The Elegant Variation: P.O.V.

June 28, 2004

P.O.V. - GAYLE BRANDEIS

One of the things I've been eager to do with TEV is to throw its doors open to more writers, allowing them to speak directly to readers. In the months ahead, it's my hope that you'll see more and more writers come and grab the wheel here for a day.

Along those lines, what follows is Gayle Brandeis' account of her Saturday night reading at Antioch University. I was unable to make it but I realized that even if I had, you'd merely be getting yet another Reading Report, none of which tend to vary that much: How many people where, what was read, some of the foolish questions, et alia. And so instead, I asked Gayle if she'd care to write an account of the reading from the writer's point of view. She accepted, and here's her take on the reading.

When my husband was a hang glider pilot, he would know that he was going to fly if his heart started thumping on his way up the mountain. If he felt relaxed, he knew he would get to the launch site and the wind would be going the wrong direction or the wrong velocity and he'd have to drive back down the hill without taking the glider out of its 12 foot long nylon sack.
It's kind of the same for me with readings. If my heart starts pounding before I get up to read, I know I'm going to be on. If I feel calm beforehand, the reading may be fine, but it probably won't blow anyone's socks off. My heart was thudding so hard before my reading this past Saturday, I wasn't sure I'd be able to read at all.

I had been invited to read at Antioch University as part of their new LA Writers Series. I received my MFA from Antioch's low residency program in 2001, so this was a homecoming of sorts. My reading fell on the last night of the June residency. At that point in the program, students are usually in an altered state-exhausted, inspired, overwhelmed. I was touched and amazed that so many people showed up to hear me read. The large room was packed.
I had recently returned from a book tour, promoting the paperback release of The Book of Dead Birds. I had written the novel while I was a student at Antioch; I thought reading from the book there would provide some nice symmetry to my writing life, a full and satisfying circle. The more I thought about it, though, the more claustrophobic I felt. I had grown tired, I realized, of hearing myself read from, talk about, the novel. I decided to take a risk, read something new.

A student gave me a great introduction; I especially liked the fact that he said my characters didn't just breathe-they sneezed and coughed and sang. This ended up being strangely appropriate, as I had decided to read from Sick Girl, my memoir-in-poems-in-progress. When I was a teenager, I was violently sick for a year. After I started to get better, I pretended to be sick for another entire year because I had grown so attached to my sick girl identity. My sister got very sick after I finally allowed myself to be healthy; years later, I found out she had been fabricating illness, as well. Most of my friends know I had been sick when I was young; few of them know I prolonged my illness. It had always been my deepest, darkest, secret. Now I was going to share it with a room full of people. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought it would find a way to break through my ribs. I took a deep breath and walked to the podium.

I couldn't see anyone in the audience as I read one poem after another-the lights on my face were too bright-but I could feel the whole room of people there, breathing with me. I was surprised and delighted by the occasional laughter. It felt good to break open what had been the most painful part of my life and let some air in, some light in.

Afterwards, at the champagne and dessert bar set up in the back of the room, a friend came up to me, beaming. "You're so perverse!" she said. "I love it!" Other people thanked me for my balls. I had never thought of myself as particularly perverse or ballsy before, but I was glad to claim those names, at least for a while. One of the main things I had taken away from my experience as a student at Antioch was how we need to move toward the things that scare us, the things that make us uncomfortable, as writers, because that is where the power lies. I could feel the truth of that on Saturday night, ramming through my ventricles, fizzing through my veins.

Posted at 11:21 AM | Permalink

Comments

Mark,

Great idea! I still like the idea of your giving the keys to the site away and seeing how it looks in this short version makes me appreciate your idea even more.

Thanks to Gayle for being the guinea pig on this one. Sounds like it would have been a great reading to attend!

Enjoy,

Posted by: Dan Wickett | June 28, 2004 at 01:16 PM

I love Gayle's description of how heart-pounding is often a precursor to a great reading. I've never thought about it, but she may have something there. And I loved reading about her ballsy public confession. Thanks!

Posted by: Masha Hamilton | August 18, 2004 at 04:40 PM

I love the idea that a pounding heart may be a precursor to a great reading. Gayle may have something there...

Also loved reading about her ballsy public confession. Thanks!

Posted by: Masha Hamilton | August 18, 2004 at 04:42 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

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Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
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The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio

The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
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*Now in Paperback*

What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
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The Sea by John Banville

John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

June 28, 2004

P.O.V. - GAYLE BRANDEIS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

June 28, 2004

P.O.V. - GAYLE BRANDEIS

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism