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WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Stephen Crane THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois McMaster Bujold FRI: My Book World | Ottessa Moshfegh, McGlue
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MY BOOK WORLD Chee, Alexander. The Queen of the Night. Boston: Houghton, 2016.
If there is any performance greater than a tour de force, I don’t know what it would be called, but this novel would surely fall under such a category. I’ve not been this stupefied by a contemporary novel for a long time. And so much to say about it! This novel begins briefly in America, and it ends softly there. Lilliet (although she deftly goes by many names, as needed) is orphaned in her teens and flees the Midwest for New York City. There she (of course) is taken advantage of by men and for a short time earns money selling herself. But she manages to secure a job with a circus (in part by lying about her abilities) sailing for Europe. Her aim: to connect with her late mother’s relatives in Lucerne, Switzerland. In Paris, however, she makes an adequate living but then because of her singular voice becomes a singer: And again a prostitute. Then a lady in waiting. Then she is trained as an opera singer by an expert. She is wooed by a prince, a famous tenor, a young composer. She backtracks at times, vacating the world of opera, because her voice (determined by experts to be a falcon, a darker-toned soprano) is fragile. Throughout, one wonders how she remains disease- and pregnancy-free, a thought that crosses her own mind: I somehow had been spared both marriage and children thus far, mostly as a condition of my class, but not entirely. I had been spared worse, as well—the clap, tuberculosis, smallpox, wasting—until now, I had given it little thought. Your health, when you have it, is invisible to you. I only thought of myself as lucky and that this was my only luck. But was I lucky? Or did I have a spiteful womb?” (336). This self-reflection occurs more than halfway through the book, and Lilliet proceeds to remain marriage- and child-free (by her own desires, in spite of being in love with the composer). It is a comfortable and fortunate condition for her, and it is the author’s way of setting her up to experience an extraordinary freedom for a woman living in the middle of 19th-century France. And it must be said that Lilliet is a true performer, not a poseur of some kind: I studied Carmen as if I were in school again. I started a new notebook, like the one I kept for each of the roles in my repertoire. I always began learning my music by copying out the lyrics by hand, and I marked the music above them. My mornings before rehearsal were spent with a pencil and the blank pages of a journal that came with me to the rehearsal, where I made notes, writing down thoughts the director and the conductor gave as well. I translated the libretto in order to understand, as much as possible, what I sang and what, if anything, might come of it” (478). Whew! And yet, Lilliet knows, as a woman, what her lot in life is: In this world, some time long ago, far past anyone’s remembering, women as a kind had done something so terrible, so awful, so fantastically cruel that they and their daughters and their daughters’ daughters were forever beyond forgiveness until the end of time” (538). This thought ties to her very last act in the novel, one I shall not divulge, for it is key to understanding Lilliet and her plight, her ultimate place on earth, as she returns to the US and once again joins the circus (her operatic voice is ruined), Barnum’s circus. She has arrived back where she began what seems a lifetime ago. Coming Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Katherine Patterson WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Stephen Crane THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois McMaster Bujold FRI: My Book World | Ottessa Moshfegh, McGlue
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night TUES: A Writer's Wit | Katherine Patterson WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Stephen Crane THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lois McMaster Bujold
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THURS: A Writer's Wit | Hillary Rodham Clinton FRI: My Book World | Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler THURS: A Writer's Wit | Hillary Rodham Clinton FRI: My Book World | Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night
MY BOOK WORLD Johnson, George M. All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto. New York: Farrar, 2020.
