Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward has one of the most memorable scenes I’ve read in a long time. It’s memorable in an uncomfortable way, like the worship scene in American Gods by Neil Gaiman, the pie-eating contest in “The Body” by Stephen King, or the dentist scene in Marathon Man by William Goldman.
I don’t know how much of Sing, Unburied, Sing I’ll remember after I’m done reading it. I forget about most books that I read. I enjoy reading, even if I don’t finish everything. Even when I don’t remember many of the details of a book after I’ve read it, I still enjoyed the process. I think I read so much that the details from new books push out the details from the old books. That’s not necessarily bad. That means I can reread the books that I liked the most and they seem new the second (or third) time.
The same thing happens to me with movies and TV shows, so it’s not a reading issue. It’s a priority issue. I remember to pay the bills. I remember most birthdays. I remember what day of the week it is. I’m pretty good at ignoring clocks and then randomly guessing what the time is. So I think my mind is working okay. I just don’t always remember many details from the books I’ve read.
I’m pretty sure I’ll remember this scene from Sing, Unburied, Sing. The narrator is a kid helping his grandfather skin and gut a goat while they talk. I won’t put all the details here (because I’m not that kind of a blogger):
Pop and I enter the shed. Pop ties the goat to a post he’s driven into the floor, and it barks at him.
“Who you know got all they animals out in the open?” Pop says. And Pop is right. Nobody in Bois has their animals out in the open in fields, or in front of their property.
The goat shakes its head from side to side, pulls back. Tries to shrug the rope. Pop straddles it, puts his arm under the jaw.
“The big Joseph,” I say. I want to look out the shed when I say it, over my shoulder at the cold, bright green day, but I make myself stare at Pop, at the goat with its neck being raised to die. Pop snorts. I hadn’t wanted to say his name. Big Joseph is my White grandpa, Pop my Black one. I’ve lived with Pop since I was born; I’ve seen my White Grandpa twice. Big Joseph is round and tall and looks nothing like Pop. He don’t even look like Michael, my father, who is lean and smudged with tattoos. He picked them up like souvenirs from wannabe artists in Bois and on the water when he worked offshore and in prison.
After that, things get really bad for the goat. And I imagine the characters in the novel will struggle a little bit too. This is literature, after all. If this scene doesn’t seem that impressive, I’ve left the memorable part out. Some people don’t like to read that kind of thing, so I don’t want to surprise them. This is usually a family-friendly blog.
I haven’t read much further into Sing, Unburied, Sing yet (that’s why this is called a Literary Glance). I don’t know how the rest of the book goes. But no matter what happens in this novel, no matter how the author builds up the story and wraps everything up, I’ll always remember the goat skinning scene.
*****
What do you think? Am I the only one who forgets the details of most books? What scenes from novels do you find memorable?
January best-selling fiction is usually an interesting mix of the previous year’s bestsellers and new books that have been hyped on book blogs since December. If you’re stuck inside the house because of bad weather (or any other reason), it might be a good time to catch up on reading. Anybody can binge watch a show. It takes true brainpower to binge read a good book (or two) in one day (or weekend).
Below are the best-selling hardcover fiction novels for the third week of January 2018, according to the New York Times:
- The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
It’s the new Gone Girl. It’s the new The Girl on the Train. Stephen King calls it unputdownable. I put it down. One of us is wrong.
- The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
It’s also the new Gone Girl. It’s also the new The Girl on the Train. Stephen King did not call it unputdownable.
- Origin by Dan Brown
This has NOT been compared to Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. Instead, it’s compared to The DaVinci Code. That’s okay because Dan Brown wrote The DaVinci Code too.
- The Rooster Bar by John Grisham
It’s another sleazy lawyer novel from John Grisham. Every time John Grisham writes a sleazy lawyer novel, thousands of readers are glad they didn’t go to law school.
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Good book so far, but long paragraphs can hurt my eyes. Some authors really should ease up on the long paragraphs.
