A Battle with Depth

Today I tried The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted by Bridget Asher. I left at page 24 because of its stubbornly impenetrable nature. I skimmed through the rest of a flashback and found that the featured wedding lasted for a decent-sized chunk of pages. Some details were beautifully written, such as the family property in Provence, France, but the entire book felt like it was written out of reach. You can observe the events, but you can't feel them. And if you try, the book moves further and further out of your grasp.

Frustrated by it, I moved on to The Kitchen Congregation by Nora Seton. Beautiful writing here too, tapping into deep wells of emotion of family, of cooking, of the descriptions of kitchens and Seton's mother's friends, which take up the first part of the book. She tries for poetic descriptions and accomplishes that sporadically, with some other passages feeling workmanlike, just a way to get to the next part of the thought.

I lasted until page 176. The book ends at page 246, and it's a better average than The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, which ends at page 422. I just shuddered a bit while typing that, imagining trying to get through the rest of it, which I probably would have done if this book had been around in my teens (Although actually, I probably wouldn't have, because I checked out more movie history books than any other kind back then). But I don't have the time now. There's so many books in the world, so much to explore, that if a book doesn't work for me, even after page 20, away it goes for good. If a passage pops up that makes me want to give it a bit more of a go, then I read through the next few pages and decide. My reading list isn't finite, but my life is, and I want to make these decades most enjoyable in reading.

I considered giving up on The Kitchen Congregation during the chapter on Senta, who lived below Seton and her husband "on the first floor of a villa in Zurich." Seton's writing is heartfelt at times, but it feels so removed. You try to reach in and you can't get close enough, not because there's a secret password to declare, but because Seton is so deep into her memories, the emotions conjured up by those memories, that it feels like she forgets to look up and see those who are reading about her life. We are welcome, but please, don't get too close. These floors, these walls, are sacred. Look, but don't touch. Learn, but don't feel as much as she has. Sentimentality shouldn't be mawkish, but it shouldn't make you feel like you have to either learn the secret handshake or beg to know about someone's memories, especially with what they describe in food. Clearly Seton is a fine cook, and loves the life she lives in the kitchen, but everything else here doesn't have the same feeling.

I first skimmed past where I had stopped in the Senta chapter while considering whether to leave this book, finding the same writing style throughout. What's established at the beginning isn't going to change. But the next chapter, "Two in the Kitchen", starts with this:

"When I first saw my husband chopping green beans into uniform inches, I thought the marriage would never last. It was so precise, so painstaking. It was the way his mother did it. He liked his green beans cut small, but then he went and married a woman who manhandled green beans--no knife, no ruler."

"Ok, ok," I thought, "I'll stick with it to see the differences between her method of cooking and her husband's method. I want to know about that."

Seton is a careful writer, and she's thought about these various passages a great deal. She wants her words to be as well-cooked as the dishes she produces in her kitchen. But it feels like she holds onto them too tightly. She doesn't want any to slip out of place and upend the entire production. Most of the time, her writing feels too gentle. When she describes the actions of her children Hugh and baby Maddie while she and they visit Ida, an elderly lively friend, she hits upon the kind of writer she should have been throughout the entire book, including Maddie eating many things such as a pocketbook. It's a welcome shot of amusement that should have been suffused throughout the rest of the sentences here.

By page 176, I became disenchanted with it again and couldn't read any more pages. I appreciate the gentleness of Seton's words, but I wish she had looked up, beckoning the reader to get comfortable and settle in. I felt like I was standing up the entire time, smiling in parts, but mostly watching. Just watching. Never feeling.

After giving it up, I opened up Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life by Michael Lee West, which was the first in my "First Lines" series of entries (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/03/first-lines-from-books-i-love-1.html), even though I hadn't read any of it beyond that first paragraph. I like it already and I think it's going to bloom into love because West isn't self-conscious about her words. She writes well, but she wants the reader to come on in right away, to get to know how she became obsessed with food after her grandmother's funeral, because her grandmother's recipe for buttermilk biscuits would have disappeared had it not been for her, urged by her Aunt Tempe to write down the recipe since she remembered it. So far (and I suspect it'll last through the rest of the book), West's writing is warm and genial. And it is full of good-natured Southern life.

