• Google the famous line from Madame Bovary — “… human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity” — and you’ll find it rendered into English numerous ways. Reading the variations one after another it becomes amusing to imagine they’re the result of a writer fiddling endlessly with a single sentence: adding, deleting, shuffling, and then changing everything back again.
First draft:
… language is a cracked kettle on which we bang our tunes to make bears dance, when what we long for is to move the stars to pity.
After a little tinkering:
. . . human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.
“Cracked tin black kettle”? No. Also, “long for”? Calm down there, Heathcliff:
“… human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when what we want is to move the stars to pity.”
Strunk the end of that sentence and we’re there:
“… human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity”
At which point the author begins to wonder if the sentence didn’t really sound better with “hammer” after all.
• I was thinking about that quote last night. I’ve been reading Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya, which collects the letters of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson during the years of their “bilaterally condescending friendship.” The back-and-forth is entertaining, and reading it I feel great affection for both men but especially old Volodya, with his superciliousness and his puns and his gliding fleet-footedness. And yet admiring him sometimes makes me feel a little like a seal barking after an opera singer, all enthusiasm and flippers, which was what brought to mind Flaubert’s dancing bears.
A couple good bits from the letters to bark at you, the first from a 1942 letter:

I have just had a visit from the secretary of the man — whatever his name — who wrote something called Tobacco Road and who is now writing a novel of Soviet Life. Vous voyez ca d’ici. He wanted to know the English spelling of “nemetzky,” “collhoz” (which he writes “kholholtz”) and such things. The hero is called Vladimir. All very simple. I was half impelled by my private devil to palm him a set of obscene words which he would use for “good morning” and “good night.” (e.g. “Razyebi tvoyu dushu,” said V. gravely.)

In the annotations, the book’s editor Simon Kardinsky identifies this last phrase as “a violent but untranslatable Russian obscenity.”
Another letter, written that same year, describes various “aberrations of Homo sap” met during a lecture tour of American universities:

1) Woman teaching Drama. Hobby: resemblance to the Duchess of Windsor. The resemblance is rather striking. When the Duchess (according to press photos) changes her coiffure, she changes it too (keeping up with her model, as some mimetic butterflies are known to do). Classifies the people she meets into a) those who mention the likeness at once; b) those who take some time to realize it; c) those who speak of it only to a third party; d) (the best) those who, in her presence, automatically refer to Wally without consciously defining the association of thoughts; and e) those who ignore it — or do not see it. She is a spinster with a few Windsors in the past, and this hobby of hers is what makes life worth living.

