literature

No Female President, But Women-Centered Novels Are Still to Be Read

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When I prepared to write this blog post on November 7, I fully expected the United States to elect its first female president the next day. So I decided my topic would be novels that are very women-centered.

But Hillary Clinton shockingly lost to Donald Trump, and these four things came to mind: 1) Many people dislike what America’s political and corporate elites are doing in this have/have-not country, so Bernie Sanders (or Elizabeth Warren, if she had run) would have had a better chance than Clinton to beat the fake populist Trump. 2) Huge crowd drawer Sanders never had a chance during the primaries because the mainstream media under-covered him or covered him with negative bias, because the supposed-to-have-been-neutral Democratic National Committee backed Clinton, because unelected superdelegates also tipped the scales, etc. 3) Clinton is smart, hard-working, resilient, and experienced, but didn’t fit America’s current anti-elite mood, even as she was slammed with sexism.  😦  4) My topic will still be fiction that’s very women-centered.

(If you want to agree with or dispute my election analysis, please do! I should also mention that my book columns after this one will return to discussing politics only occasionally. But political thoughts in the comments section are always welcome!)

Back to this week’s literary topic: So many novels — and not just thrillers — are male-oriented that it’s interesting when things get less testosterone-y. Books focusing mostly on women are often more subtle, more nuanced, more psychological, more emotionally satisfying, etc. — though it’s of course hard to totally generalize.

One example of a very women-centered novel is Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which I happened to read during this past election week. The elegantly written, heartbreaking book features three generations of women from the same extended family who live in virtual isolation in the Pacific Northwest.

There are also novels that are women-centered mainly because they feature multiple sisters — for instance, five in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and four in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, and Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies. Fewer, but still memorable, sisters in such works as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

Other novels spotlight strong female friendships (and sometimes conflict between those friends), as in Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale and Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride.

Then there are books featuring lesbian relationships, including Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Colette’s Claudine at School, and Jane Rule’s Desert of the Heart.

Plus fiction set at women’s colleges (such as Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night), set in towns where female inhabitants are the focus (such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford), and that feature workplaces of all or mostly women (such as Fannie Flagg’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion and Lisa Scottoline’s The Vendetta Defense and other Scottoline novels starring characters from the female Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates).

What are your favorite women-centered novels?

This literature blog and my local weekly humor column usually don’t intersect, but I decided to give the latter a book theme for one week. Many authors and novels are referenced.

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished writing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Fictional ‘Power Couples’ and a Real Presidential Election

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With America’s presidential election happening in two days, you’re welcome to comment here (before or after November 8) about anything related to that event.

But I also wanted to offer a literature column with some tenuous connection to the election, and came up with the idea of spotlighting fictional “power couples” who are roughly equivalent to Hillary and Bill Clinton — but not necessarily politicians and not necessarily as famous.

The first example I thought of are the two renowned 19th-century poets — Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Henry Ash — who have an affair in A.S. Byatt’s magnificent Possession. That fictional pair is loosely based on actual poets Christina Rossetti and (an amalgam of) Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson.

There’s some sleuthing in Possession, which reminds me that there’s a high-profile couple in various Dorothy L. Sayers novels: wealthy amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey and prominent mystery author Harriet Vane.

Also, we have TV host Doris Dubois and millionaire businessman Barley Salt in Fay Weldon’s The Bulgari Connection — which has a plot driven by Grace McNab Salt, who Barley the jerk divorced to marry the younger, glamorous Doris.

Or how about Mitchell and Abby McDeere in John Grisham’s The Firm? The husband is an attorney in a high-powered (but very suspicious) law firm and the wife a teacher at an elite private school.

Another possible example is Henrietta Stackpole and Mr. Bantling in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady. There’s no question that journalist Stackpole is well known but it’s uncertain exactly what Mr. Bantling does except be a member of the upper class, which makes him sort of prominent in 19th-century Europe.

Then there’s investigative journalist Mikail Blomkvist and magazine editor/majority owner Erika Berger, who are occasional lovers in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its two sequels.