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Once you read the goat skinning scene, there’s no turning back!
- The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Psychics, they always cause trouble, especially when kids are involved. This book probably has the most interesting premise of all the novels on this week’s list.
- Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
The title is really cheesy, but the novel isn’t, at least not so far.
- Robicheaux by James Lee Burke
Titles that are just the character’s name seem lazy, even if the author is James Lee Burke. I mean, Dracula and Frankenstein and Emma and Tom Sawyer were okay, but Robicheaux?
- The People vs. Alex Cross by James Patterson
This is typical James Patterson. It’s over 100 chapters. Lots of dialogue where all the characters talk the same way. And one of my favorite descriptions in recent memory…
She was classy and brassy, and hilarious, as well as certifiably badass in the courtroom, which was why we’d hired her.
Sigh. What would we do without James Patterson?
*****
It’s not always possible to read every bestseller, but it doesn’t hurt to be familiar with them. Out of all the books on this list, I’d probably rank them (from what I’ve read, and I’ve read at least a little bit of each book) in this order:
- The Immortalists
- Before We Were Yours
- Sing, Unburied, Sing
- Little Fires Everywhere
- Robicheaux
- Origin
- The Rooster Bar
- The Woman in the Window
- The Wife Between Us
- The People vs. Alex Cross
*****
What do you think? How would you rank these novels (even if you haven’t read them)?
(image via wikimedia)
When you’re a married man, there are a lot of things you shouldn’t say to your wife. At least, you don’t say certain things if you want a happy relationship. Since I’ve been married to the same woman for over 20 years, I think I have a pretty good feel for what to say and what not to say, but even I will slip up sometimes. And when I slip up, I slip up badly.
Last Saturday, there were a lot of house chores, more so than normal. I had created my own list of Saturday activities, but I didn’t write them down. That was my first mistake. From my wife’s point of view, if all my future chores aren’t listed on paper or in a text/email, then they don’t exist. Storing the chores in my brain doesn’t count.
I knew my wife had a list, and I was doing a good job of mixing my list with hers. I changed out lightbulbs (wife’s list), cleaned out some gross stuff in the refrigerator (wife’s list), raked leaves from my neighbor’s trees off my lawn (my list), destroyed a giant ant hill (my list), cleaned out kitty litter boxes (my daughters’ list, but I didn’t feel like interrupting while they were actually doing homework), throw out unnecessary stuff in the closets (wife’s list), cleaning out the gunk from the washing machine (wife’s list), and fixing the garage door (my list).
While I was cleaning out the gunk, my wife asked me to dust off a couple high spots in the house. I was a little annoyed because I’d been really productive but I was getting tired, and I wanted to get to the fun stuff for the weekend. I was ready to call it quits and enjoy the rest of the weekend. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut, get a couple more things done, and disappear for a while.
Instead, I said, “Honey, did you get any of those chores done that I asked you to do?”
She looked at me perplexed. “What chores?”
“Exactly.”
At the time, I thought I was being clever, but it’s better to keep that kind of cleverness to yourself. My wife got pissed, and instead of enjoying my Saturday afternoon I had to console an angry wife.
I should have known better. When I’m tired of doing chores, l usually let my wife know ahead of time. Maybe I’ll tell her I’m tired before I’m actually tired. If I wait until I’m tired to tell her I’m tired, then I might not have the energy or focus to say it correctly.
This is nothing new to me. When I feel it’s almost time to relax for a while, I take a dramatic deep breath and say, “Whew, we’ve gotten a lot done (I give her credit too). I’m going to do this and this (make sure they’re actual chores) and take a break.”
Even if my wife has more stuff for me to do, she probably won’t pile it on, especially if she’s seen me accomplish a lot already.
Of course, things might be easier if I just wrote out my chore list ahead of time and made sure my wife saw it. But men usually don’t write lists. Men write lists as frequently as we ask for directions. We might get mocked for that, but we still get things done and we usually find our way around (even without current technology).
