Euphoria

I had just finished Wild by Cheryl Strayed—a book that made me laugh, weep, and write earnestly into the night. Next I mused over In Some Other World, Maybe, a smart, very trendy, and ultimately memorable novel by Shari Goldhagen. I was having a blast. These women writers were feeding my summertime soul, and I wanted more. I wanted something fresh, something that would make me think, but not too hard. It is summer, after all.

Euphoria, Lily King's newest, had been sitting on the kitchen table for about two months. Before Wild and In Some Other World, I'd gone through a reading drought, so to speak. Do you ever have those? All through a hectic semester and a month-long road trip across the country, library books languished on my kitchen table. I unwound with LL Bean catalogs, Every Day with Rachael Ray Magazine, and The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks. Some choices we just can't explain.

In any case, finally. The moonsoons had arrived, bringing to a blessed close my reading drought. I poured a glass of wine and took Euphoria outside. For a moment, I watched the setting sun and inhaled hot pinion.

Then I opened the book, and almost immediately my world fell away, replaced swiftly and fully with King's. Euphoria was a different animal than anything I'd recently read, and I understood immediately that King writes at a whole other level than most. Above being a storyteller, she is a sort of research-artist, a painter whose pigments include facts, dates, and theories. She is a setter of well-researched scenes and well-considered characters. She is a master of point of view, structure, and restraint. An hour and a half later, my full glass of wine had some flies in it. The sun had set, and I realized I was cold.

I warn you, fellow writers: in King's presence you'll be humbled, whoever you are.

Of King's fourth novel, Emily Eakin of the NYTimes writes, "[Euphoria] is rife with such visceral imagery and pungent with the stink of disease, foul breath and unwashed bodies." Eakin adds that "The threat of violence and death looms from Page 1." The review closes with this: "In King’s exquisite book, desire — for knowledge, fame, another person — is only fleetingly rewarded, and gratification is inseparable from self-­deceit."

Ms. Eakin, I must politely disagree with it all. Well, all except the exquisite. Euphoria is certainly filled with visceral stink and foul breath and the threat of violence, but this after all is a book about white anthropologists traveling the Sepik River in New Guinea in 1933. What did Ms. Eakin expect? In her vaguely coy (but ever stylish) review, she overlooks what really roots the reader to Euphoria: the book's humanity. A sustained, dynamic current of sensuality and desire runs beneath the whole story, connecting each character and scene. This is the Copula Spider Doug Glover was talking about: bodies, sweat, pain, want, over and over again. Desire may be fleetingly rewarded for the characters, as Eakin claims, but for the reader the effects endure.

Speaking of want, it's immediately clear in Euphoria what every character wants. I've heard this is something you're supposed to do in fiction: understand what your protagonist wants most in the world, and tell your reader. In Euphoria, one character wants more than anything to learn. Another wants a place to call his own, and a woman to join him there. A third wants—well, I guess there is one character whose desires are less clear. Maybe he wants to forget. Maybe he wants never to leave the Sepik River.

It's all in the book, my lovelies, it's all in the book, so best not miss out on this lush work of art. King will take you to a place you've never been, a muggy, buggy place you won't want to leave. Weird, I know, but just trust me on this one. Euphoria looks short, like maybe you'll finish it in one night, but I assure you, dear reader, you will not.

Forward-thinking, bohemian places

Frank Bruni, in his NYTimes op-ed 'Same-Sex Marriage in Portugal,' does a nice job of exploring the legal status of same-sex marriage around the world, pondering why certain countries (cough cough) choose not to nationally legalize it. It's well worth a read, but if you don't have one of your dwindling twenty to spare, find below an interesting excerpt that mentions Argentina!! (Where gay marriage is nationally legal.)

It was only a little more than a decade ago that a country first legalized same-sex marriage, and that happened in precisely the kind of forward-thinking, bohemian place you’d expect: the Netherlands. About two years later, Belgium followed suit.

Then things got really interesting. The eight countries that later joined the club were a mix of largely foreseeable and less predictable additions. In the first category I’d put Canada, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. In the second: South Africa, Spain, Portugal and Argentina.

Why those four countries? People who have studied the issue note that that they have something interesting and relevant in common: each spent a significant period of the late 20th century governed by a dictatorship or brutally discriminatory government, and each emerged from that determined to exhibit a modernity and concern for human rights that put the past to rest.

Thanks for sending, Sam! Hope you're all having a marvelous Sunday. Love, Kate

Addendum: Sam just told me that if you access a NYTimes article from an outside link, it won't count as one of your twenty!! So read on, my devoted following! Read on. 

