A Work in Progress

Nick Hornby: Preaching to the Choir

Nick Hornby's Housekeeping vs. the Dirt has a subtitle that promises "massively witty adventures in reading".  I'm game!  This slim volume covers fourteen months of reading (published in 2006 in book format--originally the essays appeared in the Believer magazine -- am so tempted now to get a subscription) and I momentarily thought it might be fun to read it serially, but then thought how silly since I feel like gulping it down in just a few gluttonous sittings and not spacing it out over the course of the coming year.  It is a very gulpable book, you see. 

I am a 'collector' of books--I collect certain authors, and certain kinds of stories, certain publishers, certain series . . . you get the picture.  I collect books about books and books about reading (I'm a serious pushover for this sort of book).  Since this year is all about reading from my own shelves, one of the 'themes' I want to explore is books about books.  I have a whole shelf of them (mostly unread) and thought it was finally time (zipping right along now halfway through February) to take a peek at what I have on hand.  Nick and I have crossed paths before, back too many years when I read his Polysyllabic Spree.  I was a convert back then, so I am not sure why I never picked up Housekeeping.  Now I see he has several more collections like this out that I am going to have to add to my next book order. 

Nick (I feel like I can call him Nick) has a breezy, chatty way of writing that I find very inviting in this sort of setting.  He seems like such a laid back, engaging sort of fellow, a little irreverent, but down to earth and best (because I think I am the same--hence he is preaching to the choir in my case) an 'equal opportunity' sort of reader.  There is nothing uppity or condescending about his reading or reading choices.  And he is quite deprecating, too.  I get the feeling that he paints himself as being decidedly low brow, but I'm not sure if that is at all accurate (when asking whose books will make us more intelligent--he answers by saying not his books for sure).  He may read primarily for enjoyment, but he does seem to read widely, too, and for a variety of reasons.  Oh, and I wonder if he really does buy so few books each month (is he not really owning up to what he adds to his reading stack?).  If so, I am feeling even more gluttonous now.

I like how he approaches writing about books in his essays (these are reprints of his Believer columns) --"writing about reading as opposed to writing about individual books". 

" . . . I would be paid to write about what I would have done anyway, which was read the books I wanted to read.  And if I felt that mood, morale, concentration levels, weather, or family history had affected my relationship with a book, I could and would say so."

He dismisses the idea of reading only books that "we think we ought to read, or that other people think we should read."  He lets his tastes guide him in his reading choices (me too).  And he is all for trying to "promote the joys of reading rather than the (dubious) benefits."  He doesn't want to dissuade anyone from reading a book they want to--whatever the subject or type--as long as it's something they can't wait to pick it up again.  That sounds like just about the right sort of reading formula for me, too.

Each chapter he begins with a list of books bought and books read (not always one in the same) and then goes on to write about them in a very companionable manner.  I was most interested in today's essay since he writes about Philip Roth's The Plot Against America and compares ans contrasts it with Robert Harris's Fatherland (both on my list to read).  He talks about reading the Roth, an alternative history story, and how the alternative history drives the narrative but that feels sort of self-conscious in how it is all explained.  Whereas with the Harris the alternative history remains in the background and Harris just gets on with the thriller plot.  For him, these perceived flaws in the Roth didn't bother him one whit and it is only in critical reviews that the flaws are seen to inhibit real enjoyment of the story.  In his columns he allows himself to just say how much he likes a story without necessarily being critical about every aspect of it.  

I very much like Hornby's writing style, and his reading style to be honest.  I don't mind that our reading choices and likes might not always overlap, because his enthusiasm over reading is so refreshing.  I plan on reading one column a day (unless I can't help myself and end up reading more).  I might, as a matter of fact, just keep going now, since next up is (among other books) something by Amos Oz and (my latest 'find') Laura Lippman.  I even like the books he bought--by Kate Atkinson, Ruth Rendell and John le Carré.  I hope he writes about those books soon, too.

I've only read Hornby's essays.  I think his own novels are categorized as 'Lad Lit'?  That doesn't mean I can't read them, and have been looking through his backlist of books.  His newest appeals greatly, but maybe I should pick up an older title?  Has anyone read his fiction and have a favorite?  For now, I plan on continuing to enjoy his essays. 