Husbands, if you’re feeling really bold, write your wife a chores list. But whatever you do, don’t call it a To Do List. Men don’t write To Do Lists. We do chores, so call it the Chores List or the List of Chores. At any rate, if you write your wife a chores list, let me know how it goes.
I bet you’ll have a very interesting story to tell.
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn has a lot of advantages over other books right now. First of all, reviewers/publicists are going out of their way to compare this novel to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Maybe this makes sense. All three titles mention females and suggest that the protagonist or central character will be a female. All three books are mystery/thrillers.
If enough reviewers/publicists compare a novel to Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, then that book is guaranteed to start off as a bestseller. It might not stay there for long, but it will start there.
Next, Stephen King has called the book unputdownable. I’m not sure unputdownable is a word, but it’s a positive fake word, and having a positive new fake word created by Stephen King to describe your book is a great start.
Stephen King is not the only famous author to write something nice. The publishers of The Woman in the Window have gotten a bunch of big name authors to hype this book.
According to the book cover, Gillian Flynn calls The Woman in the Window “Astounding. Thrilling. Amazing.”
Ruth Ware writes: “Hitchcock would have snapped up the rights in a heartbeat.”
Louise Penny writes: A tour de force. A twisting, twisted odyssey inside one woman’s mind, her illusions, delusions, reality. An absolutely gripping thriller.”
I could give more examples, but I think I’ve made my point, and I don’t want to be accused of overkill.
I started reading The Woman in the Window before I was aware of the hype (I just grab the new books and go; I don’t even read the book jackets anymore), and when I saw all the reviews later, I was a bit surprised. Astounding? Gripping? Unputdownable?
I’m not sure The Woman in the Window is unputdownable. It’s alright. There’s a lot of name dropping about old movies and references to stuff I don’t know much about. I get the film noir references, but home décor is not my thing. When I read The Woman in the Window, I thought it was trying too hard to pay homage to film noir. I thought a little more subtlety would have been better.
But I guess I was wrong. Whose opinion are you going to listen to? Mine? Or Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, and Ruth Ware’s?
I have to give author A.J. Finn credit; it’s tough for a male author to write from a female character’s point of view without messing something up, but from what I’ve read so far the author is doing a good job.
I wouldn’t have known that A.J. Finn was a dude if I hadn’t accidentally stumbled upon that information. I don’t think he writes anything that obviously gives away his gender. Anna Fox, the central character, never scratches herself while watching old movies, and she doesn’t train her dog how to fetch beers from the fridge.
I’m glad I started reading The Woman in the Window before I was aware of the hype. If I had seen all the reviews ahead of time, I would have naturally had a negative bias against it. That’s just how I am. I admit it. Maybe the twists and turns that reviewers talk about make the novel better in the middle and end than at the beginning. But Stephen King called it unputdownable.
That’s okay. The Woman in the Window is still going to make a ton of money, even if I don’t think it’s quite astounding, gripping, and unputdownable so far.
*****
What do you think? Have you read The Woman in the Window? Is it truly unputdownable? If a book is super-hyped, are you more likely or less likely to read it?
(image via wikimedia)
“I’m sorry about what happened,” the writer’s group leader said to me at the end of the group meeting. My excerpt had just been ridiculed and tossed aside by the new guy in our group. He had cursed at it and said there was nothing worthwhile about what I had written ( you can get more details here ). It would have been different if I had known the guy or was familiar with his writing. But the blunt guy was new. He hadn’t earned the right to insult my prose yet.
Ed, the group leader, was a sincere white-haired guy in his late 50s, and he lived in a small house in the old, maintained part of the city with a wife 20 years younger. I’m not sure what he had done before he retired, but he was a decent writer and a good critic and his wife was nice-looking, so I always listened to his advice.
Ed spoke quietly, like me, but I could always hear him the first time he said anything. “He’s not used to critiquing the way we do.”