• This Times of London story about a secret society of rooftop climbers at Cambridge has stayed with me ever since reading about it at Light Reading last weekend. The article mentions an antique book, The Night Climbers of Cambridge, authored by “Whipplesnaith” and published in 1937. The book is now out of print but can still be read online. (I’ve read it and plan to use its advice to scale the Methodist church up the block later today.)
• Michael Chabon reads from his new novel, Gentlemen of the Road.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of gadding about lately with family and friends. The plan is to hunker down and work hard on the book for the next six weeks before the holidays start and the Festival of Peppermint Schnapps begins. But this past week’s break from the hermit lifestyle has been welcome. A few highlights:
• On Saturday, Roy Kesey came to Malaprop’s to sign copies of his new collection of short stories, All Over, a book which also marks the debut of the Dzanc imprint. Mr. Tingle and I went downtown to hover uncomfortably over Kesey at his signing table for a bit, then went with him, fab Dzanc publicist (and recent Asheville transplant) Lauren Snyder, and her charming feller Seth up the street to the Sky Bar.
The Sky Bar consists of three balconies (read: glorified fire escapes) hung off the side of the Flat Iron Building, one of Asheville’s best buildings. About the rickety dilapidated glories of the Flat Iron all I can say is that if you ever wanted to open a detective agency where you hoped to solve cases despite an ongoing problem with whiskey and women, this is where you would hang your shingle. I used to keep an office here — used to even sleep there when on deadline — and it was odd to ride the familiar hand-operated elevator up to the top of the building and have it open not on dusty offices, but a Euro-flavored bar selling Tanqueray and espresso. But the views are great — facing west, with downtown below and the mountains beyond — and the drinks, as Lauren noted, are poured with a generous hand.
The company was excellent, with the conversation ranging across everything from the travel writing of Pico Iyer to the perils of entertaining with asparagus and cranberry liqueurs. Previous to his book with Dzanc, I only knew Kesey from his dispatches for McSweeney’s, but he’s someone you can talk to for only a short time and feel like you’ve known much longer. I believe it’s part of the training of a diplomat’s spouse.
In addition to his collection, you can find a story by Roy in this year’s Best American Short Stories, edited by Stephen King, and I also recommend this interview he conducted with George Saunders, even though there he’s the interviewer, not the subject.
• On Sunday, the lovely Cinetrix made a visit to the mountains, and we went to see a matinee of Darjeeling Limited at the plush Fine Arts Theatre. Watched alone, on iTunes, I found the movie’s prequel, “The Hotel Chevalier,” stultifying and a little creepy. It becomes much more meaningful when seen in tandem with Darjeeling, when the stultification and claustrophobia seem more purposeful, less a byproduct of an overly curatorial director, and give way to ravishing color and the open vistas in the movie’s finale. (See the Cinetrix’s remarks about the film.)
Afterward we moseyed around downtown in the dusk, hopping into Malaprop’s to admire the books and then creating an inadvertent Indian theme to the day by dining at Mela, where we drank pints of Guinness, ate green peppers so hot they temporarily gave me the ability to “see through time,” and were waited on by the Unctuous Homunculus whose attempts to upsell us on our ordering were to little avail. (The appropriate Simpsons reference was Trixie’s, natch.)
• Then Halloween! My favorite holiday, my husband’s least. I played hooky from writing class, and we went out for the traditional Hallloween sushi. Then Mr. Tingle (very tolerantly) chauffeured me on various field trips related to my novel. Asheville is low on sidewalks and so trick-or-treaters tend to congregate in great hordes along a few major streets. As we clipped along Montford on our researches our car’s headlights kept picking up bits of shiny costumes and yards overrun with princesses and dinosaurs.
When we got home we built a fire off the deck and sat outside, drinking coffee and eating candy; each year we have a giant bowl full, and each year we get no trick or treaters and must eat the candy: It’s a vicious cycle. Our yard is heavily wooded, but there’s a clearing around the back, and so the fire had room to shoot up and the stars were popping out of the sky because it was so chilly. Then we went in and watched To Die For (still marvelous) and made lists and notes until it was time for bed. A very quiet evening, but one of the nicest Halloweens I’ve spent.

• A profile of Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch in The Observer explores how the magazine is changing to flourish in the post-Plimpton era.
• Lately, Jerry Seinfeld has been reminding me of the retired guy who doesn’t want to be retired. You know the type — the former titan who roams around the house looking for something to do, people to chat up, a “Bee” movie to promote.* Another new hobby: Calling people “wacko” on national tv. (Via Syntax of Things.)
• Yesterday, walking in the woods I came across a giant orange spider with black-and-white striped legs (like tights!) hanging in a web across the trail. Looking it up on the Web later I came across this photo essay on Vietnamese spiders. Spiders are so strange and beautiful in close-up, and the ones shown here should be good for a couple post-Halloween chills.
I still haven’t been able to identify my spider, the tangerine glob, although the one that appears in this fuzzy YouTube footage looks to be the same type. Except mine was prettier and kinder in the face.

• Slate plays the excellent parlor game of asking authors like Amy Bloom, Laura Lippman and John Crowley to name “The Great Books We Haven’t Read.” Mark me down as having never gotten past page 2 of Swann’s Way, which I remember (perhaps erroneously) as having something to do with lying awake in bed and which always puts me to sleep in mine. I’ve tried three times now — I’m like the climber who shows up at Everest every spring amid great pomp and with lots of gear and never gets past base camp.
• Speaking of great books not yet read, I’ve also been enjoying Critical Mass’s Critical Library series, which has convinced me to finally get a copy of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis.

