Becca's Book Blog

Genuine literary discernment is often a liability in editors.

2009-09-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've completely forsaken this blog. It's sad. To tide you (all 10 of you) over until my next post, an excerpt from this interesting article (Redactor Agonistes By DANIEL MENAKER):

3. Genuine literary discernment is often a liability in editors. And it should be -- at least when it is unaccompanied by a broader, more popular sensibility it should be. When you are trying to acquire books that hundreds of thousands of people will buy, read, and like, you have to have some of the eclectic and demotic taste of the reading public. I have this completely unfounded theory that there are a million very good -- engaged, smart, enthusiastic -- generalist readers in America. There are five hundred thousand extremely good such readers. There are two hundred and fifty thousand excellent readers. There are a hundred and twenty-five thousand alert, active, demanding, well-educated (sometimes self-well-educated), and thoughtful -- that is, literarily superb -- readers in America. More than half of those people will happen not to have the time or taste for the book you are publishing. So, if these numbers are anything remotely like plausible, refined taste, no matter how interesting it may be, will limit your success as an acquiring editor. It's not enough for you to be willing to publish "The Long Sad Summer of Our Hot Forsaken Love," by Lachryma Duct, or "Nuke Anbar Province, and I Mean Now!," by Genralissimo Macho Picchu -- you have to actually like them, or somehow make yourself like them, or at least make yourself believe that you like them, in order to be able to see them through the publishing process.

April Wheeler and Tessie Hutchinson

2009-07-31T05:32:00.001-07:00

Read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" HERE.

I'm the internet's least consistent blogger. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, on to this post!

Revolutionary Road spoiler alerts ahead!

Almost immediately in both Revolutionary Road and "The Lottery", the reader realizes she's entered a world populated by characters wrestling indoctrinations, by people timid but eager to slough the burden of dated, sometimes dangerous, groupthink.

In Revolutionary Road, a suburban complicity, a "tacit agreement to live in a total state of self-deception" is quickly established, especially amongst the four characters, young married couples The Wheelers and The Campbells, struggling hardest to imagine themselves as separate from the environment that defines them, "as members of an embattled, dwindling intellectual underground", "painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture". The novel opens to reveal a changing town, consolidated and newly industrialized, and a group of culturally aware young adults, The Laurel Players, to which The Wheelers and The Campbells belong, but with which they refuse to be lastingly associated. With the lips of this chasm, one separating traditional expectations from new sensibilities, The Wheelers and Campbells flirt cautiously; still bound by the customs and proprieties of the community they resent, the young revolutionaries find solace in only the smallest, most private rebellions.

Similarly, in "The Lottery", a village of people governed by habit are introduced. The villagers gather on a particular day, what the reader quickly gathers is an annual tradition, every year "of course", and fall into place almost instinctively, while we adjust our feet to their rhythm, to conduct the eponymous lottery.

Like The Wheelers and Campbells of Revolutionary Road, there are those among the villagers prepared to quietly question the status quo.

"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody."

In both stories it is made clear, even before any consequences are explicitly defined, that dissenters will not have an easy time publicly rejecting accepted norms - which brings me to April Wheeler and Tessie Hutchinson: two women who meet tragic ends after (bravely? foolishly?) deciding to act against expectations. Each woman steps beyond her role as wife, mother, woman and pays for these usurpations with her life.

April Wheeler, wife of Frank Wheeler, decides, against her husband's will, in a defiant "denial of womanhood" to abort the couple's third child, because the pregnancy hinders The Wheelers' plan to abandon suburbia in favor of Europe, the universal panacea of unsatisfied Americans in the world of Revolutionary Road, and because she realizes, from her end at least, that her marriage is truly loveless. Tessie Hutchinson, wife of Bill Hutchinson, decides to make a spectacle of herself before her entire village, by protesting the lottery's proceedings, which, as she is promptly reminded, is not how things work.

"Be a good sport, Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same chance."

"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.

For her noncooperation, Tessie wins the lottery... whose prize is death by stoning. The morality of this (centuries old?) practice is as resolute as is it horrific and archaic. No, the lottery isn't fixed - and Tessie is not chosen by any artful design of her peers, but her punishment, if judged against the expectations of the world she inhabits, is fitting. April too dies at the end of Revolutionary Road, due to complications of her the late term abortion she secretly performs on herself. And the story couldn't have ended (as successfully) any other way. The message is that women who step out of traditional roles are exposing themselves to criticism, risking social isolation, and in Revolutionary Road (1961) and "The Lottery" (1946), committing a most literal form of self-sabotage. It's important to include that, while ironic, and in the case of "The Lottery" allegorical, both of these stories provide valuable commentary on and insight into not only the historical roles of women, but the unattainable standards and unbearable pressures associated with attempting to shed blindly accepted traditions.

Despite all of their protestations and aspirations to conquer the depths by which they're swallowed, The Wheelers, Campbells, and Hutchinsons are very much defined by, and in some cases, content to behave within (or afraid or unable to disobey) the limits assigned them.

Watch a short film adaptation of The Lottery and the trailer for the Revolutionary Road feature film below (I've got to see this movie eventually!):

My sole issue with Revolutionary Road

2009-07-31T02:19:00.000-07:00

I loved Revolutionary Road, have had the paperback for 6 months and completely destroyed it; it's been written in, dog-eared, ripped, wrinkled, taped, and devoured. I'm not even the 1000th person to believe this, I'm sure, but, Richard Yates created a masterpiece - and Tennessee Williams agreed, according to his quote on the book's back cover.

In my blog header, I announced that I'm making a(n independent! thanks FAFSA!) study of great writing in my hopes of becoming a great writer. What I can't decide, though, is if that means I'll be focusing more on the matter of the things I read, or the manner in which they're written - if it makes ANY sense to separate the two. Most of the things I have to say about Revolutionary Road deal with themes, character development, correlations I discover between elements of the novel and other things I've read, etc - and very few with the intricacies of Yates' masterful prose.

I know I like the book and there's no doubt that it's beautifully and expertly written, but it's proving difficult to dissect and understand (mechanically?) WHY I enjoy this book as much as I do. Perhaps, I've taken the J.V. Cunningham quote (also in the blog banner) too literally. Yates isn't given to syntactical or descriptive indulgences, and if I had breezed through the novel, I may have even thought that Revolutionary Road was written plainly or that it read coldly - and I would have been wrong.

I could probably fill a month's worth of posts with the things I liked about Yates' writing (have I just contradicted myself?): the anthropomorphic descriptions of cars in the first chapter - "foolishly misplaced", "unnecessarily wide" that "crawled apologetically" to their destinations - illuminating character experiences, the story's setting paralleling character developments, synesthetic descriptions and sense triggers - the "yellow smell" of sawdust causing Frank to recall the humiliation of his father's scolding, the "bright yellow pain of [Frank's] real awakening" -, the use of questions and indirect discourse to create group identities, highlight character conflicts, and act as a Greek chorus or supplementary narrator. And I could go on and on and on. And will in future posts.

But this post is about the one thing, the sole thing, about that troubled me: Yates' tendency to state, explicitly, through dialogue or narrator(/author?) interpretations, the significance of his own devices, symbols, themes, etc. At first, this absolutely thrilled me! I'd jot down a note, and pages, sometimes paragraphs or even lines later, there would be my note in the novel's very text (of course, stated infinitely more succinctly and eloquently). It assured me I was reading the book the right way - whatever that means. If I came to the same conclusions as the book's author/narrator, my reading was on the right track... no problems, right? RIGHT?

I thought so the first two or three times it happened and resisted becoming alarmed until the third to last chapter, page 320, where I scratched in the margins, and to my surprise - angrily, DO I LOVE OR HATE YATES' STATING HIS DEVICES THE WAY HE DOES?

Hate??? Surely, I couldn't HATE anything about Revolutionary Road. Could I? Well, that's what I wrote. And here is the sentence that prompted my marginal scribblings:

Then you discovered you were working at life the way the Laurel Players worked at The Petrified Forest, or the way Steve Kovick worked at his drums - earnest and sloppy and full of pretension and all wrong;...

Maybe it's because it reminds me of what I hated most about certain academic writing - the horrid and forced repetition, the restating of the thesis - which always felt patronizing. Can we not assume the readers of our essays (most likely our teachers or professors) get the gist of the thing the first time around, or the second? Must we subject ourselves and our audience to a superficial rewording of the obviously and already stated? Now, I'm 100% sure this is not what Yates is doing, but flashbacks from my brushes with academia (Full Disclosure: I've left two colleges so far and am headed for a third, Shimer, in the Spring) sprang forward after my ninth and and tenth happenings upon these moments in Revolutionary Road.

The first instance occurred on page 45 - here, April Wheeler has just cut the grass while Frank was sleeping and hung-over from drinking the night after an argument between them:

Everything about her seemed determined to prove, with a new, flat-footed emphasis, that a sensible middle-class housewife was all she had ever wanted to be and that all she had ever wanted to love was a husband who would get out and cut the grass once in a while, instead of sleeping all day.

Because earlier in the book, it's made clear that April has no interest in being a "sensible middle-class housewife" and, in fact, feels "trapped" by her environment, I made this note: ex post facto modification of expectations, to minimize failures – also in this case to make Frank feel the full magnitude of her disappointment in his shortcomings. I'm not embarrassed to say that I was proud of myself for having come up with and noticed this, and more for fitting it into the margin legibly. Imagine how impressed with myself I was when I read this on page 54, a mere 9 pages later: "[Frank] laboriously pried the stone out again and began hacking at the root."

HACKING AT THE ROOT???? (Frank is literally hacking at a root here to make way for a stone path he's installing on his property.) Well, that kind of sounds like moving the goal posts, which parallels that note I just took. Hmmmm, I may be on to something.

To confirm my suspicions that I was, indeed, the most brilliant reader of any novel of all time EVER, this on page 55: "...by now [Frank's] mind had mercifully amended the facts."

MERCIFULLY AMENDED THE FACTS!???! Exactly! Wow, this Yates guy really has the whole thing figured out!

Honestly, I think this post has helped me come to terms with what was troubling me. My other examples of this, and there are at least a dozen others, are pleasant, and reassuring (I may give them a separate post). I often feel like I'm reading in some isolated wilderness or vacuum - and that I'm posting my thoughts into the infinite void that is the internet - so for Yates to give me a little wink now and then is .... well... it's awesome!

And I'm vaguely aware that I'm probably inventing this entire phenomenon, so if that's the case, feel free to let me know in the comments.

(or that there is a name for what I've written about - echoes, parallels... something.)

We all need a little literary therapy... occasionally. This blog can be mine.

In other news, it's probably time I find a book club. Until I'm back in school, it's the waiting game (and blog posting game) for me.

I'll break up the Revolutionary Road stuff with thoughts on Wilfrid Sheed's Max Jamison, Montaigne's Essays, a few short stories by Black authors from Black Voices: An Anthology of Afro-American Literature, African-American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology, and The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, and Sherwood Anderson's Winseburg, Ohio.

"jolts me out of the present, for just a moment"

2009-07-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

In Amateur Reader's most recent post at Wuthering Expectations, he writes of a single sentence in George Eliot's Silas Marner that "jolts [him] out of the present, for just a moment."

Such sentences exist also in Revolutionary Road. The opening lines of Part 2:

There now began a time of such joyous derangement, of such exultant carelessness, that Frank Wheeler could never afterwards remember how long it lasted. It could have been a week or two weeks or more before his life began to come into focus, with its customary concern for the passage of time and its anxious need to measure and apportion it; and by then, looking back, he was unable to tell how long it had been otherwise.

Until this point, the narrative relies on events recounted chronologically by a third-person narrator, interspersed with illuminating character histories occurring before the action of the novel takes place. In the two above sentences, "afterwards" and "looking back" jolt me out of the present.

This is the first time in the book the prospect of any future for The Wheelers is made tangible, though Yates doesn't reveal whether Frank is "looking back" on this moment from Paris - or trapped, still, in his house on Revolutionary Road. Even without this disclosure, Yates' measured inclusion of "afterwards" and "looking back" means that Frank persists at least long enough to have forgotten how long the intoxication caused by the mere IDEA of Paris lasted.

Revolutionary Road's characters are given to extended hypotheticals: planning trips that may never happen, imagining lives that may never exist, pining for, fictionalizing, and romanticizing their pasts, insinuating themselves into superior peer groups... most of their vagaries impotent. This, coupled with a looming sense of menace, a "virus of calamity" just waiting to be consummated, provide no guarantee of the characters' survival, emotional or otherwise.

I was THRILLED, upon reading these two sentences, to find that Frank makes it to the future! AND remains lucid!

