Review: Sloane Crosley's 'I Was Told There'd Be Cake'

I Was Told There'd Be Cake
by Sloane Crosley
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: April
Pages: 230
List Price: $14

Synopsis: Sloane Crosley, evidently in her late 20s or early 30s, turns her life's fumbles and misadventures into wry, humorous essays. Crosley's self-mockery lends a ring of truth. You can't make this stuff up.

Why it's a good beach book: It's funny and easy to follow. It puts everyday life at arm's length - exactly what you want at the beach. It views life, love, and jobs through humor-tinted glasses. Plus, it's paperback: easy to tote.

Details, details, details: In the essay "Fuck you, Columbus," Crosley tells the story of moving from a two-bedroom apartment in New York City to a studio apartment three blocks away. She locks her keys in her old apartment, and pays $280 for a locksmith. Later the same day, she locks her keys in her new apartment, and gets a whopping $20 reduction on the second bill. She amicably parts ways with her roommate. She "had the bonus of living with someone with a healthy penchant for childish pranks. Into our newly adult lives there crept the occasional short-sheeting of my bed or setting of my alarm clock for an obscure time. And then hiding it. Who would keep me on my toes now? You can't exactly scare yourself out of the hiccups or glue your own toothbrush to the ceiling." At times, Crosley is easier to understand if you've lived in a big city; at other times, she will be easier to get if you're female. But overall, these essays are down-to-earth and for everyone. I can't speak for Dave Sedaris' most recent book, but Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake belongs on your shelf next to Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.


-Colin Foote Burch, member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Society of Professional Journalists
This article originally appeared in this summer book roundup in the Weekly Surge of Myrtle Beach, S.C.

C.S. Lewis' friend, poet Ruth Pitter, finally gets a critical biography

British poet Ruth Pitter was the first woman to win the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

But you've probably never heard of her.

You've probably heard about the wannabe poet who sent her poems for her to critique -- that wannabe poet was C.S. Lewis.

Here's an interview with Don W. King, author of Hunting the Unicorn: A Critical Biography of Ruth Pitter (Kent State University Press), the first critical biography of Ruth Pitter, scheduled for release next month.

Poem first published in LiturgicalCredo.com will be anthologized

Rhett Iseman Trull’s poem “Counting Miracles at the State Asylum” will be included in an upcoming anthology entitled “The Poetry of Recovery,” which will feature several other established poets.

The poem was first published about a year ago in LiturgicalCredo.com, a member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. LiturgicalCredo.com will be credited in the anthology.

Read ”Counting Miracles at the State Asylum” at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/PoetryPage031507.html .

On briefly meeting Tobias Wolff

Francis Marion University is holding the Pee Dee Fiction & Poetry Festival this weekend. FMU is about an hour and fifteen minutes' drive from here so I drove up to see Tobias Wolff, who was doing a reading, discussion and book signing on Thursday evening.

After reading from This Boy's Life (the section in which the stepdad sprays the Christmas tree white and also finds mold all over the beaver skin and chestnuts), he answered questions and discussed his work, etc.

Here's some of what Wolff said, from my notes, which of course are a mix of direct quotes and summations:

+ Wolff read Tolstoy in his 20s and became interested in how the Russian infused his life into his writing. Tolstoy kept a journal due to his "need to be absolutley clear to himself about himself."

+ Wolff began writing an autobiographical record of his own life to mine it for fiction, and eventually the autobiographical record took on "a life of its own." This Boy's Life was his turn from fiction to autobiographical writing.

+ Someone asked how people in This Boy's Life reacted to what he wrote. "I've never been challenged on factuality.. ..my stepsister thought I had been unkind to her husband." The stepdad also thought Wolff had been unkind about him, but Wolff thought he had "dialed it back a bit."

+ Some people decide not to write memoir due to emotional attachments, but if he did that, he wouldn't have anything to write about, so he won't avoid it, but he went on to say something about himself in others' shoes when he is writing these things.

+ Regarding writing about himself in memoir, he said he is "very much part of this fallen creation" and tries to include himself in that context.

