Arboretum Library: Book Club Reads from 2015

This fall, East of Borneo will publish the first anthology of Esther McCoy’s landmark writing about Southern California. Esther McCoy (1904-1989) was a keen literary stylist and an ingenious architectural historian who chronicled mid-century modernist design as it was being created. Her 1960 book Five California Architects has long been acknowledged as an indispensable classic. As Reyner Banham observed: “No one can write about architecture in California without acknowledging her as the mother of us all." Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader (Fall 2011), edited and with an introduction by Susan Morgan, presents an unprecedented selection of McCoy’s work—innovative articles, out-of-print essays, unpublished lectures, and personal memoir—and roundly recognizes this brilliant American original, the pre-eminent voice of West Coast modernism.

“[…T]he book is a far cry from your average architectural text as the subject of the book and its primary speaker, Esther McCoy, is somewhat of a wild card when it comes to architecture, writing, and architectural writing. …[T]he eclectic selection of correspondences, published and unpublished articles, personal memoirs and case studies work together to produce an image of a woman who ventured into the architecture world with little more than words and confidence and emerged as one of the most prolific architectural writers of her time.”—Association for Women in Architecture and Design blog

On December 2, 2015 we discussed:
• What are five precepts of McCoy's ideas of the architects touted in the book?
• Which architect did you like best and why? Which building would you most like to see? Why?
• I thought it was an interesting comment about how Gill and his concrete was before his time and the building trades essentially never adapted to the mid-century modern building technologies. What technology from these houses do you wish had been better developed for today?
• What did you like/not like about her writing style? Why?
• How did this change/not change your view of Los Angeles?
• Who is this book written for?
• Is she right about how these folks’ architecture changed Los Angeles? Why? Why not?
• Which essay did you like best? Why?
• Did she have a bias?
• Do you have any questions you would like to ask the group?

“Kingsolver brings all of the novelist’s intrigue and style into this non-fiction work[;…] the lessons you can take from the book might haunt you for years [...Her] riveting telling of the strikes […is] a provocative and thick description of a labor dispute from the ground up. […T]he focus of the book is really on the role of women in the strikes. […] The book artfully explores the different opportunities women had to protest and support the strike[,…] explores the family dynamics when primary earnings shifted from husband to wife[,and] how “women’s auxiliaries” were often so much more than auxiliary. “—Jennifer Earl, Mobilizing Ideas

On November 4, 2015 we discussed:
• How did Kingsolver’s writing style affect your reading of the book?
• What is the book about?
• How has time changed this book? Has work changed?
• What did you think about the strike?
• Was her writing clear? Why? Why not? Did anything confuse you about the book? What didn’t?
• Why do you think she wrote the book?
• Which woman did you most admire? Why?
• Do you have any questions you would like to ask the group?
• What did you think about her bias or objectivity?
• Why did she choose that time period to explore in these women’s lives? What else did you want to know about them?
• What was powerful about the book? What not so much?

Set in the Stark country of Colorado's high plains, this vivid novel begins in 1898 and covers eighty years of western history. In beautifully crafted prose -- a rich, rough vernacular reminiscent of Larry McMurtry -- Kent Haruf brings to life Edith Goodnought, an enduring, undefeated woman who is caught in almost unbearable circumstances. Bound by love and duty to her crippled father and younger brother, she learns to survive with an iron code of service to others.Startlingly direct and with a moral vision and force the reader cannot turn away from, The Tie That Binds is an exceptional, award-winning novel.

“This powerful first novel interweaves the stories of two generations of neighboring families in the bleak sand-hill country of eastern Colorado. […] Edith Goodnough bravely faces life on a remote family farm. When a hideous accident cripples her father, she patiently cares for the vicious old man […] John Roscoe, the neighbor who once courted Edith, watches over her through the long, grim decades, assisting her whenever & however he can. His son, who narrates the story, assumes the role of protector after his father's death, & passes on the tradition of selfless devotion to his daughter.’’ —Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times

Here are the questions the Club discussed on Wednesday, October 7, 2015:
• Did it make you cry? Why/Why not?
• How would this be a different book if it was written from Edith's point of view?
• Why couldn't she marry John?
• What is the best part of this book? Why?
• Does the writing style contribute to the story? Why? Why not?
• Was it believable?/Was there anything gratuitous?
• Do you think Edith would have said there were six good years?
• Were there any struggles of a first novel here?
• What did you think about the depiction of the small town life, the times, and the landscape?
• Anything else you were curious about?

