Black Swan Green

So here I am, home sick all day. After a much needed nap right after breakfast (I helped the kids get off to school, kissed the wife goodbye, and settled in for a midwinter siesta), I woke with a passion to finish David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. I was nearly done with only a scant twenty pages to go, but I was too out of it last night to even attempt the last run, so I hunkered down under a blanket, cracked it open, and finished the darn thing. I was glad I did.

I wrote about David Mitchell's mind blowing Cloud Atlas last year, as it was my summer read, and waited until after Christmas to tackle his newest offering. School managed to keep me focused, but I just had to do it once 2007 flipped. And the results, after all that build up and anticipation, are mixed; kind of like waking up on Christmas morning and finding the package you had been waiting for all year, and finding it was as cool as you thought it would be, but then losing interest in it after oh, say, ten minutes of playing. It's kind of like that with this book.

I don't mean to disparage Mitchell. I still think he is one of the smartest writers writing now, and BSW does have its solid points. It is an accurate coming of age story. Jason Taylor's year long journey through the ups and downs, goods and bads, of life in a small Worcestershire village is incredibly similar to my own adolescence in Ravena. The issues he deals with- first kisses, drugs, bullies, embarrassing personal problems (Jason's a stutterer), sadistic school teachers, and his parents' divorce- is really reflective of the zeitgeist that was in the air during the early 1980's. It's pretty cool to hear it from a British perspective, and the homey British products that litter Jason's life add a nice air of the exotic, too.

I especially liked the interactions of the boys, which, being a thirteen year old once, struck me as very accurate. The evil Ross Wilcox, the loss of Tom Yew in the Falklands, and Jason's battle with "Hangman," the moniker he uses for his stutter, all accurately depict the world of the adolescent as it is, one fraught with dangers, joys, and matters of great sadness. Mitchell's verisimilitude, though, is a nice foil to the fantasy world of Jason and his escapist fantasy life. It is a nice balance, one that I can relate to ( I took a turn at poetry as a young man).

That said, I came to BSW with the expectation, perhaps wrongly, that it would blow me away like Cloud Atlas did. It's unfair to judge a book based on its predecessors, but we all do it. And, as you can guess, it didn't stun me like that book did. But the linguistic and stylistic virtuosity that was in the earlier text did pop up in spots in this book. Jason's poetic leaning and reflections was charming, and I really did enjoy the chapter that highlighted the verbal sparring between the protagonist and Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, herself a hold over from Cloud Atlas. Martin Frosbisher's Cloud Atlas Sextet also makes an appearance. Which tells me that Mitchell, as usual, has more going on than meets the eye. The last lines, spoken by Julia, are perhaps prophetic. She states, "It's not the end, yet."

OK, overall, a good read. Worth the time, if not as linguistically dazzling as Cloud Atlas. For the "traditional" linear readers, Mitchell is a good practitioner to settle in with.

Good reading. Back to work tomorrow.

Richard Ford and Me

The Reading

I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Richard Ford speak on Friday night (1/19/07, New York State Writers Institute, SUNY Albany), and was able to chat briefly with him and get a copy of The Lay of the Land, his latest novel, signed. Quite an experience.

I ventured out alone (my wife is not as interested in listening to middle aged male writers as I am, and we had a houseful of ten year olds participating in a sleep over) to SUNY Albany, a monstrous campus nearly empty with the cold and biting wind. As I made my way into the room, Ford was there talking to the five or six other early birds, and he was congenial and affable as the group plied him with questions they had just been dying to ask. I chose to forgo joining the group (he didn't need another groupie), instead opting to purchase a hard cover of The Lay of the Land, which he would later sign. Once William Kennedy (of Ironweed fame and executive director of the Writers Institute) settled in, Don Faulkner introduced Ford and away we went. Forty five minutes later, Ford had finished and the crowd of fifty plus listeners dug into their questions.

The Writer

Ford is a funny, engaging, intelligent writer, and Frank Bacombe, the protagonist of three linked novels- The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1996), and The Lay of the Land (2006)- provides him with an eloquent, introspective voice in which to reflect on what it is to be a man, a husband, and a father. Bascombe navigates the treacherous shoals of grief, love, divorce, and, yes, writing, as he moves through the many periods of a modern man's life, ending, with the latest book, in the permanent period, a kind of extended and suspended time in which legacies are made or sustained, and things sometimes fall apart.

I found Ford to be such a personable guy to listen to, erudite and funny. His text- he read an excerpt from the novel that I originally read in The New Yorker- was engaging, thought provoking, and, at times, laugh out loud funny. After, he answered questions (how do writers keep it fresh, hearing the same questions over and over again?) and signed a bunch of books, mine included.

In the end, the evening was such a positive one that I wondered, as I drove home in the chilly Albany night, if being a book geek wasn't so bad, after all. I mean, the high from hearing a flesh and blood writer surpasses most manufactured highs, hands down. And I was inspired to write when I left, which I hope I can actually transfer into something substantial. Added bonus. So, in the future, I won't be hesitant to feed my soul, as one friend puts it. The benefits outweigh the potential social problems that could arise.

Express Your Soul

I have to admit that Gaping Void is perhaps one of the quirkiest, most thought provoking sites on the web. Hugh McCloud is either a raving maniac or a highly perceptive artist. I lean to the latter. This little bit about expression really hit home recently, as I constantly struggle with the dichotomy that exists between writing and that other part of life that pays the bills. I have always struggled with multi-tasking, but the idea of just expressing yourself by doing what you love seems so self explanatory that it gives you the "duh" reaction when you read it.

Shouldn't we all be doing that, anyway?

I guess it's easier said than done. At times, just about every person I know has had that existential battle between doing what you love and doing what feeds the kids. Friends, colleagues, former students, my wife, myself, we've all been bitten by the bug. I know that writing is the way I'd prefer to go, although web design is pretty cool, too. Oh, well. I'm stuck, too.

The answer can come in the cartoon. Maybe it's all about doing what you love within the confines of what you must- at least until you make your million. By doing what you love, and incorporating your creativity into your life, you can achieve some sort of balance. I know when I'm not creative I get downright cranky. When I write, or create a unit or lesson, or design a web page, or even blog, I feel the release of all the creative pressure that just builds up. And maybe, in some small way, I'm expressing my soul. Because once you do that,all else ceases to matter.