A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (2015)

A selection of brilliant short stories by the criminally underrated American author, Lucia Berlin (1936-2004).

Book Review:  A Manual for Cleaning Women is a book to let us know what we missed. To shine light on a genius of the short story who died before most of us met her. She belongs in, is essential to, any discussion of American writers, such as Raymond Carver, Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison. Lucia Berlin writes ravenously of America. The down and out, the hanging on. Dust and dirt. Now I'm thinking John Fante, a scrap of Bukowski. This is the America of laundromats, emergency rooms, and what time the liquor store opens. Hard work and harder living. Then there are the more exotic stories, of Chile, Mexico, New York. Many stories of family, of living and dying. The stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women are built of layers, layers of onion skin, translucent, the reader can just see through to other layers: the top layer is interesting, another might catch your eye, but one of the layers underneath will make you cry. They're subtle, with depths that bear re-reading. Berlin rarely ventures from writing in the first person, characters reoccur, sometimes the names change, places change. Sometimes the stories seem as much memoir as fiction. As she says in one story: "I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, but I don't actually ever lie." Berlin lived a complicated and tumultuous life, she may have lived four or five lives, which provided the raw marble for these stories. She and her first person narrator are tough, school of hard knocks and all that. Four kids and no man. A PhD in Life.

Berlin has a skill that too few writers ever learn: when to stop writing. Most writers keep going long after the story has ended and finally just beat the poor thing to death. But Berlin chops off those last five unnecessary paragraphs, that superfluous last page. The stories are objective, impartial, honest, real. The reader is left with a thought, an image, a feeling, an intuition, but is never told what to think or how to feel. The stories are so direct and lucid as to seem effortless. They're of such uniform brilliance that it's difficult at first to detect Berlin's artistry. Of the 43 stories in this collection, all but one (maybe two) are faultless and fit her guidance to "write what you see, not what you want to see." That one, "Let Me See You Smile," is the exception that tests the rule, and by that shows the genius Lucia Berlin brought to the other stories. A Manual for Cleaning Women is a collection to be read slowly, to give it time to seep into your bones. Read Lucia.  [5★]

Drawings by Sylvia Plath (2011)

A collection of drawings by the poet.

Book Review: Sylvia Plath: Drawings is just lovely. Charming. A little bit of heaven to hold and treasure. She has a brilliant touch that fills her lines with charm. Plath reveals so much of herself: she so wants to do well, to achieve, succeed, to capture. Many of the drawings are quite involved. She loves what she views. She delights in her own talent and fits it all into composition. Each drawing has its own theme. Plath's poems were so often in turmoil, in pain, dissolved in emotion. These drawings are softer, more humble, even sweet. What both poems and drawings contain is the brilliant eye, the poet's way of seeing and the artist's way of presenting.

Most of the work in Drawings come from 1956. The book is broken into four sections of drawings, from England, France, Spain, USA. Each section is prefaced by letters, journal entries, accompanied by a poem, or in one case a copy of a drawing and article Plath had in The Christian Science Monitor. There's an introduction by her daughter: poor, conflicted Frieda (how could she not be?).

Plath wrote that she wanted to establish a style, "a kind of child-like simplifying of each object into design." She wrote her mother that "I'm developing a kind of primitive style of my own, which I am very fond of." She got "a sense of peace" from drawing, a sense less often revealed in her poems. Especially the poems she's best known for, those from 1961-63. I'm no art expert nor a poetry expert. For me, this book is a mix of the sense of Plath as a person that I get from these drawings and the person I know from reading her poems. It's not just a collection of drawings, but a chance for a deeper insight into Plath, a different way to see her. Plath's poems and drawings, all jumbled up. A better picture of Sylvia.  [5★]

Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison (1992)

A collection of three essays based on "The William E. Massey, Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization" that Toni Morrison delivered in 1990.


