Thoughts on Schroder by Amity Gaige

First thought: Wow.

Second thought: Wow, wow.

Additional thoughts: What a strange, odd, and beautifully, beautifully crafted book.  It's a father/daughter story like nothing I've ever read, about the people we fail, the love we can't understand until it leaves us, the lives we choose and the lives that choose us.

There are so many extraordinary things about this book, I barely know where to begin.  Schroder, the narrator, in writing a letter to his estranged wife, is a man preoccupied with pauses (you'll have to read to understand), who analyzes the pauses of Pinter plays, who, in trying to understand silence, instead fills it with actual footnotes.

The story itself is a kind of footnote.  It takes place inside the parentheses of an extended pause. It's a road trip, and trips have a way of existing outside of the reality of our lives.  They become a series of moments that are distinctly a part of us but don't necessarily connect with the rest of the minutes and hours, and Schroder's trip becomes all the more parenthetical because of its inevitable bitter end.

It's also a book about walls, barriers, and divisions. These are often the catalysts for failed relationships but, in this book, Gaige also reminds us that they leave an indelible print on our identities. The Berlin Wall somehow manages to feature prominently and, at the same time, almost ghostly veiled, as the first division in Schroder's life, a life that continues to divide like a cancerous cell as his story unfolds.

And I couldn't help but be slightly reminded of another book that intrigued me, Shards by Ismet Prcic. These are two very (very) different books but both feature men who escape divided countries and live two lives. The very last line in Schroder made me aha (!) at their connection. (Don't worry, I'm giving nothing away.)

I am covered in shards. 

Also, I liked the writing.  My favorite passage here:

I would stand there in the bathroom with white bits of deodorant caught in my underarm hair, penetrating my own nostril with the whirring pole of an electric nose-hair trimmer. You left a scene of camelia in your wake. I left tiny whiskers in mine. My footfalls were heavy. Yours were soundless. You could handle glass. I looked like an idiot holding a champagne flute, a real gorilla. I'm grateful, really, and also sad, that you were so beautiful.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. I hope you'll read it.

Playing with Two Hands, Medleys, and Shards by Ismet Prcic

I have a few things on my mind today but, mostly, a weird thought about playing piano with two hands because I'm reading this fascinating book Shards by Ismet Prcic.

When I was a little girl first learning to play piano I was really impatient about wanting to be able to play with two hands. And even when I did, finally, learn to do it my teacher always made me plunk out the notes of a song separately, let each hand settle into its role before allowing them to play together.

You think I would have learned something from that experience but no...to this day (though it has, admittedly, been a while since I sat down to play) I will look at a new song and automatically attempt to play it all at once. It's always a stupid mess. And I always have to step back, play each hand seperately, and put it back together again.

Last weekend I listened to the Sunday Show with Jonathan Schwartz. I'm totally obsessed with this show. It's crazy. If we have plans on a Sunday I become the most irritable person on the planet if I can not get my Jonathan Schwartz fix.

Anyway, he played this Irving Berlin medley (below) and I just thought how hard it must be to sing a song while the person, standing right next to you, is belting out an entirely different song. How you have to be all tucked inside your song and, at the same time, know the rhythm and feel of the other person's song.

So, this is what I'm thinking about. Having to know, I mean, really know, two pieces of something before you can put it together and have it make any kind of sense. I think Ismet Prcic, so far, as I am not yet through the book, is doing something experimental and wonderful with that idea in terms of the actual structure of the book and the theme of diaspora. Stepping back to understand all the pieces of a person before you understand the whole.

And here are Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley singing that Irving Berlin medley. I apologize that it has the cheesy cabaret feel. It's the only rendition I could find on You Tube. I think it's worth sticking it out to listen to them sing together. IT'S CRAZY. It just blows my mind whenever I hear two different voices and two entirely different songs come together like that.