Read Since the Summer

The Natural

Reading this was an unusual experience, having been so familiar with the film. I have no idea how many times I've seen it, but I have memories of watching it when we lived in Germany where we were until I was 12. Much darker and with a more devious main character, Malamud's book definitely has some of the typical Weltschmerz you find in Jewish writers, but in this case I felt real sympathy for Roy Hobbs. I almost think that it's because I have the movie story so ingrained in my mind that as I read Malamud, I was imagining all this happening to the upstanding, down-on-his-luck Roy Hobbs that Barry Levinson gave us.

The Giver

Another one of those “should've read in high school but our lit program was awful” cases. It also falls into the “the future is bland and controlled by “the Man”” category, which kind of gave me a disappointed feeling when I realized where it was going. I think because books like 1984 and Brave New World are so huge, writing about the future in similar terms feels like a knockoff. I'm ready for a future-book with the theme “the world is so bright and colorful and emotion-ridden and free that I don't know what to do with myself.”

I Am Charlotte Simmons

I was WAY into this story while reading it. I can't remember the last time I was so consumed with knowing what would happen next in a book. Sam was right on in describing it as pornographic without images at times. Wolfe doesn't spare his reader any of the dirty details associated with big university college life in a world of people obsessed with their social standing and personal pleasure. My only gripe storywise was the occasional feeling that Wolfe was laying the frat boy/college jock stereotype on a bit too thick. Almost every character had interesting developments and revelations that shook their understanding of self however, which helped take the edge off of the typecasting.

Grendel

John Gardner is probably my favorite author right now. This was fun to read through quickly, and I'm excited to start October Light next. I hear about Grendel being used in high schools fairly often and usually find it next to books like The Giver in bookstores, and I think it makes for a great book to discuss with teens. I especially like the style of writing a story from the perspective of another character in a known book, and think it would work well as a writing exercise.

“Cooling the Lava” from John McPhee's The Control of Nature

I remember enjoying McPhee's Irons in the Fire which I read about four years ago, but something has been lost in the years between these two. “Cooling the Lava” is another example of my theory that writing about extraordinary events makes it irresistibly tempting to write poorly. In 1973 the volcanic mountain Eldfell erupted on the island of Heimaey off the coast of Iceland. The town was home to about 5,000 people, most of whom were fishermen or families of. The lava from the eruption was creeping towards the harbor and launching “bombs”, baseball to car-sized chunks of basalt, up to three miles from the crater into and around the town. By rigging firehoses and other pump machinery, the citizens were able to literally stop the lava's advance by pumping millions of gallons of seawater onto the flow, diverting it into the ocean.

McPhee's account couldn't be more blandly written. It gives me some hope as a writer to know that something like this can be published by an author that people rave over.