A New Year's Reading Resolution

My good friend Cara once gave me the best reason ever for not eating fast food. "We eat a finite number of meals in our lifetimes," she said, "so why eat crappy food?" The same sentiment applies to reading, which I would argue is as essential an activity to my personal fitness as eating. With that said, let's do some math.

The average lifespan for an American woman is 79.1 years. We'll go ahead and round that down to 79 for simplicity's sake (although rounding that number down does make me a bit squeamish). Depending on the length and complexity of my current reading, I get through anywhere from 1 to 4 books a week. If last semester's coursework is a good benchmark, for at least the next 4.5 years, I'll be hitting closer to the 4 than the 1 on average.

So in my lifetime of 79 years, minus the 25 I've already lived (again rounding, since I'm really about 25.3 years old), I have 648 months of reading. Actually, the 52-weeks-in-a-year measure is probably a better way to calculate, since the whole 4-weeks-to-a-month thing is decidedly inaccurate. Thus, I can more accurately say that I have 2,808 weeks of reading left to me. That works out, using an estimate of 2.5 books per week (hereafter referred to as bks/wk), to 7,020 books.

I should point out that books hardly constitute the whole of my reading. As a graduate student, and future professor (cross your fingers, kiddies!), I'll be supplementing books with papers, articles, The Chronicle of Higher Education, department memos, colleagues' drafts, submissions to publications, online reading for fun, and the New York Times Magazine on Sundays. Let's stick with books for now, though, because doing these calculations with page counts sounds just a wee bit daunting.

So 7,020 books. A lot, yes? But not really, considering UNLV's Lied Library has a million-plus volume collection. I must be choosy, with this whole reading endeavor.

But I really like the way I've gone about reading until now. It's haphazard, true, and all over the map, granted, but it's led me to some really remote and interesting corners of the reading world. I just finished Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram (points earned for most first names in a name), on loan from a colleague/boss-lady at UNLV's Academic Success Center. I learned a number of things from that novel, including that Australia drafted soldiers to fight alongside Americans in Vietnam. What a strange tidbit to be elided from American history classes, but discovered in a book about India.

Before that, I read Roberto Belaño's 2666, hoping I would like it better than his Savage Detectives, which I read for a course last semester. I did like it better.

Next up, we've got Amartya Sen's Collective Choice and Social Welfare. I heard an interview with Sen on NPR's Planet Money podcast, and was intrigued by his thoughts on the centuries-long misunderstanding of Adam Smith's theories about the free market and the invisible hand. Sen has a book about these ideas coming out, but I want some background reading on his economics before I get into the new book. I'm trying not to take everything at face value these days, especially on the big questions like, "Why is there poverty and what can we do about it?"

Also on my reading list for the holiday vacation is assigned reading for next semester's courses. It runs the gamut from Aristotle and Plato to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I'm comforted to know before even getting started that the spring reading will be as encompassing and eclectic as the fall's.

Each of those books, assigned or stumbled across, eats into my grand total of 7,020. I can try to read more, and certainly there will be times in my life when I do. Just as certainly, however, there will be times when I don't or can't. I need a different strategy to deal with my finite-lifetime-reading anxiety.

Here it is: Feel free to put something down. I'm guilty of trying, very hard and even desperately at times, to finish anything I start. If I don't, I feel as though I've given up too easily. If it was printed, it must be worthwhile, no? Well, no, actually. In a way, this train of thought wends its way back to my post on difficult reading. A worthwhile book for some is not necessarily a worthwhile book for me. And only I can make that call.

Thinking about my projected lifespan depresses me. Thinking about anyone's projected lifespan depresses me. It leads to one of those deep, dark pits that I deliberately avoid in my day-to-day thoughts. I suppose it's that kind of avoidance, driven by fear, that keeps me from writing fiction. That's a whole other topic, deserving of its own post, however. If I can force myself to climb down into the pit, that is.

But actively working towards making the most of my projected lifespan curtails the depression. It gives me hope. Hope that I am making the most, and hope that there is a most to be made. So for the first time in my adult life, I hereby make the following New Year's Resolution:

I will not finish a book just because. I will finish it because it's going somewhere, because it speaks to me, because it broadens my knowledge, because I can't wait to find out what happens next. I will read recommendations, required books, and random discoveries, as always. But I will not be afraid to put my reading down and say, "This isn't for me." In other words, I will never again read a book the way I read Snow Falling on Cedars.

And for good measure, I'll go ahead and put that resolution into effect starting............NOW.

The Crafty Christmas Corner

This holiday season has turned out to be a very crafty one, full of knitting, crocheting, felting, cookie-baking (See cookie buckets in photo!), and other assorted Martha-Stewart-style activities. Partially, perennial brokeness has habituated me to hand-made rather than store-bought presents. It's a habit I'm not planning on breaking though, because there's something beautiful about hand-made items.

My mother and sister have always been fabulous gift-givers. They find the most amazing, artistic, and apt gifts at bazaars, local stores, and farmer's markets. My inhibitions about spending money have prevented me from jumping on that bandwagon. But by making gifts myself, I hope to give some of that same warm-cozy to their recipients that I feel when I receive a gift from the aforementioned fabulous mother and sister.

Something else happens with a hand-made gift, somthing that makes hand-made gifts an appropriate topic for a blog about texts. They say something. They speak to the character and tastes of the giver as well as the receiver, and what they say about each person traverses, back and forth, the bonds that tie the two together. In a way, what these gifts say changes those bonds, strengthens them, weaves the past to the present and opens new avenues to the future. The weaving/growing/bond metaphor springs easily to my mind, since so many of the gifts I've been making are knitted or crocheted. They may take hours upon hours to complete, and I may be reading or watching TV or listening to This American Life while I work, but a good portion of the time I spend on each gift is spent thinking about the person it's for.

I think about the colors and patterns I've chosen for this person, hoping or knowing that they'll love them. This is the past. The experiences I've shared with him or her informs every choice I make.

When I painstakingly unravel and correct mistakes, I think about the moment this person opens their gift, and how I want that moment to be perfect and free of mistakes. I want to create a beautiful tiny space in their life that in some way reflects the space they occupy in my mind, a space I can go to to appreciate how wonderful my friends and family are. This is the present.

