Top Books Read 2021

BY C.M. MAYO — December 20, 2021
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

One of Ours by Willa Cather
Brilliant and profound, One of Ours is the American novel about that episode of madness known as the First World War that will ring through the centuries. It has been a few years now that I’ve been working through Cather’s oeuvre (so far: The Professor’s House, O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop); my main wonder is why I didn’t start sooner. (For those whose children attend high schools which faculty have seen fit to remove Cather from the English class syllabi, I point to Jonathan Leer’s Radical Hope, listed below.)



Willa Cather Living by Edith Lewis
An exquisite memoir that has been wildly underestimated.

The Hidden Teachings of Rumi, and Lenses of Perception by Doug Marman
These two books spoke to me, as a novelist, very directly.

Child of the Sun by Lonn Taylor
Historian Lonn Taylor’s last book, a beautiful and moving memoir of his childhood in the Philippines.
P.S. You can listen in to my interview with Taylor about Far West Texas here.

The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe

The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Uncomfortable reading, and alas, more than amply documented.

TechBondAge: Slavery of the Human Spirit by James Tunney
“We are relinquishing our sovereignty on the basis of our convenience”—a meditation on that by the Irish artist, barrister, and mystic.

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation by Jonathan Lear
The lessons of Plenty Coups.

Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery
This prompted me to waste a ridiculous amount of time looking at vintage raccoon coats on Etsy. And to read E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels.

Hidden Nature: The Startling Insights of Viktor Schauberger by Alick Bartholomew
By Jupiter! Schauberger’s concepts about water flows fixed my email.

The City of Hermes: Articles and Essays on Occultism and The King in Orange by John Michael Greer
It was during and after writing my own work, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, that I came to appreciate how rare and excellent a scholar of the history of metaphysical religion and of the occult we have in John Michael Greer.

The Secret Art: A Brief History of Radionic Technology for the Creative Individual by Duncan Laurie
This one is waaaay out, but I would recommend it for, as the title says, creative individuals. I’ve added it to my list of recommended works on creative process.

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
A great American novel by an Irishman.

The Complete Mapp and Lucia, Volume I., by E.F. Benson
The first three novels, Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp , and Lucia in London. Light stuff, but wickedly funny and ah, the language!

Guarded by Dragons: Encounters with Rare Books and Rare People by Rick Gekoski

This is by no means a complete list. Stay curious!

P.S. Be sure to have a look at the many outstanding works by those authors featured in my fourth-Monday-of-the-month Q & A.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

Top Books Read 2020

Top Books Read 2018

Peyote and the Perfect You

Bringing in the Body

BY C.M. MAYO — December 13, 2021
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

This blog posts on Mondays. Second Mondays of the month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!

> For the archive of workshop posts click here.

In most of the manuscripts I’ve seen in writers workshops, the characters… sort of… ummm… float kinda sorta in space? When they do appear more concretely, their bodies, gestures, physical interactions with other bodies and things tend to be generic, e.g., the tall black man stood; the short blonde woman was sitting; the Asian man nodded. She looked. He shrugged.

It gets kind cardboard-cutout-y.

Oh, and these characters also do a lot of taking sips of drinks.

Well, OK, sometimes a character’s black or Asian or blonde or whatever, and he or she or zhe’s gotta stand and/or nod and/or shrug and/or take a sip. But it isn’t gain-of-function research to grab a floccule more oomph from the Vividness Department. Take just a moment to dig around there in your imagination—and this could, literally, cost you less than 20 seconds in some instances— and then, with your thoughtfully selected detail (or two or three), you can guide your reader to see your characters and the scene with more specificity, that is to say, more vividly.

(But what about clutter? You might hasten to ask. I do the whack-a-mole on clutter here. )

How to come up with vivid detail? One of the best ways to get click-your-fingers fast with vivid detail is to read as a writer. Reading as writer is not the same as reading passively, for entertainment. Nor is it reading to bag some trophy-worthy-theme as for your PhD thesis on race, class, gender & intersectionality, but rather, simply, when you spot something you—you the fellow literary artist— think an author does especially well, take note. I would suggest that you check it or circle it or underline it (or all three) with your pencil and, should you feel so moved, copy it out in your notebook. Then, perhaps take another moment to try some permutation exercises.

