Seattle Reads again

Airplane rides are useful. Of course, moving long distances at great speed is valuable. But there’s more. For example, a direct return flight from Seattle to Dallas is plenty long enough to read a novel, including time for naps each way. How do I know this? I know through experience.

Very recently I read, on both ends of a long weekend, the ‘Seattle Reads’ book of the year, Secret Son. Like other years, it’s not a very good book. However, it certainly raises LOTS of contemporary issues regarding East/West, wealth/poverty, social standing, nationalism, politics, language, family duty, love, manipulation, coming of age, honor, and education. Hmm, strange, now that I’ve listed the themes they appear more perennial than acute….

Helpful, at the back of the book there is an anonymous interviewer questioning the author, Laila Lalami. The interviewer could probably pose more interesting questions, but it does give me a sense of what Seattle was thinking in choosing this book. Lalami did a fine job responding to the questions and possibly speaks as well or better than she writes.

Lalami tells us that she tries to write “the most engaging, the most complex, and the most truthful story” she can. Complex I rate very high. Truthful I rate quite high. Engaging slips to a pretty low percentile. I wish I could say that if I wasn’t stuck on an airplane with no other novel, or if I was indifferent about reading for my book group conversation next week, that I would have found it a good use of my time, but I might not.

That lies are told in Morocco, even in Casablanca, where the interviewer insists heretofore in the American imagination only romance blooms a la Bogart and Bergman, isn’t altogether surprising. That locals and foreigners alike prey on the weak cannot surprise, either. Both of these together, as the two bruising whips driving the plot, however, do come as a surprise. Surely the portrait of even the cruelest poverty can be drawn with beautiful lines, making one unable to put away what hurts to view. But there it goes: away, secret, done.

A Rose by Nearly Any Other Name

Sometimes I do meet someone and think to myself, “Huh, you don’t seem like a Jenny.” So, there certainly is a point to Roy Feinson’s assertion that we make assumptions about who the person we’re going to meet is based on their name, and even, perhaps how we may carry out our lives based on our own names. But… how can you say that Ella is going to be happier in love than Edda?

Well, the Secret Universe of Names: The Dynamic Interplay of Names and Destiny, not only makes that determination, but many more. There are strong names, soft names, masculine names, and feminine ones. I guess that makes sense. But often there are family names. Does your daughter remind you of your mother because of her nose… or her name?

So, I checked out my name – the only thing to do, right? Reading about what an ADR person is was just like reading a horoscope. A big ‘well maybe.’ Interestingly some other people’s names I came across were very like their personality! So, I began to get drawn in by Feinson’s study and writing (not the spelling errors, though) and wondered if I was perhaps missing out on some of the benefits of being called Adrian. (Specifically my supposed main attributes: charismatic, sexy, admirable – think Audrey Hepburn…)

Speaking of Audrey Hepburn, there are nice little boxes at the base of each page giving a real-life example of how each type of name has been embodied the way that Feinson discovered it would. ADR has a tiny biography of Audrey. Although ADRs apparently should be able to take on most any profession with success, a movie actor makes a good example. But on the opposite page ADM also has a movie actor for its good example of that character. So I turn the page in either direction and discover that ADL and AG also have biographies of movie actors. After a few pages I find ALBRT, which is pretty much the whole name anyhow. Guess who? Yep, Albert Einstein is there to explain how ALBRT is one of the top names available for anyone – even working for one of Canada’s central provinces to this day.

So, this was fun, but also stupid. I am convinced that naming a kid Piscine might get him into trouble, but less because it’s a ‘paternal and benign’ letter ‘P’ starting it off than the fact that dear Piscine from the Life of Pi had a difficult time getting anyone to say anything better than pissing when talking to him.