And when I've gotten into the swing of things, I let my mind wander and imagine the fun--and sorrows--I have yet to experience with this person, this wonderful friend, confidante, supporter, sounding board, inspiration. This is the future.

All these daydreams can't be drawn from a shawl or wall-hanger or pillow, no matter how loudly I think while I'm making those gifts. What can be drawn from the gifts is the care I put into making them, the concern I have for their recipient's tastes, and the time I have and will invest into my relationships.

I'm not big on receiving gifts myself. I enjoy knowing that people care, but I'm perfectly content with a hug and conversation on the phone or over a cup of coffee. But if I get one Christmas wish, it's that the gifts I give speak as loudly to their recipients as they have to me while I've been making them.

Writers vs. Readers: The Ultimate Smackdown

I've been thinking lately about difficult writing. That's perhaps a misnomer, actually, because I've really been thinking about difficult reading. Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, the subject of my last post, got this ball of burdensomeness rolling when it came up for discussion in a class of fellow graduate students. There's one key difference between myself and these particular fellow students, though, that I think informs the contentiousness of what is really a pretty vanilla book. They're all writers, in the making-things-up, publishing-for-the-market-that-isn't-interested-in-Frenchmen-redefining-words-all-the-time, has-Random-House-called-yet kind of way. I am not that kind of writer.

This reaction of mine is not meant as an insult. I do not define myself negatively because I find that idea of the writer to be negative. I define myself that way because I do have a degree in writing and don't want to engender any confusion on that front. I define in a reactive way because I haven't yet figured out the positive definition of what and who I am. Frankly, I'm ok with that. It goes along with my distaste for setting goals, but I'll save that discussion for after I read Barbara Ehrenreich on positivism.

Lahiri is ridiculously successful. The Namesake won the Pulitzer, for goodness' sake. But it's not a very complicated book. I enjoyed reading it, but it was breezy and light and didn't evoke strong emotions, particularly not for the characters' sakes. From my last post, it's clear the book did create memorable connections to my own experience. But that's not the same as a book forging whole new paths in my brain. I felt rather that this book merely led me more slowly along paths I've trodden before. My classmates didn't seem to get even that much from it. In the words of one woman, who always offers well-reasoned and insightful comments, "I actively disliked it."

I've been trying ever since that class to make sense of the almost uniform dislike expressed by this group of writers. During the conversation, I defended the book, as did one other student. He and I have similarly comfortable sort-of foreign, sort-of not backgrounds that might account for our attachment to a book about immigrants that focuses on feelings and assumes a stable economic and political situtation. But the more I think about The Namesake, the more I realize that it doesn't really focus on feelings. The text never lets you in, never invites you to share a titillating bit of info or the excitement of a sexual escapade. All that gets glossed over. In reading, I must have inserted all the good stuff from my own experience, and let it mix with the words and actions and characters actually on the page.

The further I get from the experience of reading, the more disenchanted I become with the book. That's usually how I judge: about three weeks later. Because those books that I truly love are the ones whose endings I can't quite remember, but I do remember one character or description or awkward moment or turn of phrase that I have incorporated into my character and ways of speaking and attitudes towards others. With Lahiri, there is nothing to incorporate. Instead, I incorporated myself into the book, and mistook that self for something deeper within the text itself.

Even in acknowledging all this though--that I don't like it as much as I thought and it certainly shouldn't have won the Pulitzer--I feel compelled to defend the book against the primary complaint I heard from my fellow students. It's too accessible. Really? As writers, considering the market, weighing what you want to write against what people want to read, searching for a publisher and devoted followers, how is accessibility necessarily a bad thing? That complaint would have surprised me far less coming from literature students, who slog through difficult writing as a matter of course. (For an example, see Michael McKeon on anything. Anything at all. Just read a paragraph. You'll get the idea.)

Full disclosure: Samuel R. Delany, the sci-fi guy, also makes the following argument, which I was excited to see someone else espouse when I read him.

Difficult writing has its place. Some ideas are intrinsically difficult, and require some verbal jumping-through-hoops and big words to express well enough and clearly enough that they can be understood correctly. Currently, I'm reading Foucault's History of Sexuality, and it's not the most transparent thing. Concomitantly, it's not the most opaque. Rather, Foucault seems to have hit on just the level of difficulty needed to convey his often non-instinctive ideas. If it was too easy, it wouldn't have the same level of insight and nuance. So difficult writing has its place.

But Lahiri isn't trying to take apart the dominate discourse. She's just trying to show us an immigrant family and some of their (admittedly minor) struggles. And if doing so in an accessible fashion gets her books just flying off the shelves of Borders and Whole Foods, then good on 'er. I'm inclined to think that people reading, no matter what, is a good thing. People reading about other cultures than their own, even if the treatment of that culture stays surface-bound, is definitely a good thing. Lahiri hasn't contributed anything to the literary conversation about the immigrant experience and what it means to write as a minority American. She has, however, contributed to the general public's conversation about what it means to be an average American. The Bengali characters Lahiri shows in Boston and New York, celebrating Christmas, dating white people, are now entrenched in her readers' minds. These readers may never have met an Indian-American in real life, but by getting to know Gogol and his family, the Indian-American experience no longer seems so foreign. Lahiri has taken the Other and through her easy and engaging writing style, made it seem not so Other at all.

That's where accessible writing has its place. Not everyone reads at the same level, and that's all fine and well. Maybe I'm in this particular camp on the subject because Mr. P, with whom I share everything else, couldn't give two red hoots for reading. I know that doesn't make him less intelligent or knowledgeable; in fact quite the opposite is true. He knows chemistry and I know criticism. Which one of us uses our brain more deeply and thoroughly and usefully? Impossible to say, but I do know the fact that I read and he doesn't means squat in answering that question.

For Lahiri's readers, then, perhaps reading isn't an intellectual activity. But it can still be an activity that acquaints them with lives they've never seen before. Those lives aren't fully explored in The Namesake, and we're always at a distance from the characters' interiorities, but we have to start somewhere, right? New things are scary, and Lahiri knows just how far she can push the new before it gets too scary.

The writers reading her book know too much. They know how to parse difficult reading, and they are offended by accessible writing that sells. It's an insult to them, who spend their time perfecting their own literary craft. To them I say, remember. Remember that not everyone is like you. Remember that reading is a skill which you have fought for and struggled with and honed into a sharp-edged tool. But you too had to start somewhere. And for millions of readers who bought Lahiri's book, maybe it will be the start of their own struggles. Even if they don't struggle on the same scope as you, their struggles can still be worth having.

