The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles spent much of his life in Morocco. He began The Sheltering Sky at age 37 after living in Morocco for about a year. (I wonder if many of his experiences were catalogued in his novel.) It was the first novel he attempted and ended up being on the bestsellers list, as well as a film by Bertolucci.

I read about 75 pages on the flight from Cincinnati to Milwaukee today. I haven't really bonded with the book yet, though this very well could be a result of the wonderful book I just finished! What I do love is how focused the prose is on the music of the every day in Morocco, the sounds of the city and the people and just life. Given that Bowles was also a composer, I think it's cool that he writes with his musician cap on.

I love this picture of Mr. Bowles. He seems so jolly.

The Time Traveler's Wife -- Done

So I've spent the last week in Seattle visiting The Fiance's brother. We spent the week tooling around the city, watching fish get thrown around at the market, trying Vietnamese food, and eating goat. (Tastes like lamb, but stringier. I couldn't get over the fact that it was GOAT.) While we were in Bellingham visiting my friend The Professor, I saw The Time Traveler's Wife on a used book rack, shining like a beacon in all its turquoise glory. I convinced The Professor that she just had to get the book, and oh, I would give her my copy if I hadn't already promised it to Mother and really, whatever you're reading, just stop, [breath] because this is the book you should read right now! So she did. And I can't wait to hear what she thinks of it.

I finished the book on the four-hour flight from Cincinnati to Seattle. I had worked nights over the weekend and was exhausted, but the book wouldn't let me go. After the second beverage service, I had fifty pages left. As I read, I kept having to stop reading, dab my eyes with the cocktail napkin under my Diet Coke, and look out the window at the clouds, in the hopes of regaining my composure. Had I been alone, I would have wept with abandon, probably curled up in my bed. I very well could have reread the last fifty-ish pages to relive the experience again. I must say again and again -- you must read this book.

I was so sad that it was done that it took me a week to start another book. I wanted to revel in the love story a little longer.

It reminds me of when, at nine or ten years old, I was reading Where the Red Fern Grows. I stayed up really late on a school night finishing the last few chapters. I would run into Mom and Dad's bedroom, tears streaming down my cheeks, crying, "Mom! [sob] You'll never believe what happened!'' And I'd tell her all about it, wipe my tears, and run back to my room. Then a few minutes later, another trip down the hall, vision bleary with tears for another report to Mom, "And then this happened! [sob!!]" Ugh, it was rough. But those stories that I can be completely lost in are my favorites.

The Time Traveler's Wife -- page 204

It's getting lighter outside. "Merry Christmas," I whisper. Henry doesn't answer, and I lie awake in his arms thinking about multitudes of angels, listening to his measured breath, and pondering in my heart.

This little paragraph is one of the reasons I love this book. I was sitting in McDonald's reading while I ate my #2 with only ketchup and feeling a little teary. I just love how visual this writing is. I feel like I'm there or that I can see exactly what Ms. Niffenegger wants me to see. This whole "teaching writing to visual artists" thing is quite evident in her book.

For the first 75 pages, I was feeling a little lost in time while Henry is jumping in and out of Clare's life, until I realized that we are following Clare's timeline. Clare's life moves in one direction, while Henry zig zags in and out.

People at work have decided that I am a salesperson when it comes to books. They think that every book I'm currently in the middle of is my favorite book and oh-you-just-have-to-read-it! It's sort of true. I love to lose myself in a book.

So anyway, you HAVE to read this book! It's a love story for the ages.

The Time Traveler's Wife

I am now starting "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger. Did you know that she is also a visual artist? This is a painting that she's done -- perhaps a self-portrait? She is a writer, artist, and professor in the Interdisciplinary Book Arts MFA Program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. I think it's fun that she is an artist of many media. From an interview with Mark Flanagan:

I teach writing to visual artists. We concentrate on merging and combining text and images, by means of artist's books, comics, installations, etc. I also teach letterpress printing, lithography, intaglio, fine edition book making, a seminar on visual narrative, and the occasional drawing class.

I really know nothing about this book, other than that a friend from work has threatened to bring it in for me for six months. I finally broke down and bought my own copy. I wonder if it will be difficult to keep track of the time jumps as I read. How will Ms. Niffenegger manage the changes? I've heard wonderful things about the book and I'm always a sucker for a good love story.

Clock Without Hands -- Done

Well, I finished "Clock Without Hands" last night in my quest to switch my body's clock to the night shift this weekend. Eww. Anyway, given that this was the last book that Ms. McCullers finished, I feel like she was working out her own feelings on many different subjects in the end of her life.

McCullers husband committed suicide after asking her to participate in a double suicide. In this book, the Judge's only son commits suicide by hanging (same as her husband). The Judge's greatest sorrow that he never fully grieved was the death of his son and the question of why?. It was only in the end of his life that he came to grips with the loss. I imagine Carson M. having the same struggle. Although she was prone to episodic depression in her lifetime, it seems to me that she pushed her feelings aside to lessen the hurt.

Next: Carson McCullers had breast cancer and so did the Judge's wife. Much of the book dealt with death and dying, whether it be the living's reaction to it or the dying's journey with it. Maybe C.M. was trying to write the feelings she was experiencing with her own illness through her characters. I can't imagine a better cathartic experience.

Maybe her novels were an outlet similar to a journal, yet keeping that easy distance of not writing about yourself.

I like the way that C.M. writes; there's a lyrical twitchiness to it that I find amusing and effective. Maybe I'll have to get "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" now. We'll see.

Clock Without Hands

On the bedside table is "Clock Without Hands" by Carson McCullers. It's a novel about a boy and his grandfather in the segregated post-WWII South. Jester and his grandfather are at odds about slavery and segregation; both begin different relationships with the same black boy named Sherman. Jester, seduced by Sherman's blues piano, tries to force a friendship; whereas, the Judge, his grandfather, hires Sherman as his amanuensis to write letters to congressmen about reinstating the south's legacy of Confederacy. Threaded within are themes of sickness and dying -- the acuteness of leukemia and the slow brain death after a stroke.

After doing a little reading about Carson McCullers, I learned that she was chronically ill all her life with everything from pleurisy to breast cancer. It makes the themes in "Clock Without Hands" more personal and has changed how I interpret the book. This is her last book published before she died in 1967.

Dad got me this book for Christmas. He and I seem to exchange books every year.