Nabokov on The Writing Reader vs. The Reading Writer (sort of)

2009-06-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

Again, Vladimir Nabokov expresses my sentiments better than I ever could (though it's ironic I'm finding so much enjoyment in the articulation of my thoughts in his words, as just after the passage below, Nabokov writes, "minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise" - to which I must reply, in the words of Marianne Moore, "I’ve always felt that if a thing has been said in the very best way, how can you say it better?"):

"Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction."

I'd tried to write something to this effect last month, and naturally, Nabokov's facility of thought and expression eclipses my fumbling, groping, sometimes fatuous ramblings. Nabokov is Nabokov for a reason.
=)

Also, this from Elizabeth Bishop, to make us all feel more foolish:

“I do not understand the nature of the satisfaction a completely accurate description or imitation of anything at all can give, but apparently in order to produce it the description or imitation must be brief, or compact, and have at least the effect of being spontaneous.”

Nabokov on Macro and Micro Reading

2009-06-24T01:15:00.001-07:00

I'm aware that though I arrive at my many made-up terms independently, the concepts they attempt to describe have existed for decades (centuries?).

Here's Vladimir Nabokov (from the essay in the post below, "Good Readers and Good Writers") on what I call macro and micro reading:

"In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected."

I agree! But this has never stopped me from formulating a (hypo)thesis about a book 13 pages in. It has prevented my posting about books before I read and reread them obsessively.

My mom sees I'm reading Revolutionary Road, the book open to a page littered with marginal scribblings (I'm a carnal, rather than a courtly lover of books). Then: Haven't you already read that, Becky? Of course I have! But now I'm READING it.

Again, Nabokov understands my actions and motives better than I or my mother - even after I try, futilely, to explain them:

"Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation."

Precisely!

There will be more substantive posts soon, though the beautiful Chicago summer slyly hints to me that "there are times when one is not in a disposition thoroughly to relish good writing."
(via Laudator Temporis Acti - from Charles Lamb in a 1796 letter to Coleridge)

I've not yet been afflicted with that disposition, but it's early in the season.

TESTING NEW GOOGLE BOOKS FEATURES!

2009-06-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

Am I the only person excited about the new Google Books features?

This is what I'm reading:

Nabokov's "Good Readers and Good Writers" from Lectures on Literature.

(added the essay to my short list after THIS entry @ Wisdom of the West)

Feel free to read along!

More info on Google Books updates HERE, HERE, and HERE.

The new features include embedding (see above), a more comprehensive search engine (to locate text within books, and the books themselves), more intuitive navigation, and a sleeker interface.

I, personally, LOVE the changes.

Also, Google Books has reached a landmark legal settlement allowing the service to provide online access to (potentially) millions more books than it previously could!

Self-Deprecation + Blogging?

2009-06-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

I've convinced a few people I know to take a look at this book blog of mine, and some short stories I've written, and "self-deprecation" came up more than once. I apparently think more meanly of my (slender?) skills in fiction writing than do my friends and family... not that I don't value their opinions.... That said, I won't be posting my prose here in the foreseeable future.

Self-deprecation can be tolerable if drenched in irony - and through this exercise, I've (again) discovered that conversely, if coming from a place of true uncertainly, self-deprecation can be uncomfortable( and ANNOYING!) to endure.

There is, unfortunately, little affliction of false modesty when I say I'm daunted by (and in awe of) the work and my readings of great novelists. I don't write these things with any latent assurance that I may one day accomplish that which now seems so beyond what I know of my talents. Perhaps this has been my learning to keep these doubts to myself.

I will have been blogging here for four months by late June and am still grappling with and groping for the right tone. The issue is, as things now stand, I have no other outlet to express or exorcise my thoughts, feelings, fears, and opinions about the things I read and write.

This passage from Nabokov's "Good Readers and Good Writers" (Lectures on Literature) better articulates one aspect of my fear of insipidity (it has many facets):

Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction. The various combinations these minor authors are able to produce within these set limits may be quite amusing in a mild ephemeral way because minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise. But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction.

That covers what could excite or sedate upon a macro-reading... Then there is the matter of writing WELL. This from a girl who feels her writing hasn't matured since she was 17 years old, when it was still novel and impressive.

I'll be back to writing about reading in no time.... so ignore my venting. No comments on this one because I don't really want to know what anyone thinks of this rant - in all its sincere, more than likely inappropriate disclosure.

Unrelated: I may be developing something of an affinity for Yates' work.

___________________

2009-06-11T23:37:00.001-07:00

There seems to be some occult providence dictating the things I happen to read. What other explanation could there be for a girl who makes reading lists, never abides them, yet constantly stumbles upon prose inexplicably supplementary to what she has last read?

While reading an article on Gawker today about shady and hastily assembled Craigslist Writing employment postings, I came across a blind link under this user comment: "Gosh, this is where we're heading, huh? Everyone should read this, then". I followed the blind link to what I quickly discovered was "Builders" from The Collected Short Stories of Richard Yates. Naturally, because I've been reading and enjoying Yates' Revolutionary Road, I dove into "Builders" - and in it I discovered familiar themes, discussions of which I will save for my posts about Revolutionary Road.

What struck me most was the story's male protagonist - and how, with all his misguided aggression toward his well-meaning wife, I could end the story not hating the character. I feel similarly about Revolutionary Road's Frank Wheeler. And here's why:

Just as Frank Wheeler resents in his wife the recognition of his own weaknesses, (the "suffering creature whose existence he tried every day of his life to deny but whom he knew as well and as painfully as he knew himself"), we as readers of Yates' work often find his characters repulsive because they amplify flaws we abhor in ourselves. From what I can tell, Yates' characters have a tendency to spin in the mud; in both stories of his I've read, the reader jumps into a mild hell in media res with characters who loathe themselves and their insignificance as much as we pity them for their lack of progress.

Bob Prentice in "Builders" models his life after and measures his talents and evolution as a writer against Hemingway. When Prentice is conned, his shame is only magnified by his realization that "Ernest Hemingway could never in his life have known... [his] own sense of being a fool." And he was serious.

I'm 22-years-old (the same age as Prentice in "Builders") and understand having idols and feeling inadequate. But seeing these perceived failings in Bob Prentice and Frank Wheeler makes them seem hilarious and trivial. These yard sticks that exist only in our own minds, to which we hold ourselves strictly accountable - become prohibitive neuroses - and frankly, it's hard to witness in others, even if the others are fictional.

So when a stumped Prentice, struggling with writer's block, reacts to his wife's suggestion that he stop trying so hard to be "literary" and "think of Irving Berlin" by saying he'd "give her Irving Berlin right in the mouth in about a minute, if she didn't lay off [him] and mind her own goddamn business," the feminist in me wants to continue the story resolved to dislike Bob Prentice - but the human in me can relate to misplaced anger and aggression, and especially hypersensitivity on the matter of others' opinions of my writing.

I'm finding it impossible to hate Yates' impossible characters, in short.

Update: On the Chicago Reader's Lit & Lectures homepage today, an article originally published by the paper in November 2003 was featured, written by J.R. Jones detailing his intimate history with Richard Yates and his interview for Blake Bailey's A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Works of Richard Yates. In the article is this quote: "...[Yates] could be disarmingly candid and grimly funny, especially regarding himself, and the compassion for life’s losers that made his stories heartbreaking was evident every time he spoke." Sounds about right.

Revolutionary Road posts up next....

"suffer[ing] from a terrible inertia"

2009-06-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to New Yorker Fiction Podcasts, first selecting those whose descriptions contain names I recognize. Yesterday, I downloaded Aleksandar Hemon's discussion of Bernard Malamud’s “A Summer’s Reading.”

I've met Hemon twice - both times in Chicago, the first when I was 17 and had just finished Nowhere Man, at a local reading and discussion of the book. We crossed paths again the next year at the 2005 Chicago Public Library Carl Sandburg Awards Dinner honoring John Updike (who I also met that night. He was gracious and signed not only the two-volume Rabbit series every attendee received, but the 3 other books of his I'd brought along; I later discovered my actions were inconsiderate and in terrible taste, but I had NO IDEA at the time and was simply thrilled to be in Updike's presence. Though, having reread the Rabbit, Run more recently, I've found my tastes quite changed.... ).

I was at the dinner with a friend, thanks to a kind benefactor, who understood two bright-eyed 18-year-olds with literary aspirations could have never afforded the night's price. She spotted Hemon before I did and crossed the room to accost him in the most untoward fashion. I, of course, followed, beaming. To our surprise and elation, he not only remembered meeting us both the previous year at his reading, but recalled our names.

Yesterday, as I listened to Hemon's discussion of Malamud's "A Summer's Reading", Deborah Treisman's description of the short story's protagonist as a young man who "seems to suffer from a terrible inertia" left me with a pang of guilt. Because of the timing, my present circumstances(, and youthful egotism?), and our brief (and probably, in my mind, exaggerated) history, my mind was convinced Hemon's (and Treisman's) words were a direct indictment of idleness.

I am moved to action.

???

2009-05-31T01:32:00.001-07:00

Do you ever get the feeling you're reading far too aggressively? So aggressively your collected notes seems the length of a Bible? So aggressively you wonder if you'll ever finish?

As I comb through Revolutionary Road again, I continue to happen upon things I at first missed. I can't say whether my reading has been a journey through a mine field or treasure trove - either way, I tread attentively, so as not to, at my peril or fortune, overlook anything of great consequence.

That's where I am.... so expect an influx of posts this week. THERE'S SO MUCH TO SAY.

!!!

2009-05-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

Forgive me, blog, for I have lapsed. It has been sixteen days since my last post, but presently I will be back with MANY things to say about Revolutionary Road, Max Jamison and all I've read during the last two and a half weeks.

=)

graphophobia!

2009-05-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

The fear of writing!

Do first drafts always read like excerpts from The Young Visiters? Or is it just me?

I'm exaggerating, but by how much I'm afraid I can't yet tell.

read The Young Visiters by 9-year-old Daisy Ashford here

The writing reader vs. The reading writer

2009-05-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

I'm stuck. For now, I'm a writing reader. I read great writing and write (here) about what I feel makes each piece great - in hopes that these studies will (soon) make me a reading writer, someone who can take what she has observed and apply it to her own work.

If the writer is an artist, the writing reader draws from sight, from a model... and I'm still studying anatomy, trying to locate the bone and muscle structures under the flesh of the thing. The masters have the biology internalized and have moved forward to establish unique styles. Master writing readers can each interpret the same model brilliantly, but the resulting works remain distinctive to each writing reader's own hand.

The reading writer draws from her imagination. She may refer to the rudiments of form when conceiving a work, and her art remains true to life, but is based on no one model. Her subjects are fictional.

I'm struggling to find the point where figure drawing, portrait painting, interpretation end - and illustration, conception, TRUE creation begin.

Analysis and observation are fine (and very instructing) for now. But I'm a fiction writer at heart.

Literary Present Tense

2009-05-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else in the world have TENSE ISSUES????

As I reread some of my posts - some from as recently as yesterday - I realize that the tense issues I've always noticed in my writing are, when I don't take care to curb them, as prevalent as they ever were.

This 'literary present tense' doesn't come naturally to me.

WORKING ON IT.

...So if you're reading this blog, try to overlook whatever inconsistencies in tense you may encounter. I'm *fixing* them now.

"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present."
Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale
Grey Gardens

The absence of men in Kristin Hunter's An Interesting Social Study

2009-05-06T10:25:00.001-07:00

Read An Interesting Social Study HERE and Susan Glaspell's Trifles HERE.

"I know how things can be--for women. ...We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things--it's all just a different kind of the same thing."
--from Trifles by Susan Glaspell (1916)

There are only three characters in Kristin Hunter's short story - a young, African-American woman, "the new resident", approximately 30 years old, and two older Caucasian women, Mrs. Powell and Corinna - and this story of learned acceptance over evening drinks would be complicated in the presence of men.

While talking on an open porch on the mid-1960s Cape May shore, the new and old residents find common ground and can judge each other (or learn not to) more accurately once they discover they're not so different.

Corinna mentions to the new resident that when she “was growing up, girls weren’t supposed to train for careers. [They] went to school to become young ladies. The schools [she] went to, National Cathedral and Finch, were mostly finishing schools.” Upon reflection, the new resident, who had completed her undergraduate studies at Spelman, a Historically Black University for Women, realizes Spelman is little more than the same, all three with their weekly tea parties and frivolous social engagements. The new resident, in disclosing her Bryn Mawr graduate studies, also gains the respect of Mrs. Powell who "went to Spence" and doesn't think anyone learned "a damn thing in those young-lady schools, especially in the South".