Make a Name for Yourself

Let's talk about names. After all, the novel in question is Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, the very title of which announces its concern with names and naming. Largely because of this concern, not to mention the main character’s search for a cultural identity, I worry that any attempt at a fictive imitation of the novel (which one of my courses has prompted me to try) would devolve into sentimental, thinly disguised autobiography. So rather than strive for fiction and fail, I’ll stick with a response to the book which embraces my autobiographical impulses.

So let’s talk about names. The novel’s most obvious namesake is Gogol, our hero of sorts, who later changes his name to Nikhil, and was originally named for Nikolai Gogol. The idea of naming a child, just born, after a favorite author is somehow beautiful. The act pays homage to beliefs which have shaped my life: that books are important, that writing can show us who we are, that reading straddles the line between self and other, in a way that can open or close the world to us. But the beauty of this naming only holds up because of the unfamiliarity of ‘Gogol.’ If he had been ‘Nick’ from the get-go, no matter its connection to ‘Nikolai,’ the name would have had no resonance.

Obviously, the oddity of ‘Gogol’ is vital to building Gogol’s sense of self as a character. This Russian name, neither Indian nor American, represents his lack of a clearly defined social identity. His name-change to ‘Nick’ constitutes a deliberate step towards establishing an adult, American identity. But this step comes loaded with consequences Gogol could never foresee. The most obvious is the strange burden he has put on his family of deciding which name to call him, and when. At times, his parents slip, call him ‘Gogol’ in front of college friends, roommates, girlfriends. But can they be blamed for using the name they always intended as a family name, a fond moniker for family use?

Only Gogol’s shame creates the need for blame. His parents’ confusion should not itself be confused with shame. Shame closes us to the world, limits our actions, and dictates our desires. Confusion, however, prevents us from accepting cut-and-dried answers to all our questions. Confusion, shared with the world, reveals a self which is searching, willing to listen, and does not intimidate with unexamined assurance. Through confusion, we come to know our own ignorance. How we deal with confusion can become a central building block of our characters. Gogol’s parents respect his name-changing decision, but do not seem to understand it. They do not share his shame at the lack of an easy-to-read American identity. They express their honest confusion through support, and the occasional slip, calling him Gogol. The blame is not theirs for slipping. It is Gogol’s for not recognizing his parents’ confusion and acting to relate it to his own and resolve it. Instead, Gogol blankets his own and his parents’ confusion with a false identity named ‘Nick.’

What better disguise than a new name? Names come with built-in assumptions about who we are and where we come from. They reassure the people we meet that their judgments of us are apt, or perhaps prompt those same people to recategorize their judgment into a different stereotype. But we can turn this around. We can invite everyone around us to revel in our confusion and leave behind the slick, well-made margins of self which may be easier to understand, but are also quicker to confine. What better way to break through the boundaries of surface judgment and invite others to truly know us than to have a name which does not allow for painless pigeonholing?

I have been ‘Cagle’ since 9th grade. I’m not quite sure, twelve years later, how it happened. The story I tell, particularly to those who assume it’s a military family thing, goes like this. At thirteen, I was gangly and pale. My hair flipped at my shoulders and my bangs at my brows. A typical day might find me wearing hunter green tapered denim, a matching turtleneck, and perhaps a snowman cardigan if it was around the holidays. Braces completed the look. I don’t regret not having the friendship of those who scorned my nerdy self; it is what it is, and I choose a regret-free life.

At some point, these unfriendly trendy kids decided the number of ‘Lauren’s’ was a hassle. The popular crowd decided our fates in homeroom one day, and didn’t bother cc’ing me on the memo. The popular Lauren got to be ‘Lauren.’ The only somewhat popular, but definitely not unpopular, Lauren got to be ‘Lauren Marie,’ the middle name tacked on to the first. And I? I was Cagle. Someone did let me know that I got stuck with my last name because I wasn’t girly enough to be a ‘Lauren.’

Was that really how the name got started? At this point, I am as clueless as someone who’s never even heard of that high school, let alone attended it with me. It doesn’t matter. I have internalized this story, as well as my response. At first, I was dismayed. Then, as has happened with so many labels, I decided to embrace it, to proclaim my awkwardness, my penchant for sci-fi, my good grades, my cross-stitching hobby. But the beautiful thing I discovered was that my name did not proclaim any of these things, at least not to all people. The name has become a clear, shape-shifting vessel into which everyone I meet can pour their experiences with and impressions of me.

At times, people make the association with Kegel exercises. That’s fine. I just make sure to let them know, mine’s spelled like ‘bagel.’ Or at least, more like ‘bagel.’ I’m not too picky on the spelling. And why should I be? If I love being ‘Cagle,’ because it creates more confusion than certainty, then it would be silly to insist on correct spelling all the time. As long as it’s right on my passport and paychecks, I’ll survive. And in the process, I find people willing to make conversation. The name is an open door, beckoning people to come in and poke around a bit. All names are that way, making conversation more comfortable. Just think about any awkward moments talking to someone whose name you had forgotten. How pleasurable was that conversation? An unusual name though, not only makes conversation more comfortable, but makes conversation more likely. It is a starting point, the moniker version of a strange tchotchke, if you will.

Of course, ‘unusual’ is a relative thing, in both senses of the word. ‘Cagle’ can be unusual to those who have never heard it before, just as ‘Gogol’ is unusual to those who haven’t read the Russians, or ‘Nikhil’ is unusual to those unfamiliar with Indian names. To my family, though, ‘Cagle’ is unusual only because it isn’t just my last name. It’s what I go by, who I am. They know the name, know how to spell it, but also know me as ‘Lauren.’ My close family, though, calls me ‘Lolli,’ which is unusual in its own right.

I love these many names. I love that they give me different entry points into the world. I love the nicknames they engender: Cagtastic, Cagdeezy, Caglicious. I love that they give me different vantage points of myself and remind me that I am not always who I think I am. When Gogol changed his name to ‘Nikhil,’ I immediately wondered, “But what do you call yourself in your head?” At the risk of sounding somewhat off, when I talk to myself, I use all my names. It is a freeing experience, to be able to see in yourself multiple overlapping selves which combine into a fluid and variable whole. I wonder, does Gogol experience the same freedom? Or has he, through his name-change, simply traded in one static self for another?

Our names give us a reference point in the world, but we should not confuse that reference point with stable fact. Our names make us recognizable, but should not describe or define us. When I worry that I let the oddity of my name do too much defining, I choose to let that worry be a reminder of the good sort of confusion, a reminder of the questions I should be asking of myself. Who am I? How do I express my self to others, respectfully and courteously? What is constant in me, and what am I still creating? What am I razing to make room, and where is there room I haven’t filled yet?

All this from a name. As Gogol’s struggle with his name illustrates his search for self, an embrace of a name can illustrate a conscious creation of self. Here I will leave my musings, but for one small example of how a name can change the game. Those people you see or talk to every week, or every day, at Starbucks or the grocery store or riding the campus shuttle bus or sitting in the library: All those people have names. And if you ask what it is, and share with them yours, they become three-dimensional vessels, ready to be filled with interactions and conversation and that strange satisfaction that comes from knowing who we are in relation to the world around us.

The Family-tastic Cookbook of Awesome

In honor of the lovely fresh veg I just purchased at the Henderson farmer's market, today I'm using this little piece of internet real estate and your, my dear reader's, time to pay homage to the gift that got my cooking juices flowing.

I call it The Family-tastic Cookbook of Awesome. My mother, a goddess among women, put this cookbook together as a present about four years ago, and it changed the way I look at the kitchen. No longer is the stove for warming up spiceless quesadillas, or the sink just for rinsing out coffee mugs. In the fridge, where once lived only bagels and cream cheese, now nestle ripe zucchinis and homemade tsatsiki. And, as with so many things in my life, I have my mother to thank.

(Here I must make a quick diversion to point out that Mr. P, my wonderful life-companion, deserves an equal share of thanks. He was the first unpaid cook to put together an entire meal just for me. His boldness and bravery amongst ingredients and strange-looking cooking implements have influenced how I cook more than anyone or anything else.)

For sheer inspiration, rather than influence, look no further than the Cookbook of Awesome, as which I will hereon refer to the text in question. Let me begin with a description:

• Page count? Surpassed 250 several years back, and keeps on growing.
• Types of recipes? From appetizers and drinks to breakfasts and desserts, this book's got 'em all.
• Ingredients, cultural influences, etc.? All over the map, metaphorically speaking. Here you'll find Tunesian Tomato Soup, Salad Primavera, Scotch Eggs, and Sloppy Joes.
• Other points of interest? The recipes, most of them, have notes. From one line to a whole page, the note may be about ingredient substitutions, the recipe's origin, a memorable time it was eaten, or an admonition to try things even if they contain mayonnaise. ::shudder::

The amount of time and loving attention my mother put into this astounds me. It is as though twenty-five years' worth of unconditional love, concern for my health, and fun family/friend times have been condensed into this one object, in a way which somehow represents without minimizing.

I keep the cookbook in a 3" binder, which lets me add pages as my mother sends them to me, which is regularly. The binder's pockets have let me start adding odds and ends of paper which mostly contain recipes and notes from Mr. P's familial cooking tradition. This format has shaped how I use the Cookbook of Awesome to a vast degree, and in turn how I cook in general.

Each page of recipes tends to have plenty of white space, so I make notes about the dates that I cooked a dish, what the dish was for, if a substitution worked out, things I could do better next time. There's certainly no guilt about spilling bits of this or that on the binder or its pages, as there might be with a pristine storebought edition of Fancy Famous Chef's Cookbook of Something or Other. The book lets itself be broken down into pages, perfect for toting along to a friend's house to use in their kitchen, or to easily photocopy for anyone who's ever tasted the White Chocolate Orange Dream Cookies I can almost make without the recipe.

Having the Cookbook of Awesome makes me want to cook, simply for the joy of using the book. The tasty food that comes out of it is the icing on the cake. When my belly starts rumbling from the special brand of homesickness that's not really about a place, but about the people in that place, reading through the cookbook fills me up with happy thoughts about my fantastic family. And after I'm full of happy thoughts and tasty food, I can call my mother and qvetch about the new memories folded into these recipes, keeping company with the old.

I hesitate to use some half-baked analogy of the recipes being ingredients in the dish of my life, but somehow it's fitting, if only because before they become dishes and memories of dishes, those recipes are words on a page that my mother put there just for me. And what could be more apt for someone as in love with the word as I? Like my passions for family and literature and food and living, this book just keeps growing and changing with every use and addition and comment.

If I am so much like my mother (which I believe is true), then writing on the recipes she has written for me is one way I can love her and what she has done, be proud to be like her, and blaze my own trail that may parallel and branch off into hers, but which I can still claim for mine.

I will leave you with a few of my favorite moments from The Family-tastic Cookbook of Awesome. The words are my mother's, and I hope the enjoyment will be yours.

Doves, Venison, and Coon
Just because every Southern cook book (and this is one) should have a recipe for coon and dove and venison, here they are. I've never cooked any of these, but I've eaten all except coon. We had dove at a book club dinner; Ann Carlton's son had shot them, and he grilled them this way. They were delicious. The venison recipe is from Kathryn Tucker Windham's cookbook. The coon recipe is from Bill Woodson, one of my AUM classmates who was born and grew up in Selma. Bill would go out with his daddy coon hunting, and this is how his mama cooked the coons they shot. We took the Black Belt class and wrote a paper together on foods of the Black Belt--these recipes were in the paper. The paper got an A--we took in BBQ sandwiches and something chocolate, cookies, I think, as show-and-tell the night we presented the paper to the class.

(Should you find yourself in need of one of these recipes, just let me know. I'll be happy to share.)

Caesar Salad Graycliff
This is from a restaurant in Nassau. I leave out the anchovies, but that's only because I'm too chicken to eat them knowingly or to cook with them.

(Another delicious recipe, the Caesar Salad Graycliff. If you like spicy/savory salad dressings, this the way to go.)

(In parting, here's one full recipe, one of my favorites. Please don't hesitate to ask for any others.)