“[…The most remarkable, & often overlooked, quality [...] is that it is […] without a genre. [...I]t has been described as a memoir, an autobiography, a novel, a manifesto[, …]because she deliberately acknowledges that to write autobiography is to stand at the borderline between memory & invention. [It…] stubbornly refuses to be either entirely fictive or entirely real. [...I]n its wake, the American literary world still seems to regard the tissue-thin boundary between memoir & fiction as absolute & inviolable.’’—Jess Row,Slate

Here are the questions we pondered on September 2, 2015:
• Why did she start the book out the way she did?
• Why was she so mean to that little girl?
• Did she like her mother? Does it matter?
• What are the ghosts?
• Was her writing clear? Why? Why not?
• Why did she use “emigrant”?
• Why does the story end at the time period it does? How does the story on pages 99-109 fit in?
• What confused you about the book? What didn’t?
• What did you learn from the book?
• Do you have any questions you would like to ask the group?

Ever since he was a child sitting in the back of his parents' car, Jeff Griffin has been taking explorative journeys into the desert. In 2007, as an art student, he started wandering the back roads of the Mojave Desert with the purpose of looking for a place to reflect in the harshly beautiful surroundings. What he found were widely scattered postmodern ruins--abandoned trailers and campers and improvised structures--whose vanished occupants had left behind, in their trash, an archaeological record of astonishing richness and poignancy. Lost and is both a chronicle of Griffin's obsessive journeying and a portal into a world of dispossessed people and enduring desires. Comprised entirely of unaltered reproductions of extraordinary found materials--drawings, charts, questionnaires, compulsively detailed letters, legal documents, jottings, journal entries, stunningly vivid and mysterious photographs--this is a work of sociological and literary daring that defies categorization. Part documentary history, part literary adventure, part mystical detective story, Griffin's immersion in extremity has yielded wrenching annals of the modes and manners in which lost people inscribe their psychic, sexual, religious, and economic yearnings. At the core of the work is a collection of poems, mostly handwritten and composed without pretense to literary sophistication, that give direct expression to the abiding impulse to tap language's transformative potential. Assembled with deep regard for the dignity of its collective group of anonymous authors, Lost and is a book of profound conceptual originality--an engrossing, shocking, and tender work of art that strives to awaken voices from the wilderness of the inexpressible.

"[The book] offers found objects—mysteriously discarded photographs, notes, letters, & poems, often damaged & barely legible—that document the lives of people living in the deserts of the American West. With these documents, through which we feel the mysterious & fragmentary nature of the way lives are lived & forgotten, [he] creates a physical and psychological landscape that is suffused with a powerful sense of the uncanny. […] Its cumulative effect is mysterious, often humorous, and ultimately heartbreaking—but never patronizing. [It] is a riveting book […] —it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it verges on the miraculous."—Geoffrey Nutter, author, Christopher Sunset

Here are the questions discussed on August 5, 2015:

• What was uplifting?
• If you were going to write a positive or negative review of the book what would you say?
• What did you imagine as you were reading this?
• How did the pictures affect your reading of the text?
• Is this poetry? Why? Why not?
• Is Jeff Griffin the author Is the narrator reliable?
• Who do you think the actual writers are?
• Why is the explanation at the end and by somebody else?
• Do you have any questions you would like to ask the group?

Winner of the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction! Benjamin Alire Sáenz's stories reveal how all borders--real, imagined, sexual, human, the line between dark and light, addict and straight--entangle those who live on either side. Take, for instance, the Kentucky Club on Avenida Juárez two blocks south of the Rio Grande. It's a touchstone for each of Sáenz's stories. His characters walk by, they might go in for a drink or to score, or they might just stay there for a while and let their story be told. Sáenz knows that the Kentucky Club, like special watering holes in all cities, is the contrary to borders. It welcomes Spanish and English, Mexicans and gringos, poor and rich, gay and straight, drug addicts and drunks, laughter and sadness, and even despair. It's a place of rich history and good drinks and cold beer and a long polished mahogany bar. Some days it smells like piss. "I'm going home to the other side." That's a strange statement, but you hear it all the time at the Kentucky Club. Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a highly regarded writer of fiction, poetry, and children's literature. Like these stories, his writing crosses borders and lands in our collective psyche. Poets & Writers Magazine named him one of the fifty most inspiring writers in the world. He's been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN Center's prestigious award for young adult fiction. Sáenz is the chair of the creative writing department of University of Texas at El Paso. Awards: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Lambda Literary Award Southwest Book Award

