Diane Evans columns

By Diane Evans
If you go to Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York, you learn pretty quickly that you need to show up early at the bookstore on the square if you want to be sure to get a New York Times before they’re sold out. It’s that kind of place during the summer season of programs. It’s where you might take a yoga class, go sailing, hear a lecture by someone famous from Harvard, and maybe go to church – all in the same day. And amid all this, the bookstore buzzes all day.
So, since Chautauquans view themselves as a literary bunch, you might be interested in what they’re reading. Here are a few of the titles that have been on the central display table this summer:

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert:
Some people hibernate when dealing with the emotional trauma of a difficult divorce. But not Gilbert, who self-prescribed a year of exotic travel and convinced a publishing house to pay for it with a book advance. The result is her adventure story, of self-discovery in Rome (the eating leg of the trip), of an ashram in India (the praying portion) and love (in Bali, where she reconnected with joy).

Marley & Me, by John Grogan:

This is Grogan’s love letter to his incorrigible Labrador retriever, Marley.
In telling of his own experience with the ill-mannered, psychologically challenged Marley, Grogan examines the mysterious bond between dogs and their owners. And through stories about his needy pet, Grogan also shares observations of life, marriage and fatherhood.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini:
In his first novel, The Kite Runner, and then in A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini writes about the Afghans caught in the middle of a seemingly endless string of wars and battles for power. Both novels paint a grim and moving picture of life in a war-torn country, and of lives lived in the face of hunger, death and a bleak future. Hosseini makes you realize that, even while bombs rain down and people are dying of hunger, people still fall in love, seek friends and, mostly, try to remain human.

The Dangerous Book For Boys, by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden:
The Dangerous Book for Boys is not just about growing up, nor is it geared only for boys. It’s about the lessons from boyhood that come in handy later on. It’s part Boy Scout manual, part history lesson, part old-fashioned schoolbook. Some of this stuff might leave you scratching your head over its selections, such as must-read books for boys, or the five knots that every boy should know. Some stuff, such as how to build a bow and arrows, will probably appall many of today’s superprotective “helicopter” parents. But then that’s the point of the book: It’s OK to put a little danger in your life.

Dissecting the feminine psychology

By Diane Evans
DelMio.com

The other day I won a bingo-like game during one of the summer courses at Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York. I was the first to call out four corners – which meant I got first pick of several books spread out on a table. For my prize, I chose a thin paperback titled She: Understanding Feminine Psychology, by the psychologist Robert A. Johnson.
After class, the instructor’s husband, a defense attorney from the Buffalo area, whispered that I had picked the best book there.
Interesting paradox, right off. First, a book written by a man about understanding women. (Are we not sufficiently unpredictable to remain a collective mystery?) And second, another man saying “right on.”
OK, enough of the jibjab. Johnson is a noted lecturer in the teachings of the late psychologist Carl Jung, and this Buffalo defense lawyer is married to an expert on Jung and he, along with his wife, studied at the Jung Institute in Switzerland. The book She examines the ancient myth of Amor and Psyche and what it says about the universal challenges that women face.
My revised edition, published in 1989 by HarperCollins, is only 80 pages, so it didn’t take long to read. For me, not every point was easy to understand. But it was well worth getting through the occasional difficult passages to discover the many precious nuggets of timeless wisdom.
Take this little tip as an example: “If you wish to give your children the best possible heritage, give them a clean unconscious, not your own unlived life.”
Or this: “For a young woman to cope with her mother-in-law’s power system is to attain feminine maturity.”
The myth of Amor and Psyche is one of those stories you can spend a lifetime studying and still not uncover all the nuances. In the broadest sense, the story deals with the suffering that Psyche must endure to come into her own, be the authentic person she was meant to be, and reach her full potential in life. The process requires Psyche to meet challenge after challenge, until finally she must travel to the underworld. Yet as painful as her journey is, there is reward in the end. She ultimately marries Eros (or Amor, depending on your version of the story) and the two give birth to a daughter named Pleasure.
And the mystery of women? Near the end of the book, when he describes Psyche emerging from Hades, Johnson addresses this point:
“The deepest interior mystery for a woman may not be named or given any label,” he writes. “It is the essence of that feminine quality which must remain a mystery, certainly to men, and hardly less so for women. It is not less than the element of healing itself.”
Also, you might be interested in a couple of companion titles by Johnson: He: Understanding Masculine Psychology, and We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love.

By Diane Evans
DelMio.com
OK, explain life to me.

That’s what the life’s work of the late psychiatrist Carl Jung attempts to do. Sure, a lot of people try to explain life. But Jung’s work stands out, and is the subject of so much modern study and commentary, because he appeals to what many of us know intuitively. In other words, he validates concepts many of us feel and believe through our inner wisdom.