White Chocolate Orange Dream Cookies
You know about these too. My all-time favorite cookie. (Mine too!)
Makes 3-1/2 dozen

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon grated orange rind (dried, as a spice is fine)
2 teaspoons orange extract (the imitation flavor works, but isn't as scrumptious)
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups (12 ounces) white chocolate chips (which is the size of most bags you'll find at the store)

Beat first 3 ingredients at medium speed with electric mixer until creamy. (I nuke the butter for about 30 sec to get it all softened up. Buttered up, if you will.) Add egg, orange rind, and orange extract, beating until blended.

Combine flour, baking soda, and salt; gradually add to sugar mixture, beating just until blended after each addition. Stir in white chocolate chips.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350°F for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. (Make sure it's just the edges that get browned! The inside is best at its softest, chewiest, meltiest....och, I could go on. I should just go bake some so I stop getting distracted thinking about them.) Cool on baking sheets 2 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.

These cookies taste like Christmas, and Starbucks backroom chats, and class potlucks, and Mr. P nipping them from under the seran wrap, and surprise snail-mail packages to friends. Oh, and white chocolate and orange too.

Oppression By Any Other Name...

In the interview printed with his novel, The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga cites Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright as major influences on the text. Not having read Baldwin, I can’t speak to his influence. Ellison and Wright’s major works, The Invisible Man and Native Son, I have read, and I see their ghostly traces throughout The White Tiger. Traces, because their influences seem to appear almost in passing, needing to be tracked back to the source, even if the source seems obvious at first. Overt clues, if you will. Ghostly, because the evidence of these influences starts to drift away under too-close observation.

Clearly, an immediate connection can be made between Adiga’s Balram, Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Wright’s Bigger Thomas. Each character suffers systematic oppression, which reveals itself economically and socially. Each takes unprecedented, and extremely violent, measures to escape that oppression. But there, the major similarities end.

Balram’s story has a whiff of the farcical about it, with scatological humor and expletives strewn liberally about. Any story in which a man falls face-first into sewage with his pants around his ankles because of body-toppling guffaws cannot be taking itself too seriously. We don’t see these moments of humor, particularly low humor, in Ellison or Wright. Their atmospheres are decidedly gloomier, as are their characters’ self-reflective moments. While Balram relates his prior complacence with the oppressive life of a servant, the Invisible Man and Bigger rant against it.

And yet, there is a sense that all of Balram’s insights into the rooster coop system that is his India have not gained him the knowledge and autonomy he yearns for. Despite being an entrepreneur, despite no longer massaging the feet of his masters, he cannot escape a system which rewards only those who know how to work it. It is telling that Balram can use his shiny silver Macintosh to peruse the details of his own Wanted poster, but not to google the name of the fourth most important poet in history. India’s burgeoning access to technology is but one more way to play the system, not subvert it by reading poetry and discovering the “secrets that allow the poorest man on earth to conclude the ten-thousand-year-old brain-war [with the rich] on terms favorable to himself” (216).

The irony of Balram’s poetic ignorance comes full circle when he faints while watching the white tiger at the zoo, pacing back and forth in his cage, “walking in the same line, again and agin--from one end of the bamboo bars to the other, then turning around and repeating it over, at exactly the same pace, like a thing under a spell” (237). Balram’s insight, that his own life is no better than the caged tiger’s, echoes the undertones of Rainer Maria Rilke’s sonnet "The Panther." The poem’s final stanza describe the panther’s gaze:

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhange der Pupilles
sich lautlos auf. -Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

In this moment, the panther takes in an image, just as the tiger gazes into Balram’s eyes. The image vanishes, travels through the panther’s tense musculature, and ceases to be in the caged animal’s heart. Balram’s tiger itself vanishes before his eyes, then Balram follows suit by fainting, falling into the dark earth and vanishing from himself. His moment of clarity gives him the resolution to act drastically in order to change his life. Yet he remains ignorant of this moment’s poetic precedent, and Rilke’s command that in the face of art, “You must change your life.”

But Balram soldiers on, unabashed by his ignorance, and exhausting the use-value of every drop of knowledge he does possess. This trait put me in mind of a real, live, breathing person who has had to find a way with relatively limited information about the world. Planet Money, an NPR podcast and blog about various economic issues, recently broadcast a story about “The Paradox of Oil” in Angola. Their interview subjects were Gregory Schiedler, an American working for a foreign oil company in Luanda, and Minguito, the young local man who sells Gregory gum every day. Minguito does not like his job, and would prefer one in construction, which is almost exclusively a Chinese trade in Angola. When asked, he does not or cannot name any other work he would like. Like Balram, he seems to know the system is broken, that he could do better for himself given the opportunity. But what those opportunities might be? The question has no answer.

Even Balram’s great entrepreneurial venture does not represent any great opportunity or new way of living (which is to say, making a living). He starts a cab company with set contracts, hardly a ground-breaking idea, and even has to sabotage other companies already providing the same service in order to get his own off the ground. Yet the chandelier in his spacious office has blinded Balram to the misnomer of entrepreneur he continuously applies to himself. Similarly, through no fault of his own, Minguito seems blind to the possibility of a life not paid for by selling gum and working construction.

But what are we to do? Does The White Tiger give us a take-home lesson in how to begin dealing with the morass of corruption, injustice, oppression, suppression that we find in India and Angola, not to mention right here in the U.S. of A.? Other than being aware of the morass, and its stultifying effects on the human spirit, I’m not sure there is a lesson. I do know, when I listen to Minguito, I am bothered that he is referred to as a boy, although he says he is about seventeen or eighteen. And perhaps, that needling sense of discomfort with imposed labels, be they ‘businessman’ or ‘boy,’ is a step in the right direction. A direction which is shaped by Bigger’s anger towards the man, the Invisible Man’s refusal to play along, Balram’s belief in himself, and the wishes I wish Minguito will someday have, as well as the knowledge that his wishes are not for me to choose.

Wiki Wiki Wha?

This weekend, I read a chapter on "The Electronic Book," from Jay David Bolter's Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. He gets into historical ideas about what books actually are, and should be used for, and how this gave rise to the encyclopedia, both general and specialized. All that just sets up an insanely interesting prediction of how computers and hypertext can be used to create "The Electronic Encyclopedia."

