crooked house

Three Articles Worth Reading

I am suffering from a rotten head cold and so have popped in only to share links to three articles well worth the effort of reading, even when your head feels more stuffed with cotton batting than usual:

1) In this very interesting article by Clive Thompson (found via Light Reading), network-theory scientist Don Watts challenges the idea behind Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. Watts's research has demonstrated that Influentials -- a small group of highly connected, early adopting people -- are not necessarily as crucial as one might intuit and that trends happen in a much more random way. According to Watts, trends spread less like diseases and more like forest fires:

There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That's because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. "And nobody," Watts says wryly, "will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire."

2) I very much enjoyed this article on characters by the critic James Wood. (I'm not sure where I found  the link but it was probably on Maud.) In it, Wood examines E.M. Forster's preference for round vs. flat characters and demonstrates that supposedly flat characters can actually be quite moving and memorable ones. Wood is clearly brilliant -- he absolutely knows his stuff -- but I don't think I've read a single piece by him in which he hasn't made some remark that puts me off. This time it was:

Those who believe too much [in characters] have an iron set of prejudices about what characters are: we should get to "know" them; they should not be "stereotypes", they should "grow" and "develop"; and they should be nice. So they should be pretty much like us. A glance at the thousand of foolish "reader reviews" on Amazon, with their complaints about "dislikeable characters", confirms a contagion of moralising niceness. Again and again, in book clubs up and down the country, novels are denounced because some feeble reader "couldn't find any characters to identify with", or "didn't think that any of the characters 'grow'".

It's not that he's wrong -- of course he's right -- it's that he's rude about it. I know I'm being ridiculously hyper-sensitive about this. But because he's so clever, it feels so much more inappropriate than it would coming from anyone else. Thank god there are thousands of "feeble" readers out there bothering with books at all, however "foolish" they are when they are trying to articulate why a particular book didn't work for them. Wood goes on to explain what these people probably mean, even if they don't yet see it themselves:

I think that novels tend to  fail not when the characters are not vivid or "deep" or "rounded" enough, but when the novel in question has failed to teach us how to adapt to its conventions, has failed to manage a specific hunger for its own characters, its own reality level. In such cases, our appetite is quickly disappointed, and surges wildly in excess of what we are provided, and we tend to blame the author, unfairly, for not giving us enough -- the characters we complain, are not alive or round or free enough.

The rest of the article is just as enlightening -- or clarifying, if you've already given the matter some thought -- and I think I'm going to have to get his new book How Fiction Works. I just hope he hasn't sprinkled the text too liberally with pointlessly disdainful remarks about the common reader. It's not like he needs to make them in order to demonstrate his superiority. His ideas alone do that. And surely he's hoping -- or at least his publisher is -- that some of us common readers are going to buy that book. Otherwise he might as well have printed a few photocopies  and handed them round to the dozen or so folks out there who are reading at his level. He probably knows them all personally anyway.

3) And finally, here's Confessions of a Mommy Blogger by Catherine Newman. I love this woman's hilarious and poignant writing. You could argue that she's not exactly a blogger -- her pieces appear weekly on Wondertime magazine's site, I'm assuming she's paid for them, and they're much more well-thought-out that the kinds of posts you'll find on even the very best blogs. Dalai Mama is more like the kind of parenting column you might have found in a national magazine or newspaper ten or twenty years ago. And I imagine she'd be a household name if that were the case. Except that parenting blogs have perhaps, by their ubiquity, put an end to that sort of thing. Whatever you call it, whenever I want to read another woman writing about her children, this is the first place I go. She also has a very good book called Waiting for Birdy if,  like me, you find you can't get enough of her.

Fortune Cookies, Fake Intimacy, and Tiny Houses

Who knew? The Chinese fortune cookie is actually most likely Japanese.

By Jennifer Daniel. Via swissmiss.

And for those of you who kind of prefer fake intimacy, check out these tiny houses where you could probably live quite comfortably --  that is, if you lived quite alone. Courtesy of Nela.

