Books (not just) for Men

If you haven’t already heard, there is a baby being raised in Toronto, named Storm, whose parents have decided not to reveal the child’s gender to anyone. Inevitably this has caused quite the stir.

Of course it has; it brings up the old question of whether gender is socially constructed or biological. Do boys really gravitate to blue? Are women only interested in Chick Flicks? Must there be guns and bloodshed to keep men interested?

When the writing is good enough, we hope, the people will read, no matter their gender. Frankenstein was created by a woman, as was Howard Roark, the towering symbol of manhood in Ayn Rand’s always readable The Fountainhead. Conversely, Jeffrey Eugenides, in his Pulitzer Prize winning second novel, Middlesex, wrote seemingly effortlessly about a hermaphrodite.

We like to think we’ve gotten over this, and yet even when classically male types of action stories like the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker turn out to be directed by a woman (Kathryn Bigelow), this still comes as a surprise to many. To be sure, the marketing people behind these movies generally believe—and probably for good reason—that boys usually like stories about war and girls are inclined toward tales that end in a wedding.

In lieu of Father’s Day then, and bowing to the realities of a gender divide that, whatever your opinion, looks to be sticking around, what follows are a selection of male authors so careful in the words they set down, so effective with brevity and intensity, so adept in not overtly showing emotion, but yet drawing it so powerfully from their readers, that they are surely selections that will not only be great picks for dad, but also for any reader of great fiction.

Continue here to read that list. 

In the Telling

None too many can tell a tale like a Jack London or an Ernest Hemingway
And this one, it won't be easy
I can say that straight
It'll be told simple enough though
The language mostly plain
But in the telling a kind of beauty
Of what men must do
Men in nature
Men against the elements and worse still against each other
And themselves
The old story, the struggle to survive
Campin out there in the wilds
A fire to keep the lions from getting at your horse
Or so the story goes
But so too the way the moon looks reflected off a river
Just to stop and notice that
Amidst the harsh world God has wrought
That's what this tale'll show
That's what it'll do
The writer calls himself McCarthy
The book's "The Crossing"
Part of his Border Trilogy
This the second in said threesome
And I'm recommendin her to you

The Five Books I Most Often Recommend at the Book Shop Are:

1.

--For its epic scope, its great story and its literary quality (probably the safest bet to satisfy the book club goer, the Oprah lover and the snob), Middlesex is a beaut. 

2.

 
--Click East of Eden for the reasons why

3.

--Click Dance, Dance, Dance for the reasons why;
--The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - because it is widely considered Murakami's first masterpiece and is good for anyone looking for something meatier, denser, more all-encompassing; also that bit of (Japanese) history seems to ease more readers into the belief that what they are reading is "real" literature;
--Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - for sheer wonder and sparkling imagination

 4.

--Click All the Pretty Horses for the reasons why; and

5.

 

--For being my favourite collection of short stories published since Salinger's Nine Stories and winning the Pulitzer on what was Jhumpa Lahiri's first book, The Interpreter of Maladies is a stunning debut.

The Long-Ass Story of How I Came to (Find it Hard to) Recommend Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses"

Referred to in this post: William Shatner, All the Pretty Horses, Harry Potter, Ernest Hemingway, The Road, Keanu Reeves, Shopaholic, Ken Follett, The Social Network, Matt Damon, Vietnamese noodles, Woody Allen, Cormac McCarthy and and and...

You're either into Star Wars or you're not. There's little in between. It takes movies of that scope, movies that remarkably well made to truly break the sci barrier and reach the wider audience. As is of course the case for all great movies, books, music. The way Miles' trumpet can reach well beyond the usual jazzophile's oh so well trained ears and why a half-Jewish short story writer for the New Yorker stunned everyone and himself in 1951 by publishing what turned out to be an international phenomenon. (Clue: It's written by the other writer I never stop talking about. Ie. Not Haruki Murakami.)

Still. Even a movie as good as The Matrix on re-viewing can be hard to swallow (red pill, blue pill, who gives a crap pill?), or so is the case for those of us not sworn allegiance to all things star war/trek involved. For only in the genres we love are we blind to their tropes (eg. Keanu Reeves/William Shatner's acting). But in those genres that don't grab us instant and automatic, we stand outside their bounds and see their structure, their limitations (eg. Keanu Reeves/William Shatner's acting).