For anyone a bit confused by my use of 'hypertext' (which, depending on the context, is either hopelessly jargon-istic or hopelessly outmoded), keep in mind that Bolter published his book in 1991. At least he didn't favor the word 'hotlink.' That term gives me a weirdly abstract mental image of neon pink Daisy Dukes. Back to the topic at hand: In 1991, Bolter writes a book in which he posits the possibility, as hinted at by previous printed encyclopedias, of an electronic edition which will have the following characteristics:

• "The computer [will] facilitate the task of moving through the encyclopedic outline and among the various articles." (93)
  
• "...in the electronic medium the visible and useful structure [of the encyclopedia] may extend to the paragraph, the sentence, or even the individual word. The computer can permit the reader to manipulate text at any of these levels." (93)
• "The editors are...free to create a referential network that functions underneath and apart from their topical outlines." (95)
• "Outlines or other topical arrangements can coexist with the alphabetical order. An electronic encyclopedia can be organized in as many ways as the editors and the readers can collectively imagine." (94)

That last point is key. The rest, generally speaking, treat more the ways in which a reader can use an electronic encyclopedia that are impossible with a printed edition. Dipping your toe in one subject, zipping along to another, never constrained from pursuing information by the annoyance of having to flip pages, grab another volume, search in the index. And it is an annoyance. Perhaps it was not so before my generation became accustomed to 'hypertext,' but it certainly is now. I've returned to consistently using bookmarks, because losing my place in a book made me want to just go find something else that did have a place marked.

But I digress. Or do I? That last quote from Bolter speaks to a new and different attitude towards information, whether printed, electronic, or otherwise. Asking whether the technology gave rise to the attitude, or vice versa is a chicken-and-egg rabbithole that I don't want to go down. I do want to get a better handle on what exactly the attitude is.

Here's why: I see a connection between the structure of Wikipedia and the fact that contemporary students consider it a valid source of information, and that they consider lowercase 'i' to be perfectly acceptable in any kind of writing, and the popularity of Harry Potter. I'm sure we could draw more into this connective web, but it might get out of hand.

To begin, Bolter's insights from ten years before Wikipedia's creation serve as evidence that Wikipedia's success is not accidental. Rather, Wikipedia is beloved by millions not only because it serves a need, but because it does so in a way that feels good to its users. I'm tempted here to draw a parallel to Starbucks, so what the hey, here goes. Starbucks offers a luxury item at mostly affordable prices. A mocha costs less than a day at the spa. But, the price could still be a deterrent for those who know how to measure grinds into a coffeepot if Starbucks did not sell the feel of buying a cup of coffee as much as they do the coffee itself. Standing in line at the local Bux, you can feel both like you belong and like you're special enough to buy coffee at Starbucks. It's ingenious, really: get your community, and your ready-made social identity, one-stop shopping! In the case of Wikipedia, you get your information, and you feel like you're part of a global project, working to democratize knowledge, scholarly and popular, for the edification of all mankind. Well, all mankind that has internet access. In its early days, Wikipedia took this offer a step further, and gave its users the chance to contribute to this floating pool of knowledge.

What could better speak to a generation that shares everything on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, or whatever else is hip these days? To these cats, information cannot be organized hierarchically without reference to personal taste. What you have to say is not more important because it is more scholarly, or weighty, or the key to national security. It is more important because people want to know it. Thus the tickers, counting traffic to various websites. We're not measuring importance, we're measuring popularity. And we have no ticker for the former. So Wikipedia provides a pool of information (or knowledge; I've been using them interchangeably, and perhaps I shouldn't. Save that for a future post), and lets you dive in from anywhere around the sides you'd like. If you can come in through the bottom, go for it, and don't forget to skydive in sometime. No wonder the resource appeals to current students: it treats information the same way they do. I would like to be positive and not chalk it up to laziness on the students' parts, but rather think about what could appeal beyond its ease of us. The online OED is pretty easy too, but you don't see a lot of freshmen poking around in it.

So on to 'i' and Harry Potter. If this stab at wiki-theory holds water, it can be extended to students' writing as well as their research. A friend who teaches high school English told me yesterday that she has an inordinate number of students who simply don't understand why 'i' is unprofessional and 'I' is professional. The key to cracking that particular nut is this idea of 'understanding.' Is it really difficult to capitalize your 'i's,' in writing or typing? Absolutely not. Do they know it should be capitalized? According to my secret teacher source, yes. Being positive, then, we'll assume the lack of capitalization doesn't stem from laziness. Instead, it's a reflection of what's going on in the students' own capitals. (Pardon my Latin.) In a world of free-floating, unordered information, the rules of correct spelling and grammar cannot be privileged over, say, the fact that even Mac uses 'i' for all their ads.

And Harry Potter? Well, he does alright in school, but his success doesn't come from book-learning passed down through the centuries. It comes from his own choices about what's important for him to learn and what isn't. He starts a practice group, which has nothing to do with Hogwarts' curriculum. He doesn't do so well in classes, but still always saves the day. He can treat Hermione and Neville as his own personal Wikipedia. When he tries to find the answer in the library in The Goblet of Fire, one book after another lets him down until Neville shows him the answer in the unlikeliest of places.

Amazing, how Harry has tapped into the informational Zeitgeist. Bolter predicted it, Wikipedia made it, Rowling fictionalized it. Now I just wonder where we go from here. Wikipedia has reinstated editors for certain pages, as of this year, and Harry's all done. Seems like they had a good run together and we'll just have to wait for the Hogwarts theme park so we can take pictures with our iPhones and text all our friends to let them know, "omg im @ hgwrts!" Wonder if the Starbucks will be in the courtyard or the Great Hall.

Childhood is Calling, and It Wants Its Innocence Back

Thinking about sci-fi put me in a going-back-to-my-reading-roots mood, so I perused my bookshelves for a childhood classic to re-read. The lucky winner was Roald Dahl's Danny: The Champion of the World, and what a fine choice it ended up being. It's a nut just waiting to be cracked by some sharp insights about class tensions, aristocratic inconsequentiality, economic influences on childhood, and the transferral of masculinity between generations. What made me sit up straight and take a deep breath though, was the difference between my reading of Danny umpteen years ago and my reading of it yesterday.

