American city

American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
1997

"These deep thinkers were the only people he could not stand to be around for long, these people who'd never manufactured anything or seen anything manufactured."

The Swede, like Updike's Rabbit, is a former star high school athlete. Like Rabbit, he loses a child, though unlike Rabbit, not through the child's death. He's an upper-class Rabbit, though, someone who thinks he's got it under control. And the thing is, even when the Swede doesn't have everything under control and when he knows he doesn't, the he still kind of does.

It doesn't make up a huge part of the story, but as the Swede's life unfolds, so does his the life of his hometown, Newark (the one in N.J.), also the site of The Plot Against America.

The Plot's present-day action (circa World War II) has working- and middle-class Jewish families in the city. By American Pastoral, they've pulled out, with the Swede keeping his glove factory there but moving toward moving that out, too.

So what about Newark? It's a city of 280,00, and I've only seen it from Amtrak. And from there it looks like Wilmington, which pretty much looks like Baltimore, only with an Omaha skyline.

Philip Roth shows me a little bit of what Newark at least once was, with people riding buses and raising families and sometimes hanging on. And he's led me to find a glimpse of what it could be:

A New Arc: A botched city on the cusp of a renaissance (from The Wall Street Journal).
The New City (from Esquire, PDF).

True story

I wanted to link to A.M. Homes' 2004 New Yorker piece on meeting her birth parents, "The Mistress's Daughter," because it was the first of her writing that I read. But almost two years later, I can't find it online. So here she is in December 2004 talking about it on NPR.

An expanded version of The New Yorker piece is due out as a book in April.

Public displays of reading.

This Book will Save Your Life
A.M. Homes
2006

Certain books are awkward to read on the bus: Valley of the Dolls (because the cover is pink and it's Valley of the Dolls), Gone with the Wind (what if people think you're a confederate?) Lorrie Moore's Self-Help (it's not).

Anyway, I didn't read a single page of This Book will Save Your Life on a bus or waiting for a bus, but I did read it on the light rail and had to assure one man that it was a novel and not a cry for help.

Unlike Valley of the Dolls, which is best consumed in your home, This Book is worth the risk.
It's the second book in a row that I've had a hard time putting down. Just try not to look sad when you're reading it.

Let's scrub!

Music to Wash Dishes By: Volume 1
Music by The Hi-Fives, The Queers, Ten-Four and Scared of Chaka
Zine by Dishwasher Pete

Much of Dishwasher Pete's zine is typed, but his intro isn't and it must be said that he has very neat handwriting. But two of the guys in the bands also write, and maybe their handwriting isn't so great, so type is probably best.

I bought the record for Troy. He didn't wash any dishes while listening, but he says he will. I know I would. There are four songs -- along with some inspirational words on the importance of clean dishes to any restaurant -- so if you have a big job (maybe you made a complicated meal or let your dishes pile up for a few days; it's OK, it happens), you might run out of music. Also, if you don't remember records, you have to turn it over after the first two songs. But you could use a break anyway.

The music and zine are a tribute to professional dishwashing, but don't worry, you can totally use them at home, too.

Troy thought the music sounded kind of like the Dead Milkmen. I thought it had a Le Tigre quality, by which I mean one song used the F-word a lot.

A tour de good book

The Accidental
Ali Smith
2005

In the wrong hands, a rotating perspective could be gimmicky, but Ali Smith does well. She rotates the third-person perspective among four family members and the brief first-person accounts of the woman who fleetingly presents themselves in their lives, transforming them.

The best chapters belong to the kids -- 12-year-old Astrid and Magnus, a teenager. While the family is fundamentally unhappy, the siblings have a genuine affection for each other and there's a bit more whimsy surrounding them.

At one point Michael, the stepfather, disintegrates into verse. This is something else that could have gone terribly wrong. It was OK, though. He's a smarmy English professor, though Smith makes him so smarmy that it makes the cliche outrageous.

The mother, Eve, is a bit of a doormat, though she would tell you she just chooses not to be bothered by her husband's smarm.

I read a few reviews after reading the book, and more than one referred to it as a "tour de force." I really can't believe book reviewers think it's OK to do that. Are critics the only people who don't think that phrase has played itself out?

This is near the top of my recommended books for 2006. I'll have it back to the Pratt by Sept. 21.

Birthday reading

Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave us Modernity
by Rebecca Goldstein
2006

When this book landed in my hands last month, but for the inside flap I couldn't have told you who Baruch Spinoza was. And that can be the best kind of reading -- a random book, this one in the form of a birthday gift, that can lead to further reading. (In this case, though, I'm not sure I'm ready for further reading. I think my understanding of of Spinoza's rationalism has more to do with Rebecca Goldstein's teaching than my intellect.)

If you can really wrap your head around Spinoza, then you can solve the problem of the self and therefore solve the problem of God and evil and death. I am far from there, but Goldstein is an able guide who has made the concept clear. (Can I explain it to you? No. You will have to read the book; I am sorry.)

Spinoza was excommunicated from his Jewish community in 1656, but he was certainly not irreligious:

"All the ceremonies of the superstitious religions, all the slanted versions of their own histories, are founded on the irrational -- and irreligious! -- desire to make God love us in return, and the indulgence in the jealous fantasy that he loves us -- our kind, our people --more than others.

"... Men worship as if it is an arbitrary and exceedingly vain tyrant whom they must placate and flatter, each religion declaring itself more worthy of His favor. This is how all religions distinguish themselves from one another. ... Like children fighting for their parents' attention, they never realiza that everyone's true happiness and blessedness consists solely in the enjoyment of good, not in priding himself that alone he is enjoying that good to the exclusion of others."

Even with centuries of hindsight, though, it is difficult to grasp Spinoza's version of salvation and easy to see why it earned a hostile response from organized religion.

Let's ride

Sometimes people ask me how to ride the bus. I have to admit, I am pretty good at having exact change, and it can be confusing for a first-time rider. The change slot on Baltimore buses isn't where I want it to be. Then, sometimes the stop-requesting mechanism is broken, and if no one more aggressive than you wants your stop, you have to shout, "Next stop, please" in front of all the bus people, who are totally going to make fun of your shouting style once you get off.

But on any given Baltimore City bus with at least a smattering of riders, there is probably at least one person who is talking to -- sometimes screaming at -- no one. Life is not generally easy for this person. Yet, this person somehow gets it together enough to board, ride and exit the bus at the proper time and in the proper manner.

Let this person be an inspiration to you.

The book part of this is something I saw a few weeks ago at Atomic Books: How to Live Well Without Owning a Car.

I appreciate the spirit of the book, and the numbers on the cost of car ownership are persuasive, but I'm not sure a book is necessary. If it helps people realize that it's not so hard to live without a car, then a common-sense book isn't a bad thing.