Book Review: The Prophet

I love when books reference literature. Here’s an exchange I read a few weeks ago, as Pepper Cartwright sums up her feelings about her first, disastrous weeks as a Justice:

“As for embarrassment, I am way beyond that. On the other side of the wall of humiliation is liberation.”

Declan stared, “Kahlil Gibran or refrigerator magnet?” ~Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship

This exchanged made me realize something: the reason I usually enjoy those references is because I understand them. Getting the lit joke is part of my nerdy DNA. But not having read Gibran’s The Prophet, I wasn’t quite sure what Buckley was getting at. What’s a nerdy girl to do?

Well, making little headway with another book for Helen’s Middle East Reading Challenge (which is still ongoing through the summer, and has no book limit, so check it out), I moved The Prophet to the top of my TBR pile. I’d read some reviews about this book, both positive and negative, and I really didn’t know what to expect. So I tried to go at it with an open mind.

The book consists of short essays on philosophical topics, related in the form of a discussion between the Prophet and the people of the city he is about to leave. The Prophet touches on the questions common to most religious traditions: love, work, sorrow, poverty, religion. What Gibran presents is basically a philosophy of kindness – kindness to yourself, kindness to others, kindness to the planet. His writing is gentle. His tone is caring. It’s easy to understand why so many people have loved this book. Originally published in 1923, it has never been out of print.

But I also understand where Buckley was coming from with the refrigerator magnet quip.

Gibran focuses on dualities throughout the essays. The aphorisms come fast and furious in this short text:

“To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam.”

“Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?”

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

You get the idea. Great stuff, but there comes a point of adage-overload that I reached about half-way through. And some of them are pretty abstruse:

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

I’m still trying to work the physics of that one out.

Overall, this is a lovely book. I can see why it came from a Lebanese author: it celebrates the humanistic convergence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and Lebanon was blessed to have large populations of Christians, Jews and Muslims living together for so much of its history. I liked it, but it was a bit much as a book – it would have been smarter to read the essays one at a time, like meditations to start or end the day. Still, it’s a classic for a reason, and if you haven’t read it, you really should.

You’ll get the jokes. But you might also get inspired.

So I have finally added to my Middle East Reading Challenge total: I’ve made it to four. Thanks so much to Helen for hosting! I still want to finish an Israeli title before July, and any suggestions would be welcome!

The Night Counter: Every life has 1,001 stories to tell

Scheherazade had to get her stories from somewhere, didn’t she? In Alia Yunis’ The Night Counter, we meet the immortal storyteller as she is winding down the end of her 1,001 nights of stories from Fatima Abdullah, matriarch of a large and scattered clan of Lebanese Americans. Now in her mid-80s, Fatima is counting down the nights of her life, and we meet her as she is finally getting to her most personal stories – the ones that are hardest to tell, because they are about her adult life.

Fatima’s experience mirrors that of many Lebanese-Americans. Fatima’s marriage to her first husband, Marwan, was arranged. Marwan had grown up in the United States and had traveled back to Lebanon to find a bride. The couple arrives back in Detroit, where Marwan is a union organizer, during the Great Depression. After Marwan’s untimely death, a pregnant Fatima marries her husband’s best friend, and together they raise a typical first generation American family in the suburbs of Detroit.

The book spans both Fatima’s early life in Lebanon and her life in the United States. But not surprisingly, it’s the relationships between Fatima, her husbands, her children and her numerous grandchildren that are the heart of the novel – these are the stories Scheherazade is dying to hear, because they illustrate the immutable (love, betrayal, anger, forgiveness) and the current moment in time (higher education, anti-Islam, interfaith marriage, even computer dating).

"We have memories so that we can share them." Scheherazade sighed for the second time that night. "Otherwise God wouldn't have given us the ability to remember."

Without giving anything away, the large clan allows Yunis to cover the breadth and depth of the first generation American experience, from those who embrace their roots to those who would do anything to bury them deeper.

I really enjoyed this book, because it delivered not only a range of characters but a range of emotions. It was like a family gathering in novel form, with some laughs, some tears, some unpleasant memories, and a shared history that can only be understood by having lived it. Fatima, in particular, reminded me of my own grandmother, who was herself the wife of a teamster organizer – she was cranky and blunt and protective and loyal. Fatima is not a warm and fuzzy, baking-cookies kind of grandma, but she is still motivated by her great love for her family. And she is constrained by the time she was born in and the culture she was raised in; throughout the novel we see her difficulties in understanding and accepting her children’s very different realities.

I thank Marie at Boston Bibliophile for this recommendation, and highly recommend it myself. In the post-September 11 era, I think it’s especially worth considering how very typical of the American experience the story of the Abdullah clan truly is.

Summer reading wrap-up, and some plans for autumn

The calendar says I can wear white shoes for another week or so, but back-to-school means "autumn" to me, and with a couple of my reading challenges winding down, it's time to evaluate how I did on my reading goals this summer. Short answer: Not too bad at all.

