Why I Read

We were sitting by the pool, my two sisters and I, on a hot July day, talking about books while our kids either swam (the littles) or lounged, looking bored (the teenagers). Becky and I were shocked when Suzette told us that she didn't love The Poisonwood Bible; in both our minds, not loving that book is akin to not loving, say, chocolate, or long mountain hikes, or shopping.

Suzette explained that she thought it was too long (which even I, a staunch PWB lover, can understand), and things didn't wrap up nicely.

"That's what I love about it, or at least one of the things," I told her. "I like it when books are full of hard stuff and ambiguous or downright difficult endings, because that is how life is."

"See, but that's not why I read," she said. "My life is already full of difficult, hard stuff. I read to escape my life, to see things work out well for other people. To experience vicariously a fairy-tale life."

Since becoming a librarian, I've bumped up against this repeatedly: everyone reads for different reasons. (That means: what I write below has no reflection upon your reasons for reading; your reasons are yours and are therefore right for you. The following are just my reasons for reading.) None of them are wrong, lesser, better or more correct than any others. They are simply different. I suspect that all of them, at some level, are about escaping your daily life—out of the humdrum or boring or painful or anxiety-filled landscape of your current condition and into the wild west or a vampire's existence, Lothlorien or Hogwarts or a space ship.

But I don't read only to escape, just like I don't read only to have my personal beliefs confirmed. I don't read only to vicariously live the fairy tales I will never get to experience, or to find my own vision of the world. I don't read with a need for a happy ending. I think this illustrates something of my own nature; I am no longer hopeful enough to suspend my disbelief enough to really enjoy the fairy tale endings. They make me feel jaded and caustic; they knock me out of the world of the story with a jar, fists clenched and lips spouting a sarcastic jab.

The poet Dana Gioia says that reading "makes us feel, more intensely probably than anything else, the reality of other points of view, of other lives." (If you, too, think about books and reading, you should read the rest of his discussion and then let me know what you think!) Reading, in other words, makes us more compassionate. It helps us realize that our way of looking at things is not the only perspective. I love this unexpected benefit of reading. It isn't why I read but it is something I think about. It enriches my reading.

But honestly: books that end with everyone finding their happy ending are rarely satisfying to me. This feels like a false outcome because in life, endings are so rarely perfect. You have to trade one happiness, in general, for another, rather than getting both of them. Things don't get wrapped up neatly, a gift; they end bedraggled, held together with tape, staples, stitches, twine, and glue. In fact, there really is only rarely even an ending. Stories merge and change; sometimes resolutions are lost in the start of another new narrative. This is why I like ambiguous endings: they feel authentic.

No, I don't read to escape troubles. Instead, the balm of reading is that I'm vicariously experiencing someone else's troubles. I can sort-of know, depending upon the writer's skill, what it is like to be a Nigerian refugee in an English refugee detention center, or a woman in 18th century England trying to come to grips with both the Industrial Revolution and loving someone she didn't think she could, or a woman in modern Scotland who discovers her previously-unheard-of aunt in a psychiatric hospital. Without having to actually experience those things, I can learn the insights they hold. This is a balm because it is a piling up of possibilities: I could survive this if I had to, because this character taught me how. Also because of the human constant in all troubles; even though I have been in none of those situations, I still find those characters giving me some truth I didn't know I was missing. And, honestly (and I am just discovering this truth now, as I write it), it is because it helps me feel more compassion. I don't want to see the world only through my eyes and my suffering; I want to offer my co-suffering to others, even in the metaphoric way reading allows it.

Wallace Stegner makes a distinction between what I think of as "fluffy" novels (the ones that give you only a fantasy, even when they are set in reality) and "real" (the ones that strive to give you something true, even if they are not always set in reality). "It is fiction as truth" that he wants to both read and write, "fiction that reflects experience instead of escaping it, that stimulates instead of deadening." He calls this "serious" fiction, an adjective I will have to put to use.

Serious fiction is what I like to read. Perhaps it says something about my own bits of darkness that an all-happy ending only annoys me. Or about the casualties of my own life, which sometimes seems to be full of bad ends. But I think it also speaks to my search for truth. Serious fiction brings it, hidden in horrific experiences. Truth is also found in the authentically joyful moments, the ones built not on fortuitous plot turns or deux-ex-machina realizations, but on joy despite sorrow.

