It was great to get out last night and get together with my book group. We’re all moms of young kids and occasionally it happens that the energy level is a bit low on a Tuesday night. But last night we had a jolly time, including a very energetic discussion of Martha Beck’s memoir, Expecting Adam.

Martha Beck and her husband were high-powered fast-track ultra-competitive super-rational PhD students at Harvard when she accidentally-on-purpose became pregnant with their second child. Amnio came back positive for Down Syndrome, a particularly devastating diagnosis for this couple whose entire value system revolved around intellectual achievement. The memoir details the course of her pregnancy, during which she had numerous mystical/spiritual experiences that led her to the realization that life isn’t always rational, slow down and smell the flowers, enjoy each day, etc.

I must confess I had a strong aversion to this book before I even opened it. Because of the title. Have you noticed how many recent book and movie titles take the form of “Transitive verb ending in -ing” plus “Proper noun”? Those two-word titles are a sure warning that herein lies trendy pretentiousness. That’s my theory, anyway, and this particular Verbing Noun book did not prove me wrong.

Mainly, I did not like the flip, breezy tone. I felt at times as though I was reading a blog. As a blog, I’d have probably bookmarked it; it was indeed entertaining. But given the profound, life-changing nature of her story, the flippancy felt inappropriate. Other members of my group pointed out that her reason for writing the book was to convince other super-rational intellectual overachievers that she was not some wacko accustomed to having visions of angels, hence the snarky humor. Whereas I, who am quite open to the possibility of such things, need no convincing and would have preferred a deeper and more respectful exploration.

Also, the veracity of this “memoir” has been called into question. Was her marriage as happy as she portrayed it? Or was it dissolving even as she wrote? Etc., etc. According to the introduction, she originally wrote it as a novel and no publisher would accept it. Only when she called it a memoir . . . sound familiar? John Baker commented yesterday that “we, as readers, depend on categories to shape our understanding of texts.” Certainly that’s true for this book.

Next month’s book: Invitation to a Beheading.

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I know I’ve probably lost all credibility in the late-nineteenth century American novel department because I actually liked The Virginian despite its flaws, but I just have to tell you that so far (page 60) Esther and I are getting on like wildfire.

This novel by Henry Adams is my current Penguin Classic and it is a trip! Though published in 1884 it feels quite contemporary: it’s full of witty banter, religious skepticism, social satire, and a strong feminist streak. And if that’s not enough to suck you in, one of the characters is a paleontologist! :) Interestingly, Adams originally published this novel under a female pseudonym. I would be very curious to know how Jane Austen fans (I’m not one) would feel about this book. Esther is a slim volume and an easy read; I’d love it if anyone would care to join me. Here’s a little taste, from page one. They are at church.

[The biblical King] Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this new temple to-day a perceptible interest in religion. One might almost have said that religion seemed to be a matter of concern.

Heh heh!

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Do I seem to be contradicting myself? I censure Expecting Adam for its flippant treatment of spiritual matters while I praise Esther for the same. Ah, but there’s a world of difference between the two. I shouldn’t have put them together in the same post. Anyway, like Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes.