Now that I’m on a break, I have plenty of time to clean and declutter.  However, finding energy to do so is another thing completely.  That is where Aslett’s book helped.  Yes, he had tips and tricks, but mostly it motivated me.  After reading a section or chapter, I would think, “I can do that!” and then I would jump up and do it.  Here are some of the motivating ideas that stuck out to me.

First, clutter is expensive.  Often, we think about holding onto our stuff because we paid good money for it, but he talks about how much it costs to store and maintain, especially if you have so much stuff that you need to rent a storage unit.  There is also a psychological cost.  We can become so connected to stuff, that people don’t matter or that we must give up time with family in order to move or rearrange our stuff.

Secondly, moving clutter around is what prevents us from cleaning our homes.  He has a professional cleaning business, and he found that homes with more stuff took longer to clean because of the amount of time it took to move the stuff before being able to get to the carpet or the windows.  This resonated with me because of the toy clutter we have.  I find that all of my cleaning energy is sapped after picking up the toys that get strewn about the house during the day.  I have no desire to then dust or vacuum.  The carpet looks pretty good once the toys are gone, even if there are bits of string or cereal still there!  As to decluttering these toys, I may have to wait a few more years.  Not all of it can be easily dispensed of with the children running around.  (Aslett suggests dejunking children’s thing carefully, in deference to feelings, and perhaps when they aren’t at home.)

Third, don’t make excuses.  Aslett knows every excuse in the book.  Some of them include the claim that we are working on that project or that we will fix that someday.  He says that if “someday” hasn’t come and those scraps or broken appliances are still hanging around, just toss them.  He says it is actually less expensive to go out and buy that item, should you need it, since he knows that the excuse would be that you might need it someday.

There is much more motivation in this book.  He has techniques, such as using boxes rather than bags, and maybe storing a box full of stuff you think you can’t live without for six months and then revisiting the possibility of letting it go.  This technique works.  When we replaced the floors in our home several years ago, we boxed up a lot of stuff and put it in the shed.  When we were settled again, it was a year before I remembered that stuff was out there, and I hadn’t missed it at all!

He also talks about gifts, and how we feel like we must keep items that somebody gives to us.  He says this isn’t so.  We can thank them and then quietly give it away.  In this case, and in others, getting rid of the stuff can be easier if we know it is going to a good home.  He suggests holding a yard sale or giving to a thrift store or charity.  I find that this works well for me in getting over the psychological hurdle of giving away “important” items.

I recently did this with baby clothing and accessories.  I went through all of it, selling some at consignment stores, giving some to a neighbor, and donating the rest to a thrift store.  I felt good about it, rather than torn and conflicted that I was giving away memories of my children.

So my house is slowly becoming less cluttered and more comfortable (and clean-able).  I’ve gone through cupboards and drawers, just one day at a time.  I’ve given away games we haven’t played but once, thrown away old toiletries and perfumes, emended our DVD collection, trashed the millions of plastic children’s hangers that were stored in the backs of the closets, and parted with books that I will never read.

The best project has been getting rid of all of my old magazines, Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple.  I had marked pages in them that I planned to revisit, but I never had.  It has been years since I’ve looked at some of the issues, and I no longer subscribe to either one.  So I ripped out those pages, mostly recipes, put them in page protectors in a binder, and threw away the rest.  Now I have a beautiful cookbook that has led to renewed cooking efforts on my part and some delicious meals.  Here’s how that cookbook turned out.

Nice, right?

I’ve also cleared some shelf space, both on my bookshelves and in my kitchen and laundry-room cupboards.  Aslett recommends getting rid of shelves and chests, as they are just clutter gatherers.  I’m not completely convinced of that, but I am convinced that my home will be happier, easier to clean, and more inviting for getting rid of things that I don’t need, use, or really even want.  It has been fun and liberating.  That freedom is the biggest promise of Aslett’s admonitions to declutter.  Free yourself of stuff and start living for people.

I have to admit that I almost didn’t make it past the first section.  There is a truly disgusting scene in which the pedophile, Humbert Humbert, molests Lolita, without her knowledge, but the description was so vivid, although carefully implicit, that I felt very uncomfortable.  I did not feel uplifted for having read it, but I pushed on and found that the rest of the book has little in the way of sexual descriptions and escapades and more to do with the almost comical complications of trying to have a romantic relationship with a teenage girl while pretending to be her father.

Yes, it was comical.  Be careful what you wish for.  Humbert Humbert gets what he wants: sole custody of his dead landlady’s daughter.  He married the landlady for access to the daughter, then tries to plot her murder in order to have Lolita to himself.  Yet fate intervenes before he can carry out the murder, and his wife is accidentally killed by a recklessly driving neighbor.  He begins life on the road with Lolita and describes their relationship as mutual.  She’s 12.

Yeah, it isn’t mutual.  I mean, maybe in his narrating head he believes that and he wants us to believe that Lolita initiated their relationship, but I don’t buy it.  He’s an unreliable narrator.  I do buy that Lolita was a young, immature, and lonely girl with no real father figure in her life.  I do buy that she confused sexual attraction with love.  But her so-called compliance doesn’t make the relationship right or okay, as Humbert tries to convince us that it does.

The hilarity of the situation becomes apparent because Lolita is a teenager.  She’s moody, difficult, and mean.  She would rather hang out with her friends, participate in school plays, and date than be tied to Humbert, her lover/father.  He claims to love and adore her, but he must control her in order to keep him to himself.  He describes some of her actions as smashing her nose to the mirror, yet his life is a clear example of this sort of behavior.

Interestingly, this image of smashing one’s nose against a mirror was the form of a self-portrait/sculpture that I saw at the Louvre in Paris in 2008.  Contemporary artist Jan Fabre’s work was being featured among the work of the old masters.  At the entrance to the exhibit was a life-sized wax figure of Fabre with his face smashed against a mirror on the wall, and blood sprayed down as a result.  I never before understood this self-portrait.  I have often thought of it as strange and that perhaps the artist had some major psychological problems.  Now I realize that he may have been alluding to Lolita, or he may have been making the same point that Nabokov was, that our own behavior and justifications for it are our worst enemies and flaws.

Jan Fabre, self portrait, Louvre April 2008

Humbert eventually loses Lolita when she runs away at 15 or 16 with another man.  He spends some years adrift, hoping to find her.  He eventually does.  She’s a married woman who is pregnant, ordinary, and happy.  He gives her the inheritance money due her from her mother and begs her to run away with him again.  It turns out that he still loves her, even though she is older and pregnant.  But she refuses. And this is where the lesson of the book comes into play for him.

He realizes his error in stealing her childhood from her.  He realizes his own part in taking advantage and in robbing her of youth.  He feels some remorse, and in this, I can believe that maybe he really does love her and not just lust after her.  He contemplates how it must have actually been for Lolita (his Dolly), and he can see that from her perspective, he was not a lover or an equal, but a thief and an abuser.  Most poignantly, he wishes for her baby to be a boy.

What a commentary that is on life, that it would be best for her baby to be a boy.  It certainly reflects an entire system of privilege and power for men, and the fact that girls have it harder when it comes to love and being preyed upon by men.  I see in Humbert’s reflections a remorse but also a deep reflection on Nabokov’s part of the real problems with pedophilia, and not just an indulgent novel about lusting after children.  In this, I see value in having written the novel.

The writing is beautiful, smooth, and enchanting.  I am impressed with the prose, and it prompts me to want to read more Nabokov, perhaps without the same disturbing subject matter.  There is value in Lolita because Nabokov seemed to have been commenting on the problems with relationships, lust, and taking advantage of another, especially one who is vulnerable.

Tempest’s family, however, was not okay.  Her book recounts her love of birds and wildlife and the landscape surrounding Great Salt Lake, which sits just east of my home.  Her book also recounts the death of her mother and later her grandmother of breast cancer.  The book is a tribute to these women, to the land, and to birds.  It is also an indictment of the way we treat the land and how that treatment resulted in the rampant breast cancer in her family.  They are downwinders, and Williams’s mother, grandmother, great grandmother and many other women in the family are affectionately referred to as a clan of one-breasted women.

Williams comes to term with her mother’s cancer through the landscape.  Her mother taught her to love the land, and her grandmother taught her to love birds.  She combines her bird-watching with the story of her mother’s cancer.  Diane, her mother, was first diagnosed at thirty-six with breast cancer. She fought it and lived many more years, then found a lump in her stomach.  She again fought this tumor, but it kept coming back and eventually killed her.

I was struck by how Williams describes the experience as spiritual.  She likens her mother’s death to a birth of sorts, and in being with her in those final moments, days, and hours, Williams sees herself as her mother’s midwife.  Her mother also handles it bravely, at times becoming distant and sulky, but at other times realizing that solitude is a blessing and that each day is a gift.  It is a phrase we all hear, that we must live as if we are dying or live for the present.  However, Diane explains to her daughter that she did not understand this or have the capacity to do it until she was actually dying.  She knew the end was coming, but lived in the moment and tried to make each day full.

One of the most touching ways Diane did this was by sending a book and a heartfelt letter to a neighbor who was also dying of cancer.  The woman was younger than she, and had young children.  The letter shares some of what Diane felt she learned the first time battling cancer.  As the vignettes through Williams’s eyes continue, I forgot about this young mother, Tamra.  Then, a vignette appears, saying that they had attended Tamra’s funeral.  It caught me off guard and I cried for that young mother, long dead and gone.  But I felt I was reliving this unnatural history that Williams shares thorough her narrative.

Williams is a scholar who worked at the state’s natural history museum, the new version of which I recently visited with my children in Salt Lake City.  Williams shares insights and quotes from her profession and experiences.  My favorite was the line from an Emily Dickinson poem, that “Pain prepares us for peace.”

I’ve only ever known a few people close to me who have died, including Brother Checketts, as I mentioned in my last post.  But I’ve never been the midwife to somebody’s birth into death.  I’ve never faced such personal loss, but I have felt pain.  I have lost my mother due to mistreatment, broken relationships, hate, and anger.  I’ve felt that loss, grief, and pain.  I’ve also felt peace.  I am still at peace, although my loss is irreparable and unsolvable.  Peace is real, but I now know that I could not know that peace without having experienced years of seemingly endless and irreparable pain.

There are also themes of the power of the landscape.  The narrative is told during the mid-1980s, when Great Salt Lake was rising and threatening homes and the bird refuge near Brigham City that Williams loves to visit.  She sees irony in the attempts to control the lake, by pumping water away and passing laws against its rising above a certain level.  The money spent is somewhat ridiculous.

Her account of this time, a time when I did not live in Utah, made me grateful for knowing about this natural history.  I realized that I drive along the shores of the Great Salt Lake every day, and twice a week, I drive all the way up its eastern edge on my way to school.  I drive through Brigham City, past the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, and then veer away from the shores of the Great Lake and through the canyon to my school.  I am connected to the lake, without even realizing it.  And a few weeks ago, as I gazed at the seagulls flying high over my home, I felt more connected than I had in a while.

I am a fan of Williams’s work.  This is the second book of hers that I’ve read.  The first was When Women Were Birds.  I received this book, Refuge, from my sister and brother-in-law for Christmas.  They are more outdoorsy naturalists than I am, and this book reflects much of their lifestyle, but they knew I would love it.  And I do.

I once invited him to a jazz band concert at which I sang a solo—it was one of two solos I would ever sing.  I sang Gershwin to him, seated right on the front row beaming up at me.

“Although he may not be the man some girls think of as handsome, to my heart he carries the key.”

I made sure the audience knew to whom my heart belonged, gesturing at him.  They laughed loud and long.

You see, this man was Brother Checketts, my high school religion teacher, and he sported a shiny bald head ringed with slick, white hair, squinted through large plastic glasses, and grinned through buck-teeth.  He stood a mere and skinny 5’6” or so, and spoke in excited, erratic tones when telling stories of his youth, days full of fast cars, beautiful women, and baking.  Yes, he’d been a baker.

He’d also been somebody I considered to be one of my best friends.  He served as a surrogate father to me, a girl whose parents divorced when she was six and who now lived two states away from her own father.  Brother Checketts listened to me, cared about me, consoled me, advised me, complimented me, protected me, encouraged me, and loved me with pure intent.

I thought this made me special.  It did, but when he died, I realized just how special he had made all of his students feel.  I sat at the piano during his funeral, accompanying an innumerable sea of students singing with full voices and heavy hearts “How Great Thou Art,” his favorite hymn.  This performance served as restitution for what I had done, or not done, during his last day at school.

The last time I saw him, he stood outside his classroom, greeting and waving at students.  He seemed to be standing in a sea of them, the same sea as at his funeral, their tides ebbing and flowing and crashing about him.  He was a rock in the midst of everybody’s hurrying to make it to the next class.  I too felt myself compelled to move quickly.  I wanted to speak to him, to spend a few minutes shooting the breeze or asking his advice.  I wanted to hear his trademark conversation starter: “A penny for your thoughts?”  Instead, I let the swell of people pull me away.  I hastily waved and scurried to my next class.

He would go home early that day, complaining of illness.  He would be rushed to the hospital with meningitis, slip into a coma, and never wake.  His wife and young children, one of whom was my age, would mourn him.  He only spent a few days in the hospital, and then he was gone, swept out to the great ocean of death, from which none of us return.  I hadn’t said goodbye.  I had tried.  My sister and I sent an enormous balloon bouquet to his room, hoping he’d realize that our love for him was even larger than the latex concoction.  The balloons also seemed more fitting than flowers for his jolly personality.  He would never see the bouquet or read the card we sent, but his wife and children later thanked us for it.

That moment at my locker, when I collapsed upon hearing of his death, I kept remembering how I had last seen him without really seeing him.  I had looked through him, flippantly waving and concerning myself more with tasks that would soon mean nothing compared to his company.  I would have given anything in that moment of grief, which now defines my senior year of high school, to have gone back and spoken with him one last time.

Instead, the years have taught me not to regret my hasty decision, for I did not know its consequences.  I learned from that mistake to live each day and treat each person as if it may be the last.  Yes, I fail, forget, flounder, crash, and burn with this lesson, but it sticks with me.  I turn back more often, instead of turning my back.  From my mistake, I learned that I’m often too hasty, too efficient, and too concerned with the fluff of life.  It’s okay to slow down, talk with a friend, laugh with a loved one, admire the clouds, watch the birds, or savor a delicious meal.  The housework can wait, the dishes will eventually get done, and people are more important than being punctual.

As a mother of young children, this keeps me centered.  I realized how fleeting life is, and when my little three-year-old seems to be screaming more than is necessary, landing more food on the floor than in her mouth (we call her Fifty-fifty), or practicing her coloring skills on freshly painted walls, or when my seven-year-old has more homework than a high school student, leaves her shoes and socks on the living room floor again, or spends more time relaxing in the bathtub than practicing her piano, or when I put myself in time-out because I just can’t go on any longer as the happy, competent mommy who makes everything fun and worthwhile, I remember the fragility of life and the swift passing of time.  I remember that someday those little hands will not easily and readily throw themselves around my neck and smother my cheeks with wet kisses and those little feet may not scuff the floors or dance to wild music with me as often as I would like.  Brother Checketts’s death has given me perspective, and I know that he is proud of me, even if he’s not here to say it.

I began purchasing her books.  They are captivating and simply beautiful.  I began with Liars and Saints (2004), my favorite of hers.  I could not put it down.  The prose is uncomplicated and the story is gripping.  It is about a family and their ups and downs, caused by both human error and action and the context of culture, time, and place.

I immediately read the “sequel,” A Family Daughter (2006), and found that Meloy had turned her characters and the story on their heads.  The reality in the first book was the not the reality of the second book.  The entire plot is shifted and an alternative narrative is presented.  It is quite shocking, and as a reader, I preferred the first book, my first reality, and my first encounter with the characters.  However, both are good reads.

I loaned these books to a good friend of mine.  She didn’t end up reading them, but her daughter Jennie, also a good friend of mine, did.  Jennie is some 12 years younger than me, but a deep thinker and a deep feeler.  She’s currently majoring in English in at a local university.  She loved these books, too.

I have also read a short story collection by Meloy since then called Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (2010).  I ordered it as soon as it came out and read it within a few days of receiving it.  Each story has its own beauty and exploration of human nature.  The feeling I get when I think about Meloy’s novels are wonder, curiosity, admiration, and anticipation.  She is a fine writer.

I still haven’t read Half in Love (2002), the short story collection that began my obsession.  Perhaps it is time to track it down.

The winner of the giveaway is Denise McNichols!  I’ll get your copy of Josh’s book in the mail to you in the next few days.  Congratulations!

Before I get to the books mentioned in the memoir, I wanted to make you aware of some of the amazing press Josh has been getting for his book.  He’s been mentioned in Oprah’s magazine, chosen on Goodreads as part of May 2013 Movers and Shakers, is on the Ibookstore Best Books of May page, and is featured as part of the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series of Summer 2013.  The book was released on May 2 and is now going into its second printing!  Here are some links to other articles by and about Josh in anticipation of his book’s release.

About Josh

USA Today: “Strongest Librarian” Does Battle against Tourette’s  

The New Yorker: “The World’s Strongest Librarian” Tells All  

Written by Josh (These stories brought tears to my eyes!)

Publishers Weekly: How Becoming a Librarian Saved Me

Huffington Post:  The Bookstore that Changed My Life

The Books Mentioned

Here is a list of the books Josh mentions in his memoir.  I’ve read 21 of them, some because Josh suggested them to me.  I’ve also linked the ones I’ve written about to other posts on my blog.

The War Prayer by Mark Twain (X)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

Roughing It by Mark Twain

No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

Discrete Series by George Oppen

The Naked Warrior by Pavel Tsatsouline

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

Cell by Stephen King

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King

It by Stephen King

Misery by Stephen King

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (X)

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

Maus by Art Spiegelman

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (X)

“A Hanging” by George Orwell

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (X)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O’Toole (X)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Inferno by Dante Alighieri (X)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (X)

Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary (X)

And Eternity by Piers Anthony

The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (X)

The Holy Bible (X)

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White (X)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Far Side comics by Gary Larson (X)

Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie (X)

The Harvard Classics

The Autogiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini

Moby Dick by Herman Melville (X)

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare

Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (X)

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol

Black’s Law Dictionary

“Invictus” by William Henley (X)

A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer (X)

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

Witch in the Bedroom: Proven Sensual Magic by Stacey Demarco

Accepting the Psychic Torch by Sylvia Browne

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon

Tawny Scrawny Lion by Kathryn Jackson

Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman (X)

Mr. Gopher by unknown (Josh can’t find any record of this book existing, but he remembers it!)

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss (X)

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

The Great Brain by John Dennis Fitzgerald

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (X)

No! That’s Wrong! By Zhaohua Ji and Cui Xu

Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (X)

The Color of Her Panties by Piers Anthony

Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal (and ghostwriters)

It is a great (and interesting) list of books!  Some of them are meant to be humorous.  Have you read any of them?  I think I need to add Witch in the Bedroom: Proven Sensual Magic and Black’s Law Dictionary to my list!

Have a good weekend, all!

The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family (2013) by Josh Hanagarne is the book I’m talking about.  I spent some three years working with Josh’s wife, and when I left my editing job, she was promoted to that position.  Before that, we were both secretaries, and we spent hours sitting in the same reception area chatting, working, laughing, and sometimes crying together.  I met Josh because of her, and when he realized that I loved to read as much as he did, he began giving me suggestions and he began sharing his writing with me.  He is a fantastic writer, and I think his dream has always been to write a novel, but his first book is a memoir because his life is much more interesting than any novel!

Josh has Tourette Syndrome, and it has, obviously, been a challenge for him, and for his wife, Janette.  The book talks of their darkest days in hoping to have a baby and suffering through many miscarriages.  They decide to adopt and are rejected as candidates!  This broke my heart all over again, although I knew most of this story before reading it.  I know how much Janette wanted to be a mother, and I could feel her pain through Josh’s narrative of those tough experiences.

The most interesting parts of the book, to me, were Josh’s experiences as a librarian at the Salt Lake City Public Library.  He describes the funny and disturbing things that have happened in the downtown branch of the library and how he deals with those situations.  Josh is funny, so his reaction or thoughts on some of the interesting patrons is hilarious.  I laughed out loud while I read the book.  My outbursts would prompt questions from my husband, and I would have to read the part to him.  We would then laugh together.  Josh is a skilled storyteller, and some of his best stories in the book are his experiences as a librarian.  Sometimes those experiences occur because of his noisy Tourette’s in a library, but sometimes they are the results of patrons with interesting ideas or actions, including hiding library books, demanding that religious books be moved to the fiction section, and dropping their children off for the day as if the library is a daycare.

I also appreciated Josh’s candor about his faith.  He describes his lifelong struggle with belief and how faith and reason seem to be so opposed to one another for him.  Josh is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as I am, and he struggles with knowing what is true.  Part of this struggle occurred on his mission to the Washington DC area (the same place my husband served a mission for our church), and he began to see a worsening of his Tourette’s symptoms, even to the point of punching himself in the face and being unable to keep down food.  He returned home early because of these health problems.

I empathize with Josh.  I too have moments of doubt.  Don’t we all?  I find that faith is something I must work at, and instead of focusing on the many mysteries that I can’t make sense of or find the answers to, I must cling to what I do believe and what I can find comfort in.  Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle in our church, said, “Hope on.  Journey on.  Honestly acknowledge your questions and your concerns, but first and forever fan the flame of your faith, because all things are possible to them that believe.”

Despite doubts, Josh shares many of the beautiful spiritual experiences he has had, including feeling peace come over him in a dark time of trouble and angst.  I, too, have felt that peace, after months of praying and pleading and worrying about a problem that I had no power to fix.  That peace continues to keep me going when this problem resurfaces or becomes more apparent to me.  I remember that feeling of peace and anxiety leaves me; I am able to move on and just do my best.

Josh worried what his faithful (and wonderful) mother would think of his doubts.  He did not want to tell her.  But when he did, she listened and understood. She told him that the older she gets, the more she realizes that everybody has to journey in their own way.  This is a lesson I’ve also learned, that we cannot force others to do things “our” way or what we think is the “right” way.  We must instead focus on our own issues and challenges and do our best to love and help others without being forceful or judgmental.

I loved this book.  Josh asked his friends to be honest in their assessments of it.  He warned us not to give it five stars on Goodreads (as I did) if we did not really think that it deserved those stars.  Unfortunately, I can’t tell if I did so because I wanted to help Josh, because I like Josh and Janette so much that their story was fascinating to me, or if I am just plain biased.  Whatever the case, I enthusiastically recommend this book to you.  I will warn that there is some strong language in the book, as I know this is a concern for some of my readers.

Why is Josh the world’s strongest librarian?  Well, it’s because he has found that strength training helps with his Tourette’s symptoms.  He does kettlebell training, and even participated in some Scottish highland games.  Josh stands at 6’7” and works hard physically to manage his symptoms.  More of how he does this is explicated in the book.

Josh is also a voracious reader, which is partly why being a librarian appealed to him so much.  His favorite author is Mark Twain, but he also loves Stephen King.  (I’ve written about my first two experiences with reading King’s work here and here.)  The story about his mom realizing that he had been reading King’s novels in fourth grade is hilarious!  Because of his passion for books, Josh mentions many great titles in the memoir. I will share all of the titles with you in my post on Friday, May 10.

I will also announce the winner of a giveaway I’m hosting.  It is open to residents of the United States and Canada.  If you’d like to win a copy of Josh’s book, The World’s Strongest Librarian, please enter the contest by clicking here: The World’s Strongest Librarian Book Giveaway. (The giveaway is CLOSED.)

If you’d like to check out Josh’s blog, click here: World’s Strongest Librarian.  It includes updates on his book tour.  Maybe he’ll visit a city near you.

My great grandparents: Alabama Gray and Rufus January

I had not made that connection until now.  I was urged by my mother to read The Grapes of Wrath in seventh grade, because it never appeared in our rural curriculum.  I “read” it, and I have always claimed that I had read it, but I didn’t remember a darn thing about it.  Recently rereading it makes me feel guilty for ever having claimed that I’d read it and for not knowing how intricately the book ties into my own roots.  I am also a little shocked that my mother would have encouraged me to read it at that young age, given the enormous amount of swearing (especially the Lord’s name in vain) and some of the adult content and issues.  However, I now appreciate the book.  I understand the historical accuracy and the importance of drawing real characters, something Steinbeck never disappoints me with.  (See my post on his book Pastures in Heaven.)

My favorite sections of the book, prose-wise, are the interludes that attempt to describe the overarching or nameless faces of that time in the United States.  There are car salesmen, gas station owners, and the land, all speaking from a place of realism and pain and self-interest.  The book gets at that self-interest, especially when the Joad family arrives in California, a place they have built up in their minds to be paradisiacal, and discover they are not wanted, they are hated, there is no work, and that there are already too many Okies competing for food, work, water, shelter, and peace.  It highlights the tragedy of that age, the desperation of poverty, and the ugliness of human nature.  The sheriffs and residents would drive the travelers as if they were cattle or vermin.  They would kill and attack with no provocation other than prejudice and hate.  I think we see similar sentiments today, and in every era, when people who are different from us come looking for the same opportunities and privileges we have.

I can’t help but be drawn to Casey, the preacher.  He’s an admitted sinner and a quitter when it comes to preaching, but he is also a heroic figure who ends up becoming a sacrificial lamb for the cause of the families looking for work and relief.  He protects Tom from the law, going to jail for the crime.  He pays for Tom’s deed.  He gets out of jail, claims that he finally “sees,” and works to lead a union fight against unfair wages.  He says he has a knowledge of what is really important and he fights for that.  He dies for it.  He’s truly heroic, in the traditional sense of the word.  (See my post on Harry Potter for more about the hero cycle).