I read so I can discover truths I can't otherwise gather in my lifetime and my small experiences; to have my knowledge of what it is like to be human expanded; to encounter startling stories and art made out of language. I read because truth, knowledge, and beauty help make me be a better person than I could be on my own.

Why do you read?

 

The Good Mother

Sometimes, only rarely, I manage to have a good day. The kind when I feel like I accomplish the things normal good moms accomplish every day. Today was a good-mother kind of day. I

• Did six loads of laundry
• Folded and put away three of them
• Washed Jake's bedding (the other three)
• Got everyone breakfast, made Kendell's lunch, made Nathan's lunch, made sure Nathan was ready before his carpool ride arrived
• Had dinner made and in the fridge, waiting to be baked, before noon
• Baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (let it be stated: I LOVE a good oatmeal raisin cookie, but as literally no.one.else. in this household likes raisins, if I made that kind of cookie I'd have to eat the entire batch, so I only bake oatmeal chocolate chip)
• Helped Kaleb finish his homework
• Facillitated a play date for Kaleb with his friend Joe, who is the only six-year-old I know who wears cologne on a regular basis
• Reorganized the shelves in my closet
• Vacuumed the stairs
• Took out every ounce of garbage before the garbage man arrived
• Went to Kaleb's kindergarten performance
• Went to Jake's track meet
• Went to work
• Picked up Haley and went to the grocery store
• Purchased only healthy things at the store: grapes, cantaloupe, honeydew, strawberries, bananas, tortellini, tomatoes, turkey.

What I didn't do: scrapbook, photoshop, read outside of the bathroom, dive into the quilt I am all of a sudden burning to make. I didn't eat any caramel Easter eggs. I didn't take a long shower (just a short one!), didn't pick my toenails, didn't spend any time reading anyone's blog.

All of which has led me to an epiphany: I only really, really feel like a good mother if I dedicate my every moment to someone else. I love that I accomplished so much today, and that I feltlike I was being a decent person all day long. Even though I was not, of course, anywhere perfect (I forgot to pay Haley's lunch money, and I couldn't stay for all of Jake's track meet because I had to go to work, and I didn't record all of Kaleb's performance because my camera battery died, and I had to break Nathan's heart by telling him that I cannot go on his field trip on Thursday because I don't have anyone to watch Kaleb that day), I didn't feel full of my usual barrage of self deprication.

But now that my productive day is finished, I find myself a little bit bothered. Why can't I shut off the "you're being selfish and lazy" internal monologue when I doindulge in those other things (the scrapbooking or reading or quilting or writing or even just sitting on the front porch doing nothing other than staring at my sycamore)? Why do I lose the feeling of being a good mother when I am doing something that is centered more on my needs and desires than on my family's? Is the only way to be a good mother to be completely devoted to everyone but yourself?

I've always, deep down, took a certain little bit of pride in the fact that I am not married to my house. I am the first to confess that if my obituary does not include the sentence "her home was always clean" I will not care at all. I have taken as my motto the Anne Sexton poem Housewife, which goes like this:

Some women marry houses.
It's another kind of skin; it has a heart,
a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
The walls are permanent and pink.
See how she sits on her knees all day,
faithfully washing herself down.
Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah
into their fleshy mothers.
A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.

Or, more clearly, the opposite of the poem. I want to be a person first, a housewife second. If you let it, cleaning your house can be the only thing you do with your time. There is always something else to do, a closet to reorganize, a drawer to declutter. I don't want to be so devoted to my house that it becomes who I am. As my wise sister told me recently, I am not my house.

In theory, this idea guides me. But I also doubt its truthfulness. It makes me wonder if I am lacking something that most women lack. If my house is in need of straightening up, I am not anxious, annoyed, or embarrassed. If my non-immaculate house shocks you into not wanting to be my friend, that's OK; I probably don't want to be your friend either then. This is my natural response to the subject of housecleaning, but I don't feel like it's the natural response. If we're thinking in generalities, aren't women supposed to be made happy by a clean house? (Men, by the way, are not the only people to perpetuate this idea.)  I do it because I have to, not because it makes me feel happy.

Except when, like today, it does. Being productive and denying my (selfish?) desires gave me a little glow. Perhaps I could name that light "justified," as I had nothing to feel guilty about when the day ended. (Except for those previously-mentioned failures, and the fact that the kitchen is still messy, and I haven't recycled the grocery sacks yet, and the bathroom mirrors need to be Windexed, and how healthy are chocolate chip oatmeal cookies anyway?)

So even though I glimmered with my productive glow today, I end it feeling unbalanced. Unsure. Will I ever get rid of my "you're not a good mother" perspective? Would I be able to do my self-indulgent things without that voice chiming in if I could, somehow, manage the good mother side better? Is there a way to balance both of the sides of my life? Or do I feel guilty as a way of, perversely, proving I'm a good mother?

I don't like ending a blog without a resolution. But tonight, I don't have one. I haven't figured out yet how to lose my own needs in the service of others. Try as I do to battle it, I still have an intense craving for solitude, for time to do what I  want instead of what would help others. I don't know how to do this—do you?

Sweet

Remember how, when your baby was nearing the six-nine month age range, you started to see the light at the end of your bleary, sleep-deprived nights?

You were certain that, anytime soon, that baby would sleep through the night.

I am still waiting for that moment with Kaleb.

That kid. He's never slept well. He tosses and turns, sits up and talks. He folds himself into crazy positions. He falls off the bed. He sleeppeepeedances if I'm not careful. He has nightmares (although he can never tell me about them because he's forgotten them by morning). He likes fleece or minky blankets—only. He kicks his covers off because he's too sweaty and then wakes up because he's freezing.

Yes, the kid is nearly six years old. Yes, I know he is far too old to sneak into my bed at 3:24 a.m. because he needs a snuggle. And yes, it's fairly hard to lug a 55-pound nearly-six-year-old back into his bed at 4:17 a.m. when you wake up with your arm asleep (because he's been using it as a pillow) and a bruise on your __________ [thigh, calf, shoulder, chin, hip] from where he's been digging in his heel.

I know. But he was sneaking. As soon as I woke up and realized he'd sneaked  into my bed, I'd haul him back into his.

Cue back pain.

Two weeks ago, when the pain was especially bad, I sat him down for a talk. I explained that he is old enough to sleep all night in his very own bed, and that I don't sleep very well when he crowds into mine, but mostly I needed him to know that it made my back hurt even worse when I had to carry him back into his bed. He took this discussion very seriously and promised he wouldn't sneak into my bed anymore. He told me he wanted my back to feel better so he'd help me by not sneaking into my bed.

Of course, he never promised he wouldn't wake up at 4:28 in the morning, either. Our new routine is this: when he wakes up, he wakes me up. I follow him back into his room, tuck him back into his bed, give him a hug and a kiss, and go back to my bed. He, fortified by my (albiet brief) physical affection, goes back to sleep. (This happens once a night.)

It's still not sleeping all night, but it's much, much closer.

Here's the sweet thing. Last night when I tucked him back in, I asked him if he was warm enough. He grabbed my arm and hugged it. "My coveys make me warm on the outside, Momma," he said. "But you make me warm on the inside."

It's so cute it almost makes up for the fact that I haven't slept through the night for six years.

blogging elsewhere

So, this week I haven't been blogging much here, but I HAVE been blogging a lot elsewhere: I've been hosting the write. click. scrapbook. blog.

For the past two weeks or so, I've been carting around a half-written blog about scrapbooking. I'm still not ready to write it, but I think that's mostly because I've been writing so much on WCS about a scrapbooking topic that's near & dear to my heart. Namely: using your stuff.

Because seriously, people, I have a lot of scrapbook stuff.

Two Fridays ago, Becky (along with my niece Kayci and my other sister Suzette) just happened to stop by my house. Now, I only rarely have my house "company clean" because really, I only rarely have company. I guess I'm just not the sort of person who has friends dropping by all the time. And my house was in its usual cluttered-yet-clean-underneath disarray.