“[…S]even stories set on the south Texas border of El Paso and Juárez. […The] Club […] provides a guiding thread for the collection, acting alternately as backdrop, touchstone, and oasis for a humane set of characters who struggle with the impossible ambiguities of borders Sáenz […] presents a rendering of reality that is lush, tender, expansive, inclusive and profound. [He] takes stunning care with language—English, Spanish, and the languages of sunlight, daylight, dimlight, night light—twisting and tumbling with the whispered language of the human heart. Sáenz also devotes impressive attention to rendering communities on the borders of the United States and Mexico, on the boundaries of sensual and sexual expression, on the edge of despair, and on the cusp of redemption.” —A.J. Verdelle, judge of the 2013 Pen/Faulkner Award

Here are the questions we discussed, Wednesday, July 1, 2015.

• “He Has Gone to Be with the Women”
  Is this story better than the other ones? What made it better?
• “The Art of Translation”
  What war? Will it help to accept the war? How does the translation fit into the war?
• “The Rule Maker”
  What did the author want to tell us in this story? Why did the Dad start using the drugs?
• “Brother in Another Language”
  How does this author move the story with dialog?
• “Sometimes the Rain”
  How does the author use memory?
• “Chasing the Dragon”
  Can reading these stories ease pain? How does this story fit in with the others?
• “The Hurting Game”
  Why did the author juxtapose the two stories about the two different people in this story?

In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. She attended an Indian arts boarding school, where she nourished an appreciation for painting, music, and poetry; gave birth while still a teenager; and struggled on her own as a single mother, eventually finding her poetic voice. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo's tale of a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and transformation into an award-winning poet and musician is haunting, unique, and visionary.

“A Mvskoke/Creek Indian, she describes her dreams, nightmares and memories of her parents, and her ancestors, […] "Crazy Brave" might have been titled "Portrait of an Indian Artist as a Young Woman." […] Harjo is a magician and a master of the English language. Like [James] Joyce, she knows how to navigate the rough waters of silence, exile and cunning. […] Poets of every persuasion will surely [also] be riveted by the intensely raw and yet carefully crafted personal poems that Harjo includes here, including one of her first that begins, ‘I release you, my beautiful and terrible/ fear.’”-- Jonah Raskin, San Francisco Chronicle.

Here are the questions we discussed Wednesday, June 3, 2015:
• Why did she choose this particular trajectory for her story? (i.e. sans life after college)
• Was the book inspirational or moving for you? Why? Why not?
• How did childbirth affect her career choices?
• How was she brave? Is she triumphant?
• Was her writing deliberately non-emotional? Why? Why not?
• Was the story linear? Why? Why not?
• Was there anything confusing that you didn’t understand?
• How did the non-typical parts of the story affect your reading?
• Do you integrate nature into your life as she does? How? How not?
• What about the “truth” of her memoir? (i.e. the insertion of something she says is “mostly truthful.”) What is the impact of that statement on your reading?
• Were the additional people in her story real for you? Why? Why not?

This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel takes place in the space of four days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man who is constantly plagued by the effects of racism. Living in a society that is drenched in race consciousness has no doubt taken a toll on the way Jones behaves, thinks, and feels, especially when, at the end of his story, he is accused of a brutal crime he did not commit. "One of the most important American writers of the twentieth century ... [a] quirky American genius..."-Walter Mosley, author of Bad Boy Brawly Brown, Devil in a Blue Dress "If He Hollers is an austere and concentrated study of black experience, set in southern California in the early forties."-Independent Publisher

“[...T]here's a little bit of Bob Jones in all of us. […] ‘The huge industrial plants flanking the ribbon of road -- shipyards, refineries, oil wells, steel mills, construction companies [...] and the snow-capped mountains in the background, like picture post-cards, didn't mean a thing to me. I didn't even see them; […]’ Readers have no choice but to feel Jones' anger [...;] the way the troubles of the city create a myopia that obscures the beauty of the landscape far more than smog ever could. […] We grow with him […] to look at ‘the hustle and bustle of moving busy workers, trucks, plate lifts, yard cranes, electric mules, the blue flashes of arc welders, brighter than the noonday sun’ -- only to fall down and get beat in the end. — Sarah Fenske, LA Weekly.

