Saturday, October 27, 2007

Book 2: Separate Flights, by Andre Dubus

For my first choice in the Dävine Book Club, I selected Separate Flights, a collection of short stories by Andre Dubus. Before I go into my thoughts on the stories, I first want to talk about why I picked this book.

I was in Singapore for a week in September, meeting with our operations department on a project I'm involved with. The jet lag took me four or five days to really overcome -- I've done Europe a number of times, and jet lag to and from there is cake, but going to Singapore was absolute murder on my body. On Sunday, my fifth day in the city, I was finally on a normal schedule, so I got up in the morning and went to church, then came back and watched rugby on TV. At around 2:00 PM I was bored, and I knew I wouldn't be able to make it the whole day without going out (I try to avoid "going out" on Sundays), so I grabbed my book and headed over to the subway, then over to a mall called VivoCity, which was supposedly really cool. I checked it out for a while, took some pictures, grabbed some dinner (sushi, really good), then I walked into a book store with the sole intent of picking my book for this club. I felt rotten at the time. I was lonely. I was halfway around the world all by myself. I had spent four days falling into a daze at 6 PM every night, then wandering the streets (well, taking taxis places, then walking around) in the middle of the night looking for anything interesting to do or see or eat. So I really was in a bad place when I walked into the book store. I felt sorry for myself, I felt like sitting in my loneliness and savoring it, being proud of it.

I had heard about Dubus' writing at many points in my adult life, but I had never read anything of his until I saw a few of his titles in that bookstore. The title of one of his books caught my eye: Adultery & Other Choices. I flipped through a few of them, read some passages, read the covers, and knew very quickly that I wanted to choose a book that reflected my emotion at that moment, and that something by this author was likely my best bet at achieving that desire. I ended up picking Separate Flights, and I purchased it as soon as I was online the next day. It was waiting for me when I got back from Singapore.

So that's the story of how I came to choose this book: I knew it would be dark, I expected it to make me feel sad and empty and lonely like I had wanted at the time, and I knew that it would be different than anything I had read in the recent past, if ever.

On to the book itself: Dubus is an excellent writer. To put it simply, every one of the stories in this book could be described as "Great writing about terrible things." To start, it's clear that Mr. Dubus was not happy with his life; there is a recurring plot line in all of his stories, in some more literally than in others, that he had not seen in life what he had expected of it. There is disappointment in every sentence he wrote. Here's a sample from the title story that reflects the theme of the entire set of stories, and also of Mr. Dubus himself:

At Helen's wedding she had of course cried a little, and for some of the accepted reasons: a daughter had grown, a daughter was leaving, a phase of her own life had ended. But her tears were bitter too, for she knew the rest of Helen's life would never live up to the emotional promise of that day. Like graduation ceremonies where you heard all those words about what lay ahead, then you went out and nothing happened. Helen and Larry would end up, in a friendly way, boring each other, disliking each other.


The other major theme is infidelity, which seemed to stem in the stories from the previously mentioned boredom. In the eyes of Dubus' narrative, marriage is required of everyone, and expected, but it inevitably leads to boredom, which leads to infidelity, often to vice, always to a life of the resolution that we never get what we want, and we have to continue to live with that disappointment. It's quite discouraging. I simply don't agree with Dubus, but I know that his description of men and women was a representation not only of the men and women we all know in our professions and communities, but also of what Dubus himself was clearly experiencing at the time he wrote these stories (and throughout his life, since all of his other stories are apparently cut from the same tree).

Dubus is masterful when it comes to writing about the tedium of life. Not just the everyday things -- doing the laundry and the dishes and jogging and work -- but also the ever-shrinking emotion of those who live "normal" lives. I've never read a book that says so much about so little "real time" without making it seem like overkill. The pace of the stories matches the emotion, and I appreciated it, even though, to put it lightly, it bummed the hell out of me.

I felt down and sad with every story that I read and finished, but that was the goal. Not all literature has to be chirpy or poppy or have happy endings. In fact, life rarely is as happy as we'd read it in books. Dubus did his part to change that perception, and I enjoyed (not in an entertaining sense, but in a life and feelings sense) his pattern of writing about the everyday corners that no one ever wants to address.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Mac's Reaction to Andre Dubus' Separate Flights

So, Tim’s selection this time was Andre Dubus’ short story collection, Separate Flights (1975). Andre Dubus had an amazing gift for perfectly describing the minute details of our surroundings. Indeed, his words remind me of Walter Benjamin’s statement about how the camera lense captures “unconscious optics.” Dubus’ words capture those things that our minds see and then forget (which Funes the Memorious was unable to do in the Borges story). His writings are full of trivial details that do not help advance the plot, but their presence makes the story all the more richer. His writing, because of its insistence on minutely detailed realism, reminds me of such authors as Benito Pérez Galdós, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Henry James, George Eliot, and Gustave Flaubert.

