Come on back to the typewriter
July 9, 2009
Selected Poems of Anne Sexton
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974) once confided to a priest that she was unable to go to church, let alone pray.
After the priest read her work, he replied that her poems were her prayers, her typewriter was her altar. “As he left me he said…‘Come on back to the typewriter.’”
This anecdote appears in Kathleen Norris’s most recent book, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life (2008), about a depression-like condition that afflicts monks, causing them to become detached from daily praying and haunted by a sense of futility.
The subject matter is difficult but not intimidating, as Norris wrestles with many of acedia’s complexities. From all the ideas and philosophies I took away from the book, that one thought especially remains with me of the priest encouraging this famously depressed, confessional poet that her poems were her prayers.
Today, I bought the following – three first editions of Sexton’s poetry. As I drove home with my treasures, I remembered the anecdote, and it occurred to me that what was sitting in the sack on the passenger seat beside me was neither a mere stack of books nor a mere collection of poetry.
Love Poems (1969) paperback first/Houghton Mifflin
From the back of the book: “There are twenty-five love poems. They can be read as the story of a single lover, or a single romance which [sic] begins with a joyous rebirth described in the opening poem, ‘The Touch.’ But there is in each poem a confrontation with humanity by a woman who cannot train her eye off the real face of that humanity…”
The Death Notebooks (1974) hardbound first/Houghton Mifflin
From the dust jacket: “She speaks here with great power as a woman who has looked at despair and death up close, and has come to terms with them…”
The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975) paperback first/Houghton Mifflin
From inside the front cover: “In this powerful new collection, one of our most dazzlingly inventive and prolific poets tackles a universal theme: the agonizing search for God that is part and parcel of the lives of all of us.”
The greatest war novel of all time
July 5, 2009
German novelist Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) published All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929. He went on to publish several other novels, but the first remains his hallmark. It’s not just a classic war novel, but frequently categorized and hailed as the greatest war novel of all time.
In brief, the story is about German soldier Paul Baumer, the narrator, who responsibly joins the German army with high-school classmates, only to discover it’s a grotesque and senseless horror show. His innocence doesn’t simply vanish in the trench warfare, hand-to-hand fighting and poison gas. It’s ripped away, and he’s fully aware of the loss.
Paul’s piercing recognitions and reflections moved me. I read them and reread them. I read them out loud. One time it was the scene where Paul, standing sentry, dangerously allows himself to think about the good times of his youth, times now unreachable for all that he and his friends have been through in the war. He despairs the harsh change: “We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial – I believe we are lost.”
Another passage I kept returning to was when Paul guards Russian prisoners of war. He recognizes they are enemies, but only in so far as those who declared the war in the first place deemed them enemies: “But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles’ beards. Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us.”
All Quiet on the Western Front typically appears on bookstore tables set up to cater to students’ summer reading assignments. I was in the store, shopping for Pat Barker’s award-winning First World War Regeneration trilogy. I changed my mind, though, and picked up Remarque’s classic, thinking, “Ah, this one first!”
Eventually I will get to Barker’s trilogy, and when I do, Paul’s fictional journey will inform it – or any other WWI story – by virtue of Remarque’s bruising emotional realism. By the way, on a whim, I Googled “the greatest war novel of all time” and got an Amazon list of 25 novels ranging from Keneally’s WWII Schindler’s List to Orwell’s Russian Revolution Animal Farm. I wouldn’t rely on an online bookseller to be an authority for such a list, but it’s a curious combination to ponder.
Update: Image changed 1.10.12.
Headlights on September
July 2, 2009
Available August 4, 2009
Around the time I was 10 or 11 years old, I walked into my neighborhood public library on a summer afternoon and had a panic attack. It occurred to me that I might get all the books I saw on the shelves read, and then what?
By the end of that summer, when I’d barely made a dent in the available volumes, I realized new books were published all the time. (Someone likely pointed out the “new books” shelf, and I discovered Santa, indeed, does exist.)
Publisher’s Weekly issued “The Road to Fall Books” this week, reminding me there’s no need for panic attacks once summer reading is completed. Come Labor Day, from the looks of the lists within this PW issue, we’ll be bombarded with a slew of new choices, from the intriguing to the inane.
For the inane category, I’ll offer First Love: Celebrities’ Tales of Virginity Lost, edited by Dana Cook (Firefly Books). According to the PW blurb, Cook “collects more than 100 personal accounts of boldfaced names.” Oh boy. Mark your calendar. It’s out in September.
Of the intriguing category, here are a few coming in September that I’m looking forward to:
Available September 1, 2009
Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow
Homer is blind. Langley is mad from being gassed fighting the Great War. These brothers live together in a crumbling Manhattan mansion, reclusives struggling to survive. A novel that’s based on a true story. Right up Doctorow’s alley. (Random House)
The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage, illustrated by Michael Mikolowski
Savage’s novel Firmin published by Coffee House Press first quietly entered American bookstores in 2006 and then had huge success in Europe. That prompted Bantam to republish it December 2008 – a quirky book about a reading rat living in a bookstore. Savage’s new novel focuses on an editor of a struggling literary journal. If it’s anything like Firmin, it will be wonderfully entertaining. (Coffee House Press)
Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece
by Declan Kiberd
Thirty-five years ago I read major sections of Ulysses in a lit class and ever since have wanted to tackle it again but in full. Now’s my chance with Kiberd opening this enduring, complicated classic to ordinary readers with chapter discussions and explanations. Yes, the opportunity is here to embrace Molly Bloom’s final “…yes I said yes I will Yes.” (W. W. Norton)
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro
A promising choice for a short story collection. According to the publisher’s website, Ishiguro has put together a cycle of stories that explore themes of music, love and the passage of time. (Alfred A. Knopf)
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Here’s a true account of a man whose passion for books drove him to steal rare, valuable books from libraries, book fairs and stores. From the publisher’s catalogue: “In the tradition of The Orchid Thief, a compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him.” (Riverhead Books)
Available September 8, 2009
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
David Small is a Caldecott Award-winning book illustrator now telling his shocking 1950s childhood story in a graphic memoir. Small’s website describes the book as “a silent movie masquerading as a book.” The son of a Detroit radiologist, Small suffered under his father’s experiments with radiation. This memoir likely will get huge attention. It’s Small’s first book for adults. (W. W. Norton)
Finally, getting back to that subject of summer panic attacks, Minotaur is publishing Jason Starr’s novel Panic Attack in August. It’s billed as a page-turner and from what I’m reading, it could be just the thing for those dog day afternoons.