Plus renowned neurosurgeon Rowan Mayfair and successful home restorer Michael Curry, who fall in love in Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour.

And prominent 1930s stunt pilots/lovers Fritzi Jurdabralinksi and Bill Bevins of Fannie Flagg’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion — in which Fritzi later becomes a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) during World War II.

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, among the power pairings are the elite “Auror” Nymphadora Tonks and Professor Remus Lupin.

Another academic, marine biologist Humphrey Clark, was once in a relationship with high-profile feminist Ailsa Kelman in The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble. (She and the aforementioned A.S. Byatt are sisters, making them a prominent family duo of a different sort.)

Who are your favorite power couples in literature? And, again, election comments are welcome!

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Exploring and Explaining Epic Fiction

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What makes a novel an epic novel?

That kind of book often is long, contains many characters, is set in various places, has a story line spanning multiple years and even generations, and is filled with consequential events — such as war, adventure, quests, travel, societal changes, family feuds, and/or confrontations with evil. Readers react with adjectives such as “sweeping” and “action-packed.”

On the other hand, an epic novel usually is not solely focused on a romance (though a romance or three might be part of the mix), usually is not funny (though it might have humorous moments), and often does not depict characters in a deeply analytical way. That means authors such as Jane Austen and Henry James wrote great novels but not epic novels.

Also, epic novels might or might not be literary, and might or might not fall into the historical-fiction category.

Why am I blathering on about this? Well, I’m currently reading Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, which definitely qualifies as an epic work. The mostly Oregon-set novel is long (my edition is 715 pages of small type), has a large cast, jumps around in time, and features a bitter strike in a lumber town. There’s also intense ill will between two half-brothers — the older a “tough guy,” and the younger a more educated type who returns to Oregon after many years in the East. Tour de force writing, too.

The book by Kesey (best known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) reminds me a bit of John Steinbeck’s earlier East of Eden. Very different novels, but they share a mostly West Coast milieu, a multigenerational span, and almost biblical sibling strife.

Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is also kind of epic in its way. While it takes place over a relatively short period of time, the author ambitiously depicts the Joad family’s quest to find a better life by traveling from drought-stricken Oklahoma to the supposed promised land of California. Added to the stew are depictions of death, class differences, social injustice, resistance, and more.

Any piece about epic novels can’t omit perhaps the most epic novel of all: Leo Tolstoy’s massive War and Peace, whose title is self-explanatory. There’s also Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and its obsessed Captain Ahab, almost mythical white whale, rich prose, etc. And Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which says just about everything that can be said about race in America and related topics.

Or how about the multigenerational masterpieces of magic realism One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende)?

Then there’s James Clavell’s nearly 1,000-page historical novel Shogun, which skillfully combines a detailed look at early 17th-century Japan, a clash of Eastern and Western traditions, a cross-cultural romance, plenty of violence, much maneuvering for power, other kinds of intrigue, and so on.

Miguel de Cervantes’ picaresque Don Quixote — a novel published around the time Shogun was set — is also epic in its adventures, explorations of madness vs. sanity, etc. And funnier than most epic novels.

More recently, we have Eleanor Catton’s sprawling, intricate The Luminaries, set in the time of New Zealand’s 1860s gold rush; and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, which bounces from New York City to Nevada to Amsterdam as it tackles terrorism, the importance of art, and more.

Also sort of epic are Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (war, media, environmentalism, and other manifestations of U.S. society); Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (immigration, industrialism, gender identity, and more); and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (immigration again, the Latino/Latina experience in America, pop culture, etc.).

Semi-eligible for this discussion are various trilogies and series. They can of course be epic — think J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels — but their multiple-book nature gives authors the advantage of more time and space to achieve epic-ness.

Your favorite epic novels? How would you define what makes a novel epic?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Novels Are Read. Violence, It Grew

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Violence has always been part of literature, as it has always been part of life, but in recent decades authors have often depicted killings and other kinds of bodily harm more graphically than their writing predecessors did.

As with sexual situations, violence used to be significantly veiled in older fiction. Brutal acts would frequently happen “off stage,” or be shown in a not-too-bloody way. That sanitized carnage could still be very upsetting to read about, but most readers didn’t lose their appetites. These days, things in general are usually less subtle and more “out there.”

This was reinforced for me with the last two novels I read: Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game (1974) and Anthony Burgess’ The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985) — both written after violence in lit started to be depicted more explicitly.

In Highsmith’s novel — one of five psychological thrillers, including The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring the rather amoral Tom Ripley — murders of various Mafiaso are chronicled kind of graphically (such as strangulation with a cord, aka garroting). Interestingly, the retaliatory shooting of a sympathetic co-protagonist is described in a more euphemistic way.

The Kingdom of the Wicked — which chronicles all kinds of intrigue during the early years of Christianity two millennia ago — has myriad scenes of revolting violence (crucifixion, stoning to death, stabbings, etc.) amid the wonderful writing.

A living-author king of violence depiction is Cormac McCarthy, who has a high mayhem quotient in novels such as Blood Meridian (1985), No Country for Old Men (2005), and, to a lesser degree, All the Pretty Horses (1992). Blood Meridian may be one of the most violent literary novels ever written, but, then again, the 19th-century American West was often a brutal place that earlier authors had to sanitize to some extent when published in less-candid times.

In Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), a brutal law-enforcement murder of a likable, admirable “Untouchable” is heartbreakingly depicted. As intensely painful as it is to read, vividly showing the power structure’s violence against minorities gives readers a small sense of what the discriminated-against go through.

And how about the nightmare injuries Annie Wilkes inflicts on captive author Paul Sheldon in Stephen King’s Misery (1987)? And the excruciating Afghanistan-based scene in which Taliban guy Assef breaks several of Amir’s bones in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003)? And various horrific deaths in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy (2008-2010)?

There’s also plenty of hard-hitting harm in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, with Reacher receiving and doling out violence — and a number of good and bad people dying along the way. (Think “pink mist” rising from heads exploded by bullets — yikes!) One can’t read the 20 Reacher novels (1997-2015) without getting a major adrenaline rush, for better or for worse.

What are some of the most violent novels you’ve read? Do you think reality demands that acts of bodily harm be depicted in a fairly graphic way, or do you prefer a certain amount of author restraint?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Fictional Characters Who Treat Women As Badly As Donald Trump Does

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I wish Donald Trump were fictional, but, alas, he’s real. Yet the Republican presidential candidate does remind me of literature’s sexist louts who emotionally and/or physically abuse women. Some of the men are rich and some not so rich, but all possess a high quotient of creepiness.

And those fictional characters are painful to read about, until they get their satisfying comeuppance. Perhaps it’s revenge at the hands of people they hurt, or perhaps they die young. But sometimes the jerks of literature continue to thrive, which is frustrating but also realistic. As realistic as Donald Trump, who — though destined to probably lose next month’s election — has mostly lived a charmed life despite being awful and amoral.

So many examples of repulsively sexist guys in fiction, but I’ll discuss just a few.

For instance, the father in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is a disgusting human being who treats women (and many a man) like garbage. His first name is Fyodor, but thankfully he’s not an autobiographical version of Dostoyevsky.

Also in 19th-century literature, we have Heathcliff (who, in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, deeply loves Catherine Earnshaw but is cruel to various other women in his life); Edward Casaubon (who’s condescending and contemptuous toward his young wife Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s Middlemarch); Gilbert Osmond (the loathsome, unloving husband of the appealing Isabel Archer in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady); Roger Chillingworth (the vengeful, lost-then-reappears husband of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter); and Sir Percival Glyde (the nasty schemer in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White who, under the direction of the more powerful Count Fosco, takes part in an ugly scheme whose victims include Glyde’s wife Laura Fairlie).

In post-1900 literature, we have these repellent men — among many others — guilty of domestic violence against their wives: police officer Norman Daniels of Stephen King’s Rose Madder; company heir Seth Duncan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel Worth Dying For, and Frank Bennett of Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Two of Janie Crawford’s husbands (Joe Starks and Tea Cake) in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God are guilty of physically hurting Janie, though Tea Cake has a decent side, too. Still, there’s never a legitimate reason for a man to attack a woman.

