The Reading Corner, Issue 1

Emerging and Fading Voices

By: Pam Stolpman
Published March 9, 2010

Welcome to our newest article series, The Reading Corner. Through this column, Pam Stolpman of Trilogy Central Coast will review books that may be contemporary or classic, with stories real or imagined, and characters that you may love, or love to loathe. What these books will have in common is that they are not only worthy of a read, but also of a hearty recommendation. They all deserve to find a spot on your best-loved bookshelf.

In this issue, Pam celebrates the birth of new voices and the fading of seasoned voices on the writing scene. She highlights the works of four talented authors who are at the beginning or the end of their story-telling journeys. With On Beauty, Zadie Smith has composed a novel of astonishing strength and understanding for a woman of such a young age. One critic described Arthur Phillips, author of Prague, as “the Best American novelist to have emerged during the present decade.” William Trevor wrote his 14th novel, Love and Summer, while in his 80s, and his gentlemanly style is as much a joy to read today as it was decades ago. The collection of stories, My Father’s Tears, by Updike was published in 2009, after his death at the age of 76.

Please enjoy this selection of books from some of the best emerging and fading voices of our time.


On Beauty
By Zadie Smith

In On Beauty, we have two academic art critics; archrivals in the university world of publish or perish. Howard is a white Englishman happily ensconced at the small college of Wellington, in Boston. He is husband to Kiki, a zaftig African American earth mother, and father to two sons and a daughter, who he believes to be left wing, equal opportunity, multicultural atheists, as he is himself. His arch nemesis, Monty, is a Black Englishman who is a well-known and published scholar, teaching in London. He is husband to Carlene, a mysteriously frail, almost mystical Caribbean woman, and father to an impossibly hot young daughter who Monty firmly believes to be a right wing, anti-affirmative action, evangelistic Christian replica of himself. When Monty comes to Howard’s turf as a hugely popular guest lecturer for a year, all kinds of possibilities for inappropriate pairings, academic politics, and betrayals, large and small, arise.

In this novel - written with such a keen ear, such a sure sense of control of her material - Smith manages this group of characters in 400 pages of the most delightful satire possible. She dead-on nails the foibles of hot button racial issues, women’s studies, academic politics, and class warfare, and at the same time engages us thoroughly in the real emotional hardships of both men and their families. Smith is satirical, ironic, and quite simply very funny, but never is there a sour note of sarcasm or contempt. We laugh all the way through the complicated yarns she spins, but we care enormously how it will all come out, and we may actually find ourselves rooting for both sides in these cultural wars.

Excerpt:
An e-mail from Howard’s older son, in London studying under Monty before Monty assumes his position as guest lecturer at Wellington:

Hey Dad - I’m really enjoying everything. I work in Monty’s own office (did you know that he’s actually Sir Monty??) …and of course I’m living with the family now. I know you want me to tell you it’s a nightmare, but I can’t - I love living here. It’s a different universe. Monty’s wife, Carlene - perfect. Carlene floats above it all like a kind of angel - and she’s helping me with prayer. And it’s very cool to be able to pray.


Prague
By Arthur Phillips

In 1990, five ex-pats in their mid 20s have found each other in Budapest just after the overthrow of communism, though they would all prefer to be in Prague, where “real life is going on.” This novel is essentially character driven, the whole of it revolving around the lives of these ex-pats, none admirable in any way, but all memorable, and somehow almost as likable as they are laughable. The writing is flawlessly clever, and Phillips captures much of the excitement of Budapest as it awakens to itself after the long years of being blanketed by communist rule.

There is a plot: a single story about capitalism in the newly opened Eastern Europe. The main players are two of the ex-pats, John, a journalist at the BUDAPESTimes who brings his PR skills to the enterprise, and Charles (nee Karoly Gabor), a Hungarian/American with a Harvard MBA, who thinks of himself as a “venture capitalist” and speaks fluent Hungarian (albeit with the conversational content of a twelve year old). These two scheme to acquire shares in a venerable Budapest publishing company, the Horvath Press, recently returned by the communist government to its rightful owner, Imre Horvath. The two hope to then sell the Press at great profit.

Excerpt:
(Krisztina Toldy, personal assistant to Imre Horvath, is waiting with Charles for Horvath to arrive for their first business meeting):

Krisztina Toldy poured more coffee for the American boy and began to sense she was not accomplishing either of her two assignments. How could she relax him and make him feel the importance of the press? She realized her two tasks were contradictory: To educate this boy would require verbal force, which would hardly soothe him. Besides, there was something incorrect about this boy. His smile and word of thanks were wrong. He was made of dirty mirrors. She saw he did not care what she said: he was too spoiled to understand what Horvath had done with his life. She tried her best to entertain the bearer of U.S. dollars, but in midsentence she would find his posture, his expression, his lips and hair so maddening that she would begin teaching and then end by haranguing.

Charles found this exhibition of her predicament increasingly entertaining, savored the sight of her at war with herself, and after his initial impatience, he began to hope Horvath would be infinitely late so that Charles might instead watch this tightly coiled aide-de-camp finally bust a spring.


(Article continued on page 2.)