From the Library: Philip Roth's "The Counterlife"

This reader purchased The Counterlife while on vacation, and read the first half while on said vacation. The second half of the novel was read after the return to day-to-day work-world reality.

The novel was published in 1986. It has five sections, entitled "Basel," "Judea," "Aloft," "Gloucestershire," and "Christendom."

In the first section of The Counterlife, the narrator, a novelist, writes about his brother, a dentist. In the second section, something that happened in the first section has been undone. In other words: the narrator is the same narrator and the brother is the same brother, but the reality of the novel's second section proceeds from a possibility that did not occur in the first section. Roth declines to surround this shift with any particular narrative frenetics: there is no time travel or other physical explanation for the shift; it is not treated by the author as a shocking or rebellious move of wild postmodernity; and it does not particularly undermine the novel's "realism." One simply begins reading the second section of the novel and, eight pages in, realizes that something that occurred in the first section now did not occur.

Each succeeding section of the novel proceeds accordingly: decisions or events that occurred in previous sections are changed or undone. The reader quickly recognizes this--the shifts are not intended to be mystifying or confusing. The novel proceeds.

Because the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, is a novelist, thoughts on the construction of fiction occur and are spoken about by Zuckerman and the characters. After Zuckerman visits Mordecai Lippman, a militant Jew living on a settlement in Judea, whom Zuckerman's brother has left his family to follow, an Israeli friend writes to Zuckerman:

What worries me is that what you will see in Lippman and his cohorts is an irresistible Jewish circus, a great show, and that what is morally inspiring to one misguided Zuckerman boy will be richly entertaining to the other, a writer with a strong proclivity for exploring serious, even grave, subjects through their comical possibilities. What makes you a normal Jew, Nathan, is how you are riveted by Jewish abnormality.

The reader's response to these lines, of course, is to think: But the fact that I just read about Lippman in this novel means that Zuckerman did, indeed, turn Lippman into a character in a novel...or, no, wait: Roth used a character named Lippman as a character in a novel in exactly the way Zuckerman's friend seems to be hoping to pre-empt, though he is hoping to pre-empt Zuckerman from writing about Lippman.

Hmm.

Reviews of the novel at the time seem to have focused on its "metafictional" aspects, which made some reviewers grumpy. It strikes this reader, though, as pointless to be grumpy about "metafiction" in a novel in which one of the characters is a novelist. (We're putting "metafiction" in quotes because there are about five hundred flavors of it--even so-called "regular" fiction writing has "metafictional" qualities, if you're looking for them.) If reviewers dislike this, then they are essentially outlawing novelists from using writers as characters in novels. According to this view, we can have dentists as characters, for instance, or characters who possess any other profession in the world, but characters simply cannot be writers.

This seems arbitrary and silly. It is also seems small-minded to want to limit the terrain a writer covers, or to outlaw him from pursuing particular novelistic possibilities. So we dismiss these old reviews out of hand. Including yours, John Updike.

What was particularly impressive to this reader was the degree to which the shifts in reality and reflections-upon-writing in The Counterlife did not lessen the effects of the novel's realism. Roth's characters are vivid, their situations specific. He allows them to speak: when upset, his characters sometimes speak for pages. He allows them equality: the characters are intelligent, and when arguing, characters on opposing sides of arguments--whether those arguments are political or emotional--each make compelling points. He allows them honesty: his characters are frank about sex, about their most conflicted feelings, about the things they have done and why they have done them. And in this novel, he allows them the particular reflectivity built into a novel that features a novelist as the narrator: they discuss, quite naturally, the degree to which perhaps the narrator and main character, Nathan Zuckerman, likes to get himself into arguments and conflicts primarily because he thinks they will make for good source material for his fiction writing. Zuckerman responds to these thoughts. The novel proceeds.

There is a section in which an italicized voice simply asks questions to one of the characters. She responds as well as she can. We are not "grounded in scene," but because these voices are personal, and the questions are about a relationship we have read about in the novel--and probably because there is a tremendous amount of talking in this novel, in general--the section does not play particularly differently from others. One does not have a sense that we are somehow, now, "outside" of the novel. Two voices are talking. We know to whom the voices belong. We are still "in" the novel.

This novel consists primarily--as may already be clear--of scenes in which two people discuss something. Who the two people are, and what is being discussed, changes. The scenes, however, at all times possess an urgency and sharpness which this reader found impressive and enjoyable. Philip Roth, of course, is famous. But it is nice to be able to say that consistently, when reading him, one thinks: and he merits this fame. The Counterlife, at least, is excellent.

Happy birthday, Maurice Sendak

Good morning, Writer readers. Today, June 10, is Maurice Sendak's 80th birthday. Maurice Sendak (right) is one of those rare artists who, rather than responding to the world, may actually have created a part of it.

Think of Where the Wild Things Are. Now think of the world without it. Now think of the world with it. Now without it. Those aren't the same two worlds.

