In Search of Good Writing

"Good writing is clear thinking made visible."

~ Anonymous

Over the years, I've been enamored with writers who create believable characters, or those who use unusual descriptive behavior, or who develop intriguing plot lines, reading mainly fiction or occasionally non-fiction that could be helpful to my business (or an immediate personal crisis).

These past few years, with the time that retirement affords and the support of participation in a book club with members of diverse interests, I've become a much more eclectic reader who is learning to appreciate, above all, quality writing.  Writing that helps me clarify my own thinking, or writing so crisp as to expand or challenge the way I currently think.  

Now, I'm reading essays, short stories, memoirs, historical narrative, science, and, what may surprise some of my friends, searching the net for commentaries, book reviews, etc.  

This month, I'd like to recommend two diverse examples of good reading I've been fortunate to discover.

The first is a book of essays by poet and essayist, (and funeral director!) Thomas Lynch, BODIES IN MOTION AND AT REST.   As reviewed in the New York Times in 2000, "The essays in ''Bodies in Motion and at Rest'' are a thought-provoking, engaging hybrid of memoir, meditation and comic monologue.  Whether writing about his Roman Catholic boyhood, fatherhood, the family legacy of alcoholism, the funeral trade or the integral relationship in his life between the ''mortuary and literary arts,'' Lynch approaches his subjects with a beautifully executed balance of irreverence with reverence, gallows humor with emotional delicacy and no-nonsense immanence with lyrical transcendence."

I parceled out the essays, as I do a box of Godiva chocolates, savoring each, wanting the pleasure to last as long as possible.  This is a book I will read again.

The second example is brainpickings, a site originally recommended by one of the aforementioned book club members.  Its weekly newsletter,  accessed at https://www.brainpickings.org, introduces the reader to a variety of topics containing references and links to related books and articles.  It is consistently well-written and beautifully illustrated.   Be warned, you will be reading all week if, like me, you can't resist clicking on the additional links.  Check it out.

Worth Checking Out

"I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage."

                                                             ~   Arthur Schopenhauer

Here are three novels that have not only assuaged any trouble or concern I may have had these past months, but they also engaged me for far more than an hour at a time - one of my criteria for a good book.

The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny. c2015
This is the 11th installment in the series about the Canadian Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, now retired to the tiny village of Three Pines - and one of my favorite in the series. (I could not put it down, read it in one day.) The story line is based on a true episode in Canadian history which makes the rising threat in the novel even more believably threatening.

Penny must love this quirky cast of characters she has created, for they grow in depth and complexity, with talents and foibles, strengths and secrets, while maintaining the core of consistency one finds in decade-old friendships.  Above all, Penny is a skilled writer who combines intricate, multi-layered plots, as well as rich character development, with vivid imagery.  She, like P.D. James or Ruth Rundell, is a writer of mysteries, rather than a mystery writer.

You do not need to have read the previous novels to become engrossed in The Nature of the Beast.  But had I not, I would immediately have bought the first in the series, Still Life.


All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. c2014
I have to admit that I would not have read this book were it not one my book club's selections for the summer- not another World War II novel?!  And what a loss that would have been.

On one level, this is the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose lives collide in occupied France.  Their stories are told in alternating chapters that also shift back and forth in time, providing a framework for lessons about the brain and blindness, about art and light waves we cannot see, about courage and brain washing.  And a different kind of World War ll novel, centered around the impact on the lives of children rather than battles and strategy. blood and despair.

But for all the depth of story, all the lessons learned, what I loved most about this work was Doerr's stunning use of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors.  This is a book to read slowly, to savor, to marvel at and to read again.


Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. cl971
I discovered Wallace Stegner late in life, again thanks to my book club.  Have meant to read this for the last 5 years, but it took a friend, whose recommendations I value, telling me that this is her "very favorite novel", one she revisits every few years, to motivate me to finally pick it up.

I was hooked within the first three pages.  Hooked by the promise of fascinating characters, an intricate plot, a deeper understanding of the history of the West (I am a transplanted Mid-westerner) and the exploration of some personal questions that I am currently pondering, and some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read.  I wasn't disappointed.

Angle of Repose explores several themes in its story within a story. First,  it is a complex, compassionate examination of marriage  and the angle of repose - "the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning together from the vertical which produces the false arch.  For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. " As Lyman Ward, a disabled, divorced professor chooses to explore his grandparents' enduring marriage, he naturally explores his own life, his failed marriage, the kind of man he has become and might yet become.