+ "Memoir to me is the subjective, individual" recollection of the past, and "you have to make allowances for that when you read a memoir."

+ The topic of how his mother is portrayed -- Wolff said his mother told him, "If you had prettied up the picture [that would mean] you wouldn't have accepted me as I am."

+ Someone asked which of his short stories he would like to be remembered for when he died. Wolff said, "All of them." Everyone laughed. "I can't do that." He said it would be like picking one of his three kids.

+ Someone asked what is it that Wolff still really had to write about. "Friendship. ..I've never quite figured out how to get that down." He's had some lifelong friends who are very valuable to him. He said Joyce showed The Dubliners to some of folks in Dublin and someone told Joyce something like, "But you didn't get the hospitality! Dubliners are very hospitable people." So Joyce went back into the manuscript and added a scene of a Christmas party. Wolff was making a parallel between Joyce omitting hospitality and his own omissions of friendship. He wants to "find a way to get friendship and those bonds in my writing."

I was standing in the doorway at the back the whole time, so I was one of the first in the lobby. Wolff walked out and they set up the book-signing table just behind me. I was second in line. I wanted to ask him what he thought about reconstructing quotes from the past. But I heard him tell one of the organizers to have all the books open to the title page because that would help the signing go a lot quicker. I thought, oh great, he just wants to scribble through the book signing as fast as he can. So I opened my copy of This Boy's Life to the title page and set it in front of him. But after introducing myself I asked something like, "What's your rule of thumb for recreating dialogue that happened so long ago?"

A little of my own reconstructing a few seconds after his answer: He said, "Well, I kind of hear it in my mind. Grown ups [adults?] tend to repeat themselves a lot, so they had a kind of shtick. So it wasn't hard."

The cool thing was that he was warm, looked me in the eye, and wasn't hurried. Brief, but considerate, and not hurried, despite the long line behind me.

Books I'm reviewing for real publications

I'm reviewing The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How to do Them), by NPR's Peter Sagal, for DoubleThink, the quarterly magazine published by America's Future Foundation in D.C. The review should appear in the Winter 2008 edition. You can visit the magazine's Web page at http://www.affdoublethink.com/. AFF also has an online-only publication called Brainwash, which you can find at http://www.affbrainwash.com/.

I'm also reviewing a slightly denser book: Brain, Mind, and Human Behavior in Contemporary Cognitive Science: Critical Assessments of the Philosophy of Psychology, by Jeff Coulter and Wes Sharrock. This review will appear in the March 2008 edition of Appraisal: The Journal of the Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies. You can visit the SPCPS Web site at http://www.spcps.org.uk/.

Meanwhile, at LiturgicalCredo.com, I will soon post a book review of Praying with Beads: Daily Prayers for the Christian Year by Nan Lewis Doerr and Virginia Stem Owens.

Creativity: Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007

It has only been within the last two weeks that I finished reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. When I heard about her death on Thursday, I choked up and whispered a “thank you” to her. Walking on Water is one of the most life-affirming, creativity-affirming, and art-affirming books I have read.

Only my two-year-old was with me, sitting at the kitchen table on which I had my computer, which I used to view the news stories and the Wikipedia entry about L’Engle. Although I never met L’Engle, I think I said something like, “One of daddy’s friends died,” and my face briefly contorted toward a cry, but little Sadie laughed, thinking I was clowning. Childlike laughter might be the best way to remember L’Engle.

She proved that childlikeness can be intelligent and broad-minded. Like comedians, children’s writers are often overlooked in the intellectual realm, yet they have both serious and playful minds. Here are some of the passages I underlined in Walking on Water.

Our work should be our play. If we watch a child at play for a few minutes, “seriously” at play, we see that all his energies are concentrated on it. He is working very hard at it. And that is how the artist works, although the artist may be conscious of discipline while the child simply experiences it.

