Carl > Recent Status Updates

The Overstory challenges one of my unwritten theories as a reader: “preaching damages literature.” I felt a similar unsettling when reading The Monkey Wrench Gang, which the group of five characters has recently devolved (evolved?) into. I trust Powers; it’s not going to end cleanly. And “unsettling” is itself valuable. But I wobble.

Kate and I stopped for lunch at Salt Springs State Park, and we decided to hike the Hemlock Trail, because it advertised trees half a millennium old. Reading The Overstory makes one alert—that really is the word—to the majesty around us.

I can easily imagine that the government fiends currently hell-bent on turning national parks into drill sites would roll their beady eyes at Powers’ earnestness. Their loss.

Memoirist Tobias Wolff wrote, “The truth is in the memory because the memory is all we have.” Reading Hong Kingston’s book that is categorized as “memoir” puts that freeing epigraph to the test.

This is nothing like a traditional memoir. It’s like it taunts a Westernized reader, saying, “You must be disoriented out of your idea of a life’s narrative before my talk-story can take root in you.”

I’m loving the history and the literary lenses. (I’m a big fan of Prof. Garber, who was on my thesis committee lo those many years ago, and was very generous to me.) Not every episode in the book seems fully aligned with the subtitle’s premise, but it’s a very enjoyable read nonetheless.

I’m not sure whether the early part of this book was unimpressive by design or just that it was setting up the later parts, but in any case if has begun to grow in me. Maybe still clunky snd cloying in its most didactic moments, and yet quite endearing.

The German episode is my favorite so far

I’m enjoying it more now, but I’m still waiting for what exactly made this a Pulitzer-quality novel. (The fact that Pachinko was eligible and wasn’t even a finalist makes me skeptical about the whole process.)

“Back in his room, he is surprised to find, in the Lilliputian bathroom, a Brobdingnagian tub” (32). No, sorry, that doesn’t work. Nobody tries harder than writers attempting to be funny, “tries” being the operant word.

Mesmerizing use of the shifting narrators—a Modernist gem. But why does Darl use words like “stertorous” and phrases like “a cubistic bug”? (I love the names.)

Mattie Ross is as vivid a character as I have read lately. The dialogue in this book is a delight.