I knew what Ed was talking about. The new blunt guy was from a local university’s prestigious writing program, where students butchered each other’s work in groups. Our writing group intentionally approached criticism more gently. It allowed me to experiment more, knowing that nobody would just say “You suck.”
I understood why the blunt guy had said what he’d said (it was how he had been taught), but I was still pissed. I really wanted to massacre the blunt guy’s manuscript. He had just given us an excerpt from his novel for the next writer’s group meeting, and we had the week to read it and make perceptive comments. I really wanted to be negative. I hoped that the excerpt wasn’t any good. I hoped that it sucked so that I’d have every reason to criticize it, mock it, cast it aside just like he had done with mine. I mean, I knew this wasn’t the right approach, but I was in my 20s, so I give myself a little slack when I look back on this.
A few days after the writer’s group debacle, I had calmed down and I found some spare time over the weekend to look over the blunt guy’s excerpt. It was okay, but really boring. It seemed like the blunt guy was putting together a legal thriller, but there was nothing exciting about it. The main character was a lawyer, and he talked to other lawyers, and there was a bunch of legal jargon I didn’t understand, and everybody talked the same way, except one guy used a lot of profanity, and the main character saw everybody else as incompetent and never seemed to make mistakes.
I could tell that the writer’s group would gently pan this excerpt, and I felt a little sympathy for the blunt guy, so I decided to ease up and set aside my plan for revenge. It wouldn’t be necessary to criticize his writing if everybody else did as well. I didn’t want to gang up on him.
The next week’s meeting began peacefully enough. The blunt guy read a portion of his excerpt out loud. He read it dramatically, even though there wasn’t much drama in the excerpt. He emphasized the profane character’s extreme language, and he used a quiet whispery voice for the one female lawyer character. I suppressed a yawn and prepared my criticism.
There were eight of us in the group, so the blunt guy had to listen to seven critiques, but I was one of the last to offer my opinion, and the other participants, including Ed, had said the same stuff that I was thinking, and I didn’t want to repeat what everybody else had said. The blunt guy wasn’t happy about the criticism (nobody is ever happy about it), and he frowned and nodded while they talked. By the time my turn came, I had decided to go easy on him.
“I don’t have much new to offer,” I said. “You could probably take it easy on the legal jargon.”
“They’re lawyers,” the blunt guy snapped. “That’s how they talk.”
First of all, the blunt guy wasn’t supposed to respond to criticism until everybody had spoken. Secondly, this guy was being a dick to me again.
“But I’m not a lawyer,” I said, trying not to get sucked into a stupid confrontation, “so I don’t understand everything the characters are talking about.”
“That’s not my problem,” he said.
“It is if you’re trying to sell this book, and readers don’t understand it.”
“You don’t understand it,” he said. “You’re not every reader.”
“I think a lot of potential readers would have a tough time with this.”
“I don’t care what you think.”
That was it. I could feel the back of my ears getting purple again. My hands shook as I clutched his manuscript. I wanted to be diplomatic, but I was running out of tactful responses. I knew I was going to respond in one off three ways:
- “Why are you in a writer’s group if you don’t care what we think?”
- “Okay, Then I’m done with my critique.”
or my personal favorite…
- “Your story sucks, and you have bad breath too.”
I knew I was going to use one of those three responses, but I wasn’t sure which.
*****
To be continued! In the meantime, here are two books that my writer’s group never saw.
Now only 99 cents each on the Amazon Kindle!
At first, I wasn’t going to write about Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff. I figured there’s already enough stuff about this book out there, so the world doesn’t need me piling on.
Besides, it’s dangerous to talk about politics nowadays, much less write about it. The topic of Fire and Fury came up at work last week, and that led to an argument between a Trump supporter and a Trump hater. It went from politics, and then started to get into generalities about who was a racist and who was a globalist, and then it started to get personal. The whole thing was pointless because these exchanges never change anybody’s mind, so I reluctantly stepped in:
“C’mon, guys!” I said, trying to fake some positivity. “It doesn’t matter who you vote for. Both of you have the same values. You raise your families the same way. Both of you work hard and are honest. You even cheer for the same football team. The only thing you disagree about is what the government should do about stuff.”
