Megan Stielstra's Blog

Viki tagged me to talk about books. I'm supposed to fill out the following questionnaire which reminds me of that first chapter of Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler which you should read if you haven't (the first chaper. Not the whole book. But, knock yourself out) because it'll make you want to read. Or else maybe hide. Here goes:

1) One book that changed your life:

Excuse me very much, but ONE? That’s a joke, right?

Somebody gave me a copy of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey when I was fourteen and I was amazed to read my thoughts in those pages (which were, of course, very much like Franny in an I’m too Spiritual/Intellectual for the World So I’ll Cry for Hours on the Sofa sort of way). A couple years later my English teacher, Ms. Holmes, assigned Swift’s Modest Proposal, which is the first time I remember being awed by the power of language. Then there was Geek Love, which turned me on to what I know think is literature’s greatest gift: understanding different points of view, different sorts of people, different lives. Richard Wright wrote about this idea in chapter seven of Black Boy (when he gets a library card and starts reading for the first time ever, and novels helped him to understand the white men at the office where he worked, and Dreiser’s Sister Carrie helped him understand his mother, etc. etc), just this idea of how a story can open our eyes a little bit. My life has been profoundly affected, over and over, by that knowledge. Take O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, which helped me understand my dad. Philip from Of Human Bondage, which helped me understand all those friends who’ve ever obsessed about someone totally wrong for them. Most recently, I experienced it through the Iranian professor-narrator of Reading Lolita in Tehran (it’s crazy now, to think that realization first originated from the narrator of Geek Love, a teenage blind albino freak-dwarf). Then there was One Hundred Years of Solitude, which made me think about magic—magic within the normal, day-to-day maneuvering of my life—and, oh man! Love in the Time of the Cholera (maybe the best book EVER) which REALLY rocked my world because it made me understand, for the first time, that my life is this big long series of events that connect and something done years ago may very well touch what happens tomorrow, and also the power of love which is certainly no small-time news. Bastard Out of Carolina made me horrified and sad and furious, I wanted to scream on some roof after that read, so that one makes the list because horrible things DO happen in this world, and if we discuss them maybe we can fix them, and if we can observe someone else’s strength and hope (like Bone’s) maybe that can give us strength and hope to push on—it comes back to that same idea from Franny Glass years ago. At the time, that felt like MY story, and knowing I wasn’t alone made it easier, somehow. Hopefully, Bone gives that same feeling to people who’ve been in her situation, but what makes that book such goddamn genius is that all the characters are painted with depth and care, so, even as you sit there hating Daddy Glenn, you still feel sorry for him. Because he’s real. He’s human. He’s words on a page—chicken scratches on a piece of paper—but he lives and breathes. And then—THEN—there’s the whole slew of books that changed my life because of what I learned about writing (and could, hopefully, then, make myself a better writer, a life lesson which I strive to relearn every day): Anna Karenina and Fall on Your Knees and Last Exit to Brooklyn, East of Eden, Hairstyles of the Damned, When the Messenger is Hot, Interpreter of Maladies, Cavedweller, Middlesex, The Things They Carried (again. That book took me on this whole What is Truth spiral) Kafka, Kafka, Kafka and mostly, geez oh Pete’s, Light in fucking August, which I could go on for several pages about but since I’m guessing it’ll be the answer to most every question here I’ll pause for now.

2) One book that you’d read more than once:

All of them. I try to read once just to lose myself in the story, and then a second time, sometimes a third or fourth, to figure out how it was written. The best part (now that I’m actually old enough to do this) is NOT having picked up a book in several years and rereading it, and then finding all the new stuff I didn’t notice the four times I read it years ago because now I’m a totally different person and a totally different writer.

3) One book you’d want on a deserted island:

A blank one (preferably a 5.25X8.25 graph-paper Moleskin, but if I’m on a desert island I doubt I’d be so picky about the specific brand of journal so long it’s not one of those fancy Indian-print jobs from Urban Outfitters because ink seeps through the homemade paper) so I’d have a place to write, as opposed to writing in the sand with a stick and getting pissed every time a tropical storm or the tide or whatever wiped away my story, like when your hard drive crashes (which mine hasn’t ever since Christopher made me switch to a MAC—FOUR fuckin’ PCs I went through in my life and I want to cry when I think of all the work they ate!) and you’re so, so, so terribly sad.

4) One book that made you laugh:

I’m with Viki: Sederis always makes me laugh in the funny/haha kind of laugh, but there’s also the books that make me laugh in a funny/NO F’ING WAY kind of way, like in Nice Big American Baby when the Mexican immigrant character thinks that as soon as you cross the border into the United States someone gives you a free dishwasher. Or You’re Ugly, Too by Lorrie Moore, when the professor gets all these student evaluations that talk about how she skipped into class singing show tunes and then offered the class sips of her hot chocolate. Or in Video, by Meera Nair, where the uber-traditional Indian man (accidentally) watches an American porno and sees a blow job for the first time in his life and never, never had he even IMAGINED the possibility of such an act and he can’t get the image out of his head and you’re like, WHAAAA? A GUY who’s never heard of a BLOWJOB? Or in Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer, when the narrator gets a psychiatric evaluation ‘cause, when forced to play some trust-building game with other Yale freshmen where she had to pretend to be an inanimate object, she wanted to be a revolver. And, you know, wipe out the human race. That’s super-funny, but in a really uncomfortable way that’s just too true to life, you know? You laugh, not because it’s rip-roaring hilarious but rather because awkward laughter is the only thing that’ll break the tension of how horribly honest it all is.

5) One book that made you cry:

That scene in The Things They Carried with the baby buffalo. I lose it every time.

Also, Where the Red Fern Grows. That scene where the dogs die. My fourth grade teacher read it aloud, and apparently lots of parents called in really upset that their kids came home crying. My mom called and thanked him for giving me such a power introduction to literature (score one for Megan’s mom!).

6) One book you wish you’d written:

I’m working on it, I’m working on it!

7) One book you wish had never been written:

blah blah I’m glad they’ve all been written ‘cause they’ve all contributed to blah blah. That said, here’s my real answer: either the stupid shit by celebrities (Yes, Nicole Ritchie, this means you) or anything by Henry Miller.

8) One book you’re currently reading and (since, for me and my crazy schedule, #8 and #9 are the same question with #9 being more of a "Books you've been meaning to get back to" sort of thing) 9) One book you’ve been meaning to read:

Again with the ONE book? Here’s the answer: Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevski, Sight Seeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell, Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sons of the Rapture by Todd Dills, America’s Report Card by McNally, Meno’s The Boy Detective Fails and about six anthologies are sitting on my desk right now, some just begun and others halfway through and others almost done, and I’ll come back to whatever’s grabbing me in the moment. That said, it’s conference time at both schools so mostly I’m reading student work—lots of student work—and when I have free time what I want to do is not so much read but rather watch action movies.

10) Tag five people:

Kim, Byron, Mary, Jeff (even though he doesn’t do this sort of thing on his blog) and Molly (who doesn’t even have a blog so maybe that’s not fair, but she’s a big reader so she can just do it and post it on the No Touching site until she starts her own blog).