Novel Therapy

I hold a substantial portion of my retirement fund in equities (the actuarial tables inform me that I'm too young to ride a pure cash/bond route into the sunset), and you could say that the events of the past week have focused my attention. As they say, if things seem too good to be true, they probably are. Just as I was settling into a warm bed of complacency ("This 'investment stuff' is great. All I have to do is go to sleep at night, and when I wake up in the morning, I have MORE MONEY!"), reality, in the form of capitalism gone wild, stripped the sheets and pitched me to the floor in the process.

Conventional wisdom has it that the current market meltdown, albeit grave, will eventually pass; the trick is to batten down the hatches and ride the storm through in hopes that it won't attain Katrina force. My secret for staying reasonably collected in these volatile times? When the going gets tough, the tough get reading. I have a long history of burrowing into a good book during bad times, to wit:

1. I am nine years old, it is midnight, and I have a roaring case of the measles (yes, I know, this dates me). Folk medicine of the day has it that straining one's eyes during a measles outbreak can permanently weaken your vision. In an effort to drive this point home to me, my parents have upped the ante by vaguely alluding to actual blindness. Nevertheless, I am reading a Nancy Drew mystery ("The Clue of the Dancing Puppet," as I recall) by the light of a flashlight (I've also taken the precaution of stuffing a pair of pants into the light-emitting crack beneath the bedroom door -- you can't be too careful). My forehead is hot, my flannel pajamas are clammy, but Nancy's clever detective work has lifted me from my stale sickbed into an alternative universe where measles are irrelevant. (For those who are wondering, I didn't go blind, although I am extremely nearsighted.)

2. Fast forward to ninth grade: my intellectual precocity has consigned me to the fate of a social outcast. An ugly rumor that I read Shakespeare voluntarily (ychh!), together with the fact that I'm a chronic hand-raiser in class (Pick me! Pick me! I know!) have virtually insured a dateless future. Gossip has it that most of my classmates are going to a "mixer" on Friday night, and it's fairly clear by Thursday night that I'm not invited. The rebuff is particularly painful due to the fact that "Twister" (a game invented by the devil himself if ever there was one, my Sunday School teacher tantalizingly informs me) is on the agenda for what promises to be one hormone-fest of an evening. What's a shunned girl to do? Frank Herbert to the rescue. I devour "Dune" for the next four days, transported across time and space from my small town onto an arid planet that is depending upon me to fulfill a messianic prophecy. Who needs to roll around on a plastic mat and tangle legs with Larry Hoffbeck when you can hook and ride a massive sandworm into the pages of interplanetary history?

3. Freshman year, Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri: Things aren't going well. I'm homesick, stressed out (to my surprise, it's not quite as easy to stand out in a private women's college as it was to shine in a graduating high school class of 40 indifferent students), and flirting with an eating disorder. My roommate smokes like a chimney ( a fact that she concealed until about twenty minutes after her parents bid a teary goodbye) and owns the only television set on our floor, guaranteeing a nightly gaggle of Johnny Carson fans yucking it up while I try to study. Miraculously, while browsing the campus bookstore one muggy autumn afternoon, I stumble upon a series that everyone seems to be raving about -- "Lord of the Rings." I decide to give it a try. Tolkien saves my undergraduate life.

4. California Bar Exam, Los Angeles Airport Hilton: This is a nightmare. I'm committed to eighteen hours of exams spread out over three days, I'm one day into the process, and I've awakened with a flaming sore throat. With the aid of a sunny window and a makeup mirror (why are the light bulbs in hotel rooms so damn dim?), I observe white, pus-filled plaques coating my throbbing tonsils. Luckily, there is an "InstaCare" near the airport, and I'm able to see a doctor who confirms my diagnosis and dispenses some antibiotics.

After listening to fellow test-takers bemoan the incredibly low pass rate predicted for this exam, and after realizing that my recovery isn't imminent, I toss in the towel. I decide that I will continue to sit for the exam, but I'm beyond caring. In line with this defeatist attitude, I refuse to study, and instead spend all of my free time reading a paperback book entitled "Nobel House" by James Clavell. I focus on the novel with the concentration of a dog anticipating bacon, complete the exam as a mere auxiliary activity, and fly home with a devil-may-care attitude. Interestingly, I pass the exam.