More than one tentacle of PDXWD has children who are kid's-book age, so we are fairly up-to-date with the world of children's lit. Sendak's work transcends that genre. Because what is Where the Wild Things Are? It isn't a social allegory, a la the work of Leo Leonni. It's not the colorful diversion of Eric Carle, and neither is it didactic, teaching children the value of some kind of appropriate behavior, as in most of the rest of children's lit. Max gets sent to his room (for mischief, and his threat, "I'll eat you up!"), but after his fantasy time with the Wild Things, he finds that his dinner has been sent up to him. That's it.

We never see his parents, so there's never any lecture about, or "real world contextualization" of, the situation. The Wild Things don't teach Max any life lessons. He is neither victim nor victimizer: they bare their claws and teeth to him, but he is unafraid, and makes them cry. Neither side apologizes. They also have that big party together.

The work that graphic artist Dave McKean does, for instance--especially the kids' stuff he has done with writer Neil Gaiman--is hard to imagine without first thinking of Sendak. Same goes for Chris Van Allsburg. And any number of other writers and/or illustrators.

From Wikipedia:
"Sendak’s book In the Night Kitchen, first published in 1970, has often been subjected to censorship for its drawings of a young boy prancing naked through the story. The book has been challenged, and in some instances banned, in several American states including Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Texas. In the Night Kitchen regularly appears on the American Library Association's list of 'frequently challenged and banned books.' It was listed number 25 on the '100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.'"

That's not correct. Mickey, the boy in In the Night Kitchen, does not prance. He floats out of his bed (and his clothes) and down through the floors of his house, into "the night kitchen." He ends up in batter and gets placed in the oven, but leaps out. He wears a suit of batter, and flies a dough airplane. He floats (naked) down into a huge bottle of milk. At the end, he floats back into his own bed, secure in the knowledge that there will be cakes for the morning breakfast, because he saw--and flew a dough airplane over--the bakers working.

For further proof that Sendak's work transcends conventional children's lit, look at Outside, Over There. It looks like a children's book, but...it kind of isn't. And we're not trying to be evasive with that "kind of." One looks at the book. One thinks: Could I read this to my children? One thinks: Maybe. Or maybe not. Or, but, maybe. Or, oh, maybe not. Hmm.

Sendak is 80. He continues to work. Below, enjoy the animated version of In the Night Kitchen:

Portland's Paige Saez publishes "Visual Mixtape" through Blurb

We here in the lower echelons of PDX Writer Daily have no idea what Blurb is, but it apparently is being used by noted Portland artist Paige Saez (pictured at right), and apparently one can order a copy of her book Visual Mixtape (pictured at left) from the Blurb bookstore, which apparently will be printed on demand (though the upper echelons of PDX Writer Daily have often hinted that their preferred term is "print-on-request," for the moment we trust that the generally acceptable terminology will not raise too many hackles).

Unpurchased periodicals trump online infosnacking

One of PDX Writer's many tentacles was standing in the doorway of Kir watching the lightning and the rain Saturday night, when a friend who recently dropped out of college listed her reading for Spring Term--or what would have been Spring Term had she stayed in school. Naturally, the list included Sartre's Roads to Freedom trilogy, a samovar of Italo Calvino (yes, samovar is the correct term for a singular grouping of Calvino books), The Future of an Illusion, and a little pulp courtesy of Thomas Mann.

As the tentacle counted the thirteenth thunderclap and watched a crazy bicyclist ride by while singing (or shouting?) aloud, s/he decided to 1) cease all online reading in favor of those baggy monsters; 2) begin by reading the books already on his/her shelf, rather than purchasing new ones.

How is our tentacle's project working? Well... Tentacle has discovered that many perfectly intelligent periodicals are available for free in print form. On Sunday alone, Tentacle picked up a copy of Rain Taxi, the latest issue of Context, and spring's Arcade. So Tentacle may not have finished--or even started--reading any novels since Saturday night, but after thirty-six hours, the experiment is still intact. Writer readers, we'll keep you posted.

Please, Margaret Wise Brown. Release us. Please.

Welcome to May 23rd, Writer readers. Children's author Margaret Wise Brown was born on this day in 1910. Brown's most well-known book is probably Goodnight Moon, which this blog also nominates for Most Unsettling Children's Book Ever. Evidence?

The copy on the back of the book reads, "A little rabbit is getting ready for bed. And as the night gets later and his room grows darker, he bids goodnight to everything around him."

Everything, folks. He bids goodnight to: Every. Thing.

Things that have occurred to this blog on, oh, roughly every one of the approx. 200 times we have had to read the book aloud: Why does the room slowly get darker, when it was already night at the beginning of the book? Who is the mysterious larger rabbit that appears in the chair? Why is there a page in this book that is empty except for the words "Goodnight nothing"? Why does the "Goodnight nothing" page reek to us of death, or at least of existential panic and despair?

Why does all of David Lynch's work seem somehow derivative of the room depicted in this book?

Why this, from Wikipedia: "Brown bequeathed the royalties to many of her books including Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny to Albert Clarke, the son of a neighbor who was nine years old when she died. In 2000, reporter Joshua Prager detailed in the Wall Street Journal the troubled life of Mr. Clarke who has squandered the millions of dollars the books have earned him and who believes that Wise Brown was his mother, a claim others dismiss."

