Edgy Mama

I admitted in one of my comment threads last week that I finished After Dark by Haruki Murakami a few weeks ago, and I liked it, but I just don’t know what to write about it. When I was an English Lit grad student, I would’ve come up with some erudite, though slightly righteous, analysis. Nowadays, I’m less concerned with being a lit crit and more concerned with finding the time to read great books.

After Dark is an extremely well-written and sometimes mesmerizing novel. I don’t think it’s for everyone, though. In fact, the whole magical realism sections of the book, where some gorgeous Sleeping Beauty character and her bed get sucked through the TV screen, just didn’t do it for me.

The primary story, tracing the hours of a night in a number of intriguing characters’ lives as their paths accidentally crossed, was pretty damn cool. The problem is that I wanted more. The novel ends, appropriately, as the sun is rising, but damn, I felt invested in these characters by then and felt like I got left hanging. As they say in writing circles, the author didn’t complete his contract with me, the reader.

So, after After Dark, I skidded off into the world of escapist fiction. I read Tess Gerritsen’s The Mephisto Club,and Michael Connelly’s The Echo Project, (both are out in paperback). Both of these writers fulfilled their contracts with me and gave me satisfying stories. However, both books are a bit like a peppermint candy–sweet, minty, satisfying, but the taste fades after a while, until only the barest scent of spice remains.

Right now, at this very moment, I’m reading Steve Almond’s new book, Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions (Not that You Asked). Somewhere in the distant past of this bloggie, I wrote a love letter to Steven’ Almond’s nonfiction masterpiece, Candy Freak. Since then, I’ve followed Steve closely. His short story collection, The Evil B.B. Chow, rocked my soul–made me laugh, made me happy, made me mad, made me want to chew on Steve Almond’s toes in gratitude.

This new book, a memoirish collection, makes me want to be Steve Almond, except still be me. I sit there, reading this book, thinking, “Wait, I can do this too. I do do this too already. I’m writing humorous little stories about my parenting life.” Then, I notice some particularly brilliant little line or twist or effing-hilarious riff, and I think, “I suck. I can’t do this. I can’t believe I’d even consider comparing myself to this guy. Mountain Xpress should fire my inarticulate heiney.”

For some reason, I seem to enjoy putting myself on this roller coaster.

I also read Steve’s blog on Babble. Babble, for the most part, tries to be an edgy on-line parenting mag, but really, like a lot of these sites, is more a vehicle for selling over-priced baby gear than promoting writers with rocking parenting stories. But they do have Steve. And you can bypass the “you must have this stroller that unfolds into a Corvette when your kid turns 16″ ads masquerading as stories and go straight to Steve. Mostly, he writes about how much he adores his baby girl, Josephine. And she’s pretty darn cute. He writes about the slavering devotion of Daddyhood, well, slaveringly.

So, what are y’all reading and what do ya think?