Gallup Readers Met the Pulitzer Challenge!

Congratulations to all the Gallup readers who participated in our Pulitzer Challenge and many thanks to the amazing librarians at the Octavia Felling Public Library for hosting the dialogues!

Gallup Discussion: Golden Mongooses

This week we discussion The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao at Octavia Fellin Library in Gallup, New Mexico.  And before our discussion began there were some important things to clarify about the setting of the story and some of its symbolism.

Unlike other stories we discussed, some of our readers didn't immediately know the background of the Dominican Republic or the characters in the story.  Just reading the story, you learn a lot of more recent Dominican history, but not everyone remembers off the top of their head where the Dominican Republic is or the significance of its location.

The DR is on the island of Hispaniola.  People who know "a little" history might recall that Columbus discovered America in 1492.  The first place he "discovered" was Hispaniola, an island, and on the modern DR side of that island was where the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas was built, also making it the location of the first European colony in the Americas.

Notice how I said, "the modern DR side" above.  That's because, unlike most Caribbean nations, the DR has a border with another country.  Reading the story, you might not some passing references to Haitian genocide, derogatory references to Haitians, maybe a mention of looking like "you speak a little French" as a coded insult.  That's right!  The DR borders Haiti, and they have not had a healthy past. 

The DR was a Spanish colony and while they shipped a lot of slaves to the region, it wasn't half as many as were sent to Haiti for French plantations.  Skin color is a big deal in the story, and there's a lot of coded (and not so coded) language related to it.  Dark skin is usually seen as a terrible thing, handsome means white, as noted with Beli's first paramour, Jack Pujols, and when someone suggests you might speak a little French, it suggests you have darker skin, or in other words, you look Haitian.

The Sauron of our story is Rafael Trujillo or El Hefe, and he is portrayed as a pretty terrifying, incredibly evil guy.  I think the book actually gives you plenty to go off of, but I wanted to show a picture of him, because he doesn't look the super villain, child rapist, mass murdering monster that he definitely was... or at least, he doesn't look like I quite expect him to...

he looks...gassier...

Finally, let's talk about the Golden Mongoose in the story.  This is not really based on any bit of history or folklore.  So if your book club is sitting around scratching their heads and saying "What does the mongoose mean?" in deep, philosophical tones, here it is in the words of Junot Diaz, himself:

“My mother got lost when she was young in a coffee plantation (my father used to grow coffee) and she was lost for like three days and everyone thought she died and by the third day they just went and bought fucking—I mean, it shows you the difference, if a child were lost for three days today, we would still have hope, we would still be looking, but in the DR they were like ‘Three days? ’That kid’s fucking dead man’—they went out and bought funeral clothes, they were going to bury this little outfit and then my mother shows up. And my mother tells this story and she was like I had gotten lost and was just desperate and this mongoose came up and was like ‘you lost?’ ‘Well, I’m tired right now but I’ll come back tomorrow and lead you out.’ So he did and my mother arrived home the next day.” - Junot Diaz 

These are just a few things to keep in mind if you ever have a discussion or book club on this fantastic work.  A little background can help a lot when discussing a book, especially one as closely tied to a time and place as this one.

Now Reading in Gallup

Discussion of Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao will be held on Thursday evening, September 22, at the Octavia Fellin Public Library.

The Shorter Short Stories of John Cheever

Last Tuesday, Octavia Fellin Library in Gallup, New Mexico had its Pulitzer Discussion Group on "The Stories of John Cheever" and while there was some considerable disagreement about the content of the book, there was definitely one unifying belief between our readers: This book is too long.  And I can't really dispute that.  700 pages of short stories is a lot for the casual reader.  It's a lot for the advanced reader!

So after our discussion, I decided to "shorten" the collection a tad.  Largely based on the favorites (or occasional least favorites) of our readers, I've put together a list of 15 Must Read Short Stories from "The Stories of John Cheever."  If you are looking for a great book for your book club or discussion group, but this collection seems too daunting, try this, more manageable, selection...