It's relatively simple for the three women to overlook their separating circumstances and find commonality, but among men, the new resident's approval might not have been as easily earned. Though the three women are divided (superficially) by class, race, wealth, and age, they're still, in a sense among their peers.

The new resident said softly, almost to herself, “I wanted a quiet place to work on my thesis this summer. That’s why I picked Cape May. Besides, I heard it was a pretty town.”

“Well, you came to the right place if you wanted quiet,” Mrs. Powell said, pouring herself another double slug of whiskey. “This town is so damn quiet it gets my nerves sometimes.”

In Susan Glaspell's 1916 drama, Trifles, a woman is suspected of killing her husband - and when two female neighbors accompany officials to the home in search of proof, the two find all they need: proof that the suspect had been oppressed and emotionally abused by her husband (manifested in erratic sewing, a canary with a snapped neck, the cessation of the woman's singing, for which she had once been known in the community). For this, they suppress the evidence against her, secretly repairing her stitchwork and stealing the canary's corpse, pardoning her crime because they, a jury of her peers, understand the stagnant oppression, the "stillness" she must have had to endure.

Similarly, the three women on the porch at Cape May during that mid-1960s summer, "a strong tide seem[ing] to have scattered the varicolored bodies of bathers as randomly as shells," couldn't possibly condemn one another for being of a different race, or for the sins of their forefathers. They find in each other friendship, understanding, hope - understandings that in the presence of men, would have been more difficult to achieve.

...And male characters would have elongated and complicated the fairly simple narrative. Its 8 pages could have easily become a novel with the hurdles the women would have had to overcome in reaching the same end.
=)

An Interesting Social Study by Kristin Hunter

2009-05-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

This is Becca's Book Blog's 29th post - but only its 2nd concerning a Black author, its 8th concerning the work of female authors... which is a shame - as I'm a young, Black woman.

I'm now making a point to write about Black and female authors - with an emphasis on the intersection of the two conditions - a space in which I reside, happily.

First is a short story published in 1967 by Kristin Hunter, "An Interesting Social Study". I couldn't find the story reproduced ANYWHERE online, so I've typed and posted it on an auxiliary blog started for this very purpose.

Read An Interesting Social Study HERE.

A micro-reading of An Interesting Social Study may turn up more than a few issues... the overuse of adjectives and adverbs and prosaic repetition of dialogue structures ("she said", "she inquired", et al, et al), but besides, there is much to love in Kristin Hunter's story of an evening drink between old and new acquaintances on a porch in a 1960's Jersey Shore town, Cape May.

The story's young female protagonist is never named, only referred to as "the new resident", and is the only character whose thoughts are explicitly revealed to the reader. There are two other characters: Mrs. Powell, who is quickly established as the director of the story's coming action, whose "tone less of invitation than command" is not to be refuted, whose invitations are so coveted as to resemble "the instant fulfillment of a wish in childhood", whose "booming voice of authority" delivers "incontrovertible orders" to all around her. And her longtime friend Corinna who, by Mrs. Powell's declaration is "dumb", a "one hundred per cent fool", and who "accepted Mrs. Powell’s tyranny, as if [it] were divinely ordained circumstance."

What isn't immediately obvious is that Mrs. Powell and Corinna are White and the new resident is Black. The initial physical descriptions of Mrs. Powell and Corinna are as follows:

[Mrs. Powell was] an unusually tall and bony woman with a magnificently lined face which depicted, clearly as a graph, a mixed history of pleasure and pain...

[Corinna] was a plump woman of vague shape and features, with wispy dyed-red hair; like her hostess, near sixty; and dressed, like her, for a city luncheon, in a silk suit, polished straw hat, and quantities of pearls. Except that Mrs. Powell's hair was uncompromisingly short and gray, and her pearls were real.

Corinna refers to local blue collar workers as "colored" early in the story, which was not cause for alarm in 1967, when An Interesting Social Study was published, but it's clear that her referral establishes "colored" as other. The new resident, once she's sufficiently inebriated by Mrs. Powell, reveals that she'd done her undergraduate studies at Spelman College - a Historically Black Women's College. When the races of the women become apparent, the story finds its footing.

The setting, Cape May in summer, and its signs of social progression, not unlike in Yates' Revolutionary Road, mirrors the reluctantly changing attitudes of its inhabitants. In Revolutionary Road, "three swollen villages had lately been merged by a wide and clamorous highway called Route Twelve" - and along this new highway, commercial properties, "KING KONE, MOBILGAS, SHOPORAMA, EAT," spring up - all while the sly elitism of young, suburban families prompt resentment toward any lingering signs of what was once an uncouth rural town. Similarly, in An Interesting Social Study, both Cape May's new and old residents can feel a shift in the town's culture:

...There was no longer any clear pattern of segregation on Cape May’s beaches. A strong tide seemed to have scattered the varicolored bodies of bathers as randomly as shells. But last night she had noticed the stately old hotels floating at the edge of the water like giant ghost ships, empty, yet lit from stem to stern. They had given her an eerie feeling, and she had turned her back on the ocean wind and hurried home, shivering.

The tide of change brings integration to the historically relaxed, carefree shore town, and also, by Mrs. Powell's admission had divide it into "'two towns... the old summer people, and the new summer people. The old people... kind of wooden-headed and slow, and it takes them along time to make up their minds about new thing." The old people like Cape May's old hotels, their ghostly, stately manner, leave the new resident unsettled - her first encounter with Mrs. Powell described by the narrator as awkward, stiff, uncomfortable... understandable as Mrs. Powell herself "looked monumental and splendid as the old beach front hotels, and as lonely." Lonely because Cape May's newer, younger residents seem "to be flocking to the ugly new nightclub down on the beach instead," - Mrs. Powell because her position of near omnipotence ("The new resident thought... Before this evening is over, you’ll know everything about me too. That’s probably why you invited me up here on your porch. You make it your business to know everything.... And I’ll bet you’re the one who tells all the other old people what to think. I’ll bet you run the whole town by yourself...") in Cape May is also one of isolation.

In this seaside town, these women, from different places, separated by decades, generations, are able to find common ground - each providing the other with what she seeks in her visit.

In this strangely colored twilight that falls on the southernmost point on the Jersey shore, the newest resident’s hands, as they caught the arms of the rocker were tinted a soft mauve, while the faces of the older women, who had already spent a month in the sun, were deeper variations of the same shade.

The new resident's studies to be a social worker lend themselves to aiding Mrs. Powell's blatant alcoholism, as Mrs. Powell herself suggests. More tangibly, the shells the new resident collected on the beach the day before the action of the story began are, at the end of the story, suggested as the antidote allowing Mrs. Powell's stagnant furnishings to more accurately reflect the town's spirit. We learn that Mrs. Powell was raised in the North (explaining her progressive attitude?), that she's the great-grand daughter of her state's most profitable slave owner and trader, the daughter of a state senator, "the most important lady in Cape May." But she plays down her own attributes, her wealth, her legacy "with a deprecating wave of hands".

We learn in Mrs. Powell's willful sloughing of legitimate claims of class, birth, and education that people, disparate in origins, can converge peacefully, meaningfully... An "old relic" and a "new resident" - Corrina, whose harmless ignorance foils Mrs. Powell's willingness to accept change - find one another, put history aside, and in a summer, on a porch, drunk, head together toward the future of their town.

I'm reminded of a recent post from Patrick Kurp's Anecdotal Evidence:

I’m rereading a favorite family history, Bowen’s Court (1942) by Elizabeth Bowen. As she chronicles the fortunes of one Anglo-Irish family, we slowly realize we are witnessing the fall of an entire civilization into modernity:

“And to what did our fine feelings, our regard for the arts, our intimacies, our inspiring conversations, our wish to be clear of the bonds of sex and class and nationality, our wish to try to be fair to everyone bring us? To 1939.”

In this case... To 1968.

Mrs. Powell's final dialogue to the new resident, the story's closing lines:

“I have a lot of interesting old relics around here, if you like history, and I’m the biggest old relic of them all. Although I don’t care much for history, myself.”

What a refreshing read! I have 4 anthologies of the best short stories and poems by Black Writers and look forward to enjoying them as much as I have Kristin Hunter's An Interesting Social Study.

But I plan to finish Revolutionary Road first!

Next Post: The absence of men in An Interesting Social Study

Maidenhood vs. Motherhood vs. ... whatever other states a woman may inhabit =(

2009-04-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

In this optical illusion - do you see a young woman or an old woman?

What happens to a girl when she becomes a wife and mother?

Something awful apparently... at least in the eyes of Frank Wheeler.

In keeping with my (hypo)thesis about Revolutionary Road - that "the book's characters seem to be reluctantly enduring the death of their idealism as they're bombarded with the realities of their lives" - it seems that Frank can't cope with his wife's diminishing maidenhood and dainty femininity.

As a younger man, one still frustrated at not having met the perfect "first-rate girl", Frank meets April Johnson, “the exceptionally first-rate girl whose shining hair and splendid legs had drawn him halfway across a roomful of strangers.” Later, after they're married with 2 children, Frank watches her on stage as “she moved with the shyly sensual grace of maidenhood; anyone happening to glance at Frank Wheeler, the round-faced, intelligent-looking young man who sat biting his fist in the last row of the audience, would have said he looked more like her suitor than her husband.” Because husbands CLEARLY don't think of their wives that way - it's implicit and ingrained in the world of Revolutionary Road.

“Nowhere in these plans had he foreseen the weight and shock of reality; nothing had warned him that he might be overwhelmed by the swaying, shining vision of a girl he hadn’t seen in years, a girl whose every glance and gesture could make his throat fill up with longing (“Wouldn’t you like to be loved by me?”), and that then before his very eyes she would dissolve and chance into the graceless, suffering creature whose existence he tried every day of his life to deny but whom he knew as well and as painfully as he knew himself, a gaunt constricted woman whose red eyes flashed reproach, whose false smile in the curtain call was as homely as his own sore feet, his own damp climbing underwear and his own foul smell.”

When April's production fails miserably, Frank's image of her dissolves as well. She quickly degrades in his regard from a "shining vision of a girl" to a "graceless, suffering creature", a "gaunt constricted woman... homely". The "first-rate girl" is suddenly merely his wife and the mother of his two children - on stage in a terrible community theater troupe. Frank's stark dichotomy - this maiden vs. mother attitude is vile, but reading these sentiments at face value cheapens the book. It's easy, as a young female reader to be disgusted by this unfeeling binarism - but if I'd taken the easy route, I'd be missing Yates' larger intention.

There's a tone of resentment in the deflation of Frank's ideals of April - I think because in her commonness, in what he perceives as her failings, he sees his own reflected.

The standards to which she's held seem to be a bit rigid as well. She's described as being “a shade too heavy in the hips and thighs” after bearing two children and again as “a little too wide in the hips”. The interesting thing is that these assertions don't come from Frank or any other character in the story - they're the narrator's commentaries. But the narrator is not a character in the book - so to whom should these opinions be attributed? Obviously, they're meant to be ironic and illuminating - and they succeed.

But what does a woman become after she's far into motherhood? What if she's old and unmarried? What of her then?

Frank's own mother is described vaguely as "a pair of rimless spectacles, a hair net, and a timorous smear of lipstick.” Another older woman, Mrs. Givings is, as soon as she's characterized, immediately made ridiculous - her "cosmetics seemed always to have been applied in a frenzy of haste, of impatience to get the whole silly business over and done with, and she was constantly in motion, a trim, leather-skinned woman in her fifties...”.

Jane Austen, in all her infallibility, accurately portrays these female literary archetypes while allowing them to maintain some shred of humanity. Her Miss Bates, who was never asked to play the pianoforte (because who could think of homely, spinsterly, poor Miss Bates when Emma or Jane Fairfax were around?) still lives today in women like pop culture figure Susan Boyle. Austen takes the same ironic tone as Yates when she says that "it is only poverty that makes celibacy contemptible. A single woman of good fortune is always respectable." While ironic, both statements reflect the attitudes and opinions of the day.

In this optical illusion - do you see a young woman or an old woman?

This is all too "Virgin/Mother/Crone" for my taste.

Restless Young Men

2009-04-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

“Weren’t the biographies of all great men filled with this same kind of youthful groping, this same kind of rebellion against their fathers and their fathers’ ways?”
--Revolutionary Road

Paul in Paul's Case by Willa Cather.
Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
The Real Life Frank Abagnale Jr. (whose story was featured in the book and movie Catch Me If You Can).

All 3 restless young men fighting to escape their fathers' (men they at once admired and resented) curses of mediocrity nearly, or completely, achieve ruin in their own lives.

