Checking Back In

Guilty: I haven’t been blogging.

But I have been reading. I just didn’t seem to have the energy to get my thoughts together. But here are some of the books that I have read during this period and can recommend:

Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell. This is a memoir about the friendship between two older women that ended all too abruptly with the death of one from cancer. That is not a spoiler. These two women have more than the usual bonds: Same profession, new puppies, recovered from addiction, complicated relationships with their fathers, and a love of an athletic pursuit. Most of us are not so lucky. But women readers especially will appreciate (and envy) their discovery of each other – without any of the sexual intimacy that seems to be presumed among two single women friends.

Searching for Tamsen Donner by Gabrielle Burton. Another memoir. For a book that I really liked, it took me over a month to read and I’m not sure why. Burton is married and has five daughters (just like Tamsen Donner). One summer Burton takes her family on a road trip to recreate the journey of the Donner party. This memoir is part journal of that trip, part history of the Donner party and part record of Burton’s struggles to balance her ambition as a writer and her sense of responsibility as a mother. The history of the Donner party is fascinating. I had always thought that the stories of cannibalism were just conjecture – not so. Tamsen Donner managed to write a few letters during the journey which have been preserved; but her journal was never found. Burton tries to reimagine the thoughts and feelings of Tamsen Donner.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Fiction. If someone had told me that I could ever take an interest in professional race car driving, I would never have believed it. But for most readers, I think, that part of this book is just tangential. It’s more about the dog. The entire book is told from the dog’s point of view – which raises some interesting questions, such as: What does a dog see when the dog is in front of a television? There is a lot about race car driving and some good philosophy. “The car goes where the eyes go” works for both.

Related articles

• Dr. Irene S. Levine: A Conversation with Gail Caldwell: On the loss of a close friend (huffingtonpost.com)

Best Friend

Jack London’s Call of the Wild (COTW) is the perfect counterpart to David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle if only because its 86 pages are a welcome reprieve from the 562 pages of Wroblewski’s book. Although the latter had only 3 chapters from the point of view of the dog Almondine, COTW is all Buck. Buck is a cross between a St Bernard (his father) and shepherd (his mother). Though the first 4 years of his life were spent in the comfort of the Santa Clara Valley in California, Buck finds himself as part of a dogsled team in the Yukon in the gold rush days of the 1890s. The story takes us through a succession of 5 owners. They run the gamut from bad to good. As Buck learns to adapt to his new surroundings, we see him exercise the imagination so sought by the Sawtelle breeders.

As Charlotte described in her review of London’s story “To Build a Fire”, his language is so vivid that you feel that you are right there. You feel the frenzy of the miners and the personalities of the dogs. To write with such feeling about Buck and his fellow dogs, London must have had some very special canines in his own life. Maybe it was the dogs he encountered during the year that he spent prospecting for gold in the Klondike during the gold rush. When an author is writing from personal experience there seems to be a special quality, an immediacy to the writing that no amount of research can duplicate.

As an aside, I listened to COTW on a free recording that I downloaded from http://www.librivox.org/ but I also have a printed copy. I went to the hard copy to check something only to discover that the recorded version had omitted the last two pages – pages which bring a significant closure to the story. Another example I guess of “you get what you pay for.” Like many of London’s other works, COTW was first published in sequential issues of The Saturday Evening Post which left the text open to editors’ space and formatting constraints which were not present in the subsequent book publication. Nevertheless I am sorry for the recording lapse.

We in the San Francisco Bay Area are fortunate to be close to Jack London State Historic Park where London is buried and a museum chronicles his life and adventures. I’m tempted to pay a return visit.

Walking with Jack

I never read Jack London when I was growing up. My impression was that books by authors like London, James Fenimore Cooper and Booth Tarkington were 'boy books'. Plus, I was not interested in books about animals (sorry all you Black Stallion fans). So it wasn't until my short story class read “To Build a Fire” that I was first exposed to London's writing. I decided to load the story onto my Ipod and listen as I walked, so I have some advice for you if you plan do the same.

First, know where you're going. I was walking on a familiar path so there was no chance I would get lost, but there's about 30 minutes of my walk that I simply can't recall. In my mind I was walking through Yukon wilderness with a man and a dog. Second, dress warmly. In the story the temperature is 75 below, so even though it was in the mid-50's in San Francisco I was certain that my fingers were getting frost-bitten. Third, slow down. If I had been reading this story I would no doubt have been racing ahead, skipping words or even paragraphs, to find out what happened. But since I was listening instead of reading, I kept walking faster, trying to hurry the man and dog along to the end of the tale. But the real pleasure comes from savoring London's stark prose, from allowing this thrilling story of man versus nature to unfold at its own elegant pace.

This story in its entirety is available at several online sites, including The World of Jack London. Or you could download it from iTunes and go for a walk.

Listening to Dogs

Every once in awhile you read a book that you love, one that is very difficult to put down. “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski is a book that I absolutely loved and will recommend it to everyone. This is David Wroblewski's first novel. It is the story of the Sawtelle family who has raised a fictitious breed of dogs on their Wisconsin property for three generations. Gar and Trudy are the young couple who have inherited the business from Gar’s father. After having a stillborn baby and a few miscarriages Trudy joyfully gives birth to Edgar, a beautiful, healthy baby boy. But Edgar has no voice. When Gar and Trudy realize that there is nothing that can be done for Edgar, they decide to learn sign language to give him a voice. What they find is that not only can Edgar communicate with them, but he has a special gift of communicating with the dogs they raise, especially Almondine. Trudy and Gar have more or less assigned Almondine to be Edgar’s watchful companion. The incredible bond that develops between Edgar and Almondine is beautifully portrayed by Mr. Wroblewski.

The life they have made, raising, caring for and training these special dogs is one that is very happy and satisfying for the Sawtelles. But the return of Gar’s younger brother, Claude, changes that. Gar tries to help Claude, letting him live with them and giving him work to do. Then Gar and Claude argue and Claude leaves. Not long after Claude leaves, Gar mysteriously collapes on the barn floor and Edgar cannot call for help. Grief consumes Edgar when Claude moves into the house and woos his mother. Edgar believes that Claude had something to do with Gar’s death. When he tries to prove it to his mother, something horrible happens and Edgar has to run away. He takes the three pups he has been training and enters the Chequamegon forest. With no food or shelter, Edgar and the three dogs find abandon cabins that dot the many lakes in the forest and fight for survival. It is a wonderful adventure that proves to be the turning point in Edgar’s coming of age. He makes the difficult decision to return home and to face what waits for him there.

The story is an epic, long and beautifully written. The author’s descriptions of the northern woods of Wisconsin are mesmerizing. Mr. Wroblewski has also borrowed much of the plot line from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. But, he has used his own imagination and beautiful prose to propel this wonderful story. The chapter where Almondine describes her quest to find Edgar when he ran away was heart wrenching, “She stood broadside in the gravel and turned her head and asked her question. Asked if it had seen her boy. Her essence. Her soul.”

The ending scenes are riveting. Every page is a joy to read and you will close this book with regret that it is finished.