The Science of Herself

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Child Boot Camps, Coming of Age literature, Fiction, Jane Austen, Karen Joy Fowler, PM Press, Science Fiction authors, Short Stories, small presses, The Science of Herself, Women's Literature, Writers, Writing, WWASPS

PM Press is a very small press founded in 2007. It publishes fiction and non-fiction. As part of its Outspoken Authors series published authors submit a few short stories, a biographical interview, and offer their insight into writing or about issues of concern to them. A number of authors in the series seem to be drawn from the science fiction genre. Karen Joy Fowler, the author of “The Science of Herself” mostly writes science fiction or fantasy, for which she has garnered numerous literary awards. She is slightly stretching into “mainstream” short stories with this submission. She is at the borderline between reality and science fiction in “The Pelican Bar”. This story, grounded in boot camps for children, is chilling in its debasement. She reveals in one of the interviews the influence of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in part, but more directly, the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), Tranquility Bay in Jamaica and High Impact in Mexico. There are websites for survivors of these programs (e.g., http://www.wwaspsurvivors.com).

Ms. Fowler also reveals that she has been given a key to the Baseball Hall of Fame. She has written a nicely told coming of age, single Mom, story in “The Further Adventures of the Invisible Man.” Contrary to expectation, the young boy hates baseball. There is real feeling expressed between a Mom trying to balance her life with a maturing young boy for whom she deeply cares.

The first story reminded me of my recent review of “The Signature of All Things”. It is a 19th Century tale about a young girl who hits a very low glass ceiling as a female archaeologist. Like the botanist in “The Signature of All Things” she lives a spinster’s life, but is more in the shadow of men because she is lower economic class. Ms. Fowler apparently wrote a well-received novel, “The Jane Austen Book Club” and Jane Austen figures prominently in this story. The story has a nice ending in this regard.

The sampling of Ms. Fowler’s capable writing offered in this very short book encourages me to seek out more of her widely published works. I would recommend this short book if you could find it, or other offerings by Ms. Fowler.

The Years with Laura Diaz

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book reviews, books, Carlos Fuentes, Diego Rivera, Fiction, Literature, Mexican Literature, Novels, The Years With Laura Diaz

In February I reviewed Carlos Fuentes’ “The Death of Artemio Cruz”. Like that novel, “The Years with Laura Diaz” traverses the years surrounding the Mexican revolution, and class in Mexican society. Some of the secondary characters in that the earlier novel make cameo appearances in this novel, but the scope of “The Years with Laura Diaz” encompasses the major political travails of the 20th Century from a upper class socialist viewpoint. The Acknowledgment to the novel makes clear that this is fiction drawn from the author’s extended family.

There is a bit of name dropping in this novel, as it descriptive of the personalities of significant Mexican authors, artists, musicians, politicians and social diletantes of the period. The novel begins in 1999 Detroit. The City is on its knees and the focus of the visiting cinemaphotographer is coincidentally Diego Rivera’s mural at The Detroit Institute of Arts. It is the same mural that the now bankrupt Detroit considered selling this year. The Marxist Diego Rivera was commissioned by the bigot Henry Ford. Biting the benefactor’s hand, Rivera celebrates revolutionary workers of all colors. Rivera subsequently did the same at Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller, unlike Ford, had it painted over. Within the Detroit mural there is a woman. Not Rivera’s companion artist, Frida Kahlo, but an ancestor of the cinemaphotographer, Laura Diaz.

Octovio Paz had a long-standing feud with Carlos Fuentes because his magazine published an article by Enrique Krauze that dubbed Fuentes a “guerrilla dandy”. This novel may lend support to that view. Laura Diaz is the product of the Mexican upper echelon of the middle class. The novel examines socio-political changes through the attractive Ms. Diaz’s failed marriage and numerous affairs. Though she has means, they are not independent means. Her relationships are the source of her financial support. Although at times she is characterized as victim, she is self-absorbed. Not until the near end of her life does she fulfill any responsibilities. She is a celebrated free-spirit in search of herself. She is critical of her husband, who is mid-level labor leader that rose from poverty through the revolution. He “sells out” in her mind because she had an upper class image of revolution. The poor don’t want to be poor. He supports her in the style of her class.