Dispatches by Michael Herr

I've read that Michael Herr's Dispatches is one of the best, if not the best, book that has been written about the Vietnam War.  I've certainly not read widely enough to know whether that's true or not (and a personal favorite of mine remains Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried), but Herr manages to convey to the reader what it was like to be in Vietnam with a very authentic voice.  He gives a flavor to the time, place and people that will remain in my mind for quite a while.  I thought Dispatches would be an easy read, straightforward journalism.  Dispatches, a report, what you would find in a literary magazine like Esquire (right?), for whom Herr was connected when he went to cover the war. 

It turned out to be a very disorienting experience for me and a challenging read, not least because the writing style is so vivid and raw and with little structure.  When I first was thinking about the book, his writing felt impressionistic, but I've since come across a better descriptive term.  The six sections that make up the book, and within each section there are many stories, create a sort of collage.  Bits and pieces of different experiences make up a much larger picture.  Since there is no or little narrative arc it's hard to describe what I read, though I am left with a great many images.  This was also challenging as I have read very little about Vietnam and am unfamiliar with the military and social jargon of the era.  It's a cliché to say this, but the more I read, the less I feel that I really know about history and the world in general.

Herr chose to go to Vietnam as a reporter/writer (he wasn't there as as soldier) and could have returned home at any time, a fact that mostly astonished the troops, most of whom would happily have left sooner than later given the chance.  He traveled with the marines and endured the same battles and discomfort they did.  Drug use wasn't unheard of, and Herr and other reporters engaged in the activity.  Caroline touched upon this in her post, but I wonder if the war helped shaped the Sixties, or if the Sixties shaped the war.  Herr's Dispatches very much reflects that unique period--both with the language he uses and the style of the writing, which makes it easy for me to see why it's considered a modern classic.  It just needed a musical soundtrack to be complete, but even then there are many cultural references peppered throughout the text.

Like all good nonfiction it's hard to tell you exactly what I read, since there was so much.  So many stories, so many experiences and images and battles.  I can tell you bits and pieces.  I can tell you how my own perception has been shaped by a later generation and a different cultural viewpoint.  I was still a baby when Herr was following the marines and watching the Battle of Khe Sanh unfold, about which he writes extensively.  I've always understood this was the Vietnam War, though in Vietnam it's called the American War.  I remember studying the Tet Offensive in school, but did I ever learn that Tet is actually the Vietnamese Lunar New Year?

Maybe it's best to leave you with a few excerpts so you can read for yourself and get a feeling for the writing.  I dog eared many pages, so here are a few random passages.

"One morning before dawn, Ed Fouhy, a former Saigon Bureau Chief for CBS, went out to 8th Aerial Port at Tan Son Nhut to catch the early military flight to Danang.  They boarded as the sun came up, and Fouhy strapped in next to a kid in rumpled fatigues, one of those soldiers you see whose weariness has gone far beyond physical exhaustion, into that state where no amount of sleep will ever give him the kind of rest he needs.  Every torpid movement they make tells you that they are tired, that they'll stay tired until their tours are up and the big bird flies them back  to the World."

**********

"Talk about impersonating an identity, about locking into a role, about irony: I went to cover the war and the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you've never heard it.  I went there behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, serious because I acted on it and went, crude because I didn't know, it took the war to teach it, that you were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did.  The problem was that you didn't always know what you were seeing until later, maybe years later, that a lot of it never made it in at all, it just stayed stored there in your eyes.  Time and information, rock and roll, life itself, the information isn't frozen, you are."

**********

"Almost as much as the grunts and the Vietnamese, Tet was pushing correspondents closer to the wall than they'd ever wanted to go.  I realized later that, however childish I might remain, actual youth had been pressed out of me in just the three days that it took me to cross the sixty miles between Can Tho and Saigon."

**********

"I know a guy who had been a combat medic in the Central Highlands, and two years later he was still sleeping with all the lights on.  We were walking across 57th Street one afternoon and passed a blind man carrying a sign that read MY DAYS ARE DARKER THAN YOUR NIGHTS.  'Don't bet on it, man' the ex-medic said."