Also:

When I am working, I move into an area of faith which is beyond the conscious control of my intellect. I do not mean that I discard my intellect, that I am an anti-intellectual, gung-ho for intuition and intuition only. Like it or not, I am an intellectual. The challenge is to let my intellect work for the creative act, not against it. And this means, first of all, that I must have more faith in the work than I have in myself.

And:

…I try to take time to let go, to listen, in much the same way that I listen when I am writing. This is praying time, and the act of listening in prayer is the same act as listening in writing.

And this fragment, which could be a life goal:

…accepting the discipline of listening, or training the ability to recognize something when it is offered.

I did not recognize what was offered soon enough. I began Walking on Water years ago and put it down, distracted by the parts of life that do not involve being quiet and listening.

Now that I have recently finished it, I want to read her children’s books, none of which, I am ashamed to say, I have read. I eventually recognized Walking on Water after it had been offered for a long time, and now that I have read it, I am eternally grateful to L’Engle. May light perpetual shine upon you.

The Year of the Books About Stoics, or the Continuing Stoic Revival

A new book on ancient Stoicism is due in September.

At least three books about ancient Stoicism have been re-released in paperback this year.

Several more books about Stoicism or the thought of individual Stoics have been released in the past few years.

Why are people into the Stoics these days? I'm trying to answer that question for an upcoming article in LiturgicalCredo.com, but for the moment, I'll give a broad-brush backgrounder and then get back to this year's books.

Founded in ancient Greece by Zeno of Citium in Cypress (344-262 B.C.), this philosophical school lived about 600 years through Roman Imperial times. The writings of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor who lived 121-180 A.D., are considered key texts for Stoicism as we know it today.

Due in September is Stoicism and Emotion (University of Chicago Press, 2007) by Margaret R. Graver.

The book "shows that they did not simply advocate an across-the-board suppression of feeling, as stoicism implies in today’s English, but instead conducted a searching examination of these powerful psychological responses, seeking to understand what attitude toward them expresses the deepest respect for human potential," according to the description at Amazon.com.

The three books re-released in paperback this year, suggesting an ongoing interest in the subject matter, are:

Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind (Oxford University Press, 2005, 2007), by Nancy Sherman

The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, & Fate (Oxford University Press, 2005, 2007), by Tad Brennan

The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995; HarperOne, 2007), which was co-authored by Epictetus, an ancient Stoic, and Sharon Lebell, a writer and musician who lives, in our time, in Northern California.

Note that two of the three paperback re-releases were published just two years ago.

Graver's books and those paperbacks are priced within a range one might expect to pay for a book.

However, if you really wanted to dig deep into this subject matter, you could buy one of these expensive academic books, released this year:

The Corinthian Dissenters and the Stoics (Studies in Biblical Literature) (Peter Lang Publishing, 2007) by Albert V. Garcilazo for $71.95 at Amazon.com, or

Spinoza and the Stoics: Power, Politics and the Passions (Continuum Studies in Philosophy) (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007) by Firmin Debrabander for $120 at Amazon.com.

The priceless online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on Stoicism here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/ .

-Colin Burch

Self-renewal in science and free societies

"The life of the scientific community consists in enforcing the tradition of science and assuring at the same time its continuous renewal. A dynamic free society lives as a whole in this way. It cultivates a system of traditional ideas which have the power of unlimited self-renewal."
--Michael Polanyi, from the preface to the Torchbook edition of Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

This might explain the success of Christianity, which could be described as "a system of traditional ideas which have the power of unlimited self-renewal."

The Stoics rise again in recent books

Look at this partial list of books released so far this year regarding the Stoics. Consider their the "self-help" orientation to these particular titles:

Stoic Ethics: Epictetus and Happiness as Freedom by William O. Stephens
Stoic Serenity: A Practical Course on Finding Inner Peace by Keith Seddon
The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate by Tad Brennan

In recent years, even more self-help books have appealed to the Stoics, including this outstanding title from 2004: Don't Worry, Be Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Troubled Times by Peter J. Vernezze.