All I can say is I wish this young adult book had been around when I was in high school—back in the middle of the last century. Yet it is odd that this man, thirty-eight years my junior, goes through many of the traumas I do in my youth: trying to maintain two psyches, one private and one public; two lives, one inner and one outer. I most love the details of Johnson’s college life, in which he joins a fraternity (of long-distinguished African-American lineage), half of whom are also gay, and the other half are OK with his orientation. He limns a very sensitive picture of his first time with another guy, one experience as a top and one as a bottom. The descriptions are real, even erotic, but not in themselves titillating. We also are privileged to read of his loving middle-class family life in New Jersey. This book should be available by way of multiple copies in every high school in America. Sadly, we live in a time when public libraries are being besieged by book burners, I mean, book banners, who serve to remove such tomes from our students’ shelves. I plan to buy copies and make sure they’re available in my city’s public libraries—or perhaps the little free libraries that pop up in towns. Maybe we all can do our part. Coming Next: TUES: A Writer's Wit | Moss Hart WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler THURS: A Writer's Wit | Hillary Clinton FRI: My Book World | Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night
FRI: My Book World | George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren't Blue
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Moss Hart WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler THURS: A Writer's Wit | Hillary Clinton
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores FRI: My Book World | George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren't Blue
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Wendy Wasserstein THURS: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores FRI: My Book World | George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren't Blue
VISITING CLOUDCROFT SINCE 1972In the three years since the beginning of the pandemic, Ken and I have been out of town only once, so our recent three days in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, made for quite a milestone. A five-hour drive (as we do it) from Lubbock, Cloudcroft is a quiet village with its historic Lodge (1899) and famed golf course—perhaps the highest course (9,000 feet) in the U.S. We've been coming to this village since the 1970s, but this was the first time we stayed on a VRBO property. We quite enjoyed the privacy and solitude that a single dwelling could offer (for the same price as a motel room you'd take along the highway). Yet we could not stay away from the Lodge entirely, dining at Rebecca's restaurant each evening. Below are some photos we'd like to share—all taken and processed on iPhone 13. 1) Video: Aspens About to Turn 2) Video: Golfer and Ponies Play Through Coming Next:
TUES Oct. 17: A Writer's Wit | Elinor Glyn WEDS Oct. 18: A Writer's Wit | Wendy Wasserstein THURS Oct. 19: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores FRI: My Book World | George M. Johson, All Boys Aren't Blue
MY BOOK WORLD Kingsolver, Barbara. Demon Copperhead: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 2022.
At first, I feel that the lad’s name, Demon Copperhead, seems a bit contrived—perhaps trying too hard to BE David Copperfield—as Kingsolver is forthcoming about her boilerplate use of Dickens’s beloved book. But as the pages fly by, his name takes on an earned significance. Eventually Demon Copperhead will become the name of his comic book character—artist Demon has a natural talent that a sensitive teacher nurtures along the way. Kingsolver’s novel is about a twenty-first century orphan, one who loses his father before he is born and loses his mother as a child to her drug addictions. Not just any “drugs.” And it is not an easy life, as Demon proclaims. “Addiction is not for the lazy. The life has no ends of hazards, deadly ambushes lying in wait, and that’s just the drugs, not even discussing the people. If I was a fuckhead, I was one that knew how to apply himself . . . I’d only ever lived one way, by devoting myself completely” (426). Kingsolver also beats the hell out of Purdue Pharmacy in this narrative, how the corporation invades Appalachia and actually targets poor people. Aching people who are injured in mines, aching athletes (like Demon)—anybody in pain. The afflicted line up at a pill mill in their local strip mall where a real doctor prescribes real Oxycontin (for a price). Then the person may use it all or peddle it (or part of it) in the parking lot. Persons can score Fentanyl, too. The whole ball of druggy wax. Demon loses his live-in girlfriend to drugs. Demon himself gets hooked, as a star (for a short time) high school football player with a painful knee injury. Kingsolver concludes the saga with a proper Dickensian “happy ending,” at least happier than it might have been had he wound up dead, that is. The novel is a rough read, emotionally. I seldom cry when reading aloud (to my partner in the evenings), but several times, Kingsolver crept up on me, and I found the simplicity of her language and her understanding of humanity uncanny. When Demon is fostered by the coach, Demon offers, to the housekeeper, to do his own laundry, his own cooking. “She laughed and said not to be putting her out of her job. She said mine was just to be a little boy. Weird. I’d not had that job before” (224). This passage put me flat on the floor. Evocative for adults who’ve given up part or all of their childhood. If you can withstand all the bad shit that happens to mostly loveable characters (experiencing a sad story vicariously is always easier than doing it for real), the book is quite a rewarding read. Coming Next: No Posts, October 10-13 TUES Oct. 17: A Writer's Wit | Elinor Glyn WEDS Oct. 18: A Writer's Wit | Wendy Wasserstein THURS Oct. 19: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores FRI: My Book World | George M. Johson, All Boys Aren't Blue
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead: A Novel NO POSTS October 10-13, 2023 TUES Oct 17: A Writer's Wit | Elinor Glyn WEDS Oct 18: A Writer's Wit | Wendy Wasserstein THURS Oct 19: A Writer's Wit | Dan Flores
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Denis Diderot FRI: My Book World | Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead: A Novel
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Heidi Hayes Jacobs THURS: A Writer's Wit | Denis Diderot FRI: My Book World | Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead: A Novel |
AUTHOR
Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA. See my profile at Author Central:
http://amazon.com/author/rjespers Archives
July 2025
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