Book Review: Playing in the Dark, subtitled "Whiteness and the Literary Imagination," finds Toni Morrison ably fulfilling her role as Ivy League academic. Here she promotes the need for a deeper and more nuanced critical analysis of the portrayal and use of black characters in American literature. Presenting her thesis as questions she asks, "How did the founding writers of young America engage, imagine, employ, and create an Africanist presence and persona? In what ways do these strategies explicate a vital part of American literature? How does excavating these pathways lead to fresh and more profound analyses of what they contain and how they contain it?" Morrison examines Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Willa Cather's last novel, which I'd never heard of but apparently is universally panned. Morrison agrees. She then looks at The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Poe, which just seems like a quite odd story. Morrison concludes with a lengthy discussion of Hemingway's minor novel (his only one set in the States) To Have and Have Not and his posthumous The Garden of Eden. The first seems to be Hemingway (or the Hemingway character) acting like an ass (or horribly worse) and the second is much enlightened by the description of his childhood-based fantasies in the recent biography by Mary Dearborn (more fetish than race). Playing in the Dark presents a solid and necessary case for a deeper analysis of the portrayal of black characters in traditional American fiction, though I wished she'd used less obscure and unaccomplished examples. None of these are "a vital part of American literature." (There is a good though short discussion of Huckleberry Finn.) Fortunately, there has been a greater critical examination of black roles in traditional American literature, just as there has been in the portrayal of women (not enough, but more). In fact, I think her proposal should be extended to works without obvious or significant black characters, but in which black populations must exist just off-stage. The investigation of fiction that unaccountably fails to include notable black characters, the setting of which must have a strong if unacknowledged black presence would be a fertile field of study. My thought here is similar to Warren Roberts' 1979 study of the French Revolution in the novels of Jane Austen, even though that event is never mentioned in her work. My only criticism (I'm not an academic nor even a literature student, so we know I'm on thin ice) is that, as with the Freudians and cigars, not every fictional description of dark and light, day and night, the shining and the void, means race. It's just me, but I must admit I'll always prefer her fiction.  [3½★]

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut (1952)

Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, about a world where machines do the work and humans find little meaning in life.

Book Review: Player Piano is the rare novel that confronts the subject of work. Most novels, films, television ignore work. Usually the characters either somehow don't need to work at all or any work occurs offstage. Or its simply not mentioned. Even when set in the workplace, the day-to-day of work rarely intrudes. Yet for most people work is central to our lives, essential, consuming much of our time and energy. Many of us spend more waking hours with workmates than loved ones. Vonnegut's focus here is on the pride that workers, the craftsman and artisan, take in doing their work well. But while it has Vonnegut's usual charm, Player Piano seemed a bit dated. Science fiction of another time. Set in an unspecified near future America when technology has enabled computers and machines to run and produce everything. Humans are now relegated to: (1) an elite manager and engineer class, and (2) the masses who are generally unemployed and living on the dole. This very much reflects elements of the corporate gray flannel Fifties when conformity was king and there was a fear that technology would put everyone out of work and life would become meaningless. Work gave life meaning, after all; the "feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed." Existentialists Heidegger and Sartre had similar concerns about America at the time. Today, when technology is everyone's best friend, we have more entertainment than we can consume, and some workers successfully create more flexible and friendly working conditions, Player Piano isn't quite as scary a prognostication as it may've been in 1952. He does see clearly, however, the domination of consumer culture, professional college sports, limitations placed on women in the working world, and a president who'd gone directly from a television program to the White House. Interesting historically for what may have been a nightmare at the time and to see Vonnegut's beginning as a novelist. Although enjoyable and entertaining, Vonnegut's best was ahead of him.  [3½★]

Nothing Personal by James Baldwin, Richard Avedon (1964)

A collection of photographs by Richard Avedon illustrating four short essays by James Baldwin.

Book Review: Nothing Personal was a surprise and a half! I reserved it on my library website, sight unseen. When I picked it up I found a huge coffee-table book (is that the term in other countries?), 14½ inches (37 cm) by 11 (28), beautifully printed in Italy. The first printed page simply has the year: 1964, reminding that this lovely book comes from another time, over a half-century ago. James Baldwin's words were my reason for seeking out this book and they did not disappoint. The essays seemed spoken, not written, as if I was just listening to Baldwin talk, sharing his thoughts with me, with the reader. He ranges wide, he rambles, he tells stories. He talks about President Kennedy's assassination, about the preponderance of violence against black men, about suicide, about getting arrested for "walking while black." He discusses how the wealthy continue their reign through divide and conquer, pitting the poor against the poor, poor whites against poor blacks. He notes the refusal of American men to grow up. How, when dressing to leave his apartment, it "is necessary to make anyone on the streets think twice before attempting to vent his despair on you." The exact sentiment I recently read in Ta-Nehisi Coates' memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. Baldwin has the hope that one day "we will evolve into the knowledge that human beings are more important than real estate." He talks of the overwhelming power of love for each of us. What is most obvious in Nothing Personal, most striking, is that we're still fighting over so many of these issues today. These issues are still relevant, still important, now. Which signifies that we're not just fighting about issues, we're fighting human nature.

I came for Baldwin, I stayed for the photographs. Richard Avedon's photos were less than an afterthought for me, I expected to glance through them without blinking. I blinked. In these days when everyone is a prolific photographer and we swipe dozens of pictures in a minute, we forget the blinding emotional power hidden in photographs. Each of the black and white photos in Nothing Personal is brilliant and more meaningful than I thought possible. The subjects of these photos ranges wide through 1964: the DAR, weddings, Joe Louis, a Southern judge, Marilyn, Nazis, Dorothy Parker, Malcolm X. Each photo is a whole short story. But the pictures that chilled me to my DNA were of patients in a mental institution. There are several, and "heartbreaking" is just a word, but these break both heart and mind.

