15th Meeting: Wise Blood

The 15th meeting of Eat, Drink, and Be Literary took place on a sunny and mild Sunday afternoon in February. One our newest members, Rachel, hosted the discussion of Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor. I was extremely excited to read this book for many reasons- mostly, I have embarrassingly never read anything by Flannery O'Connor, and I feel as though I should considering she is a literary icon. Also, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and happened to write at least a portion of the novel while here! It is incredible to be living in the same city and walking the same streets as so many literary geniuses, and reading the works they wrote while living and studying here is just too cool.

Unfortunately, I didn't love the book-- and barring one exception, neither did most Literary Eaters & Drinkers. We had an amazing discussion though. The novel is about a maladjusted WWII veteran, Hazel Motes, who returns to the south from the war having a crisis of faith. He starts preaching and starts the "church of Christ without Christ". The cast of characters are all misguided mis-fits and the symbolism, religious themes, and dark comedy of the book are inescapable. 

I appreciate the book much more after our discussion, but while reading it, I kept feeling like I just wasn't smart enough. I didn't see the masterpiece, I didn't get the comedy, I wasn't shocked (in a good way or bad) by the religious themes. Overall? I just didn't get it. The chapters didn't seem to flow, and I was just not that engaged. At first I chalked it up to the fact that I was incredibly preoccupied with prospectus writing and applying for fellowships, but after finishing the novel, I looked it up on Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge, right?) and found out that the book was basically a compilation of multiple originally separate short stories (one of which was O'Connor's thesis at Iowa!) After I realized that the chapters were originally distinct stories, I felt much better about the whole book. And in fact, I could see merit in individual chapters and I think I would have enjoyed them much more if they were just a short story. 

Kelsey, the loan true fan of the book, is also a huge fan of O'Connor in general. She said that once you "get" the dark comedy of her work, that the rest falls into place.  So, with that endorsement, I have decided not to give up on O'Connor's work! And maybe in time, I will come back to Wise Blood and see if I can get a clue! 

14th Meeting (and a blizzard): Caramelo

We have had the most mild winter that I can remember this year. (I realize I probably just jinxed us to have the coldest snowiest March ever, but oh well). In fact, we've only had a few days with our typical sub-zero temperatures, and only one significant snow storm. Because I am so fantastic at planning things, that one measly blizzard we had fell on the day of our January book club meeting. Because of the craptastic weather, we had a pretty small group, but a great meeting. I was the host for the meeting (which meant I didn't have to drive in the snow! yay!), and I picked the book Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros.

I picked Caramelo for several reasons. First off, despite reading a wide variety of literature over the last year and a half, our book club hasn't read very many books by female authors; and we have read exactly zero books by women that are told from a woman's point of view. Considering the fact that the club is predominantly female, this is somewhat surprising! Caramelo fit both of these criteria-- Sandra Cisneros is obviously a woman, and the book is semi-autobiographical and told from the point of view of a young Mexican American girl named Celaya. The second reason I selected this book, is that Sandra Cisneros went to Loyola University Chicago for her undergraduate education (just like me!) and to the University of Iowa for her graduate education (just like me!). The third reason is that her graduate degree was from the Writer's Workshop at Iowa and I want to support anything coming out of Iowa! And the fourth and final reason I chose this book was that I already owned it. In college, I took several hispanic or latina women's writers courses with the most amazing professor, Dr. Cavallo. My friends and I adored Dr. Cavallo, her amazing pencil skirts, and her ability to make us passionate about any piece of literature. It was in her classes that I really learned how to be a critical reader and I will never forget her impact on me! Anyway, Caramelo was on the syllabus for one of her classes-- however, we got behind thanks to a discussion about some other great book, and never got around to finishing it. I have held on to the book since (for 7 years) and figured it was time I actually read it!

After that huge amount of back story, it might be fairly obvious that I was expecting great things out of the book. Seven years of build-up do that to a girl! I don't know if it was just because of my exceedingly high expectations that this book couldn't stand a chance, but I didn't really like it all that much.

Oddly enough, everyone at book club agreed with me. I say this is odd because we have all been in agreement about our feelings towards a book exactly ONE time in the 14 meetings we've had (it was at our second meeting, back when we uniformly all loved Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender picked by Beth). I am bummed that this time our unanimous opinion wasn't so great, but we still had a great discussion.

The book reads like a memoir, but is technically a novel. It is the story of a a young Mexican-American girl named Celaya and her huge, vibrant, and dysfunctional family. What was interesting about the book club's unanimous "meh" feelings towards this book, is that we all agreed that it was pleasant to read. There were passages that we thought would have made wonderful short stories, or even novellas. Throughout the entire novel, Cisneros used creative and memorable turns of phrase, and described things so colorfully that on occasion I dog-eared pages so I could jot things down later. The novel was fairly engaging, but, none of that seemed to matter-- nobody felt especially connected to any of the characters, so as pleasant as the book was, we wouldn't have thought twice about setting the book down and never picking it back up. I guess that is actually one of the good things about book club: it forces me to finish books that would otherwise turn into "never-enders" for me.

The real hit of the meeting, for those who were brave enough to rough the blizzard conditions, was the food. Since the book was largely about life in Mexico, we decided to have a Mexican inspired feast. I made tacos-- I had a chipotle pulled pork filling and my very favorite sweet potato black bean filling for the vegetarians. We had plantain chips c/o Jillian, guacamole thanks to Rachel, and the most amazing little short bread cookies with spicy chocolate dipping sauce made by Mandy. Josh and Beth brought margarita fixings (which made me wonder why we don't celebrate the "drink" portion of this blog more often) and they also managed to find the same brand of soda that Cisneros talks about in the book at Hy Vee. We had lime, mandarin, and pineapple Jaritos. (The pineapple was my favorite.) All in all, it was one of our best meals ever, especially since it fit so perfectly with the book.