Page turners

Things are looking up on the job front. I have two interviews scheduled for Tuesday, and in the meantime I'm working part-part-time job as a nanny/schlepper/driver for a woman who lives in Maplewood NJ. Her daughter is almost 13, too old for a nanny, but she's an only child whose mom works full time. I think my official title is "companion." The mom works in publishing, AND she went to the same high school as MY mom-- small world, ain't it?!

I've been talking to a lot of really great people who are willing to pass along a resume for me, give me advice, put me in touch with someone they know... I can't express how much that means to me.

So things are better, but I still don't have a job. The good news is I have lots of time to catch up on my reading. And the best thing about working in book publishing, or in my case, having friends who work in book publishing, is you get SO MANY FREE BOOKS. One of my CPC friends works at Bloomsbury USA, children's publicity dept., and she lends me a lot of Y/A books. Today I picked a book up off her coffee table called Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film About The Grapes of Wrath, by Steven Goldman. I've read about 100 pp and it's pretty funny; although if you're into the Y/D (Young Dude) genre, I'd recommend King Dork by Frank Portman. That book is sidesplittingly funny.

And for some reason, everyone in my group of friends from college, including me, just spontaneously read Lolita. Funny. I read it fast, in less than a week, and after I finished (sitting in a public library waiting for the rain to let up) I wandered outside in a daze, trying to make sense of the world again. To paraphrase something smart someone else said: Nabokov's prose is so beautiful that even though almost every single composite part of the book (characters, setting, content) is ugly and seedy, the book itself manages to convey a sense of exuberance that feels pure.

Last spring I read Inga Muscio's Cunt. You have to take what Muscio says with a big grain of salt; the woman is clearly nuts, but she has some interesting things to say. In Cunt she talks about her decision to read only books written by women for a year. I don't remember why, but it probably it had something to do with her deep-seated dislike and distrust of men.

I read Cunt around the time I was getting disillusioned with my thesis. I was writing about Don Quijote and Tristram Shandy, and there was nothing new to say about the books. Why hadn't I choosen to write about a book written in the last century? maybe by a woman? I blame Scripps. The core classes in the English program focus on English & American lit from Beowulf to "present" (i.e. 1975). We mostly read works from the established literary canon. Until I took Victorian Lit last year, I didn't have a single syllabus with more female than male authors.

I decided to try it for three months. Reading books only by women, I mean. Over the summer I read novels by Zadie Smith, Stephenie Meyer, Alison Bechdel, Doris Lessing, Mary Karr, Dorothy Allison, Isabel Allende, Ann Patchett.... For those of you with 60-hr workweeks/significant others/domestic responsibilities, don't feel inadequate. I have a lot of spare time on my hands.

Cherry by Mary Karr was one of the best books I read this summer. It's a personal memoir about coming of age in a dead-end town in Texas in the 70s. What did kids do then? Mostly sex and drugs. Karr is a poet by profession, and even her prose scans like poetry. It's also really, really funny.

I need to get me a New York public library card!