Stuck in Germany!

You'd think an unplanned, several-day-and-no-end-in-sight "vacation" in Berlin would afford plenty of time for literary pursuits. Unfortunately, between spending hours on the phone with the airline trying to rebook my flights about three times, and exploring this beautiful, lively city, I've had almost no time to read. But I did find a German book store or two, and spent some time browsing. If your German ain't great, that book is David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.

I have a flight out of Berlin through London scheduled for Wednesday, so please send out some positive thoughts about ash clouds dissipating and planes flying safely. Prost!

Bloodroot: Tragic Family, Brilliant Novel

Don't be surprised if you see Amy Greene's Bloodroot make its way onto several of the literary prize short lists later this year. It's that good; a wonderfully engrossing story by a debut novelist who writes with amazing clarity, emotion, authenticity and beauty.

Bloodroot is a plant that has the power both to cure or kill; it's the central symbol throughout a novel rich with dichotomy (love and hate, life and death). Bloodroot is also the name of the mountain in dirt-poor East Tennessee where the novel takes place. Much like the Mississippi River in Mark Twain's works, Bloodroot Mountain stands as both the setting for the story and a "thing" with which the novel's characters have a real, tangible relationship. The mountain itself is a character.

These tragic characters, all with an inseparable connection to Bloodroot, take turns telling this story about the importance of family heritage and the dangers of fate. Blue-eyed, beautiful Myra Lamb is the central character. She is her family's hope for breaking a century-old curse. But Myra herself seems also to be cursed, and marries an abusive jerk who does everything he can to sever her roots and destroy her sense of self. Her only saving grace is her hope of one day returning home to Bloodroot. "You might leave one day," Myra says, "but your blood will whisper to you."

Bursting with symbolism and Biblical allusions, but maintaining a wonderful sense of "country mysticism" and superstition, this novel is about as literary as literary gets. That's not to say the book is difficult — it's actually one of the most brilliant types of literary novels: Even if you don't get all of it, you're still totally engaged in the story and the writing, because the story stands strongly on its own merit and the writing is so fantastic. Taking time to think through and understand the "literary adornments" only adds to the enjoyment of the novel.

I'm not in a book club, but if you are, this would be a fantastic novel. It's one that begs to be discussed, and therefore, savored.

Found in Translation: Overcoming a Fear of Non-English Novels

A few years ago, as an idealistic mid-20s reader, I made a goal one summer to conquer War and Peace. So I set out for Barnes and Noble to make what I thought would be a simple book purchase. Two hours later, I emerged bleary-eyed and frustrated...and with no book.

So what happened? Well, that was the first time I had really seriously looked into War and Peace at all, and as I poured over the four or five different versions of the novel on the shelf, I couldn't figure out which translation was the "best." One version seemed to be several hundred pages shorter than others, there were some pretty major differences in the line-by-line prose, and one version even included long passages of untranslated French. I started to wonder how much those differences would affect my comprehension and enjoyment of the novel. Eventually, I convinced myself (rationalized?) that there was really no point to spending three months with a book and constantly worrying if I was missing something because I'd picked the "wrong" translation.

I know it's a touch xenophobic, but that experience pretty much put me off all books in translation for good. What if all translated novels only represent approximations of the author's tone and intent? Would the novel be nearly as good when I'm missing all the subtleties and "inside jokes"? What if these novels are really only the literary version of those terrible (and terribly funny) Japanese kung-fu movies over-dubbed into English?

I've read exactly ONE novel in translation in my entire life — a crappy mystery by Arturo Perez-Reverte titled The Club Dumas, which I read at the height of Da Vinci Code-mania. However, since I've started blogging and reading others' literary blogs, it's becoming increasingly clear that this fear of books in translation is a neurosis I need to overcome to really consider myself a well-rounded bibliophile. It's caused me to miss out on some pretty fantastic novels by non-English writers like Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), Roberto Bolano (2666) and Jose Saramango (Blindness).

So, as I leave for a week-long work trip to Germany on Saturday, I figured what better time to work through this literary stumbling block than when I'm in a foreign country. Book of choice, about which I've heard tons of good things:  The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Explanation for that choice: Since this fear of books in translation isn't exactly reasonable in the first place, I'm going to overcome it by reading a Spanish novel in Germany. Take that, sense. I've also just purchased the first two books in Steig Larsson's "The Girl Who..." trilogy, and plan to read those Swedish-to-English books before the third novel The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is published in the U.S. May 25th. 

So, what else have I missed out on? What are some of your favorite in-translation books? Anyone else ever have to overcome a similar silly, irrational fear of books in translation?

(Note: Wikipedia's War and Peace entry has a full list of translations. My copy — which, if you're reading this on the site and not on Google Reader or email, you see to the right in the "Dork at Work" photo — is the Anthony Briggs translation. I still don't know if that translation is the "best" one, so would welcome any input on any "reader preferred" translations.)

