Shogun VS. Lincoln in the Bardo

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book critique, book review, books, Entertainment, Lincoln in the Bardo, novels, Reading, Shogun, writing

I have two books on my nightstand, Shogun by James Clavell and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Both are historical novels, the first an epic adventure story set in feudal Japan in the 1600’s, the second a literary novel centering around the death of President Lincoln’s son, Willie. Both are highly acclaimed.

I began reading them around the same time. The first is 1210 pages, the second 342. Guess which I finished first? Yes, Shogun.

This surprises and disappoints me in some ways. But perhaps it shouldn’t. I had resisted buying, let along reading Bardo, for a long time, despite the fact I’m a huge Saunders’ fan. I fell in love with his short stories in The Tenth of December, especially the title piece and “Victory Lap,” which I wrote about in The Light-Craving Stories of George Saunders.

The reason I resisted reading his first novel, even though  I had read so many ecstatic reviews of the work, was because it just sounded so dark and somber. This despite knowing what a wild sense of humor Saunders has and how “heart-searing and heart-soaring” his light-emitting stories can be, as I had written earlier.

Still. The setting, a graveyard? Inhabited by souls lost in Limbo? A dead boy? A grieving father? I felt the ratchets of my mind closing down one by one: resist, resist, resist.

I’ve already written in my last post how a resisting reader almost always dooms a piece of writing. Here it wasn’t the writer I was resisting. I already knew the pleasures of reading Saunders. It was the subject matter I was resisting (as it was, come to think of it, in the Outlander example I wrote about in my last post.)

On the other hand, I came to Shogun, not as a new reader, as I’d already had the pleasure of reading the book 20 years ago or so. I already knew what to expect, but I was curious to see if it would still draw me in and keep my interest so many years later.

What I was really looking for, I believe now, was a book to binge on, like the series I liked to watch on TV–Game of Thrones, The Last Kingdom, Downton Abbey–with characters I cared about, and plot-lines that drew me deeper and deeper into the story. A ship-wrecked sailor cast upon shores of Feudal Japan had the potential to do that. A dead boy in Limbo, not so much.

So does it all just boil down to what kind of mood I’m in? Perhaps. But even more, it comes down to that ever-enduring quint-essential question that all writers, and all publishers, I dare say, grapple with: what keeps the reader turning pages and wanting more?

In Shogun I immediately became caught up in the plight of the sailor and the culture crash when West met East for the first time. I was caught up in the game-of-thrones-type warfare and strategic plotting that was taking place between the Lord Toranaga and his rival feudal lords. I was caught up in the tender and precarious relationship developing between Anjin-san, the ship-wrecked sailor, and his beautiful and wise translator, Marika. It wasn’t that I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. I knew that already. It was just because it was all so fascinating, and deep enough and rich enough that I felt well fed, and yet still craved for more. I’ve already started on the next book in Clavell’s Asian series, each book taking place a generation of so after the other.

But while I found the historical excerpts about President Lincoln and the loss of his son quite interesting, and I was amused and delighted by the array of misfit lost souls inhabiting the graveyard, and deeply touched by the young boy finding himself stranded between worlds while his hapless grief-stricken father holds his now lifeless body in his arms, I was not compelled to find out “what happens next.” The writing was deep enough and rich enough to make me feel well-fed, but not enough to make me crave more–to keep turning pages.

It’s a different kind of story, of course, and is meant to be. In so many ways comparing Bardo with Shogun is like comparing apples and oranges. The first is meant to “capture the pathos of everyday life,” as  Michiko Kakutani wrote in a New York Times review . Or as Saunders himself wrote in an email interview with The New York Times Book Review, to elucidate “that terrible conundrum: We seem to be born to love, but everything we love comes to an end. What do we do with that?”

Bardo is meant to make us ponder the deep, disturbing questions about life, and to deepen our capacity to have compassion for each other, to show us how, as I wrote before, that in the end, “when all the superficiality and fears and meanness are flayed from us, beneath that, we are light-craving creatures: people who are starving for the want of goodness, the want of grace in our lives.”