A quick version of the story: Danny's mother died when he was very young, and now he lives with his father, William, who is a mechanic. Their shop lies a bit out of town, and they house themselves in an old gypsy caravan behind the shop. Danny loves his father, for all the surprising and exciting things William says and does. One of the most surprising turns out to be pheasant poaching in Mr. Victor Hazell's woods six miles up the road. Danny suggests a scheme for the ultimate pheasant-poaching experience, they try it out, bag 120 drugged-up pheasants, deliver them to the Vicar's wife, the sleeping pills wear off the next morning and pandemonium ensues. Cue hilarity and a riotous sendup of the heavy-jowled, red-faced Mr. Hazell. (That would be the class tensions coming into play.)

I only had the vaguest recollections of this plot when I pulled Danny off the bookshelves this last time. A few pages in, I had the most comfortable feeling, as though this was a space which I knew fairly well, and wouldn't need to work too hard to reacquaint myself with. It was a bit like finding an old, lost sweater and discovering it's still worn into the shape of your shoulders. Except that a few pages further, that sweater was starting to itch and pull and grow tight in all the wrong places.

That 'wrong' feeling? It all boiled down to Dahl's characterization of William. Danny is our narrator, so we see William only through the eyes of an adoring, idolizing son. When I first read Danny, I was probably pretty close to his age in the book. I identified with him, idolized his father along with him, wished I had crazy illegal pheasanty adventures with him. Perhaps I give my younger self too much credit, but I do recall knowing that money was an issue for Danny and William. They clearly didn't have much of it, and living outside of town was a clear indicator of that for a little girl living in a tiny German village with farming still struggling to make it all around the village. Again, perhaps my hindsight is a bit misty.

I know I had no critical thoughts about William, though. How can I know, after all these years? Well, I can't really, but what I can do is extrapolate from those initial cozy feelings from yesterday that I already mentioned. Five pages in, I was simply enjoying an escapist romp in 19early-something-ish England. As soon as William started in on his poaching, though, those feelings evaporated, replaced by the slow settle of heavy responsibility and adult concerns. See, William is rather upfront about the dangers of poaching: The pheasant keepers carry guns and will shoot at anything without feathers that moves. And yet, he continues to poach.

How?

How could a single father justify putting himself in mortal danger, with no care for his son's welfare should he be shot and unable to work, or even killed? Obviously, I ask this question with a very post-2000 attitude about the responsibilities of parents, and particularly with contemporary ideas about the necessity of gender-equal distribution of those responsibilities. In Danny's days, having a caring father who not only earned the dough, but also baked it, and told bed-time stories and walked his son to school every day, would have been something else. Indeed, if Danny wasn't the Champion of the World, at least he would be the Champion of Sons with Concerned, Involved Fathers. If that was all William was, I wouldn't be having this odd now-vs-then discrepancy as per my view of him.

Danny's narration gives us insights into William's character, as well as his activities. This bit just blew my mind:

Danny has discovered that his headmaster, Mr. Snoddy, drinks gin all day. He decides to keep the secret, save for telling one person.
"The only person I told was my father, and when he heard it, he said, "I don't blame him one bit. If I was unlucky enough to be married to Mrs. Snoddy, I would drink something a bit stronger than gin."
"What would you drink, dad?"
"Poison," he said. "She's a frightful woman."

Whoa. You want to talk about sending negative signals to children about women, marriage, relationships, and appropriate responses to unfortunate circumstances?

But then I'm stuck asking, What would I have kids read? Once they get out of picture books, and before I'm ready to loose them into Updike, there must be a middle ground. By middle ground, I mean thematically and topically, something that trades some childhood concerns ("But I don't like sharing!) for adult ones ("But I don't like sharing, so I'm going to do destructive things and act like a child!). Thinking through that last explication of this ambiguous middle ground, I've come to a new conclusion about it. It's not that children and adults require different topics or themes, but rather that children and adults can generally handle different levels of sophistication in treating the same topics and themes.

So applied to Danny, that means I'm not going to take Dahl to task for setting up this possibly misogynistic and irresponsible father as the model all fathers should follow if they would like to be "sparky," not "stodgy"! Rather, I will take to task guardians, parents, librarians, teachers who have kids read this book without providing other examples and models to follow.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean we should live in a crazy PC-world in which every possible viewpoint is represented as equally valid. The resulting who-can-be-more-liberal-and-accepting pissing contest gives me the shivers. What I do mean is that if I gave a kid Danny, I would do it with full awareness both of how I read it as a kid and how I read it now. I've had an extra 17ish years to gain some perspective on what types of people are out there in world. I would like to share some of that perspective with the (made-up, non-specific) kid reading Danny and loving William, just like I did at that age. Perhaps that sharing takes the form of another book, with different models of masculinity and fatherhood. Perhaps it is introducing the imaginary kid to lots of real people: fathers, brothers, policemen, baristas, teachers, friends, who are all different, and--more importantly--show those differences in their attitudes and behaviors.

The child who is sheltered, kept only with kids exactly her own age for the length of the school-day, then shuttled back home to spend time in exactly one family environment, observing one set of relationships and interactions is ill-prepared to understand William as a three-dimensional, and sometimes negative, character. That sheltered (made-up, non-specific) child simply has no basis for comparison.

So get those kids out in the world! Let them talk to strangers, at the coffeeshop or the library or the farmer's market! Give them more books than they can possibly read, and read those books yourself, and then talk about them! Make friends with the neighbor kids, but check out the neighbor adults and see if they're friendly and unthreatening too!

How else can a child in love with reading learn enough of the world for their emotional and judgemental faculties to keep pace with what they can, and therefore want, to read? Books can be a child's ticket to a whole new world. Don't adults have the responsibility of making sure that world is as rich and diverse and complete as possible?

Don't Genrify My Neighborhood!

The first books I can remember selecting for myself were cheap paperback versions of Dragonlance and Anne McCaffrey at the BX bookstore in Germany. As far as I recall (and we all know how murkily untrustworthy recollections can be), no one introduced me to them, told me what they were about, clued me in to their subgenre, non-literary status. Perhaps I just liked the pretty covers.

Thus began years of reading science fiction, exhaustively and--for monthlong stretches--exclusively. Sometime in college, I left science fiction behind, with few exceptions. I completely left fantasy and sword-and-sorcery to wither by the wayside. Somehow, the topics of books that had previously engulfed my mind just weren't relevant anymore, to my experiences as a woman, as a college student, as a seeker of meaning and direction for my life. Yet, the critic in me says, Hold up a moment! Science fiction and fantasy treats all those topics/themes/what-have-you's, and more! How can you simply decide it's not relevant?

