we hardly miss him. The reader has begun to suspect that, graceful and spare as Lahiri's prose is, the simply put does not always equal the deeply felt. How much steely equipoise, after all, can one novel stand? Lahiri is a supremely gifted writer, but at moments in "The Namesake" it feels as though we've descended from the great Russians to Nick Adams to the PowerPoint voice-over. "She orders a salad and a bouillabaisse and a bottle of Sancerre," goes the description of one of Gogol's dates. "He orders the cassoulet. She doesn't speak French to the waiter, who is French himself, but the way she pronounces the items on the menu makes it clear that she is fluent. It impresses him."

Male point of view

Although Ashima is the story's focus in the beginning, the main protagonist in "The Namesake" is Gogol. Here's what Lahiri said about writing from a male point of view:

In the beginning I think it was mainly curiosity. I have no brothers, and growing up, men generally seemed like mysterious creatures to me. Except for an early story I wrote in college, the first thing I wrote from the male point of view was the story "This Blessed House," in Interpreter of Maladies. It was an exhilarating and liberating thing to do, so much so that I wrote three stories in a row, all from the male perspective. It's a challenge, as well. I always have to ask myself, would a man think this? do this? I always knew that the protagonist of The Namesake would by a boy. The original spark of the book was the fact that a friend of my cousin in India had the pet name Gogol. I had wanted to write about the pet name–good name distinction for a long time, and I knew I needed the space of a novel to explore the idea. It's almost too perfect a metaphor for the experience of growing up as the child of immigrants, having a divided identity, divided loyalties, etc.

Do you think her male protagonist was convincing? Did you ever feel the author failed to capture that voice?

Apology

I’m sorry that my discussion of this book has been so slow and shallow. I hope our next book goes better.

“The Volunteer”

I think the focus on Ted in this story is strange. He doesn’t seem to me like a very interesting character -- and his sorrow at the end of the story is shallow, in my opinion. I think the story should focus more on Elizabeth, as all the strength in the story revolves around her. I especially think the last line shows this: “At last, she feels the warmth of her son’s tears in the palms of her hands.”

“My Father’s Business”

Why is Daniel going to the cemetary in his hometown?

What is his father’s business?

“Divination”

At the end of the story, do the parents understand that Samuel knew about Trevor?

What is the importance of Samuel thinking about what God wants at the end of the story? What is the meaning of the phrase “a broken spirit?” What does it mean to Samuel?

Adam Haslett’s experience

I think Haslett has an uncanny ability to reflect how people really feel in the situations he portrays. In every story I find myself wondering how much of this happened to him in real life. Do you think he is drawing on personal experience for a lot of these stories?

“Reunion”

Why does James write the letters to his father? Why does he seal the letters and put them on the living room shelf?

I love this sentence: “Gently, images flowed before his mind, and the inscrutable enormity of remembered life washed back over him, leaving him weightless and expectant.”

“War’s End”

Why does Paul go to Albert at the end?

Why does Paul decide this is the right time to kill himself? Will he do it?

“Devotion”

At the end of this story, we find out that Hillary knew about the letters already. Did she also know about Owen and Ben? She thinks that he has “led such a cramped life, losing his friends, scared of what people might know,” but what exactly does she know?

And with how much she cared about Ben, why was she so devoted to Owen? Why had she “held her tongue, remembering the chances Owen had to leave her and how he never had?” I know that quote attempts to answer my question, but I don’t think it is sufficient -- why did it matter to her that Owen stayed with her when she could have had Ben if it weren’t for Owen’s interference?

Erin’s pick

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

“The Beginnings of Grief”

What is going on in this story? What does Gramm get out of the relationship? What does the narrator get out of the relationship? Does the answer to that question have to do with his parents dying?

Does this sort of thing happen in real life?

And what does the title of the story mean?

Talk, talk, talk

Do you think she is rejecting his help in particular, or all help? Does he experience the rejection as personal, or does his ego allow him to attribute it to something in her personality? She asks him a lot of questions, mainly, it seems, to validate her own assumptions about who he is: relatively well-to-do easterner with a privileged background who probably has experienced very little pain in his life, let alone unspeakable tragedy. Is she doing this to gauge whether he has anything to offer her? What does he hope to "talk" her out of? Or into? Or over? For all his training and "empathy," is this woman's pain really "soothable" by him? By anyone? (Erin noted that the benefit of talking is largely his).

As I was reading this story, I kept thinking of an Ani DiFranco song. It's about racial injustice, particulary the way centuries of abuse have informed the modern ghetto:

Why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun?
'Cause we'll never live long enough to undo everything they've done
to you

The song is strangely uplifting despite its tone of irredeemable loss. It doesn't foreclose the possibility of a better life; it just frankly acknowledges the scope of the tragedy.

How much life there is

What is the significance of the works of art described in this story?

Good?

Is Dr. Frank Briggs good?

The Good Doctor?

Is “The Good Doctor” about Dr. Frank Briggs or Mrs. Buckholdt?

Graham

The character of Graham shows us how bad bipolar disorder can be even when treated. He doesn’t sleep well, he fears that his partner will leave him, and a part of him doesn’t want to take his medication. But the overall picture is of someone who can lead a reasonably normal life when taking his medication. Is Graham’s condition sad, or are you optimistic for him (especially when compared to his father)?

Depression

Most of bipolar disorder is depression. The average person with untreated bipolar disorder spends 70% of their life clinically depressed. Even though this story is about a manic episode, did you see his lifelong struggle with depression through the cracks in the story?

I see several clues to his depression in the story. One is that his family hasn’t heard from him in years. Another is that his son hints that his mother found his father after a suicide attempt. Do you see any others?

Mania

In “Notes to My Biographer,” we see a tragic portrait of the manic side of untreated bipolar disorder. It is painted so vividly and accurately that it makes me wonder whether it is about the author’s own father and whether the Graham character is the author.

As a person who has bipolar disorder and has been arrested when manic, this story was both difficult to read and difficult to put down. Did any of you have trouble reading it? Did it add anything to your understanding of mania, or did you already understand it?

Hot cha cha

This is the one I want to see.

"Michael Lucas' Dangerous Liaisons" — a gay pornographic film directed by Michael Lucas based on "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," set in the fashion industry of modern-day New York City. There is also a documentary about that film called "More Dangerous: The Making of Michael Lucas' Dangerous Liaisons."

Sweet.

franco flick

I recently watched a movie version of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" that I'd been seeking for a while. This French version starred Jeanne Moreau (the allure for me) and Gérard Philipe, and set it in the 1950s, featuring music from Thelonious Monk.

It was a fine, but not great, adaptation (unlike the fabulous '88 version with Glenn Close), but it worked with an interesting premise: Juliette de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont were a married couple with political aspirations, and they tolerated affairs and intrigues to keep their love "fresh." In a way it worked, opening a lot of freedom for each partner under the protection of marriage to explore their sexual proclivities. It was the kind of arrangement the book's characters would have thrived under, if only the time and circumstances wouldn't have threatened the marquise's independence. Compare that to Juliette de Merteuil musing to her husband that they were the only couple amongst their friends not to divorce. Maybe some of the tension didn't work in this movie version, though, because society's mores were sufficiently relaxed that neither Juliette nor the film's de Tourvel really faced scandal and ruin if their sexual exploits were exposed.