But along the way, it is also of story of youthful hopes and expectations, disappointments and loss, reality vs. myth.  Seamlessly woven into a gorgeous piece of writing, well deserving of the Pulitzer, worth checking out, if you've not read it.  Worth reading more than once.

The Last Gift of Time

"Women, I believe, search for fellow beings who have faced similar struggles, conveyed them in ways a reader can transform into her own life, confirmed desires the reader had hardly acknowledged - desires that now seem possible.  Women catch courage from the women whose lives and writings they read and women call the bearer of that courage friend."

~ Carolyn Heilbrun

The Last Gift of Time:Life Beyond Sixty

I have been fortunate to acquire a few such friends along the way, often by accident - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Tristine Rainer, Judith Cameron, Natalie Goldberg.  Heilbrun is the most recent; somehow I missed her until recently when The Last Gift of Time was lent to me by a friend to whom I'd shared my interest in reading about aging. This book, she said, was a must to read, a classic, a favorite of hers and of her mother before her. I wasn't 20 pages into the book when I knew I wanted my own copy. 

Although I am close in age to the age at which Heilbrun wrote the book, I did not identify easily with her at the outset, the particulars of our lives being quite different.  Heilbrun was a distinguished author and critic, a professor at Colombia for over 30 years, a single child of upper class Jewish parents, a mother and grandmother, well-traveled, well-known.  And I - the eldest daughter of working class Sicilian-Americans, a Mid-westerner at heart, educator, small business owner, no children - in so many ways, an ordinary woman. 

As the book unfolded, however, as Heilbrun shared her insights and opinions about men, marriage, memory, time, mortality, I felt I'd come across a kindred spirit.  When she described her despair over the state of our society, I became her hallelujah choir.  When she declared a woman could be a feminist without hating men, I knew I'd found another friend (Heilbrun calls such a friend "unmet").  And when she asserted that to remain vital beyond sixty, one needs to pursue an undertaking that "requires strong effort and the evidence of growing proficiency", I knew this to be another one of those right books at the right time that I cherish.

What sealed my conviction that I'd found another friend was the sense of recognition when I discovered that Heilbrun had written a mystery series under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross, a series I had devoured years ago.  And the sense of loss and sadness when I learned that Heilbrun had committed suicide only seven years after the publication of The Last Gift of Time.

I recognize that some younger readers may find this book to be dated; after all, it was written over 20 years ago.  But I hope they will explore it anyway, if only to appreciate the challenges and contributions of feminists of Heilbrun's era.  And to get a taste of her writing style.  Crisp, clear, intelligent, uncompromising, with an irreverence I found particularly appealing.  

My copy arrived in the mail yesterday.  I intend to reread it soon, to take more time to savor the writing, to reflect more carefully, to appreciate that I came upon this gift, now that I am beyond sixty.

I Recommend....

"My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?” 

                                                                                                                       Dr. Seuss     

In the last years of my mother's life, she often said that it seemed she was reading the Sunday paper every day, so quickly was time passing by.  I'm not quite at that point yet, but the quick passage of time has been brought home to me repeatedly in recent months...my 74th birthday, my "baby" brother's 70th, our 32nd wedding anniversary. the 40th birthday of a young man I would have sworn was only 25.  And returning to this blog to discover I haven't posted in almost a year to the day!

I have been reading, honestly!  In fact, two or three books some weeks.  Mystery, historical narrative, psychology, e-books, paperbacks.   Book club selections, books I've enjoyed, books I haven't finished - but none that I've felt compelled to share until recently.  None that I couldn't wait to recommend to friend, family, even strangers, until recently.

Therefore, after a longer hiatus than I had planned, here are four books that I have been recommending, even extolling whenever and wherever I've had the opportunity.

Flourish by Martin E. P. Seligman    NF c2013

Seligman, considered by some as the father of Positive Psychology, has continued his work on resiliency, learned optimism and most recently, what he refers to as well-being.  A champion of learning from what works and from healthy practices rather than illness and disease, Seligman combines research and application and presents his findings here with clarity and - optimism.

I almost cheered when I read that Seligman "detests" the word happiness because it's become so overused as to become meaningless...the way I also have come to feel about the word "deserve".

Focusing on well-being and its five pillars of positive emotion, engagement, positive relationship, meaning and accomplishment, Seligman asserts, is what makes for the good life.  And he supports his assertions with academic studies as well as anecdotal stories.