Cather's Paul steals money from his employer and flees to New York with dreams of a glamorous new life, surrounded by the arts - free of his middle-class existence and the "horrible yellow wallpaper" in his room. Similarly, Frank Abagnale Jr. runs away from home once his father's trouble with the IRS plunges his family into impecuniousness. He, like Paul, lies, cheats, and steals his way to wealth. From what I've read so far, Yates' Frank Wheeler has the same begrudging respect, coupled with disgust, for his father as do Paul and Abagnale - wondering "...who wanted to be a dopey salesman in the first place, acting like a big deal with a briefcase full of boring catalogues, talking about machines all day to a bunch of dumb executives with cigars?"

He as an adolescent also plans a trip - his on a freight train - to begin his own life: "[Frank] spent all his free time in a plan for riding rails to the West Coast. ...he had rehearsed many times the way he would handle himself." He steals his father's hat for his journey and stuffs it with newspapers so that it would fit his small head properly, just as Frank Abagnale Jr. borrowed behaviors and epigrams from his father and used them to his advantage.

These three characters all exhibit a restless, impatient quest toward manhood - but not just any state of manliness - one that would eclipse whatever claims to greatness their fathers' may have laid, taking from them the estimable, leaving behind the execrable.

In Revolutionary Road, it's made clear early in the book that Frank values masculinity, admiring "men who looked like they’d never been boys at all", posing to affect a more distinguished jawline, "the face he'd given himself in the mirror since boyhood and which no photograph had ever achieved", "saunter[ing] manfully" to his father's heavy briefcase as a child and "pretend[ing] it was his own". Abagnale's heroes are pilots, doctors, lawyers, James Bond, Paul's those great men of the stage - and each of these three young men pretended to their goals before they're old enough to achieve them.

Unfortunately, (100 year old spoiler alert!!!) Paul kills himself once he realizes he'll be returned to obscurity, Frank Abagnale Jr. is caught forging checks and imprisoned (though he eventually begins work as an FBI fraud specialist) and I don't yet know what comes of Frank Wheeler. I haven't finished the book.
=)

There seems to be a recurring theme in literature (and movies) of Restless Young Men. Freud's Oedipus Complex, perhaps? Except without the creepy part about marrying one's own mother.... I'll keep a keen eye out as I continue Revolutionary Road.

TRIVIA - Leonardo DiCaprio played both Frank Abagnale Jr. AND Frank Wheeler in the film adaptations of Catch Me If You Can and Revolutionary Road. Coincidence? I think he has that earnest, Restless Young Man Look about him.

"We became drivers and garbage men, so that our children could become doctors and lawyers, so that our grandchildren could become artists and writers, so that our great grandchildren could become models and socialites."

"The finder of his theme will be at no loss for words."

2009-04-27T19:27:00.001-07:00

The quote in the subject line is one of J.V. Cunningham's.

In Yates' Revolutionary Road, Cunningham's assertion is proven on every page and in every word. I can't say whether or not Yates had a difficult time writing his masterpiece, but nowhere in Revolutionary Road is his theme forgotten or absent, either from the writer's intention or the active reader's interpretation.

I've been doing far more reading than writing lately, (the only writing I've done has been on this and my other blogs) but when I (finally) decide to create, the instructions I've gleaned from all I've read will be invaluable.

Gus von A. - The Fallen Dandy

2009-04-23T00:56:00.000-07:00

" 'You see, Aschenbach has always lived liked this' -- here the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand to a fist -- 'never like this'--and he let his open hand hang relaxed from the back of his chair. It was apt."

Thomas Mann, at the outset of his novella Death in Venice, takes great care to establish his protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach as a disciplined man and respected poet - only to have the character's admirable qualities, by the story's end, disintegrate - replaced by ruinous obsession and capricious, irresponsible whim. Though the tenets of dandyism (as defined by dandyism.net) may not have been explicitly stated and assembled at the time of Death in Venice's publication, it is clear that Thomas Mann wrote Gus von A with strict parameters in mind so as to make his descent into chaos and madness that much more shocking than if such misfortune had befallen a more mediocre man. When evaluated against the 12 points of comparison outlined in 'The Anatomy of a Dandy', von Aschenbach's heights appear at their highest and his lows seem beneath what would be thought capable of such a man. The loss of his physical distinction, elegance, self-mastery, aplomb, independence, wit, skepticism, endearing egotism, reserve, discriminating taste, and caprice - all of the things that make a dandy a dandy - is disturbing for the reader to *witness*, to endure - and I believe this theme of humbling and self-destruction is a large part of why this story persists as a classic.

Let's start at the very beginning - a very good place to start:

“Dandyism is the result of an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits of fashion.” - Max Beerbohm

By this definition, Gus von A was a textbook dandy: "The union of dry, conscientious officialdom and ardent, obscure impulse, produced an artist..."

1. Physical distinction

Dandyism can only be painted on a suitable canvas. It is impossible to cut a dandy figure without being tall, slender and handsome, or having at least one of those characteristics to a high degree while remaining at least average in the other two. Fred Astaire was neither tall nor handsome, but he was “so thin you could spit through him.”

Count D’Orsay, of course, had all three qualities to the highest degree.

“To appear well dressed, be skinny and tall.” — Mason

2. Elegance

Elegance, of course, as defined by the standards of a dandy’s particular era.

“[The dandy’s] independence, assurance, originality, self-control and refinement should all be visible in the cut of his clothes.” — Ellen Moers

Dandies must love contemporary costume, says Beerbohm, and their dress should be “free from folly or affectation.”

Gus von A's initial physical description is as follows: "somewhat below middle height, dark and smooth-shaven, with... his almost delicate figure... rimless gold spectacles... , aristocratically hooked nose... yet it was art, not the stern discipline of an active career, that had taken over the office of modeling these features." By the final pages of the story, von Aschenbach was sickly, "worn quite out and unnerved... his head burned, his body was wet with clammy sweat, he was plagued by intolerable thirst." There was no sign, physically, of the man with whom we first became acquainted.

On his boat ride to Venice, Gus von A encounters an old man he considers foolish in his attempts to mimic the look and mannerisms of youth ("Could they not see he was old, that he had no right to wear the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them?"). This ridiculous old man in all his buffoonery becomes a foil for von Aschenbach's own conscious decision, once deluded by obsession with his young muse Tadzio, to don the facade of youth in his old age: "A delicate carmine glowed on his cheeks where the skin had been so brown and leathery. The dry, anæmic lips grew full, they turned the colour of ripe strawberries, the lines round eyes and mouth were treated with a facial cream and gave place to youthful bloom." Disregarding how ridiculous he must have looked with stark hair dye, his face covered and caked in rouge, Gus von A, by the story's end loses any claims he held on admirable physical distinction or elegance.

2 down. 10 to go.

3. Self-mastery

Barbey speaks of the dandy’s staunch determination to remain unmoved, while Baudelaire says that should a dandy suffer pain, he will “keep smiling.”

“Manage yourself well and you may manage all the world.” — Bulwer-Lytton

“Immense calm with your heart pounding.” — Noel Coward

4. Aplomb

While self-mastery is the internal practice of keeping emotions in check, aplomb is how it is expressed to the dandy’s audience.

“Dandyism introduces antique calm among our modern agitations.” — Barbey d’Aurevilly

Gus von A and the characters he as a writer created possessed " 'the conception of an intellectual and virginal manliness, which clenches its teeth and stands in modest defiance of the swords and spears that pierce its side.'... there was the aristocratic self-command that is eaten out within and for as long as it can conceals its biologic decline from the eyes of the world". Not unlike Elliot Templeton in Maugham's The Razor's Edge, who ignores his own imminent mortality in favor of honoring a party invitation, the dandy never betrays any sign of inner conflict - a tenet to which Gus von A at first adhered. He knew that "almost everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come into being in defiance of affliction and pain; poverty, destitution, bodily weakness, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions. And that was more than observation—it was the fruit of experience, it was precisely the formula of his life and fame, it was the key to his work."

So bizarre, then, was his eventual loss of any sense of propriety or concept of how he would be perceived in his madness. Caught in what should have been embarrassing, reproachable situations, the new Aschenbach "remained there long, in utter drunkenness, powerless to tear himself away, blind to the danger of being caught in so mad an attitude." The power of intoxicating obsession over the learned life-long practice of self-mastery and aplomb becomes apparent in these words.

5. Independence

Ideally financial independence, but if the dandy is forced to work, a spirit of independence will be expressed through his work, as with Tom Wolfe. Independence — often to the point of aloofness — will also characterize the dandy’s dealings with the world.

“The epitome of selfish irresponsibility, he was ideally free of all human commitments that conflict with taste: passions, moralities, ambitions, politics or occupations.” — Moers

“Independence makes the dandy.” — Barbey d’Aurevilly

Gus von A was born rich, remained rich throughout life, lived by his pen and maintained independently wealthy until his death. He had no dependents and therefore no human commitments other than his own strict expectations of his life and career. Nothing to see here. 11/12 isn't bad lol.

6. Wit

Especially a paradoxical way of talking lightly of the serious and seriously of the light that carries philosophical implications.

(See Oscar Wilde, his characters such as Lord Henry and Lord Goring, and to a lesser degree every other notable dandy.)

7. A skeptical, world-weary, sophisticated, bored or blasé demeanor

“The dandy is blasé, or feigns to be.” — Baudelaire

“A spirit of gay misanthropy, a cynical, depreciating view of society.” — Lister

8. A self-mocking and ultimately endearing egotism

“Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.” — Wilde, “The Ideal Husband”

9. Dignity/Reserve

Pelham keeps “the darker and stormier emotions” to himself — Bulwer-Lytton

“A flawless dandy, he would be annoyed if he were considered romantic.” — Oscar Wilde, “An Ideal Husband”

In the face of a Venitian cholera plague, one being hushed by police for the sake of tourism, Gus von A eschews all natural problem-solving and skepticism in favor of willful ignorance, so that he can extend his holiday and remain near Tadzio, his young muse.

He also begins to think and speak gravely of love, obsession, the nature of art and the artist, the lover and the loved, in grand lofty allusions to Phaedrus and Socrates. "Such were the devotee's thoughts, such the power of his emotions." Any poetic ability he'd once had for flitting lightly over such emotions was wiped away by madness.

"He trembled, he shrank, his will was steadfast to preserve and uphold his own god against this stranger who was sworn enemy to dignity and self-control. But.. his heart throbbed to the drums, his brain reeled, a blind rage seized him, a whirling lust... and in his very soul he tasted the bestial degradation of his fall." In a dream, his own insanity was made apparent.

10. Discriminating Taste

“To resist whatever may be suitable for the vulgar but is improper for the dandy.” — Moers

11. A renaissance man

“A complete gentleman, who, according to Sir Fopling, ought to dress well, dance well, fence well, have a genius for love letters, and an agreeable voice for a chamber.” — Etherege, quoted by Bulwer-Lytton in “Pelham”

Gus von A was powerless to resist the improper and vulgar once blinded by passion. "The presence of the youthful beauty that had bewitched him filled him with disgust of his own aging body; the sight of his own sharp features and grey hair plunged him in hopeless mortification; he made desperate efforts to recover the appearance and freshness of his youth". He began to wear bright clothes and ostentatious jewelry; his taste was lost to foolishness.

He remained enough of a gentleman outwardly - and the fury of his final work, inspired by Tadzio, seems to confirm that his talents for writing weren't damaged by his madness, so I don't think his status as a renaissance man was every in jeopardy. 10/12 isn't bad (lol).

12. Caprice

Because dandies are an enigma wrapped in a labyrinth, and because dandyism makes its own rules, the final quality is the ability to negate all the others.

For in the end there is not a code of dandyism, as Barbey writes. “If there were, anybody could be a dandy.”

The 12th tenet more or less nullifies my above arguments, but that's the beauty of the thing. Even for all his missteps, in the last line of Death in Venice, we realize that Gus von A's fans and admirers are completely oblivious and, (100 year old spoiler alert!) in death, he is restored to the position in which we first found him.

"And before nightfall a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease."

His "preoccupation with [Tadzio's]form lead to intoxication and desire, they may lead the noblest among us to frightful emotional excesses, which his own stern cult of the beautiful would make him the first to condemn. So they too, they too, lead to the bottomless pit." Death in Venice remains so fascinating because of its protagonist's determination to ruin himself though every impulse advised against such lunacy.

Basically, if it could happen to him, the most disciplined and dandiest of dandies, it could happen to any among us.