The coworkers looked at me funny, probably because I’m known as the monotone quiet guy. Then one coworker told me to mind my own business and the other one called me a f***ing eavesdropper, and that was that. Their argument was over. They were united against a common enemy, me.
I don’t like being the common enemy, but I guess it’s okay because the coworkers forgot their disagreement. This is how politics can poison relationships if people approach these discussions the wrong way. And that’s why I was reluctant to mention this book on my blog.
But I can’t ignore a book that gets so much attention. Fire and Fury got a lot of hype before it came out, so much that it was guaranteed to be a bestseller. I wish I could get that much hype for one of my books. Maybe I should write about Donald Trump. But if everybody wrote about Donald Trump, then none of the books would be bestsellers. It would be a Ponzi scheme of Trump books; only the first Trump books would make money, and by the time I finished mine, it would be too late.
The main criticism of Fire and Fury is that the information presented is contradictory and interviewees are saying it’s inaccurate. I don’t know much about that because I’ve read only the first couple chapters. From my point of view, this feels like a book that was written too quickly. Even if I wasn’t nitprickety, I’d think it felt rushed.
For example, in Prologue: Ailes and Bannon, a lot of sentences are loaded with interrupters that disrupt the flow of the prose:
Now, however reluctantly, Ailes understood that, at least for the moment, he was passing the right-wing torch to Bannon. It was a torch that burned bright with ironies. Ailes’s Fox News, with its $1.5 billion in annual profits, had dominated Republican politics for two decades. Now Bannon’s Breitbart News, with its mere $1.5 million in annual profits, was claiming that role. For thirty years, Ailes- until recently the single most powerful person in conservative politics- had humored and tolerated Donald Trump, but in the end Bannon and Breitbart had elected him.
I wonder if anybody took the time to read the words out loud to hear how all these sentences sound together. If you take out the interrupters, I don’t think much meaning is lost and the sentences would have a better rhythm. That’s an editing dispute that reasonable people can disagree about.
However, there are writing errors in this book that are obvious mistakes:
In early August, less than a month after Ailes had been ousted from Fox News, Trump asked his old friend to take over the management of his calamitous campaign. Ailes, knowing Trump’s disinclination to take advice, or even listen to it, turned it down. This was the job Bannon a week later.
What? I want to know what the verb in that last sentence was supposed to be.
Supposedly, this wasn’t the only outright error in Fire and Fury. In a couple places the L in the word public is missing (making it pubic). That looks like the kind of mistake that’s done on purpose.
I admit, I make plenty of mistakes on my blog. I’ve left out words. I’ve used words incorrectly. But I don’t get paid. And I also don’t have an editor. And nobody expects me to write books that can embarrass a presidency. I just embarrass myself.
Maybe Michael Wolff doesn’t care if there are errors in his book. Maybe he’s the type of person who doesn’t care when others say he is careless and factually incorrect. That makes sense; the author who is accused of being careless and factually incorrect has written a book portraying a president who is accused of being careless and factually incorrect. In other words, Fire and Fury is just another day of media and politics. I’m gonna go back to reading fiction.
How could you NOT want him to show up in your dreams?
I had a dream with Scott Baio in it last night. It wasn’t “that” kind of dream, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t even call it a Scott Baio dream because I don’t remember enough to say how much Scott Baio was in it. All I can tell you is that somebody in the dream said something funny to Scott Baio, and I woke up laughing.
I don’t know if it was a joke or an insult, but whatever it was, it was pretty funny because my wife said I laughed out loud in my sleep, and I rarely laugh out loud, even when I’m awake.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had a Scott Baio dream. Scott Baio first appeared in one of my dreams in 1991 or 1992. Maybe “appeared” isn’t the right word. He was mentioned. I clearly remember a friend of mine named Kirk in my dream saying “I always thought Scott Baio was underrated.”
