Life stories

I’ve read a series of memoirs in recent times more off the 65 Books List:

Kitchen Confidential

This is an excellent read. Admittedly, I’m a fan of his show. There are definitely hints of obnoxiousness in some of Bourdain’s escapades and views and there are some non-politically correct views but maybe because I am familiar with his style and viewpoint from the show, I don’t hold it against him. The writing is vivid and evocative.

The Liar’s Club

Most of the reviews of this book said you would laugh through your tears. I didn’t find this much of a laugh riot. There are some terrible happenings as experienced by a child, albeit a scrappy child who takes them almost wholly in her stride (though she did become an alcoholic later, a period covered in Lit which I was actually supposed to read). Much as I avoid the slightest hint of unhappiness in my reading diet, Mary Karr is a poet and her words grabbed me by the hair and held me captive. That’s all there is to it. Mary Karr’s mother is of the kind described by Jerry Pinto in Em and the Big Hoom – wonderfully eccentric but also certifiably crazy and yet beloved. The mother is expected to touch our hearts, but I was moved by the father as well. I don’t know why estrangements from fathers affect me the way they do, hitting me in some primal, howling place that I don’t want to explore. But there you have it. And yeah, I think I might just read the other two memoirs as well.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

I’d been urged to read David Sedaris’s work for a while. Now that I have, it strikes me as Chicken Soup for the yuppie soul. It’s just left off centre enough to make lukewarm liberals happy. It makes you laugh, but it doesn’t touch any of the deep places. It doesn’t leave you slightly sore after. And that to me is a failing, much as I’m supposed to be avoiding the sore-making kind of book. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. I most certainly did, and I’ll pick up his books later if I want a quick smile. But that’s about it.

Wild

This was a fairly recent bestseller, and yet I wasn’t completely enthused at the prospect of reading it. A woman hiking alone for ages, an admirable undertaking but how exciting could reading about it be? Turns out it was similar to Life of Pi which is about a boy stuck in a boat with a tiger in the open sea. You don’t expect to be riveted but you are. In the case of Wild, I consumed it like a page turner. It helps that Cheryl Strayed interweaves vignettes of the life that brought her to this journey while recounting the actual trudge through the wilderness.

Many of these books have a mother hovering over them, and this one is no exception. It is a tribute to Strayed’s mother, a way of coping with the grief of her loss but also the loss of family that ensues after the lynchpin that held it together has gone. I had always wondered about Strayed’s unusual name and it turns out she took it after her divorce. A fact which delighted me. That one could just pick a name that seems right and it works.

If there was one thing that I didn’t love about the book it was how  Strayed seems to hanker for a man at the first sight of one. She herself admits to this but it seems there’s no breaking the habit. And being the ‘only girl in the woods’ places her in a good position to crush at will. On the other hand, hiking as a solo female did throw up dangers posed by creepy men, but given the length of the journey, there were only a couple of nasties. Strayed herself points to the overwhelming number of kindnesses of strangers she encountered which mitigate the creeps. Her manner of dealing with the creeps – paying attention to her gut instincts about people, being firm, trying not to antagonise them might be good rules of the thumb, if there can be any these situations.

Also, surprising was her hankering for the trappings of civilisation. While her journey is proof that she can live without it, the longing for creature comforts and junk food doesn’t go away that easily.

Bonus book (not on the 65 books list)

The Diary of Anais Nin – Fire

Having become an admirer of sorts of Anais Nin via quotes of hers posted on Brain Pickings and the like, I felt it was time I sampled the real thing. So I was somewhat perturbed to find myself irritated at Nin at the beginning. She just seemed so obsessed with matters of the heart ad infinitum. But later I identified with her more and it became clear how accomplished and unusual she was but also how she was trapped in and a product of her time, as much as she tried to transcend its limitations. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked and didn’t finish this one.

Becoming an artist

 

This book is a keeper (though I have to return my library copy,  alas!).

It narrates the true-life incredible journey of two struggling artists who clamoured to the top  with nothing more than raw talent and their dreams. It is also a portrait of New York life in the 70s, life on the fringes of Warhol’s Factory and the short blaze of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and the artistic poverty of the Chelsea Hotel playing out to the backdrop of Vietnam.

It is one generation’s answer to the question: what does it take to be an artist?