Recently I was reading Bernard DeVoto’s The Western Paradox when this struck me:

“We headed toward Flagstaff from Bakersfield. In August the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley is wrapped in a brown heat-haze which I have never fully understood, for assuredly there is no water vapor in it. A reek of crude oil goes with it; the sky is a steel-white; one does not rest a forearm on the car door.
Bernard DeVoto, The Western Paradox (p. 195)

Rest a forearm on the car door—Bingo! Dear writerly reader, is this not by a league more vivid in your mind than, say, “it was a really hot day”? We’re no longer kinda sorta floating around; we are in a body— a body with a forearm that avoids resting on the car door!

As I went on to read Willa Cather’s novels My Ántonia and O Pioneers! I kept an eye out for how she handles bodies— not only in how she makes the characters more vivid and/or grounds them in the scene, but has them relate physically to each other. (And I would wager that any author whose work you especially admire and enjoy reading is doing this splendidly well— else you wouldn’t be bothering to read them and so admiringly. So I would suggest that you go to your own bookshelf of books you have already read and loved, and reread one or two with an eye to how these authors handle detail relating to the body.)

Cather never disappoints.

“As Ántonia turned over the pictures the young Cuzaks stood behind her chair, looking over her shoulder with interested faces. Nina and Jan, after trying to see round the taller ones, quietly brought a chair, climbed up on it, ansd stood close together, looking. The little boy forgot his shyness and grinned delightedly when familiar faces came into view. In the group about Ántonia I was conscious of a kind of physical harmony. They leaned this way and that, and were not afraid to touch each other. ..”
Willa Cather, My Ántonia

“Three three pretty young Swedish girls who did Alexandra’s housework were cutting pies, refilling coffee cups, placing platters of bread and meat and potatoes upon the red tablecloth, and continually getting in each other’s way between the table and the stove.”
Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

“Frank went into the house and threw himself on the sofa, his face to the wall, his clenched fist on his hip. Marie, having seen her guests off, came in and put her hand coaxingly on his shoulder.”
—Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

She put her hand on his arm. “I needed you terribly when it happened, Carl. I cried for you at night”
….
Carl pressed her hand in silence.
—Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

“Emil rubbed his knees thoughtfully”
—Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

And from some random other reading:

“But it is true that a lot of work gets done over two-hour ceremonial luncheons, and more than once, after such an occasion, I wobbled out like a stunned ox, vowing to change jobs before I acquired gout and a faintly British accent.”
— Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys

By the side of this fortress-door hung a heavy iron bell-pull, ending in a mermaid. When first Mrs. Lucas had that installed, it was a bell-pull in the sense that an extremely athletic man could, if he used both hands and planted both feet firmly, cause it to move, so that a huge bronze bell swung in the servants’ passage and eventually gave tongue (if the athlete continued pulling) with vibrations so sonorous that the whitewash from the ceiling fell down in flakes.”
—E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia

*

A WEE WRITING EXERCISE

As one character is speaking, what else can another character do besides, say, “rub his knees thoughtfully”? Oh, plenty! Here goes:

Joe slowly rubbed his elbow.

Elmira dabbed a finger under eye, as if to remove a fleck of mascara that wasn’t there.

Patsy slipped both hands, palms out, into her back pockets.

Lou took up his cup of tea and then, with a nearly inaudible sigh, leaned sideways into the pillows.

A wee exercise: To this list, add 5 more examples of your own and use the names Puddleton, Jamilla and Fred (because I say so). Absolut Verboten: nodding, sitting, standing, looking, shrugging and sipping.

For more exercises, see Giant Golden Buddha & 364 More Free Five Minute Writing Exercises.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

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