I Know I Should Like Philip Roth

I'm on page 182 of "The Counterlife" and I can't wait to be done. 324 pages total. If I read just 50 pages a day, I can be done by Saturday. And since I've started skimming some of the longer dialogue exchanges, that should be very doable.

And then I won't have to read another Philip Roth novel for another year. That's my deal with myself.

I somehow avoided Roth until recently. When the New York Times published its list of "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years" a few years ago and Roth's books were so prominently featured I decided I needed to fill in this gap. I got "American Pastoral" and found myself losing interest after just 20 to 30 pages. OK, so I read that this is part of a long series involving a character named Zuckerman. So I decided I should work up to this book. The idea of seven or eight books in a series didn't scare me off.

But I took a break first. Reread "Beloved" and the first two of Updike's Rabbit books to prove to myself I wasn't completely unable to enjoy and appreciate what the late 20th century had to offer.

Then I read "The Ghost Writer." Liked it. I grew up across the Kill Van Kull from Newark so felt a certain kinship with the subject matter, even if the Newark Roth depicts was long gone by the time I came along. But it felt like work. However, by the end of the book I'd warmed to him and raved to my husband that it was true that Roth has been gypped of the Nobel Prize, that there's no one who can deliver period dialogue like him, etc. etc.

Then I jumpted right into "Zuckerman Unbound" and "The Anatomy Lesson." I plowed right through. I wallowed. I OD'd. I waited a long time to turn to "The Prague Orgy."

The next two -- "The Counterlife" and "American Pastoral" -- sat unblinking and accusatory on my bedside for almost two years. I don't know what made me take up Roth again now but it is torture. And yet I can't allow myself to stop.

It doesn't make sense. I've given in before. Gave up on Salman Rushdie nearly as soon as I started, could barely hold "The Alchemist" in my hand, and ended up gritting my teeth through the second half of Pamuk's "Snow" (even though I went on to greatly enjoy others of his books).

I usually have great staying power with books and series. I pretended to have (or gave myself a psychosomatic case of?) the flu to finish "Crime and Punishment" a few years ago. I cheerfully whistled my way through a course in Victorian literature in which I digested a Dickens or Eliot orAusten novel every week. I will press a copy of "Absalom! Absalom!" in the hands of any unsuspecting teenager who expresses even a mild interest in southern writers.

Several years ago I went to a dinner party where one of the guests was a soon-t0-be-famous medium. My father had died a few years before and I corralled my cynicism long enough to talk to the medium. He first described to me a teal blue tailored coat I had as a child that my father had particularly liked. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Your father wants you to know -- all the books are where he is. You don't need to rush through them."

There was nothing more convincing I could have heard. But of course I couldn't show that.

"Great," I quipped. "I can wait for eternity to read Proust."

And I've kept to that. I've read Zola and Flaubert but I've not experienced the float of memories from the taste of the madeleine myself. I'm waiting.

But I don't think I want to share eternity with Philip Roth. In fact, I want to finish with him before I'm 50.

Morning Buns

My doctor says it's time to pay attention to my creeping cholesterol count and those extra ten pounds. OK, I'm game. I know that. So what do we do?

We completely turn on end what I've been eating. I've eliminated breads, white rice, pasta before, cut down sugar, etc. so I was up for that. But this time, on day two of the regimen, it finally dawned no me -- my cappuccino and croissant mornings are a thing of the past. Granted, after France I still don't have much of a desire for the stuff and it's been so hot it hasn't seemed appealing. But what if I discover that foamed milk and sugar are the fuel of my writing? That the whole thing comes to a crashing halt when faced with the prospect of an unremitting diet of peppermint tea and a third of a whole grain roll?

I've been dutiful and even enthusiastic for eight days now. I truly feel good too. I planned for my drive to Napa like I was the provisioning officer for a company of Marines -- an ounce of mozzarella cheese and two black velvet pluots on the seat beside me and the confidence that I would pass at least a dozen Carl's Jr.'s where I could get a chicken sandwich and eat just the inside.