Except for my scrapbooking room, which looked a tiny tsunami of scrapping supplies had been unleashed. I was just wrapping up the prep on my Write Now class, and I'd been so consumed with making layouts that putting stuff away just seemed pointless. Why file it all when then I'd just have to flip through all my drawers to figure out where the thing I needed next had been stashed? It was much easier to just pile up all the stuff I was using on the floor.

I think Becky was shocked at my mess. And trust me: she's seen lots of my messes!

But here's the thing. All of that mess? It's just proof. I'm consciously striving not to horde. Not to see my supplies as sacred, untouchable items just waiting for the "perfect" layout. Instead, I've decided every layout is the perfect layout. Whatever I'm working on right now is deserving of whatever supply I want to use. Even if I use up an entire package of rub-ons or letter stickers or whatever. I've moved that product out of my collection and into my albums. Which really is where it belongs!

And honestly. This post isn't the one I want to write about scrapbooking. The WCS posts aren't the one that's still in my head, either. Maybe next week! But I hope you'll click on over and read my thoughts there, anyway. Just because I want  you (if you're a scrapper) to make layouts with your stuff, too! And, if you're  not, to maybe get inspired to become one. Or to use the horde of craft supplies I know you do have, be they fabric or cross stitching or knitting or tole painting or whatever.

Yeah, it's messy. It might just annoy your husband and shock your sister. But somewhere in that mess comes happiness: stories are getting matched up with words. And I know not everyone gets why that makes me happy. (In fact, I don't know if anyone I'm skin friends with really knows how obsessed I am with scrapping!) But it does—make me happy. It brings me a great sense of peace. It lets me relive good moments. If I get it down, the words, the stories, the photos, then, like Dad said, if I ever do forget like he has, someone else can read it and remember.

And there's value in that to me!

Who Knew?

• Forget the hot pad. The thing that calms down back spasms is an ice pack. Who knew? We still have the ones Kendell came home with after his hip surgery. They stay flexible so they conform right along your spine. Twenty minutes of relaxing with the ice pack and I can function again for a few hours.
• It is FREEZING here but my daffodils are blooming! "Spring in Utah," as the saying goes. It's highly bipolar.
• I am totally in love with NPR. Drives Kendell & the kids crazy! I started listening to it in November when my favorite radio station went off the air. I've felt so much more involved with the world and what is happening.
• My favorite radio station came back on in the air in December, but I didn't know until last week when Becky finally clued me in.
• My kids will all eat orange chicken. You know...the completely unhealthy stuff from Panda or Flaming Wok. (If I could have the Flaming Wok chicken and the Panda chow mein, my meal would be happy.) That makes one—exactly one—meal that everyone will eat without complaining. Kaleb said on Monday, when he wasn't excited about the dinner I made—spaghetti with red sauce—"Can't we go eat at the Hot Wok instead?" (tee hee)
• While I love our charter school's curriculum for the older kids, I'm not crazy about the kindergarten class. I finally told Kaleb's teacher, when she stopped by the library one day, that I think they are pushing them TOO hard—and she agreed. Not that my complaining will change anything, but my realization has at least given me some peace with Kaleb's progress. They can push phonics all they want at school, but at home I'm going with the old-fashioned way of learning to read. I'm helping him figure out math instead of getting frustrated that he can't do it on his own. (What normal kindergartener CAN carry numbers anyway?) I'm not going to stress about it now.
• Eating too many Lindt truffle balls in an effort to energize yourself through a two-week stretch of intensive class prep WILL make you gain weight. Seriously. Trust me on this.

What's surprised you lately?

 

Where my Photographic Mojo has Gone

Every so often, an acquaintance will see me taking pictures and ask me if I do wedding photography. The very thought makes me shudder. I don't want to be responsible for anyone's wedding photos. This is mostly because I don't trust myself: what if I messed up horribly? Or my memory card decided to die? Or they hated everything I took?

Nearly any other photo shoot can be recreated, but not a wedding. If you want me to take your engagement photos, I'd be happy to. If you have a brand-new baby you want pictures of, call me. But you know, my very favorite pictures to take are senior photos. There's something energizing about catching a young person on film, just as they are on the cusp of adulthood. They still have so many possibilities open to them. Plus, they're easy—confident enough to pose and try unexpected things and laugh and be themselves. Unlike newborns they never cry or pee on you, either.

