November Reading

Yesterday I went with my wife, A, to her 7am ultrasound. She scheduled it early so we could both go. After a moment of the technician methodically gliding the handle around on her bare stomach, the dark screen was flooded with a silhouette of the baby that slid back and forth like mercury in a thermometer. When the technician paused, the yet un-fused vertebrae of the spine lit up electric white. The ribs, the four chambers of the heart, the stomach, the brain, the bones of the legs and arms—these also were illuminated in turn, star-bright and defined. A was far enough along that we could have found out the gender, but we’re going to wait until the birth.

Here’s a list of what I read in November.

A couple nights ago I was really tired, but instead of going to sleep I was going to try and push through a few chapters of The Adventures of Augie March. As I pulled myself off the bed—where I was gathering resolve—A told me I was being irresponsible with my reading this month, which I thought was really funny, and also made me feel like some kind of maverick, reading badass. Like my reading in November was real Top Gun material. You say The Adventures of Augie March can’t be read in three days? I did it in two. Or like I’m spending sleepless nights working on the cure for cancer or something. Nope! Just reading a lot! Poetry and fiction!

With grading, applying to schools, and trying to produce new work, it probably was a bit much, but I went on a King Library binge and couldn’t stay out of what I brought home. It’s interesting, looking back at the list, at what was the most enjoyable at the time I was reading as opposed to what I can’t quite shake at the end of the month. For instance, Poetry in America by Julia Spicher-Kasdorf (I grabbed it because of the ambitious title) was a fantastic read—something about Spicher-Kasdorf’s sensibility was uniquly intimate, and engaging, and perhaps also familiar—but now I keep thinking about Rachel Zucker’s Eating in the Underworld, which after reading, I didn’t even like as much as The Bad Wife Handbook. I guess the word for that is "haunting."

Jesus’ Son, a recommendation by my friend J, was good, and a lot like Knockemstiff. Profoundly, severely, disturbingly troubled narrators that surface in and out of the linked stories. Still, as unsettling as both those collections are, neither of them have lingered with me for days like Kazuo Ishiguro. Lord have mercy. When We Were Orphans, like the film version of Never Let Me Go, is absolutely devastating. Work by Ishiguro doesn’t make me want to start a book club, it makes me want to start a support group. Are you a reader traumatized by Ishiguro’s brutal and unrelenting vision of the human condition? Whiskey and commiseration each Wednesday night! It would probably be poorly attended because, as all readers of Ishiguro know—there is no help.