More lowlifes: Slave owner Rufus Weylin, who is unspeakably cruel to slave Alice Greenwood in Octavia Butler’s Kindred; the vile Alphonso, who beats and rapes his daughter Celie in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple; racist town drunk Bob Ewell, who abuses his daughter in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Esteban Trueba, who rapes a number of peasant women living on the land he owns in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits; and all the rotten males who treat women as nothing but breeding machines in the patriarchal dystopia depicted in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Monstrous actions all.

Do you have other examples of odious, sexist men of fiction? With a slight variation on “trump cards,” we could call them “Trump cads.”

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Recurring Characters Are Not Just in Series and Sequels

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Obviously, there are recurring characters in novel sequels and series. Some are sleuths who star in mysteries, and many are non-sleuths who hail from other genres. Memorable, widely known recurring characters include Harry Potter, Jack Reacher, Katniss Everdeen, Lisbeth Salander, Sherlock Holmes, Anne Shirley, Miss Marple, “Easy” Rawlins, Harriet Vane, Frodo Baggins, etc., etc.!

Then there are characters who appear in more than one novel despite the books not being sequels or series per se — which will be the subject of this blog post. In a number of cases, they’re a minor character in one novel, and a major character in another.

One advantage of recurring characters is that they add to the illusion of reality — the worlds that authors create can seem more believable when readers encounter the same people in different books. And if readers like and/or find those characters interesting, they are thrilled to see them several times. Also, multiple appearances by characters give authors the opportunity to depict them in a more nuanced, complex way than might be the case with one-novel appearances.

Emile Zola was among the writers who mastered this. For instance, he introduced Claude Lantier as a supporting character in The Belly of Paris before making that troubled artist the full-fledged star of The Masterpiece, and gave Nana Coupeau a relatively modest role in The Drinking Den before making her the main protagonist in Nana.

Zola may have gotten the recurring idea from earlier-in-the-19th-century French author Honore de Balzac, whose perhaps most prominent use of the device was having Rastignac appear in Old Goriot and about a half dozen other novels.

There was also Mark Twain, who made Tom Sawyer the star and Huck Finn a supporting player in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and then made Huck the star and Tom a supporting player in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Tom was subsequently featured in two lesser, late-career Twain novels: Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective.

In 20th- and 21st-century literature, authors who have gone the recurring-character route include Kurt Vonnegut (Kilgore Trout appeared in or was mentioned in various novels), Margaret Atwood (“Snowman” was prominent in Oryx and Crake and not so prominent in The Year of the Flood), Robert Heinlein (the long-living Lazarus Long had a role in about a half dozen novels), and Fannie Flagg (who put characters such as the Norma/Macky couple, Aunt Elner, and radio host “Neighbor Dorothy” in Welcome to the World, Baby Girl, then Standing in the Rainbow, and then Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven).

Can you name some recurring characters from non-sequel, non-series books? And, heck, if you want to mention your favorite characters from series and sequels, be my guest!

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

More Multiculturalism in Literature

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We live in a multicultural world, so it’s great when that’s reflected in literature. An increasing number of books have characters of different races and ethnicities interacting — often on a more equal basis than they might have interacted in older fiction.

(Actually, some older fiction also has surprisingly decent multicultural aspects amid the many false assumptions of white superiority, which I’ll get to later in this post.)

But the multicultural interactions in relatively recent literature are hardly always nirvana. There is love and hate, open-mindedness and narrow-mindedness, harmony and conflict, understanding and lack of understanding. Racism continues to often rear its ugly head, even as some characters are more enlightened than their ancestors might have been.

I just read Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, which is not only funny as hell but has an amazing mosaic of characters. Among them are Samad, a brilliant but insufferable Bengali Muslim from Bangladesh whose best friend is a white Englishman (Archie) who’s married to a black woman (Clara). The variety of cultures depicted in the mostly London-set novel is exhilarating, even when it’s more like a clash of cultures.