Francophilia

Have you read any other French novels? If so, what is your favorite?

Danceny, you jackass

Really, the only character to come out of this unpunished is Danceny. And what does he do? He imposes himself on a convent innocent (demands that Cecile reply to his letters, then barely thanks her for taking this reputation-threatening step before lamenting for a kiss). He takes up with the marquise. He feels entitled to challenge Valmont for "seducing" Cecile even though he's been unfaithful to her (nor does Danceny's code of honor extend to include the man to whom Cecile is betrothed). Then -- ooops -- he kills Valmont. Then he wants Madame Rosamonde to spare him legal accountability, because he didn't really mean to do it. Then he has a fit of pique and shares letters that, even if they served Valmont's dying wishes, jeopardizes other innocents in the marquise's path.

Then he goes off with the Knights of Malta. Scarred? Maybe a little. But did Danceny deserve more?

Tragic figure?

Did the characters give Valmont a free pass for his behavior -- which I think was no better than the marquise's -- because he died and deserved mercy? Or was it because he was a man?

Decadence

(I have to write a new post just so I don't see the word "Rape" every time I look at the blog).

From what I've read, no one really knows what Laclos' intentions were in writing "Dangerous Liaisons," although he apparently wrote it at a remote army outpost as a way to erase the boredom. The first edition sold out in Paris in less than a week, and one fan was Marie Antoinette. Many critics have suggested that it was a morality tale about the French aristocracy, who were moving rapidly toward the guillotine on a wave of revolt. Other critics have pointed out that the book was beloved by the aristocracy, that virtually all the characters in it are aristocrats, that the "editor" is neutral and that the author himself was aligned with that social class. What do you think? Did you see any indications that the book was meant to be an indictment of the decadent upper class?

(I also read that this is the only novel he ever wrote. And he only published two other things, one being a tract criticizing the system of female education, which I'd like to read because I think "DL" is clearly an indictment of the way women were living and being treated. I think you could argue until the cows come home whether he was a feminist per se, as many claim, but I don't think it's arguable that he concerned himself, regardless of side-taking, with issues that are important to feminists.)

Rape

Ben and Erin's references to rape in "The Manipulated" gave me pause, because I didn't give Valmont's sexual domination of Tourvel or Cecile the consideration it deserved. It made me quite uncomfortable.

I asked myself what I first thought of Cecile's submission. First, she was a "dolt," so I didn't care very much. (Did I think she was "asking for it"?) Two, she admitted she derived physical pleasure from Valmont's advances. (Did I think a body's physical response negates the intent?) No!

So didn't Valmont rape her, by using fear and intimidation to seduce her? Yes.

It puts Valmont in a different light -- his actions can't be dismissed as those of an amorous scamp.

Do you find it incongruous that Valmont and the marquise would repeatedly assert how easy it would be to seduce a silly girl like Cecile, yet Valmont had to resort to threats rather than seduction to accomplish his mission?

Now I need to think more on Valmont's ravishment of Tourvel. I saw that as more of a mutual passion, but that requires further reflection. (So I thought she was "saying no, but meaning yes?") Oh, god.

Age before beauty

What did you think of the use of Madame de Rosemonde as a multipurpose confidante? Was her being at the hub significant in terms of a moral center? What role did her physical decrepitude play?

Novel form

It's always a matter of personal taste when it comes to superlatives, but a lot of people seem to agree that this is the best epistolary novel ever written. For my part, I haven't read one to top it. Do you think this novel, which is also talked about as the first important and "mature" psychological novel, could have been as interesting written in a non-epistolary form?

What do you think the letters added to it?

For me, the biggest problem would seem to be personalizing each character. I wonder if that could be done as effectively without using personal letters as the device. Then there would be the problem of narrative point of view. And, perhaps most importantly, "moral" point of view; as it is, the collection of letters — a "found" story, as it were — tends to distance the "editor" from the action in a way that another kind of narrator would not be.

Jane Austen, the mother of the modern novel, began "Sense and Sensibility" a couple of decades later as an epistolary work, but abandoned that form in favor of a straightforward narrative and the more modern style that came to be identified with her.

Any thoughts on this and the choices/sacrifices/advantages involved?

(I thought the Close/Malkovich movie did a really fantastic job translating letters into scenes, particulary the chateau scene between the marquise and Cecile and the "war" scene between the marquise and Valmont).

Memorable moments

What were your favorite scenes from the book?

Sophistry — and Sapphistry?

Cecile writes to Sophie: It seems to me that I love her (the marquise) more like Danceny than like you, and sometimes I wish she were he.

And: She scolds me sometimes ... but then I kiss her with all my heart until she is no longer vexed. At least I can love her as much as I like without there being anything wrong in it, and it gives me a great deal of pleasure.

And the marquise says of her: She is really delicious! She has neither character nor principles.

And: Really, I am almost jealous of the man for whom this pleasure is reserved.

And: I acted as her waiting woman ... her shoulders and breasts were entirely uncovered. I kissed her; she let me take her in my arms ... Heavens! How beautiful she was! Ah! if Magdalene was like this she must have been far more dangerous as a penitent than as a sinner.

Two words: Whatever, Ellen!

Letter LXXXI

The marquise's "manifesto" is at the heart of the novel, literally (almost exactly in the middle) and figuratively. It purports to explain how the marquise developed her outlook on life, how she resolved to not be like other women, who were ignored and ill-used and denied worldly pleasures, who were taught to concern themselves with "womanly virtues." It contains the prophetic, "I was born to avenge my sex and to dominate yours" and "I must conquer or perish." Did you feel more or less sympathetic to her after reading this letter?

Encore

Valmont writes, of his expected sexual victory with the marquise, "I desire it as if we had never known each other ... to have known you is perhaps a reason for desiring it the more."

Why was the prize of her favors so extremely valuable to him, even though he had already "known" her (the standard then for a man losing most sexual interest in a woman)? For me, this is somehow the most important question in the book.

The manipulated

Which victim excited the most pity in you? Did you ever have the feeling, along with a sense of pity, that one of them got what he/she deserved?

Amour

Who do you think best understood the nature and value of love?

Just deserts?

Did you find the book's ending satisfying? Why do you think the author had Valmont die and the marquise live (in disgrace, with smallpox)?

Dangerous Liaisons

Whose letters did you enjoy the most?

Ben’s pick

The bear

The title of the final story comes from an old folk song. It goes, “The bear came over the mountain to see what he could see. And all that he could see was the other side of the mountain.”

How do you think this relates to the story?

Marriage and escape

Mr. Vorguilla is probably the most despicable husband we've seen in this collection of terrible husbands. And Munro gives us another heartening vision of marriage:

"Well, of course he was wrong. Men are not normal, Chrissy. That's one thing you'll learn if you ever get married."