Mr. Fuentes is cynical about politicians, particularly Mexican politicians. He parades upper class societal functions, but appears comfortable with them. The novel does not delve into the pervasive under-class. It does not want their point of view. Laura Diaz is shown this class once by her husband. She is glad to not see how they live more than once. She does not return and neither does the novel.

Like “The Death of Artemio Cruz” the novel is strongest when it is descriptive of Mexico’s regions, cooking, vegetation, dancing and culture. The novel can be philosophical. This adds depth to the writing. The chapter about expats during the U.S.’ McCarthy era is however a bit repetitive.

The novel slows toward the end although it is chronologically circular. It would have been better served by more editing. The book is worth reading, but I preferred “The Death of Artemio Cruz”.

The Signature of All Things

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Alfred Russell Wallace, American Literature, Animism, book reviews, books, Botany, elizabeth gilbert, Evolution, Fiction, Jacob boehme, Literature, mysticism, Novels, The Signature of All Things, Women's Literature

“Thank heavens we have an earth, or where would we sit?”

Elizabeth Gilbert borrows the title of her novel from the 16th Century German Christian mystic Jacob Boehme’s book “De Signatura Rerum”. The Doctrine of Signatures premised that plants imbued by God with characteristics of the human bodily have medicinal uses. Botany has a significant place in this geographically and temporarily epic novel. Thematically, Alma Whittaker, the novel’s spinster bryologist character, debates Darwin’s transmutation and Alfred Russell Wallace’s spiritual evolution. It is the failure of natural selection to explain morality within humans that causes Alma Whittaker not to publish her evolutionary study of mosses during the same period that Darwin publishes “On The Origins of the Species”. Darwin, who knew of Wallace’s prior evolutionary work, avoided the question of morality within his purported “survival of the fittest” (or adaptable) theory by describing animals other than humans. Heresy, although a consideration in the Lutheran Dutch world from which Ms. Whittaker came and ultimately returns, was a factor, but not a concern to Ms. Whittaker in her decision. Her English father was an enlightened materialist that cornered the market in herbal pharmaceuticals from 18th and 19th Century America. Religion had no place in his life, nor in his Dutch Lutheran wife’s, who was grounded in the world. This mentality was genetically transcribed to the precocious Ms. Whittaker, who having her mother’s unattractive physical features and her father’s drive, found recluse in the study of moss. Her adopted sister Prudence, the daughter of a prostitute, is juxtaposed as coldly beautiful, but not lacking intellect nor morality. The novel’s romantic interest is a matter of love’s labor lost, with neither obtaining the desired same suitor. Ms. Whittaker, in contrast to her father’s materialism and her scientific objectivity, marries a naturalist who spiritualism causes him to be banished to Tahiti.

To Ms. Gilbert’s extensive research of botany, is added the animism of Tahitian culture, and small dose of their language. The story is fast reading and the theme is underplayed. The prose is plain. Ms. Gilbert is more storyteller than a composer of great sentences or characters. Initially, I found the characters to be caricatures, but Ms. Gilbert has them evolve. The story is also somewhat contrived, but is still entertaining. The strength of the book is Ms. Gilbert’s research and its theme. Unlike many books that close weakly, I felt that the novel got stronger toward the end, despite its tilt toward feminism. Ms. Gilbert saves the novel from being sappy, by not having Darwin’s publication preceded by Ms. Whittaker’s own unpublished work on evolution.

Ms. Gilbert in her acknowledgment recognizes Dr. Robin Wall-Kimmerer, a U.S. bryologist, and all women in science. The scientific choice to explore what is unexplored on earth by observing the seemingly commonplace or perceived useless aspects of our biological and physical world underlies this novel. Darwin studied coral, Ms. Whittaker studied moss. It is important to know where you are sitting.

This novel has been well received by critics and is popular. For the research and the novel’s theme, it is worth reading in my opinion.