All this because I don't know how to recommend Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses to you. Before telling you why, I should stop here to note that Cormac McCarthy's books have about as much in common with the Star Wars movies as Woody Allen does to Harry Potter. But there I go mixing genres again. (If I had an editor he'd have nixed my opening long ago for its terrible misdirection. This post has nothing to do with Star Wars really. Ah, but the pleasures of not working volunteering for the man person.) McCarthy is neither funny nor fantasy. Neither Jew(ish) nor Eng(lish). He's an American and All the Pretty Horses is a western, if we've gotta label it. It is also the first of what's known as "The Border Trilogy," three novels that came almost a decade before they rightly awarded McCarthy the Pulitzer for his masterpiece, The Road.

My confusion and inability to just write a straight recommendation comes in response to an incident that happened to me a few weeks back. I was reading the novel, loving it, lusting after it, getting intimate, not able to stay away, feeling the required need to share it with others, as is my way. An older woman (no need to mention names), lover of books, teacher of youngsters, and clearly a highly intelligent personage all around, she was sitting across from me at a restaurant on Bloor Street, two enormous bowls of Vietnamese noodles between us- there was in fact a whole group of us, but by chance or fate we two were sat across from one another at the one end of the long table. She was so book-lovish and so novel-smartish that I, unable to help myself, had to pull McCarthy's book from my knapsack and share it with her.

"Just read the first page," I said. I was, clearly, very excited.

Which reminds me of my brother-in-law who reads more than God. He knows more than most internet search engines and he is a true book-lover, knowledge-accumulator. He also has a gift for remembering all he reads that is far beyond the average, and well ahead of my less than average and rather crap memory, really.

What I can remember, on first getting to know said brother-in-law and trying to bond, was my bringing up one of my favourite writers, Ernest Hemingway (a big influence on McCarthy, I'm pretty sure, so this story is related - bear with me). Hemingway! my brother-in-law said, all but curling up the one side of his smirk. He then, in bold and hilarious fashion did his impression of a typical Hemingway novel. It went something like this:

I woke up. I went downstairs. I had a drink. The drink was good. Then I went outside. After I had some more to drink. Then I went and slept. In the morning I drank again and it was good.

The point was clear. The Hem(ingway) was lame, was simpleton, was ridiculous. And from outside I can totally see it. And yet I am a fan, a lover, and a sucker most of all to Hemingway's astoundingly simple(-seeming!) style.

But back to that older woman.

I gave her my copy of All the Pretty Horses, the one I went out my way to get because it didn't have Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz smooching on the cover (tie-in to the movie, no thank you, especially when said movie is said to be crap!).After reading for a couple expectant (on my part) minutes, she looked up, and was laughing. If you know The Road never mind Blood Meridian or anything else by Cormac McCarthy you know that laughter ain't a common reaction to the never less than brutally intense writer.

What? I said.

This is a joke, right? She genuinely thought I was pulling her leg she found the writing so cliche, so bad. Like a bad western, she said.

What's so interesting to me is how clear and right both her opinion and my brother-in-law's opinion were. Like an old friend who recently status updated on facebook:  

The Social Network = made-for-TV movie. 

I hated the comment at first, disappointed that such a smart friend would disagree so vehemently with my taste in a movie. Because when it comes to taste it's always personal, isn't it? Then I actually thought about it and thought, He's right. The Social Network does have something of the TV movie to it. The dialogue especially, but even the movie's arc. It was, in fact, a brilliant insight, especially as Sorkin, who wrote it, was the guy who wrote and created TV's The West Wing. Yet after taking that in, after being willing to accept it - to even appreciate it - the movie remains my favourite flick of the year. (We now have a bet going, that friend and I, both of us sure that in two years the other one will have totally changed his mind and adore/despise the flick. Time will tell.)

This week I started working part-time at a big book store. This snobby, nerdy, bloggy, writerly guy now gets to meet the women that come in looking for the latest Shopaholic. He chats with the men who want - perhaps need - the new Ken Follett.

Good to know there're different opinions in this world.

Here, to conclude, that opening to All the Pretty Horses, a book I strongly recommend and that I liked so very much I had to go online and buy the second and third books in the trilogy. When the writing is as good as this I am a sucker.

You decide:

The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutlgass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping. 

Great Book Openings: Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.