Why do we cover this book with other books? Why, when we turn off the light in the room, does this book seem to pulse in a strange and menacing way? Why, when we throw this book into the garbage can, does it reappear the next day, back in its same spot on the shelf? Why, when we attempt to burn the book, does it not burn? Why, when we attempt to throw it into the street, does it somehow fly through the air in a boomeranging arc and land inside of our home again?

Why will no one believe us? Why will no one help us?

It's Margaret Wise Brown's birthday. Something awful is going to happen when we fall asleep tonight. Help us. Please. Help us.

From the Library: Douglas Coupland's "Life After God"

Okay, here goes. PDX Writer Daily has started a new department: From the Library, in which the little nuts, bolts, and mitochondria that make up the leviathan-that-is-us report their reading experiences.

What's that we hear? A signal? A voice? A mitochondrian? Go, mitochondrian! Speak!

Though it was published almost 15 years ago, this mitochondrian recently read Douglas Coupland's Life After God for the first time. The author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, Coupland has made a habit of examining the philosophical tension that lies below the surface of modern daily existence and Life After God, a collection of rather bizarre stories, is no exception.

The strongest piece in the book is its title story "1000 Years (Life After God)," a wandering tale that traces the lives of a group of twenty-something friends who knew each other closely during late adolescence. As each of them inevitably follows his or her own path (drug addiction, parenthood, hippiedom, mental and physical transience, etc.), Coupland is able to tease out the universal existential angst most people go through in reaching "stable" adulthood before the age of 30.

In the tradition of stories by, say, Kafka, "1000 Years" caused this reader to pause on several occasions, steeping in quiet interpersonal evaluation, forced to take stock of all that happens (and doesn't happen) in the third decade of life. "This is not to say my life is bad," Coupland's narrator admits. "I know it isn't...but my life is not what I expected it might have been when I was younger. Maybe you yourself deal with this issue better than me. Maybe you have been lucky enough to never have inner voices question you about your own path--or maybe you answered the questioning and came out on the other side. I don't feel sorry for myself in any way. I am merely coming to grips with what I know the world is truly like."

The method in which several of the stories in Life After God reach off the page like this, addressing the reader almost directly by way of using the second person "you" over and over, makes the experience of reading it sort of harrowing, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, Coupland's virtuosity lies in writing fiction that successfully frames some of our more common abstract longings and intangible disappointments.

"Gettysburg," for example, a story told from the point of view of a father who attempts to make sense of and explain to his child his failed marriage, dwells on life not working out how we expected it to. "I say that I know life has gotten so boring so quickly in so many ways--and that neither of us planned for this to happen," the father says. "I never thought that we would end up in the suburbs with lawnmowers and swing sets. I never thought that I'd be a lifer at some useless company. But then wasn't this the way of the world? The way of adulthood, of maturity, of bringing up children?" The dream-crushing facts of life are so well-established that they become impossible to change or question without also taking on the very truth and nature of the modern world.

The greatest moments of Life After God occur when Coupland puts words to those many thoughts we've all had about where we are versus where we hoped we would be. "When you're young, you always feel that life hasn't yet begun--that 'life' is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays," and it's true. It's tempting to consider, for example, what may have happened differently had this reviewer read that line earlier in life.

But alas, that's not the way it works, and Coupland is wise to that fact. It's so difficult to heed the advice of other, older people because there is a belief innate to us all, especially in our youth, that everything is really yet to come. We don't need to worry that much because it doesn't quite count yet, right? "But then," Coupland writes, "suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive. You find yourself asking, 'Well then, exactly what was it I was having--that interlude--the scrambly madness--all that time I had before?'" Again, the second person "you," though Coupland uses it nonchalantly, becomes one of the most riveting components of the story, and one on which the whole collection pivots.

If, as a middle page of Life After God reads (the page is not connected to any story, and looks more like a poem between stories), "You are the first generation raised without religion," then what has filled that spiritual void within us? Is it television, email, and material possessions? Hummers and Wiis and DVDs? Or is there simply a void there inside us still, a lacuna in want of filler?

Coupland never explicitly speculates, exactly, nor does he even seem that interested in the answer. Perhaps (and this may have been Coupland's plan), it's our job to find out.

Oxford Commas, Pin-Stripes, and Fact Checking

If you haven't already listened to Vampire Weekend's self-titled album (left), we think you should. The group of Ivy League punks (is that an oxymoron?) wax lyrical on a number of writing-related topics in the course of their 11-track debut.

Here at PDX Writer Daily, we were just arguing the other day, in fact, about the Oxford Comma, but it seems VW beat us to the punch: "Who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?" Well, we do, it turns out, but we're smiling again by the time frontman Ezra Koenig sings, "I haven't got the words for you/All your diction is dripping with disdain."

The album really picks up steam on track nine, "I Stand Corrected," a tongue-in-cheek homage to errata, editing, and self-rebuke. "You've been checking on my facts," the tune goes, "And I admit I have been lax/ ... I stand corrected." As if reading our minds, making a perfect slogan for our collective daily existence here in Cramer Hall, Koenig adds, "No one cares when you are wrong/ ... I've been at this far too long."

And perhaps we have. A good day to you, nonetheless.