With those names mentioned, I must add that I hate Realist literature. I recognize the talent it takes to write realist prose, but I don’t appreciate that talent. I don’t read to get descriptions of everyday life; I experience that every day. I read so that literature will move me, make me feel something that I’ve never, or rarely, felt before. Under those criteria, this collection of stories DID make me feel something. But, what I felt wasn’t exciting, new, or engaging. Rather, it was a loathing of the ins-and-outs of the dreadful waiting game that is the marriage of most people. The slow descent into not loving one’s spouse, of turning to drink and cigarettes to slowly pass the time away—to help one cope with tedium, of infidelity and all the rationalizations as to why it’s okay, of making excuses, of selfishness, of despair and longing and unquenched desire for something that never existed.

The people in Dubus’ stories are miserable, because they choose to be. They are miserable because of their own pride. He notes, often, that the situations they find themselves in could all be reduced with an apology or a declaration of love. But, the people always balk at the last second. There’s selfishness and not selflessness in virtually every story.

I hated “Over the Hill,” “In My Life,” “Miranda Over the Valley,” and I especially loathed "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and “Separate Flights.” “Going Under” was a decent story, but not one I would ever care to read again. I really enjoyed “The Doctor,” and “If They Knew Yvonne” was an excellent read, and a story I might keep in the back of my mind when I write a paper on autonomous morality in literature.

As a married man, I can only read so many tales of adultery before it starts to bother me. I’ve never felt any of the despair and angst that these characters have because my marriage to Mickelle is based on more than just this life, plus I actually like my wife--our marriage wasn't founded on pure lust. My religion teaches me that my marriage in the temple is a covenant for time and for all eternity. To soil that covenant by being unfaithful is unthinkable. Yet, to the realist in me, it is a constant worry. I don’t want to ever become like the people in these stories, so in a way, I’m glad I read this really terrific (in the classic sense) book. It taught how not to be with my wife. Open communication of desires, frustrations, issues, and such is a key to a healthy marriage. The other person can’t respond to a problem if they don’t know about it.




Dubus’ book paints every man in the world is eventually unfaithful. Hardly!

Monday, October 8, 2007

Tim's reaction to "The Book of Dave"

My simple reaction: WOW!

A more in-depth response: I don't tend to look at books from as academic a point of view as Mac does, as my interest lies more in how a book feels and what it means than what it actually says or how it says it, even though one could claim that the study of the philosophy of a book is just as valid as the study of its mechanics. That aside, I found this book to be one of the best feeling and most meaningful books that I've ever read.

The pace of the book was spectacular. Normally I chip away at a book over the course of weeks or even months, but I was lucky enough to read most of this book while I was on my way to Singapore and on the return flight. The pace of the book was so compelling that I didn't want to put it down. There were no lulls -- each plot point flowed freely into the other. It was believable and never caused me to step back and say, "what the?!," even though it was fantastical enough to make me know that it was a fiction, and that it was an attempt at making a statement.

I loved the alternating narratives. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the story moved between plot points with ease, even jumping between narratives more naturally than I expected. Questions were asked in narrative and answered in the other. There were surprises in one that made me love the other.

As far as how I actually felt about the story, the word I walked away with was "hopeful." Now, I'm a religious person, and this story did have a bit of an anti-religious smack at times. There was an undercurrent of a "your religion was made up by the most random person in the most random happenstance imaginable" attitude, but I still felt like Will Self was attempting to instill hope through it all. You could sense the authoer's struggles with religious identity, but even through all that I had the feeling that he WANTS to believe something, and that more than that he believes the tenets of a faith are worth mentioning outside of the context of religion. I read the scriptures because they help me to relate godly lessons into my own life, and, while not a spiritual text or religious work, "The Book of Dave" struck the right chord for me at the right time in my life.

Some pages made me emotional -- Dave's pain was palpable. His discouragement was visible, his anger was noted on every page. That's what I look for when I read a book -- a visual and emotional representation of another life. In this sense, the book was perfect. In many senses, it was one of the best books I've ever read.