Marya (1986) by Joyce Carol Oates

A photo of a young Joyce Carol Oates

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Marya (1986)

by Joyce Carol Oates

Innisfail, New York

New York: 9/105

Upstate New York:   8/23

    This is the first 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die/1,001 Novels a Library of America I've encountered in the New York/New Jersey chapter.   Marya was included on the original 1,001 Novels list but was dropped in the 2008 version and replaced by Francophone author from Africa (Marima Ba). 

   I didn't re-read Marya for the 1,001 Novels Project.  Below is my review from 2017:

Published 4/18/17
Marya (1986)
 by Joyce Carol Oates

   You might consider Marya a Joyce Carol Oates origin story.  Marya, the title character, physically resembles Oates, shares a similar background and has the same experiences as Oates the writer.  Within the 1001 Books project, Oates is a huge loser.  She starts with four titles in the original edition, and that number is cut to a single title in the first revision.  This reduces Oates from a repeat player of some note to a one hit wonder, for the purposes of the list.  It also points to the way that many, if not all, authors with multiple titles- certainly all those from the 20th century and beyond- were subject to having their contribution halved.

  I'd be inclined to think that Oates was ill served- she is almost certainly an author who deserves more than a single title.  It's likely that she is a victim of both being prolific, still writing and not a major literary prize winner.  Oates is not going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, she hasn't won the Pulitzer Prize.  She's also written non fiction and short stories throughout her career, and flirted with the career of a public intellectual in the television era.

  Like Anagrams by Lorrie Moore, Marya hasn't aged well, except as it relates to a general up-swell of appreciation for Oates as she ages out of productivity.  Most of Mayra exists within the confines of the academic literature of the 1980's.  Her plight as a white woman, making her way in academia, has only muted relevance to the polyphonic explosion of viewpoints related to class and gender.   At least Oates, unlike Moore, avoids writing from a place of vested privilege.  

Enterprising Elite (1987) by Robert F. Dalzell, Jr.

Book Review

Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made (1987)

by Robert F. Dalzell, Jr. 

Harvard University Press

   I go to Boston twice a year because my partner is from there and she fucking loves it.  I don't like it as much as she does but there is plenty to appreciate.  First off, the history- which- even in the shittiest, nothing small town in New England typically extends back to before the American Revolution.  There's Boston itself, which is a world-class city.  One of the things I've found interesting about the city is that Boston is like this shining crown jewel and then you go 30 minutes out of town and there are these super sad industrial suburbs- Lowell, Lawrence that are like caricatures of depressed-working-class towns.  What happened, exactly?  

  Fortunately I found this book on the shelf at the Boston Library and was able to check it out from the LAPL.  Voila, all my questions answered.  It turns out that the first wave of industrial capitalism in New England was started by a small group of interlinked family members who then relocated to Boston and turned their fortunes to improving the civic institutions that bore their names.  The lives of the people living in the towns they founded to put their factories- not so much.  Not at all, in fact.  One of the major points that Dalzell makes is that these guys (they were all men) were interested in community welfare but had a narrow definition of "their" community.  At its greatest, that encompassed everyone in Boston before the Irish showed up.  

   A later chapter on political involvement shows how narrow their appeal was- with men from the Lawrence family losing elections in Lawrence, the city they founded for their textile factories.  Dalzell points out that this was nothing close to what one would consider a "modern" industrial operation even though they were pioneers in the use of the corporate form to limit liability among owners. Most notably these textile factories didn't retain much capital instead handing out large dividends rather than reinvesting in the business.

We the Animals (2011) by Justin Torres

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

We the Animals (2011)

by Justin Torres

Baldswinville, New York

New York: 8/105

Upstate: 7/23

  Justin Torres just won the National Book Award for his novel, Blackouts.  We the Animals is his first book- also marketed as a novel though the circumstances- an LGBT childhood in upstate New York with two older brothers, a white mother and a Puerto Rican father, largely mirror his biographical details.  This book also ends with the narrator being shipped off to a mental institution by his family, which is also a theme in Blackouts. 

   We the Animals reminded me of On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong- which is another poetically inclined bildungsroman about being an LGBT child of immigrants in a decaying, New England-rust belt milieu.  I know, New York isn't New England but honestly if you cut off the northern third of the state it could just as well into Vermont or New Hampshire.   We the Animals is a slim volume- 144 pages or a three hour audiobook.  I was excited to see the Audiobook was instantly available- sometime with recent prize winners their earlier works see heavy demand and limited supply.    I wasn't shocked, exactly, but it was surprising that both books written by Puerto Rican authors in the 1,0001 Novels: A Library of America feature women who start giving birth at 14 years old.  In this book, the parents elope to Texas when the Mother is 14 and the father 16. 

  Again, the father figure is violent towards all members of his family and it is simply acceptable to all involved.  There is one chapter in this book where the mother briefly contemplates leaving the abusive father but generally speaking the state of affairs seems acceptable to the family.  It is a frequent characteristic of relationships involving domestic violence that there is sympathy for the abuser on the part of the abused- nothing specifically Puerto Rican about that. 

  We the Animals is the fourth of fifth books set in and around Syracuse- so far none of them have done so much as mention the existence of Syracuse itself- they all take place in small towns set around Syracuse.  I couldn't tell you a single fact about Syracuse based on the books from that region selected in the 1,001 Novels project.

The Modocs and Their War (1959) Keith A. Murray

 Book Review

The Modocs and Their War (1959)

by Keith A. Murray

University of Oklahoma Press

Civilization of the American Indian Series #52

   American Indian history has been pretty risible until very recently.  The Civilization of the American Indian Series from the University of Oklahoma Press represents the longest running effort in this genre, but most of the books, while well meaning, are dated in terms of attitudes and approaches to Native American history.  This book is pretty good from a 1950's perspective, in that it isn't openly racist, but it still reads as one sided.  All the sources are white people who were fighting the Modocs or contemporaneous accounts written by white journalists.  There is a brief mention of the ghost dance phenomenon but the Native characters are poorly drawn and one dimensional.  Captain Jack, the leader of the band of Modocs who gave the US Army their greatest beating in an Indian War- and killed a US general to boot, is portrayed as a vacillating coward.  Considering the Captain Jack Modocs were actually removed to Oklahoma, you would think that Murray could have talked to someone there and gotten a different perspective. 

   There's also no context about the Native environment prior to the arrival of the whites, which, to me, anyway, seems relevant to describing the Modoc experience.  But, if you are just looking for dates, names and a general description of how this war went down, Murray's book is an inoffensive starting point.

Gunflower by Laura Jean McKay

 Book Review

Gunflower (2023)

by Laura Jean McKay

   Australian author Laura Jean McKay won the Arthur C. Clarke award for her debut novel, The Animals in That Country in 2021. That win caught my eye, and I promptly checked out a copy from the library.  It was good, not great, but interesting enough to merit attention to the author going forward.  Late last year she published her follow-up, an entirely predictable book of short-stories compiled from her previous 20 years of writing.  Some of the stories echo the themes of The Animals in That Country, an early story delves into the family dynamics of a cat ranch (Yes, a cat ranch.)  Other subjects are prosaic/banal- like the lengthy story told from the perspective of supermarket clerk who makes a stand for the rights of smokers to take their hourly smoke break.   The Guardian called this collection virtuosic but the New York Times didn't even mention it.  It did get a US release back in October but with essentially no press- the Amazon product page only has seven reviews and Goodreads has 70 ratings, basically the equivalent of many books that haven't been published.