Here are the questions we discussed, May 6, 2015.
• What were his assumptions all about?
• What did you make of all the dreams he told us about?
• Do you understand his rages? Why? Why not? Did his rages help him?
• Did Alice’s advice help? Is it true?
• What was shocking?
• How did the author’s portrayal of women affect your reading of the novel?
• Was there anything confusing that you didn’t understand?
• Could you imagine the ship? Could you feel the spaces where they were working?
• Has anything changed since this book was written?
• Did the end seem to follow from the rest?
• Was the narrator reliable? Why? Why not?
• What did you learn about L.A. at that time that you didn’t know before?
• Did the book change your views on discrimination?

“[…]The [book…] is a delightfully comedic take on the serious subject of class warfare. The class conflict in [northern New Mexico…] is the real thing, with the warring parties literally not even speaking the same language. […]But don't be put off by its decidedly serious theme. […It] makes its point using a zany and lovable cast of characters who follow their own logic. […] All the way through, Nichols uses the land and the hardships it forces to great effect. [...He] has come up with a wild and romping tale told not only with humor but also with great caring and compassion. — Tom Walker, Denver Post

Here are the questions we discussed on April Fools Day, 2015:
• This novel is often referred to as “comic.” Did you perceive it as that? How? Why?
• Who is your favorite character? Why?
• Is the story real, believable? Is the narrator reliable? Why? Where? Why not?
• Does this story have resonance for today’s economic/political struggles? How? What strikes you as ways the world changed since the times of this story? What’s the same?
• What was the author best at?
• What did you perceive in his portrayal of the locals/rural society?
• How did the book make you feel?
• Was there anything confusing that you didn’t understand?
• What is the best part of this book?

Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.

“[…]Sylvie [...] is looking after [...] two adolescent girls her sister has abandoned in Fingerbone. [It] is one of those towns that seem to be lost between the West and the Middle West. As Miss Robinson puts it, Fingerbone is 'chastened by an outsized landscape and
extravagant weather.’ [...She] works with light, dark, water, heat, cold, textures, sounds and smells. She is […] taking apart the landscape to remind us that we are surrounded by elements, that we are separated from one another, and from our past and future, by such influences. [...] Though her ambition is tall, she remains down to earth, where the best novels happen.’’— Anatole Broyard, New York Times.

Here are the questions we discussed, March 4, 2015.
• What is this story about?
• How does the author’s narration affect the story?
• Is the story real, believable? Is the narrator reliable?
• What it shocking? How?/How not?
• Were the author’s descriptions clear? Could you see it?
• How did the weather in the story effect your reading?
• How did the book make you feel?
• Why is the title Housekeeping?
• Was there anything confusing that you didn’t understand?
• This is a first novel? Can you tell that? How? How not?
• What is the best part of this book?
• How does it/does not seem an accurate description of small town life?
• When does this book take place?

An inspired reflection on the bond between wild creatures and the human imagination, told as a chronicle of four seasons with a band of rare desert bighorn sheep. Among the steep cliffs of Utah’s canyonlands a band of rare desert bighorn sheep simply vanished. Although the word “extinct” was bandied about, their passing seemed to fit the downward spiral of native wildlife in the Southwest that began in the early twentieth century. Remote, isolated, and elusive, this band slipped through the cracks. The bighorns were gone. Then they came back. We have allowed ourselves few places and scant ways to witness other species in their own world, Ellen Meloy writes, an estrangement that has left us lonely and spiritually hungry. Now, with generous empathy and wry humor, the award-winning author of The Anthropology of Turquoise describes the mystery of the bighorns’ self-rescue. In the role of an “amiable, nosy neighbor,” Meloy matches her seasonal geography to theirs, observing cycles of breeding and birth, predators and death, the exquisite match of animal to place, of blood and bone to a magnificent redrock canyon. On backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels to Mexico, the Great Basin, and the Chihuahuan Desert, Meloy roams the rugged habitat of these intriguing and precarious natives. Throughout, we revel with her in the air, light, and dazzling colors of the high desert. Most of all, we come to understand why she finds that watching wild animals intensely is very much like prayer.

