Reading for Fun and Profit

I've ploughed through two books of my reading list for my craft class in the fall so far: Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche. With this, I'd like to unveil a fancy right-hand sidebar addition to the blog, the "What I'm Reading" list. Yes, it's a very creative title. But for those of you who are interested, it's a simple listing of what I'm currently reading. Right now, it's Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft of Fiction by David Jauss, a craft book on fiction.

As for the other two books I've finished, "Then We Came to the End" and "Shining at the Bottom of the Sea," I'm glad to say they were both great reads. The Stephen Marche book is less my kind of reading material, as I quickly came to realize it was more metafiction than anything else. "Shining at the Bottom of the Sea" is an anthology of works derived from a made up country (Sanjania) and its culture. Craft-wise, it's a pretty brilliant book. Marche creates a whole population with its own customs, practices, value systems, dialects, and histories from the bottom up. Reading through the anthology of short stories, I really came to appreciate the breadth of Marche's writing prowess; he manages to write over a dozen stories, "authored" by over a dozen different writers, all of which have their own unique voices and stylistic tics. It's both amazing and intimidating.

However, for all of Marche's technical virtuosity, I found myself fundamentally enjoying Ferris' "Then We Came to the End" on a much more viseral level. Everyone reads for different purposes. Myself, I read to be moved, to laugh, to cry. Metafiction, unfortunately, does not do this for me. Joshua Ferris' book does. Written entirely in first person plural, "Then We Came to the End" follows an advertising agency office struggling to stay afloat during a time of layoffs and economic troubles. At first, I was dubious about the subject matter of the book; I didn't think I would care very much about the travails of a group of affluent upper-middle class people, but I was pleasantly surprised that the book became much more than that. Suffice to say, it manages to be a very emotionally satisfying read. Also, what's extraordinary about Ferris' book is that it, too, is technically remarkable -- writing a story that is almost entirely in first person plural ("we" and "our") is amazing. The fact is, a story such as this could have never been written without the first person plural point of view. The narrator, the "we" and "our," is an additional character, representing the crowd, with the kind of group think that occurs in an office of people whose backgrounds are all socioeconomically and culturally very similar. This group think is an important character, as they act and think as one, often with the maturity level of children, which leads to some very ridiculous decisions and situations, some of them more serious than others.

I can't even begin to imagine how Ferris managed to develop this voice, though I suspect it came from years and years of writing and rewriting. But that's an obvious answer, right? At any rate, I'm very glad to have finished two books on my list already. I'll be sure to share the remaining book titles as I tackle them in the weeks ahead.

Summer Reading

I've been neglecting the blog for the past week or so, trying to get my moving situation to Champaign straightened out. The good news: I have an apartment, so I won't be homeless come fall.

At any rate, I received an email from one of my professors a couple weeks ago letting me know what we'd be reading in our craft class for the fall. And I don't know about the rest of you, but this is the kind of stuff that geeks me out. Books. Craft stuff. The kinds of books that can and will be taken apart, page by page, word by word. It's interesting, because I didn't always use to be this way. In high school, I absolutely hated those English classes, the ones where you read The Scarlett Letter or Jane Austen and then dissect it to death in a sort of faux-democratic style of consensus on what we thought about the book... except they weren't really our thoughts or opinions; they were the thoughts and opinions of the teachers, as dictated by their syllabus. And realistically, who in the world would expect 15-year-olds to express critical thinking about books that are completely outside of their realm of knowledge and world experience? Much less books that all took place before the 1900s? Why should they care? I often look back on those high school years with disgust. Is it any wonder why the population of active readers and book buyers decrease year after year? It's as if we wanted to ruin an entire generation to the idea of reading for pleasure during their most formative years.

Okay. That was a huge tangent and rant. Back to summer reading. The list of books as provided by my professor is about 6-8 titles long, including two craft books. Now, no one would ever accuse me of being well prepared, but being the nerd that I am, I went out and ordered three of the books from Amazon to get a head start. They are Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft of Fiction by David Jauss, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche. Interestingly, I had the David Jauss book already marked for purchase six months ago -- I'm a huge sucker for craft books. And I've heard about the Joshua Ferris book, written completely in first person plural, which should be a great study, but I'm most intrigued by the Stephen Marche book -- a completely fabricated anthology about the island of Sanjania. In it, he creates a country and its culture from the ground up, which, to me, is nothing short of fascinating. As a writer, such a concept sounds so incredibly large and imposing. I have a hard enough time fabricating the lives and histories of invididuals and their families, and I simply cannot fathom doing the same for a population, a country, an entire culture. Heady stuff. I can't wait to get started reading.