I'll tell you how, or at least my half-congealed ideas of how. About the time I broke up with sci-fi, I found a new boy(girl)friend. Literature. Let me restate, making sure to emphasize the initial capital: Literature. And Literature was a jealous creature, that didn't want me going out for coffee with my ex. At those moments when I missed the delight with which I discovered new unabashedly nerdy authors, devoured descriptions of demonic meta-computers gone astray, at those moments, I reminded myself (subconsciously, of course) that I had traded all that in for a shiny new ride with reputable bucket seats and a whole host of upstanding folk ready to oo and ahh over it.

Perhaps that metaphor went a bit far. The point is, my interest in reading as something beyond escapism, beyond a hobby came together with my earnest search for a position in the world from which I could feel secure in who I was and what I was doing. And nothing provides a sense of security more easily than the codified institutional label of reputability. Literature is reputable and science ficiton is not. Therefore, since I must read, I cannot imagine not reading, I will read Literature, and it will give me all the social gratification of belonging to an intellectual (and in hindsight, elitist) group, as well as the individual gratification of running my eyes over words on a page, making sense of them, enlarging my knowledge and worldview and understanding of others without leaving my easy chair. I even found one of those 100-Greatest lists, and read through it like it was my job, highlighting with satisfaction every book I finished.

I won't deny still having that highlighting impulse today (the MA Reading List is a constant lure!), but I will claim to better understand that impulse. More importantly, I have consciously chosen to resist it, for reasons that have nothing to do with what's actually on the list and everything to do with what isn't.

You certainly won't find any science fiction on the list, but that's alright with me. I'm not losing sleep over sci-fi's lack of place in the academic canon. It would be oversimplifying to say that sci-fi is a more productive and interesting and lively enterprise because of that lack, but that's generally about half the idea I'm getting at. The other half consists of exploring why sci-fi, as a genre, has been relegated to subpar literary status. All my thoughts on this question have been heavily influenced by Samuel R. Delany's Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics, which I'm currently reading.

The problem with sci-fi's low standings does not result from its particular generic characteristics, but rather from the fact that academics sincerely believe that it has particular generic characteristics. Certainly this is true of other types of books, from the picaresque to the art novel, but something about this belief is different. I agree with Delany's supposition that critics and general readers believe that sci-fi can be wholly circumscribed by its characteristics, and that circumscription constitutes the boundaries of all that defines sci-fi. It's the old problem of demonizing the Other: If we non-nerd kids can build a semantic wall around all that is sci-fi, then we can stand on this side (the right, reputable side) of that wall, and make all our critical pronouncements from solidly socially acceptable ground. Most critical questions being asked of sci-fi assume the presence of the wall as an unassailable--in fact, necessary--condition of sci-fi. But it's not.

Just as poetry borrows from prose, and novels can borrow from epics, and a literary adventure like Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives can be an art novel, a detective story, an interview, a pornographic escapade, sci-fi is not so limited in its topical and stylistic options that it cannot cross over, lend, borrow, and thieve to and from other genres. Something about what sci-fi allows us to do to conventional social mores and rational worldviews creates discomfort that forces a restrictive labeling. In other words, if we can call our discomfort a name, put it at a distance, and compare it unfavorably to things which really aren't that different, but don't make us so uncomfortable, well then, the discomfort just doesn't matter so much anymore.

All this is to say, I'll be reading more sci-fi from here on out. But I won't choose it because it's sci-fi. I'll choose it because I like the author, or I read an interesting review, or someone recommended it to me. Precisely the way I now choose all the Literature I read. And when it comes right down to it, no matter what I choose, I'll be reading a text. A text that require me to be a reader, with all the strategies and elision of meaning and grasps at understanding that that label entails.

Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World

Despite seeing through the book's conceit, and predicting the form (if not the content) of its ending, I still enjoyed it. Mostly, I think for the characterizations, but there was also the fun of the puzzle. Shriver imbues certain phrases with multiple levels of meaning by putting them in the mouths of different characters, or the same character in a different situation.

Not to give too much away, but if you don't like being played with a bit as a reader, I wouldn't recommend this one...more I went to the library for another book altogether and this title caught my eye. I compared its first paragraph with the first of the novel I came for, and Shriver definitely won. I wish I could remember what the other book was, but all I can tell you is that its first paragraph informed me of the shape and color of precisely one rock. Perhaps on a beach, or lake side.

The Post-Birthday World, though, grabbed me at the get-go. Within a moment of reading, I knew this was a book about a woman, who illustrates children's books and lives with a man, with whom she is joining another couple for dinner and it's going to be awkward. How could I say no?

Chapter 3 threw me for a loop, because in it Shriver begins taking certain liberties with our readerly chronological expectations. As soon as I realized I was reading outside of the traditionally chronological novelistic framework, I got jumpy and excited about the experiment. While it doesn't push the boundaries of genre in the ways I'm really interested in these days, it's still pushing the boundaries. Seeing a writer willing to trust her readers to understand her nontraditional approach to time gives me hope for the publishing prospects of writers who believe their readers can handle forays into the far wilder woods of mixed-up hybrid genres.

Or perhaps I'm just pumped by the comic book version of this book that now exists in my head. The comics genre inherently has the tools to communicate and interrogate alternate versions of time, outside the norm of text progressing linearly. Pictures can slow you down, make you consider, and alert you immediately and unobtrusively to shifting perspectives, both spacial and temporal, in a way that words can't. Shriver doesn't even try to make them; she just jumps right in and lets you catch up as best as possible.

If I have a complaint, it's that once you catch up, the book's conceit lets you see ahead. It's a bit of a downer on the whole suspense side of things. Yet, despite seeing through the book's conceit, and predicting the form (if not the content) of its ending, I still enjoyed it. Mostly for the ideas it gave fuel too, and a bit for the characterizations, but also for the fun of the puzzle. Shriver imbues certain phrases with multiple levels of meaning by putting them in the mouths of different characters, or the same character in a different situation. Finding and taking apart those moments felt like solving a particularly slippery crossword clue.

Not to give too much away, but if you don't like being played with a bit as a reader, I wouldn't recommend this one. I would recommend it for anyone who enjoyed The Time Traveler's Wife for its unusual form as much as its love story.