photo via sarah.of.a.lesser.god
This feature (for now in the custody of sarah.of.a.lesser.god) is our way of sharing those book titles, both fiction and nonfiction, that have been standouts in recent reading, and hopefully getting some from our readers in return. The focus is primarily, but not necessarily exclusively, on books concerning women and feminism, and/or written by female authors.
My Pick: Foe by J.M. Coetzee, one of the best books I have ever read. I’ve tagged this post in the “education” category because this book was assigned reading in one of my courses in Fall 2008, and I reread it this past week. Coetzee, a South African author who won the Novel Prize in literature for Foe, is a man who rendered an extraordinary revision of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe from the perspective of a female character, named Susan, of his own creation. Crusoe (or Cruso) is a shadowy presence as the narrative focuses on the lives of Susan and Friday. For those who haven’t read Robinson Crusoe, which I found fascinating and troubling, Friday is an aboriginal man who Crusoe encounters when he’s shipwrecked on a fictional Caribbean island, and is subsequently forced into the role of Crusoe’s manservant.
Susan is the only woman Crusoe had contact with — at least in Coetzee’s imagination — and Defoe’s Friday became the archetypal “noble savage” of English literature. With the privileged white male character Crusoe dead, it is up to Susan to tell the story of the island. But Susan finds herself locked in a duel with her ghost writer: another white man, this one named Foe, in a nod to Crusoe‘s author, Daniel Defoe. (More after the jump.)
Meanwhile, Friday’s tongue is gone. He cannot write. His story is a swirling mystery, one that Susan tries to interpret on his behalf. As the man, Foe, starts commandeering Susan’s memories, she tries to do the same on behalf of the only nonwhite character. At the same time, Susan is grappling with the arrival of a young woman who claims to be her daughter, in spite of the fact that Susan swears she has never given birth. Is her identity being further co-opted as she is being forced into the role of motherhood, and is Foe behind this? Susan insists on taking control of her story, telling Foe, “It is still in my power to guide and amend. Above all, to withhold. By such means do I still endeavour to be father to my story.” I love Coetzee’s use of the word “father”, as Susan knows the importance of using male terms to wrest her rightful power from a man.
Foe is a slim book (157 pages), but a powerful and resonant one. I don’t usually say this, but I really think a lot of Harpy readers would find reading it a rich experience, even if you don’t end up agreeing with my love of Coetzee’s story.
Now, what say you? What are the books that have grabbed your attention recently?
I read Coetzee’s Disgrace a few years ago, and hated it. I remember liking the style of writing, but I cannot stand books where I feel like I’m supposed to like the protagonist/main character despite his absolutely gross behavior. Like the opposite of Lolita‘s Humbert. But it’s possible that I misread it or didn’t give it enough thought, as I did read it the week before I graduated from college, a week spent almost entirely hung over or drunk.
Yay, Harpy Book Club! I just discovered Angela Carter / her story collection The Bloody Chamber. They’re adult retellings of fairy tales (beauty and the beast, little red riding hood). I don’t want to say “from a feminist point of view” because that makes them sound predictable, and they’re not; they’re dark and creepy and sexual and her writing is very lyrical. The title story is a knock-out.
What are the books that have grabbed your attention recently?
I picked up Michael Chabon’s new book of essays, Manhood For Amateurs, despite somewhat mixed reviews. I like Chabon, so I will read it, but essays on what it is to be a man in modern society aren’t really my bag.
@Kathy, that’s a book I would be interested in if I wasn’t so burned out from all of Ayelet Waldeman’s autobiographical work. (Which I haven’t even read, but have absorbed through internet osmosis.)
@Cimorene: I haven’t read Coetzee’s other work, as I almost only read fiction for my courses (hence why I read Foe). I will say that Foe‘s lead character Susan is superficially a really difficult woman to relate to, but that her struggle to keep her story as her story really struck a chord in me.
@Spark: I need to get that! I actually wrote about Angela Carter in one of last year’s Harpy Book Club posts, concerning her take on Lizzie Borden. It was fantastic!
Hmm, that link didn’t work. Here: http://www.harpyness.com/2009/04/23/harpy-book-club-april-edition/
@ sarah.of.a.lesser.god — Disgrace is fiction as well. It’s not so much that the main character is unlikable, though he is. It’s also that he does things like sleep with a reluctant biracial student (he’s white) and when he gets in trouble he is entirely unrepentant. And thinks everyone’s overreacting, and that he shouldn’t have to change just because apartheid is over, because he’s too old to change and old people should be cut some slack and allowed to hang on to their outdated ideals. Which also isn’t really a dealbreaker for me. I guess the problem was that it seemed as though Coetzee agreed that old people should be allowed to have outdated beliefs without being judged for it. And, I mean, I love my racist grandmother though I refuse to be friends with people my age, even relatives my age, who are less racist/sexist/homophobic than she is, so I get that age can be a mitigating factor in judging someone’s bigotry in terms of what it says about their identity as a whole. But in Disgrace, the character ends up hurting other people, namely his student, in a way that is deeply influenced by his ageist/racist/sexist ideology. Again, fictional characters fucking up is basically the stuff that fiction is made out of, but I couldn’t help but feel that Coetzee was fond of the main character in a way that reminded me of David Mamet’s Oleanna. In both plays, there’s lip service paid to “ambiguity” and shit, but ultimately sexual harassment of students, or abuse of one’s power or something, is portrayed as something a that just happens to these hapless guys trying to just do their jobs who accidentally “get involved” with women who end up unfairly persecuting them for sexual harassment. And it’s the kind of shit that annoys me.
I suppose I feel similarly about any hypothetical book that might exist about a woman who falsely accuses someone of rape. Like, sure, maybe the book itself is an interesting exploration of intentions, motivations, the human condition, the battle of the sexes, blah blah blah. But books so deeply, deeply shape our culture that I can’t get behind a book like that when we’re still living in a world in which your average rape victim is totally not believed and supported because of the mythology of “crying rape.”
@Cimorene: Foe sounds interesting, and I’d be interested in giving Coetzee another chance, but I don’t think you’re wrong about Disgrace. I HATED how gender, race, class & sexual assault were portrayed in that book; if he had been intended to be an unsympathetic character, my response may have been different. However, I think you’re right when so much of his appalling behavior was presented without judgement as something that just happens when old dudes are confronted with a new world. Also, I could be wrong, but I think the rape of his daughter was supposed to be symbolic, somehow? There is little I hate in the world more than “symbolic” sexual assault.
I recently tried to pick it up & read it again, especially as it’s now a movie, but I couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters, for the rage.
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god: I’ve learned my lesson for not taking your advice last year. Foe is on my to-read list. I’ve never Coetzee before. I’ll remember to stay away from Disgrace.
I confess I know nothing about Disgrace, but it sounds like a book very different from Foe. I think one of the reasons I like Foe was that it concerned itself mainly with the question of who gets to write history. And as the white man (Foe) takes over on behalf of not one but two people who lack privilege — one due to gender, one to race — it struck me as a fascinating narrative about narrative.
Just finishing Year of The Flood by Ms. Awesome Atwood. I need to re-read, or re-read Oryx and Crake and then Flood again. Started and am flying through Bloodroot by Amy Greene and really enjoying it. Fiction, set in Appalachia, follows a family (mostly a character named Myra) from the Great Depression through today. Hints at special family powers (having “the touch”) and the perils that befall the family related to those powers.
I’ve read Disgrace too, and another one whose name I am forgetting, and just thought I would have to put Coatzee aside for being so motherfucking dark. As life would have it I ended up working on and in South Africa on my last job. I think in a couple of weeks after I move on I might have more room to reconfront Coatzee. I’m very interested in a female narrator. Thanks for this review.
I’ve been reading novels at a furious pace in 2010, many of which I saw recommended here — I read and enjoyed to various extents Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez, Brother I’m Dying, by Edwidge Danticat, The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver (which Sarah you might enjoy because like many of her novels it is heavily researched and historical, set partially in the Mexican household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo when they house Trotsky in exile), and on the advice of my mother, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. I don’t know how I missed reading that classic but man I have been missing out. For those who enjoy memoirs or just luscious writing, I highly recommend.
Right now I’m reading Lush Life by Richard Price and have to say I’m unimpressed despite the hype.
Yeah, I actually had to read and teach Robinson Crusoe to junior high school students two years ago, and it was the first time I read the book. Oh holy hell was that miserable. First of all, all the kids were like, “Cannibalism is SO GROSS why would ANYONE DO THAT?!” And, not that I enjoy eating people, but I was like, Fer chrissake, a little perspective here.
I wish I had known that what I know now about conquistadors and cannibalism. Which is that, apparently, when the Portuguese arrived in the “New World” they were horrified by cannibalism, and were all “Oh it’s their horrible heathen culture this is a good excuse to enslave them.” Montaigne wrote (enjoyably) that the people who used to eat the bodies of their slaughtered enemies used to do it in order to scare future enemies, like “don’t fight us or we’ll win and then eat your bodies, which we know freaks you the fuck out.” Which Montaigne could figure out because when the Portuguese taught these people how to really, properly intimidate their enemies, early modern European style, they adopted it and gave up cannibalism. The Europeans would bury their enemies alive up their chests, then shoot arrows into their chests, then pull them out of the ground and hang them, and once the people who had formerly eaten the bodies of their enemies saw this, they were like, “Whoa, that’s way more brutal and effective” and started doing that and stopped with the cannibalism. Montaigne was like, “Yes, I do think it’s disgusting to vivisect the bodies of humans, and to eat them. But for christ’s sake at least those people wait until their enemies are dead first. Unlike, say, the fucking Inquisition.”
Anyway, it does sound like I’d like Foe, so perhaps once thesising is over I’ll pick it up.
