The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

It’s a running joke that there’s never any food in my parents’ house. My mother lacks the foresight necessary for adequate grocery shopping, although even when my mother was at her most Hubbard, I never had to eat exclusively grapes for three weeks or pick through other kids’ discarded lunches in the bathroom garbage so that I could eat that day.

Sound like the makings of an Oprah special? Absolutely. But thankfully, The Glass Castle doesn’t read this way. This absolutely captivating memoir isn’t about self-pity or finger pointing, but simply documents an extraordinary childhood at once rich in imagination and adventure and bitingly impoverished.

Of course it is Jeannette’s parents who created this bipolar existence for their children. She has a brilliant and charming, but alcoholic father who took his daughter inside a leopard cage or demon hunting in the desert, but also wouldn’t hold a job and stole his daughters’ meager savings to finance his addiction.  Her mother is a free-spirited artist who appreciates learning and beauty but who disdains regular work and domestic duties.

As we follow Jeannette from the age of three through her teenage years, we watch as the Walls parents lose their magical glow, and the children are forced to fill the vacuum of responsibility their parents have created. It would be tempting to cast the parents as villains here, but Jeannette takes care to present all sides of her conflicted parents with a critical eye and a compassionate heart.

Though the Walls children are bullied, hungry, and poor, Jeanette never complains, instead illustrating the creativity and courage which they depended upon to survive. And while their parents neglected them, they also taught their children important lessons about the value of learning, mastering their fears, avoiding conformity, and relying on their wit and imagination.

Walls is a journalist by trade, and shows both tremendous restraint and an eye for detail, making the writing a pleasure to read. Combine that with a series of events right out of a Miriam Toews novel and you can see why this memoir has received so much praise.  Start to finish I was hopelessly ensnared in this extraordinary tale of a childhood I’m thankful to experience second hand, but wouldn’t for a second want to miss.

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One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, by Rebecca Mead

This summer I was invited to five weddings. I went to three, and of those was in the wedding party for one. Don’t get me wrong, they were lovely, but at 26, it seems I’m in the wedding prime, although I myself find the prospect a little terrifying. And the only thing that terrifies me almost as much as marriage is the prospect of the wedding itself. Weddings seem like forces of nature with lives of their own, and I resent the fact the fact that the expectations of others end could end up costing you a fortune, all in the name of keeping up appearances.

For though weddings are supposed to be about love  and lifetime commitment, they are also a show, an elaborate display of who we want to be. It is a day to have the advantages of a celebrity — you look perfect, you act graciously, there are lavish gifts, and everyone is there to see you. We want the way we marry to be a reflection of the way we are as individuals, yet in her book One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, Rebecca Mead illustrates that weddings are not so much a meaningful reflection of individuals, but of society as a whole.

Her principal argument is that marriage is no longer a major transition: partners are older than they used to be, they’ve lived independently or together, they’ve often had sex, sometimes they’ve even been married before. Consequently, in order to preserve the momentousness of the occasion, we throw a lavish party, enacting “traditions,”  though many were in fact recent products of consumer culture (Take the supposedly sacred diamond engagement ring, which didn’t even appear on the scene until the late nineteenth century with the availibility of cheap South African diamonds, but insinuated itself into the American consciousness with the 1937 DeBoers’ ad slogan “A diamond is forever.”)

The wedding day must becomes the focal point because the marriage, solemn vows aside, is life as usual. And so, if the wedding is the main event, and supposedly a reflection of who we are, we want the wedding to be perfect. Mead points out that this is more than just vanity, there is a more sinister side; the bride often starts to believe that a perfect wedding will yield a perfect marriage. The wedding (and the time leading up to it) is a “quest for self-perfection” (often accomplished through the accumulation of a literal hope chest of over priced bridal goods and services)  and that supposedly inward transformation can lead the couple to anticipate a fantasy life. Take for example, the bridal registry, often filled with ridiculous whims of a scanner-drunk couple, who find items such as a $250 gravy boat new life essentials (an example I’ve borrowed from an unmarried friend’s experiences on the wedding circut this summer). But it’s not just simple greed, Mead points out:

“The element of absurdity that accompanies the extensvie shopping list that is a bridal registry–the suggestion that a bride and groom who have never before had use for a waffle iron or for a pair of asparagus tongs will suddenly discover they now do–does not imply mere acquisitiveness; it is an expression of the profound hope that married life will, in some way, amount to a different kind of domestic engagement.”