“[…]The artist and writer's books have won several literary awards, and time will likely show her to have been one of our finest natural-history writers. Her knowledge of the natural world is deep, and her prose breathtakingly beautiful and often startling. Here she leads us through the history of desert sheep from the Pleistocene onward, their predators, behavior, and the points where their lives intersect with those of
humans as evidenced in prehistoric petroglyphs and tribal myths.” -- Annie Proulx,The Globe and Mail

Here are the questions discussed on February 4, 2015
• What was your favorite fact?
• Was there any area that you didn’t understand what she was talking about? Where?
• Can you tell about a wildlife experience that you had, that was reminiscent of any of hers?
• Did you follow and agree with her conclusions? Did this book make you think differently? Why? Why not?
• What did you think of the places she went for sheep?
• How did the mixture of memoir and fact affect your reading of this collection?
• How does this story differ from other nature writings you have read? Examples?
• Did her non-fiction language, story framing, etc., seem different than the typical non-fiction story; better, worse? Why?
• How did her use of descriptive language affect your reading of the text?
• Every tale of wildlife or current nature is a tale of gloom and doom? Did this differ from that? Did this affect you any differently from other wildlife stories you have read?
• What is the best part of this book?

This enlarged edition of The other California, originally published in 1990, contains nineteen essays (six of them new to this collection) on the landscape, literature, and life in the Great Central Valley of California. A vast, flat patchwork of fields and orchards about the size of England, the Valley has become the richest farming region in the history of the world. It also has a rich literary tradition: William Saroyan, Joan Didion, William Everson, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Soto, and Richard Rodriguez were all raised in this agricultural heartland.

“In this collection of essays[…], he explores what it means to be from the San Joaquin Valley of California, a massive stew of cultures and people. As an Oildale boy and a product of Okie and Hispanic heritage, his perspective is entrenched in valley dirt and hard work […]
Haslam shows the valley as it is. He speaks with pride about the labor of Okies struggling to emerge from the poverty of the dust bowl, and the Mexican migrants working the fields today. He explores the racism of Taft in the 1970s, and the grief of his mother's slow decline and death. It's a moving work. […] a keeper.”—Beth Cato, Goodreads.com

Here are the questions discussed on January 7, 2015:

• "The Other California"
How did the facts in this essay differ from your vision of the San Joaquin Valley?
• "The Lake That Will Not Die"
What was the most astonishing fact here? Did it bother you that there were no bibliographic citations to back up his facts?
• "The Water Game"
Do you believe it? Why or Why not?
• "The Kern, My River"
What was the most astonishing geological fact in this essay?
• "California’s Literary Landscape"
Which of the authors he mentions in this chapter would you most like to read and why?
• "Other Voices, Other Lives"
What is your favorite passage in this chapter and why?
• "The Grapes of Wrath: A Book That Stretched My Soul"
Can you tell about a reading experience that affected you as much as The Grapes of Wrath affected the author?
• "Father Comes Home"
How does this story fit in with the rest?
• "What About the Okies?"
Did you follow and agree with all his conclusions? Did this essay make you think differently? Why? Why not?
• "Oil Town Rumble: The Young Men of Taft"
What went wrong?
• "William Saroyan and the Critics?"
Did you realize how different his fiction was from the rest of his time? How did the author flesh this out for you?
• "Remembering Hutch"
What made Hutch so great?
• "Bronzing the Valley"
How has thinking changed since this essay was written?
• "The Bakersfield Sound"
Can a place shape music as it does literature? Is the Bakersfield sound distinct as he says? (Is his essay convincing?) How? How not?
• "Leon Patterson’s Short Season"
How was he shaped by the San Joaquin Valley?
• "Oildale"
How does the mixture of memoir and fact affect your reading of this collection?
• "The Home"
How is this a story of the “other California”?
• "Visions of the Valley"
How did this story affect you?
• "Other Californians"
What is the best part of this essay?