Each year, I look forward to classes on Jungian thought during the summer season of programs at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York. Jung taught that myths and fairy tales mirror the basic patterns of the human psyche. The Chautauqua classes most often focus on these myths and fairy tales, through the masterful teaching of Kaye Lindauer, now in her 21st season at Chautauqua, and recently retired as a school librarian and lecturer at Syracuse University.

During one recent session, Lindauer told an Italian fable about The North Wind.
In the story, a poor farmer worries about how to feed his family after winds destroy his crops several years in a row. The farmer goes to see the North Wind, to plead for help. Depending on your beliefs, you can see the North Wind as a symbol for God, or a higher power, or even a positive force of energy.

Long story short: The North Wind helps the farmer, but the farmer keeps sabotaging his own interests and his family’s interests, by letting his landlord (who also happens to be a priest) take advantage of him.
Each time the farmer falls into despair, he goes back to The North Wind (a good move). The farmer ultimately prospers once he learns not just to take the gifts of the North Wind, but also – and this is critically important – to protect those gifts from people, such as the priest-landlord, who are greedy and try to push others around.

The moral of the story: Living a just life doesn’t mean you’re so goody-goody all the time that you let other people take advantage of you. Balance is required, and that means you need to be tough and aggressive at times for your own good and the good of those in your care.

The key is balance. If you’re too passive, expect to get snookered. But if you’re too aggressive, you’ll end up being a bully and you’ll pay consequences in the end.

Balance is central to Jungian thought, as it is to various religious beliefs. In Jewish mysticism, for example, the whole idea of the tree of life is about keeping life in balance. Each positive attribute must be kept in check against its negative counterpart. For instance: Too much generosity and you go broke. Yet on the other hand, too much stinginess and you end up poor in spirit.

Standing up for ourselves – with just the right dose of force – can be one of the most difficult balancing acts of all. In The North Wind story, the farmer takes his blows until he finally learns the hard way.
You probably don’t need to study Jung to know that’s the way life is.

By Diane Evans
DelMio.com
Ever heard of a fairy tale called The White Snake?
I hadn’t, until hearing a lecture on it recently during the 2008 summer programming at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York.
The classes on myths and fairy tales are among my favorites each year at Chautauqua. A lot has to do with the teacher, Kaye Lindauer, recently retired as a school librarian and lecturer at Syracuse University. Lindauer, who is in her 21st summer season at Chautauqua, teaches from the late psychiatrist Carl Jung’s perspective that fairy tales mirror the basic patterns of the human psyche.
Now to the story. The crux of it is this: A wise king has a servant bring him a covered dish every day after dinner, but no one, including the servant, knows what’s on the plate, because the king waits until the servant leaves before lifting the cover. Each day the king eats a piece of the white snake.
You can guess what happens next: The servant gets curious, and one day lifts the cover unbeknownst to the king. The servant, too, takes a bite of the white snake, and immediately gains the ability to understand the language of animals.
On the very same day, the queen loses her ring. The servant becomes a suspect and faces execution unless he can find the ring. Turns out a duck had swallowed the ring, and because the servant understands the language of animals, he overhears the ducks talking, learns what had happened and retrieves the ring – saving himself but not the duck.
The servant then asks the king for a horse and a little money to travel. The king agrees and the servant sets out. End of story.
For Kaye Lindauer, the symbolic meanings of even this short story took up two days of 75-minute lectures.
A couple points, to give you an idea:
• Fairy tales show how a new cycle of growth evolves in a person. Change is the goal, which is huge, because it means that a new dominant voice within you must replace the voice that has you locked in your comfort zone and trying to please others, even to your own detriment. If you opt for change, expect conflict in your life, because the price of growth is that you must fight resistance. In this story, the snake represents renewal, because a snake sheds its skin. As Lindauer pointed out: Jung believed that we are constantly pushed toward growth, and if we try to repress such growth, it comes out in the form of sickness or maybe an accident. Status quo is not an option. We either grow or we digress.
• Once the servant tasted the snake, he gained new insight, and once that happened, he couldn’t go back to being the person he was before. Lindauer: In real life, the process can take years. Once you know what you know today, you can’t go back to where you were before. Your own knowing keeps you from going back to the place of not knowing. It’s the Garden of Eden metaphor: Once Adam and Eve tasted the fruit, they couldn’t go back to their prior innocence. And the white snake? Given that we, too, are constantly shedding old skin, the challenge becomes that of saying yes to a life that over and over will never be the same.

