I apologize right now in advance. this is going to be a total fucking cliché. But I’ve been so busy I couldn’t do The Pithy. Every aspect of my totally unremarkable existence became remarkably demanding. Imagine me sliding and tumbling down a muddy hill. Maybe occasionally I grasp a branch to brace myself and catch my breath, then the branch snaps and I’m rolling down again, and gaining speed. That’s me. And I bet many of you feel the same.
Or this is me:
Life is moving a little too fast–sports tournaments, choir concerts, dress selection for the 8th grade dance, desperate pleas with the high school administration to not withhold my son’s diploma due to chronic tardiness, renting a tuxedo. Have I paid for Julius’s cap and gown? Did I order his cringe “home of a CHS grad” lawn sign? Does Naomi have shoes to go with her tiny little dress for the dance?
It’s not without its pleasures. I’m sure Lucy didn’t mind those first few chocolates, and of course I am cherishing all these moments. But it’s so much at once, I’m beginning to get queasy.
It’s too much life admin.1 It doesn’t help that I’m pretty sure everyone does life admin better than me. I never love my friends more than when they tell me how they’ve missed deadlines for school forms, or accidentally forgot to renew the car registration, or never ordered their daughter’s cap and gown. These people are my tribe. I've been doing this mom thing for 20 years and I still feel a genuine thrill when one of my kids needs cash for a field trip and I actually have the U.S. currency in my wallet.
In this messy tumble down the hill that is my family’s spring, this poor little blog—my little patch of me-ness in my life—was exiled to the outer corners of my brain. I just honestly couldn’t make it work and I’m sorry. But I’m here now dammit!
Birnam Wood
I live for exquisitely crafted novels with characters who are written with such attention that they feel like real breathing people. I love when writers have the talent to use their novels to express themes that serve as commentary on our culture. I love great books.
But. Sometimes I just want a great barn burner of a plot, a page turner, a thriller, an unputdownable book. I’ll tear through stacks of these until I start to see the strings and scotch tape holding it all together, or grow weary of how the characters are just semaphores for whatever their requisite character trait might be–bravery, loyalty, deceit, etc. It’s incredibly rare that you get literature-level writing and a thrilling plot. A book like that is the peanut butter cup of books–the perfect combination.
So when I leafed through a New Yorker this spring and saw Eleanor Catton described as a literary author who emphasizes a great plot, I splurged on a hardcover of her new book, Birnam Wood. I do not feel like my money was wasted. (Spoiler alert: sometimes I do regret paying for a book.)
Birnam Wood is set in New Zealand, Catton’s homeland, and it’s about the climate crisis, billionaires like Elon Musk, self-righteous cancel culture, digital surveillance, illegal mining, friendship, and finding your voice. It’s a satire, but she doesn’t slack on the character development. It’s pretty tragic but she isn’t afraid to make you laugh.
The plot has several spokes–an older married couple with a valuable plot of land they’re selling, a billionaire who wants to buy the land, and Birnam Wood, a band of mostly benign eco-warriors who do renegade plantings on public and private property, then distribute the crops they grow. Everyone’s lives get tangled up when Birnam Wood trespasses on the valuable plot of land the older couple is selling to the Musk-y billionaire.
One of the small delights of the novel is the friendship between Mira, who founded Birnam Wood, and Shelley, her bestie and right-hand woman. In their friendship, Catton captures that specific feeling of a young woman who is feeling her wings for the first time, but hesitant to exercise her agency because it could mean hurting her friend. Another member of Birnam Wood is an insecure yet wildly ambitious young man named Tony whose antics feel like comic relief, until they’re not. And the tech billionaire is a sociopath, which I found very satisfying.
At some points I just like how it scratched an itch for me, like when Mira calls out the billionaire’s doomsday prep work: “You’ve clearly devoted a lot of time and energy to the idea of a future global catastrophe. But when you spend all this time preparing for this one highly particular scenario, at some level you must be kind of willing it to happen. Right? … And what’s even more fucked up is that you totally have it in your power to make things better. Like in all of history, there has literally never been a group of people better equipped to avert catastrophe than the billionaires alive today.”
The billionaire agrees, and says he and his peers are like gods. Capricious, selfish gods.
This novel is a page turner but it’s not fluffy. At one point, as they tend their plantings, Shelley and Mira discuss Dumbledore’s aphorism about how at some point you have to choose between what is right and what is easy. Shelley (or the author, through Shelley) says the real choice is between what is wrong and what is hard.
In the midst of all this thoughtful writing–including details of a long marriage that really demonstrates the 37-year-old Catton’s powers of observation—there’s a plot that hurtles forward with the delightful pace of a thriller. And to be fair, Eleanor Catton isn’t the only literary novelist who can write a propulsive story. Demon Copperhead whizzed along, and it won a Pulitzer.
