En Famille

Imagine a gatecrasher comes to your party uninvited and he ends up 'stealing' your wife. Stealing is clearly not the right word as you cannot steal a person. As it so happens, the uninvited guest steals a moment with the hostess and the demographic of two different families have to be reconfigured.

Commonwealth  written by Ann Patchett is about children growing up in a blended family.

The book opens in 1960s Los Angeles.

Fix Keating does not know who Bert Cousins is when he shows up at his younger daughter’s christening party. Fix is a local cop while Bert is a lawyer in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. Although they barely know each other, Cousins goes to the christening party to escape from  howling kids and his pregnant wife , Teresa. He arrives with gin at the christening party and ends up kissing Beverly Keating when he is totally drunk on gin and orange juice. They divorce their spouses and move from California to Virginia. Consequently the six kids from their previous marriages end up shuttling from coast to coast every summer. As we follow the Keating and Cousins children, their stories come into focus.  Bert has Cal , Holly, Jeanette and Albie while Fix has Caroline and Franny.

Coffee in a wine glass

In her 20s, Franny Keating has an affair with Leo Posen, a famous writer who ends up writing a best seller based on Franny’s stories about growing up with her siblings.

The story spans five decades and it is like a jigsaw puzzle, the readers get to piece together the story from fragmented memories of the Keating girls and the Cousins children.

‘But Caroline and Franny were not glad they were home. They were not glad at all. It was in this battered state that the Keating girls returned to Arlington to be reunited with their step siblings.

Holly was certainly friendly. She hopped up and down and actually clapped her hands when the girls came through the door. She said she wanted to put on another dance recital in the living room this summer. But Holly was also wearing Caroline’s red T-shirt with the tiny white ribbon rosette at the neck, which her mother had made Caroline put in the Goodwill bag before she left because it was both faded and too small. Holly was not the Goodwill.'

 Ann Patchett  tells the story in a  succinct style with vivid description for each scene and the story flows in a nonchalant and existentialist manner. 

ALMOST TWO WEEKS  after Franny had so miraculously deduced that Leo Posen’s room number was 821, and had gotten him to that room and gotten herself out of the hotel without anyone’s being the wiser, she got a phone call at the bar. Ten minutes past six and every table was full, every barstool taken .People stacked up behind the people in the chairs , drinks in hand , laughing and talking too loudly while hoping that a seat would open up. One of the other waitresses, the girl named Kelly who had the ex-husband and the child , put her hand on the small of Franny’s back and nearly touched her lipsticked lips to Franny’s ear while whispering to her . Everything these people did was intimate, even the delivery of messages. “ Phone call,” she said, her voice slipping beneath the din.

Though it is an ordinary tale about ordinary people, Ann Patchett  click is good in painting characters and in her subtlety , it shows that nobody is completely bad and the characters evolve as they age.  Through the female characters, she aptly conveys  how a woman’s hopes about life have been slowly dashed in middle-age. She is insightful and humorous in her eloquent narrative.

Often there may be bitter rivalry between siblings, they do share a common past where they each remember things differently. If they could just grow out of the sibling rivalry and let go of  the memories of the past that hurt them  , they might find a deep bond in their shared past.

I first read Ann Patchett's memoir " This is the story of a Happy Marriage". She writes with such ease in capturing small moments in life just like how she tells the story in Commonwealth.
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A Wondrous Life

I have not been able to feel bored as there are always  books that I want to read and projects I want to work on. There are so many good books too little time. Amidst my work and commitments, I need to  fit in reading and writing and every day feels like a race. THIS IS THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE, a  memoir by Ann Patchett  tells about how she manages the balance in her life between writing and all that matters in her life. Ann Patchett has the right aptitude and resolve. I enjoy all the insights that she shares with her readers.

Finding the right balance between what we love to do and what needs to be done is a constant challenge. But what if what we love to do is actually what needs to be done?

One afternoon, a man walked into my office seeking some legal advice. He was troubled as his wife of thirty years had taken off and she had decided to stay away from the family. When confronted, she told him that she had done enough for him and their three children who had since grown up, the youngest son seventeen going on to eighteen. He reiterated that he had been a good husband as he did not have any extra-marital affairs. He disclosed that he had regularly gone for drinks with the boys and frequented karoeke lounges and whenever he stayed out late, his wife used to telephone him and wondered about those women at such joints. After hearing his narration, it  sounded like he wanted the wife to continue feeling needy and insecure. Now that his wife has decided to make a change in her dreary life, he is terribly upset and accuses her of not thinking about the family. And to top it all, he  blamed her new woman friend who had brought about the change in her attitude that subsequently caused the disruption in his  family life.