By Diane Evans
A novel idea for a book? It’s not easy, especially with nearly 300,000 new titles and editions published each year, and sales flat – at best. But here’s a new twist on the old subject of failed romance: It’s a book coming out in April 2009, titled Relationship Obituaries, based on the Web site of WNYC reporter Kathleen Horan.
For a flavor of what to expect, you can go to the site at www.relationshipobit.com.
It’s mainly women writing death notices about their failed relationships. While the book is billed as humorous, the few entries I read on the site were more in the category of scorned and forlorn.
In an interview on National Public Radio, Horan described the site as a “sort of wake for love.’’ And just like when it’s over in life, the dead rest in silence if not in peace.
•••
Speaking at Stanford University’s commencement recently, Oprah Winfrey urged the nearly 4,700 graduates to trust their gut instincts. “Every wrong decision was the result of me not listening to my voice,” she said. “If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.”
Winfrey gave each graduate copies of two of her favorite books: Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth and Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind.

•••

Who really decides what we read?
A recent survey found that adult readers were most influenced by recommendations from family and friends.
But look what happened to the 566-page debut novel by Wisconsin native David Wroblewski. Since its release on June 10 Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, has gone back to press three times to keep up with demand for Wroblewski’s book, titled The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. It’s a coming-of-age story about a mute boy and his dog set in rural Wisconsin.
The book gained media attention even before it came out, most notably with a cover story in the Washington Post’s Book World. Significantly, Amazon.com weighed in with strong promotions after selecting it as one of the best books of June. Among other things, the retailer featured an endorsement of the book by celebrity author Stephen King. Amazon also had the book on its home page for two weeks at a 40 percent discount.
The Wall Street Journal now says the book is positioned to be one of the “breakout titles” of the summer.
Wroblewski, 48, worked on the book for 10 years. He grew up – with dogs – on a Wisconsin farm.

Another example of media power, on a far less literary level: Hundreds of viewers of the Sex and the City movie have contacted AbeBooks.com, an online seller of used titles, looking for a title that Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) reads while in bed with Mr. Big (Chris Noth). But there is no such book as Love Letters of Great Men, as referenced in the scene.
There is a Love Letters of Great Men and Women, and its publisher is reprinting the book, originally published in the 1920s.

Diane Evans is founder and president of DelMio.com. She writes a weekly column about books that is distributed by McClatchy Newspapers.

By Diane Evans

DelMio.com

Summer reading should be a little akin to summer cooking. You grill for simplicity’s sake - but you expect a savory result.

A summer book? It should be more the juicy hamburger rather than the fat pot roast that won’t be tender for another hour.

A few of my requirements for a fitting summer book:

Nothing too heavy: Many years ago (we’ll leave it at that) I read “Catcher in the Rye” in the summer and in that one book, discovered the joy of leisure contemplation. I still remember J.D. Salinger’s description of a “studied” air of sophistication as something that helped explain a particular snob in my life. Perspective with a laugh - under a hot sun. That’s the idea.

Read what you want - not what you think you should. To look smart, maybe you feel you need to read one of the new titles on John McCain or Barack Obama. But if you’ve always wanted to read “Gone With the Wind,” then do it.

A fast read, and if it’s short, all the better: One of my favorites:

Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (not morose despite the title). It’s really a treatise on how to live well, so you don’t have regrets later.

Now for a sampling of summer reading recommendations from various 2008 lists:

From the Los Angeles Times:

“The Last Embrace,” a novel by Denise Hamilton on secret doings in Hollywood in the 1940s.

“Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us),” by Tom Vanderbilt, on the meaning of the mundane.

“Shining City,” a satire by Seth Greenland, about a dry-cleaning business that fronts for an escort service.

“America America,” by Ethan Canin, a novel about a working-class boy’s involvement with a senator and powerful New York family.

Recent titles popping up on high school reading lists:

“Life of Pi,” by Yann Martel, and “The Lovely Bones,” by Alice Sebold, both stories of young people coming of age.

Some old favorites, recommended for middle school reading by the National Endowment for the Humanities:

“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott.

“Fahrenheit 451,” by Ray Bradbury.

“The Last of the Mohicans,” by James Fenimore Cooper.

“Robinson Crusoe,” by Daniel Defoe.

“Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“Diary of a Young Girl,” by Anne Frank.

“The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle.

A few children’s titles, from this year list by the “Association for Library Service to Children:

“Little Rat Makes Music,” by Monika Bang-Campbell.

“When Dinosaurs Came with Everything,” by Elise Broach.

“My Name Is Gabito: The Life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez/Me llamo Gabito: La vida de Gabriel Garcia Marquez,” by Monica Brown.

“Fred Stays with Me!” by Nancy Coffelt.

“Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale,” by Carmen Agra Deedy.

If you’d like to share your suggestions, please do. Just e-mail me at Diane.Evans@delmio.com.