Hope Springs Eternal: Baseball in Literature

Happy Opening Day! For my international friends, as well as American readers who don't know a bunt from a base on balls, today marks the start of the 2010 Major League Baseball season. For baseball geeks like me, it is the first real sign of spring, and bar none, one of the best days of the year. 

Sadly, though, merging two of my favorite things in the world — baseball and books — isn't that simple. While there are a ton of good baseball movies (Bull Durham, The Natural, Field of Dreams, Major League, to name a few), there seems to be a dearth of good baseball-related books. But I have come across a few. And I wanted to post about this today to find out if there are any I'm missing, so please get ready to comment below if you've encountered a good book centered on our national pastime.

Here are a few baseball-related novels I've enjoyed:
1) The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth — This hilarious satire, and one of Roth's lesser-known novels, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a homeless baseball team in 1943 called the Rupert Mundys. The team includes a drunken first baseman, a one-armed center fielder, a "little person" relief pitcher and a 14-year-old second baseman. Most of the meat of the novel is introducing each of the characters and giving their back stories, but there's plenty about the Mundys ignominious season, as well. This a must-read for any baseball fan!

2) Play for a Kingdom, by Thomas Dyja — This inventive Civil War novel features a Union company from Brooklyn who takes on a Confederate company from Alabama in a daily baseball game during a semi-stalemate at the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness. Dyja (who most of you have probably never heard of) is a wonderful storyteller, creating fantastically vivid characters. As you'd expect, the story relates how baseball becomes a welcome distraction and a common denominator for these supposed enemies. But it never becomes cliche or cheesy. I loved this novel because it covered two of my favorite topics to read about: the Civil War and baseball.

3) The Brothers K, by David James Duncan — One of my favorite novels of all time, this story follows the Camas, Washington-based Chance family through the mid 20th century. Duncan uses baseball as a central theme and a metaphor for life as it constantly brings the family together. Father Chance played baseball at the University of Washington and was a blue chip prospect until he is drafted into the Korean War and hurts his shoulder. He spends much of the novel managing minor league players and trying to make a comeback. Additionally, the second-eldest son Peter is a naturally gifted ballplayer, but his politics intervene and he renounces baseball. If you haven't read this novel, or even heard of it, or even if you're not a baseball fan, please take my word that this will be one of the best books you'll ever read, too.

So what are your favorite baseball novels? Any recommendations I should start today, in honor of Opening Day?

A Gate at the Stairs: Metaphor Mania

Like practically everything else in Lorrie Moore's novel, the title A Gate at the Stairs is a metaphor. No matter your station in life, there are always obstacles. But some "obstacles" -- like race, or past mistakes, or ignorance, or preconceived notions -- are harder to climb over than others. In and of itself, that's a great message, but the plot with which Moore frames this idea is such a tangle of subplots, digressions and varying styles, that this idea almost gets lost amidst the din.

In a thinly veiled fictional version of Madison, Wisconsin (Moore teaches at the University of Wisconsin), freshman Tassie Keltjin lands a job as a babysitter for the adopted, mixed-race child of Sarah Brink and her husband Edward. But Sarah and Edward's marriage is rocky, and they have secrets. But Tassie gets a boyfriend who isn't what he seems. But Sarah is a restauranteur. But Tassie's farmer father and Jewish mother are a little kooky. But racism exists, even in a liberal college town. But Tassie's brother is joining the army. But nothing is ever what it seems in a paranoid post-9/11 world.

Moore seems to have the literary version of attention deficit disorder. The style and story shifted so often that it was hard for me as a reader to get comfortable. When Sarah has meetings with other parents of mixed-race children, Moore writes these scenes as pages of modifier-less dialogue. But then the next section might be a long description of flowers and nature, practically bursting with over-adorned, metaphor-laden prose. And even when the plot is moving along, Moore will key off a single word or phrase, and spend a several-paragraph digression making jokes or describing further or generally trying to "wow" you with her words. (Here's an example: "Contents may shift during the flight, we had been told. Would that be good or bad? And what about discontents? Would they shift, too? And what if the oxygen deprivation in the cabin caused one to think in idle spirals and desperate verbal coils like this for the rest of one's life?")

When I did get comfortable enough to slow down or reread to get some of the jokes (like the one above about "contents shifting during flight"), I did enjoy them. Moore is frequently a clever and witty writer. But more often than not, these seemed like spaghetti-at-the-wall gimmicks. If it stuck with the reader, great. If not, well, Moore had amused herself. Similarly, with the multiple themes Moore tries to tease out of her many subplots, there just seemed to be too many balls in the air. Instead of trying to catch one or two of them to give them the appropriate attention and treatment, Moore actually just drops them all. 

So, now this is a bit awkward. I get to announce the winner of my giveaway...of a book I didn't care for. That'll learn me to have a contest for a book before I've read it!  Anyway....and the winner is....Lisa, at bibliophiliac. Congratulations! Also, I'd highly recommend checking out Lisa's blog -- she writes with great enthusiasm and flair, and it's a lot of fun to read!