PILES

Every now and again I get a bit overzealous in my reading life and bite off a little more than I can chew. I had thus far been successful in avoiding such a situation since the calendar turned, but I fear I have allowed it to happen once again. There is a giant stack of big books piled high on my bedside table. There are enough that as I lug them about the house to grab a few minutes here and there for chipping away at one or another, I sometimes lose track of one or forget which it was that I was last enjoying. I suppose it speaks to some sort of compulsion I carry, this gathering of books, but I am not qualified nor am I inclined to  try and sort that out. No one ever said a reading life was an easy one.

The pile -- to which I swear I have stopped adding -- currently includes Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity and Community, edited by Amy Clark and Nancy Hayward, Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, a collection of stories called Fire and Forget (more on that one below), Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, and the novel I have not yet started but could not bring myself to abandon to the wilds of the library's new book shelf, Dina Nayeri's A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea. Then, of course, there are the magazines, the newspapers, the most recent issue of Ploughshares that came in the mail and seems to be teeming with really good stories, and even mentioning that pile over there in the corner of books that I would like to read makes me anxious. I am surrounded by piles. You can imagine it makes my wife happy.

Anyhow, I have managed of late to actually complete one book and it was a dandy. Just when I felt like I had slipped into a bit of a reading slump, I picked up one of the better stories I have read in a long time, a novel by Liz Moore called Heft. Liz Moore is a new discovery for me and someone whose work I feel I should get to know. It also happens that I am especially fond of her publisher. This is her second book and her first, The Words of Every Song, is, of course, now on the reading list. Once again, I am amazed at the skill and artistry of a very young writer. Heft is a novel about a lot of things and brings together two characters seemingly from opposite poles who allow us to explore those all too human feelings of emptiness and loneliness. The immense tragedies of the two lives Moore has rendered here end up giving us a deep sense of hope and a clearer understanding of the power of choosing to be a part of a community.  She reminds us of the good in the world. As is said often here at ToFGT in one form or another, one of the most important things good fiction does is give us room to process and think through realities that are nearly impossible to make sense of. Sometimes the only way to see clearly through the messiness that life gives us is to share the story.

Now and then I pick up a book that I want to savor and so I do not feel nearly as bad for taking my time to finish an anthology edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher called Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. I owe my discovery of this one to Bob Edwards, on whose radio show I heard an interview with Scranton and Gallagher and one or two of the authors in the collection. The book is the product of a writing workshop sponsored by New York University for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I cannot begin to adequately convey the quality and power of these pieces, so I will not try. They are quite simply gut punches of reality. I have a penchant for war stories for a number of  different reasons. Colum McCann, in his introduction to Fire and Forget that is in itself compelling enough for you to seek out this book, expresses some of the more important ones.

"All stories are war stories somehow. Every one of us has stepped from one war or another. Our grandfathers were there when the stench of Dresden hung over the world, and our fathers were there when Vietnam sent its children running napalmed down the dirt road. Our grandmothers were there when Belfast fell into rubble, and our mothers were there when Cambodia became a crucible of bones. Our sisters in South Africa, our brothers in Gaza. And, God forbid, our sons and daughters will have stories to tell too. We are scripted by war."

 "We are drawn to war because we are, in the words of William Faulkner, drawn to 'the human heart in conflict with itself.' We all know that happiness throws white ink against a white page. What we need is darkness for the meaning to come clear. We discover ourselves through our battles -- our awful revelations, our highest dreams, our basest instincts are all on display."