1. Belief: Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe were not born into families steeped in artistic tradition. Maplethorpe came from middle class Catholic Stock, while Smith’s family was poor though intellectually inclined. Somewhere along the way, both of them decided art was their calling. Smith used to steal art books and pore over them. Maplethorpe experimented with LSD and chucked a stable career as a commercial artist. Each ran away to New York, where they met entirely by chance.

The road of the artist who has no benefactor is paved with hunger and poverty and working monotonous jobs and struggling to keep the spark alive at night and sometimes selling your body in order to buy men’s magazine’s to make the collages that will take the world by storm years later. It takes some conviction to keep going even when gallery after gallery turns you away.

2. Imitation: Artists come into their own aesthetic by studying the work of other artists. They also move among likeminded people, drawing inspiration from them. They cultivate their own style, sometimes starting out looking like clichés. But the common rule is to give free reign to their impulses and then structure the results. I used to mock people who seemed to self-consciously arty. But now I can see that taking on the mantle of the artistic life can actually stimulate creativity. Patti and Robert landed up in the Chelsea Hotel where they rubbed shoulders with poets, artists and musicians, both established and budding. They gained acceptance to this circle because the gatekeepers saw potential in them. They also worked to gain admission to some circles such as that of Andy Warhol. And thus they gained opportunities within the creative vortex of the age.

3. Support and freedom: The other interesting aspect of their story is their relationship. They started off as friends who quickly became lovers, but then Robert discovered he was homosexual. However, they had made a pact to be there for each other for life, and they were. On and off, they had other relationships. Their core friendship was bigger than these. There may have be jealousy and friction but they endured. It’s a model of an alternative to the institutionalized marriage. They were more connected and supportive of each other than most married people, yet they were sexually and creatively free.

4. Humility: Patti has a poetry reading that takes the art scene by storm. Offers keep pouring in, but she turns them down. She feels that things are coming too easy (considering she had to steal for food sometimes, I don’t think so) and that she’s not ready. She turns them down, until she feels she is worthy. How refreshingly different from the ‘grab every chance’ we’ve been schooled on. This resonated with me because I myself turn down opportunities if I feel I’m not ready for them. I have seen people jump at the chance to be promoted even if they have little experience. To some extent I’m of the old school. I believe in apprenticeship. I haven’t done too badly, but others have done better.

5. Free-spirits: We like to think of artists as allied to one medium only, but it seems like an artist is an artist is an artist. A medium is just that, a way of expressing something that serves the idea. Both Patti and Robert moved through mediums until they found what they were comfortable with. And though Robert is best known for photography and Patti as a rock star, they probably didn’t think of themselves that way.

On money

I watched The Wolf of Wall Street (uncensored version) last weekend. Everyone was going on about it because it’s directed by Martin Scorcese, but I think Leonardo Di Caprio should get major props for carrying it off. The man can act, and doesn’t let his beautiful face get in the way. Though I suspect his beautiful face did help me get through the movie.

From the outset, I had to suspend my feminist sensibility or my eyes might just have rolled into the back of my head and prevented me from seeing ever again. The film is basically a frat boy’s wet dream. Before I watched the film, I heard people talking about the high jinx portrayed in a tone that was reaching for disapproval but was tinged with admiration.

The other reaction people seemed to be awaiting was shock. But I was not shocked. The money business is essentially a venal one, so why would the aspirations of those in the business not be towards other venal things?

Also, I’ve interacted with investment bankers. I don’t believe that they’re all flinging dwarves for entertainment but I do believe a number of them (not all) are running on coke and that the use of escort services was a perk some enjoyed until the collapse of Lehman Brothers brought the party to an end. I think some of the worst sexism has been bled out of banking industry at least, but I can’t say the same for the hedge funds and other investment firms. So yeah, not shocked. Though it was interesting to watch how heady those heady days were. And what the dreams of men are made of.

Because these are not women’s dreams. Jordan Belfort’s firm had just a few women, and they strove to be as male as possible, under their twinsets and pearls, which I suppose was the only way they could survive. However, I doubt most women would have chosen the kind of entertainment Belfort provided had they had an array of options available.

[spoiler alert]

For me, the most telling moment was when Belfort tried to bribe an FBI officer. He could not comprehend someone who could not be bought. And this is a the difference between us and them. For some of us, money isn’t everything, some things cannot be bought.