Virginia Woolf's success in creating 'Modern Fiction'

2009-04-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Amateur Reader's post - Herman Melville's Mardi was written by Herman Melville:

Read Virginia Woolf's essay Modern Fiction HERE, The Mark on the Wall HERE, and To The Lighthouse (Chapter 6 - Starting with the words "He was safe..." to end of chapter) HERE. Because To The Lighthouse is a novel, I figured it would make the most sense to tackle a representative except for readers not familiar with the book.

I love to read because the things I learn from books inform the choices I make when writing. A close reading of any great piece of literature can guide its reader through the author's processes and intentions, can influence (not define) an aspiring writer's style and motivate him or her to take care that each word tell. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite authors for this reason. She not only provides the active reader stimulating and instructing fiction, but in her essay Modern Fiction, she outlines criteria by which modern fiction should be evaluated - and holds herself to her own standards. By her own definitions, Woolf creates, in varying degrees of success, modern fiction.

In 1921, Virginia Woolf's The Mark on the Wall was published, in 1925, her book The Common Reader, which contained Modern Fiction, and in 1927, To the Lighthouse. In this 6 year period we see Woolf's work progress from exemplary, but aimless, to challenging and purposeful - and have her own words as the bellwether by which to measure that progress. I consider these my formative literary years, and what better example than Woolf for taking literary matters in one's own hands can a girl have!

In Modern Fiction, Woolf defines two types of fiction, that which is concerned with the body, and the most desirable - that which is concerned with the spirit. Novels concerned with the spirit, she claims, are "what it is we exact." If that is true, then we as readers get exactly what it is we exact from Woolf's To The Lighthouse - and while we come closer to the spirit, to "life" in The Mark on the Wall than in what Woolf terms as "materialist" fiction, the piece still does not satisfy the readers quest for "the essential thing" it is we search for in fiction, "whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality." For that reason, I believe Virginia Woolf truly becomes VIRGINIA WOOLF in To the Lighthouse - and in The Mark on the Wall, she is well on her way. Woolf assigns properties to what she considers fiction concerned with both the body and with the mind - and believes that "life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small." In that sense, both To The Light House and The Mark On The Wall contain some aspect of "life" by Woolf's own definition - but To The Lighthouse succeeds in adhering to more of the properties that readers now know to be hallmarks of Woolf's best work.

In To The Lighthouse, the character Mr. Ramsay contemplates his place in the world while in real time observing his wife read to his son. In The Mark On The Wall, Woolf's speaker chronicles random thoughts while in real time looking at the titular mark on the wall. In exploring the thoughts of their respective speakers, both pieces capture the "myriad impressions" that Woolf claims "the mind receives" in Modern Fiction. However, these impressions are to an end in To The Light House, whereas in The Mark On The Wall they seem scattered, and to have no specific purpose.

In being concerned with the spirit, a piece of fiction must focus on the abstract rather than the concrete and in The Mark On The Wall, the speaker's thoughts are centered on physical objects (trees, birds, wood); in To The Light House Mr. Ramsay's abstract thoughts are only spoken of in concrete terms to make tangible abstract concepts. Just as with the literal body and spirit, both can be perceived, but only the body physically.

To The Lighthouse, while it employs a stream of consciousness style is less self-concerned than The Mark On The Wall. Because The Mark On The Wall is written in first person, with phrases "I like," "I understand," "I should," "I feel," repeated as often as they are, the piece seems selfish and "never embraces or creates what is outside itself or beyond"; it has "the effect of something angular and isolated", all of which are qualities Woolf attributes to "materialist" fiction.

In both pieces, "emphasis is laid in unexpected places." Because Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse grapples with his position in his own life and family, this emphasis is in unexpected, yet logical places - always keeping in mind the book's overall aim and maintaining an "obedience to vision." Historical figures of questionable importance, how a dying soldier will be remembered, the alphabet used as a concrete analogy for Mr. Ramsay's quest through his own mind - these seemingly disparate mentions all converge to illuminate Mr. Ramsay's existential musings. The emphasis in To The Light House don't seem to achieve any greater purpose than to "record the atoms as they fall upon the mind... however disconnected and incoherent in appearance."

Like the works of the Russian artists Woolf praises as "saintly" in Modern Fiction, To The Lighthouse appears "vague and inconclusive" only in that it asks many unanswered rhetorical questions. Similarly, Woolf states in her essay that "life presents question after question which must be left to sound on after the story is over". Mr. Ramsay's vacillating between a life dedicated to family and one to work constantly begs the question "Who shall blame him?" while suggesting his favoring the former. Of course, no one could blame a man for choosing his family over his work - though it's a question people struggle with every day.

The Mark On The Wall asks questions as well, but they are self-involved, have no larger implications beyond the story's speaker and give the reader no incentive to want to know their answers. They do not "endeavor to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit".

To the Lighthouse is by Woolf's own definition a true work concerning the spirit in that it embodies "life" - which is what Woolf believes modern fiction should always endeavor to do. The Mark on the Wall was a valiant effort, but pales in comparison to Woolf's later work. In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf becomes VIRGINIA WOOLF.

*The Amateur Reader said this would be a tricky post and it WAS! I'm not even sure I'm saying everything I mean to say, but this is my first go at explaining an author's coming into her own. I may rehash this later with more textual examples from TTLH and TMOTW - because I only used quotes from Modern Fiction in the post above.

IN OTHER NEWS - tomorrow is Becca's Book Blog's
ONE MONTH ANNIVERSARY!!!
So far, So good!

Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney + Divinity in Literature

2009-04-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

I've already written about my favorite and second favorite poems on this blog; Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney is my third. In this post I'll explain why.

I grew up in church (African-American, Christian, Non-denominational) and have had fleeting spats of full devotion and engagement, but tend to feel a bit divorced from it all. I'm just as interested in the Bible as literature, apart from its larger religious implications, as I am in reading it as the literal WORD OF GOD (though I read it for guidance, instruction, and encouragement more than I do for verifying literary allusions).

Because of my exposure from such an early age, I tend to find (or do I seek?) the Biblical, the Divine in all I read. For an entire semester of high school AP LIT, I analyzed every assigned book, poem, essay, etc through a Biblical lens. All I could see in Beloved was Morrison's allusion to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse... and any passing reference to parable or scripture in any work became, to me, the author's overarching Biblical theme. This tendency was at first impressive (sometimes offensive!) to my teacher and peers, and quickly became pedantic and tiresome - but I was 17 at the time. I'm 22 now... much older, much wiser.
:\ (if only!)

Sometime during that (stained glass?) window, I read Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney. Rereading it now, I don't think my initial analysis was too off the mark, or clouded by the divine fog in which I then found myself.

Blackberry-picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Seamus Heaney

The literary critic J.V. Cunningham noted "How difficult it is to write in praise!". Well, here's my taking a shot.

Heaney uses contrasting images of divinity - first allusions to Christ, communion, and the crucifixion associated with the action of picking the blackberries - then to the Biblically defined sins of gluttony, lust, and greed (peppered through the first stanza and dominating the second) - to illuminate the emotions associated with picking and eating blackberries, which are in turn used to parallel the human tendency to unwittingly self-destruct, to Fall from Grace - even when intentions are good.

The conscious lack of agents in lines 1 & 2 ("...given heavy rain and sun/ for a full week, the blackberries would ripen,") suggests the influence of a higher power. The blackberries do not ripen themselves and "would ripen" only "given heavy rain and sun" - but "GIVEN" by WHOM? Sacred diction in lines 5 & 6 elevate the speaker's experience of eating blackberries to the equivalent of taking communion - "it's flesh was sweet/like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it." In aligning the act of partaking of the body or "flesh" and blood of Christ to biting into the wine-producing blackberries, Heaney cements this act as a religious experience.

The word "lust" is slipped in the poem to appear as an afterthought in a sentence that progresses from concrete to abstract in lines 7-9. The sentence that includes "...leaving stains upon the tongue /and a lust for picking" establishes "stains" and "lust" as parallels - both are nouns, but a stain is tangible, can be physically perceived; lust is not, cannot. "Hunger" is made the agent of the verb "sent" in line 8 - labeling hunger a driving force, capable of inciting action. "Lust" and "hunger" as used here are in opposition to the tone of the first stanza, but serve to hint at darker events to come.

In lines 10-12 the speaker's trip to crate the berries is likened to a religious pilgrimage or Herculean task, one to be "round hayfields, cornfields, and potato-drills... trekked", one that would "bleach [their] boots" - recalling Biblically scarlet sins being "washed white as snow" - as is the mission of most pilgrimages. The trek was only complete once their "cans were full"; here the transition into the second stanza's theme of gluttony begins.

The speaker and his companion's hands being "peppered with thorn pricks" is a stark allusion to Crucifixion of Christ. That the blackberries with their "big dark blobs burned/ Like a plate of eyes" are watching the pickers as they red-handedly stock them to be hauled away is intentional - and prepares the reader for the guilty disappointment of the next lines.

The greed, hunger, and lust merely hinted at in the first stanza are consummated in lines 15-17. They "hoarded, were "glutting" and as a consequence, a punishment, the once "sweet flesh.. turned sour" - the forbidden fruit from "the bush... fermented"... all was tarnished - the imagery is nearly sacrilegious. As with Adam and Even in the Biblical Garden of Eden, the speaker's innocence was purged and replaced with an undesirable knowledge - that once off the bush, a parallel to the fruit picked from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the berries they greedily hoarded and "hoped would keep", they "knew would not". The evil existed in the speaker's gluttony, which caused the surplus to rot - the knowledge of which ruined the joy of picking blueberries "every year" - yet this greed persisted annually.

Thus is human nature - and the masterful ability of Seamus Heaney to describe that tragic nature so beautifully.

It's actually not at all difficult to write in praise when you've got a poem such as this for inspiration.

I will eventually get to writing about Gus von A (Death in Venice) as a fallen dandy (as defined by dandyism.net) and the conclusion of my first installment of Hip Hop as Literature - I'm just not sure when.

Revolutionary Road - First Impressions

2009-04-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I was 6 pages into Revolutionary Road and already in awe of its density. By page 13, I'd already formed the (hypo)thesis on which I've decided to center the rest of my notes.

Many of the book's characters seem to be reluctantly enduring the death of their idealism as they're bombarded with the realities of their lives - and it's a theme I'll be on the look out for as I continue reading. There also seems to be a learned culture of silently borne misery, a group mentality of complacency. I'm only on page 15 though, so I'll see if my (hypo)thesis holds up.

But my early (perhaps premature) assessment doesn't stem from any lazy transparency in Yates' writing - if anything, it's a credit to his ability to thread a tangible motif through every single word in his narrative. Nothing appears to be included or mentioned incidentally - no object described that doesn't parallel or illuminate the experiences and sensations of a group of characters, no actions detailed that don't flesh out the character to whom they're ascribed, no setting chosen that doesn't add layers of context to the reader's understanding (of course, I'll give textual examples and details in my full review/analysis - these are just first impressions).

When an author begins his novel with "The final, dying sounds..." it's no accident. Setting an ominous tone, one of impending doom, in the opening words of a story immediately prepares the reader for whats to come. And from what I've read so far, Yates won't be letting up any time soon.

This is purposeful writing at its best; I would be proud to have my (eventual) fiction writing resemble Yates' in any small way.

Can't wait to finish Revolutionary Road and post my full analysis! I've also got to get around to seeing the movie once I'm done with the book...

the PROFESSIONAL APPRECIATOR's fear of CREATING.

2009-04-18T05:55:00.001-07:00

"You're making something. You - the critic, the professional appreciator - put something new into the world. And the second one of those things gets sold, you're officially a part of it."
From the movie High Fidelity.

I couldn't be called a professional critic by any definition - but am an active and avid reader and have a paralyzing fear of writing for that reason. I've described my reading style (macro vs micro) on this blog and why some books are frustrating to ENDURE because of it - and why, conversely, other books bring me so much pleasure.

I'm only 6 pages into Revolutionary Road and already, I'm WOWED by its density. Could I ever write with such mastery? I feel presumptuous even typing those words. And I think most writer-readers, and anyone in love with the ART of writing, can understand that feeling.

"The trouble was that from the very beginning they had been afraid they would end by making fools of themselves, and they had compounded this fear by being afraid to admit it." This quote from the opening pages of Revolutionary Road compelled me to nod my head in reluctant sympathy for the described Laurel Players and their collective fear that their seminal performance would fail. The only difference is that all I do is talk and write about that familiar fear - so at least it's not compounding upon itself, right?

Wrong.

It's daunting to know that you don't know much - and that knowledge of ignorance is crippling.

I've cited this Thomas Mann quote here before, but here it is again:
"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." I'd have to add that it's no cake walk for active readers either.