That’s when I woke up, perplexed. Why was my friend Kirk talking about Scott Baio? Kirk was real, and I knew Kirk pretty well, and he’d never mentioned Scott Baio before. The next time I saw Kirk, I asked him if he thought Scott Baio was underrated. He sneered at me and said, “Scott Baio, that m***********?”
A few years later, Scott Baio invited me to a party, and I bragged to my friends that I was going to Scott Baio’s party, but I woke up before I got there. That kind of sucked because I bet Scott Baio could throw a wild party.
A few years after that, I was cohosting a variety show with Scott Baio, and I made it on onstage and delivered my first lines without dry heaving. Our first guest was some guy named Johnny Chode, and when I introduced him, the audience roared. Maybe it was my delivery that got the positive reaction.
That was actually a pretty good dream. I was a little disappointed when I woke up. It felt good to speak in front of a large audience without dry heaving. Thank you for that, Scott Baio.
A couple summers ago, I saw Scott Baio giving a speech at the Republican National Convention. I turned to my wife and asked, “Am I in the middle of a Scott Baio dream?”
She said something with the word nightmare, and I went into the other room. I don’t like political conventions, even if my buddy Scott Baio is speaking.
I don’t know why Scott Baio keeps turning up in my dreams. I stopped watching Happy Days before he became a regular. I never watched Joanie Loves Chachi. The kids in Charles in Charge were annoying. I have no connection to him that I know of.
I could understand if other famous people were in my dreams. I’m surprised Stan Lee has never shown up. I’ve read so many comic books that Stan Lee owes me a moment or two. Tom Hanks, Homer Simpson, the sax player from Madness, I could understand if they showed up in my dreams from time to time. But Scott Baio?
I believe that dreams can have meaning, but I’m not the kind of guy who can figure it out. I can barely decipher basic poetry. When I read “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, I just say “Get a map.” My wife has a theory about my Scott Baio dream, but I don’t believe I’m repressing anything. I don’t deny that I repress stuff, but not that. I don’t have any problem with what my wife claims I’m repressing, so I wouldn’t repress it.
This might end up being one of the great mysteries of my life. I’m pretty sure I’ll never meet Scott Baio, and even if I did, he wouldn’t know why he’s in my dream. Maybe I’m in Scott Baio’s dreams, and he doesn’t know who I am. He might wake up once every few years wondering who that awkward quiet guy is, but I doubt it. He doesn’t care who I am. He’s probably just mad that he woke up before he could interview Johnny Chode.
*****
What do you think? Am I the only one who has random Scott Baio dreams? If not, who is your version of Scott Baio?
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is a pretty good book so far.
That’s it. That could be my entire my review. I mean, I’ve read only a couple chapters so far, but I haven’t found much to complain about, which is unusual for me. Some people think I read books with the intent of finding something wrong with them, but that’s not true. I want to enjoy books, but sometimes I notice stuff that other readers might not, and since I don’t get paid to write and these famous bestselling authors do, I get ticked off when I see well-paid famous authors take shortcuts that amateurs aren’t allowed to get away with.
Anyway, back to my review. It feels like Celeste Ng is a real writer. At least, I haven’t noticed any cheap shortcuts yet (and I promise I’m not trying to find them). A couple really long paragraphs stood out as warning signs in the first few pages. There were a few teenage characters, but they weren’t exceedingly annoying or precocious or overly witty, as some authors like to write. They sounded like normal teenagers. Several characters (who aren’t the teenagers) have been introduced or mentioned, and they’re easy to keep track of.