Women on a quest for change and freedom is a common theme. Elizabeth Gilbert had written the memoir “ Eat Pray Love”  about her year of travel that ended up in her meeting her present husband, a wonderful love story. In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything most women were supposed to want-husband, country home and successful career.  Instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she felt confused and depressed. She divorced her husband and went on a trip to Italy, India and Indonesia.

As it is  a self- discovery voyage, Gilbert may at times  ramble on a bit and sound self- absorbed. Nonetheless the book is a page turner and the characters that she has met during her travel are colourful and fiction like. Her narration is for the most part lively and come across as sincere and honest. 

This is an extract from  what she wrote about her experience on meditation .   

‘When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking , to dip back into my meditation. I took a new idea with me : compassion.  I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind’s workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being- and a normal one, at that ? The thoughts came up as usual –OK, so it will be -and then the attendant emotions rose, too. I began feeling frustrated and judgmental about myself, lonely and angry. But then a fierce response boiled up from somewhere in the deepest caverns of my heart, and I told myself, “ I will not judge you for these thoughts.”

My mind tried to protest, said, “ Yeah, but you ‘re such a failure, you ‘re such a loser, you’ll never amount to anything -”

But suddenly it was like a lion was roaring from within my chest, drowning all this claptrap out. A voice bellowed in me like nothing I had ever heard before. It was so internally, eternally loud that I actually clamped my hand over my mouth because I was afraid that if I opened my mouth and let this sound out, it would shake the foundations of buildings as far away as Detroit.”

And this is what it roared:

      YOU HAVE NO IDEA

          HOW  STRONG MY LOVE IS !!!!!!!!

‘The chattering, negative thoughts in my mind scattered in the wind of this statement like birds and jackrabbits and antelopes – they hightailed it out of there, terrified. Silence followed. An intense , vibrating ,awed silence. The lion in the giant savannah of my heart surveyed his newly quiet kingdom with satisfaction. He licked his great chips once, closed his yellow eyes and went back to sleep.

   And then , in that regal silence, finally – I began to mediate on ( and with ) God.’

Gilbert  did come across as someone who had an unlimited reserve  of good luck as she embarked on her self-discovery journey from eating and learning Italian in Italy to spending six weeks at an Ashram in India with a view to seek inner peace through meditation  and subsequently heading to Bali for the remaining part of her sojourn. As most of us know that we do not have neither the resources nor the courage to make such a trip of a lifetime, the memoir definitely makes a fun and inspiring read.

Be Inspired

These days when the adults get together, it  appears to be a norm that children  are kept occupied with a smart phone or an iPad or a Samsung galaxy notebook. A nineteen year old whom I am acquainted with tells us how he has seen a toddler  sitting inside a pram holding up an iPad ( presumably an iPad mini). When they were toddlers, I used to give my daughters cloth books that were washable,  picture books, simple jigsaw puzzles or some children’s toys to keep them occupied. That was two decades ago. These days, games are available on apps and there are ample of them. A colleague  laments that he has three young kids and he has to get not just one iPad. Imagine having to contain your kids with electronic devices even if you are not keeping up with the Joneses and you have to be realistic about instagram, facebook, twitter, pinterest, wechat as they are all part of the technology evolution. The  virtual world is expanding its horizon at a fast pace. The way people interact with one another and disseminate information are very much dependent upon social medias and because we are all social beings, etiquettes  that might have not been acceptable may now be part of the changing social culture.

For me, I cannot imagine myself playing candy crush and the likes as I need all the minutes and hours to read and pursuing my passion in writing. I loved to write as a child. When I was in primary school, I  listed “ writer”作家 (Zuòjiā) as what I wanted to be when we were asked to write  Chinese essays with topics like“ What would you like to do when you grow up?”. I probably had  no inkling what the job would entail and very faint idea about what it had meant to be a 作家 (Zuòjiā). As an adolescent. I had always been interested in writing, dramas and films but I have chosen law as my career path as I was being practical. Decades later, I am ambivalent about whether I had made the right decision. I feel that competence, confidence and assertiveness may be the personality traits that are ascribed to a good lawyer, to be a great lawyer is another thing altogether. I only wish that I had Ann Patchett’s conviction and resolve when I was in my 20s. She knew that she wanted to be a writer since she was six years old. 

Ann Patchett wrote in her memoir THIS IS THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE,

“ If I was twelve that Christmas Eve, I already knew I wanted to be a writer. That knowledge goes back as early as six, as early as the start of school and maybe even before that.  I may at times forget the details of my life  but I remember the stories I read. ….”

Patchett writes with such passion and honesty. I thoroughly enjoy reading the essays collection in THIS IS THE STORY OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE.