I Half Imagine I Can Almost Remember Plunging Off the Side of a Picturesque Mayan Ruin

Yesterday, while David took Luke outside into the arctic wasteland our neighbourhood has become, I spent the afternoon researching 5-star all-inclusive family resort vacations in a number of exotic tropical settings.  If I weren't suffering from some sort of mental breakdown brought on by acute cabin fever, I would laugh disdainfully at the very notion of spending $5000 on a 5-star all-inclusive family resort vacation. Never mind the fact that we certainly don't have $5000 to spend on a 5-star all-inclusive family resort vacation.  We don't even have $500 to spend on such a thing. Nevertheless, our poor financial situation did not stop me from spending three hours yesterday afternoon making detailed comparisons of resorts, especially ones that feature all-day programs for children and unlimited "free" drinks for their parents. It was kind of tiring. It's very difficult to find exactly the right five-star all-inclusive family resort in exactly the right location. Especially if you're looking to spend, say, $50 per person per week and you really want a suite with an ocean view, marble bathrooms with multiple shower-heads, top-end towel art (it's more important than you might think), and a personal concierge. After spending all afternoon researching vacations until my eyes went buggy, I dreamed about resorts all night. Of course we're not going anywhere but I sort of kind of feel as if we already might have. If while we were there I had a great deal to drink -- only because I wanted to get my money's worth, of course -- and maybe experienced a head injury.

So maybe the following things I believe to have occurred today never actually happened at all:

1) The telephone rings. It is across the room. "Luke," I say. "Get that phone for Mommy, will you?"

He wanders slowly over, picks it up, and brings it to me. It stops ringing just as I answer. "Hello?" I say. No one's on the line -- whoever it was, they've already hung up. I set the phone down.

"Hmm," says Luke, going back to his blocks. "Must be a tele-mahkah."

And

2) I am reading a magazine article about why it is important to argue with your spouse. Next to the article is a full-page photograph of a cave-man and a cave-woman huddled on opposite sides of a tree. Luke peers over my shoulder. "Oh!" he exclaims, pointing at the cave-man's dirty, bare feet. "I REALLY  like those TOES!"

Tom Swifty Contest

David over at the mental_floss blog writes about the genesis of Tom Swifties and how he was introduced to them by a short story of Lorrie Moore's. You know about Tom Swifties, right? He invites  you to come up with the best one in the world. If  you do, he'll send you a t-shirt. "Although I do think  a good Tom Swifty might be worth a little more than that," she says appreciatively.* Via Bookshelves of Doom.

*"I... haven't... had... much... coffee... yet," she explains slowly.

Last Saturday

Last Saturday morning. Daddy is packing up his suitcase, getting ready to leave for a business trip to Switzerland and Germany. Luke is watching with great interest.

Mommy: Daddy is going away for a week, Luke.

Luke (nodding, his eyes wide): Oh, okay.

Mommy (pointing to a calendar): That means he will be gone today, tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  See?

Luke (nodding, his eyes wide): Oh, okay.

Mommy (holding open one of Luke's many picture books about airplanes): Daddy's going to go on a plane, Luke. Remember when you and Mommy went on a plane, to Gramma's house?

Luke: Oh yes! (And he begins a very long, rambling, mostly unintelligible monologue about his experience flying on an airplane, Gramma's house, and a particular toy she has there.)

Daddy: I will miss you and Mommy, Luke. But I will call you every day.

Luke (nodding, his eyes wide): Oh, okay.

Daddy takes his bag to the door, pulls on his coat and gives Mommy and Luke big hugs and kisses.

Daddy: Be a good boy, Luke. Look after Mommy!

Luke and Mommy go to the kitchen window, waving as Daddy puts his bag in the car and drives away.

Luke: Bye bye, Daddy! Bye bye! Have fun on the plane!

Mommy: See you next week, Daddy!

Luke: Bye!

One hour and fifteen minutes later, Mommy and Luke are sitting on the couch, reading a book.

Luke (sighs heavily. Then, exasperated): What's TAKING Daddy so long?

God knows. But I wish he'd hurry up.

Rule 7, Rule 7, Rule 7

Sister Corita Kent's rules. Via HI + LOW.

E. Nesbit, Simone de Beauvoir, Mavis Gallant, H. G. Wells, and Jorges Luis Borges. All in a Kind of Spaghetti. With Miniature Cities.

I'm on a bit of an E. Nesbit binge.  Which is weirdly coinciding with my Simone de Beauvoir binge.  For about the past week I've been moving back and forth between Nesbit's biography A Woman of Passion, a couple of her children's books, and Beauvoir's The Mandarins. The two women, who had more in common than you might think, are going to be forever inextricably linked in my mind. This is leading to some confusion. The other day I remembered that some female writer I'd recently been reading was boarded out at a school that was located on the same street as her family's home -- a fact that disturbed her.  Whoever she was, she wondered why she couldn't live at home and attend school as a day student. I kept going back and forth between Nesbit and Beauvoir on this. Which was it? And then I realized that it might also have been Mavis Gallant, whom I heard interviewed on the radio recently.