1. Goodbye, My Brother
2. The Enormous Radio
3. O City of Broken Dreams
4. Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor
5. The Sorrows of Gin
6. The Day the Pig Fell into the Well
7. The Five-Forty-Eight
8. The Duchess
9. The Lowboy
10. The Death of Justina
11. Clementina
12. The Brigadier and the Golf Widow
13. An Educated American Woman
14. The Swimmer
15. The Fourth Alarm

The real benefit of trimming down the book is in the primary complaints I heard about the book from our readers: "It's too long," "All the stories started to blend together," and "I started to forget some of the stories."  These are the kind of statements that I dread hearing, and I know that our readers would have gotten more from less.  

To really appreciate Cheever, or any short story author, one needs to take their time and enjoy each story individually, like eating a nice desert.  I loved "The Stories of John Cheever," and I really wanted others to share that love.  But it got to be too much for our readers, like eating way too much of a nice desert.  It became hard to really enjoy the flavor.  A shorter list like the one above would be easier and more pleasant to digest for anyone interested in reading Cheever for their discussion group or book club.

Bon Appétit!

4 Big Questions for a John Cheever Discussion

I'm an optimist.  I believe that everyone who shows up to the Gallup Pulitzer Discussion Group will have read "The Stories of John Cheever," this 700-page collection, from beginning to end, retaining absolutely every story perfectly in their minds.  But what if...let's say... a couple people only get halfway through.  We all want them to participate in the discussion too.  While I have plenty of questions that pertain to individual stories, I'd like to share some of the broader topics, we'll address that will make it easier for everyone to get a turn.

   1. What does Cheever seem to think of the typical nuclear family?

It's probably not hard to guess how Cheever felt about the nuclear family. If you've read one story, you don't have to guess his feelings toward the upper-middle class and wealthy white world. But this is an opener. People that read even a single story can start citing sources and picking through details.

2. Do the families portrayed in John Cheever stories still exist today?

I've rephrased this question half-a-dozen times in my head, and I'll probably do it a dozen times more before the discussion. What I'm trying to get at: Cheever's works really have a specific feel, a specific time, a specific place. Husbands all have mistresses and wives are all trapped at home. Perhaps some readers will think family structures have changed to no longer reflect the ones in his stories. Perhaps some readers will think they have not.

3. How are male-female relationships portrayed?

All general questions have a million-billion specific ones that can follow, and this one, in particular, can branch out in a million-billion different directions. Perhaps, because I am a man, I found the way Cheever writes men particularly fascinating. Our masculine protagonists are ignorant of their families, constantly cheating on their spouses, failing at work, and irritated by the tiniest of domestic issues, almost without exception. Women can be just as horrible in his tales, but they usually live like caged birds. I'd love to know how other readers felt about these two groups and how/why they clashed against each other.

4. How does the evolution of technology affect the people in these stories?

This is kind of an odd one, but John Cheever's stories take place when a whole lot of new/advancing technologies were drastically changing the world. A few examples I can think of are in The Enormous Radio, The Swimmer, and The Brigadier and the Golf Widow. Do radios, and swimming pools, and bomb shelters (and nuclear bombs!) change relationships and outlooks of people, and in what ways?

So these are four questions that can easily be used to boost discussions of John Cheever's works. They should function pretty well for those who finished the book, those who got halfway through, and those who jumped around, reading the stories that sucked them in, and skipping those that didn't.

Gallup Discussion: Lovely, Dark, Deep - Turning Bonobo

Most of Joyce Carol Oates' stories in "Lovely, Dark, Deep" are firmly set in reality.  The problems people have in the story are typically those we could face in the real world.  Three exceptions can be found in the collection.

Forked River Roadside Shrine, South Jersey is a kind of ghost story.  Anyone whose seen a roadside shrine, usually decorated in pictures, flowers, and the occasional teddy bear, immediately knows their meaning.  They exist to memorialize someone who died in a car or motorcycle crash, and often serve a second purpose, reminding everyone of the dangers of the road.  Forked River follows the spirit of "Kevie" as he witnesses people from his past visit his shrine.

Jesters is a very different ghost story, one where the ghosts might be a bit more active in the physical world.  An elderly couple feels harassed by their noisy neighbors, only to find that the house is long abandoned.  But for our discussion group, there were some strange moments in the story where our protagonists' perspectives are called into question, like when they can't figure out which one of them drove to "the Jesters'" house.