Maybe it has something to do with my age and that I feel everything I write is somehow, or will be perceived as being, incorrect or foolish (I try not to betray any signs of that apprehension - but I'm writing about it now - so the cat's out the bag), because I LOATHE adamant inaccuracy and steadfast incompetence. In the presence (even the e-presence. read: commenting on literary blogs!) of those I admire, my tentativeness is amplified exponentially. I check and double check things and hope I'm making sense. But I'm in good company, Freud often fainted in the presence of scientists whose work he admired.

Whenever I do get around to CREATING something and submitting it to the court of public approval, I only hope it stands up alongside the kind of purposely written, dynamic writing that I so enjoy. In the mean time, I plan to continue, reading, writing, BLOGGING, and learning.

End rant.

Disparate Obligations in "A White Heron"

2009-04-17T05:58:00.000-07:00

“Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been, - who can tell?”

After all this talk about The Yellow Wallpaper being perceived as propaganda(!), I figured I'd find a short story that, while having a clear agenda, manages to not suffocate its readers. I came up with Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron". Through her use of a third-person omniscient speaker, Jewett makes a persuasive case for her environmentalist platform, while permitting the reader room to make his or her own choices and not feel stifled by the author’s beliefs.

I can relate, even if in a very small way, to the decisions that Sylvia, the young heroine of "A White Heron", had to make between the environment and money and between the environment and personal relationships. As a member of the ASPCA, an organization whose members are often staunch vegetarians, some vegans, there is pressure from that community to follow suit (but I love MEAT! and the costs of being an aspiring vegetarian in a house full of adamant meat eaters piles up QUICKLY lol), so with this glimpse into the life of the little girl who had to make a very tough decision between her obligation to the environment and forces pulling her in opposing directions, I can certainly empathize.

Jewett does a great job of implanting objective information, making sure that by the story's end the reader knows Sylvia’s answer to the question (“Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been, - who can tell?”) , and prompting the reader to ponder his or her own obligations and biases.

Alongside her lengthy descriptions of the permanency and beauty of nature and the transience (and vulgarity?) of human life, Jewett places the story of a young girl's first romantic attraction and coming of age - balancing both with care not to seem biased, so the reader feels they themselves are forming these opinions. The noted literary critic J.V. Cunningham asserts that "When style is overpowering it takes us over. We think we have said what we have heard,"; Jewett's style has that effect.

Once Sylvia is faced with the choice between her romantic interest, a young scientist who happens upon her house in the wilderness hoping to find and kill or capture the eponymous white heron, and nature, the scientist's position in her circle of obligation slowly degrades. The scientist goes from being regarded by Sylvia first as an “enemy” with a “very cheerful and persuasive tone”, and a “stranger” with a “kindly” tone, to a “companion”, to the professional title of “ornithologist”, then a “handsome stranger”, and finally to a “friendly lad” once the two become acquainted and she grows to enjoy his company. He once again becomes a “stranger” and is then assigned the generic term “sportsman” when her decision to save the bird is made. By the end of the story, he is merely “the hunter”.

The reader takes the journey with young Sylvia and admires the scientist, who is never named, as Sylvia does, fears him as she does, trusts him as she does, and is left with the choice to take or leave him as she does.

"A White Heron" remains relevant today because people chose between the environment and money, the environment and convenience, or the environment and profits all the time. Reports of large corporations struggling over the importance of environmental effects of their products or byproducts are printed almost daily. Every time someone pumps gasoline into their car, or throws away a diaper, or disposes of a paper cup on a city street, they are making a decision about what they think is important in their lives.

If anyone can make the argument that this is a piece of propaganda, I'd love to hear or read it lol.

The Yellow Wallpaper as Propaganda???

2009-04-17T05:24:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't have been surprised to find that some believe Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper to be little more than a one-sided and "quite bald piece of propaganda" (from a comment on GoodReads.com) - BUT I was.

More surprising to me was that after reading a few well-formed and qualified opinions and reviews, I can see why they might believe that.

From my favorite GoodReads.com reviewer, Keely, comes this:

Roland Barthes talked about 'writerly' and 'readerly' books. I've struggled for a long time, myself, in trying to come up for terms to talk about the differences between conscientious works and those which are too bumbling, too one-sided, or too ill-informed to make the reader think.

While The Yellow Wallpaper brings up interesting points, it does not really address them. The text has become part of the canon not for the ability of the author, which is on the more stimulating end of middling, but because it works as a representational piece of a historical movement.

As early feminism, this work is an undeniable influence. It points out one of the most apparent symptoms of the double-standard implied by the term 'weaker sex'. However, Gilman tends to suggest more than she asks, thus writing merely propaganda.

It's may be easy to say this in retrospect when the question "is isolating women and preventing them from taking action really healthy?" was less obvious back then. However, I have always been reticent to rate a work more highly merely because it comes from a different age. Austen, the Brontes, Christina Rossetti, and Woolf all stand on their own merits, after all.

This symbolism by which this story operates is simplistic and repetitive. The opinions expressed are one-sided, leaving little room for interpretation. This is really the author's crime, as she has not tried to open the debate so much as close it, and in imagining her opinion to mark the final word on the matter, has doomed her work to become less and less relevant.

This is the perfect sort of story to teach those who are beginning literary critique, because it does not suggest questions to the reader, but answers. Instead of fostering thought, the work becomes a puzzle with an accurate solution to be worked out, not unlike a math problem. This is useful for the reader trying to understand how texts create meaning, but under more rigorous critique, we find it is not deep or varied enough to support more complex readings.

Unfortunately, this means it is also the sort of story that will be loved by people who would rather be answered than questioned. It may have provided something new and intriguing when it was first written, but as a narrow work based on a simplistic sociological concept, can no longer make that claim.

The story is also marked by early signs of the Gothic movement, and lying on the crux of that and Feminism, is not liable to be forgotten. The symbolism it uses is a combination of classical representations of sickness and metaphors of imprisonment. Sickness, imprisonment, and madness are the quintessential concepts explored by the Gothic writers, but this work is again quite narrow in its view. While the later movement was interested in this in the sense of existential alienation, this story is interested in those things not as a deeper psychological question, but as the literal state of the woman.

Horror is partially defined by the insanity and utter loneliness lurking in everyone's heart, and is not quite so scary when the person is actually alone and mad. Though it all comes from the imposition of another person's will, which is very horrific, the husband has no desire to be cruel or to harm the woman, nor is such even hinted subconsciously. Of course, many modern feminists would cling to the notion that independent of a man's desire to aid, he can do only harm, making this work an excellent support to their politicized chauvinism.

I won't question the historical importance or influence of this work, but it is literarily very simple. A single page of paper accurately dating the writing of Shakespeare's Hamlet would also be historically important, but just because it is related to fine literature does not mean it is fine literature.

Art by~kaitaro0401

My response:

Your point is valid and I'd agree that in retrospect The Yellow Wallpaper may be seen as bordering on sensationalism - but I HAVE to propose that Gilman MAY have presented only one side of the argument INTENTIONALLY to reflect the lack of options presented her - and her female contemporaries.

Does not her presentation of a concrete, resolute stance on the issue exactly mirror the speaker's husband's stance on the rest cure? Maybe the frustration you feel as a reader is supposed to mimic the frustration Gilman's speaker feels.

Ama brought up Gilman's own doctor whose words, "Live as domestic a life as possible … and never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live," were taken as law - not to be questioned or acted against.

Maybe I'm giving Gilman far too much credit... but it's a possibility. And what fun are criticism and analysis without dissent?

love your reviews btw.

The Yellow Wallpaper is simply too important to write off as artful, ornate propaganda.

What say you?

UPDATE: Keely has responded and misunderstood my argument, thinking that I had suggested Gilman's work was meant as satire. Not the case. My 2nd response:

I'm not suggesting that The Yellow Wallpaper was written satirically at all. I'm suggesting that Gilman chose to position herself so firmly that the reader could experience the constriction she and her speaker felt. In mirroring her husband's unflappable views, it would have been detrimental to her argument to present them as equally flawed because her husband didn't think his methods flawed in the least.

He earnestly believed he was doing what was best for her and smotheringly so. I think that Gilman was recreating her experience for the reader - no *wink wink*.

And I'd have to agree that Gilman creates a formidable ENEMY against whom the reader barely has a choice to side, but, as seen in the case of your review, there's plenty dialogue to be had because of it.

**and if you're reading this, leave a comment. This blog has been up for ALMOST a month now and I've only gotten 2 comments so far, though my traffic tracker tells me LOTS of people are passing through. I'd LOVE for this to become a dialogue - or any of my other posts for that matter.

Sharon Olds - Rite of Passage + Children's Perspectives

2009-04-15T03:41:00.000-07:00

My second favorite poem is Rite of Passage by Sharon Olds. I love literature that deals with children's perceptions of themselves, each other and the world - and this poem touches on that through the eyes of a parent reluctant to see his or her son grow up.

Janiyah & Sinclair

I babysit often(!) and my cousin Janiyah and her friend Sinclair never cease to amaze me with their acute observations and talents for making even the simplest things profound and expressing their wonder pithily. Maybe it's because I don't remember how my mind worked or how I saw the world as a child (at the ripe old age of 22) - or how words and letters looked before I learned to read, or what purposes I ascribed to machines before I learned their use.

Literature that believably taps that pool of innocence captures me every time. Some favorites include First Confession by Frank O'Connor, The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake (both versions from Songs of Innocence and Experience), and though people HEAVILY criticize it - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.

*spoiler alert*

Without my making any claims about its historical accuracy or feasibility, its morality, or perceived exploitation of the fable form to push its agenda, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas told the story of a boy's life in Nazi German betraying few signs of its adult author (though I realize a 9-year old child couldn't have written this book). It captured the way children internalize and regurgitate words and phrases they hear, using them in and out of context - the narrator Bruno repeatedly calling his sister The Hopeless Case after hearing the phrase used once, referring to Auschwitz as ‘Out-With’ and Hitler (the Führer) as The Fury.

*end spoiler alert*

Subject matter aside, its narrator was not unlike Ralphie from the movie A Christmas Story - precocious, prone to hyperbole and bouts of waking fantasy, with a tendency to believe that everyone's against him.... It's a success in storytelling.

All that brings me to Rite of Passage, which is not told from a child's POV, but manages to accurately convey the way children see themselves in relation to each other - and how adults perceive these miniature showdowns... I have a younger brother (I'm almost 8 years older than him) and I've seen what Olds describes in her poem IN ACTION.

Rite of Passage

As the guests arrive at our son’s party
they gather in the living room—
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So?
They eye each other, seeing themselves
tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their
throats a lot, a room of small bankers,
they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the midnight cake, round and heavy as a
turret behind them on the table. My son,
freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,
chest narrow as the balsa keel of a
model boat, long hands
cool and thin as the day they guided him
out of me, speaks up as a host
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two-year-old,
he says in his clear voice. The other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they relax and get down to
playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

The images of gathering little men "tiny in each other's pupils" "jostling, jockeying for place" remind me of mammal cubs at a watering hole, instinctually play-fighting to learn the survival skills they'll need later in life, the fights "breaking and calming" like undulating waves - as is the fickle nature of childhood grudges.... The speaker's son banning the small men together against a common and weaker enemy, "a two year old", only relayed to the reader through the speakers eyes...

This poem is perfect.

There's so much to love here and I could write more BUT I have a traffic tracker that lets me know what people are Googling to find their way here and a LOT OF YOU are cheating on papers.... TISK TISK! No Freebies!

Anywho - I'm reading Revolutionary Road now + coming up there'll be more on 'Hip Hop as Literature' and Death in Venice (Gus von A as a fallen dandy).

Future Posterity (in Literature) of the 00s.

2009-04-15T02:13:00.000-07:00

in response to THIS (from A Commonplace Blog) and THIS (from Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes):

I've been thinking a LOT lately about who will write the literary fiction that typifies this generation.(literary fiction means... WHAT? I know. I know.)

Who will be our Fitzgerald? Will we have one? Who will document and make immortal this youth culture, however transient it may be. Not a fan of Kerouac or Easton Ellis, but they pegged their respective eras well.

I'd like to see the story told of self-important hipsters, micro-fame, of instant, often undeserved celebrity - and told well. If this story is only preserved on blogs or facebook or in youtube videos will it last? What's the future of posterity(!) in the digital age?

What's happening now isn't at all unlike Wilde's late Victorian commentaries on the society he kept and the frivolous pleasantries of its members and their attempts to remain relevant in all the right circles, or Maugham's turn of the century and Depression-Era social scene regulars - or Austen's criticisms on propriety and expectations... Whatever is said about the 00s must be as perceptive as those timeless observations and as carefully handled.

