TM 227: Book recommendations.
227. A friend asks you to recommend a book: which book would you choose and why?
It's so much easier for Camilla to say what she wouldn't recommend than what she would. There are books she won't touch anymore, books she used to like or at least used to find thought-provoking, that now hit too close to home. She won't read any Faulkner anymore, not since Charles left. She won't read anything that reminds her of people she's lost. Marlowe is right out. Milton and Dante are out; Henry loved them. Flaubert is out because Henry used to quote at her from Madame Bovary. Tolstoy is out for obvious reasons. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, indeed.
What she finds she likes to read, more and more these days, is nonfiction. It's safely remote because it's always about people she doesn't know. It's never anything anyone she used to know would want to read. It's more escapist for her than fiction can be. Fiction is a mirror, and nonfiction is a window.
In this vein, she would recommend The New Kings of Nonfiction. It's a collection that Ira Glass put together, pieces of reportage he liked for one reason or another, and Camilla doesn't really listen to public radio so she'd never heard of Ira Glass, but now she thinks he has interesting taste, and if he edits anything else she supposes she'll read that too. There's a story about a teenage boy who made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the stock exchange and got busted by the SEC. There's a story about the Stringfellow acid pits. There's a story about an everyday young boy, "The American Man, Age Ten," and this one is by a writer whose name Camilla recognizes for once: Susan Orlean. (Camilla did read The Orchid Thief, a while back.) She has to chuckle a little, under her breath, at the opening paragraph:
If Colin Duffy and I were to get married, we would have matching superhero notebooks. We would wear shorts, big sneakers, and long, baggy T-shirts depicting famous athletes every single day, even in the winter. We would sleep in our clothes. We would both be good at Nintendo Street Fighter II, but Colin would be better than me. We would have some homework, but it would never be too hard and we would always have just finished it. ...
Reading about this boy doesn't bother Camilla at all, because he is nothing like Charles had been as a child, and because he has both his parents still alive.
Camilla doesn't need to find deep meaning in these narratives. Maybe the authors try to project or tease out something profound, and maybe they don't; Camilla doesn't seek it or care whether she sees it. She's reading this because it's about people out in the world she'd never talk to in real life. The Americans in the book are as foreign to her as the modern bushmen and ancient Mayans she reads about in National Geographic. Therefore it doesn't really touch her. Therefore it is safe.
Also, the writing isn't half bad, not that she cares very much about that.
Muse: Camilla Macaulay
Canon: Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Word count: 515
Note: I think it's clear, but just in case, the indented passage wasn't written by me. It is an excerpt from Susan Orlean's piece "The American Man, Age Ten," in The New Kings of Nonfiction, ed. Ira Glass.
It's so much easier for Camilla to say what she wouldn't recommend than what she would. There are books she won't touch anymore, books she used to like or at least used to find thought-provoking, that now hit too close to home. She won't read any Faulkner anymore, not since Charles left. She won't read anything that reminds her of people she's lost. Marlowe is right out. Milton and Dante are out; Henry loved them. Flaubert is out because Henry used to quote at her from Madame Bovary. Tolstoy is out for obvious reasons. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, indeed.
What she finds she likes to read, more and more these days, is nonfiction. It's safely remote because it's always about people she doesn't know. It's never anything anyone she used to know would want to read. It's more escapist for her than fiction can be. Fiction is a mirror, and nonfiction is a window.
In this vein, she would recommend The New Kings of Nonfiction. It's a collection that Ira Glass put together, pieces of reportage he liked for one reason or another, and Camilla doesn't really listen to public radio so she'd never heard of Ira Glass, but now she thinks he has interesting taste, and if he edits anything else she supposes she'll read that too. There's a story about a teenage boy who made hundreds of thousands of dollars on the stock exchange and got busted by the SEC. There's a story about the Stringfellow acid pits. There's a story about an everyday young boy, "The American Man, Age Ten," and this one is by a writer whose name Camilla recognizes for once: Susan Orlean. (Camilla did read The Orchid Thief, a while back.) She has to chuckle a little, under her breath, at the opening paragraph:
If Colin Duffy and I were to get married, we would have matching superhero notebooks. We would wear shorts, big sneakers, and long, baggy T-shirts depicting famous athletes every single day, even in the winter. We would sleep in our clothes. We would both be good at Nintendo Street Fighter II, but Colin would be better than me. We would have some homework, but it would never be too hard and we would always have just finished it. ...
Reading about this boy doesn't bother Camilla at all, because he is nothing like Charles had been as a child, and because he has both his parents still alive.
Camilla doesn't need to find deep meaning in these narratives. Maybe the authors try to project or tease out something profound, and maybe they don't; Camilla doesn't seek it or care whether she sees it. She's reading this because it's about people out in the world she'd never talk to in real life. The Americans in the book are as foreign to her as the modern bushmen and ancient Mayans she reads about in National Geographic. Therefore it doesn't really touch her. Therefore it is safe.
Also, the writing isn't half bad, not that she cares very much about that.
Muse: Camilla Macaulay
Canon: Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Word count: 515
Note: I think it's clear, but just in case, the indented passage wasn't written by me. It is an excerpt from Susan Orlean's piece "The American Man, Age Ten," in The New Kings of Nonfiction, ed. Ira Glass.