And again we have a wife running away, this time literally, from the marriage. What's different about Queenie? When she's talking to Chrissy, she seems resigned to her situation, so why doesn't she continue to suffer quietly like the other wives?

What is not remembered

Meriel tries to remember everything about her romantic encounter --"and by 'remember' she meant experience it in her mind, one more time -- then store it away forever." And for years to come, she continues to remember things about that day, each time being jolted by the memory. It's not until after her husband dies, however, that she remembers perhaps the most important moment: The doctor refused to kiss her goodbye. And she realizes that if she had remembered it earlier, she might not have stayed with her husband. She might have left her marriage in response to her lover's denial even though nothing else had made her do so, not even the fact that she didn't seem to particularly like her husband. What do you make of that?

Young husbands

This was a remarkable paragraph, I thought, that seemed to sum up the predicament of marriage that Munro writes about.

Young husbands were stern, in those days. Just a short time before, they had been suitors, almost figures of fun, knock-kneed and desperate in their sexual agonies. Now, bedded down, they turned resolute and disapproving. Off to work every morning, clean-shaven, youthful necks in knotted ties, days spent in unknown labors, home again at suppertime to take a critical glance at the evening meal and to shake out the newspaper, hold it up between themselves and the muddle of the kitchen, the ailments and emotions, the babies. What a lot they had to learn, so quickly. How to kowtow to bosses and how to manage wives. How to be authoritative about mortgages, retaining walls, lawn grass, drains, politics, as well as the jobs that had to maintain their families for the next quarter of a century. It was the women, then, who could slip back -- during the daytime hours, and always allowing for the stunning responsibility that had been landed on them, in the matter of the children -- into a kind of second adolescence. A lightening of spirits when the husbands departed. Dreamy rebellion, subversive get-togethers, laughing fits that were a throwback to high school, mushrooming between the walls that the husband was paying for, in the hours when he wasn't there.

This, in particular, may be what drives most of Munro's men: How to kowtow to bosses and how to manage wives. The feeling of loss of control at work makes the men compensate as ogres at home.

Remembering

"What Is Remembered" gives us the first real sexual infidelity in this story collection. Rather than a wife who pines her whole married life for something exciting to happen, fantasizing about some imagined love affair, we have Meriel, who has her moment of excitement and then spends her whole married life clutching the memory like a life preserver. Do you think she's happier for having taken that plunge than the wives who only long for it?

timelessness

Something about the description in the first story (the descriptions of dress, maybe, or the use of trains) made me visualize that the setting was supposed to be at least a few decades ago, maybe the '60s. As I keep reading, I have that sense of timelessness, that these stories could be set almost any time since the early 20th century. Do you visualize the stories in terms of today or otherwise?

Bargains

"Post and Beam" is another story with a tagged on disclaimer.

It was a long time ago that this happened. In North Vancouver, when they lived in the Post and Beam house. When she was twenty-four years old, and new to bargaining.

Lorna had tried to make a bargain with God, that if Polly was still alive when they returned home, Lorna would do whatever she had to do. She comes to realize later that "the bargain was already in force." Her promise was to accept that her life wouldn't change. The children would grow up and "she and Brendan would grow older and then old."

The Publisher's Weekly review that I quoted when I picked this book said, "Munro has few peers in her understanding of the bargains women make with life and the measureless price they pay."

What's your take on this idea of bargaining with life?

Wives

"Post and Beam" gives us another example of a prison of a marriage.

Think about the marriages in "Floating Bridge" and "Comfort."

In "Nettles," the narrator talks about the enchantment she feels in leaving behind her marriage and its domesticity. In "Family Furnishings," Alfrida says that the narrator will soon be a married woman: By her tone, this could mean either 'I have to allow that you're grown up now' or 'Pretty soon you'll have to toe the line.'

And now we have Lorna, who's married to Brendan (another older man, another academic), but who has odd, seemingly platonic fantasies about one of his former students. I loved this paragraph:

She did not love him enough. She would say she loved him, and mean it to a certain extent, and she wanted to be loved by him, but there was a little hum of hate running along beside her love, nearly all the time.

There's no high drama here, or in any of the stories, really. There's no domestic violence, there's not even infidelity that we know about. But these women are unhappy, unfulfilled and desperate to escape.

Death

I really appreciated how Munro juxtaposed the experiences of death in this story as a way of highlighting the difference between childhood and adulthood. The prime difference is how we understand mortality. When you are a kid, you generally have little grasp of death, or the brevity of life, or the fragility of life. You may have witnessed death; but you don't really accept your own mortality until you get older. Death is something you can play at, something that's romantic, like soldiers dying on a battlefield with women wailing lamentations, and it's reversible. When you are tired of being dead, you get back up and rejoin the game. And then of course when you grow up, you discover that death is not a game, it's not romantic, and it's not reversible. It's ugly and haunting and tragic and it's with you forever and ever — until you yourself die. It's something that — even with all the power and richness of a young imagination — cannot really be imagined by the young.

And I think we are to understand that as a blessing of youth. And it seems like some of the "awakenings" people have in Munro's stories have something to do with feeling blessed again, even for a moment.

The unthinkable

If you think this collection contains some sad, screwed-up relationships, read "Dimension," the story I linked to in an earlier post.

"Nettles" has a dad who killed his child accidentally. "Dimension" has a dad who did it on purpose. There are really interesting questions in both about survival and pain and self-worth in the aftermath of an unthinkable act.

Love

I think that Mike's tragedy with his child is a bigger impediment to an adult relationship with the narrator than his being married. Did you have that feeling?

Theirs — this broke my heart — is described as a "love that was not usable, that knew its place."

Do you think that would be true if they had just met, if they didn't have the weight of their shared childhood between them?

Oh wait

What do you make of the fact that the "nettles" they were in were not really nettles but the less common joe-pye weed? The narrator ends the story with this "correction."

And another kiss!

What did you make of this one in the "nettles"?

The narrator describes the kiss as more a matter of survival than their "bodies' inclinations."

And yet she has been desiring him heatedly before then: a pounding heart, lust with "shooting pains."

Nettles

I think my favorite image from this story is of the kids washing the feet of Mike and the narrator after their golf-course outing.

Claire especially was delighted with the sight of our naked, foolish, adult feet.

It's fantastic because it's an image of humility and also because it harkens back to their own childhood when their friendship began. Only now they are the adults in someone else's Kid World.

The narrator says of her own childhood: It doesn't seem likely that such account would be taken of children's feelings, in those days. They were our business, to suffer or suppress.

It seems, though, that the same is true in adulthood, isn't it? Doesn't the narrator find that her feelings are still her business to suffer or suppress?

Had sex. Have sex with.

He was an athletic and inventive partner and in a physical sense, not unaware of her. Not inconsiderate. But he was on guard against anything that verged on sentimentality, and from his point of view, much did. She came to be very sensitive to this distaste, almost to share it.

What does it mean to be "on guard against anything that verged on sentimentality?" What is sentimentality with regards to sex?

And how sad is it that she came "almost to share" his distaste of sentimentality? That sentence speaks volumes about a woman who gave up too much in order to make her husband comfortable.