Baldwin and Avedon were high school friends. I'm not sure what their goal was for Nothing Personal. Perhaps their own version of the great Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, written by James Agee with photography by Walker Evans in 1941. This is a unique work, awkward to hold, a treasure to read, a gift from another time.  [4½★]

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (1948)

An elderly mother and her daughter accused of kidnapping and beating a young woman turn to their solicitor for a defense.

Book Review: The Franchise Affair is unlike most mysteries, but charming and enjoyable nonetheless. The mystery is not a murder or even much in the way of violence. The "detective" is a rather staid solicitor and our ostensible hero, Inspector Grant, is a minor character at best. The story is both compelling and predictable, but all the more enjoyable for that. There's also a pleasant hint of romance. Smoothly written, The Franchise Affair is a step forward from the first two Inspector Grant books, even if he makes only a minimal appearance here. The setting is very British, a cozy mystery, even with what I suspect is the unusual addition of mob violence. The Franchise Affair contains the prides and prejudices of its time and place (and its author), but I found that not too difficult to ignore, even as a potential target myself. This was a good addition to my effort to read all the Inspector Grant mysteries, and after The Franchise Affair I'm looking forward even more to the next, To Love and Be Wise (1950).  [4★]

Ayiti by Roxane Gay (2011)

A collection of short stories about Haiti and the emigrant experience, by the author of Bad Feminist.

Book Review: Ayiti was a wonderful surprise; I loved this. No one told me. Roxane Gay's first book, published three years before Bad Feminist, only a year after publishing her PhD. thesis, and yet this is everything good. A first book shouldn't be this powerful, this assured. Gay reveals a deep intelligence in these stories, but even more she respect the reader's intelligence without catering or pandering, which is both flattering and welcome. She presents her stories in varied imaginative styles: one told in simple factual statements, a horror story, a shopping list, a history, a fable ... an overdose of creativity. These are stories about "a place run through with pain," stories from "geographies of grief," people caught one way or another between Haiti and America. These stories have a deep undercurrent of anger, sometimes simply a strong current of anger, that can lead her characters (I just want to say "people") to be self-destructive, unkind, reckless. They seek escape, happiness, a future, however they can find it. The stories in Ayiti seem written over a period of time, and there's some, not much, variation in quality; they're all good. What may be the earlier stories rely on a deep and meaningful last line to summarize and profundize the story: typical of writing workshops. What may be the later stories, just rest on the strength of the story as a whole. I can't believe Gay was born in Nebraska and went to prep school. To write these stories. In a story about an illegal border crossing she writes: "He is proud, eyes watery, chin jutting forward. I will never regret this decision, no matter what happens to us. I have waited my entire life to see my husband like this." Reading Ayiti will lead you to appreciate Roxane Gay, and whatever level of privilege you may have.  [5★]

Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

Farm animals revolt against the cruel Mr. Jones to establish a bucolic utopia.

Book Review: Animal Farm is an allegory, a parable, a metaphor, a fable, a roman a clef ... a classic. Easily accepted as just a children's story about talking animals (I love stories with talking animals!). Yes, it's also a history: identifying which animals are the Czar (Mr. Jones, also Capitalism), Marx, Lenin (both Old Major), Stalin (Napoleon), Trotsky (Snowball), Molotov (Squealer), etc. is fun, but so not the point. Beyond the heart-breaking, tragic figure of the workhorse Boxer, is a simple and moral lesson, the propaganda wrapped up in Orwell's "Fairy Story." Contrary to conventional wisdom, Orwell is not condemning Socialism, which is actually presented quite sympathetically in Animal Farm. Instead, he shows how the rosy promises of Socialism are used as the sweet bait for the evil trap of Fascism (what he viewed as the true name for Stalin's Communism). The reader can't help but think that if only the new farm had been guided by moral leaders the farm's resources would've been more than enough for all the animals. But Orwell's cynicism may be shown by his failure to present a class of animals from which such leaders could be drawn. Even today we see resource-rich countries that devolve into misery and totalitarianism because of greedy, selfish, uncaring leaders (and other post-colonial issues). Human nature ... maybe. For Orwell the evil isn't socialism but fascism, and that lesson plays out repeatedly in our modern world. Reading Animal Farm, I saw not only a foreshadowing of his next novel, 1984, but elements in the news right now.  [5★]

Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (1981)

A mysterious stranger upends a family.