A later Smith novel — the compelling On Beauty — finds much material to mine in the marriage of an African-American woman (Kiki) to an insecure/annoying white professor (Howard) from England who’s teaching in America, and how that couple relates to another couple: a Trinidadian (Monty) who’s a professor in England, and his ill wife (Carlene).

Plus, in both On Beauty and White Teeth, it’s fascinating how the children of the main characters become (sort of) Americanized or anglicized. The immigrant vs. second-generation experience and all that.

It’s no surprise that Smith is the biracial daughter of a Jamaican mother and English father; the increased multiculturalism in relatively recent literature is partly a reflection of thankfully increased author diversity.

Jhumpa Lahiri also finds multicultural fiction gold in The Namesake and The Lowland, both of which feature Bengali characters who migrate to the United States. They and/or their children of course interact with white Americans and in some cases have romantic relationships with them, while other characters continue to identify mostly with their country of origin.

Then there’s Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story, in which a biracial anti-apartheid activist in South Africa has an affair with a white social worker; Lee Child’s Make Me, in which Jack Reacher teams up professionally and romantically with a Chinese-American woman; and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in which the multicultural elements include Harry and Cho Chang dating at one point.

The multicultural connections in relatively recent novels obviously include more than romantic ties/angles. In Fannie Flagg’s I Still Dream About You, for instance, the African-American friend/real-estate coworker (Brenda) of the white protagonist (Maggie) has political aspirations in Alabama. Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is includes African-American (Moses) and Native-American (Benny) characters who befriend the white protagonist (Novalee) when she’s abandoned in Oklahoma.

As one can see from the above examples, people of color are frequently — though not always — the supporting rather than lead characters in multicultural literature written by white authors. Too much of that sidekick phenomenon, which is also often the case in movies.

While there’s plenty of blatant white superiority in older novels — often reflecting the narrow-mindedness of the authors themselves — there are some nice exceptions. For instance, James Fenimore Cooper depicts various Native-Americans with surprising tolerance in his five 19th-century “Leatherstocking” novels (including The Last of the Mohicans), and I loved the deep friendship between the Native-American Chingachgook and the white Natty Bumppo.

Also, black or biracial characters are prominent, portrayed positively, and shown interacting (or trying to interact) with white characters on a fairly equal basis in 19th-century novels such as Armadale by Wilkie Collins and Georges by Alexandre Dumas (who was biracial himself). But those protagonists also face major difficulties living in a mostly white society.

Black-white interactions are even more fraught in decades-ago books such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Margaret Mitchell’s often-racist Gone With the Wind, Carson McCullers’ more-understanding The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and Richard Wright’s Native Son — though Bigger Thomas in that last book is eventually befriended and represented by a white (communist) lawyer.

Then there are John Steinbeck’s works, which rarely featured black characters but often featured Hispanic ones — as in The Wayward Bus (driver Juan) and Tortilla Flat (most of the book’s ensemble). Also, Asian-American housekeeper Lee is arguably the most interesting person in East of Eden as he interacts with the white Trask family he works for and with the mostly white California world he inhabits.

It’s almost another topic entirely, but there’s plenty of multicultural interaction in sci-fi and fantasy — or maybe it’s more like multi-planet or multi-categories-of-beings interaction. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, for instance, we have hobbits, dwarfs, elves, orcs, wizards, humans, etc.!

What are your favorite books with multicultural elements? How important is that kind of diversity to you as a reader?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson. 

 

A Blog Session on Emotional Repression

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Can novels with emotionally repressed, even boring protagonists hold a reader’s interest? In many cases, most definitely yes.

To illustrate how, I’ll first talk about Evan Connell’s Mrs. Bridge, which I read this month. Its title character is not only emotionally repressed and boring but also conventional, conformist, proper, too conscious of manners, timid, obedient, afraid to offend, and often clueless. Her first name, India, is about the only thing distinctive about this white, cliche-spouting, country-club-member woman.

