{"id":541,"date":"2008-04-14T07:09:28","date_gmt":"2008-04-14T15:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/2008\/04\/14\/novel-love\/"},"modified":"2008-04-14T07:09:28","modified_gmt":"2008-04-14T15:09:28","slug":"novel-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/2008\/04\/novel-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Novel love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/erica_1bw.jpg\" alt=\"Erica Eisdorfer.\" width=\"161\" height=\"226\" align=\"left\"\/><br \/>\n<em><strong>By Erica Eisdorfer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Recently, I made the mistake of giving my 11-year-old daughter a copy of <em>The Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Miscellany<\/em> by Matthew Morgan. Mistake? I jest. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really a mistake: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that now she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s delighted to deliver such tidbits as, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mom, a billion seconds ago you were a child.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m grappling with whether I can push my reading glasses for one more month before I take the bifocal plunge. A billion seconds? Tick-tock. <\/p>\n<p><!--more-->But you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need a miscellany to provide you with a fact; not at all. Recently, this same daughter asked me what exactly lox is anyhow (an excellent question). \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Smoked salmon,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I told her, which made her nod. She then expounded on her knowledge of how to smoke meat \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the hollow tree, the proper weather \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all gleaned from her reading of Little House on the Prairie, a novel. <\/p>\n<p>Every once in a while it occurs to me that almost everything of consequence<br \/>\nI know, I know from novels. The Hindu-Muslim strife under Indira Ghandi? <em>A Fine Balance<\/em> by Rohinton Mistry. The birth of our country? <em>The Sot Weed Factor<\/em> by John Barth. Iceland in the twentieth century? <em>Independent People<\/em> by Halldor Laxness. Poverty in Martinique? <em>Texaco<\/em> by Patrick Chamoiseau.<\/p>\n<p>But what I know from novels isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t limited to facts (like the billion seconds) nor to historical\/cultural incidents. What novels have taught me ranges the gamut from personal belief to moral behavior. For example, after years of bewilderment about my personal religious beliefs, I read <em>Kaaterskill Falls<\/em> by Allegra Goodman, about a community of Jews of varying devoutness, and felt better. Raymond Carver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Small Good Thing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reminded me of what it looks like when good people face their mistakes. The great Doris Lessing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <em>The Golden Notebook<\/em> cemented my feminist convictions. <em>Alias Grace<\/em> by Margaret Atwood reminded me of what a liar looks like. And even <em>The Wind Up Bird Chronicle<\/em> by the brilliant Haruki Murakami bolstered one of my most cherished convictions: that increasingly often, excess really hits the spot. <\/p>\n<p>Given a choice, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll always read a novel. I admire the nonfiction readers of the world and have certainly benefited from what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read of it. (<em>Mountains Beyond Mountains! My Own Country!<\/em>) But I have found, in my reading life, that what happened in someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s imagination is sometimes precisely what I have needed to help me figure out what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important or beautiful or terrible about these few billion seconds I can call my own. <\/p>\n<p><em>Erica Eisdorfer is a writer and manager of Bulls Head Bookshop who lives in Carrboro. Her novel The Wet Nurse\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tale was recently named as one of Amazon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s top ten Breakthrough Novels.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Erica Eisdorfer Recently, I made the mistake of giving my 11-year-old daughter a copy of The Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Miscellany by Matthew Morgan. Mistake? I jest. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really a mistake: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that now she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s delighted to deliver such tidbits as, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mom, a billion seconds ago you were a child.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m grappling with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}