I couldn’t help crying when Ma feeds the starving children in one of the camps.  She has their last stew, only enough for the large “fambly,” but she encourages the children to get flat sticks and scrape out the pot once she has served her people.  She cannot watch them suffer and she cannot keep it from them.  One of the mothers is angry about the charity, but Ma explains that she just couldn’t stand there and do nothing and watch them watch her.  She knew they were starving.

Tom is also an interesting figure. One of my favorite scenes is near the beginning when he gets out of jail for murder and has a tense conversation with a trucker who gives him a lift.  It captured my attention and made me care about the rest of the book and the rest of the family.  Tom throughout is seemingly calm and carefree, but he has a violent streak that constantly leads to trouble.  He cannot control that part of himself, and in the end, with Casey’s sacrifice, he too “sees” and decides to try to make better and do better for the people.  He becomes a leader.

The end of the book is what is most powerful, shocking, and poignant.  Rose of Sharon, the pregnant and abandoned-by-her-husband daughter of the Joads, gives birth to a stillborn.  She has been worried throughout the pregnancy because of their hard travel, their lack of fresh food and milk, and the words of a crazy woman who tells her that she’s in trouble and the baby will be cursed for sin.  Rose of Sharon is fragile and ill.  She just wants milk during her pregnancy to make her unborn baby strong, but it is not to be.  The baby is born dead.

The baby is born in a downpour, and her parents must leave all of their possessions and their vehicle stuck in the mud to find shelter.  They take Rose of Sharon and find a little shack.  In that shack, a man is dying, and his young son is scared and alone.  He explains that his father is starving to death, after having given him most of the food over the last week.  Rose of Sharon, scared wet, alone, in shock, grieving the loss of her baby, and still in want of milk, offers her breast to the dying, starving man.  She feeds him with the milk she has produced for her child, but that she cannot use herself.

This scene echoes the idea throughout the book, that the poor are more generous than the rich.  Many times the family receives kindness from other starving, struggling families or the poor men who work for the rich men.  The poor take care of each other, yet they have, seemingly, nothing to give.  This theme is instructive for many reasons, but for me, it causes me to ask, “What do I have to give?”  Compared to most of the world, I have much and I am rich.  I do not consider myself to be rich, not in an extravagant way.  Although I sometimes feel I have nothing to give, this book proves otherwise.  There is always something to give, and the poor sometimes know what that is more than those of us who have so much we have a hard time letting go of any of it.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“I’m just pain covered with skin.”

“A fellow builds up his own sins right up from the ground.”

“There’s a woman so great with love she scares me.”

There is so much more to this book.  I could mention the grandparents, who both die on the trip, and Ma’s sitting with “Granma” all night while she died and then sitting with the dead body until they can cross into California without telling anybody.  I can mention the two children, Ruthie and Winfield, who are excited over the possibility of having a single box of Cracker Jack toward the end of the trip once the family has work.  I can mention the children’s surprise over flushing toilets at the government camp and their worry that they had broken them.  I can describe the delicious shower Ma took for the first time in months at that camp.  I can describe Al’s conversation working on a car with a neighboring family.  All of it is beautiful, in a gritty, shocking, and sand-papery way.

Steinbeck captures poverty, history, and continuing American sentiments in this novel.  I now know why my mother urged me to read it and why it is required reading in many classrooms.  I know why it is an American classic and one of the most famous of Steinbeck’s books.  (It did win the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.)  I also know why it is number 28 on the BBC book list, and I am glad it is.  I would not have revisited it otherwise.  I would have continued to claim that I had read it and been completely ignorant of its lessons, its significance, and its connection to my heritage and family.  The Grapes of Wrath is about me, my people, and America.  It is about all of us.

http://onelittlelibrary.com/2013/05/03/literary-wives-part-one-american-wife/

http://persephonewrites.wordpress.com/

http://unabridged-expression.blogspot.com/  

If you have been reading along with us, feel free to add your voice to the conversation.  You can do this by commenting on any of the posts, or by leaving a comment with a link to your blog’s post about the book.

We wanted to explore the two questions below.  (I will also be commenting on other aspects of the book.)

1. What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

2. In what way does this woman define “wife”—or in what way is she defined by “wife”?

American Wife is about Alice Blackwell, married to the president of the United States.  The book takes place in three sections: her youth and adolescence, her courtships and early marriage to Charlie Blackwell, and a few days of their span in the White House.  The characters are loosely based on George W. and Laura Bush.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the way her life was constantly defined by men.  Every chapter and episode centers around a man, whether that be Andrew Imhoff, whom she kills in a car accident, Pete Imhoff, his brother with whom she has her first sexual experiences, or Charlie Blackwell, her eventual husband.  There seems to be no point in Alice Blackwell’s life that is not defined in relation to a man.

In that sense, this book has a lot to offer in answering the question: what does this book say about the experience of being a wife?  For Alice, it means being defined by that role.  Yet, she finds power in that role, too.  I the mid-section of the book, she must deal with Charlie’s alcoholism.  She eventually does so by leaving him for a short time.  It works.  He finds God, stops drinking, and their marriage is happier for it.  This episode shows that a wife’s responsibility is several things.  Perhaps to be strong for her husband strong enough to “punish” him?

It also shows that a wife should stick by her husband. This is reiterated by Alice’s mother-in-law Priscilla, who points out that being a wife is a job.  “You’re a housewife, my dear.  It is your duty to ensure that your house runs smoothly.  Just whose income do you imagine it is that allows you the luxury of staying home?” (p. 404).