Bardo‘s purpose, perhaps, is to deepen our understanding of the human condition, first, and to entertain, second. While Shogun’s purpose, perhaps, is the other way around. But deepen our understanding it does nonetheless. The best books do both.

In 1975 Webster Schott wrote about Shogun in the New York Times: “I can’t remember when a novel has seized my mind like this one. . . . Clavell has a gift. It may be something that cannot be taught or earned. He breathes narrative. It’s almost impossible not to continue to read Shogun once having opened it. Yet it’s not only something that you read—you live it.”

Creating characters and plot lines that allow us to live and breathe through them, that compel us to ponder the deep, disturbing questions about human existence, and to leave us craving for more. Isn’t that what we all want when we pick up a book?

Isn’t that what we all want when we put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in our aspiration to write a novel?

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Books I’ve Abandoned

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authors, books, novels, Reading, Reading lists, Taste in books, writers

Sad to say, but I abandon more books than I finish nowadays.

I simply lose interest in them. I read a few chapters, lay them aside for a few days, and realize: I really don’t care how this end. There’s nothing drawing me to return to the page. Often the book is well-written, has received rave reviews, the characters are strong, and the plot adequate. But it’s not compelling. I’m not sucked into the story. Something is missing, and I’m disappointed. Because I want to be swept away, I want to be dazzled, I want to be moved. But I’m not.

A few of these abandoned books I’ve kept, hoping the timing just wasn’t right. I wasn’t in the mood for this particular book. This has happened before. I’ve abandoned books and returned to them later and loved them. Or I’ve persisted with a book I wanted to abandon but couldn’t because I had an outside inducement to continue (a class I was taking, a book club choice, a friend had recommended, etc.), and then, about half-way through, something is triggered, and I find myself eagerly finishing the book–a book I would have abandoned otherwise.

Here’s a few books I abandoned within the past year but have kept on my shelf, hoping the timing was just off:

• Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kinglover
• Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
• Arcadia, Lauren Groff
• The Tiger’s Wife, Tea Obreht
• Wild, Cheryl Strayed

Recent reads I loved and eagerly finished:

• The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey
• Mudbound, Hillary Jordan
• The Round House, Louise Erdrich
• The Shadow Catcher, Marianne Wiggons
• Games of Thrones (first three books in the series), George R. R. Martin
• The Hunger Games (all three in series), Suzanne Collins
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (all three in series), Stieg Larsson

A few I finished with coercion and am glad I did:

• The Light Between Oceans, M. L. Stedman
• Claire of the Sea Light, Edwidge Danticat
• Tinkers, Paul Harding
• Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson

Books I’m currently reading and on the verge of abandoning:

• Object Lessons, Anna Quindlen
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

Books I’m currently reading and am eager to finish:

• Peace Like a River, Leif Enger
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

Books on my shelf, or in my Kindle, that I’m looking forward to reading:

• Tenth of December, George Saunders
• We the Animals, Justin Torres
• Americana, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich

I don’t know if I’m unusual in doing this, if I’m particularly picky, or if this is fairly common. Do you abandon books? Or do you force yourself to finish them?

Have you read any of these books? What’s been your experience with them?

 

20 Favorite and Most Influential Books

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authors, books, favorite authors, favorite books, influential books, literary fiction, literature, non-fiction, novels, Philosophy, spirituality

What follows are the 20 favorite books that helped shape the way I think and write. It was hard to limit the list to twenty, and the only way I could do so was by including only one book per author, and by excluding works of poetry, and two foundational (religious) books, all of which I may write about in future posts.

But the twenty remaining are significant. I’ve listed them–more or less–by when they first appeared in my life, starting with fiction and moving to non-fiction: memoir, science, and philosophy.

