Fin & Lady (2013) by Cathleen Schine

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Fin & Lady (2013)

by Cathleen Schine

New York: 62/105

Manhattan: 18/34

   Thankfully, Fin & Lady, a comic novel by author Cathleen Schine about a wealthy orphan and his guardian half-sister set in Greenwich Village in the 1960's is neither tedious nor excruciating, and I actually enjoyed the Audiobook listening experience.  I've accepted that the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is about representing ALL Americans without regard to race, religion or economic class, but as I've observed before, books written about socio-economically disadvantaged groups- of all races- has a dreary sameness:  The kids wants to escape (or are so downtrodden they can't imagine escaping), the parents are trying to survive, the world around them is limited to a block or two (city version) or whatever local town the action is located (country/suburb version)- no one goes anywhere, no one does anything except suffer and try to survive.    

   Novels about the well educated at least have characters who can make interesting observations about the world beyond their own immediate experience, and they tend to feature in books that have more than one setting.   On the other hand, the problems of the wealthy and educated are far less interesting than the continuous theme of "survival in America" in every book about the poor and less educated.   When I'm reading books like this one- about a precocious orphan and his flighty older half sister- I am quite frequently struck by the thought that every problem in the book could be solved by the main characters going to a gym once a week and running on a treadmill for half an hour. 

   In my experience there is no variety of angst- existential or otherwise that can not be overcome by running for an hour (or half hour).  On the other hand, if you don't have enough money to pay rent or buy food for your children, running isn't going to help. In the case of Daughter- it might even get you killed by NYC cops.   

   Fin & Lady is a decently entertaining comic novel.  It will likely rank in the middle tier when I complete the New York chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Nothing in this book made me want to read more books by Cathleen Schine, but I would be open to the idea if the opportunity presented itself.

Daughter (2015) by Asha Bandele

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Daughter (2003)

by Asha Bandele

New York: 62/105

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 1/28

    Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island is the last sub-chapter of the 105 books from New York- that's over 10% of the entire list for a single state, and something close to 70 percent of the books from New York state are from New York City.  I checked out the Audiobook from the library- when I say it was absolutely excruciating to listen to, that's neither a criticism nor a compliment, just a reflection of the heartbreaking AND extremely over-wrought narrative, about a mother who loses her college age daughter to a mistakenly fired police bullet.  

    The Publisher's Weekly review that is quoted on Daughter's Amazon product page calls it "maudlin" which was a thought I frequently had listening to this book.  I'm not exactly a stranger to the difficulties faced by African American people at the hands of the police, and I've had plenty of experience counseling people who have been through the kind of tragedies that this book covers.  Still, the actual details of this plot defy believe- both the daughter of the title and her father are shot mistakenly by the NYPD thirty years apart. 

  Also, the decisions made by the characters in this book are simply excruciating to hear.  Like every chapter is filled with either the Mother or the Daughter making a terrible decision and paying a terrible price for that poor decision.  I can't remember another book like it where the decision making by the characters was so cringe inducing.  It was definitely a function of my life in the criminal justice system- I just can't stand to read fiction/watch tv/movies about people making bad decisions. 

    

   Generally speaking Daughter is an extreme example of common narrative:  A family has a child who they treat in an over-protective fashion, seeking to shield them from their own mistakes or to overcome their underprivileged background.  This then causes the child to make the exact same mistakes the parents are trying to prevent, providing the ironic tension in the narrative.

   Here, Miriam, the mother of the dead daughter, is raced by a religious couple who welcome her as their late arriving, miracle baby.  She feels suffocated in this environment and, at 17, falls for the school janitor, a young guy just back from Vietnam.  When her parents catch her making out with her boyfriend on the street, they forbid her from seeing him, and she responds by moving in with her boyfriend and his grandmother.

   Of course, she gets pregnant immediately.  Of course, they don't get married.  Of course, it doesn't work out, which, you know, everyone can see except for the character herself.  Bandele makes a point that is similar to other African American authors, which is that African American families struggling to better themselves often restrict their emotions to survive, which can then have negative consequences for their children. 

Ms. Hempel Chronicles (2008) by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Ms. Hempel Chronicles (2008)

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum 

"Manhattan"

New York: 61/105

Manhattan: 17/34

    Half-way through Manhattan but with another potential bottom 10 book, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's dull set of interlinked short stories about Ms Hempel the "cool" teacher at a (private?) Manhattan middle school.  I am well aware that editor Susan Straight has selected numerous books set at schools (not so many set at colleges so far) in her 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.   Certainly it makes sense- it is hard to get more bang for your portrait-of-a-community novel than one set in an urban grade/middle/high school- all the teachers, all the parents, all the kids.  Why, if you are clever enough you can include a half dozen or more different individual perspectives among the cast of characters.  On the other hand you have the fact that every novel set within a school involves characters who live boring lives unless they are sad lives.  School teachers are boring people, sorry teachers. I'm glad they exist but I'm not a "teachers are heroes" type.