I'm happy to have read Dispatches, though it's a book I can say I think I appreciate more than I love.  I wish I had known more going into the book, but with every book or magazine article I learn just a little bit more for the next time.  With the next book I'll have a little more familiarity and the language or style may feel a little less foreign.  And maybe someday I'll pick up Dispatches to read again and the experience will be completely different.  Until then I'm glad I read outside my comfort zone, something I am always eager to do more of, and I'll be looking for more books on the Vietnam War (suggestions as always are welcome).

Next up (later this month) is The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, which is already on my night stand. 

Reading Michael Herr's Dispatches

"No New Journalist that I'm familiar with left a book for us that succeeds in being so utterly of its time and to timeless.  Yes, the Nam was a rock-and-roll war, a Sixties war if you like.  However, be assured that Dispatches, with its poetry flaring from the vernacular to the sublime, is a work proved upon our pulses today."

I'm in the midst of reading Michael Herr's Dispatches, of which Robert Stone writes (above quote) in his introduction to the Everyman's Library Edition.  It's the last of the 2012 Literature and War Readalong titles and I had hoped to be finished by now but the book is proving to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated.  Every once in a while you come across a book that knocks you for a loop with its writing or subject matter.  Dispatches is a series of reportages by Michael Herr who was a war correspondent for Esquire, but it's not the straightforward journalism that I had expected. 

As I've been reading I was thinking that this must surely be a good example of literary nonfiction (or creative nonfiction), which I think it is, as Herr writes of his experiences in Vietnam in an impressionistic, vivid and very visceral manner.  I'm wondering if I am ill-suited to the writing style, yet I think the writing style is well-suited to the time and place Herr writes about.  Throw into the mix references to events, places and acronyms I'm not familiar with (I feel as though I should be but see now I have a gaping hole of knowledge when it comes to the Vietnam War), so style and content are slowing me down.  

I'm not discouraged in my reading, however, and I think it's good to read outside comfort zones.  I feel, though, that I'm not going to take away from this book what I could had I been better informed.  This is a case where reading about what I'm reading (if that makes sense) can only be a good thing.  It's been helpful, too, to read Caroline's thoughts about the book, and I'm a little relieved to hear that the latter sections (the book is divided into six "dispatches") are easier going than the earlier ones.

So in order to 'orient' myself a little better a definition right about now wouldn't be amiss.  'New Journalism' is "an artistic, creative, literary reporting form with three basic traits: dramatic literary techniques; intensive reporting; and reporting of generally acknowledged subjectivity.  New Journalism isn't entirely new to me actually, as I've read books by a few of its practitioners in the past including Joan Didion and Truman Capote (both are authors I hugely admire by the way).  As for Michael Herr's Dispatches, Robert Stone writes:

"About the time that Michael herr began his journey through Vietnam, the mode of narrative that came to be called 'New Journalism' had begun to appear in the American press.  The unique claim of the New Journalism of that period was to present a pursuit of reality - we might very uneasily call it 'truth' - in two authoritative dimensions.  On the one hand it was journalism imbued with the authority of the press.  It was the news, a recounting of facts theoretically subject to stern review by responsible authorities whose institutional reputations spoke for the accuracy of the matter contained.  In an age perhaps more trusting of its institutions this seemed reassuring."

"Yet New Journalism made claims beyond the correct rendering of events.  Along with its documentary accuracy it aspired to deliver the subjective observations, the tropes, witticism, and insights, quite often unsympathetic, that even the most partisan standard feature story might leave to the reader's inference.  The result could be quite scandalous and attention-getting, with some readers enraged by the insolence that the New Journalist might visit on his subject's embarrassed subjects, and others rejoicing not only in the public exposure of the enemies' fatuities but in having the journalist's observations echo their own judgments.  So the New Journalism, liberty and license, dependent on the honor and perception of the reporter, as an unwieldy vehicle."

Hmm.  So I wonder if I can apply the term verisimilitude to Herr's writing as he certainly is giving a taste of place--what it felt like to be in Vietnam, especially the fear. 

So, onwards now.  I do feel like I've oriented myself a little better and know what's coming, so perhaps the second half of the book will make for a smoother reading experience.  Now that you've heard all about the style, next time I'll let you know about the content!