On Sunday, Mr. Tingle and I had brunch with my parents. There was a brief lull in the conversation and then my mom said very brightly and apropos of nothing, “Gumdrop and Lillian are going to rob Snoopy.”
I thought she’d suffered some sort of mental break until she reminded me she was reading my copy of Away.

5 x 5 Books … is a recommendation of five books that appears regularly in this space. As a special treat, today’s installment is a two-parter. First up is a 5×5 of spooky Halloween books recommended by Kelly Link, author of the knockout collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners and a connoisseur of strange, creepy, marvelous books. Just below you’ll find a second 5×5 of not-so-spooky alternative recommendations written by Gavin Grant, Link’s husband and co-founder with her of one of my favorite imprints, Small Beer Press.
1. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill. One of the best collections I’ve read in years. For Halloween reading, I particularly recommend the stories “Best New Horror,” “My Father’s Mask,” and “Voluntary Committal.”
2. Thirsty by M. T. Anderson. This young adult novel begins this way: “In the spring, there are vampires in the wind. People see them scuffling along by the side of country roads. At night, they move through the empty forests. They do not wear black, of course, but things they have taken off bodies or bought on sale. The news says that they are mostly in the western part of the state, where it is lonely and rural. My father claims we have them this year because it was a mild winter, but he may be thinking of tent caterpillars.”
3. Novels by Robin Westall, stories by E.F. Benson, and some Aiken too. I don’t know if Westall’s young adult horror novels The Watch House and The Scarecrows are still in print, but you can probably track them down. Track them down! Westall also wrote several collections of ghost stories in the tradition of E. F. Benson and M. R. James. Speaking of Benson, Carroll & Graf put out The Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson a few years ago, and I love this edition best of all because it includes a foreword by Joan Aiken. And if you’re already a fan of E. F. Benson, then you ought to pick up Joan Aiken’s short story collections. I could continue to cram recommendations into this paragraph, but then I’d never get to …
4. Cruddy by Lynda Barry. This one’s part Grimm’s fairytale (starts grim and gets grimmer), part Grand Guignol, part Jim Thompson-style grifters on the road. Mud and blood by the buckets, sock monkeys stuffed with money, and a knife named Little Debbie. Pair this with Patricia Geary’s Strange Toys.
5. Flanders by Patricia Anthony. Lastly, I’ll recommend this wonderful WWI epistolary novel by Patricia Anthony. There are ghosts here, and a serial killer, and a mysterious figure in a garden. I’ve been waiting ever since for Anthony to write another novel, but in the meantime I reread this one every other year or so.

Of course, not everyone who sees a haunted house wishes to enter. With some less ghoulish recommendations, here is writer Gavin Grant, who is the founder with Kelly Link of Small Beer Press. Gavin’s list, you’ll note, is 100 percent ghost-and-goblin-free. Or is it?
1. Liquor, Prime, and Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite. Brite’s series of sort-of-mysteries set in New Orleans make a wonderful break from horror novels. Beginning with Liquor, she tells the story of two young cooks who, inspired by their own prodigious drinking, decide to start a restaurant where every dish will feature liquor of some sort. Great characters, great city, great fun.
2. Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson. This one’s a perennial favorite recommendation and should help keep you from noticing the Halloween ghouls. Half the readers in the country seem to have worked in a bookshop at some point or other which will make the start of this brilliant graphic novel easily recognizable. But the real genius here is that the book collects a comic written over a decade so that none of the characters follows the paths you might expect.
3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Slightly darker, but not in a ghosts’n’goblins manner is this novel by Diaz, a hilarious, tragic, immersive smashing together of many cultures. Oscar and Junior are college roommates who shouldn’t get on with each other, and often don’t. It’s brutal and fantastic.
4. Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan. OK, this one might be just right for the holiday (although I’d argue it’s right for any holiday). Lanagan’s collections are mind-boggling things. Her first, Black Juice, won an amazing amount of awards. Published as a young adult book, Red Spikes is her third collection (after White Time) and contains enough timeless tales of terror (sorry!) to keep you up all night.
5. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. Paul Farmer’s a hard-working hero who has spent his life battling against poor health conditions all over the world. You could do worse than reading these five books from the library and sending $50 to Partners in Health.