My first goal was to enjoy reading for pleasure again. That may seem a bit looney, but after six years on the tenure track, I had gotten into the very sad habit of thinking of reading as a chore. And let's face it, it can be if you only associate it with work, work, work. Or even worse, when you associate it with guilt because you ought to be working. (You'd think as a stupendously lapsed Catholic I could discard the guilt, but it appears to be the one thing that stuck.) This summer I enacted what I already knew -- I am better at working when I actually make time to do little things for myself, like read or take a walk, or play a game of Scrabble with my daughter. My TBR pile is a source of potential pleasure, not anxiety. Even now that the semester has started, I'm still making time for reading. The joy is back. Goal one accomplished.

My second goal was to expand my reading horizons. I took two positive steps toward that goal. First, I joined a couple of different reading challenges: fitting books into the challenges introduced me to reviews of books across a wide range of genres, and by a variety of authors that were completely new to me. I've benefitted from the regional challenges in particular: the Japanese Literature Challenge 4 and the Scandinavian Reading Challenge were responsible for my two favorite books of the summer, Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen and Tove Jansson's The Summer Book. (Okay, I also read a couple of lousy books, but the good books more than made up for them.)

As my second step toward widening my horizons, I started participating in discussions about books. I found some book blogs I really like to read. Checking my Blogger Dashboard with a cup of coffee has become part of my day -- a part I really enjoy. I owe a great portion of my current TBR pile to the insights provided in the thoughtful reviews of many book bloggers, and I'm really thankful for that. (I'm also thankful that I have access to one of the world's largest university library systems, but that's another blogpost altogether.) So I'd describe the state of my second goal as "progressing well." You can always be more "expansive," right?

So what's up next? After all, this is a blog about what I'm doing when I ought to be grading. With the papers about to roll in, I need to shore up my procrastination skills. Not to worry: I am happy to report my grading avoidance strategies for the fall will be many and varied!

• Number 1: Complete the challenges I've started, and find some interesting new ones. I've already started on this goal. I have three Scandinavian titles left to blog about, one of which I've already read. I'll probably add two more to the Japanese Literature Challenge as well (I'm Yoshimoto-obsessed, so thanks, Meredith). I've also joined the Middle East Reading Challenge over at Helen's Book Blog. For that challenge, I'm hoping to read at least 4 books from across the region: one from Israel, one from Lebanon, one from Egypt and one from Iran. If anyone has any suggestions for titles, I would love to hear them.

• Number 2: Participate in a read-along. I've read posts about read-alongs, but haven't done one yet. Since I haven't found a book club in State College, I feel like I might really enjoy this. One thing I know for certain about myself is deadlines keep me honest. Once I attach a date to something, I can usually do it -- not early, but at least on time. Again, any suggestions are appreciated.

• Number 3: Be a better blogger. I'm pretty new at this, but I already realize my site could be better. I'm going to work on designing some new pages and some indexing. I also plan to update more often. I only have a few, highly valued followers, and they deserve something new to look at more often than I've been providing it. I'm thinking four posts a week. Might be too much, but at least it's a goal!

We'll see how it goes.

Persepolis: Breaking out of a rut with graphic art

My good friend Jess at Desperado Penguin had a great idea for a reading adventure that became The No Ruts Reading Challenge. Basically, the idea was to read a small number of books in genres and by authors you have never encountered before – or even have existing prejudices against. I had already dedicated this summer to expanding my reading horizons, so I decided to try and fit some of the books from other challenges into No Ruts.

Reaching the Bronze Level of No Ruts proved easy. I read my first-ever Banana Yoshimoto title for Dolce Belleza’s wonderful 4th Japanese Literature Challenge, and listened to my first audio book with Ellie. Silver Level – reading something despite some kind of bad review – seemed wide open. I’m a member of Goodreads, and believe me, for every person that loves a book, there’s someone else who hates it. But in the spirit of the challenge, I was looking for something different from anything I had tried before. When my 16-year-old daughter gave a lukewarm review to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, I knew I had Silver nailed: I had never read a graphic novel.

The Complete Persepolis is a fascinating memoir of the Iranian Revolution – or more correctly, revolutions, since the first one ousted the Shah, and a second brought the Islamic government to power. Marjane is the only daughter of the Satrapi family, a wealthy, well-connected and liberal clan that supports the first revolution. But as Iran moves toward fundamentalism, the family and their close friends feel like unwelcome guests in their own home. Finally, Marjane’s independent, secular attitudes become such a problem for the family – and pose such a danger to herself – that she is shipped off to boarding school in Austria. She eventually returns to Tehran and attends art school, but ultimately she must decide if she can live within the narrow confines of fundamentalist Iranian society.

The book is at turns funny, smart and annoying. The graphic novel format makes great sense here, because Satrapi is an illustrator, and she is more comfortable “speaking” in pictures than in words. In fact, the story is so compelling that I often forgot I was reading a graphic novel. Satrapi does not spare herself from the artist’s critical eye: she allows the reader to experience some difficult and unflattering episodes, a courageous and dangerous path for a memoirist who wants to remain “likeable.” Still, Marjane comes off more strident than heroic at some points. In others, she seems more annoyed that the Islamic Revolution ruined the party for Iran’s elite than concerned about the societal outcomes of regime change. But perhaps that's just the way a young woman would feel about a revolution – I certainly haven’t lived through what Satrapi did.

This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in a social history of the Iranian Revolution, or for anyone trying to dip their toes into the graphic novel genre. Another rut undone. Another reward.