I won’t say I’m indifferent to money. But I actually think I have enough money. If you tried to offer me even a lot of money to break the law, I wouldn’t do it. I might break the law for other reasons but not money. I don’t condemn people who are desperate who break the law. I have no tolerance for people who are obsessed with more more more. Unfortunately, the latter breed is more common.

 ***

Then I read Walter Percy’s The Moviegoer. The protagonist is a stock broker but he’s also on what he calls The Search, which is what it sounds like – the search for meaning. He says something interesting about money: ““Beauty is a whore. I like money better”

Money is a good counterpoise to Beauty. Beauty, the quest of beauty alone, is a whoredom. Ten years ago I pursued beauty and gave no thought to money. I listened to the lovely tunes of Mahler and felt a sickness in my very soul. Now I pursue money and on the whole feel better.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me then. I tattooed beauty on my back instead of money.

Memoirs

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young

Overall, I loved this one. It’s like a more intelligent Devil Wear Prada because a lot of the action takes place at Vanity Fair instead of Vogue. Some thoughts:

1. Initially, I found myself getting a bit pissed with Toby. His thought process seemed quite frat boy/lad-like, and while he might be trying to come across as him taking the piss at the establishment and political correctness and/or exaggerating his gaffes, I suspect that at some level his persona in the book is authentic, which in this case is not a good thing. For example, he characterizes the women in Vanity Fair are feminazis, and please note, he was unable to ever get a date with them, probably because he came off saying things that sounded offensive. The problem is that the world has moved on from considering certain things political correctness to just considering them normally abnormal (eg – bringing a stripper to the office) but he still thinks it’s up for debate. Anyway.
2. He also goes on off these philosophical spiel using the idea of Alexis de Tocqueville to justify how democratic America is the tyranny of the majorty (which I don’t disagree with) and to champion aristocracy, whereby the aristocracy is not an inherited concept but really truly the great and the good, completely ignoring that this kind of meritocracy is not quite as simple as the best rising to the top. He may have a point that the aristocracy being somewhat guilty about their wealth means they’re more benign and paternalistic and less flaunty, but he stretches it too far.
3. He is generally immature. I was amazed at the questions he asked in interviews and the stories he pitched to his boss. How come he got a personal invite and a free reign at Vanity Fair? Clearly, meritocracy isn’t everything, because I suspect his Oxford credentials and his network helped put him where he could catch the Editor of Vanity Fair’s eye. Okay, maybe based on his earlier rebellious work, but still. Or maybe he played up his ineptitude. But anyway, he lasted about a year. His biggest complaint about Vanity Fair was that no one wanted to get drunk with him and everyone seemed to behave like a regular office workers instead of bright young things. Well, welcome to your mid-thirties and real life. Why is behaving like a gadfly necessary to being a bright spark?
4. Now its sounds like I didn’t like the book, but I did. The inside peak at the workings of Vanity Fair was genuinely interesting. I didn’t realise how celebrity obsessed it is. I also didn’t realise how the PR industry controls everything and what a monopoly it is. Journalists have power only as much as the PRs let them. This was one complaint of Toby’s I agreed with.
5. By the end of the book, I agreed with Toby’s major conclusion. From someone decidedly celebrity-obsessed, he had come away with a hankering for more down-to-earthness, for a society in which people are not reduced to what they do.  Part of his failure due to a character trait I think I share with him, which is to not take what we do too seriously, to see how it’s just one big circus and to always be slightly ironic about it. Toby pushed this to the extreme and thereby his failure to take New York. Though he turned out all right in the end.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn

The premise of this book is simple – it’s is woven around the experience of working in a homeless shelter and your dad walking in there one day because he’s homeless. This is not a sad book. It’s a matter of fact book and a beautifully written tribute and a depiction of the child becoming the father of the man. It’s non-fiction but there were parts that were surreal and absurd (and which I must admit I skipped. Clearly surrealism in literature is not my thing). My biggest takeaway from this book though was the reality of the life of a homeless person, the nitty gritty of how a shelter works, the character of those who chose to work with homeless people, the stories of the homeless, including Nick’s dad.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Joan Didion is a celebrated writer and I had not read anything by her so I was keen on this one. It will probably really please those who are into short stories and essays. I am into neither and I expected this to be more memoirish, so I must admit I struggled to get through it. But there definitely were pieces that resonated with me. I thought Didion’s strength was her ability to convey a sense of place, such as in the article on the insularity of Sacramento, and of course, the titular essay on the hippies of San Fransisco.