Kisses

Are there parallels between Nina's kiss and Jinny's?

Comfort

What are your thoughts on the title of this story? What "comfort" is she talking about?

Domestic details

I love how Munro, in "Family Furnishings" and other stories, captures the spirit of being a young person immersed in and on the cusp of understanding the "adult world," particularly one's own family dynamics.

On dinner talk: There was hardly any idea of a general conversation, and in fact there was a feeling that conversation that passed beyond certain understood limits might be a disruption, a showing-off.

It was improper somehow to pay attention to anything that was not close at hand. (talking about books instead of the weather, for instance).

Alfrida not only accepted second helpings, she asked for them.

...she (Alfrida) was really there to talk, and make other people talk, and anything you wanted to talk about — almost anything — would be fine.

The aunts' husbands had opinions too, but theirs were brief and unvaried and expressed an everlasting distrust of all public figures and particularly all foreigners...

...and the aunts themselves seemed fairly proud of how much they didn't know or didn't have to pay attention to.

How like them, I thought, to toss aside Alfrida's wit and style and turn her teeth into a sorry problem.

flourishing under the banner of my own personality

And when Alfrida makes fun of the book in their house (and the narrator pretends to be less smart and bookish than she really is): That was the kind of lie that I hoped never to have to tell again, the contempt I hoped never to have to show, about the things that really mattered to me. And in order not to have to do that, I would pretty well have to stay clear of the people I used to know.

...usually I was affronted when people had anything to say about my appearance. Particularly when it was somebody like Alfrida — somebody who had lost all importance in my life. I believed that such people had no right to be looking at me, or forming any opinions about me, let alone stating them.

There too you could come upon a shabby male hideaway with its furtive yet insistent odors, its shamefaced but stubborn look of contradicting the female domain.

he did seem to carry around a history of defeat

The reason that I had nothing to say was not that I was rude or bored ... but that I did not understand that I should ask questions.

And in this description of her fiance, you can almost tell that their marriage will not last forever, that she will outgrow him: He admired opera and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, but he had no time for tragedy — for the squalor of tragedy — in ordinary life.

the wearing out of attachments, that I understood so well in my own life but did not expect to happen in the lives of older people.

Whose family?

Did it seem to any of you that “Family Furnishings” might be completely non-fiction?

Aunt Alfrida

From a review in Atlantic Monthly:

There is a long line of idolized women in Munro's stories, usually independent and childless, living emotionally extravagant, artistic lives, admired by shyer, more cautious, and often younger women. The very real suffering and squalor endured by these idols is sometimes glimpsed in flashes, with the troubling suggestion that their more colorful ways may not all have been a matter of choice. But usually the younger woman is too much in the thick of her own life to pause long to consider the implications of these hardships for herself or her future.

"Family Furnishings" is apparently at least partially autobiographical. What did you think of the narrator's reactions to Alfrida as an adult? Did you find her callous for using Alfrida's private recollections as material for her writing, or for being annoyed when she found out Alfrida had been upset by it?

Escape

With "Family Furnishings," I began to notice Munro's recurring theme of escape.

In "Hateship," we have Johanna fleeing her dreary, loveless life for the possibility of companionship. In "Floating Bridge," Jinny had tried to escape before but never got farther than the bus stop; she eventually finds the release she had been seeking in a kiss with a teenage boy. And in "Family Furnishings," the narrator escapes into urban anonymity, surrounded by "people I did not know and who did not know me. What a blessing."

"Such happiness, to be alone."

Any thoughts on this theme? Is it depressing that everyone wants to get away from their lives?

Furnishings

I think in "Family Furnishings," Munro is really talking about family baggage. And I think she pretty well described how a lot of people feel about their families and hometowns.

This line particularly resonated with me: "There was a danger whenever I was on home ground. It was the danger of seeing my life through other eyes than my own."

Probably we've all felt that sense of danger at some point, of seeing our lives through our parents' eyes.

Kim's pick

Surprises

In "Floating Bridge," Munro once again explores life's twists, the idea that things often don't turn out the way you expected. I enjoyed her description of how even good news can throw you out of whack.

"It removed a certain low-grade freedom. A dull, protecting membrane that she had not even known was there had been pulled away and left her raw."

And then, when she is unexpectedly kissed by the young waiter, she feels ''a swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.''

She recognizes that this is perhaps just a momentary relief, but also that perhaps she has been given more time.

all for you, Sabitha

I not only thought Sabitha was a minor character, but belatedly, it occurs to me that she drives everything that happens in the first story. Edith's desire to first outwit and then please and entertain her friend is what sets the adults -- the pawns -- in motion.

Munro understands adolescent girls so well to make Edith loathing to impress Sabitha not because she is a good friend or an intellectual peer, but because Sabitha came back from Uncle Clark's with an impressive rack. "However they came, they seemed to indicate a completely unearned and unfair advantage."

And while Munro ends with Edith contemplating how in the world Johanna had triumphed in the machinations she set forth for her, I would bet it stung more that "she had taken the precaution of not speaking to Sabitha first, before Sabitha could not speak to her."

God, I love that line. Dear Edith -- the Sabithas are not worthy of your clever ruses!

More Munro

If you need something to read at work, Alice Munro has a story called "Dimension" in the New Yorker that's available online.

I'm reading it now while waiting for the press to run. It's great.

Edith

One thing, among many, that really intrigues me about Munro is that she acknowledges that life is about loose ends — and that's where a lot of suffering and angst come from, but also a lot of opportunity and growth. She doesn't try to artificially tie up all the loose ends at the end of a story — stories don't really end, do they, until we die? — but she does give a satisfying accounting of where characters are at that particular point and she usually intimates or outright states that even that point of view or situation will change. No emotion is the final one, to borrow from T.S. Eliot. A number of these stories span a major part of a girl's life, and we get a glimpse of her change in perspective from Point A to Point B, and often there's an implication that the hard-won wisdom of today will be even different down the road. In this first story, the action per se really concerns Johanna, but Johanna is this molded personality already — almost out of the author's (Munro's) hands in her determination, just as she defies the attempted manipulations of the girls who wish to be the author of her fate — so Munro narrates how Johanna plowed ahead into a new life, and it's lovely to behold, but I think what really concerns her are the girls who see themselves as puppetmasters, the girls who, like many writers vis-a-vis their characters, don't know who the hell they're dealing with. That's, I think, why in the end she comes back to Edith (one of many clever young women in this book whom Munro seems to identify with) and shows that she is stung by the knowledge of Johanna's fate, dismayed, insulted, but also bored and wondering why the "antics of her former self" should be connected with her present self. Who hasn't felt that way as a young person — a disconnect between the things you do and who you are? And Munro leaves us with an image of Edith's "real self that she expected would take over once she got out of this town and away from all the people who thought they knew her." This, I think, is an ironic nod to Johanna because that's exactly what she did, thanks in part to the girls' manipulations: She became the mistress of her own affairs, and got out of the town, surprising all the people who thought they knew her. At the end, it's like Munro is assessing Edith, with all her youthful dynamism and haughtiness and room for growth, and asking: Will you fare as well, my dear?