My plan for the weekend had been a double header of Kitchen Chinese by Ann Mah and Angelina's Bachelors by Brian O'Reilly, since The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted hadn't arrived by Friday. It came on Saturday, and by that time, I had given up on Kitchen Chinese because despite the delicious descriptions of Asian food, the story became very boring. There's no other way to describe it but just that and move on. I devoured Angelina's Bachelors afterward, and then came The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted and the beginning of the entry you just read. So three books came into view this weekend, and only one survived. I'm never perpetually impatient with books, just those I absolutely cannot continue.

First Lines from Books I Love #5: Angelina's Bachelors

Since becoming a writer at 11 years old, I've learned so much about writing, and surely still have much more to learn that will sustain me through the rest of my life.

I've learned not to be so prickly about language. People will end sentences with prepositions. It's not a heinous crime against humanity. (I'm not against this, but I have seen disturbing militancy from others about it.)

Contractions are ok; they help keep word counts low and prevent stuffiness.

And if you take away colloquialisms, you take away culture and how people live every day in language. I was born in South Florida, and grew up saying "Yes'm," and "No'm." I have not and will never say "Yes ma'am" and "No ma'am." That's not how I grew up, and I want to keep that part of my heritage.

But what I also learned is that I'm not the one to decide if my writing is impressive. I write because I want to, and however it turns out is because of the ideas I have of how it should be, along with assistance provided by editors. When I wrote my essays for What If They Lived?, I wasn't nervous about it being my first book, but my writing sure was. I overwrote the introduction to my James Dean essay, trying to tie in a visit to Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, to a magnet store there with ones of Dean and Marilyn Monroe, to Dean's lasting appeal. Phil Hall, my co-author, thankfully looked over my essays and rewrote that introduction. I made sure it conformed to my writing style (Whatever that might be, but I make sure I'm comfortable with the words expressed), but was relieved, because in hindsight, it was an introduction more suited to a blog entry. In fact, I may post it here soon as a reminder of the time I spent writing that introduction, reading those paragraphs over and over, hoping that they clicked together without fighting it. I'm never embarassed by writing from years ago or writing I've scrapped. I always have to start somewhere, and that's where I did.

When I read The Men Who Would Be King by Nicole LaPorte, I was excited at the thought of writing with that level of detail, resulting from so much research that I hope to undertake as well for my own projects. I'm passionate about these subjects, so that will be easy.

Reading Angelina's Bachelors by Brian O'Reilly, I want to write with that much care, that much love. And it's huge. This is not just the product of O'Reilly's experiences being surrounded by cooking for decades, with his wife Virginia O'Reilly having cooked since she was little, not just him being the creator of Dinner: Impossible on Food Network, but him having a true love for words and for reading. At the beginning, Angelina's husband Frank dies (There's no reason for a spoiler alert here because it's mentioned in the copy on the back of the book and it's the impetus for everything else here), and even though Frank is given only five and a half pages before his death, O'Reilly knows him so well that we're affected by this, not only because Angelina is going to lose a beloved husband, but he seems like a very good man.

After the funeral, and after a cooking spree that produces dishes and soups that are delivered to neighbors, as well as a lasagna to Dottie, her across-the-street neighbor, Dottie's brother Basil returns the empty lasagna pan and proposes to Angelina an arrangement whereby she'll cook him breakfast and dinner six days a week and he'll pay her for it, a sum to help her keep on living and not have to worry so much about future finances, as she is already.