I don't actively pursue senior portrait sessions, but I usually end up doing four or five a year. Mostly these opportunities come because someone else recommends me. I take that recommendation as a compliment: they liked my work enough to trust someone else to my photographic eye.

I did a shoot for a close friend's daughter a couple of weeks ago, and while the photos turned out great, I still am upset about that shoot. I didn't charge my friend anything other than asking her daughter to watch Kaleb for me while I processed her photos, which was fine with them. But when my friend asked me how much I would charge to take her daughter's friend's senior photos, her response stunned me:

"I would never pay you $100 to take pictures."

Ouch.

Of course, it's all in the wording and the tone, and perhaps she didn't mean it that way, but she left me full of doubt. I ended up phoning several local photographers just to get an idea of their prices. True—they're professionals. They have studios and they'll print your pictures for you. But still, the smallest price I could find was $150, and that was in a studio rather than at a location. Those prices were just the shooting fee—getting prints costs more, and it's even more if you want the digital files.

This made me feel a little bit better. When I do a senior photo shoot, I usually end up with about 20-25 poses. I prepare the files for the client and then put them on a disk—they own the files and can print them where ever they want. I include wallet-sized proofs with the disk. I put at least ten hours into the entire process.

I feel justified in my price.

But her comment has left me doubting my abilities. Maybe the time I put in isn't the point. Maybe it's my vision. Maybe my photos are only mediocre. Maybe I'm just not good enough to be paid for my time.

I need to finish processing those pictures. I need to get the proofs printed and everything delivered. I need to let it go. Because I realized last night, when I finally could sit for a little while at my computer (the back is still irritated and inflamed), that I haven't taken one single photograph since I did that photo shoot. For me to go this long—more than three weeks—without taking any pictures is unheard of. I am always taking pictures. But my friend's comment has turned up the volume on my inner critic, drowning out my confidence.

Can I even take pictures anymore?

What a Pain in the...

Off and on since Christmas, I've been having little bouts of back pain. Nothing unmanageable, just surprising as this has never been a problem for me.

Never, until Tuesday afternoon when, for whatever reason—I'm guessing it's all the coughing I'd been doing—the pain grew and grew and grew. By the time I got home that evening (after a delightful girls' night out with my friends Jamie and Wendy which I'd like to get around to blogging about when I can sit for longer than ten minutes), the pain could only be described as horrendous. Standing wasn't as painful as sitting, which was excruciating. Even sitting up in bed hurt. So I begged out of the gym the next morning, took six Advil, and went to bed.

Theoretically. If by "went to bed" I mean "tried to keep myself from instinctually turning over and curling into fetal position and then shocking myself out of sleep" then yes: I "went to bed."

Most of Wednesday was spent like this: lying flat in bed, trying to hold perfectly still. So Kendell talked me into going to see the doctor on Thursday. Prognosis:

I have a back ache.

Specifically, my sacroiliac joints are inflamed and annoyed. Who can blame them? I tend to be inflamed and annoyed in general. I had an x-ray, which came back, in the verbose words of the doctor's secretary, "negative." I'm assuming that means everything is OK, but she was in a hurry, apparently, and didn't have time to explain.

I spent an hour at a physical therapist's office, getting massaged and heated and stretched. The electrical stimulation part was heaven. I wish I could just stay there with the electrical stimulation for the next week or so. Of course, I can't stay there indefinitely. There's laundry to be done around here, people! Meals to be cooked. Toilets to be cleaned.

This morning, after a night's worth of ininterrupted sleep (thanks to the muscle relaxer the doctor prescribed), my back doesn't hurt as much. Sitting is still  the most painful thing, but standing and walking—even twisting a little bit—without grunting has once again become possible in my world.

I might even survive. As long as I never have to sit down again.