A simple question

Why did Ken marry Johanna?

What fate has in store

What were your thoughts on the ending of the story? I've read a couple of reviews that called the Latin translation bit "heavy-handed."

And what did you think of Edith and her reaction to the way her little game turned out?

Writing style

I adore Munro's language, the rather plain but artistic descriptions that paint such a clear image of the characters and setting. What were some of your favorite descriptions? Here are a few lines that I made note of:

Her teeth were all crowded to the front of her mouth as if they were ready for an argument.

It looked glamorous to her, like satin bedspreads and blond hair.

Since her own operation -- for gallstones -- she spoke knowledgeably and with a placid satisfaction about the afflictions of other people.

The sound of her activity would be like a net beneath him, heaven-sent, a bounty not to be questioned.

After Mrs. Willets her heart had been dry, and she had considered it might always be so. And now such a warm commotion, such busy love.

For your listening pleasure

Alice Munro reading from "Hateship"

T, revisited just once

A thanks, friends, for picking up my slack. Good discussion.

I'll be ready to dish about Erin's selection June 1.

KC has suggested we reprise a Fisher recipe at some point (please ... not the borscht). Cast your votes on any possibilities?

From A to Z: The Perfect Dinner

Do you agree that six people at a home can produce the best possible dinner?

Z is for Zakuski

What do you think about appetizers? With my unrefined palate and background, I don’t have a lot of experience with them. Probably the most common first course for me (when I have more than one course) is chips and salsa, although I’ll get the occasional Caesar salad.

Y is for Yak

And other strange animals. Have any of you eaten any strange meat? The strangest I have eaten was fried alligator sausage, in New Orleans in 1996.

And what did you think of the Christian pretending to eat what he thought was stewed newborn baby? I could have lived without that anecdote.

X is for Xanthippe

Hmmm. X is always hard to come up with in these alphabet games, so I admire the choice of Socrates' wife. Again, I was turned off a bit by Fisher's analysis of gender differences as a function of gender rather than culture. I mean, I sense that she sees through bullshit — she understands that a lot of so-called gender differences are learned, not innate — but I wish she'd be more explicit about that. I've come to think of her as sort of an intellectual Helen Gurley Brown — where the point is not so much to question or diminish sex role stereotypes as to get on the winning end of them!

If Xanthippe had been the typical Greek wife — meek, servile, unassuming — we wouldn't even know her name today, and Fisher wouldn't have her X.

Having said that, though, I do admire her notion that dinner conversation should be upbeat and polite. Sour talk spoils the food. The dinner table should be sacred, like the bed. You wouldn't offer up a bunch of complaints about your day while you're having sex, and you shouldn't while you're eating either.

Her idea of separating the kids from the adults periodically at first rubbed me the wrong way, but then I became more sympathetic, and I identified with her wish that her parents had spoken more naturally about certain adult matters in front of the children.

I want to try her scrambled egg recipe. I saw on a show long ago that you really shouldn't beat the eggs as is so often done and that they should be cooked very slowly. That's exactly how she does it.

W is for Wanton

This was an interesting one. I'm again surprised by Fisher's openness, given the time period she was writing in.

I don't quite understand the seductiveness of food. Generally, when I'm eating, it's all about the food. And if I have really enjoyed the food, I have probably eaten just a bit too much to feel very seductive right afterwards.

Pardon me if this is too much information, but I generally prefer the reverse order. First I'm wanton, then I'm hungry.

V is for Venality

I loved Fisher's descriptions of the restaurant's seedy Hollywood deal-making. I was also reminded of all the deal-making that takes place in restaurants on "The Sopranos." There's something intriguing and romantic about it.

U is for Universal

Mmmmmm, salt and bread. Two of my favorite things.

KC and I were talking just the other day about a former roommate of hers who forgot the salt in her homemade bread. She didn't find the result as charming as Fisher describes here.

I love salt. I salt my vegetables, my fruit, my orange juice. But like Fisher, I was raised to believe it is rude to salt food before you've even tasted it. And I agree that food is commonly oversalted, in restaurants especially. After eating in certain restaurants, I find myself completely parched a few hours later. And that does not give me a warm feeling about those restaurants.

My dad had high blood pressure, and his doctor recommended a salt substitute called NoSalt. We kept it in a special shaker by the stove. It tasted terrible. Poor Dad, he should have just eaten the salt.

"Good bread will forever send out its own mysterious and magical goodness, to all the senses, and quite aside from all the cookbooks, perhaps the best way to learn how to make it is to ask an old, wise, and, above all, good woman."

Amen, sister.

T is for Turbot

... which I had never heard of before this. I'm happy to hear that it's "esteemed as food." Hehe

I have a pressure cooker, but I've never used it. What am I missing?

Fisher's trout recipe sounds quite good -- except for the gelatin, which I find horrifying.

Q also is for pâté, quacking

KC suggested we try Sole Veronique sometime, which has a heavy sauce with grapes. Yum. I was going to suggest we have it on a cold winter night and, like Hercule Poirot, precede it with pâté on hot toast by the fire. Except the idea of pâté has really turned me off since I read an article in Gourmet about the whole process (basically force-feeding ducks) and how inhumane it is. On the other hand, because I've never had it, I wish I'd tried it.

Has anyone had pâté before? What was it like?

S is for Sad

As you all know, I have bipolar disorder and I've been through several clinical depressions in my life. Depression leaves an emptiness inside of me that I often try to fill with food. I always gain weight when suffering from a long depressive episode.

Does sadness, depression, or death have that effect on any of you? I thought the anecdote about the man who ate all the steaks after his love died was quite strange. I suppose it is understandable, but it still is strange.

R is for Romantic

Romance and sex are recurring themes in this book. What do you think of her using 8-year-old Red as an example of romance? She clearly (from all of her hints in other chapters) had other incidents she could have chosen. Why did she choose Red?

Q is for quantity

Do you suffer from the ill that she talks about in this chapter: Increasing certain ingredients in your cooking beyond all good taste? I'm afraid I've done that. When I was a boy, I always thought that more of whatever made something good would make it better. I found out that this was not true when I put way too much garlic powder on buttered toast!

But I still put too much of stuff on meals I make for myself. Too much Miracle Whip or peanut butter on sandwiches, too much sugar in or on anything sweet, too much ketchup on my fries, too much sauce on anything saucy. I think I've learned from my mistakes in putting too much flavoring into dishes, but you never know when my boyish stupidity might return and we find out just what it tastes like to have too much basil in a red sauce.

P is for peas

Have you ever had peas that fulfill her three requirements: Very green, freshly gathered, shelled at the last moment? I wonder how much better they can be than the best peas I've had. I quite like good peas, but without having had fresh ones, I wonder how much better they might be!

O is for Ostentation

Have you ever served certain food, or eaten at a certain restaurant, to impress someone?

