Quirks that work

Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (Penguin, 2009).

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet is the kind of book that teeters on the edge of being irksome. It is, like so much postmodern pop culture, self-consciously idiosyncratic, bubbling with quick, knowing references to everything from railroad signals to Dolly Parton. The literary mechanism that enables such detail is a twelve-year-old cartographer - a child prodigy. His obsessive-compulsive mind spills out onto every page, and frequently into the margins. Footnotes, drawings, and maps are integral to the story; they are "illustrations" in the truest sense.

And although Larsen never makes this explicit, while the protagonist is twelve-year-old T.S., the speaker seems to be adult T.S., with emotional insights that could come only with life experience. These adult reflections also fill the pages, and the result could easily turn pretentious.

But Larsen errs on the side of charming. All the minutiae are offset by the powerful simplicity of T.S.'s "emotional journey" - he has lost a brother and is trying to understand, not only his role in the death, but his role in his transformed family. He uses his scientific work to grapple with his very unscientific dilemma. Not only does T.S. surreptitiously insert his brother's name into every one of his maps, but his personal issues determine the kinds of maps he draws. Faced with a surfeit of new sights and sounds on his first trip to Chicago, for instance, he ultimately chooses to chart the terrain of loneliness: he counts the number of people walking alone, and then the percentage who deflect their loneliness with cell phones or iPods. One of my favourite "maps" in the book uses arrows to illustrate the changing flow of conversation at his family's dinner table, both before and after his brother's death.

So all the bits and bobs have a role to play, and while some might find the end result cloying, I do not count myself in their number. The quirks worked for me. (For quirks that do not quite work, see the film 500 Days of Summer, playing now in your local theatre.)

Restoring the integrity of my blog

Jennifer's pick: Rose Tremain, Restoration (Viking Press, 1990)

17 August 2009 @ The Nook (Denman Street, Vancouver, BC)

I'm beginning to have a problem with the five-star system that my book club uses. There is no nuance. I can read three books, and give them each a rating of four out of five stars, but that indicates a sameness about them that is misleading. It also makes the reviewer (my friends and I) appear passionless. Maybe it's time to scrap the system; until then you can see our critical insights and opinions reduced to a number below. (I lost the ratings - it must be a sign. I hereby retire the star rating system.)

Everyone liked Restoration. It's difficult to see how someone could not like it. Tremain's story is a sensitive rendering of the seventeenth-century world of an English courtier, but it is also surprisingly funny and touching. The speaker, our hero Robert Merivel, is absolutely lovable, even when his character sinks to the depths of depravity. He is so pathetic, but so open and child-like that you forgive him his trangressions - which include a heaping helping of the seven deadly sins, gluttony and lust in particular. (I used the film adaptation cover here, with Robert Downey Jr. in Louis XIV's wig. Excellent!) Reading about Merivel's turbulent fortunes is a pleasure. I wish I could give more specific information on my fellow members' individual perspectives, but we all seemed to be in loose agreement, and to be honest we didn't spend hours discussing it. My sister, who joined us that evening, remarked later, "I don't know if that qualifies as a 'meeting'."

I do, however, want to emphasize what a lovely example this is of an historical novel. Tremain doesn't fetishize the period details or showboat her knowledge of seventeenth-century politics. But she captures the zeitgeist, especially the significance and role of the king in courtly society. Merivel's adoration of James II might seem overblown, but a good absolutist monarch had that effect on his followers in the seventeenth century. James was not as charismatic or effective as Louis XIV, but to his courtiers he would have been the centre of the universe. Meanwhile, Merivel's life in "exile" shows just how much the rest of English society was moving onward and upward, regardless of the shenanigans of the royal court.

Not even good enough to be called trash

Linda Lael Miller, Shotgun Bride (Pocket Star, 2003).

The only reason this is on my blog is because I'm committed to reporting on every (non-work-associated) book that I read. This book, apparently second in the hallowed "McKettrick Cowboys" trilogy, was one of a handful of romance novels on the bookshelf at the N.S. cottage that my family and I rented this August. I had brought the current book club choice - Rose Tremain's Restoration - along to read, but it made sense to read a vacation paperback instead. Judging from the back-cover synopsis, Shotgun Bride seemed the raciest and most amusing of the bunch:

Kade McKettrick's got five mail-order brides-to-be camped out at the local hotel, all more than eager to provide him with the heir that will win him the Triple M ranch. But Kade, the newly appointed marshal, has his hands full with a troublesome outlaw gang. Why, then, is he so easily distracted by pretty "Sister Mandy" -- who most assuredly is not the nun she claims to be?

So, inspired by the cheese of Twilight, I dug in. But this book sucked. I didn't even finish it, a rarity for a completist like me. The story was plodding. The dialogue wasn't witty or sparkling. But I woud have dealt with this in exchange for good romantic tension and bodice-ripping love scenes. But no. When the cowboy and his lover finally get to it, after two-hundred-and-something pages, Miller likens their derobing to "an ancient ritual of sacred magic" or some such nonsense. It made my skin crawl.

Like a man

Sam Keith from the journals of Richard Proenneke,

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

(1973: Alaska Northwest Books, 1999).

This is one of my very occasional forays into non-fiction. Dick Proenneke moved to Twin Lakes Alaska, in 1968, when he was in his early fifties. His goal was to build a cabin and spend an entire year in this secluded spot, living off the land and braving the brutal winter, when the temperature could get as low as -45ºF. In the end, Proenneke stayed for about twenty-eight years. His cabin is now a provincial landmark, and his journals and film footage are valuable records of Alaska's native landscape, flora, and fauna.

While Proenneke's experience may not be the most extreme ever recorded - his loyal friend Babe regularly flew in with a few supplies from civilization, and he did not hang out with grizzly bears - it might be the most meticulous. With the exception of nails, tar paper and polyethylene for his cabin roof, and a few simple metal tools, Proenneke built his cabin, above-ground cache, john, furniture, and other odds and ends (like a sled and snowshoes) from logs that he harvested, transported, seasoned, and hewed himself. He used old gas cans to make hinges, containers, and pots and pans. He fashioned a dutch door with wooden hinges and even a wooden locking mechanism. Everything he made looked so clean and operated so smoothly that, from the photographs, it is hard to believe they are handmade. His cabin logs tuck together seamlessly. He gathered stones from the lake beach and built himself a beautiful, neat, fireplace. He fired one shot at a ram early in the hunting season, and the meat lasted him the entire winter. Proenneke described in detail many of his projects and travels up and down the lakes, and most fascinating of all, filmed his activities as well. (Some of this footage has been collected in the one-hour program Alone in the Wilderness, which you can periodically catch on PBS.)

I was drawn to the book by the televised program, but was happily surprised to find that, on the page, Proenneke has a flair for rustic turns of phrase. He could write as well as be manly. On getting a bite on his fishing line: "It happened with the suddenness of a broken shoelace." On the view: "Rags of fog are strewn about the high peaks." On encountering a weasel: "There he was, sitting upright like a fence picket." Evocative and authentic. And my favourite, on the sudden changes in the lake: "Like a woman. All smiles one minute, and dancing a temper tantrum the next." (Proenneke's bachelor philosophy and attiudes toward women were charmingly old-fashioned. When Babe promised to bring some "mission girls" out to the cabin for a visit, poor Dick set about scrubbing down his quarters with the zeal of my Aunt Donna before a family reunion. The girls never materialized.)

This book deserves your attention for three reasons: because Proenneke's feats as an outdoorsman were outstanding; because it reads with sweetness, passion, and honesty; and because it will make even the most committed urbanite sigh at the prospect of solitude in the mountains.