Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

So good!

I've always loved the movie version of Rebecca (1940), and the book was just as good. Really unsettling - I lost a little bit of sleep over it, and I mean that as a compliment. Also, lots of girlie details about the famous Manderley. The whole thing is tense and romantic and weatherblown and a little trippy. And the ending is nervy as hell.

If you haven't seen the movie, read the book first. I would have loved to be surprised by all the reveals. And the movie (Alfred Hitchcock's first American film; David Selznick's second consecutive Best Picture Oscar after Gone With The Wind; Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine).

Do it now! It's the perfect weather outside!

Included here are two versions of the Rebecca book cover: the larger one is the cover I wish I had; the smaller is the one I was able to dig up in that used bookstore on Belmont. How embarrassing!

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

This book is unique. I've never read another like it: about the war in Vietnam or about any war. One surprise is the degree to which I found myself identifying with the soldiers re: despair in leadership, anger at absurdity and ineptitude, sadness and yearning in the face of...the world. I don't think I've ever been allowed, as a reader safe and sound in my bed, to draw parallels between my civilian life and those extraordinary experiences had by men and women at war.

Matterhorn somehow let me do that. I've read my fair share about war in general and Vietnam specifically, but this book made it real to me. The confusion, the futility, the pointlessness of that war have become American generalizations. This book, in making these elements specific, actually underscored them and made them real to me.

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros' writing is beautiful and stark. This was my favorite vignette from the book:

A House of My Own

Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.

Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

~Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

Edge of my seat.

What happens to the only girl to survive at the hands of a serial killer? Elizabeth (now known as Eliza) was 15 when she was kidnapped and held by Walter for almost 6 weeks. This is a psychological thriller that weaves back and forth between the present, when Walter has contacted Eliza from Death Row before his execution date, and 20 years prior when Elizabeth was first kidnapped. Lippman handles these transitions smoothly in a slow yet exciting pace, introducing each new character beautifully to the point where I couldn't stop reading. I've never read anything else of hers but I'll definitely be keeping her on my reading radar.

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three.

I'm sorry for posting so many poetry books, but not really, because as Mark Wahlberg says in I Heart Huckabees:

TOMMY CORN.

Excuse me, ma'am. Poems are amazing. They help you in your mind transform --

ANGELA FRANCO.

Who the hell are you?

TOMMY CORN.

I'm with Albert. They will help you to transform your mind into thinking differently. You guys need this, OK? This is great."

[ahem]

Aristotle

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces himself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.

Things have had time to get complicated,

messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.

Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teeming with people at cross-purposes -

a million schemes, a million wild looks.

Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack

here and pitches his ragged tent.

This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,

where the action suddenly reverses

or swerves off in an outrageous direction.

Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph

to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.

Someone hides a letter under a pillow.

Here the aria rises to a pitch,

a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.

And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge

halfway up the mountain.

This is the bridge, the painful modulation.

This is the thick of things.

So much is crowded into the middle -

the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,

Russian uniforms, noisy parties,

lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall -

too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,

the car running out of road,

the river losing its name in an ocean,

the long nose of the photographed horse

touching the white electronic line.

This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,

the empty wheelchair,

and pigeons floating down in the evening.

Here the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,

and the climbers are in their graves.

It is me hitting the period

and you closing the book.

It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen

and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.

This is the final bit

thinning away to nothing.

This is the end, according to Aristotle,

what we have all been waiting for,

what everything comes down to,

the destination we cannot help imagining,

a streak of light in the sky,

a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

Freedom

I loved it more than The Corrections. It was beautiful, easily the most timely book I've ever read, and eerily relevant to me personally.

One thing though: is there any endeavor or approach to life that Franzen finds worthwhile? I mean really. That was way harsh, Tai.

Freedom.

Loved!!! (Almost as much as The Corrections.)