The members of our group saw similarly unreliable storytelling in Betrayal.  In this story, a young man gets an internship at the zoo working with bonobos and his parents are not particularly thrilled.  As he grows to love this non-paying job, his father, in particular, becomes hostile towards it, noting there was "no future" in the zoo.  Towards the end, the son seems to disappear, until the parents realize that a new bonobo in the habitat is there son.  He had betrayed them for the bonobos!


In a collection where most of the stories are pretty comfortably grounded in normalcy and upper middle class problems, this is by far the strangest story.  Some of our readers had their doubts about the son, Rickie's, transformation.  Whether the parents were delusional or Rickie really did turn bonobo, the story was a clear metaphor.

Members of the group pointed out Rickie's rejection of his parents' values.  "All of us feel somewhat estranged from our kids," one reader noted.  The parents had a hard time accepting the path Rickie was choosing for himself.  They couldn't understand him, and one person suggested, "the world of bonobos was just as strange to the parents as his own chosen lifestyle."  So maybe they really had thought Rickie turned into a bonobo, but it wouldn't have been much different to them if he had just joined the zoo staff instead.  It still would have been a betrayal in their eyes.

Gallup Discussion: Lovely, Dark, Deep - Frosty Reception

Joyce Carol Oates' "Lovely, Dark, Deep" was a divisive collection.  At our discussion in the Octavia Fellin Public Library, one story probably stood out as the most divisive of them all, and that was the titular tale, Lovely, Dark, Deep.

To briefly summarize the story: a female journalist interviews a famous and beloved poet, attacking the image he has cultivated for himself, revealing the far more awful man below the surface.  What makes this a particularly controversial story is that the poet is Robert Frost, a real poet who is both famous and beloved.

More than one voice in the discussion group brought up an interesting question, "Why couldn't this story have used a fictional poet instead of Robert Frost?"  The interviewer, Evangeline Fife, is a fictional character, so despite Oates' claim to base the story on real sources, it is an entirely fictional one.  Frost never had this confrontation.  So why not just create a fictional poet instead?

There was an interesting response to that argument.  One woman at the discussion thought that because he wasn't a fictional character people had stronger reactions.  Without Robert Frost, it's just two pretend people having a conversation.  None of our preconceived notions about Frost align with the image created by Oates.  Perhaps, Oates was shattering an idol.


This lead to many other issues.  For example, the lack of sources sited by Oates.  If Frost had been an actual good person, did Oates have the right to demonize him?  And if Frost was not who we all thought he was then what should we think of his works?

There were two sides to this argument.  The first side thought that we could look past a flawed man to embrace his works.  One person asked, "Does the character of Bukowski or Pound ruin their works?"  A fair question.  Without a doubt, these were great writers.  On the other side of the argument was a much more contemporary figure: Bill Cosby.  It would be hard to appreciate The Cosby Show knowing what we know about Bill Cosby now.  In that situation, the legacy of the man seems to have ruined the works.

I'm not sure there are any correct answers here.  Sometimes great works transcend the people who write them.  Sometimes great works are destroyed by them.  There was no universal consensus on Frost or Oates, and most everyone had very mixed feelings on the story, but we all walked away with a greater perspective.

Pulitzer Dialogues in Gallup

"The Plague of Doves" @ Octavia Fellin Library (Part II)

In an earlier post, I mentioned one the more confusing plot points in Louise Erdrich's "The Plague of Doves" and how our group discussed it.  While I thought this was the most interesting part of our discussion, it was far from the only one.  Here, I'm going to run through some other topics we discussed.  If you ever find yourself in a book club with "The Plague of Doves" in front of you, these are all great aspects to bring up!

Early in the discussion, religion was brought up, and differing religions in the story play a central role in many ways.  Mooshum and Father Cassidy argue over elements of Catholicism and Mooshum's soul.  From sexuality to transubstantiation, Mooshum takes Father Cassidy's beliefs and turns them around.  In a similar situation, snakes and doves seem to have their roles reversed from what they would be in traditional Christianity.  Marn Wolde describes the snakes as having "judgement in them... And they have love"  (p160).  On the other hand, a swarm of doves is described devouring crops and crushing houses on the first page of the book.  That's not even getting into the cult founded by Billy Peace.