1. Fairy Tales, by Charles Peuralt and the Grimms Brothers – I grew up on fairy tales and came to love these stories, which speak in deeply moving ways of what it means to be human. Not surprisingly these stories seemed to rise in slightly different forms all over the world. They illustrate the archtypes that Carl Jung writes about and point toward a collective human consciousness. A few of my favorites were Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and The Snow Queen. As an adult, my love of fairy tales is satisfied by such books as The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (a darkly sensual retelling of the old fairy tales) and more recently The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (a retelling of that classic fairy tale, as experienced by homesteaders in 1920 Alaska.)
2. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madelien L’Engle – As a child, this classic was my all-time favorite. It introduced me to the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and inspired me with the subtle elements of spirituality woven throughout. It also spurred my interest in physics and astronomy, and how all these things can be drawn together and brought to life with lively characters and a riveting plot.
3. Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien – This trilogy by a master story-telling creates a fantastical world that has the gravitas of myth and lore. Humble, flawed, impulsive, and heroic characters are set upon a rousing adventure full of pitfalls and setbacks, in their quest to overcome evil and save the world. It both delighted me as a reader and instructed me as a writer. I haven’t read anything quite like it until recently, reading the Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin. This series doesn’t measure up to the Lord of the Rings as literary fiction, but it does surpass it in terms of gritty reality, sexual exploitations, and characters with fatal flaws–literally.
4. The Bear, by William Faulkner – This is one of several linked stories in Faulkner’s book Go Down, Moses. It’s one of his most spiritual stories and the one most anthologized, about a boy coming of age in the wilderness and his hunt for the legendary and mythical Bear. I found how Faulkner depicts nature as a powerful, mystical force mesmerizing, as I did the structure of his sentences. I love how his long, sensuous, prose that wraps around itself, and takes you, phrase by phrase, to a deeper and more profound meaning. Reading Faulkner trained my ear for other seductive writing styles and stories, such as those by Toni Morrison and Gabriel Marquez.
5. The Beast in the Jungle, by William James – This is another short story, a novella actually, that deeply impacted my taste in literature, for writing that is dense and complex. I found the way he deeply probes the human consciousness and shifting perceptions using an unreliable narrator fascinating. His writing was a major influence in the works of the next writer on this list, Virgina Woolf.
6. To a Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf – I love her lyrical prose, the way she uses stream of consciousness to move the narrative, and the fact that so much can be revealed so quietly and subtly when writing about an ordinary day, ordinary lives. I agree with Eudora Welty when she wrote how this book is “beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality.”
7. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison – I was blown away by this novel, the beauty and lyricism of the prose, the intensely passionate and quirky charactors, and the magical realism that is woven throughout. I also loved her novels Beloved and Tar Baby. More than any other writer, I think the depth and beauty of her prose is what I aspire to. Reading her books led me to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, his short works as well as One Hundred Years of Solitude, which easily could have been included as one of my top 20’s.
8. Bellefleur, by Joyce Carol Oates – I had read many of Oates’ dark, often violent short stories with a strong psychological bent. And I know these influenced me – some of my short stories are dark and deeply psychological. But I found Bellefleur, which is written in a completely different style, spellbinding. Here she marries gothic romance with magical realism, and it’s so over the top, and written with such rich and luscious prose, such depth and sensuality, that it is a delight to read.
9. Passion and Other Stories, by Isaac Bashevis Singer – I fell in love with these stories set in Eastern Europe about Yiddish-speaking Jews. While rooted in realism, these stories of unique characters and situations have subtle elements of magical realism and an undertone of spirituality. While not well-known today, Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.
10. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy – For all of its length and complexity, this novel is easy reading because it sweeps you away with the mastery of great story-telling. Reading Tolstoy, I feel I am sitting at the knees of a master writer and drinking up all I can learn.
11. Notes From Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky – Another book I was blown away by, but in an entirely different way than the others. I’d never met a character or heard a voice like the narrator of his tale, who displays a kind manic, depraved perversity and woundedness. Doestoevsky intimately and devastatingly dissects the inner life of a man on the verge of madness. He reveals that kind of humiliation and masochistic tendency that haunts our worst nightmares.
12. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller – This fascinating novel is based on Miller’s own experiences living in Paris in the late 20’s. It’s about an artist seeking to live a rich and authentic life under dire conditions. This narrator, like Doestoevshy’s, writes about the humiliations he suffers and his own woundedness, but unlike the other character, he rises above it—he yearns for transcendence. This novel reads in part like a memoir with sketches of important writers and artists living in Paris at that time, and also contains long sections of stream-of-consciousness with poignant, luminous passages. When it was published in 1934 it was banned in the US for its erotica. When finally published here in the 1961, it sparked a controversy that ended in a Supreme Court ruling that extended free speech to include literature.
13. At Play in the Field of the Lord, and The Snow Leopard, both by Peter Mathiessen – I couldn’t decide which book to include, both were so influential. I read At Play first, a novel set in South America about two degenerate pilots, two missionary families, and a tribe of natives on the verge of extinction. The second is a memoir about Mathiessen climbing the Himalayas in search of the elusive snow leopard. It’s also a meditation on the death of his late wife, and about his pracice of Zen Buddhism. Both books are great adventure stories that look deeply into the meaning of life, the natural world, and the human heart.
14. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig – This was an immensely popular “culture-bearing” classic from the seventies. It had been rejected 122 times before finally finding its way into print, and immediately became a best seller. And for good reason. Like “The Snow Leopard,” it is part memoir –a father-son road trip, part meditation on the meaning of life (the author calls it “an inquirey into values”), and part instruction manual on how to practice Zen through the art of motocycle maintenance. A heavy and heady road-trip indeed.
15. Cosmos, By Carl Sagan – Another heady and heavy road-trip—through the Cosmos this time. His series inspired a keen interest in astronomy and cosmology, and enabled me to see how science, too, can help us explore the big questions about what it means to be human.
16. The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas – Where Sagan was exploring the outer universe, Thomas explores the universe of earth, which he compares in all its complexity to the beauty of a single cell. Writing as a biologist, his essays ramble from field to field, with meditations on such diverse topics as music, death, language, medicine, insects, and computers. Each essay always brings into juxtaposition seemingly dissimilar items, revealing surprising relationships and shedding light on the human condition and the nature of reality.
17. The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra – The book copy describes this as “a pioneering book” that “reconciles eastern philosophy and western science in a brilliant humanistic vision of the universe.” An apt description. This book took me on another adventurous road-trip, this time into the tiniest realms of the universe. It awakened in me a keen interest in quantum physics and the latest discoveries of science, which I’ve been exploring (as a layman) ever since. James Gleick’s Chaos: Making of a new Science, M. Mitchell’s Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, and Leonard Shains’s more cross-disciplinary Art & Science: Parallel vison in Space, Time & Light are a few examples of influential books that followed.
18. The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran – I read this as a teen, and it began a life-long interest in philosophy, eastern spiritual practices, and the possibility of creating an artful life. It was written by a Lebanese artist and philosopher as 26 prose poems, each a meditation on such topics as joy and sorrow, good and evil, beauty, pleasure, marriage, children, and so much more.
19. An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki, Forward by Carl Jung – This book introduced me to two great thinkers, Suzuki and Jung, and a new way of thinking. It was hugely influential. Suzuki was born in Japan and trained as a Buddhist disciple at a Zen Monestary. He wrote extensively on Zen and was credited with bringing Zen to the West. I went on to eagerly read (and study) several more of his works, including his Essays in Zen Buddhism. I’ve never read another book on Zen that comes close to his works in depth and clarity. Another favorite, however, is Alan Watt’s The Spirit of Zen. The foreword to Suzuki’s book also led me to read Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, and Bill Moyers’ interviews with Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth. Both hugely influential.
20. Creativity and Tao: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry, by Chang Chung-yuan – I ran across this in a used book store when I was a young woman. I read it to tatters along with several other copies I bought to replace it—that’s how much I love this book, and how often I study and meditate upon it. It’s the kind of book you can read over and over and gain new inspiration and understanding with each reading. It sparked a keen and enduring love of art, and threw new light on the creative process–where it comes from and how it is manifested in art and the written word. It deftly weaves together and brings to a profound point some of the great loves of my life: Poetry, Art, Philosophy, and Spirituality.

Have you read any of these books?  I’d be really interested in hearing your comments on them. I’d also love to hear what books influenced you the most.