N is for Nautical

As I mentioned in a comment on cl's blog, I don't enjoy boats or ships. I have an irrational fear of being on the water, so I would probably be unable to enjoy meals on a cruise. Those of you who suffer from motion sickness, would you be able to enjoy meals on board? Are cruiseships large and stable enough to prevent seasickness?

And for further discussion, see cl's blog.

M is for Monastic

This is related to the first chapter, as it is on dining alone, but it is now restricted to men. What are the differences between Monk's stew followed by licking the plate clean and the author's dinner of Ry Crisp, tomato soup, and California sherry surrounded by pocket detective stories?

L is for Literature

I remember the Boeuf en Daube from Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse."

"It was rich; it was tender. It was perfectly cooked. It was a triumph." In fact, when I took an interest in cooking in fall 2005, the first Bon Appetit I purchased included this recipe, except I subbed beef instead of venison.

It was not a triumph, but still, I like authors who trouble to tell you what their characters are eating. It's just as important to mood as where they're at and what song is on the radio.

Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is a gourmand, and as I tried to remember great meals he has eaten, I pulled out "Funerals are Fatal." He is host to the elderly Mr. Entwhistle, a retired attorney who has met with the survivors of a rich client and suspects that one of them did the client in.

To stimulate Entwhistle's storytelling and soothe his palate, Poirot serves:

Pate de Foie Gras on hot toast by the fire
Sole Veronique
Escalope de Veau Milanaise
Poire Flambee with ice cream

Served with Pouilly Foisse, followed by "Corton and a good port."

(Poirot, "who did not care for port, sipped Creme de Cacao.")

Any sources of literature ever whet your appetite?

K is for Christy hates borscht

And I have little to say about the Kosher chapter. I did like this:

"It is an astonishing and moving thing that after so many flights of terror, after so many vigils in strange lands, many Jews still feast as Moses told them to do."

"K is for Kim"

A dish indeed.

"J is for Juvenile Dining"

It must be frustrating for an author of Fischer's taste to succumb to her child's mealtime preferences the way all parents eventually must do. Toddlers are tyrants at the table. You cannot make them eat anything, and they can outwait their masters for days, with no apparent consequences, until a jittery parent succumbs and gives them their cut-up Jenos pizza or a generous serving of Shrimp Poppers in lieu of taking them to the doctor for intravenous caloric support.

And to accept that TV commercials and peers' tastes will sway the child to a preference for sugary cereals, pizza and soda pop. I guess it's a precursor to when those forces will direct a child how to dress and act, and what she will read and watch and listen to. And a parent has to stand by and accept it.

My nephew Alex, 3, was eating Shrimp Poppers at Thanksgiving while the rest of us laid into various homemade hors d' oeuvres, and my grandparents began stealing them off his plate, and now they get the fried little snacks as appetizers to go with their daily "happy hour." (Which they have at 4 o'clock.)

Usually there's a link between Fischer's storytelling and the recipe that ends that essay. If you can place the context of snails in "J," do tell.

Has anyone eaten snails before?

I is for "Innocent"

The Innocent can, "with a child's bland happiness, do the most God-awful things with his meals and manage, by some alchemy of warmth and understanding, to make an honest gourmet pleased and easy at table."

This was more than an essay about a cook who prefers recipes with gelatin or Miracle Whip. The Innocent built meals in memory of his late wife and observed all the rites from their time together -- the music, the types of food, the place at table. Through that he elevated his belching beloved's preferences into something more grand than they were. Don't you think of people no longer in your life (alive or not) and romanticize any of their habits, tastes and mannerisms? Is there a person you would immortalize at table or elsewhere because sentiment would sway you to do things "their" way?

Fischer had more than a meal; she participated in a ceremony to honor the departed.

"H is for Happy"

My favorite in the series, I think.

Fischer makes me feel like I'm accompanying her through all of her memories in this essay. First I'm climbing the hills with Aunt Gwen, an unsanctioned fried egg sandwich in my pocket, and then I'm singing with her family in Berne, sipping cognac while road construction debris falls around the car in a kind of enchantment. Maybe they were representative of two dining experiences, too -- the homey and simple treat for an afternoon walk and a luxurious meal at an elegant hotel. In both cases, and as she's covered before, it's the company who makes the meal.

My first go-round with these essays, more of the recipes sounded appetizing, and upon re-reading, I'm a little turned off. But don't those fried egg sandwiches sound kind of naughty and good?

"G is for glutton"

"I cannot believe that there exists a single coherent human being who will not confess, at least to himself, that once or twice he has stuffed himself to the bursting point, on anything from quail financiere to flapjacks, for no other reason than the beastlike satisfaction of his belly."

Fischer later exposites about why there is shame tied with gluttony, that important people no longer stuff themselves in public, and I found that ironic considering she wrote "Alphabet for Gourmets" at a time when the average woman was a size 12. Today a state of gluttony might best be characterized by a cafeteria table of high school girls, drinking Diet Coke or water, critiquing their peers for consuming solids.

Anyway ...

Don't you think there are different stages and circumstances of gluttony? Like special-occasion gluttony, when you eat a lot because the circumstance won't be repeated (eating on vacation at a fine restaurant). Wedding or anniversary or party gluttony.

Mood gluttony (one day a month, I feed my PMS and feel much better, quality of meal notwithstanding).

Love gluttony. Continuing a meal with someone because you don't want the date to end, and eating too much as a result.

I even had a case of jingoistic gluttony. I traveled with my youth group to Mexico for two weeks of mission work, of which we seemed to do little, and had no problem with the local cuisine, but we did become homesick, especially spending the Fourth of July out of the country. So when we crossed the border two weeks later and stopped at a South Texas Pizza Hut, we went crazy for American food. Greasy, salty, all-American Pizza Hut pizza, served by English=speaking workers. I still remember pillaging a cheese pizza. Isn't that awful?

Any gluttony experiences you'd like to share?

Erin's pick for May

"Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" by Alice Munro, her 10th collection of short stories.

From Publisher's Weekly: "All of the stories share Munro's characteristic style, looping gracefully from the present to the past, interpolating vignettes that seem extraneous and bringing the strands together in a deceptively gentle windup whose impact takes the breath away. Munro has few peers in her understanding of the bargains women make with life and the measureless price they pay."

I suggest that we begin discussion on June 1. Because it is a story collection, we may be able to read along as we discuss, as we are with Christy's pick.

"F is for family"

One of my favorite quotes from the series:

"The cold truth is that family dinners are more often than not an ordeal of nervous indigestion, preceded by hidden resentment and ennui and accompanied by psychosomatic jitters."

"E is for Exquisite"

Fisher writes: "In my private lexicon of gastronomy, I continue to see the word 'exquisite' ringed with subtle vapors of perversion."

What is the difference between exquisite and debauchery in the sense of eating? Or entertaining?

Also, does exquisite eating, as Fisher suggests, require the outlay of a lot of money?

Have you eaten an exquisite meal you can recall? Or what would be on the menu?

"D": Dining out

It's not my favorite essay, but I liked what Fisher had in this segment. She continues to link dining with celebration and sensual pleasure, and she frowns upon those who see "dining out" as a chore or routine habit.