We found that characters were constantly haunted by the past, particularly their crimes or sins, and just as frequently they end up trying to avoid those ghosts as long as they can.  As a major spoiler, the man who committed the crime three Native men were executed for spends his entire life trying to avoid a meeting with the sole survivor of his murderous actions, only to be nursed to health by her.  John Wildstrand forces Billy Peace into kidnapping his wife.  As a result of this, Billy flees the town, joins the army, and founds a cult.

While these were just a couple of the topics we touched upon, there were a lot more.  Race and sexual identity both came up, particularly in relation to Evelina.  We touched on how the characters in the book deal with trauma and how labels/identities change how they perceive each other.  There was a lot in "The Plague of Doves." It was a great discussion and I think everyone in the group would highly recommend it.

"The Plague of Doves" Discussion @ Octavia Fellin Library

I'm pretty sure everyone else has moved on to the next book in the Pulitzer series, but I want to linger on "The Plague of Doves" for a while.  The Octavia Fellin Library Pulitzer Discussion Group read through Louise Erdrich's novel this week and found a lot to unpack, and I'm going to take a couple posts to do that.  So let's start off with the one thing that left everyone head scratching: Doctor Cordelia Lochren.

This is the point where you shouldn't keep reading if you haven't finished the book.

A lot of information about Dr. C is revealed towards the end of the book and one thing that really stood out to our readers was the fact that she wouldn't treat Natives.

"She had let it be known, generally, that she would not treat our people.  They all knew why.  It was more than your garden variety bigotry.  There was history involved..." p.292

This person had been Judge Coutts' lover and she had treated him in the past, but it is revealed to him that she "had turned people down - even in a crisis." For the Judge, this is an epiphany.  His ex never wanted to be seen with him and she would never stay with him because she has a deep-seated hatred, something "more than your garden variety bigotry."  It answers all his questions and the scales are lifted from his eyes... Sort of.

The very next chapter, we get Cordelia's perspective on the matter, and it ends up being a lot more than that garden variety bigotry.

"One thing shamed her, only, one specific paralysis.  She was known to turn Indians away as patients; it was thought that she was a bigoted person.  In truth, she experienced an unsteady weakness in their presence.  It seemed beyond her control..." p.298

For the readers in our group, this explanation was slightly less than satisfying.  She clearly didn't hate them from her perspective, but feeling an "unsteady weakness" didn't really justify abandoning one's Hippocratic Oath in a crisis.  Some thought that the complex feelings she had towards Natives and especially the Judge should have made her more willing to help them.

Having a long standing hatred, as the Judge was taught to believe seemed the more logical answer in many ways.  Cordelia's truth was muddier, like many truths in the book, and really gave our group pause.

Join the Reading Challenge at Octavia Fellin Library

5 Pulitzers in 5 Months!

To commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize, Octavia Fellin Public Library is one of six libraries across New Mexico to partner with the New Mexico Humanities Council, bringing a very special reading grant to our communities.

We invite you to join us as we read and discuss five Pulitzer winning and nominated books beginning in May 2016.  

The novels chosen for this challenge are:
Beloved by Toni Morrison 
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates 
The Stories of John Cheever 
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 

Discussions will be held on the Tuesdays listed above in the Main Library Meeting Room. To reserve your place in the discussions and pick up a copy of the books visit the library beginning April 11th or contact us by phone: 505-863-1291. Registration for all groups begins Monday, April 11, 2016 at the Main Branch of the Library, 115 West Hill Avenue, Gallup, NM. Please stop by to fill out a signup form and receive your books and informational materials. 

Our facilitator for the discussions is Gallup resident Lynn Huenemann. Lynn is a former elementary, high school and college teacher in the fields of World Music, Cultural Studies and Education. He is a past faculty member of University of New Mexico, Diné College, and Arizona State University.
Visit our Reading Guide for quick and easy insights into the books and authors on our reading list!

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