  As far as the Manhattan location goes- I couldn't even tell this book was set in Manhattan. I actually double checked the master list to make sure I was reading the right book.  You'd think, at least, they'd go a recognizable museum at some point.  Ms. Hempel suffers no indignities from living in Manhattan on a teacher salary, which I believe to be literally impossible.  It was all very "why am I reading this book?"

Night Song (1961) by John A. Williams

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Night Song (1961)

by John A. Williams

New York: 60/105

Manhattan: 16/34

   The Manhattan chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project has been boring.  I think... this stems from the fact that editor Susan Straight is trying to give equal wait to the different cultural and socio-economic groups and books about the lower tiers of the socio-economic scale have a depressing sameness (so do books about the higher tiers of the socio-economic scale, of course).   How many times can one reader be subjected to the similar struggles of day-to-day life from the POV of poor, uneducated people. I believe the answer for this project is going to be something like 300 to 400 books.  Compare that to the sweep of the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, which has books from all times and places but few that chronicle day-to-day life from the perspective of the working poor.   It's so rare that the times and places where it does happen: English Kitchen Sink books from the mid 20th century, the French naturalists of the 19th century- come readily to mind.

   Night Song is more along the lines of what I'd like to read- a thinly veiled bio-fic about a thinly veiled Charles "Bird"  Parker:  musician and prodigious heroin addict.   Williams, who died in 2015, had a decades long reputation as an underappreciated writer from the "second Harlem Renaissance," but he rejected those comparisons and put together an iconoclastic career- including a critical biography of Martin Luther King Jr. that was unfortunately published in the aftermath of his assassination.   One interesting facet of this book, which is worth reading simply for its portrayal of the Greenwich Village jazz scene in the 1950's, is that Williams includes a white character who has interior thoughts which is extremely rare in books written by African American authors.  In African American fiction from New York white people are either absent, present as villains or presented as well-meaning do gooders who are more of an annoyance than a help.   My sample here is the 40 or so books out of the 60 books I've read out of New York.  

   Night Song is sure to be in my top 10 for New York.

Starting Out in the Evening (1998) by Brian Morton

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Starting Out in the Evening (1998)

by Brian Morton

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York

New York: 59/105

Manhattan: 15/34

  If there is one subject, artistically speaking, that I would happily exclude from future reading it would be relationships between much older men and much younger women, particularly those that take place between members of higher income/education socio-economic groups.  Haven't we all heard enough about 70 year old men fucking 20 or 30 something women?  It's sad, it's gross and there is so, so, so much of it out there already that a book like Starting Out in the Evening- which was made into a feature film a decade later, for pete's sake, now seems out of touch. 

  I'd never heard of Morton before this book- certainly I hadn't seen either of the movies that have been adapted from his books.  The story here is about a semi-succesful novelist- four novels over the course of a lifetime, two good ones and two not so good.  He's retired, living on the Upper West Side.  His daughter, Ariel is a mess- an-ex dancer who teaches housewives aerobics and spends way too much time thinking about her dad.  Enter Heather Wolfe an ambitious young writer-scholar, who wants to write about the novelist.  Spoiler alert, they fuck.   She writes a not-so-amazing thesis on the author (Schiller is his name) and then he has a stroke.  Ariel gets back together with her old boyfriend.  Can't imagine how this book made it onto the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, one of my least favorite books out of New York.

Bread Givers (1925) by Anzisa Yezierska

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bread Givers (1925)

by Anzisa Yezierska

The Lower East Side, Manhattan

New York: 58/105

Manhattan: 14/34

     Really feeling like I've passed the hump on the New York section of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.  Not a huge number of surprises on the list thus far, and no Manhattan Murder Mystery's as of yet- proof that you don't need filler to paint a literary portrait of the PEOPLE of New York City. Like Triangle,  Bread Givers lands us amongst the Jewish immigrants on the lower east side in the early 20th century.  It's not exactly my people- who were midwestern Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century, but I'm thinking this is the closest I'm going to get, since there aren't many midwestern Jewish immigrant authors out there.

   I call Bread Givers an example of the Martin Eden genre- an American immigrant/first generation native from a lower socio-economic background who struggles against family (or lack of a family) and the indifference of America to create themselves as an educated member of the professional class.   These titles blend florid descriptions of urban poverty, working class characters and a burning desire by the protagonist to achieve something more than their circumstances.  Here, the protagonist is the youngest daughter of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family.  The mother, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant and the Dad a Rabbinical scholar.  In the old country this pairing was quite common- the husband being a variety of "trophy husband" who was supported by his father-in-law and not expected to work to support the family.

  This was all well and good in Europe/Russia, but America was, as they say, a different kettle of fish, and basically all of the conflict in Bread Givers is caused by the Dad's refusal to work, and his insistence that it is the duty of his daughters to support him.