If there’s anything to complain about, it’s long paragraphs. They make my eyes hurt, and the length might be unnecessary. Here’s a long paragraph from the beginning of Chapter 2:
Shaker Heights was like that. There were rules, many rules about what you could and could not do, as Mia and Pearl began to learn as they settled into their new home. They learned to write their new address: 18434 Winslow Road Up, those two little letters ensuring that their mail ended up in their apartment, and not with Mr. Yang downstairs. They learned that the little strip of grass between sidewalk and street was called a tree lawn- because of the young Norway maple, one per house, that graced it- and that garbage cans were not dragged there on Friday mornings but instead left at the rear of the house, to avoid the unsightly spectacle of trash cans cluttering the curb. Large motor scooters, each piloted by a man in an orange work suit, zipped down each driveway to collect the garbage in the privacy of the backyard, ferrying it to the larger truck idling out in the street, and for months Mia would remember their first Friday on Winslow Road, the fright she’d had when the scooter, like a revved-up flame-colored golf cart, shot past the kitchen window with engine roaring. They got used to it eventually, just as they got used to the detached garage- stationed well at the back of the house, again to preserve the view of the street- and learned to carry an umbrella to keep them dry as they ran from car to house on rainy days. Later, when Mr. Yang went away for two weeks in July, to visit his mother in Hong Kong, they learned that an unmowed lawn would result in a polite but stern letter from the city, noting that their grass was over six inches tall and that if the situation was not rectified, the city would mow the grass- and charge them a hundred dollars- in three days. There were many rules to be learned.
By my standards, that’s a long paragraph. It could probably be chopped up and not lose any artistic value. But for some reason, it didn’t bother me much (except for hurting my eyes). Maybe it didn’t bother me because I started reading Little Fires Everywhere right after I’d gotten ticked off at a James Patterson book. James Patterson can make just about every book that’s not his look good.
To be honest, I’ve never heard of Celeste Ng before, and I don’t like admitting this because I read a lot and I blog about books. I like Ng’s writing. I’m still not quite sure what the book is about, but since I like Ng’s writing style, I’ll probably keep reading and find out.
*****
What do you think? Was that long paragraph from Little Fires Everywhere too much? Did it hurt anybody else’s eyes? Or was that just me?
(image via wikimedia)
First of all, I never said my date’s name was ugly. I’m not sure how I phrased it, but I know I didn’t say the word ugly. This whole thing happened about 25 years ago, so I don’t remember everything exactly as it happened, but I know I’m not the type of person who would use the word ugly to describe a woman’s name.
This awkward moment happened in my coworker’s living room on a weekend evening. We probably shouldn’t have been dating ( you can get more details here ), but we were. I’m not the kind of blogger who gets into really personal details, so I’m not going to describe play-by-play what we were doing in her living room, but we were probably about to go to her bedroom as long as I didn’t do/say anything stupid. At least, I was 80% sure we were getting there.
There were a lot of positive signs, and I wanted to say her name at the right moment. I was preparing myself for it, making sure the time was right. When a guy says the woman’s name in this situation, he has to make sure the time and tone are right. The time was right, but when I opened my mouth, nothing happened. I hesitated at a moment when a guy shouldn’t hesitate.
“What’s wrong?” my female coworker date asked, and that was bad because you don’t want your potential partner to think anything is wrong in this situation.
“Nothing,” I said, but that never works. Even if there’s nothing, a guy has to say something, even if it’s a lie, and I should have just lied.
“I was going to say your name,” I said.
“And you forgot it?” she said, and her face moved away from mine.
“No, no, no,” I said quickly. And then I said her name. I even repeated her name several times.
“So what was the problem?”
I paused before saying this, but I had the feeling she had a strong BSometer, so I said, “I have a difficult time saying your name.”
“Why?” she asked. “It’s only two syllables.”
“Uhhh, because it doesn’t fit you.”
This is where everything deteriorated.
I’m not sure what happened next. It happened so quickly. I talked too fast, and she talked even faster so that I could barely keep up with her thoughts and reasoning. I think I said that her name didn’t do her justice, that she was beautiful but her name was kind of plain. Maybe I said common instead of plain. Somehow, this coworker female managed to turn plain or common into ugly. I don’t like it when people rephrase what I say in a negative way. I have a tough enough time defending my exact words. It’s impossible to defend somebody else’s misinterpretation of my words.