Sure, I've experienced a few page turners that get the MOOD right - even with their small caches of oft repeated descriptive words and phrases, flat characters, and abysmal writing, but those are the types of books that'll be irrelevant by next year (or worse: OUT OF STYLE & UNCOOL!!!!! only to be enjoyed *IRONICALLY*). I like to think I'll have something to do with the stuff that lasts, that is universal.
:\

The Athitakis/Michaels dialogue is a good one - though Michaels seems, in his essay, to have a narrow comprehension of what the AMERICAN SOCIAL SCENE is...

The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier!

2009-04-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

Synopsis: This book is not fictional. The events described took place in the life of author Grégoire Bouillier. This memoir was his attempt to "tell not the story of [his] life... but what [his] life had told [him] and what [he] thought [he'd] decoded of its language," and that's precisely what he does. The Mystery Guest tells the story of Bouillier's failed relationship with a woman (never named) who leaves him 5 years prior to the book's start without warning, explanation or any contact UNTIL she phones him an invite to a birthday party, at which he will be eponymous the mystery guest. Sad and honest hilarity ensues as Bouillier tries to piece together WHAT IT ALL MEANS.

WARNING:
This book may be at first frustrating for the active reader. Don't miss the forest for the (seemingly) gnarled trees. The Mystery Guest delivers on both a micro and macro level if given the chance to find its footing. There is the temptation to give up before the book wins you over, but the prize is well worth the journey.

Most of the more critical notes I'd taken about The Mystery Guest were irrelevant by the book's end. At first, Bouillier's memoir appears to be carelessly assembled - yet perceptive and insightful. The constant use of the phrase "as they say" to qualify assertions and justify the use of idioms tires the reader quickly, until it becomes evident that it's all to an end. Deferring to some imaginary "THEY" as if the speaker's own opinions aren't alone valid, reads as tentativeness, but what begins as an annoying tic becomes a purposeful style as it mimics the speaker's vacillation between unflappable certainty and unmitigated panic. When within the span of a sentence, images and tones contradict themselves, it's simplest to attribute the perceived fault to sloppy writing or translation, as I was too quick to do; when in the progression of a line, the speaker, who , because this is a memoir, is indistinguishable from the author, alternately describes his iron resolve and paralyzing insecurities, it's difficult not to appreciate the careful construction of what you're reading. It's not unlike marveling at people who spend lots of time and money to appear not to care about their appearance... a delicate art that can easily go wrong and is applauded when successful.

"No doubt this [the decision to wear only turtlenecks] was magical thinking on my part...; these turtleneck-undershirts erupted into my life without my noticing until it was too late and I was under their curse. You could even say they'd inflicted themselves on me..."

The speaker's decision to wear only turtlenecks (The Mystery Guest dedicates long passages to Bouillier's expressing his distaste for the kind of man who layers turtlenecks - before his admonition of becoming just that type of man) goes IN A SINGLE SENTENCE from being described as active and artful to something passively endured. But, a few lines later the speaker explains that when in pain we often "spend our lives... disappearing behind what negates us," just as each of his assertions on the previous page seem to cancel the other.

This illustrates The Mystery Guest's charming method of explaining away its chaos, which, only naturally, is also the speaker's aim throughout the story - to explain way the chaos in his life, to "' illuminate certain matters for [him]self at the same time as [he] makes them communicable to others'". Bouillier tries to rationalize the irrational, assign agenda to pain and chance, cope through logic, make sense of the injustices he doesn't understand. Every event, pertinent or irrelevant, is manipulated in Bouillier's mind to advise his predicament: the death of writer Michael Leiris, the launch of the solar shuttle Ulysses, characters literary and mythological - all in existence solely to lend themselves to Bouillier as needed, to be alluded to and used as foils against which the magnitude of his pain could be measured. All the while, the reader grapples to piece together how all of the disparate elements in The Mystery Guest could possibly work together congruently. Yet by the end of the book, absolutely everything is as it should be.

Just as, in his book, Bouillier can't always forgive the self-serving narcissism and tendency to project he possesses when recognized in others, I at first found it difficult to dismiss the book's mechanics in favor of seeing the big picture - until it was handed to be on a platter... in a bow.

Once I was able to zoom out and enjoy the book as it's intended, I found a lot to love in The Mystery Guest. Dark thoughts described as "grinning fiends" and "old familiars" threatening to "sully [Bouillier] with their banality" were reminiscent of Montaigne's "chimeras and imaginary monsters" brought on by idleness that he hoped to "record ... in writing... to make [his] mind ashamed of them." The way Bouillier attempts to capture every impression and emotion accurately recalls To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, who (incidentally?) plays an important part in Bouillier's memoir. The Mystery Guest's goal was to "record the atoms as they fall upon the mind... however disconnected and incoherent in appearance," and make sense of them - a goal Woolf defined as paramount in 'Modern Fiction'. I could relate to the speaker's self-doubt and imagine myself behaving similarly if in similar situations. I could sympathize with the perfect and pithy descriptions of the flawed logic of a lover scorned (who can't???) and the hyperbolic hilarity found in the most acute pain.

Before I'd finished it, I was prepared to rip into this book mercilessly - and more importantly - prematurely.... but whatever flaws you may THINK you've detected in The Mystery Guest turn out not to be flaws at all. They all lend themselves to the very human telling of Bouillier's imperfect dealings with the world around him.

LOVED THIS BOOK.

Kudos to Bouillier and Stein.

Hip Hop as Literature Introduction

2009-04-04T22:33:00.000-07:00

"She was teaching me by not preaching to me, but speaking to me in a method that was leisurely, so easily I approached."
Common - I Used To Love H.E.R.

I love GOOD Hip Hop and the best of it employs as many literary devices as any poem I've read - extended metaphors, similes, allusions, alliteration, slant rhyme, precise story structure, clever manipulation of POVs, personification, hyperbole... the list goes on and on.

Analyzing Hip Hop through a literary lens should be an interesting undertaking, but I've had the idea for a long while, and now's as good a time as any to put this idea into action.

The first song will be Common's I Used To Love H.E.R. - one of my favorite songs of all time!

Listen to it below. The lyrics are included - and rather than having them in bar form, the way rap lyrics are usually read, I've punctuated them and have them listed sentence by sentence and grouped by verse. I didn't correct grammatical errors and the chorus is left out.

I met this girl, when I was ten years old and what I loved most she had so much soul.

She was old school when I was just a shorty; never knew throughout my life she would be there for me on the regular.

Not a church girl, she was secular - not about the money, no studs was mic checking her but I respected her.

She hit me in the heart.

A few New York niggas had did her in the park but she was there for me and I was there for her, pull out a chair for her, turn on the air for her, and just cool out, cool out and listen to her, sitting on bone, wishing that I could do her.

Eventually, if it was meant to be, then it would be because we related physically and mentally and she was fun then.

I'd be geeked when she'd come around.

Slim was fresh, yo, when she was underground, original, pure untampered and down sister.

Boy I tell ya, I miss her.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Now periodically I would see old girl at the clubs and at the house parties.

She didn't have a body but she started getting thick quick, did a couple of videos and became afrocentric: out goes the weave, in goes the braids, beads, medallions.

She was on that tip about stopping the violence.

About my people she was teaching me by not preaching to me, but speaking to me in a method that was leisurely, so easily I approached.

She dug my rap, that's how we got close, but then she broke to the West coast, and that was cool cause around the same time I went away to school and I'm a man of expanding, so why should I stand in her way.

She’d probably get her money in L.A. - and she did stud.

She got big pub, but what was foul - she said that the pro-black was going out of style.

She said afrocentricity was of the past.

So she got into R&B, hip-house, bass, and jazz.

Now black music is black music and it's all good.

I wasn't salty she was with the boys in the hood cause that was good for her.

She was becoming well rounded.

I thought it was dope how she was on that freestyle shit just having fun, not worried about anyone and you could tell by how her titties hung.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I might've failed to mention that the chick was creative but once the man got you well he altered her native - told her if she got an image and a gimmick that she could make money, and she did it like a dummy.

Now I see her in commercials; she's universal.

She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle - now she be in the burbs licking rock and dressing hip and on some dumb shit when she comes to the city - talking about popping glocks, serving rocks, and hitting switches.

Now she's a gangsta rolling with gangsta bitches - always smoking blunts and getting drunk, telling me sad stories.

Now she only fucks with the funk - stressing how hardcore and real she is.

She was really the realest, before she got into showbiz.

I did her, not just to say that I did it, but I'm committed, but so many niggas hit it that she's just not the same letting all these goofies do her.

I see niggas slamming her, and taking her to the sewer but I'ma take her back hoping that the shit stop cause who I'm talking `bout y'all is hip-hop.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Sneak Peak: Common, in his song ‘I Used To Love H.E.R.’, establishes the extended metaphor of the song’s speaker’s first romantic interest and its evolution as a parallel to Common’s often tumultuous relationship with the ever-changing Hip Hop genre. By assigning Hip Hop a gender, actions, feelings, and intention, Common is able to detail to his listeners why and how Hip Hop first appealed to him, why for a time his interest waned, and how the two found each other again. 'I Used To Love H.E.R.'s story structure mimics the archetypal 'hero saves harlot' template that can be seen in contemporary movies, Biblical parables, and many other pop culture mediums - a structure used to illuminate what Common perceives as Hip Hop's fall from grace and his attempt to salvage what is left of the genre he continues to love. Common's purposeful and precise syntax further highlights his complex relationship with Hip Hop; he most often uses the subjects "I" and "She" to illustrate the trajectories both he and Hip Hop follow during the period in the speaker's life the song covers, only using other agents to qualify the effect outside influences impose on the course of that relationship. Through his speaker's dissatisfaction with the recounted relationship, Common is able to voice his criticisms about the increasingly aggressive and commercial direction Hip Hop was taking in the early 1990s under the guise of love lost and found. This clever, yet thinly veiled commentary on the state of Hip Hop is mirrored in the trials the genre faces to this day and is why 'I Used To Love H.E.R.' has been hailed as one of the greatest and most perceptive records in the annals of Hip Hop.

Full analysis of 'I Used To Love H.E.R.' coming after my review of 'The Mystery Guest'.

* I know I have ISSUES with tense, so try to disregard those errors lol.

there are two types of people in the world: those who & those who

2009-04-04T03:33:00.000-07:00

I just found a college entrance essay I wrote in 2005 in response to the (stupid) prompt: "There are two types of people in the world: those who _____ & those who _____." This is what I wrote. (Remember, I was 17 years old at the time! So be nice if this is all a bit ridiculous! lol)

Rebecca O'Neal
June 2005

There are two types of people in the world, those who know language to be a tool of persuasion, to be used with accuracy and precision, and those who use language solely as a tool of communication, as a means with no particular end in mind. Those who fall into the former group would cringe upon hearing their arduous journey toward enlightenment termed as "falling"; those in the latter would not know the difference. Like those Biblically born into sin, we are all doomed, for at least a time, to be among those not aware of the power held by language and do not know the latent error of our ways. Until we are taught differently, we remain oblivious to the prospect of MORE.

It has been my experience that those who are aware of the power of language also hold an affinity for it. Conversely, those who have not yet been awakened to that power tend to either be indifferent to, or even exhibit distaste for things related to extended or elevated uses of language, such as academic reading and writing, usage of proper or heightened spoken language, and leisure literary activities ( i.e. reading or writing outside of school). Because we all, more or less, begin in the latter group, levels of extremity differing, the question "How does one progress from one group to the next?" naturally arises. The answer is definitely a complex one.

In elementary school, with the exception of unnaturally precocious children, we are all the same, being expected to learn first the alphabet, how to write and read, construct simple sentences, and later to write cohesive pieces of academic literature, with the common properties of format being universally duplicable. These pieces are called, affectionately by some, resentfully by others, Five-Paragraph-Essays.

Once this archetype has been mastered, not much else is required of the student. Though there are variations from this format, persuasive, expository, narrative, etc, the blueprint remains the same: introductory paragraph, in which a thesis is explicitly stated, three body paragraphs, which are almost unwaveringly less poignant expositions of dependant clauses contained in the thesis, and finally the hardly-necessary conclusion, an often verbatim regurgitation of the introduction.

In high school (my knowledge can only speak of public, selective enrollment primary and secondary schooling), English I, expands to lightly graze over the most rudimentary of literary devices, only requiring students to identify them or use them in vacuums and out of context. English II, American Literature, attempts to encourage Literary Criticism, but never strays away from the Five-Paragraph-Essay. English III, British Literature, rather than tackling, merely settles to engage in requiring students to memorize the names of literary movements. These are the years in which students are given the tools and the option to make the transition into the former group.