The Wager
I also loved listening to The Wager, the new book by David Grann who also wrote The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. This incredibly well-researched tale of a 1742 shipwreck off the coast of Chile makes me think that it doesn’t take a shipwreck for life at sea to be absolutely horrible. The rats, the terrifying seas, the starvation, the imperious British foolishness–I loved every word. Grann is a meticulous researcher so I’m not saying this to cast doubt, but the awfulness is so over-the-top it started to feel like a Monty Python skit. Like did you know that when you have scurvy, previously broken bones can just spontaneously break again?
The narration of this book was a little overdone to be honest. I enjoyed it but if you don’t want your narrative nonfiction with a side of corn, I suggest reading it instead of listening. And while I’m panning things, let me get to the list of books I wish I had not paid for.
My secret power
First of all, indulge me. You need to hear why I rarely include books I didn’t like in The Pithy. It’s because criticizing things comes too easily for me. Do you know how sometimes a musician will be interviewed and she’ll say how she was raised in a musical home? She’ll reminisce about how her uncle was in a bluegrass band, her mom played piano, and everyone sang around the fire at night. Well, I was raised in a critical home. We were steeped in the sharply observed take, the sarcastic comment, the incisive review. I received “notes” on everything I did, from everyone in the house. I’m pretty sure even my cat had opinions.
Finding fault was a sign of intelligence, a way to notch yourself above someone else (usually a sibling). Criticizing a work of art was a way to show your superiority, your more astute and cultured perspective.
My parents came by it honestly. They were highly cultured New York intellectuals—ivy league-educated academics, foodies before that was a thing, world travelers with amazing taste in movies, books, and art. It wasn’t really pretension, it was just who they were. The rest of us clumsily followed suit; hypercritical put-downs were our love language.
I’m like Elsa from Frozen but instead of ice it’s snark. I really try to turn down the volume on my propensity to criticize—especially because the person I criticize the most is me. I want to exist in the world of love and positive encouragement—I don’t want to be exiled to a lonely Disney castle devoid of any furniture, Besides, there are so many fantastic creations in the world, why not focus on the things I love?
But today, I’ll make an exception.
I was so excited to read I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai because The Great Believers was my favorite novel of 2020—a year when I read a fuck-ton of novels. I don't know what went wrong with this new novel but I didn’t even finish it. It’s about a podcaster, which was my first inkling I’d be disappointed. Is there anything more zeitgeisty and trite than making podcasting a central component of your novel? Then, the main character is this depressive schlub of a woman, and the “mystery” is a non-mystery from her own high school years. I think that maybe the author’s message was about our obsession for true crime mysteries, and how murder mysteries are actually sort of dull? I don’t know, I didn't finish it.
One of my favorite tasks at work is when I have to write “talkable moments,” one-liners to entice Audible members to learn more about and hopefully buy the audiobook. For instance, for The Wager: “Treacherous seas and treasonous men make for a terrific listen.” God…that looks so cheesy now. I was proud of that line a couple weeks ago. Well, anyway:
I had to write a talkable moment for a quirky romance novel called The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. It has over 2,000 4-star reviews so I got pulled in. It was cute, and not badly written, but after a few hours of listening I realized the people who love this book are not my people. I need a little less twee charm and a lot more conflict. This was like a warm milky cup of tea. Gross.
That book made me think maybe I wasn’t cut out for romance novels not written by Jane Austen, but then I tore through Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy. It’s totally light, and totally entertaining. I realize it has no place in this bulleted list of my rejects, but the segue worked so shut up. If anyone reads romance novels that are sharp and witty, by the way, share the titles. I could use more of this in my life. No conflict is fine if there’s great banter, I guess.
I listened to The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and it was good, I did finish it. So many of my friends love this book and I understand why. But it was a simulacrum of several much better books about WW2 and the resistance, especially A Woman of No Importance, which is the true story of the real young woman who fearlessly shepherded soldiers and refugees across the Pyrenees—and she did it all with one wooden leg.
Ok, that’s enough of that for now. Next time I publish I’ll give you a list of books to read, not books to avoid. And today, in honor of the season, I’m going to leave you with a link to a short commencement speech Kelly Corrigan gave a few years back. One of my besties shared it a couple weeks ago, when her baby graduated from high school. This week one of my babies graduates from high school too, and I’m going to make him sit down and listen to this in front of me, since I know he will never listen on his own. But you will, and you won’t regret it.
Thanks for being patient with me, as if you had a choice.
Life admin is a term I’m poaching from a witty work pal. Life admin sounds relevant and necessary. Housework sounds like drudgery. (Maybe she didn’t invent the term, but I choose to believe that she did.)
As always, incredible writing about writing! And the description of your family of origin- beautiful and trenchant!!!