This concept carries through throught the book, appearing again in the chapter on wedding photography and videography. Here, Mead explores an industry which has thrived by transforming memories (personal constructions of the imaginative mind) into something external, something, that if you do not buy photos or videos, can be lost. But further, by making them externally created, airbrushed, well-lit, and selectively cut productions, the new couple can not only justify our outrageous expenditures, but also provide a “confirmation of the reality they were making a significant transitin into new status as husband and wife,” and even more scarily,  these photographic records allow them to play  “the role of bride and groom not to convince the wider public of the validity of their newly acquired social status, but to convince themselves.”

There are too many passages I’d love to quote, but suffice to say Mead is critical but restrained and often sympathetic, and her expeditions into the darkest corners of the white industry are laced with plenty of humour. In addition to photography and registries, she tackles the white dress, wedding planners, destination weddings, pseudo-religious ceremonies, the traditionalesque and more.

Mead chose to conclude her book with a discussion of gay marriage rights, which at first I thought seemed like an oddly placed afterthought for such an important issue, but it turned out to be the perfect conclusion. For here, Mead shifts the focus away from weddings and back to marriage itself, the thing that is supposed to be the reason for the celebration, but gets lost long before the colour schemes are decided. She argues that marriage itself is something we take for granted, and perhaps, if heterosexuals had to fight harder just to marry, to consider why this official union was so important, they would see how it would actually change their lives, beyond exquisite dinner parties complete with asparagus tongs.

Thanks to B.Kienapple at A Certain Bent Appeal for bringing this excellent book to my attention with her review.

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The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch

Let’s start here. I was prepared to like this book. I may lose some literary street cred here, but I LIKED Tuesdays With Morrie. Granted, I was about 18 at the time when I read it, but I cried (on the beach in Mexico no less) like a baby. I like my insight with a dash of sentiment (or okay, with Morrie, maybe a bucket of sentiment). So I was prepared to like The Last Lecture.

And then, I didn’t really. No light bulbs went off, not a tissue was dampened.

But first, some quick backstory in case you’re behind: Randy Pausch, scientist and family man is diagnosed with an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer and given 3-6 months to live (he actually made it about 9). As he’ll never get to see his three young children grow up (2 likely won’t even remember him), he wants to leave them some life advice and an idea of who their father was. So hijacks and old academic tradition: The Last Lecture, which allows retiring professors to comment on their academic careers.  Pausch’s last lecture, called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” happened on September 18, 2007, and  was put up on You Tube (almost 10.5 million people have watched it). It’s a sensation.

Then the book (co-written by New York Times scribe Jeffrey Zaslow) was published by Hyperion and it’s a smash hit too (they’ve printed 400,000 copies and it has been translated into 46 languages). So must have some good advice, right?

Well, I guess. For the most part, it’s common sense. Don’t give up, No job is beneath you, Show people you appreciate them, Ask and you shall receive (although, I will point out, that the example for this one takes place at Disney World, and as a former minion of the Mouse, I can tell you ask and you shall receive ANYTHING while you’re are in Disney’s domain.) I will say I did appreciate the “There are only walls around things to keep out the people who don’t want it bad enough.” I liked that. Forced me to stop and reflect, it’s concise, and something you could fall back on when you’re frustrated. I don’t know if you could say that about the rest of the book.

I hate to admit it, but I often found myself almost irritated by the book. Pausch is certainly cocky, and likes to be the man with the answers. But I did watch the first few minutes of the YouTube lecture, and I instantly found him more likeable. Hey, sick or not, anyone who can do clapping push-ups has my respect.

So I guess what I’m saying his while the advice may have been ho hum, what I DO find admirable is Pausch’s example. He remained positive, but realistic, and he lived each day to the max. He was certainly the ideal for how a person should cope with disease. But that’s just general impression you get from reading the book. In this case, I think it’s definitely a case of actions speak louder than words. So if you’re looking for life changing advice, and you’re not terminally ill, perhaps don’t look here.

For the target audience, Pausch’s family, this is a bullseye. It accomplishes the goals Pausch set out. But as for me, I don’t see anything any differently, which I think should be the goal of any inspirational/self-help book/near-death memoir. So my advice? (Get ready, I won’t say this often) If you still want to check it out, skip the book, watch the video instead.

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