‘Pin Picks: This One Goes to Eleven
Our beloved Selene is at a transitional place right now:
“I’ve got one year of college left, and I don’t know if this is actually a life-stage dilemma or if it just happens to coincide with one, but I’m beginning to feel like I should be reading Grown-up Books now, and not just re-reading my favorites from middle- and high school. I mean, I will continue to do that. I just have not had much luck with Grown-up Fiction (I’m sure I’m not looking in the right places), and while non-fiction is an exciting new frontier, I can’t do it all the time.”
Ah, the eternal question. Take heart, dear one, you are not even halfway there. HOWEVER, having skipped ahead to her current favorite books, I know exactly which book I’m recommending for Selene, and it’s filling me with SUCH a sense of accomplishment. But, whatever, let’s pretend it was a big chore and involved a lot of thought. Not true!
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells — Classic! Classic. Possibly the odd one out of the three, but furthers the idea that you like your books to be Olden. Which is funny, too, because Wells is so I AIN’T OLD, I AM STEAMPUNKKKKKK. But, really, H.G. Wells, you are mad old.
An American Childhood, Annie Dillard — Hey, hey, Selene, I’ve got your number. You like your classics a little off-kilter. If you’d said Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, you’d be a different person looking for a different book, you know? Partially because I think you’ve got a bildungsroman thing going on, which is great, and so, so appropriate as you start The Rest of Your Wonderful Life. So, olden, childhood, Becoming a Person, sensitive to the world around you. Hm. Hm. Hmmmmmmm.
Shadows on the Rock, Willa Cather — BIIITCH, I called it. You have picked a SUPER obscure Willa Cather (I mean, I’ve read it, but I have a whole Willa Cather thing, personally, dating from getting O Pioneers! from the Scholastic catalog as a wee babe. Don’t cheat on your husband, girls! He may shoot you and your lover and be sent to prison.), which is about (wuttttt?) OLDEN FRENCH CANADA, and also childhood and becoming a person and, err, French-Canadians, who are…hm…I’m sort of joking, but not really, because French-Canadians refused to support the Montreal Expos, my childhood baseball team, and now they’re gone, and I blame them. You are right to be offended by me. I am being a dick. I apologize. It’s personal.
OKAY, OKAY, HERE IT IS:
The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy.
See, I just spent a paragraph bitching out the good people of Montreal, only to turn around and recommend a beautiful, beautiful book by a French-Canadian. The French title (it’s better in French, she says disdainfully) is “Bonheur d’occasion,” which can mean either “second-hand happiness,” or, possibly, the idea of happiness that lasts for just a second and then goes. Which, man, that’s happiness, right?
It’s lovely. It’s also very sad. It’s kind of like a sadder, French-Canadian “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” but I think you’ll like it and will respond to it. It’s about poverty and class and love and beauty and loneliness and cruelty. And Becoming a Person. Please buy one of the many used copies and then write me and tell me what you think, okay?
Also, please enjoy my man, Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian novel:
“In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.”