"Dining out" is usually special to me just because it's too costly. I wonder how it would be different to work in an industry with regular business lunches and dinners. Just combining work and business etiquette with eating would, I think, steal away the sense of anything special.

She goes on to recount how she entertained a bigwig by choosing just the right restaurant, ordering the meal and arranging for the bill and tips in advance.

I found this a trifle braggy and wondered what everyone else thought. I suppose she was seen as a leading figure in entertaining, and so her personal anecdotes were welcome advice. And ordering for others in a dining-out scenario seemed archaic.

On the other hand, as a woman, she may have been displaying her own power, as the host who could commandeer the best table, service, pick the food and wine -- traditional men's roles in the time she speaks of.

"C" correct vs. careless

Fisher also uses “C” to point out that cook with the right books and references, whose sauces follow a reputable recipe to a science, and assigns them the dubious title of “Cautious.” Don’t you think that’s applicable to people in a lot of arts and skills? They take a mechanical approach to learning about art or music or another subject like they’re studying for a final exam where there are only some “right” answers, which don’t take their own tastes into account.

Or you have people who profess an interest in a subject but learn nothing about it. Did anybody see Woody Allen’s “Hannah and her Sisters” and remember the artist who was irate that some rock musician wanted to buy something to complement his furniture?

Ben is a great example of how not to be either. He knows a tremendous amount about music but will tell people exactly what he likes or doesn’t like without worrying about what they think, because he’s confident in his own taste. I could envision him critiquing Beethoven or Bach when most people would be too cowed by what they’re told is “good” to speak up. And if he didn’t know much about another subject, he would just say so rather than bluff his way through a conversation.

I’m getting away from the book, here, but think it’s applicable -- a “correct” host just isn’t as much fun. They have their own party but don't trust their own tastes to please friends.

"C": enthusiasm

I also like how Fisher critiques hosts for their enthusiasm over taste or skill.

She describes a host: “... with no innate good taste, whose meals are incredibly and coarsely and vulgurly overlaborate and rich, but present them with such high spirits that they are unfailingly delightful.”

"C is for cautious"

This essay explores the idea of how much ambience contributes to a meal -- as important as the main dish.

A host's caution can be charming, but usually it's contagious, like a tangy vinaigrette that's been indiscriminately squirted all over a meal. It makes a guest nervous for the host, unless you're impervious to the mood. (Sometimes I wish I were one of those people -- people who talk loudly and crack their gum and walk around work barefoot -- they must be happy to be so indifferent to everyone around them.)

Fisher calls it them "the inescapable vapors of timidity and insecurity," and I think they manifest themselves most strongly at bridal and baby showers. This may be because nobody ever really wants to go to one of these things, and the nervous hostess must rally the troops anyway. The women choke down frosted cakes and Sugary, Vile Punch (I contributed a Sugary, Vile Punch to the last shower I attended, on mistaken faith in my mom's recipe), but the sweet cannot overcome the sour mood stemming from the need to break into insincere applause every time the guest of honor opens another Diaper Genie.

Still, at that shower, the hostess did a great job because she was in her element -- her natural thoughtfulness, graciousness and good taste didn't make the handmade, pink and baby-blue mints seem pretentious. Yet other friends who would carouse about Westport in our younger days would, upon taking a hostess turn, turn into automotons and hand me a glass of weak sangria and dash off to the kitchen to reheat the mini-quiches. It's not growing up, it's conforming to a vague idea of what a proper hostess will do.

Maybe the difference is the motive of the hostess: Whether she wants everybody to have fun, or whether she wants everybody to approve.

"B" and men cooking

As in the quote from the last post, Fisher regards men's cooking as synonymous with seduction and not from the pleasures of gastronomy. The idea of a man making a home-cooked meal sounds charming and antiquated to me, but that could be the company I've kept in the past.

We ran a wire story (I wish I could find the full version) on the food industry taking an interest in men who viewed cooking beyond what you could slap on the grill with a Pabst in hand. Here's the article, but note the sex element still comes into play:

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/mar/21/food_industry_reaching_out_men/

'B is for Bachelors'

Fisher writes of bachelors .... "Their approach to gastronomy is basically sexual, since few of those under 79 will bother to produce a good meal unless it is for a pretty woman."

This was one of the most enjoyable essays in the series and represents of the reasons I like Fisher so much; she's not only knowledgeable about food, she understands the motivations that lie beneath the sum of a meal.

I love her rules for conduct in this piece, too, that she considers it her honest duty to ascertain said bachelor's "direct or indirect" approach and then let him know ahead of time of his chances at bedding her. It makes her a frankly appealing woman of the world, not the type to toy with a man's feelings through a three- or five-course courtship and then leave him cold.

(As in "A," she notes her ability to hold her liquor in a self-conscious manner. Did she drink a great deal in the context of a gourmet diner? Is it a postwar cocktail-hour kind of norm? Or did you get the feeling she wrestled with the bottle on a personal level?)

'A' continued

"It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at table."

Fisher seems to come full circle with dining alone to realize that she's worth more than a meal of soup and crackers if nobody has "chosen" her as a dinner companion. Again, this may be more of an issue for women, but it seems like the norm for adults is to put their life on hold until somebody agrees to complete them. They don't buy houses, don't take vacations, don't have children, like the things that give them satisfaction and/or stability require the sanction of another human being who agrees to go along the same path.

I am guilty on all counts mentioned there, and I think my interest in cooking that began at age 31 was finally that exact sense of "care of myself, at least at table." I was worth more than a plastic Lean Cuisine entree or McValue meal even if I was eating alone. Mine may have been a case of arrested development, but it reminds me of a co-worker asking whether I'd been on a cruise before (prior to the one I took last week with my mother). And I just answered no, but thought, "Right, why would I? My friends go with their husbands, and nobody else has asked me." And that's the beginning of something new -- to strike out on new ground without somebody's invitation.

Is it harder to take care of ourselves, at table or elsewhere, without someone by our side?

I'm moving on to "B" but dont' mean to narrow the discussion to these two posts. I'm interested in what else you got from this telling first chapter.

'A' is for Dining Alone

One of the admirable aspects of this series of essays is how much M.F.K Fisher is willing to share with her audience right off the bat -- and her loneliness and self-consciousness are vital parts to her first essay.

In the time period she spoke of in this chapter, the author seemed to be at a crossroads -- not wealthy, but successful enough with her writing that her fame also isolated her, at least from traditional social gatherings that involved food. She writes: "But, for the most part, to the lasting shame of my female vanity, they have shied away from any suggestion that we might dally, gastronomically speaking." And so her unsuspecting acquaintances send her home to a can of tomato soup and box of crackers.

So she wills herself to begin eating out alone with a complicated and self-conscious set of rules -- where she can eat, how to befriend the wait staff, how to head off misperceptions about her willingness for company or her ability to handle her liquor, to a point where she realizes her outings are more a test of self-endurance than an enjoyable treat.

Has this changed much today? Why is it difficult to go places alone, and is it tougher for women? I have experienced varying degrees of discomfort trying to go it alone, though it's lessened as I've become older.