In her essay entitled “ On Responsibility” , Ann Patchett wrote :

“ I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE for much. I do not have children who have to get to school on time and wear matching shoes and be taught the difference between right and wrong. I do not have a job in which the well being of a company or the safety of the nation or the health of anyone at all is resting on my shoulders. I have a couple of plants. I must remember to water. I make a point of paying my taxes on time. I take care of myself, but that’s not worth mentioning. I pitch in and help other people when I can, but they are people who could find the same help elsewhere if I went on vacation. When I think of whom I am responsible for, truly responsible for, I can whittle the list down to my dog and my grandmother, and it just so happens that last week they were both sick.”    

The essay entitled “The Mercies” reminds me of the first two  years of my secondary school when I was taught by Sister Stephen and Sister Gertrude at the convent I attended. Sister Stephen was the principal of the school and due to her love for music, she arranged for a choral teacher and a violin teacher for our class. I remember Sister Gertrude as being gentle, genteel and  soft spoken. My best friend in school then became a Catholic and she grew very close to Sister Gertrude. For some reasons, I am a Buddhist and agnostic and have always been. Although I was a vanguard and used to be able to recite  Hail Mary and Our Father very well at school,  I never got round to knowing much about the nuns.

Ann wrote :

“When I was a girl in Catholic school I was open to the idea of being a nun, a mother, a wife , but whenever I closed my eyes and listened (and there was plenty of time for listening – in  chapel, in math class, in basketball games-we were told the news could come at any time) the voice I heard was consistent: Be a writer. It didn’t matter that “writer” had never been listed as one of our options. I knew that for me this was the truth, and to that end I found the nuns to be invaluable examples. I was , after all, educated by a group of women who had in essence jumped ship, ignored the strongest warnings of their fathers and brothers in order to follow their own clear direction. They were working women who had given every aspect of their lives over to their belief, as I intended to give my life over to my belief.  The nuns’ existence was not so far from the kind of singular life I imagined for myself, even if God wasn’t the object of my devotion.” 

How she met her husband Karl and live happily after is a sweet story she shares.  She also tells the story about how she started a bookstore with her partner when Borders were closing down . Maybe the book shop is working because she is an author and because her partner, Karen works like life depends on the bookstore or simply because they just got lucky.  Whatever the reasons are, Ann Patchett has the right attitude.

“ But my luck has made me believe that changing the course of the corporate world is possible. Amazon doesn’t get to make all the decision; the people can make them by how and where they spend their money. If what a bookstore offers matters to you , then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read the book. This is how we change the world: we grab hold of it. We change ourselves.”

Kudos to Ann Patchett who is  fully committed to the art and craft of writing, books and the dog and people who matter to her. And thanks to writers and avid readers throughout the world, books and reading are very much alive.

The World of Words

So many good books, so little time. If I could complete one fiction per week, I can only complete around 50 to 60 novels a year.  That is wishful thinking considering amidst my work and doing all the things I like and dislike, I do not actually get to read one fiction per week  unless it is a short one.

I also read books other than fictions. I have started reading the memoir This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett . Here is a passage that I find inspiring for anyone who wants to write.

‘Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art you must master the craft. If you want to write , practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. Write the story , learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment. The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the fresh water underneath. Does this sound like a lot of work without any guarantee of success ? Well yes, but it also calls into question our definition of success.’

The only way to learn to write is by writing and the pleasure is in the writing. I cannot agree more. Ms Patchett aspired to be a writer since she was twelve years old. She always knew that she wrote because it was her joy.

I find joy in reading and writing. Reading and writing are solitary acts and nothing pleases me more than allowing me the time and space to read  and write alone.  In his essay entitled “ Why Bother?” ( How to be Alone, Jonathan Franzen )  Franzen wrote this :

‘ At the heart of my despair about the novel had been a conflict between a feeling that I should Address the Culture and Bring News to the Mainstream, and my desire to write about the things closest to me , to lose myself in the characters and locales I loved. Writing, and reading too, had become a grim duty; and considering the poor pay, there is seriously no point in doing either if you’re not having fun.’

Here is what Franzen transcribed from a letter he had received from Don DeLillo, to whom he had written in distress.

‘The novel is whatever novelists are doing at a given time. If we’re not doing the big social novel fifteen years from now, it’ll probably mean our sensibilities have changed in ways that make such work less compelling to us - we won’t stop because the market die up. The writer leads, he doesn’t follow. The dynamic lives in the writer’s mind, not in the side of the audience. And if the social novel lives, but only barely, surviving in the cracks and ruts of the culture, maybe it will be taken more seriously, as an endangered spectacle. A reduced context but a more intense one.

     Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around .In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some under culture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.’

Reading and writing require one to be alone in his or her own contemplation . As I read, ideas bounce from one book to another and every book is an invitation to savor, experience , learn and grow. There are great books for every reader. In order to improve one’s writing craft,  one has to keep writing. Ideas are everywhere, writing helps me to formulate my thoughts and as I compose , I reflect.