I've been very curious about the Stoics recently, reading up on them when I ought to be reading and doing other things. (I haven't read any of the above books; I'll list my bibliography below.) My interest has a simple need at its root: I need more soundness of thought, more stability of mind, more perspective to help me accomplish the things I need to do, more guidance to navigate my way in the world.

Apparently, some of the Stoics intended to answer those types of needs. In the later part of Stoicism's influence in the ancient world, Stoic writers were "presenting Stoicism as an attitude or way of life," says the Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. "They tend to edifying and moralizing discussion and give little indication of the philosophical structure of their positions."

My presumptuous belief that I will find benefits in the Stoics creates a split personality in me as I consider it over against my Christian faith.

First, I realize that the core of my faith is the starting point from which I evaluate the assets and liabilities of other schools of thought.

Second, I don't feel like I've been given enough of what I need from the Christian perspective.

Sometimes that feeling came from a reading experience in which a Stoic expressed an insight in a clearer and more impactful way than I had read it before, while the content of the expression might be found directly or indirectly in the Scriptures. For example, this quote from Seneca's Epistles certainly echoes passages from the Bible:

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.

I hoped to find more of such gems, to allow myself to read deeply in the Stoics, and yet I did not want to jump in without some context. So I dove into some books that addressed Christian history and the New Testament and read the sections on Stoicism. I'm not offering anything new here in the strictly academic sense, just synthesizing some of my reading.

No doubt, many scholars identify a Stoic influence in parts of the New Testament. Saint Paul was writing within the Hellenistic culture in which Stoicism had been influential.

F.F. Bruce wrote, "Too facile a distinction between Palestinian and Hellenistic phases in primitive Christianity is unwarranted....The Hellenistic elements in the New Testament should not be written down as accretions or intrusions; they are of the essence of Christian life from the beginning."

So there was my persmission to be interested in the Stoics and glean from them. However, as I began in a very cursory fashion, something stood out to me. The thing about the Stoics and their influence was that they completely left out love in the grand, universal, Christian sense of the term. Paul Tillich opposed the Christian view, cosmic redemption, to the Stoic view, cosmic resignation.

For the Stoics, it seems to me, knowledge of the divine and the role of reason were simply for the cultivation of individualistic virtue, which isn't a bad thing, but their methodology did not emphasize the cultivation of emotionally intimate relationships, or the role of love beyond a rather emotionless duty, a kind of redemptive love that trascends all limitations of social and cultural roles.

Then again, as a matter of cultural history, whether theologically astutue or not, Western Christians have been drawn to the Stoics throughout history. Richard Brookhiser, describing influences on George Washington, makes this remark: "...Seneca's earnest moralizing has always made him popular with Christians." The redemption and love of the Gospel are more important than moralizing, considering that Saint Paul said God's kindness leads to our repentence, yet an understanding of sin and an exhortation to self-control are part of the New Testament's message, too.

The Stoics were brilliant in advocating and demonstrating the possibility of self-control, a virtue that seems to be considered a mere fantasy in our time, even assumed to be an unlikely exercise in a culture of convenient self-indulgence. Maybe that's why some authors and publishers can offer Stoicism in our time.

#

Books I looked at for these cursory thoughts:

The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Metzger and Coogan

Christianity and Western Thought, Vol. I, by Colin Brown

New Testament History, by F.F. Bruce

The Fourth Book of Maccabees

The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1, by Jaroslav Pelikan

101 Key Terms in Philosophy and Their Important for Theology, by Kelly James Clark, Richard Lints, and James K.A. Smith

Familiar Quotations, by John Barlett

Invitation to the New Testament, by W.D. Davies

The Courage to Be, by Paul Tillich

The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, edited by Hornblower and Spawnforth

Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, by Richard Brookhiser



-Colin Burch

Peter Augustine Lawler talks about his new book

I interviewed Peter Augustine Lawler, a professor and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, about his new book in the June-July edition of LiturgicalCredo.com, at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com .

Lawler's new book, Homeless and at Home in America, will be released later this summer.

In the interview, he makes some interesting comments about manliness. Kind of an anachronistic word, huh?

-Colin Burch