2010 Reading #32: The House on Mango Street

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
31. Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley.

32. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. A novel, or a cycle of short-shorts, or a prose poem? I experienced it more as the last, but it could be any of those things. A meditation on childhood, poverty, race, and gender; sometimes giddy, sometimes heavy with tragedy. Small without being slight.

2010 Reading #33: Justice League of America, Volume 2

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
31. Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley.
32. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

33. Justice League of America, Volume 2 by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, et al. Either Fox or his superiors must have realized, at some point, that the pattern of 1. Strange New Villain/Unexpected Return of Old Villain who 2. Stumbles Upon Seemingly Unbeatable Power/Has Seemingly Unbeatable Diabolical Plan but is foiled when the JLers 3. Suddenly Switch Tactics/Reveal That They Anticipated Everything And Had the Fight Won Before It Even Started--you know, that pattern--was getting a bit stale. Here are new members, team-ups with the Justice Society of Earth-2, and fewer attempts to shoehorn every single member into every single issue. It's still a bit repetitive, but I guess I'm making allowances because it's unlikely that anyone involved expected that any nearly-40-year-old-dudes would be sitting around 40 years later reading these collected issues with a critical eye.

Setting

On the way to the library I walked past the site of the Hollow, which was an informal neighborhood playground back in the day. Nowadays there's an apartment high-rise standing there, overlooking I-94. A block beyond that, there's a Head Start facility, where little kids drove tricycles around a track with expressions of sheer delight on their faces.

At the Rondo library branch I returned a graphic novel, a book of letters written during the Great Depression that was too depressing to finish, a conspiracy-theory book about a plot to overthrow FDR that was more interesting in theory than in fact, and a municipal report about some riots here in 1968 that no one seems to remember. I picked up another graphic novel. I think the girl at the counter thinks I never read anything but comics.

After that I tried to walk along the route of old Rondo Street towards downtown, along the route the streetcars used to travel. Most of Rondo was renamed Concordia, but around Arundel the interstate curves and Concordia swerves to follow what used to be Carroll Avenue. I crossed over I-94 four times during the walk, and for the life of me I could not picture the quiet, tree-lined avenue that existed before that trench of wind and metal was dug.

Yesterday Gwyn (more on her later) said she thought the reason I was stalled out on the novel was that I was barking up the wrong tree. I thought, well sure, but which tree, and how do I find the right one? But today I thought about it. I am steeped in place. My head is full of history; I'm seeing everything in four dimensions. But I'm obsessing over the interior upholstery while mice are building nests in the engine.

Too much setting, not enough story.