Ozick @ MindSay 
There is literature and then there is just-a-book. Just-a-book is a misnomer maybe because there is a world of really awful crap that I won't touch- I see whole sections of this stuff in bookstores- but to me a just-a-book book is something by Grisham, Baldacci, Patterson, Turow. Literature on the other hand is reserved for the classics and modern masters such as Murakami, Ozick, Roth--- understand?
And I have this need after reading some literature to goon a little spree and find a string of juts-a-books to get me ready for literature. It’s like a pretzels and cheese for the mind after eating gorgonzola gnocchi or brasciole. So my literature recently have been Krauss’s The History of Love and The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki. The Krauss book is a novel about a book written stolen plagiarized copied translated and the people it couches. And The Makioka Sisters is a beauty Japanese post war novel about four sisters and their adjustment to the “modern” world. Both very different and both quite wonderful. Then I fell into the world of James Patterson again but this time started with his Alex Cross books hoping they were less formulaic. Duh. Untrue. Alex is a handsome black doctor/cop who falls in love a lot, gets screwed, is corrected by his grandmother and betrayed by someone he works with. He is fit, tough and manly man. Sigh. I thinking the days when one had to wait for the next book to come out one didn’t see the formula so clearly. Is that being generous? But I buy these just-a-books from a library book store where hard covers are one dollar and paperbacks a nickel so I can read and devour them five at a time. It reveals the formula quickly.
Great literature can fall into patterns too but I wouldn’t call them formulaic. I mean Wharton writes about the rich trans atlantic world of the turn of the century. Austen’s pattern are the pieces of ivory which comprise her vicarage life. And Hardy the blackness of people caught in tempests of their own choosing and the headlong roll to the cliff of disaster. But the writing transcends the pattern or rather fits and illuminates it and just-a-book writers simply entertain and distract. Oh I would adore being a successful just-a-book author, they get rich and seem to have a ball and sometimes there stuff gets made into a wonderful movie. (Elmore Leonard falls on the line between just-a-bookishness and REAL art I must confess and Get Shorty was a gem) But anyway I have to decide if I am going to pick up another Carl Hiasen book or switch to Toni Morrison. Hmmmm… maybe after I eat some taco chips.
What a wonderful book group; what an abundance of food; what total bounty. This makes me recall the effort and energy the Alabama group took and all the rules developed about what we couldn’t read: no paper back, no hard covers, nothing that wasn’t at the library, no historical fiction, no Oprah books, no more down and outer books, no magical realism. By the end I pointed out that we wouldn’t be able to read anything and Beverly attempted her silent coup which DW warned me about and a group intervention was head off at the pass. Ouch I still recoil at that betrayal. But this is a self selected group who want to meet other women and talk and be real and laugh and I think I am going to enjoy everyone immensely. Our handout:
Love for Lydia H E Bates
HE Bates is one of the most under-rated authors of the Century and this book is his masterpiece. It is the story of the love of a young man for the beautiful Lydia, and how their love has painful and tragic consequences for them both and their friends. It is a story of warmth, love lost and love found, of growing up, of rejection and hope. HE Bates had a profound love for the countryside and it shines through in the detail of his narrative. A few books teach you more and more each time you read them: this is one of them.
Beauty and Sadness Yosunari Kawabata (in English)
Kawabata weaves a wonderful story and its title describes it perfectly. The story begins with the writer Oki Toshio. In his younger days Oki had a love affair with a young girl named Otoko. Their affair produced a child, but unfortunately the child was born premature and died shortly after birth. The death of the child caused Otoko to suffer a nervous breakdown and she was put into a mental asylum. Her mother told Oki that Otoko would soon be better but it would probably be better if Oki did not see her again. Warp 20 or so years into the future. Oki decides to see Otoko again at New Years, so he hops a train to go see his ex lover. Otoko worried about Oki's arrival hires a couple of geisha to entertain them. Also her protoge Keiko is there. I believe Keiko to be the main character in the story.
Keiko is not only Otoko's student but her lover as well. Keiko is angered about how Oki treated Otoko so many years ago, and wants to seek revenge against her teacher's ex lover. Otoko still harbors a strong love for Oki but is not assured enough to keep Keiko from plotting against Oki. Keiko is extraordinarilly charming and beautiful, and although a lesbian she manipulates males very easily. She seduces Oki and his son Taichiro, the reader knows something bad is going to happen to Oki or one of his loved ones early on, and he or she just wonders how it will finally end.
The Puttermesser Papers Cynthia Ozick
Veteran novelist and essayist Ozick continues to impress with this episodic, highly imaginative, humorous exploration of the disappointed life of brilliant Jewish lawyer and scholar, Ruth Puttermesser. In her thirties, Ruth found her early success in law school quickly turning to failure as she descended through the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of New York City government. In her forties, she unwittingly creates a golem?an artificial human being derived from Hebrew folklore?who gets Ruth elected mayor of New York but soon destroys the Eden it helped create. In her fifties, Ruth finally finds a soul mate in flamboyant artist Rupert. But as soon as they get married, Rupert leaves. A master stylist with a powerful command of the English language, Ozick has created a revealing portrait of a complex woman, as well as a dark satire of government bureaucracy. Essential for literary collections and highly recommended for general collections.
And we are reading Love for Lydia. Ahhhhhhhhh sublime. Now I have to go play with the cat.