I wish I had brought Angelina's Bachelors into Sprouts yesterday. I hadn't had lunch before my family and I left on afternoon errands with the hope that we might eat out (I've been thinking again about a pastrami sandwich and Ultimate Chili Cheese Fries (which just means diced onions and sour cream included) at Weinerschnitzel). No luck, so by the time we reached Sprouts, I was famished, and grabbed a few samples from the bulk items, including chocolate-covered peanuts, and chocolate-covered cashews, and yes, not ideal, so I made sure that in the bananas we bought was a ripe banana to eat while driving a very short few hundred yards to Target nearby.

Had I read Angelina's Bachelors while walking around Sprouts, after grabbing a few containers of my favorite lemon yogurt from Casacade Fresh, my favorite yogurt actually, I would not have been inclined to scarf down chocolate. The descriptions of Italian food and Angelina cooking each dish is glorious, reverent, and it feels spiritual, a real connection not only with food but also with the bonds it creates between people. Wait until you read about Don Eddie's connection to marrowbones and toast, and the memories it brings to Big Phil, his nephew. Phil is my favorite character because he doesn't say a word, at least until it matters the most. It makes the impact of his later gesture huge.

Angelina's Bachelors is going into my permanent collection. I need it for reference not only in the gentleness of writing, but also how each word matters most. Every single word keeps you in the neighborly and caring world that Brian O'Reilly has created. Humanity has found another magnificent ally.

And now, the first lines:

"Perfect," whispered Angelina.

Standing alone in the moonlit warmth of her kitchen, she stroked them each softly in turn and applied the slightest, knowing pressure to each. They were cool to the touch now, all risen to exactly the same height, the same shape and consistency, laid side by side by side on the well-worn wooden table. The dusky scent of dark chocolate lingered in the air and on her fingers."

Angelina's Bachelors is also a vacation. Take a few hours for it, and you will return looking at the world anew.

First Lines from Books I Love #4: The Secret of Everything

About three or four months ago, sitting on some kind of odd, circular red seat near the fitting rooms at Target in Golden Valley, waiting for Mom and Meridith, I opened the Target Book Club edition of How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal (which includes a letter from her to Target shoppers, being that Target plays a small part in the book, and she loves Target), and began reading. I liked the descriptions of mother doughs, and of Ramona's kitchen, but didn't get further than that. Out of curiosity about a month ago, I ordered How to Bake a Perfect Life, remembering that brief encounter, and began reading it on August 25. I remember that so specifically because I had written about it on the 26th (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/08/perfect-day.html). Because of that experience, I ordered from abebooks.com her previous two novels, her first, The Lost Recipe for Happiness, and her second, The Secret of Everything. Right when The Lost Recipe for Happiness arrived in the mail, I had just finished The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark by Ridley Pearson, which merits its own entry soon, since I ordered books 2, 3, and 4 from abebooks.com, and am anticipating book 5 in 2012.

When I opened to the first page of The Lost Recipe for Happiness and began reading, I immediately began sighing with pleasure all over again, just as I had with How to Bake a Perfect Life. Imagine coming home from a hard, yet satisfying day of work. You've done some good in your part of the world. Your family or boyfriend or girlfriend comes home not long after, and dinner is many of your favorite foods. The mail has brought the latest issue of your favorite magazine. On TV, reruns, but in particular, a rerun of your favorite episode of your favorite show. Feel that bliss, that warmth, that peace, that love? That's what The Lost Recipe for Happiness feels like. That's why I ordered it, because I wanted again what Babara O'Neal had given me in How to Bake a Perfect Life, but also to see how she did it in her first novel.

With The Secret of Everything, I've found my favorite Barbara O'Neal novel, and my new favorite novel. This one will be going into my permanent collection (It's been a while since I've mentioned it: My permanent collection are the books that will move with me when we move; I also have collections of books around my room, but this collection is in two boxes that I use as shelves for now). O'Neal (a pseudonym, by the way, as she is Barbara Samuel) is a poet in a novelist's body. I want to give out more than just the first two paragraphs, but you need to explore this book for yourself too.