Book Review: Tar Baby is the archetypal story of the stranger, the outsider, the Other, who enters, exposes, and disrupts the settled but hidden dysfunctional workings of a family. In doing so he exposes the mixed attitudes that blacks and whites have about whites and blacks. At the same time, while not a "beach read," it is the most accessible, easiest, and closest to fun of any of my Toni Morrison reads. As much as I recognize her immense talent (hey, she won the Nobel), I know her books aren't always fun to read. Isn't that one definition of a Classic: a book you know is good but avoid reading? Tar Baby begins in the Caribbean where a wealthy white man and his much younger, mentally ill white wife have settled with their black servants, another married couple, and their light-skinned niece. There's little subtlety in Morrison's images -- I should mention there's a black baby-sealskin coat. Ouch! Speaking of beach reads, here a quick makeover transforms the ugliest kid in school into the prettiest and the two characters who detest each other are destined to fall in love. The story reminds of Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) (a remake of Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)). But Morrison takes the story several quantum leaps beyond the simple and expected. Easy read -- difficult issues. She examines white attitudes toward blacks, black attitudes toward blacks, black attitudes toward whites. She mixes in class as well as race: economic factors, employment, working for a living, that complicate the racial picture. Indoor workers versus outdoor workers; native culture versus foreign culture. In Tar Baby the familial and racial patterns, rituals, and expectations have been upended, but few of the characters truly reassess their thinking. After all, it's a version of a love story -- and what does love mean? Where is the tar baby? One might think Son would be attracted to a proud black woman, but instead he finds the "yalla" Jadine irresistible. Son's a chauvinist at heart and engages in stalking, sexual assault, domestic violence, and worse, but is still endlessly attractive to Jadine. Overlaying the plot is Morrison's symbolic conflict between nature, the black world, confronting the white world's crumbling civilization. The colonial occupation destroyed nature and native culture on the island, and the survivors are still trying to pick up the pieces. Morrison asks difficult questions about finding a place along a racial spectrum, a human spectrum, and provides no easy answers.  [4½★]

Winter by Ali Smith (2017)

A family accidentally gathers at Christmas.

Book Review: Winter, the second book in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet, expands on the wonderful Autumn. Winter is about family, art, Christmas, world events past and present, aging, politics, disconnected reality, and simply dealing with life as one has to and does. In both novels it's apparent that Smith is at a point in her life when she just wants to talk about her thoughts on life in the world. She wants to talk about Brexit (in Autumn), the refugee crisis (in Winter), and the nonsense in America, so she does. Her vehicle is the novel and all the characters are Smith speaking to us. They say all characters in a dream are really the dreamer; all the characters in Winter are really Ali Smith and they all have something to say. Some characters are prickly or confused, but she let's us see why by going back in time and memory to pivotal moments in their lives. The Ban the Bomb movement plays a big role. The book is choppy, mixing time and memory, history and viewpoints (with helpful road signs for the unwary reader). It can get very meta: the narrator, maybe the author, sometimes who-knows-who isn't shy about stepping into the spotlight. But it had to be written this way to work as it does.

Smith again weaves in Dickens, as A Christmas Carol is the template -- Sophia being our Scrooge du jour. Although Winter is being hyped as being better than Autumn, I don't see it. We just have more to work with now that we have two books. Winter is simpler, more accessible, more heartwarming, and has a "happier" ending. It's enough to bring a Grinch's heart up to room temperature. Winter also has  more humor. A Hallmark Movie (or teen movie) device is employed as a comic subplot. We meet a too-good-to-be-true, practically-perfect-in-every-way immigrant, unsubtly named Lux, who brings light to the family. Or is she St. Lucy whose feast day was once the Solstice? She speaks perfect English, but despite spending much of her life in the Commonwealth she doesn't understand English idioms. Funny immigrants! We also meet the unloved and unlovable Art, who never knew his father, whose mother (Sophia) was too busy making money to have time for him or his father, and packed him off to boarding school asap. Since this is a book about art the characters may either be talking about art or Art. Ha! Another artist is introduced (a sculptor this time), the talented Barbara Hepworth (of Hepworth Wakefield art gallery fame). Compared to Pauline Boty in Autumn she's given short shrift. Smith also uses straight reportage to demonstrate that America's President is a pea-brained, vindictive bully, quoting his clumsy and petulant pandering efforts to reclaim "Merry Christmas," because in Winter we're talking about Christmas. This doesn't require great art, and sadly, by the time Winter hit the bookshops it was out of date because of even more heinous comments. This book seems more rushed than Autumn, simpler, more obvious, more slapdash. A tragic current event in Britain is included for no apparent reason. It's best to read Autumn before Winter -- there are a few overlaps and many similarities. Now, I can't wait for spring, erm, Spring.  [4★]