Yet the novel is gripping and fascinating. Why? Well, Mrs. Bridge is superbly written, in an understated way. It has numerous short chapters (some less than a page), which make things go quickly. And there’s lots of subtle satire from the author.

Also, despite India being all the yawn-inducing things listed in my second paragraph, there are other elements to her that draw our sympathy. She is nice, friendly, kind of smart, unhappy, and haunted (India has longings but can’t quite articulate them or do anything about them).

In addition, we understand that she’s of her time (the decades before World War II) and economic/family situation (upper middle class with a workaholic husband) — meaning she was expected to stay home, have no outside job, and employ a housekeeper. So Mrs. Bridge has almost nothing to do to break life’s tedium, especially when her three kids grow older.

Also making the novel interesting are those three kids, who quietly or not so quietly rebel against their humdrum upbringing. Plus India has a few friends and neighbors with a bit of an edge.

One more thing: Readers — who may know people like Mrs. Bridge, even in the 21st century — are curious what will happen to such a character. Connell’s novel doesn’t disappoint, offering closing chapters that seem just right and a last scene that’ll knock your socks off. (After which India’s housekeeper might feel obligated to wash them.)

Now I’ll name protagonists from other novels who are emotionally repressed for reasons that are Mrs. Bridge-like or because they’re the victim of racism or other bias, have a history of psychological or physical trauma, wrestle with a major regret, harbor a secret, or just possess a certain personality. In some cases, they’re emotionally repressed for the entire book; in other cases, they start out fine and then go downhill, or start out troubled and get better. And those characters range from very likable to very unlikable.

A few of the many fictional people with some or much emotional repression include Sethe and Denver of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Matthew and Marilla of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Dimmesdale of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Penderton of Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye, Claire of Henry James’ The American, Harry Haller of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Gauri of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, Maren of Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water, Lisbeth Salander of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.), the kid Ricky in John Grisham’s The Client, and the title characters of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome.

Who are some emotionally repressed characters you remember most?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson. 

The Plot (or Lack of) Thickens

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Last week I was reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, and my brain was queasy with mixed feelings. The novel is intellectual, philosophical, existential — clearly a great mind was at work there. But I was at times bored along with being impressed, and found myself putting the book down every few pages. Then I started to skim it.

Why the partial boredom? Well, the protagonist sat in cafes, watched people, walked down the street, moped, thought, overthought, etc. There was no dang plot, or very little of one. And a plot-less novel — no matter how well-written and thought-provoking — is going to have a harder time holding a reader’s interest.

Now a brief poetic interlude, sung to the tune of “If I Only Had the Nerve” from The Wizard of Oz:

There are followers or leaders
Who were bound to become readers
They like literature a lot

But they could change that habit
Flee as fast as a rabbit
From a novel with no plot

I’m afraid there’s no denying
If I did I would be lyin’
To adults or to a tot

Authors could show their prowess
(With a touch pad, not a mowess)
If they only had a plot

Oh we’d be in our stride
Book fans to the core
Oh we’d read the way we never read before
And then we’d read
And read some more

If many an authorsaurus
Wrote works that were more for us
More book sales to be got

Yes, we’d gladly read their fiction
And our brains would have less friction
If they only had a plot

I’m exaggerating a bit, because there are a number of novels with little or no plot that I like a lot. It helps if that sort of book has humor (as with, say, John Steinbeck’s episodic Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row), but even plot-challenged books with a scarcity of laughs can merit our admiration and deep respect. The aforementioned Nausea is one of them, as is Evan Connell’s exceptional Mrs. Bridge, which I finished this afternoon (more on that novel in next week’s post).

Yet…a plot is usually needed to activate another “p” word: page-turning.

Take any of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, such as The Killing Floor and 61 Hours. How will the bad guys be defeated? How much damage will they do before that happens? How much damage will Reacher do to them? How will Jack’s latest romance begin, and end? We’re on the edge of our seats.