So here goes, the first two paragraphs:

"On a foggy August morning, Tessa Harlow had finally tired of her long wallow on the Santa Cruz beaches. Leaving her father's tidy little bungalow as she did every morning, she carried her breakfast down to the surf: a mango fresh from the local grocer, a hunk of sourdough bread, and a hefty cup of tea she bought from the stand on the corner.

Settling on the sand, she skimmed the thick outer skin from the mango and bit into the buttery flesh, mopping the juice from her chin with a bandana. The tea was hot and milky, sweet with real sugar, and the bread---while not quite as tangy as San Francisco sourdough---complemented the mango perfectly."

Now go find it, and bask in the words and descriptions of a novelist who is stunning in her approach to the world, poetry in paragraphs. As I read many descriptions, some on one page alone, I grinned wide, gasped a little from the beauty of her prose, and felt my heart swell over and over. This novel embodies what reading means to me.

First Lines from Books I Love #3: Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends

I love books with a clear personality. Joyous, angry, happy, depressed, crazy, introverted, give me words, but give me a person behind those words. John Leguizamo is indeed a person who stands behind all his words, and what words they are in "Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends"!

He does not couch anything in mealy-mouthed language. What he says, man, he means. He has lived this life and he's going to tell you all about it, every triumph, every wrinkle, every conflict, everything.

In what he tells, he's certainly had one of the more interesting Hollywood lives. He started from hardship; he knows what it is to struggle to get what you want, to try to define your voice in an early life that discouraged different voices and was dominated by a hard father. He rises, he falls, like anyone does, but most importantly, he remains true to who he is. He does not change himself for the sake of financial betterment, for more fame.

I get restless with books nowadays. I don't force myself through what I don't want to read. Yesterday, I started "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" by Neal Gabler, because I love Walt Disney. I love what he created, I love what I have been able to establish in my own imagination because of what he left behind, and I know he was a conflicted and complex man. And I don't expect Gabler to adopt how John Leguizamo has written his book, but I was bored at the start. However, with that one, I realized that I probably wasn't in the mood for it right then. Maybe some other time.

Leguizamo pulls you right in like a friend he hasn't seen in a long time. "How the hell are you, man? Now sit down. This is what's going on with me."

This is what pulled me in right away:

"For me, there's always been a fine line between acting and acting out. Like this one afternoon me, English, Xerox, and Fucks Funny are riding the 7 train, the elevated subway that runs from Manhattan way the hell out into Queens. I see that the door to the conductor's booth at the front of the car is open, and no one's inside. And I get this sudden idea for my first public performance. Call it guerrilla theater, except at the time I was a clueless youth and thought guerrilla theater was a show they put on in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo."

Let it pull you in, too.

First Lines from Books I Love #2: The Trouble with Gumballs

From about 9 this morning to about 10 minutes before noon, I read all 249 pages of The Trouble with Gumballs by James Nelson, which included the "About the Author" page, which was more interesting than most "About the Author" pages.

I was disappointed at first to find that there's no listing on Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/) for it, and I was thinking that I'm probably too lazy to create one, since I'd rather be reading. But to give proper tribute to this book, I created one.

This was so much fun to read. Even the slightest bit of business matter, in profit, in trying to figure out profit, in wondering if a profit can even be made, is made funny by the nimble mind of author James Nelson, a former editor of Business Week, who moves himself and his family out to Northern California from New York City, and decides to get into the vending business, hauling around gumball machines, machines to dispense nuts, and even an attempted side business of jerky. He gets started with the No-Name Vending Machine Company, and it's hard to resist a book that includes a sketch of a man named Ogden Chugwater. Nelson didn't make this up.

