In The Country of the Young and In the country of the dumb

I just finished reading Lisa Carey's In the Country of the Young. It's a book I've had sitting on a shelf for years. That's the curse of those of us who love books...we never have enough time to read them all! Anyway, it's a really gorgeous story about the dead...both the really dead, and the living dead. You could call it a fairytale, or you could call it a parable, but in either case, it shows us how our ghosts (or the skeletons in your closet, if you will)--if we listen to them--can teach us about life.

Oisin (Oh-sheen) is alive, but just barely. He's closed himself off from most of life, both the joys and the sorrows, because of a series of tragic events in his younger years. In truth, he's always been much better at communicating with ghosts than with the living...

"Last week, on the night of the full moon equinox, Oisin had left his front door open until morning. He has done this every November for almost thirty years, but it's been ages since he truly expected anything to come of it. Now the light in a house that should be dark pulls him toward his door with a combination of thrill and panic. He swings it open, propping it with a tree-trunk stool from the porch. Please please please, he repeats in his mind, and he hopes this begging will serve as an invitation.

"He knows wht happened to his tobacco. Something has entered his hermitage, something he has anticiapted for more than half of his life. Something that most people--if they believed in such things at all--would not welcome with an open door."

And that's how the "visitation" began. That's how Oisin was able to look at his life up until then, and finally move on. It's a brilliant metaphor for self-examination. But the tale isn't just one about the dreariness of figuring out one's life. It's a celebration of everything that we cherish: childhood, love, lust, wisdom.

I spent the last pages of the book in tears, so I need to reread it. I was so carried away by the emotions of the characters, and by my own emotions, that it was more like reading with half my brain and all of my heart. It's not so often that a book enables a personal epiphany. In my superstitious Irish mind, I think that maybe I was supposed to read this lovely piece when I did, six years after it was first published. Maybe my own ghosts weren't ready to come to me until now. Who knows?

Lisa will be reading from her new novel, Every Visible Thing, at Brookline Booksmith on August 31st. Go see her!

Note: The book I read was an uncorrected proof, and before any of you English majors start bellyaching about a light in a house being able to be thrilled or panicky, just keep the uncorrected part in mind.

As for the country of the dumb, I just came across these two tidbits in The Week. First, in a section entitled "Only in America," there was this:
"A camper is suing the U.S. government because he fell off a cliff while looking for somewhere to pee during the night. Jerry Mersereau, 23, was camping Mount Hood National Forest when misadventure struck. 'While finding a place to relieve himself,' his lawsuit says, 'plaintiff walked off the unguarded and unprotected creek, falling approximately 20 to 30 feet to the creek bed below.' Mersereau says the government should have known that campers might wander off the cliff, and is demanding compensation for his 'mental anguish.'"

That piece sits right beside another interesting tidbit in a section called "Good Week For..."
"...the future of the human race, after scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics announced the invention of the first pill to combat stupidity. The drug has been shown to improve the attentiveness and short-term memory of fruit flies and mice."

Too little, too late for Jerry Mersereau, hm?

~Fischlipps

LitPAC...

Don't miss the next LitPAC event, featuring some of Boston's best, local authors, and sponsored by some of the best, local, indie bookstores. No excuses...it's Sunday night. Perfect way to top off the weekend.

The LitPAC blog is fun, too, with all sorts of good links. Check it out.

~Fischlipps

Alone on a plane...

The following is from a site for the book biz called, Shelf Awareness...
"'If they hadn't been able to get books, I think they would've been quite frustrated.'--Jonathan Daniel, the supervisor of a Borders store at Heathrow Airport, in a Los Angeles Times article about business travelers' reactions to not being allowed to take laptops as carry-on luggage on flights to or from London yesterday. Daniel noted that 'laptop-free travelers' were among the store's best customers; popular titles included Freakonomics and The World Is Flat. It was unclear whether the travelers could take the books on planes or whether they read them during the long waits."

In fact, I was just listening to NPR and they were saying that in flights out of London, you can't take anything with you, other than your wallet and your passport. It would really be a drag not to be able to take a book on a flight. To me, there's not much that's more relaxing than knowing that I have a few uninterrupted hours to get lost in a good read.

But what bothered me most about that article wasn't the possibility of being separated from my favorite author, but the sentiment that so much working time will be lost now that laptops aren't allowed on planes! We are a society gone either maddeningly stupid or stupidly mad. So many of us have forgotten how to detach from work. Very few offices seem to respect "vacation" time anymore. Yeh, you're not in the office, but if they can call you on the beach or up in the mountains, are you really away from it? Is your spirit regenerating the way it was supposed to? I don't think so. And really, is what most of you are doing, all that important? No offense, but I doubt it. We're all racing like crazy, day in and day out, but to where? I haven't managed to spot any finish line yet. What's the damned rush? Why are we so consumed with work? Fischlipps thinks it's because most of us aren't doing anything we think is really worthwhile, so we rationalize that we're too busy...just can't get around to it. Well, your next plane ride might just be your chance. While you're sitting there with no computer, gaze out the window and daydream. Talk to the person next to you. Make a list of things you want to do, and start carving out the time to do them. I can't go so far as to say that this averted horror might be a blessing in disguise, but while you're sitting there, maybe you can come up with a better way to put it.

It's not easy...

...to name a "best" bookstore in a town like Boston. Not when you have the likes of Harvard Bookstore, Porter Square Books, the New England Book Fair, Village Books and Newtonville Books, to name a few. But this year, once again, Brookline Booksmith was the winner!!!