In the news

Emmett Till's family gets autopsy report

By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO — A 464-page FBI report released Friday contains gruesome details from the autopsy of Emmett Till, but it is so highly redacted that it doesn't shed much light on the teen's killing, which helped galvanize the civil rights movement.

The report found that Till, killed in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman, died of a gunshot wound to the head and that he had broken wrist bones and skull and leg fractures.

When the 14-year-old's body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in the summer of 1955, the report said, "the crown of his head was just crushed out ... and a piece of his skull just fell out."

The FBI report is part of an 8,000-page file investigators amassed during its three-year investigation into the killing, opened at the request of the district attorney in Greenwood, Miss. The local prosecutor recently announced that a grand jury had declined to return an indictment in the case.

Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who are deceased, were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury. They later confessed in a 1956 interview with Look magazine.

Nearly 100,000 people visited Till's open casket during a four-day public viewing in Chicago. A graphic photo of his face appeared in Jet magazine, sparking national outrage.

One of Till's cousins, Wheeler Parker Jr., said the family had hoped more people involved in the crime would acknowledge their roles during the investigation. Parker said he was not surprised, however, that no charges were filed.

"Most of the people are dead, so I guess they did the best they could," Parker said of the FBI.

Names, photos and other identifying information about living people were redacted from the report "out of privacy considerations," according to FBI spokeswoman Denise Ballew. Autopsy photos also were redacted "to protect the privacy interests of the surviving family members," Ballew said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The report, available online, says investigators found no evidence of Ku Klux Klan involvement in the crime.

Federal investigators reviewed the report with the family Thursday. Parker, who was there when Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant and also when he was kidnapped, said a report of a confession by Leslie Milam, a relative of Bryant and Milam, was the most satisfying part of the newly released documents.

"I was pleased to hear that one of the gentlemen confessed on his deathbed to his pastor ... that's kind of what I wanted to hear," Parker said.

A cousin of Till, Simeon Wright, 64, was present when Till was kidnapped and said the investigation proved the family never will have closure.

"There are some things that will never be resolved about the Till case until someone comes forward. Maybe they'll just take it to the grave," Wright said.

BRAVE OR CRAZY

Which was James Meredith?




The first photo is of him being escorted to class by federal marshals at Ole Miss in 1962. The second photo, which won a Pulitzer in 1967, is of him being shot by a sniper on a civil rights march in 1966.

And a separate question: What do you think of there being no photographs besides the one of the sheriffs in the whole book? Assuming the author meant that singularity to support the notion that the book is a meditation on one monumental image, did you like that strategy or did you wish to see more photos — other images from the time, images from the present? Would it have weakened or strengthened the book to have photos of each sheriff — and of Meredith — showing him as a kid, a husband, a father, a grandpa, etc.?

Comment on part one

By no means would I de-emphasize the physical violence that these perpetrators used against civil rights workers, blacks or other victims, and I'm not hardened to it. But sometimes what I found more shocking was the extent of efforts to keep blacks from registering to vote or voting at all, or forming or joining advocacy groups. Maybe I think of violence as the means of dumb brutes but the right to vote as a sanctity that the intelligent would revere and protect. And it's hard to understand that the justice system could essentially imprison you if you showed up to register (as was the case in Jim Middleton's jurisdiction). Withholding these rights required so much complicity through so many branches and levels of government. It required premeditation and planning. How does one consider himself an American or patriot and play the mental hopscotch required to justify these actions?

John Cothran

What do you think of John Cothran, the four-times-married manager at the Home Depot? Are there any clues in the book as to why he has such a problem with anger (we first see him destroying his car with a tire iron)? Is he going to lose his job (he seems to be losing his authority at the end of the chapter about him)? Is he racist (an all-white neighborhood was “a selling point” when he bought his house)? Sexist (one of his employees said so)? Is he any better than his grandfather, the man with his back turned? (His grandfather, John Ed Cothran, was hard to read until he said his county was the best because they didn’t even indict lynchers.)

Cleaning up the county

This topic is related to the previous topic. Could you see any actions of the characters separate from their racism? In other words, were you able to see good in what some of the sheriffs had done even though other things they had done were so bad? If you had been a black person in a segregationalist sheriff’s jurisdiction, would you be able to say that he had cleaned up the county or that he had always treated you fairly (as some of the people in the book said), or would you just see him as the wrong person to be in law enforcement?

Even though I felt somewhat sympathetic toward the sheriffs, I still had trouble thinking that they could do anything in their jobs that would deserve praise, because their racism more than made up for all the good they did.

Sympathetic characters

How did you feel about the people in the book? Could you identify with any of the segregationalists? In my opinion, the author did a good job of bringing out the humanity inherent in each character, even the Grand Dragon and his wife. It was not difficult to feel sorry for some of the characters who I think would have done greater things if they had been raised in a different environment.

The voice

At first, the narrative voice in this book really bothered me. I thought Hendrickson was injecting himself too much into the book. I wanted a book about the people in the photograph, not about the author’s search for them. But as I read, my view softened a bit as I realized how much good there still was in the book, and how strong and personable the author’s voice was.

I still think the book may have been stronger if it had been written in a more detached way, but I realize that this would have required a totally different approach, one that this author may not have been able to pull off.

Do any of you have any thoughts about the narrative voice? Is it just me, or did it bother any of you?

The picture

What did you think of the photograph? Was it worthy of a 300-page book? Was the author’s obsession with it justified, or did he go a little over the top? Do you believe that the men really were as they were portrayed, coincidentally like they were pictured in the photograph (e.g., the man with his back turned), or did the author’s view of the picture color his view of the men?

Christy's pick for April

"An Alphabet for Gourmets," by M.F.K Fisher, an outstanding collection of essays on food that translates into a philosophy about living well, about loved ones and memories.

A review from foliobooks.com:
"An Alphabet for Gourmets , published in 1948, is essentially a book of the most wonderful stories. No 'A is for Apple, B is for Borscht', but, in 'I is for Innocence', the touching tale of a widower's passion for fast food; in 'B is for Bachelors', recollections of the superb meals that the unattached male, bent on seduction, can pull out of his cupboard, and in 'Z is for Zakuski', a hymn to the pleasures of sharing Russian hors d'oeuvres with the famous opera singer Chaliapin. The recipes are just as exuberantly affectionate, ranging from Aunt Gwen's Fried Egg Sandwiches to Raspberries Romanov and the Perfect Martini. With wit, elegance and a sensuous turn of phrase, Fisher considers the alchemy of the perfect meal, and muses upon that eternal mystery, keenly debated by everyone from Galen to Woody Allen: do aphrodisiacs work?"

You may find this as a paperback or in a collection of Fisher's work, called "The Art of Eating." The essays are fairly quick reads and stand alone as content matter.

My plan would be to post comments for the first six essays, A-F, on April 22, and then four letters per day after that for the rest of the week. This may be a selection, then, that you can read very close to the due date, or follow along per day.

Warning: This may put you in a gourmet state of mind ...