I don’t want to say what this woman’s name was. I’ve known several women with this name, and I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings (or piss them off either). I think this name __________is drab. It’s plain and common and boring. The __________ that I was dating was a unique woman with a couple distinct features that men either loved or disliked. I liked __________’s features a lot. I thought she was interesting, funny, and I was lucky to be going out with her. I didn’t think I was lucky; I knew I was lucky.
“I don’t understand what’s ugly about my name,” she said.
“It’s not ugly,” I reiterated. “I never said ugly.”
Even when I convinced her that I never said the word ugly, the passion was already lost. The best I could try to do was salvage the evening so that the romantic moment could happen another night. But __________ got quiet, she sat apart from me on the couch, and she didn’t laugh at my attempts at humor (which were probably clumsy), and I reluctantly left an hour later.
Ouch, that was embarrassing, I thought, but I wasn’t surprised because it wasn’t the first time I’d blown a romantic opportunity. But at least this had been a private moment between only the two of us. Private awkward moments are salvageable because nobody else knows about them. I was pretty sure __________ would keep this to herself because she didn’t want anybody to know we were dating.
I should have known __________ wouldn’t see things quite the same way.
*****
To be continued in… Awkward Moments in Dating: The Public Argument!
At first glance, The People vs. Alex Cross by James Patterson is just James Patterson being James Patterson. The chapters are short, and there are 114 of them. Descriptions are basic. All the characters talk the same way. Everybody is a smart ass. If you like that kind of writing (and lots of people do because these books always sell like crazy), then this book won’t bother you.
But it bothers me. I don’t want to go into another James Patterson rant and repeat stuff that I’ve already said here and here and here . I prefer that each of my rants be somewhat original, but I can’t help myself sometimes. .
I probably shouldn’t keep reading James Patterson books because I always know how I’m going to react and I’m rarely wrong. At the same time, I can’t just ignore James Patterson. He’s too relevant. He writes 10-15 books a year. Bookstores have sections just for James Patterson. He’s almost a genre. You can’t ignore an author who is almost his own genre.
What bugs me is that The People vs. Alex Cross seems like it’s written by an author who feels contempt for his readers (and that’s not good for a genre). It feels like James Patterson knows that he can write anything and it will sell. Here’s an excerpt/description that shows what I’m talking about (with my comments in parenthesis):
Anita Marley, my attorney, was also there, waiting at the curb.
Tall and athletically built(of course), with auburn hair, freckled skin, and sharp emerald eyes (of course), Marley had once played volleyball (of course) for and studied acting at the University of Texas (of course); she later graduated near the top of her law school class at Rice (of course). She was classy (of course), brassy (of course), and hilarious (of course, but…she’s not sassy?), as well as certifiably badass in the courtroom (of course), which was why we’d hired her.
Marley opened my door.
“I do the talking from here on out, Alex,” she said in a commanding drawl (of course, because everybody from Texas has a drawl, especially students near the top of their law class at Rice) just as the roar of accusation and ridicule hit me, far worse than what I’d been subjected to at home.
That was pretty bad, even by James Patterson’s standards. He has to know that’s crappy writing. I know that’s crappy writing, and I write for a free on a blog that maybe a few people read. James Patterson has written decent stuff before, so he knows he’s writing crap, and if he knows he’s writing crap and he still publishes it, then it shows he doesn’t care.
Maybe I shouldn’t worry about James Patterson so much (I’m not losing sleep over it). I can ignore his books. If he stopped writing, it wouldn’t affect my chances of becoming a successful author. But it’s frustrating (or annoying) to see an extraordinarily successful author getting away with writing that amateurs wouldn’t even put on their own blogs (except to use it as an example of bad writing).
She was classy and brassy, and hilarious, as well as certifiably badass in the courtroom, which was why we’d hired her.
Ugh.
*****
What do you think? Is that really bad writing, or am I overreacting?
Dysfunctional Literacy 