 

 

 

Even cowgirls get the blues

 

OMG. How is it possible that I had not read this novel till now? Okay, I suspect it’s because I confused Tom Robbins with Harold Robbins, and the title of the novel did nothing to discourage me from thinking it might be on the lines of Harold’s smut fest. How terrible is that?

Thankfully, this list pointed me in the right direction. So how did I love this book? Let me count the ways.

1. The protagonist has an unusual body feature. Instead of being ashamed of it, she embraces it. She rides on it – literally – to the realm of the fabulous, leaving in her trail normality and its cousin boredom.

I wish I had read this when I was growing up, I hated my nose. There were enough intelligent people there to tell me that it gave my face character, but it offended my own sense of aesthetics, one that was drawn to symmetry. I fantasised vaguely but not seriously about plastic surgery. Finally, I grew up and my face grew into my nose. I now love my nose as the one angular feature of my face that has been rounded out by fat. I might even consider crowning it with a nose ring.

There were probably narratives when I was growing up about the value of the things that make us stand out and I’m sure absorbing them kept my angst about my nose in check, but this particular narrative is stunning enough to completely shake a teenager out of the stupor of conformity and onto the route of audacity, the path on which one not only accepts one’s unusual traits but revels in them.

2) The writing is, for lack of a better word, awesome. Playful and profound at one go. I was under the impression that it wasn’t possible for Anglo-American culture to use magical realism, but if Robbins’s style cannot be classified as magical realism per se, then it comes very close to it.

3) The tidbits of philosophy and wisdom on every second page crystallised almost everything I’ve been thinking these days and been hard pressed to articulate. I’m afraid to post any examples for fear of them sounding trite. The entire book is a treatise on breaking free and finding one’s own way and just enjoying life.

It’s possible that this book might be to the 25-35 age group (note that it appeared on a reading list for one’s 20s) what Catcher in the Rye is to the 18-25 age bracket, and that in my 40s, I’ll look on the whole thing with a self-indulgent smirk but for now, I’m getting my own copy.

 

 

Just read

This book opens on a heartbreaking note. I don’t know if it ever goes on to the staggering genius of its title, though it is definitely well-written, and clever at many points. It is essentially a memoir (with many creative liberties) about a youngster in his late teens raising his eight-year-old brother. Although Dave is an unconventional parent, there are many aspects of his parenting that made me smile in their universality, such as the rise and fall of his emotions as he watches his brother struggle with baseball. So other people feel like this too, I thought.

I wasn’t especially taken with this one. I can appreciate the writing, especially the descriptions of places of abode, but the characters and their concerns didn’t seem particularly illuminating, which was probably the point. All of them seemed to be the emperor sans clothes of the title. The moving portion of the book is its finale which hinges on 9/11. The event is a turning point for the characters and brings out the best in them, and in the writing.

These books were on this list that I’m reading my way through.

Generation X

When I first started reading this book, I was struck by how manky it was, chronicling the experiences of people who in the book are referred to as “bohemian” but who might today be called “hipster”. Lately, though, I’m beginning to think that if all the world’s a stage, then one might as well act the life one wants to live to have a fighting chance of achieving it, and ignore the troubling sensation of being a poseur for a while.

Quite soon I began to get into the book though. For one, the writing is great. It uses a device of the characters telling stories to each other, which is quite a good writing strategy if you have lots of sharp short bits that don’t quite seem to logically string together. It also has these very portmanteau words and phrases in the margins of each page.

The book is supposed to reflect our parents’ generation but it resonated quite a bit with me (or maybe I fall into that generation, I’m perennially confused). Of course, it had some very Americana references like the Vietnam War and the pervasive paranoia of The Bomb.

But the reason that this book will probably hold good for a long time is because the categories of people described may quite possibly be timeless, or at least relevant for a while. Actually, it will be interesting to see if this is true as time goes by. Will our children see us as Andrew did his nostalgia-clinging parents and see their juniors as he did his brother Tyler? Maybe it’s inevitable that we go through these stages, though the social climate we live in does impact us.

Here are some more quotes from the book:

We’re not built for free time as a species. We think we are, but we aren’t” She was saying that most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives, the rest is filler , and that at the end of our lives, most of us will be lucky if any of those moments connect together to form a story that anyone would find remotely interesting.

This book was on this list recommended to me by Curly. I’ve liked almost every book on it.