He pays a significant amount of money to No-Name to get started, is hampered by Chugwater's delays in getting the machines to him and laying out the route which could include busy storefronts that might turn a profit, and eventually, Nelson gets started, and it's hard work. He's joined by his wife, who is an equal partner in this venture. She fills the machines with gumballs, she goes with him to see how much money they made from the machines, and in coming up with a name for their fledgling company, the Multivend Company, she names herself "Chairman of the Board." It works for Nelson, as the book is dedicated: "For the Chairman of the Board"

I've been interested in vending machines since Riverside Elementary School in Coral Springs, Florida, fascinated by all the mechanisms, and what can be stored in them for sale. Sometimes I stayed after school in the library to thumb through the encyclopedias and read everything I could on vending machines. I'm not machine-minded, but it's just the concept, in that I can ride the escalator down to the first floor of Macy's at the Valencia Town Center Mall and there's an iPod vending machine. It's become advanced enough that credit cards are taken. And here's Nelson, selling penny gum and filling those globes with gumballs at home.

Now to the purpose of this series, the beginning of chapter 1, the first page:

"Sweetie-pie," I said to Mary-Armour one night not too long ago, "how do you suppose we got here, anyway?"

It was one of thise winter evenings we have in Northern California, cold and rainy and miserable in the fields outside, but warm and toasty beside the blazing fireplace of our rented farmhouse. I was lolling, shoeless, in our easiest easy chair, staring morosely into the flames. Mary-Armour was sitting on the sofa working away at the tan sweater she'd been knitting for me ever since our courtship days.

At my question, she looked up and smiled, which was quite a heart-warming sight.

"How did we get here?" she echoed. "You mean, did the stork bring us?"

"Listen," I said. "I mean, how come did we leave New York and everything?"

James Nelson is (or was, since this book was published in 1956, and he's probably long gone) the best kind of business writer, one who can see into the humanity of a business, and so we get to read about grocer Freddie Wing Duck, and his wife Moonstone, and his Bongo Board. We also read about the severe Primus Gideon, who hates making change for children wanting to get gum from the machines, with such a fiery passion usually reserved for the most intense preachers.

I found this book because of my continued interest in vending machines, searching my local library catalog for more books, hoping that Kerry Segrave's "Vending Machines: An American Social History" had a listing. It still doesn't, but about two months ago, I bought it off of abebooks.com, not minding having to pay close to $30 for it. I've wanted to read it for so long.

I love the cover of that one. It's a soda machine, with "Vending Machines" across the blue stripe of the can, "An American Social History" under it, and Segrave's name squarely on the drop slot.

I found Nelson's book in the library catalog, put it on hold, and checked it out twice, but never got to it. This morning, I decided to finally read it, and it was a wonderful experience that made me feel so good during it and after I finished it.

First Lines from Books I Love #1: Consuming Passions

I've decided to start a new feature called "First Lines from Books I Love." I'm trying to get in the shower, but my damn brain keeps shouting, "BLOG! I WANT BLOG!"

I opened the closet door, intending to pull out my black Sheldon Cooper t-shirt (It has Klingon writing across the type with an asterisk, and next to the asterisk at the bottom is the translation: "Revenge is a dish best served cold"), but was distracted by the book on top of the third stack of books next to my bed. It's called "Consuming Passions: A Food-Obsessed Life" by Michael Lee West. I bought it months ago, but still haven't read it yet, just like a good bibliophile.

I opened to the first section, "Family Recipes", and the first chapter, "A Food-Obsessed Life." And I really want to share this first paragraph with you: "Many hundreds of years ago, when I was a small girl, I used to eat dirt. I would squat in a Louisiana ditch, a dark-haired child in a yellow dress, busily whipping up a mud pie. Using a spoon from my mama's best silver, Francis 1ST, I added a little ditch water. Then I swooned, overcome by the color and texture of the mud. It resembled rich brownie batter. Without hesitation I licked the spoon. My pie tasted sour and felt gritty against my teeth. I ate another spoonful, dribbling mud down my chin. All of a sudden Mama flew out of the house and jerked me up by one arm."

I bought this book because of the subject of food, but now I really know why I bought it. And I think I'll love the rest.

And now I think I'll also finally make my way to the shower. Shut up, brain. You're empty. Don't try to convince me that you have something else to be written. I won't hear of it right now.