But now I'm at my conference in Napa. I went to Bouchon Bakery yesterday afternoon -- just to look -- and I couldn't leave that pistachio brioche all alone in its case, unclaimed as evening drew in. And this morning I went to the Napa Valley Coffee Roasting Company in St. Helena. Even though I have TWO breakfasts provided for me everyday -- one at the B&B where I'm staying and one at the conference -- I require more serious caffeine than that which a pot of communal coffee can provide. Especially to fuel the exciting and exhausting work ahead of me of thinking about voice and narrative arc all day. I need a hissing, steaming, metallic machine that looks like it could pull a line of train cars up to Promontory Point. I need a double espresso.

And my plan survived until I got to the end of the short line at the counter. Then I pointed a querulous finger at the little trio of pastries balanced at the top of the display.

"What's that?" I asked, trying to sound casual and knowing that Dr. Getz is hundreds of miles away.

"A morning bun," the young woman said.

I suspected as much. I could not resist. A yeasty fistful with a firm, crunchy exterior and just a dusting of sugar.

"I'll have one of those," I said.

Now I can do my work.

Research?

The Tour de France is drawing to a close. There are three more stages. I've watched pretty much every minute of the coverage -- albeit fast forwarding through some of the stretches when not much was going on. I exercise a strict news blackout during the day until I can sit down and watch the coverage with my husband at night. I have a print out of the teams sitting on the coffee table and by now I can identify many riders by their number. I can even tell the difference between the Schleck brothers based just on their profiles (Andy's face is thinner).

On Sunday morning I must get up very early and drive to Napa for my writing conference. It's the last stage of the tour -- the ride into Paris and along the Champs Elysee. Usually not much happens but it's fun to see and this year who knows what might happen. I'm considering getting up even an hour earlier than I need to and watch an hour before I get in the car.

Why am I doing this? I can't explain why I have become so taken with the sport. It really started last year (yes, I'm the only American who started following cycling in earnest AFTER Armstrong retired). I feel that odd and comforting feeling of characters and scenes roiling around in my mind. Surely there is some fiction to be crafted from this drama. People who push themselves beyond physical endurance and who accept pain as a daily part of their lives, people who see food as a tool and don't have enough hours in the day to take in the nutrition they need, people who are away from their families for most of the year for a sport that many people scoff at and where your career is largely over by age 35. Boy -- it sounds an awful lot like professional dancers. Hmmm, I wonder why I find it interesting......

But this week I know that I'm also trying to distract myself from the fact that I am going to a writing conference next week. I've read all the submissions from the other people in my workshop and I'm excited to meet them and talk about their work. But I have underlying anxiety about the whole thing.

Sad, Sad News

I just read that Frank McCourt is gravely ill and is not expected to live. Apparently he recently had melanoma but survived that and now has meningitis.

Mr. McCourt was my first creative writing teacher. I was lucky enough to have him for two years at Stuyvesant High School and he fostered my irreverant, impractible love of words that still is a major part of my life.

All week I've had a burning desire to just sit in my chair and read. I keep creating piles of things to read. John Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Philip Roth. My eyes scan my bookshelves looking for things to dive into. My practical self tells me I should be feverishly working on my novel to prepare for the Napa Valley conference. But I can only make myself revel in the work of others right now.

Perhaps a fitting thank you to a life-changing teacher and writer.

Psyching Myself Out

In two weeks I will be at the Napa Valley Writer's Conference in a fiction workshop led by Antonya Nelson. I loved Nelson's short stories even before I found out she would be teaching at the conference.

This is the first competitive admittance conference I've gotten into. Today I received access to the manuscripts of the other participants in my workshop to read and critique. I am having a problem with Adobe on my computer so I haven't been able to open any of them yet, let alone read them, but I already feel my confidence draining away.

I knew this would happen, but I hoped it would just happen on the drive up to Napa, not now, when I have so much time on my hands to ask myself why I am trying to write anyway.

