Remembering Ruth

In my bedroom trunk lies a photograph, sandwiched between my grandmother's memorabilia, a broken cardboard Shamrock and a Garden Club program. In this yellowing black-and-white picture my Aunt Ruth is walking--almost running--gaily down a red brick street in Nacogdoches, holding hands with her girlfriend, who pales by comparison.

She sports--not wears--a wool plaid jumper over a white cotton blouse and Cardigan sweater with Bobby socks neatly folded over Saddle Oxfords. Her carefully combed hair is parted just so, then it waves over her perfect forehead, pinned with a spunky barrette. She must be in her early 'twenties, for the picture seems to have been taken in the late 1930's. In this abandoned snapshot one aspect is stunning: Ruth is absolutely beautiful. Young, strong, bright, poised and absolutely beautiful. She was my grandmother's little sister.

The picture says it all: she was vibrant, intelligent, graceful. She was Lucille Ball's age, elegant, fun and a living doll. Ruth was young when everyone "wore a hat, " as John Cheever wrote of that golden age. She had a level of class one simply cannott attain--she was born with it. Gentility was bred in her bones; born into that era and category of elegance, style, grace, lightheartedness and above all beauty. Effortlessly, she carried beauty into every situation, into every single activity. Ruth had an innate sense of aesthetics which my generation missed, somehow. Oh, we were pretty, as young women, but it was never first and foremost for us, with all our fish to fry.

Ruth's generation of women, and she in particular, radiated beauty in all things and in all ways. She was born lovely, grew up even lovelier and as she grew older she did and said lovely things, and everything she touched turned into something pretty. When Ruth casually tied on a cotton apron, it became a ruffled ball gown. She never tried to be something she was not, and this core of authenticity made her even more beautiful, for when she spoke we believed her; being around her made us into better people. Ruth loved her family; adored her sisters and brothers; loved her neighbors and friends and life itself. Her laugh, that blue-eyed knowing grin, could light up a whole room.

So, we all grow old. It's the way of the world. Ruth grew old gracefully and kept on growing older gracefully and carried grace with her, a sense of the positive, lovely side of this world, right up to the end. She said she would live to 100, but even someone as strong as darling Ruth could not make that wish come true. But with all her illnesses and trials, to know that she was determined to make it to live out a century entirely, touches and spurs us on to do our best, to live up to higher and higher ideals, even through darkness, fear and the deepest tragedies of life.

The one person who helped Ruth to believe in the positive was her beloved husband Dick. She was certainly lucky in love, for he could make anyone feel as if both sides of the street were the sunny side. He loved her in the way of fairy tales, and she loved this man with her whole heart, through thick and thin, right to the end. He was her Knight in Shining Armor, she was his fair maiden, as unrealistic as that seems. Dick made Ruth live up to what she was to become: a beautiful strong and loving woman who knew that one way or another, everything would be all right. We will miss you, Ruth, and will hold you as an example for all our days.

In Praise of Richard Russo

Read any good books lately? It's been ages since a novel really grabbed me, with few exceptions. Nice when one does, although admittedly, few have come close in recent years.

Fashionable or self-conscious method ruins a good story for me, even if it does work out as a decent plot. For several years, in order to sell a story, some authors have taken to impairing the narrators to the point we can hardly understand said person. We must decipher these texts through the eyes of someone with brain damage, Asperger's syndrome, or full-on Autism, such as the charming THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME, although some go too far, and we must endure disentangling plots of children raised by wolves, only to find out their parents were academicians whose schedules were so booked, they forgot the kids in a Peruvian airport, and crap like that.

Then there are the latest title constructions. For a while now, authors have scrambled for zesty combinations of relatives to bind together on a book binding. First we had THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE, by Amy Tan, which seemed perfectly acceptable at the time. . . good story, well told, fair enough. But it was apparently far from enough. Streams of similar titles have subsequently lined the shelves. A mere sprinkling of them:

THE TIME-TRAVELER'S WIFE

THE MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER

THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER

THE SENATOR'S SON

THE TIME KEEPER'S DAUGHTER

THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER

THE WIDOW'S HUSBAND

THE PIG KEEPER'S DAUGHTER

Surely we've seen the other titles whose writers jumped onto this paddy wagon. Eventually they'll run out of kinfolk. Picture THE QUEEN MOTHER'S AUNTIE. . . or THE ARCHBISHOP'S SWEET GODSON . . . or THE FRUIT JUGGLER'S SECOND COUSIN, ONCE-REMOVED.Thank goodness the family tree scheme should inherently be short lived.

Jonathan Franzen's THE CORRECTIONS rose above short lists of others--its dysfunctional family characters making reluctant exits at the story's end, however shady remains the plot. Certainly I recall some of the wacky tight spots they got into. I had few qualms about the style, at least.

Kathryn Stockett's THE HELP was a triumph--it knocked me flat, its theme one of such recent urgency, according to the headlines, it's appalling. A southern writer secretly, dangerously and daringly gathers black housemaids to tell their stories of working for upper-income whites in 1950s Mississippi. The effect of its overriding fear and loathing overwhelmed me, as did its dead-on honesty.

AMERICAN WIFE, Curtis Sittenfeld's fictionalized story of Laura Bush, also renders a complex--even baffling--story very well indeed, possibly approaching the standing of Great American Novel. At the end, we know as little as we did at the beginning about why people make their decisions, and this uncertainty fulfills the plot's needs as much as do her letter-perfect character renderings. Add to these ON BEAUTY by Zadie Smith, THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt and THE KITE RUNNER by Khaled Hosseini, and my mind's skipped for sure--there must be dozens more truly great novels around.

Still one longs for something meaty in which to sink the bicuspids. Recently in a fit of literary boredom, I looked up Richard Russo's list, and discovered STRAIGHT MAN, which had bypassed me somehow.

Russo's biggest hit was NOBODY'S FOOL, a searingly poignant American story of a down-and-out drunk who attempts another bat at life; the novel was made into a movie starring the late Paul Newman. Another great one was the saga of a failing economic community, EMPIRE FALLS, one of my favorite novels in the last three decades.

I finished STRAIGHT MAN today, and found out at last what happened to comically pathetic Devereaux, the English professor who had dug so many permanent holes for himself no one could ever climb out. Did it make me want to be a better person? Well, sure. But it also opened a curtain into a whole structure of relationships--a small town university setting, its diffident royalty and its paranoid peons, their loyalties, hypocrisies and deadly grudges--making me cry at the sheer tragedy of life, while laughing at it too, most especially at my often deluded self. Would I say it's a Great American Novel? I'd have to re-read and analyze it. I'm not sure. It came close, though.

Richard Russo: wherever you are, though undoubtedly you will not read this, thank you for a good long read on the caliber of Updike.

www.librarything.com/author/russorichard

In Praise of Richard Russo

Read any good books lately? It's been ages since a novel really grabbed me, with few exceptions. Nice when one does, although admittedly, few have come close in recent years.

Fashionable or self-conscious method ruins a good story for me, even if it does work out as a decent plot. For several years, in order to sell a story, some authors have taken to impairing the narrators to the point we can hardly understand said person. We must decipher these texts through the eyes of someone with brain damage, Asperger's syndrome, or full-on Autism, such as the charming THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME, although some go too far, and we must endure disentangling plots of children raised by wolves, only to find out their parents were academicians whose schedules were so booked, they forgot the kids in a Peruvian airport, and crap like that.

Then there are the latest title constructions. For a while now, authors have scrambled for zesty combinations of relatives to bind together on a book binding. First we had THE KITCHEN GOD'S WIFE, by Amy Tan, which seemed perfectly acceptable at the time. . . good story, well told, fair enough. But it was apparently far from enough. Streams of similar titles have subsequently lined the shelves. A mere sprinkling of them:

THE TIME-TRAVELER'S WIFE

THE MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER

THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER

THE SENATOR'S SON

THE TIME KEEPER'S DAUGHTER

THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER

THE WIDOW'S HUSBAND

THE PIG KEEPER'S DAUGHTER

Surely we've seen the other titles whose writers jumped onto this paddy wagon. Eventually they'll run out of kinfolk. Picture THE QUEEN MOTHER'S AUNTIE. . . or THE ARCHBISHOP'S SWEET GODSON . . . or THE FRUIT JUGGLER'S SECOND COUSIN, ONCE-REMOVED.Thank goodness the family tree scheme should inherently be short lived.

Jonathan Franzen's THE CORRECTIONS this epic tome rose above short lists of others--its dysfunctional family characters made reluctant exits at the story's end, however shady remains the plot. Certainly I recall some of the wacky tight spots they got into. I had few qualms about the style, at least.

Kathryn Stockett's THE HELP was a triumph--it knocked me flat, its theme one of such recent urgency, according to the headlines, it's appalling. A southern writer secretly, dangerously and daringly gathers black housemaids to tell their stories of working for upper-income whites in 1950s Mississippi. The effect of its overriding fear and loathing overwhelmed me, as did its dead-on honesty.

AMERICAN WIFE, Curtis Sittenfeld's fictionalized story of Laura Bush, also renders a complex--even baffling--story very well indeed, possibly approaching the standing of Great American Novel. At the end, we know as little as we did at the beginning about why people make their decisions, and this uncertainty fulfills the plot's needs as much as do her letter-perfect character renderings.

Still one longs for something meaty in which to sink the bicuspids. Recently in a fit of literary boredom, I looked up Richard Russo's list, and discovered STRAIGHT MAN, which had bypassed me somehow.

Russo's biggest hit was NOBODY'S FOOL, a searingly poignant American story of a down-and-out drunk who attempts another bat at life; the novel was made into a movie starring the late Paul Newman. Another great one was the saga of a failing economic community, EMPIRE FALLS, one of my favorite novels in the last three decades.

I finished STRAIGHT MAN today, and found out at last what happened to comically pathetic Devereaux, the English professor who had dug so many permanent holes for himself no one could ever climb out. Did it make me want to be a better person? Well, sure. But it also opened a curtain into a whole structure of relationships--a small town university setting, its diffident royalty and its paranoid peons, their loyalties, hypocrisies and deadly grudges--making me cry at the sheer tragedy of life, while laughing at it too, most especially at my often deluded self. Would I say it's a Great American Novel? I'd have to re-read and analyze it. I'm not sure. It came close, though.

Richard Russo: wherever you are, though undoubtedly you will not read this, thank you for a good long read on the caliber of Updike.

www.librarything.com/author/russorichard