Conclusion

There are, of course, a few rules to follow when selecting a good book to get you through bad times. A page-turning plot is a huge plus, of course, and I find that the most effective "escapist" fare predictably involves unusual or imagined settings. Whatever you do, don't read a "slice of life" book that addresses the very issues you're trying to escape from. (Don't read "Anna Karenina" if you're trapped in a deteriorating domestic situation, etc.) Accordingly, "Diary of a Bad Year" by J.M. Coetzee may be high on my current reading list, but there's no way I'm going to read it during these times of economic and political absurdity. Suggestions, anyone??

Susan Choi Explores the Psychology of "Otherness"

Susan Choi's newest novel, "A Person of Interest," is a complex thriller that rises above the usual standards for the genre. Professor Lee, an Asian-born mathematics professor at an undistinguished university, has lived an increasingly quiet and isolated life after the exodus of his second wife and the estrangement of his only child. His days are spent teaching calculus to indifferent undergraduates, worrying about how he is "coming off" to others (he wraps his empty beer and wine bottles in newspaper and carries them to the trash bin in cover of darkness so that his neighbors will see no evil/hear no evil), and nursing a festering resentment of Professor Hendley (middle-aged "hipster"), whose neighboring office is under constant barrage by starstruck undergraduates while Lee's office threshold gathers dust.

Lee's sedate existence is shattered when a mail bomb explodes in Hendley's office, killing Hendley and turning campus life on its head. Lee becomes increasingly agitated as he attempts to reconcile his self-contained private nature with the need to appear acceptably grief-ridden in the face of the tragedy (Lee skips out of Hendley's memorial service, and recoils at the sanctimonious orgy of tears, grief counseling, and cancelled exams that follow -- how well could the undergraduates have known Hendley, anyway?)

In the midst of the Hendley aftermath, Lee receives a "mail bomb" of a different sort altogether. It so happens that Lee poached his first wife, Aileen, from a fellow graduate student named Lewis Gaither decades ago -- a graduate student who subsequently disappeared and hasn't been heard from since. A letter addressed to Lee sets his head spinning with long-buried feelings of rivalry, regret, and guilt. His roiled state of mind doesn't help him when two FBI agents arrive at his doorstep to interview him about the bombing, and he slowly realizes that his sweaty efforts to "appear normal" have backfired -- he's obviously a suspect.

Choi weaves themes of estrangement and loneliness throughout her novel. Lee's daughter, Esther, has moved to the Rockies where she spends her days in isolation on the edge of a mountain cliff, patiently feeding abandoned eaglets with meat chunks delivered through a plastic tube. Aileen decamps from her marriage to Lewis when she realizes that their union is, at best, a sham of "togetherness." Her subsequent marriage to Lee is detached from the get-go; only their daughter Esther prevents her from fleeing earlier than she does. Lewis Gaither, an intensely religious man, recovers from Eileen's departure by marrying a fellow parishioner named Ruth, and their subsequent lives are spent wandering from one misbegotten mission outpost to another like fundamentalist nomads. Their itinerant travel has a negative effect on their young son, Mark, who is further isolated by the fact that he doesn't share their religious convictions.

Choi is at her best when she explores the inner workings of characters who are self-aware of their "otherness." Lee is ambivalent about his solitude -- he isn't upset about living alone, but he worries whether the neighbors might feel sorry for him; he is torn between feelings of resentment and relief when students don't visit his office; he is at once pleased and irritated when Gaither invites him to a church social. All of these feelings are intensified by Lee's status as an immigrant who will always remain, at least in his own mind, a "foreigner." "[Lee] had felt that his place in the world was unsteady and worthless, a perch best abandoned and, more than that, not even his." Choi's portrayal of"the immigrant's sense of hopeless illegitimacy and impending exposure" speaks to the occasional alienated (and sometimes paranoid) introvert in all of us.

I've not given away any "spoilers" here. The book's plot line is filled with twists, turns, and a bang-up ending. If you don't read it for its thriller appeal or psychological depth, read it for the prose, which is wonderful:

"The cherry trees had exploded like fireworks and left their pink litter all over the ground."

"She was aware of the need to frame an objection that was calm, logical, but she felt herself flailing around in her mental closet, knocking things off the shelf."

I highly recommend that you read this book.