Ordinary People

Enrique Krauze, author of 'Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America,' wrote for the New York Times last week on Javier Sicilia, Mexican poet and protester. The article, 'Can This Poet Save Mexico?' profiles Sicilia, who has created over the past five months a so-far peaceful movement in protest of the drug-related violence there. The Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity is made up of 'ordinary citizens' affected by the violence and has hosted dozens of peaceful marches and panels throughout the country.  The movement's ideology demands more "thorough investigation into the connections between politicians and criminals" and the creation of a 'truth and reconciliation committee,' among other governmental changes.

After reading about Twitter users in Mexico murdered for posting pictures of the violence, it's humbling to see such this kind of a movement gain momentum and publicly disseminate important information. My thoughts remain with Mexico as this whole situation unfolds.

But, better for you to read the article than for me to summarize. It's finely written and will be well worth one of your twenty! 

I'll leave you with this: I couldn't help but notice the way the article's headline, 'Can This Poet Save Mexico,' piqued my interest not only because Sicilia is reinventing himself as a political revolutionary, but because there's another protest going on in NYC that seems to have gained even greater publicity. The NYTimes described it, in an article entitled 'Protesting Until Whenever,' as a hodgepodge that quickly gained momentum, and now people from all over have Occupied Wall Street. I read that the protestors have a health clinic and sanitation facilities and bottled water, and that people from around the country are calling in food, pizza and wings, to be delivered. And now hundreds have been arrested, but the Coors Light still seems to be flowing...

I've been living under a little Argentine rock for the last few...I don't know. Days? Months? Anyway, I felt like the Occupy movement kind of lost me back there, and I asked Stephanie S for help understanding what exactly these people's goals are. That's how I said it - "What are these people's goals, anyway?" All snobbish like that.

"Redistribution of wealth," she told me simply, then added that she's helping to organize next week's Occupy New Orleans. "Elimination of debt," she said. "Free slaves."

And so, okay, it's bigger than I thought. "It's not an end to anything," Stephanie S said, "but it's a start. Major cities across the US are occupying. Athens has been occupied for months, but you won't see anything about that on the news. It's a media war. And Tunisia? Kicking ass."

Indeed. And may both protests remain peaceful. Missing you all, and sending my love,

xx

Reckoning with Grizzlies

Just read this little gem in the NYTimes: "Reckoning with Grizzlies: Sometimes the Bear Gets You' by Timothy Egan. No, it didn't turn out to be something by Jennifer Egan, as I'd hoped when I'd clicked off the Times homepage, but I'm still glad I spent my last free article pass on this clever little morsel.

An excerpt: 

You move forward with reasonable precautions, knowing you can’t control some things, and that everything worth doing involves a calculated risk. The rest is luck of the draw, the bear not getting you.

Fine sentiments indeed, and I bet Paul would appreciate them, too. 

As always, I'm missing you all. xx

Travel in Turbulent Times

I'll preface this post by saying I'm ashamed to have missed this NYTimes article. I have no defense; at the time it came out, I was making my way into Ecuador, where I'd stay put for three months and have plenty of time to read The Times.

I'm also ashamed of my dear readership! Is this because you have to pay to read the Times now? Did none of you stumble across this article and think of me? For shame! All of us.

OK, enough scolding...LOOK!
An article on travel by Paul Theroux...and here is a fine, fine excerpt:

“Don’t go there,” the know-it-all, stay-at-home finger wagger says of many a distant place. I have heard it my whole traveling life, and in almost every case it was bad advice.

Oh, Paul. Oh Paul Paul Paul. Truer words were never spoken. When do you want to meet for a drink?

Read the full article here...if you can afford it!

On ‘Redeemers' by Enrique Krauze

Discovered this: a fine review of a book worth reading. Thanks NY Times! How lush it always is to start a new month with you, my 20 free articles renewed.  


Enrique Krauze, Mexican historian and Letras Libres editor, documents in 'Redeemers' a history of political ideas in Latin America during the late 19th and 20th centuries in the form of a series of biographical portraits.


Here's an excerpt from Paul Berman's [slightly swoony] review:
"People who love novels recognized long ago that Latin Americans in a storytelling mood were producing some of the world’s liveliest fiction. “Redeemers” raises the suspense-inducing possibility that Latin Americans in a political mood have likewise done something worthy of worldwide attention. They have tried, with mixed success but unflagging brio, to address the vast conundrum, political and cultural, of a modern age that has ended up dominated by the magnetic power of the United States."

cbsnews.com

Shall one of my beloved visitors bring me this book as a gift? Will Christmas come early for Kate? Quizas! Quien sabe! Miss you all. x