I think, actually, that both E. Nesbit and Mavis Gallant were boarded at schools very close to their family homes and that both were upset about it. But don't quote me on that. Isn't this blog helpfully  informative? Also: do you see how I just failed to illustrate my own point there, about how Beauvoir and Nesbit will be forever linked in my mind? By introducing instead a (possible) Nesbit/Gallant link? Welcome to the inner workings of my fascinating mind. Isn't it like a miniature version of the internet itself? Both are full of bits of  poorly supported, if not downright false, "information" all tangled together like strands of spaghetti.

Now I'm hungry.

Anyway, I came here to post something (two somethings, actually) from the Nesbit biography. One has to do with the genesis of her children's novel The Magic City -- and one with whom it may have influenced. The Magic City is the story of a little boy who finds himself inside the world he himself has created during his many construction projects. There's his very first sand castle writ large, for instance, on the outskirts of a huge elaborate city made out of blocks and dominoes and vases and ink-stands -- all manner of Victorian bric-a-brac, actually -- and, of course, books.

It turns out that H.G. Wells may have influenced Nesbit here. H. G. Wells was, for a time, a dear family friend of Nesbit and her philandering husband Hubert Bland. That is, until he became a kind of enemy -- first when he attempted to take over the Fabian party, which the couple helped to found, and then when he attempted to run off with their daughter, Rosamund. He was already married to someone else but, unlike Bland, whose hypocrisy he despised, Wells was a big proponent of free love. (Rather like Sartre, actually.) Wells was very lecherous in an up-front way while Bland was very lecherous in a secretive way -- Bland liked to drone on, both in person and in print, about the sanctity of the family all the while engaging in numerous sexual affairs. In fact, Rosamund wasn't actually E. Nesbit's daughter at all. Nesbit adopted her after Bland impregnated her close friend Alice. She sort of adopted Alice at the same time, convincing her to move in with them in order to help with the running of the household and the upbringing of the children. (At that point Nesbit already had three of her own). Alice did so, leaving Nesbit free to write. (Shades of Beauvoir there, I think, except of course Beauvoir and Sartre never had the complications of children. But I digress.)

What were we talking about? Spaghetti?

Oh yes, here's Julia Briggs, Nesbit's biographer, on The Magic City and H.G. Wells' influence on it:

Like Edith, Wells was particularly fascinated by miniature buildings and battles and when he lived at Sandgate, he had spend hours playing with his two sons on the nursery floor, building railways and cities and conducting wars with toy soldiers. His graphic account of these games in The New Machiavelli led to a suggestion that he should write a book about them -- the result was Floor Games, published in December 1911. It included a number of ideas that had already contributed to The Magic City, for Wells's floor games had been played out with his children and friends several years before either her story or his was actually written... Wells asserts as a general principle that " a large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of all sorts of extraneous objects", an aspect that particularly appealed to Edith, who loved any exercise demanding ingenuity and inventiveness. Inevitably they shared the same building materials -- wooden building blocks, plasticine, twigs from the garden potted up in cotton reels, and miniature animals, employed as architectural or sculptural features.

When she sat down to write The Magic City, Nesbit also used some ideas from an earlier story of her own called "The Town in the Library in the Town in the Library" (contained in Nine Unlikely Tales, published in 1901). This story is about two children who build a city in a drawer in their library. They use "The Beauties of Literature in fifty-six fat little volumes" to build a set of stairs and a gateway that magically transports them  into the miniature city they've constructed. Once inside it, they discover their own house. They enter and go up to the library where they proceed, again, to build another miniature city. Briggs writes:

Making another  gateway of books, they find themselves trapped in an apparently infinite regress of towns and houses and libraries, in a startling modern image of the endlessly mirroring series of literature, imagination and experience. As a story it impressed E. M. Forster, and must also have appealed to the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, self-confessedly an admirer of her contemporaries, Wells and Chesterton.

It is possible that Borges, who was born in 1899, might have read Nesbit's work when he was a child (assuming that either he learned English fairly early or that her books were translated into Spanish).

Defective Yeti's Goals for His Son

Defective Yeti on his goals for his son: "Squiggle is getting really good at talking to strangers."

Maybe He's Going to Be A Writer

Recently, upon waking, Luke has taken to telling me outlandish stories. "Last night, Pa wearing ghost hat!" or "Last night, big rock fell on Luke's head!" ("Last night" is his term for any time in the past -- from just five minutes ago to the time of the dinosaurs.)

I always reply, "Oh! Was it a dream?"

"No!" Luke always says.

"Oh!" I say, "Did it really happen?"

"No!" he says.

Uh. Okay then. Maybe he views the "and it was all a dream" ending with great contempt.

My Friend Nela and The Bruce

My old friend Nela has a new blog. In it she reveals that she fantasizes about Bruce Springsteen... being her father. And with some reason. Go find out why.

(Speaking of Springsteen, Lisa Godden, are you out there somewhere?)