@J.D. – I loved Last of her Kind so much I bought Feather on the Breath of God after reading it. Loved that one too. The only other authors that I’ve sought out their other works after reading them are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (first Half of a Yellow Sun and then Purple Hibiscus) and Kiran Desai (first The Inheritance of Loss and then Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard – less impressive, but it was her first).
What did you think of it?
@Cimorene:
One of my favorite books in childhood was a history of the different conquistadors. Because it was amazingly different from my own life and also true, it twisted my little brain pleasurably.
I just read Lucrezia Borgia and the Mother of Poisons by Roberta Gellis. It was a historical murder mystery, but I was impressed by Gellis ability to divorce the women character’s from modern gender roles and give them attitudes and beliefs that reflected the circumstances of the time.
Now, I’m reading A Male Guide to Women’s Liberation by Gene Marine. It was published in 1972, so is dated, but I’ve been trying to get some perspective on the Men’s Rights movement and early male responses to feminism have been helping. A little.
@bellacoker: I have to say that I really enjoyed Sarah Bradford’s biography of Borgia. (There’s a review here.) It wasn’t brilliant, but it was illuminating and accessible, and perfect length for a six hour cross-country flight.
And if the Men’s Rights BS gives you headaches, check out some of Alan Alda’s responses to feminism, namely fighting for years for the passage of the ERA and appearing in a feminist commercial for ATARI in the ’80s (no, seriously). I think I might need to read Alda’s book next. Dude is pretty cool
For the first time in a long time, I’m not reading a book by a female or about a female. My boyfriend recommended it to me, and since he read Push for me, I figured I could read this. It’s called Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander and for the most part it’s great! It’s pretty funny and it’s interesting to see Orthodox Judaism from the perspective of an insider. He actually broke from the community in his 20′s (and had been breaking the laws for longer than that) but he communicates about how hard it is, mentally, to move on. He still thinks that God is following him, punishing him, laughing at him, and just waiting for the next opportunity to cause him pain. As someone raised in a strict Catholic household and feels guilty constantly after doing things I was raised to believe were wrong, I can relate somewhat to his problems. There is some misogyny (his lack of feeling for the prostitutes and strippers he hires/watches) that can grate occassionaly, but the overall story is enjoyable.
Hi yvan, I leapt up The Last of Her Kind like a beach book almost and read it very quickly without putting it down, which means that on a page-turning level I really enjoyed it. I found the narrative voice a little bit weird, but then by the last third I had forgotten my beef with the Georgette as she and Ann grew past the college years and matured into more complex versions of themselves. I studied writing with Nunez while a student at a womens college (not Barnard) so it kept pulling me out of the book and into my own life — which I actually think was a strength of the book, and must produce much the same reaction for those who lived through “the sixties”. I still think George was kind of a boring person to choose as a narrator but I suppose that was half the point.
I have no idea what verb I meant to use when I said “leapt” — lapped maybe?
Feminizzle, I felt exactly the same way you did about Foreskin’s Lament. Auslander has a way of pulling wry, laugh-out-loud anecdotes out of a terribly repressive, unhappy childhood. He does come across as occasionally misogynist–no surprise, given how he was raised–and super-angsty, but I really enjoyed the book(and its mostly happy ending).
Coetzee is one of the authors I consistently argue with my brother about, he loves him and I just, don’t. I entirely understand why people rate him but I just find him to come out of that Rothian (is there such as word as Rothian who knows?) tradition of thoroughly unpleasant and misogynistic protagonists that I can’t enjoy his work.
Anyway as to what I’ve been reading – I’m going to recommend a book to everyone, please please get hold of Strange Days by British journalist Francis Wheen. It’s an absolutely great (and entirely terrifying) account of life in the 1970s during which Wheen persuasively argues that only was every world leader in the 70s batshit crazy and utterly paranoid but also that we are currently living in equally insane, paranoid times.
It’s well written and fascinating and I can not recommend it enough, particularly for those on this board who were born during or after the decade and thus might be unaware of how crazy it really was.
Other than that I’ve just read Monica Ali’s In The Kitchen, which is an entertaining enough read and quite absorbing and I’m about to start Diamond Star Halo by British author Tiffany Murray which should be good – she grew up on an infamous rock studio in Wales and this is a fictionalised account of those times plus her first novel Happy Accidents was very funny so i’m looking forward to this one.
I’ve had Foreskin’s Lament on my shelf for about a year, and haven’t picked it up. Even though it was recommended to me by the friend who recommends every book I love passionately.
I will resolve to put it back on the active bench.
Which is to say, the bathroom window sill.
@yvanehtnioj and JDRegent, thanks for your comments on Sigrid Nunez. yvanehtnioj, I’m a fan of both of the other authors that you liked (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Kiran Desai) so The Last of Her Kind is being added to my wish list right now.
I’m currently enjoying a book called What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin. It’s set in the period before the partition of India (approx 1928-1947). Most novels that deal with Indian independence have Hindu or Muslim protagonists but this novel tells the story from the point of view of two Sikh women married to the same man (thought that only Muslims were still practicing polygamy during that time period).