Priscilla also makes the point that it may be Alice’s fault for Charlie’s drinking, and that it is her responsibility—job even—to make sure things are running smoothly.  I dislike this logic.  It removes personal responsibility from Charlie and places women as in charge of men’s appetites.  If women are responsible for making sure their husbands are sober, making sure their husbands are sexually satisfied, and making sure that the house runs smoothly, what is left for the husband to do?  I see this logic as faulty, because it assumes that women are responsible for men’s choices and that it is a wife’s job to drag that man to “heaven” even if it is kicking and screaming or beyond his will, capability, or choice.  Why can’t Charlie be responsible for his own behavior?  In this scene, we see the heavy responsibility of being a wife, especially through the eyes of Priscilla’s generation and class.

Alice counters this view a little, when she earlier muses, “there’s no surer sign of a man who won’t make something of himself than his repeated assertions that he will” (p. 82).  But she still feels responsible.  She tells Charlie that his drinking worries her because of the possibility of his killing somebody with his car and that she would feel responsible for this.  In some sense, both husband and wives ARE responsible for one another and must reach out and reign in when needed.  Charlie senses this in some ways, when in the end, as president, he says, “You know the one person who’ll never use me?” And then he points at Alice (p. 483).  This is presented as a complication of being famous, but any marriage should be able to claim the same thing.

One of the best things about this book is the fact that Alice is a librarian, and she is constantly reading. Here is a list of the titles we hear about throughout the book.  Hopefully, I caught them all. And I have linked them to posts that I have on some of them.  I’ve put an X next to the ones I have read.  I’ve read 21 of them.

The Rise of Silas Latham by William Dean Howells (X)

The Odyssey by Homer (X)

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (some of them!)

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

Stop-Time by Frank Convoy

Eloise (series) by Kay Thompson

Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (X)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (X)

Deenie by Judy Blume

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (X)

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle (X)

Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry (X)

Autumn Street by Lois Lowry

The Westing Game by Agatha Christie

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (X)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (no, but it’s on my nightstand)

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt (X)

A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt

The Diary of Anne Frank (X)

Locked in Time by Lois Duncan

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (X)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (X)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (X)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (X)

The Group by Mary McCarthy

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (X)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (X)

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

The Great Santini by Pat Conroy

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Native Son by Richard Wright

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (X)

The Old Forest by Peter Taylor

Rabbit Redux by John Updike

Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow

Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling

The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown (X)

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton (X)

Ferdinand by Munro Leaf (X)

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein (X)

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

Trinity by Leon Uris

I always like to note which books are mentioned in a novel because I had a professor who said that the libraries in books are often allusions or can reveal a pattern of some sort about the characters or the narrative.  I think this list reveals that Alice Blackwell loves to read and that she’s a children’s school librarian!

I am also interested in what American Wife had to say about being a mother.  Alice muses, “but what I did care about, what I wanted most fervently, was for her to understand that hard work paid off, that decency begat decency, that humility was not a raincoat you occasionally pulled on when you thought conditions called for it, but rather a constant way of existing in the world, knowing that good and bad luck touched everyone and none of us was fully responsible for our fortunes or tragedies” (p. 401).  I loved these words, and they stem from Alice’s adjusting to being part of a rich family and married to a rich man when she grew up so humbly.  She often uses a metaphor of the people in California who build their homes on cliffs.  She feels to be one of those people.  “Our lives were beautiful but precarious, their foundations vulnerable” (p. 335).

Here are some of the great quotes from the book:

“But hadn’t I learned, over and over, that the world was larger and more complex than I’d once imagined, and wasn’t this lesson an essentially positive one?”

“I live a life that contains contradictions.  Don’t you?” (p. 473).

“Was this what marriage was, the slow process of getting to know another individual far better than was advisable?” (p. 342).

“I’ve always had a soft spot for people who talk a lot because I feel as if they’re doing the work for me” (p. 223).

“Everyone is boring some of the time . . . What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together” (p. 301).

“Go home, put on a pretty dress, some heels, and some lipstick, flirt with him, flatter him, and never forget how insecure men are.  It’s because they take themselves far too seriously” (p. 302).

“The fact of someone saying something about me, even when the someone is in my husband’s inner circle, cannot make it true or untrue” (p. 547).

There are many more plot lines and issues covered in this book.  Abortion is one, and the idea that the personal is political comes into play many times.  There is also a falling out with a good friend, in which Alice realizes that “Dena’s behavior had to reflect her frustration with her own life more than with me” (p. 189).  I think this is true for many of the conflicts we face with each other.  We often take out our disappointments and anger on other people, rather than looking at ourselves.  Doing so would be much more painful.

There are political issues, even an interesting tension between Alice, a Democrat, and her Republican husband Charlie.  There are issues of class and race, the divide between the rich and the poor, and the difficulty in crossing class lines.  There is guilt and compassion.  There’s mothering.  There is a lesbian grandmother, probably the best character in the whole book.  There is death and disappointment, and new love.  There is sin and redemption.  The novel, although seemingly about marriage, is also about so much more.  And yet marriage is tied up in all of those things.

I that sense, Alice is defined by being a wife because she must put aside her political differences and support her husband.  She breaks out of this at the end, without too much hurt, but reveals some of her betrayals. She hasn’t been completely loyal, but she says, “I have to assume there are betrayals in most marriages.  The goal, I suppose, is not to allow any that are larger than the strength of the partnership” (p. 555).