If you've never worked in a bookstore, you probably haven't given much thought to the details. You may not realize that the profit margin is small, the competition is fierce, the hours are long. It's retail! In, say, the GAP, you have t-shirts, sweaters, pants and a few accessories. Most anybody with an eye for color can help you, right? But how many times have you gone in and come out annoyed with the "help" you got from the hired hands? First you have to find one who's not talking to a colleague or trying to look busy enough that they can ignore you. If you do corral someone, what you get in reply to your questions is oftentimes, a kind of way off look and a finger pointing in the direction of the newest pile of (albeit nicely) folded shirts. Ach, Gott!

When you go into the Booksmith, however, you're going to find a whole store full of book-loving clerks, who take pride and joy in helping you find the book you want. Customers walk in there knowing one word of a title, the color of the cover or that they heard/read about it somewhere three weeks ago...and they walk out with that book, thanks to people who know their business.

But books aren't the only thing people go to the Booksmith for. They go for the events, they go for the funny and unusual things they'll find in the Card & Gift Room, they go because it's a neighborhood haven where they can meet their friends, or sit are read. They go because their dogs are welcomed with treats and smiles. They go because of the clever signage, the creaky wooden floors, the way the books make the place smell. They go because they're getting married, they want to know how to fix their computer, they need a new diet, they have a thing for science fiction novels, they're going to take the MCATs, they're planning a trip or they're depressed. I think that working in a bookstore is a very intimate occupation...you get to glimpse a lot of the private lives of customers by what they buy. It's a trust.

So why did the Booksmith win this year? Well, there's no question that it has everything a bookstore should have (see above). And no one can deny that Marshall Smith, the founder of the store, had a great idea when he started the Paperback Booksmith all those years ago. But I think that the driving force behind the store--the real heart and soul of Brookline Booksmith--is it's manager and part owner, Dana Brigham. Dana is one of the most warm, generous, nurturing, liberal and tolerant women I know, and without her spirit, I don't think the store would be the one we all know and love.

Congratulations, you all!

~Fischlipps

Been a long time...

...but I've read two great books! Yeh, you'd think I'd have gotten more done, but there've been extenuating circumstances too boring to cite, so let's get to the interesting stuff.

Louis Bayard's The Pale Blue Eye, first: It's really rare these days to read something so special. A couple weeks ago, I took a few days off and went away to sit by a pool, read, recharge and do a little of my own writing. Louis was the man I took with me. He was a splendid traveling companion! His story, a murder(s) mystery, has more twists than a twizzler, and a lot more flavor. I want to compare him to Donna Morrissey, in that both of these writers are dazzling in their skill and their ability to transport us to a different time and place through dialogue. Their characters are complex and sympathetic. And maybe most importantly, they're actually telling an interesting story about human relationships. One of the biggest problems I have with some of the hip, young writers these days--the McSweeny's crowd, for instance--is that while they're oftentimes striking wordsmiths, they just as oftentimes, have nothing to say. They're just talking to hear the clever way words flow from them. They entertain me for about 5 minutes, then bore the bejesus out of me with their preciousness. Maybe they'll be great writers when they grow up.

Before I get to the next book, I need to vent about something. I saw a piece the other morning about GPS systems, and decided that I think that they're the next step in dumbing down and isolating us.

Think about it...where's the adventure in a road trip if you don't get lost? It tests our relationships ("You idiot! I told you we should have turned left!" "Yeh, well the last time you said that, we ended up in a cornfield." "Ok, but we got a bunch of free corn and had sex in the backseat." "True. Hm....."). And what about the great little restaurants you visit, because you stopped and asked directions from a flesh'n'blood person? You'd never have come across that place with your nose in a gps screen...AND you'd have missed that deer drinking from the pond at the side of the road, too. Naw, I say steer clear of gps systems. Just think of all the places Christopher Columbus, Magellan and Balboa would've missed if they took the most direct route to their discoveries.

Ok, next book: Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle. This book, which just came out, made me so nervous, I couldn't stop reading it! I was furious with the pig-headedness of the protagonists, terrified of the seething rage of the antagonist, riveted by the inner dialogues of all the diverse characters and can't wait to read more by this scary and brilliant guy. If you've ever felt like you got the raw end of a deal (and who hasn't?) and want to take matters into your own hands, this fast and clever read is an excellent release for those feelings. Not pleasant, but not to be missed.

And last, for this morning, but far from least, what about this horror in the Middle East? I have an idea: what if all of us, everywhere, who don't want this to be happening, step up one day and say to the governments involved and the terrorists involved, "STOP!!! Cut it the hell out!!! We are not going to vote for you, support you, or be afraid of your crazy asses any longer. We are family, neighbors, friends, people just trying to make our existence a nice one. We may not agree with each other, we may have radically different lifestyles, but we can live side by side and learn to tolerate these differences. We don't even have to like each other, but we will tolerate each other!" Think about it. There are so many more of "us" than there are of "them." We could do this. All we need are leaders (real leaders, not politicians) in all the countries to get together and organize a big sit-in or peaceful protest on a huge, world-wide scale, and we could do it. Yes, it's incredibly idealistic and not so simple to pull off...but what are the alternatives? Just look at the devastation. And it's not just the Middle East. These injustices in the name of ego and greed are going on all over the world. Have been forever, really. But they're perpetrated by a few on millions and that just don't make sense, do it?

What's the world coming to, you ask?

Good Week For Coitus interruptus, after a study revealed that eight out of 10 adults are so dependent on their cell phones that they can’t bear to turn them off during sex.

~Fischlipps