It's a hot day, even here at the beach. The air conditioning at the place I go to yoga is not working, so I will be skipping class this afternoon. A walk along the beach is unappealing. Maybe I will just stay in my cool bedroom and finish reading "Pictures At An Exhibition," watch a Netflix movie or two (so that I can send them back tonight and get the next season of "MI-5" by Wednesday) and put considerable energy into not comparing myself to others and reminding myself that this is supposed to satisfying and fun.

Candle Crazy

Candles are synonymous with writing to me.

When I was a little girl my mother inexplicably allowed me to keep a lit candle on my desk as I read in the winter afternoons. I stuck normal dinner tapers in the top of an old wine bottle and treasured the colored patterns the dripping wax created on the sides of the green bottle. I read all of the Little House books, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Noel Streatfield and Daniel Defoe watching the wax drip down the sides of those bottles.

When I started writing in earnest a few years ago, I started lighting scented candles when I wrote. At first I thought it would act as a warning beacon to my sons to communicate that I was engaged in a serious creative pursuit and should not be disturbed. Then I started insisting on having candles lit at dinner, on the dining room table as I sat with my tea and book in the grey dawn before anyone gets up, and in my room as I get dressed. I even have little travel candle tins that I impermissibly use in hotel rooms when I am at writing retreats.

It's not quite an obsession but more of a marker, a reminder, that I am open for the business of writing or thinking about writing, whether my own or someone's else's. When I walk into my office, I get a whiff of hyacinth left over from the day before and it makes me do a mental check on when I will get to sit down and write that day, already anticipating the sound of the match flaring into light. I'm not unaware of the Christian service overtones. I serve as a subdeacon at my Episcopal church and I am cognizant of the power of candles being lit or extinguished and what they communicate to the congregation.

It makes it very easy to buy gifts for me. I am thrilled when people give me candle paraphenalia. I recently received a blue glass votive holder, inspired by Alvar Aalto, the famous Finnish designer. It already has a permanent spot on the dining room table.

There's also a promise involved in lighting a candle. The big poured jar candles claim that they last 60 hours. I don't know if that's true, but when I buy a new candle it's like an insurance policy or vow to myself that I will make good use of it and see it through to the end. The idea of leaving a candle only half-used is beyond comprehension

Grant and Twain

I've been fascinated by Ulysses Grant for a long time. I can spend a long time looking at those photographs of him during the Civil War, trying to figure out what he was thinking about. I feel like I know him -- that he could be my brother. It doesn't make any sense.

So I was delighted to find a book called "Grant and Twain" by Mark Perry, which tells the story of the unlikely friendship between Grant and Mark Twain. It was Twain who convinced Grant to write his memoirs and to work on them while he was dying of mouth cancer at age 62. It was Twain who helped him negotiate to get a better publishing deal so that his wife would have something to live on after his death. It was Twain who would come to his house in the evening and read his pages, while he was anxiously waiting to see if he could see sufficient subscriptions to make it worthwhile to go ahead and publish "Huckleberry Finn."

But it was Grant, uncertain of his writing abilities and unsure of the market for his book, who sat, in great pain and with a scarf tied around his neck even in summer, and pounded out descriptions of the great battles of the Civil War, day after day, racing against the clock of his own death. Some days he wrote ten thousand words. In his last summer he waived off the narcotics offered by his doctor so that he could finish the book.

The book met with great success and according to Perry is the beginning of the great American tradition of well-written non-fiction.

It makes me sit up straighter and feel ashamed of every day I've looked at my computer and then just shrugged and decided I didn't feel like writing that day.

Failing At My Resolution

At the beginning of the year I stated that one of my resolutions was to read less than I did last year. Well, here we are halfway through the year and I hereby publicly admit a complete failure to keep to that resolution. In fact, I'm slightly ahead of last year's tally. As of yesterday, June 30, I've read 77 books so far this year.

My current read looks like it will be fascinating. It's called "Grant and Twain" and is the story of the friendship between Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant at the end of Grant's life. I didn't know they were friends and I didn't know that Twain played a big role in convincing Grant that he should write his memoirs. I guess Grant's memoirs will be next on my reading list.