3.1415926

You do realize that yesterday was pi day, right? (I didn't until my kids at church reminded me, after which we had a long discussion about the merits of apple pie over any cream-based pie in the existence of cream-based pies, which I think are yucky but most of them disagreed!) I don't remember many things from high school geometry, and what I do remember involves the fact that our classroom was in a trailer that didn't have heat, so I was freezing, and my teacher was the wrestling coach, and maybe he should have stuck to wresting because teaching geometry? Not his forte. Geometry: color me cold & clueless. But, for some reason, I do remember these digits of pi. Strange what sticks! We celebrated by:

• Making the last payment on one of our debts.
• Visiting my sister-in-law Melissa, who had her baby on pi day! I meant to take pictures of little Lydia but was so enjoying holding her that I didn't get my camera out. I love babies! This perhaps was an unwise visit for me to make. My uterus will hurt for the next little while...
• Stopping by Cabellas. OK, honestly: This is NOT a celebration for me. I hate going to Cabellas. I'm not a fan of the entire hunting oeuvre. But, Kendell had something to do for his mom there, and Kaleb thinks Cabellas is nearly as good as Disneyland, so I went. I smiled. I practiced shooting. I didn't make fun of (at least, out loud) the 800-thread-count, deer-printed sheets.
• Baking, of course, a PIE! I made a blackberry pie when we got home from the hospital & Cabellas. I was too tired, though, to actually eat it last night. So I had pie for breakfast this morning.

Did you celebrate pi day?

I Forgot

• the scent of outdoors when the soil is warm and you can nearly smell green things growing
• that perfect blue of the sky when it's warm and cloudless
• the happiness of green
• the lightness of wearing just one layer
• the pleasure of strolling down the street just to say hello to your neighbor
• the way the mountains nearly steam as the snow melts from them
• the sight of color and the lightness it brings to my heart
• the beauty of rosy cheeks
• the happy noise of kids playing outside: squeaking swings, rushing pedals, burbling laughter
• the way grass—still dry and crisp, but starting to soften and green—feels underneath naked toes

It won't last, of course. Tomorrow it will snow five inches, or hail, or fill that perfect blue sky with storm clouds. It won't stay 58 degrees forever.

But today the world has remembered: it is spring.

Book Note: Full Dark, No Stars

For the majority of my adolescence, I was a staunch Stephen King fan. I think the first King book I read was Nightshift, which is a collection of his older stories. What possessed a thirteen-year-old blonde girl to check out such a macabre book—perhaps my dad’s own Stephen-King habit, or maybe Dad even recommended it to me—I cannot rightly say, but I do know this: that book punched me in the face. It made me crave other things about life’s dark side and the thrill of terror racing up my spine. My favorites were the more subtler stories, the ones that left my hands a little shaky, along with my courage.

 Probably it wasn’t the best genre I could read at that age, but I was hooked. After Nightshift, I read all of King’s books: The Stand, Cujo, Firestarter, The Dead Zone. I got my hands on ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Pet Semetary and, of course, Carrie. Some of these I checked out from the library while others were Dad’s copies. I remember when It came out, I waited anxiously for Dad to finish reading his copy so I could start on it. The images stay with me: the lawnmower man in his green-stained nakedness, the children in the corn; Carrie’s blood-stained gown, the hanging man with his ravaged face. Plus, language stayed with me. “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier,” someone said in Pet Cemetary and, had I known it is perfectly acceptable to write in books, I would have underlined that thought. That idea haunted me; I wrote it in strange letters in my journal and pinned my failed relationships on it.

If I had a map of all my adolescent adventures, tucked into my luggage (back pack, black bag, pocket of boyfriend’s black suede jacket) would be some Stephen King novel or other. Did the books’ darkness create mine? Or did they simply speak to what already existed? I don’t still rightly know. Perhaps both. What I am certain of: his thoughts influenced mine. Darkness and evil seemed likely in nearly anyone.

Somewhere in the changes that hit me at about 18, I stopped reading Stephen King. I’d like to link it to my discovery of Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, and some of my still-favorite poets, but I think more than anything it was my need to turn my back on darkness. I did, in my early twenties, read the first three Gunslinger novels; sometimes at completely random times I hear my dad quoting the chirping lobsters. That was in 1993, when we were building our house, so I can safely say it’s been nearly two decades since I read a Stephen King novel. And since the Gunslinger series is much more post-apocalypse than it is full-frontal horror, it could be said that it has been twenty years (at least) since I’ve read a real Stephen King novel.