In that, she reveals that marriage really is a partnership, a relationship that should be equal and mutually beneficial.  I think the Backwells have it figured out by the end of the novel, but not without continual detours and bumps in the road.  But as I learned (about research) from theorist Wiebe E. Bijker this semester, sometimes detours can lead to main routes.

I did have a few reservations about this book, but they are the same issues that plague much of the popular fiction right now.  There is an awful lot of swearing and way too much detail about sex.  The sex isn’t Harlequin romance novel worthy, but it was definitely more than I wanted to know and more than the readers need to know.  It seemed gratuitous.

If you’d like to purchase the book, please follow this link  http://www.curtissittenfeld.com/books/american-wife/buy-the-book/

The next book we will be reading and reviewing is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.  Feel free to read (and post) along!

Public domain image by Chris Roberts Antieau

1. Don’t be afraid to follow a blog with only a few followers.

I’m not afraid to follow a blog that has only four followers.  If I like the writing, the content, and the style, I will follow the blog.  I don’t need a bandwagon to jump on.  I saw this with my own blog.  For a long while, I hovered at fifty-some-odd followers, and I was proud of that, so I made sure that the numbers were displayed on my home page.  That may have been a mistake.  I’d get views, but no new followers.  Then, Freshly Pressed happened and suddenly my followers (and views) exploded.  I was grateful for this.  But it seemed that once people started following me and the numbers grew a little, nobody felt afraid to push that looming “Follow” button.  It wasn’t uncool anymore because, hey, hundreds of others were doing it.  If your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff too?  (I know I sound like a parent, but I just couldn’t resist.) 

2. Be considerate when commenting.

Be polite and considerate when commenting.  I’ve never had an overt problem with this.  It’s been a pleasant surprise to me on WordPress and in the world of blogging.  A few years ago, I tried a citizen journalist site in which many articles that I posted were met with criticism, derision, epithets, and sarcasm.  Needless to say, I quit that pretty quickly.  Along these lines, when commenting, do not post links to your own blog!  It’s uber annoying.  I can’t stress this enough.  And although there have been a few of these that I’ve let slide because the way in which it was done was tactful and tasteful, most of the time I feel annoyed. 

Here’s an example.  A woman visited my blog, commented on one page, and then left.  But no.  That was not all.  She came back.  Twice.  And kept pasting links to her posts, saying, “ I see that you are interested in _____.  I wrote about that.  Here’s a link to my post on it.”  Or, “I wrote a poem about _____ and I can tell you would like it.  Here’s a link to my post on it.”  I did not click on either link, nor did I approve her comments.  They were asinine, pushy, and full of assumption.  What makes you think that I want to read your poem?  I’ll read it if I want to read it.  I’ll read it if I come across it while blog surfing.  Otherwise, back off!

3. Like as many blog posts as you want, but be prepared to follow the blog, too.

There’s an interesting post about liking blogs that I came across on Freshly Pressed last year.  I’m not sure if I agree with all of the author’s ideas.  She claims that you should comment if you really liked it, and that liking a blog is tantamount to just pushing a button in order to get somebody to notice you and follow your blog.  I take offense to that because I have actually read the posts that I like and I genuinely like them, and sometimes I just don’t have anything extra or intelligent to add to the conversation. 

My pet peeve with liking is the random person who likes posts every few weeks, but never bothers to become a follower.  In that case, I sense some sort of game being played with trying to get noticed or to get me to follow their blog.  I don’t mind this, if it’s a good blog.

4. As a blogger, respond to your comments!

We all know this one.  It’s touted by everyone as the way to become successful.  Success aside, I am touting it as a way to have meaningful conversations on a blog.  I mean, that’s why I started my blog.  I wanted to actually interact with people on the subject of books.  It’s fun.  It’s fulfilling.  It’s part of blogging.

Maybe I’m too critical, but I get annoyed when a blogger doesn’t respond to my comments.  I’ve noticed this with a few blogs.  One blogger used to be on top of this, but has since seemed to have lost interest.  I have no idea what this blogger’s life is like, and perhaps something major is going on, but I sense this distance, and the blog isn’t as fun to follow anymore.

Additionally, when bloggers claim that they cannot respond to every comment after being Freshly Pressed, I only see them admitting that they have no interest in their followers.  Freshly Pressed is where it’s at.  It’s what gets you connected with your new virtual “friends.”  It is the way to connect with hundreds and thousands of people through the written word.  I think bloggers should respond to each and every comment.  It is a lot of work, but, for me, it has been worth it because I ended up building relationships.  No excuses.  Just do it.

5. Don’t steal images.

I was guilty of this when I first began blogging, but I have changed my ways and gone through each post to make sure that my images are used correctly.  I realized my error by reading this post written by a blogger who was sued for using copyrighted images.  Yes.  She.  Was.  SUED!  That was enough to scare me straight.

But think about it.  Would you want somebody copying and pasting your words and putting those on their blog?  No.  I didn’t think so.  So take your own pictures, or use images in the public domain.  There are also plenty of images that others share on Wikimedia Commons.  The post I mentioned above has other good ideas.  I liked her suggestion to just start taking your own pictures and filing them away for future use. 

These are the major issues that come to mind when I look back on what I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, from blogging.  What have you learned?