I saw a reference on another blog to what my household is calling the <a href=”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18628613/site/newsweek/”>Newsweek thing</a>– my rather inexplicable appearance in a regular column that, the week before, featured Tom Wolfe. There is a story behind the story. Another writer dropped out, they needed someone at the last-minute, my e-mail is readily available, the editor’s mother had once profiled me . . . But the reason I’m mentioning the article here is because I can’t help wanting to expand on the (somewhat impossible) task of picking five books.
LOLITA: No contest. Everyone knows I love this book. I’ve read it over and over; I felt terrifically affirmed when Martin Amis said it was one of the best novels ever. One of the things that fascinates me about Lolita is that Nabokov got many of the details of pedophilia exactly right – in an era where it wasn’t much discussed, much less understood. Humbert’s rationalizations, his “barter” system with Lolita. It also knocks me out that one of the clues to the identity of Lolita’s kidnapper (as Humbert thinks of him) is hidden in plain sight, in a letter. There are a lot of Poe allusions in LOLITA, and while I don’t think the annotated LOLITA specifies this as one of them, I would count it.
DANCING BEAR, by James Crumley. I’m a creature of habit, for those who don’t know. And, in my 20s, one of my habits was having breakfast every Saturday at the same San Antonio bakery, Twin Sisters, then going across the street to the Bookstop, where I bought a lot of Vintage paperbacks. This is how I discovered Crumley. I’d like to advance a theory that many of today’s best crime writers are, in fact, Crumley-ites, which I define as those who could write literary fiction, but prefer to write crime fiction.
ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND, by Philip Roth. I had to pick a Roth, but I wanted to pick one of the less-obvious ones. The fact is, I think Zuckerman Unbound is one of the first hardcover novels I bought as a young reporter in Waco. It cost $10.95. At the time, I made $175 a week. To the <a href= “http://www.westegg.com/inflation/”>inflation calculator</a>, Batman! That same book would cost $25.83 (in 2006 dollars) and my weekly salary was the equivalent of $412.85. Hey, I was kind of poor when I was 22.
I think I also picked ZU because this passage has been on my mind as of late: “Andre was right to give it to him: you lock yourself away to stir up your imagination, then you lock yourself away because you’ve stirred up theirs.”
LOVE STORY: If you know me well, you know by now that my not-so-secret dream is to write a biography of Ruth McKenney. This is, for the most part, a very funny book, but McKenney’s life does not strike me as particularly comic.
The Betsy-Tacy books: Almost all the e-mail from the Newsweek piece was generated by my mention of these books. And some of the mail actually echoes the watch-cry of the<a href=”http://www.betsy-tacysociety.org/bolts.htm “>Betsy-Tacy Society</a>– “I thought I was the only one!” I’m re-reading BETSY IN SPITE OF HERSELF now, and marveling at it.
As for my dis of CATCHER IN THE RYE – if space had allowed, I would have added that I still like NINE STORIES, RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTER, and FRANNY AND ZOOEY. Truthfully, if I could get away with it, I would chuck my hardcover copy of CATCHER.
Don’t throw away Catcher. It shows up every year on the list of books requested to be banned or removed from library or school shelves. Any book that the riles those who would ban books is okay by me.
Perhaps when the next library or school bans Catcher, I’ll offer them a cash gift — but only if they accept my copy of Catcher.
Meanwhile, until a few minutes ago, this post has one of the best typos ever: Dancing Beer.
So what are the Beany and other Weber books, chopped liver (she says with a grin on her face)!?! I love Betsy Tacy too and have been to Mankato and gone to sit on the bench.
It was such a tough choice — Betsy-Tacy versus Beany, Betsy In Spite of Herself versus Beany Has a Secret Life. Lovelace won the tiebreaker because I read her first.
When I read Catcher in the Rye at the age of fifteen, I thought Holden Caufield was one of the greatest characters ever. I picked it up a few years ago, read a few pages, thought, “Jeez, what a friggin’ drama queen”, and put it down again.
I didn’t read Catcher in the Rye until I was an adult and I really didn’t get what the big deal was. Maybe if I had been an adolescent male….
Laura, everyone on the Betsy Tacy list is thrilled that you mentioned the Tomes, especially since the high school books are going out of print again.
WORD on Catcher in the Rye — both self-indulgent and disingenuous — though I love Raise High the Roofbeams and Seymour: An Introduction. Too Much Joy’s great song “William Holden Caulfield” says, “I’m afraid of people who like Catcher in the Rye…” and I agree.
Yeah, sort of what Dusty said. Which, I think, shows what a well-created character Holden is. I react to him differently at different ages, same as I do with breathing humans–though I never really felt he was great. When I first read it, somewhere around age 20, I thought his concern with genuineness was a losing proposition and didn’t make any sense to start with, but empathized to some degree anyway.
Now, I think he’s a limited kid with no concerns that are worth an eighth of the energy he expends on them. But that’s the definition of adolescence, I guess.
As the resident adolescent boy here, I feel it’s my duty to hold up all that is great and wonderful about Catcher in the Rye. I do feel that’s it’s an entirely voice and character driven novel and that if that voice and character don’t speak to you, then it ain’t gonna work for you. But toward what Dusty said, I guess maybe because I am a drama queen it all works for me.
Anyone looking for a female version of Catcher (with less drama and whining) should look up Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner. I pimp this book at any chance I’m given and it’s a close second to Catcher as my favorite book.
I had forgotten how much I loved the Betsy books! Thanks for the reminder of a wonderful part of my childhood.
Diane
P.S. And it certainly was a “Newsweek thing” for your household this issue.
One of the nicest things Laura ever did for someone she’d never met was to introduce Betsy-Tacy to my nine-year-old daughter. (This was five years or so ago.) That series became a refuge, read over many times; whenever she’d read something sad or frightening, she’d go back and reread all the Betsy-Tacy books. Yet we’d never even heard of Lovelace till Laura told me about her.
I read Catcher at about 13 or 14 and like most, was knocked out. Unlike Dusty, I haven’t cracked it since.
But Nine Stories. I think I wrote like a fifth-rate Salinger for months after reading that book. A profound change in the way I look at short stories.
Apparently, quite a few girls missed Betsy-Tacy. And the high school books might go out of print again, I’m sorry to report.
Ah Betsy-Tacy. What little girl didn’t read those. They were wonderful.
Never read Betsy Tacy- Honey Bunch, Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and as many OZ books as I could find.