The Rewards of Teaching...

I finished reading Ethan Canin's "The Palace Thief" a few days ago. I have been unable to post because my weekend was filled with grading and also with the purchase of my first-ever, top of the line lawn mower. It was an interesting adventure to actually buy one of these things, really. It took us nearly a month to decide on one. It took me an hour and a half to do the front yard alone.

At any rate, I finished a few days ago with "The Palace Thief." The three stories that follow "The Accountant" (of which I wrote before) are excellent and each one grows in excellence from one to the next. The crowning achievement of this collection is, of course, the title story. In "Batorsag and Szerelem" a family struggles to understand a son who seems gifted in mathematics. As a regular genius, he is indulged and praised. The narrator, the genius' little brother, struggles with himself and his eccentricity. He invents his own language, which essentially turns out to be Hungarian at the end of the story. There are some compelling passages here regarding the protagonist's identity and the narrator's effort to convey this. I am not going to write to spoil any of these fascinating stories, so you'll have to read them and find out. In "City of Broken Hearts," the narrator, a middle-aged gentleman whose wife had just left him, is receiving his son who is away at college. His son is only staying one day at home (Boston) and father and son decide to go to a Red Soxs game. The dialogue between father and son is an exquisite ballet of alluding and avoidance, a constant back and forth game of "one-upmanship." It all boils down to a father concerned with his son's future and a son who in turn able to shape his father's life in the time he spends with him. Excellent twist.

"The Palace Thief" is an excellent story about a teacher at a preparatory school. He teaches antiquity, the history of the great civilizations. He takes under his wing a problematic student who turns out to be the catalyst of the story. The narrator is gifted--Canin's use of language here is particularly interesting. Canin is able to reproduce a diction of high intellectual with great ease. The narrator, Mr. Hundert, prepares the annual history competition, "Mr. Julius Cesear." As a teacher he fails to promote the one student who actually was supposed to compete in order to fit in the rebellious one, Sedgewick Bell. The story is about failures, repercussions, and the power of a teacher to make difference (for good or bad). I loved it because it mirrored some of the things I deal with in the classroom almost daily.

I am now reading "Dog Soldiers" by Robert Stone. This books won the National Book Award, but I am still struggling to find out why. I have read "Bear and His Daughter" and also "A Flag for Sunrise" by Robert Stone, and it was on the strength of these that I ventured into "Dog Soldiers." The story takes place in the last days of the Vietnam War. The protagonist, one John Converse, is preparing a drug deal that is supposed to make him rich, but the story doesn't go according to his liking. I am still early on the story, so I can't comment much. More to follow.

The Palace Thief...

I am reading "The Palace Thief" by Ethan Canin, and after reading McEwan this is certainly a change in writing styles. Canin's short stories are as lyrical as they are intricately composed; a very hard balance to strike, even for an experienced writer. The volume covers three stories of which I am presently reading the first one, entitled "The Accountant." It is a simple story of a friendship in which both men find themselves comparing each other's success. Although they are not as close as they used to be, there seems to always been a string of consciousness tying them together. The climax builds as the two men agree to attend a baseball "fantasy camp." For those not familiar with this it is a week-long camp in which middle aged men join old baseball players (perhaps the stars of their youth) and play baseball, complete with real uniforms, etc. Almost every single baseball club has one of these. They are not cheap--presently I think they run around $6,000+ for a week. At any rate, the two men in the story, Eugene Peters and Abba Roth, attend the baseball camp in which Peters was supposed to ask Roth for a business partnership. That's as far as I have read, but I can at least say that I have enjoyed Canin's understatement style and climax building techniques. The title story of the book, "The Palace Thief" was made into a movie you might recognize by the title of "The Emperor's Club." He is certainly a writer I want to read more about. I am not quite sure what else besides "The Palace Thief" and "Emperor of the Air" he has written. He is also a practicing doctor, so he may not have published as much.

The semester is going well at school. The students came back from their Easter holiday quite determined to get this stretch of time done and welcome summer. The last day of school is June 7th, I believe. What else? I ran for a bit yesternight. It went well. I didn't push myself much because I still feel my knee is tender, but at least I got into the swing of it. In the meantime I am doing 200 sit-ups a day instead of running. I have two full-days of committee meetings tomorrow and Thursday. My classes will be directed by a substitute the next two days. I really don't enjoy committee work, but it has to be done. Well, I think that's it for now. I will continue reading "The Palace Thief" the rest of this week.

Other Titles...

Here are some other titles that may be included in my reading list for this year "Love and Longing in Bombay" by Vikram Chandra, and "The Palace Thief" by Ethan Canin.

A few days ago, I reviewed a story by Haruki Murakami entitled "Tony Takitani." Imagine my surprise when I found out it was made into a film in 2006.