I have continued to admire him as a writer, however. Out of any hugely popular writer, his is the only opinion I pay attention to. When, for example, he said that Stephenie Meyer “Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn,” I stood up and cheered. I don’t have a problem with his writing (not that he’s the best novelist ever), just the subject matter. That overt darkness is something I cannot savor anymore. But, while working on a list of science fiction novels at work, I stumbled across King’s newest book, Full Dark, No Stars. More precisely, across Margaret Atwood’s review of one of the novellas in the book. If Margaret Atwood reads Stephen King, well, then! I can too! (I know how ridiculous that sounds. Fully ridiculous. Also? My true motivation anyway, even if it is ridiculous.)

 Turns out, she didn’t review my favorite novella. She wrote about “A Perfect Marriage,” which tells the story of Darcy and Bob, who have a seemingly-average but happy-enough marriage, until Darcy stumbles (quite literally) upon Bob’s long-held secret. Atwood says it proves “Our Stephen is a not-so-secret feminist.” I think my favorite novella, “Big Driver,” does that even better, but she has a point. When you are a wife and a mother, you don’t only hold yourself in your hand; your choices affect your children, too, and Bob’s secret leads Darcy to make a fairly severe (and important) choice. I’ll let you read to find out what it is.

 The other novellas are “1922” and “A Fair Extension.” The first tells the story of Wilf James, his son Henry, and his wife Arletta. He tells you this immediately: it’s the story of Wilf murdering his wife over a piece of land. Well, that’s immediately what it’s about. Deeper, though, it says something about the way our choices resonate throughout our lives, sometimes forming a perfect storm that devastates a far wider swathe of land (metaphorical) than you ever imagined possible. The second was my least-favorite, if only because of the gentleness. It’s the story of Streeter, who’s close to dying from lung cancer. He makes a Faustian bargain with one Mr. Elvid (I know: this made me roll my eyes), but it’s not exactly the traditional my-soul-for-my-life sort of deal. Since human souls have become "thin, transparent things," not worth much, the exchange is for money: 15% -for-your-life. The catch: you have to put the weight somewhere. “In words of one syllable,” Mr. Elvid explains, “you have to do the dirty to someone else if they dirty is to be lifted from you.” Streeter decides that the dirt should be transferred to his life-long, very-successful best friend. And thus the fun transpires. 

My favorite novella in the collection is “Big Driver,” which I wish Ms. Atwood had also reviewed. I’ll still take Suzanne Collins’ opinion, though: “There's an undeniable satisfaction in watching certain kinds of characters go down.” The “certain kind” is a rapist, and the person taking him down is one of his victims, Tess, who also happens to write cozy mysteries. In some aspects, all of King’s stories do this thing: what would a normal person do when presented with this very-highly-not-normal life experience? Tess’s answer: get revenge. Very carefully, in fact, using her skills as a pseudo-detective (from her novels), exacting it. 

More than the story or the character or the writing, though, what startled me most about “Big Driver” is what it reminded me of myself. Until she’s victimized, Tess doesn’t realize she has another self inside of herself. Someone far edgier than the gentle writer she projects. I would be willing to say that, after her experience, her novels will never be the same. The voice that guides her through the revenge is “the one that belonged to her deepest self, the survivor. And the killer—her, too.”

 I so get that—your alternate self. It’s not quite so crazy as multiple personalities. It’s just the parts of yourself, perhaps not so appreciated by the majority of the world, that exist nevertheless. I think that in those fractured adolescent years of mine, that is exactly what I did: I discovered some of my hidden self, both the good and the bad parts, and used it to pull myself through. Perhaps King’s books contributed to the darker parts of that self, but they also contributed the pulling-through-anyway part as well. At least, some of it. 

All of this might sound like way too much critical interpretation. We’re talking Stephen King here, people! But I stand by my opinion: I think he is a good writer. And my other opinion, long-standing, which is this: what matters about a book is what you, the reader, do with it. I think King would agree with me. In the book’s afterword, he says that “the writer’s only responsibility is to look for the truth inside his own heart.” I think readers have to do that, too. And my truth is that while I am not King’s “constant reader,” I am glad I picked up that copy of Nightshift all those decades ago. It contributed a part to the self I became, moving through darkness and then upstairs, into light.