But a novel doesn’t have to be a thriller or a mystery or another kind of genre fiction to propel the reader along. It can be literary fiction, or a popular/literary hybrid like Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. Will Edmond Dantes escape from prison? Well, it’s pretty obvious he will. But how exactly will he exact his epic revenge on the various people who framed him?

Other classics are also full of plot lines, even as they can be brainy, too. For instance, we wonder what will happen to Crime and Punishment‘s double-murderer Raskolnikov even as we are awed by how Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrestles with all the important questions: psychological motivations, guilt, nonconformity, and more. Nearly as propulsive and thought-provoking is Richard Wright’s Native Son, which also stars a murderer whose fate we very much wonder about. Or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, in which an innocent man is put on trial. The last two novels have the added dimension of gruesome racism.

A fictional crime doesn’t have to involve real or alleged physical violence, of course. Donna Tartt keeps the suspense going for hundreds of pages after her protagonist takes and hides a priceless painting in The Goldfinch.

Another compelling plot line focuses on whether characters will survive a war (Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Erich Maria Remarque’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die, etc.) or survive a hostage scenario (Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto) or survive other life-threatening situations. It’s hard to top death, or the threat of death, for drama.

And will courageous political activists — such as those in Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies — survive opposing a despotic government?

Then of course there is the age-old and frequently fascinating plot line involving relationships, married or otherwise. Will two people get together or not? Will they stay together or not? How lovey-dovey or stormy is the relationship? So many examples: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, and thousands of other novels.

And there are all kinds of other plot variations, including whether characters will finally achieve a non-romantic goal — as with the protagonist in Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That, or Dorothy, The Scarecrow, The Tin Woodman, and The Cowardly Lion in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

How important is a plot to you when reading fiction? Do you like some novels that mostly lack a plot? If so, which ones? Also, what are some of your favorite books with compelling plots?

That’s a lot of questions, but at least I didn’t post a second Wizard of Oz parody…

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson. 

One Novel Stands Out, But Why?

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What is it that makes a many-novel author become known mostly for one novel?

Maybe that book is their best, even though they’ve written a number of other good or great books. Maybe it’s because that most-known novel became famous partly because it was turned into a popular movie. Maybe the publisher marketed that one book more than the others. Maybe there’s no discernible reason.

I was thinking about all that last week when reading Fannie Flagg’s Standing in the Rainbow — a funny, sunny, sentimental, heartwarming novel that also seriously addresses sexism, racism, homophobia, infidelity, death, etc. And the 2002 book — which spans more than five decades of life in a small Missouri town — includes a drunk-with-power politician whose presidential campaign in some ways eerily presages the vile Donald Trump’s divisive White House run.

Flagg has also authored other excellent novels (several set in Alabama) — including A Redbird Christmas, Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, I Still Dream About You, and The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion. But when the general reader thinks of Flagg, what mostly comes to mind is Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe — which probably is the author’s best novel, and was made into a beloved major motion picture. Still, Flagg’s other books deserve to have much higher profiles.

Of course, Flagg’s fans know and love her novels, and the same can be said for the fans of other multi-book authors associated mostly with one novel.

Those other authors? Let me name just a few, in alphabetical order:

— Margaret Atwood’s most famous book by far is The Handmaid’s Tale, but she has also authored more than a dozen other superb novels — including Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake.

— Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is that author’s book most assigned in high school and college courses, but she also wrote other compelling novels such as O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia.

— Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World far outstrips his other books in popularity, but his novels such as Antic Hay, Point Counter Point, and Island are well worth the read, too.

— Herman Melville is of course best known for Moby-Dick, but he penned a number of other fine novels such as Typee, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, and Billy Budd. Plus the riveting short stories “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno” are almost long enough to be novellas.

— L.M. Montgomery is mostly associated with the memorable Anne of Green Gables, but she also attracted readers with compelling works such as the various Anne sequels, the Emily trilogy, and The Blue Castle.

Can you name other authors who wrote a number of very good novels yet are mostly known for just one of those books? Why the disproportionate focus on that one novel?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’ve finished and am now rewriting/polishing a book called Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Writers, but am still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as “Dear Abby” and Ann Landers, and other notables such as Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.