With two roads diverged before them, most students are grateful to have taken the road less traveled by; my two roads were these: English IV or Advanced Placement Language and Composition. My choice was simple and it has made all the difference.

Everything I thought I knew about writing and literature was thrown out of the window in AP LANG. My general sweeping notions were sifted for kernels of usable information and concentrated to save room for the knowledge I was about to receive. Diction and syntax, the chameleons that they are, became my best friends. Jeanette Winterson, Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf became my mentors. I was inducted into the group of those who appreciate the power of language.

It was a challenge to readjust to the rest of the world after the shift. My new friends in my new "group" and I have not since been able to read or write arbitrarily. As Thomas Mann so pithily stated, "A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Other people, those who have not (yet) been exposed to language as art, as persuasion, are allowed to mercilessly take pen to paper by those who know better because there is no simple way to deposit this life changing information into someone's mind; there is no switch to be flipped. The only exception to this is the unexplainably gifted Emily Dickinson, who possessed a seemingly innate membership into the group to which I now belong.

Those unaware of the power of language cannot be faulted for their ignorance. For some people, the knowledge isn't desirable, just as complex science holds no interest for me. For others, the knowledge simply hasn't presented itself conveniently enough. I was fortunate enough to attend a school where there WERE two roads; most students my age are only offered one path. Because the road less traveled has led me to this state, which I enjoy immensely, I can only hope to once again visit the place where the two roads diverged and show more inquisitive minds the way.

Once I'm a successful, famous(, critically praised?) writer, I'll consider this my seminal work lol.

Tadzio is to Gus von A as Dorian Gray is to Basil Hallward

2009-04-02T02:27:00.000-07:00

"…If you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me!"

Gus von A (the poet in Death in Venice) and Basil Hallward (the painter in The Picture of Dorian Gray), besides being characters in books with themes of dandyism and latent homosexuality, have in common seemingly shameful obsessions with their respective muses (Tadzio & Dorian Gray), obsessions that threatened, at least in each artist’s mind, to overshadow the resulting art itself.

From Death in Venice:

“Verily it is well for the world that it sees only the beauty of the completed work and not its origins nor the conditions whence it sprang; since knowledge of the artist's inspiration might often but confuse and alarm and so prevent the full effect of its excellence.”

There’s a similar, simpler saying about why patrons shouldn’t go into the kitchens of their favorite restaurants to see how the sausage is cooked - It ruins the magic. But the hesitation that Basil Hallward and Gus von A expressed was deeper than a fear of fallen illusions – it was a fear of reproach or embarrassment, of being found out.

Basil Hallward, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, explained to a friend that:

"every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown with it the secret of my own soul.”

Similarly in Death in Venice, parallel to the story of Gus von A’s obsession with Tadzio, runs Plato’s story of Socrates’ obsession with Phaedrus in which Socrates says to his muse that "the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other".* The consensus seems to be that the artist or lover has more at stake in exhibiting his work or exposing his love than does the muse or object of affection.

Both men were also protective of their muses’ identities and careful not to reveal to their muses the depth of their adoration, Basil Hallward not wanting to reveal even Dorian Gray’s name to a friend. He offered this explanation: “When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It seems like surrendering a part of them.” Gus von A went as far as to not look at Tadzio overtly or ever speak to him. Hallward, though he had a relationship with Dorian Gray, never betrayed the secret of his obsession, saying to his friend, Lord Henry:

“I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of course, I have never dared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He will never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry,–too much of myself!”

The happiness of both Gus von A and Basil Hallward seemed to depend on their muses being constantly in their presence. Hallward “couldn’t be happy if [he] didn’t see [Dorian] every day. Of course sometimes it is only for a few minutes. But a few minutes with somebody one worships mean a great deal.” Gus von A couldn’t bear to leave the hotel at which he discovered Tadzio because “he felt the rapture of his blood, the poignant pleasure, and realized that it was for Tadzio's sake the leave-taking had been so hard.”

Because of these reservations and this maintained distance despite deep adoration, hidden, private, and figurative consummation of each relationship was forced to take place in the process of creating art.

“Strange hours, indeed, these were, and strangely unnerving the labour that filled them! Strangely fruitful intercourse this, between one body and another mind! When Aschenbach put aside his work and left the beach he felt exhausted, he felt broken--conscience reproached him, as it were after a debauch.”

In the above except, Gus von A writes feverishly in a fit of Tadzio-inspired creativity which results in excellent work and a feeling of guilt (we all know the feeling!)– and the sexual diction used to describe this process and the emotions it produces in Aschenbach are palpable. Only a few pages earlier, the act of conception that lead to Tadzio’s existence is compared to Gus von A’s act of creating poetry:

“What discipline, what precision of thought were expressed by the tense youthful perfection of this form! And yet the pure, strong will which had laboured in darkness and succeeded in bringing this godlike work of art to the light of day-was it not known and familiar to him, the artist? Was not the same force at work in himself when he strove in cold fury to liberate from the marble mass of language the slender forms of his art which he saw with the eye of his mind and would body forth to men as the mirror and image of spiritual beauty?"

Lastly, both men compare their muses to Greek mythological characters constantly… which is why, to this day, it’s just as common to hear a beautiful young man compared to a Grecian sculpture as to Tadzio or Dorian Gray (who share a similar physical description - eternally young, slight, with curly blond hair - Tadzio's face "recalled the noblest moment of Greek sculpture--pale, with a sweet reserve, with clustering honey-colored ringlets, the brow and nose descending in one line, the winning mouth, the expression of pure and godlike serenity." Dorian "was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair").

Basil Hallward offers a remedy to all of this suffering on the part of the artist.

“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. If I live, I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”

Not an hour ago did I write, in response to a post at A Commonplace Blog, that “as a reader, it's important for me to ingest what I read as a work sovereign of its creator.” Basil Hallward and Gus von A would be pleased to know that, I hope.

This has all been very Pygmalion.

* I LOVE when literature employs parallel storylines where one is used to illuminate the other. It’s the main reason I enjoyed Watchmen as much as I did. Some people hated The Tale of the Black Freighter; I say we wouldn’t still be talking about Watchmen today if that element had been omitted.

Coming up next in the 'Death in Venice' series - Gus von A as a fallen dandy (as defined by dandyism.net).

On D.G. Myers on J.V. Cunnigham + Commonplaces

2009-03-31T04:40:00.000-07:00

I've been blog-stalking A Commonplace Blog for a couple of months now. Its author, D.G. Myers, - 'a critic and literary historian at Texas A&M University' -never fails to provide stimulating commentary on all things *literary* - and the inspiration I find there is invaluable, as evidenced by my almost physical response to the post found HERE; below is the comment I left:

You've given me enough fuel to last a LONG while. Thank You! Pithy, poignant - near heroic couplets in substance and brevity.

"The assumption of translation is that things can be said in several ways and that the ways can be compared." <-- I've spent the last week or so vacillating between the English and French versions of Bouillier's The Mystery Guest and am miserable (it's all documented on my blog).... this is timely.

"The purpose of the plain style is to persuade, of the pretty style to charm, of the grand style to move or bend." <-- I'm drawn to dandyism in literature, so it's definitely the charming, pretty style for me.

"An accumulation of bad habits marks the colloquial style." & "In modern literature we witness a widespread need for anti-formality which often takes the form of vandalism. It goes by the rubric Make It New." <-- These are the reasons I've disliked many of the books I've recently read.

"When style is overpowering it takes us over. We think we have said what we have heard." <-- Montaigne is the master of this plain, persuasive style. You'd think you'd come up with some of the self-realizations he documented. And these notes of yours, of Cunningham's, I find myself nodding in agreement and gasping in epiphany as I read them.

"How difficult it is to write in praise!" <-- I started my own commonplace blog last week (this blog has been my inspiration) and already I feel I'm being too negative, finding fault with everything, being a literary *hater* (lol) - but it's much easier for me to identify and criticize the source of my dissatisfaction in what I read... which is strange because there's so much pleasure to be had in a book. What a teacher Cunningham must have been!

It may seem like I slathered the praise on a bit too thickly, but my appreciation is genuine. I loved being a student, learning from amazing and insightful people... and not being in an academic setting at 22, and for over a year, hurts more than I am comfortable admitting. I plan to be back in school by next year, and in the mean time this blog has been a source of motivation.

From A Commonplace blog:

"Commonplace book
orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
OED"

Immediately after reading the above for the first time, I knew I'd found a place on the internet to relax and stay a while. I'd been amassing 'commonplace books' for years without knowing what to call them. Now, with a commonplace blog of my own, I feel I am actively doing my part to stay sharp (and hopefully grow sharper by the day!) in preparation for my return to school and for my life as a reader and writer.

That's all for now. More on The Mystery Guest & Death in Venice coming up.

Macro vs. Micro Reading + why I can't read in French

2009-03-30T02:23:00.000-07:00

This post can be considered The Mystery Guest part 1.5 because these thoughts were triggered by my frustration with the translation of the story from French.

In which I TRY to explain my reading style:

When I read a piece of fiction, it's being read in two ways at once. Of course, I'm forming an overall impression of the narrative and whether it leaves a good or bad taste in my mouth. But I'm also picking apart the minutiae, finding fault or excellence in the details; macro-reading vs. micro-reading.

What I can't decide is if the two are independent of one another or interdependent - because I can love the plot, characters, and themes of a story and think it clever while taking issue with its mechanics. Conversely, exemplary, deliberate writing can, for me, render nearly ANYTHING enjoyable.

I may criticize elements of a book severely, and finish it with a positive impression - which brings me again to The Mystery Guest and why (micro and macro) reading in French seems a Herculean task. I'll outline my individual charges in my next post on the book, but the English translation is becoming a larger and larger issue by the page.

Because I know just how finite my grasp of my native language (English) is, I can't possibly be satisfied with reading in French. Even if I understand each French word I read (and I'm not there yet - I don't dare read even in English without a dictionary at my side) there are still nuances and intentions that elude me completely. French syntax, pronouns when used as objects/direct objects especially, is another beast I have yet to conquer - and it clouds my comprehension.

So I'm stuck with an unsatisfactory English translation and what I can LITERALLY garner from the original text. In my next post, I'll have specific examples of what I mean - outside of the idioms with which I've already taken issue.

Micro-reading in French is out of the question for me at this point, and will be a long time coming...

But I shall soldier on and finish this book (that I LIKE so far, though it may be hard to tell).

The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier Part 1

2009-03-29T03:06:00.001-07:00

EDIT: Finished the Book. HOW WRONG COULD I HAVE BEEN????

I'm just starting a new book, The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier, and I've already some qualms.

So far, what I know of the plot seems promising and the rhythm is pleasant, but there's something ELSE going on....

The Mystery Guest reads like a story being recounted aloud and I read French well enough to have garnered upon comparison that it's the not the fault the English translation. I was afraid that this would be another 'On The Road' - written incidentally as a continuous stream of consciousness with a lax, free-association influenced story structure, each thought or memory triggering the next, the reader frequently taken on amusing tangents along the way (and the tangents are abundant, as are idioms and colloquialisms "as they say"). Boullier's narrative has also in common with Kerouac's its basis in reality; both books blur the line that separates memoir from fiction. But this story has among it's draws, a lyrical rhythm - whereas 'On The Road' bares the telltale mark of certain American fiction: a jumpy cadence.

The rhythm was never the source of my hesitance though. My issue is more with the careless use of tiring and inappropriate idioms:

"...I was fast asleep and at my most vulnerable, my least up to answering the phone, when IN A WORD I was completely incapable of appreciating this miracle for what it was..."

"in a word" <--- This phrase makes no sense here because the following description of the speaker's state of mind is 10 words, rather than 1 word, long. Because this is a translation, there were three possibilities for this lackadaisical error:

It was the doing of the author.
It was the doing of the translator.
It's a device to characterize the emotionally distressed and neurotic narrator.

I was hoping for the third, but unfortunately, it's the translator's fault.

The original reads: "...j'ètais le plus dèmuni et le moins susceptible de rèpondre à son appel et même dans l'incapacitè la plus totale d'en èprouver la miracle." Nowhere does the literal or colloquial equivalent of "in a word" (en un mot/parole) appear. Literally the phrase in question would translate to "yet in the most total inability to experience the miracle."

I'm hesitant to read on from this point because I'm experiencing this book through the lens of someone else's understanding and interpretation of the original text. Audio books, for the same reason, don't appeal to me (being burdened and imposed upon by a stranger's inflections and intonations is no fun). Unfortunately, I can't read French well enough to fully digest, decode, interpret, and analyze an entire book the way I'd like... So I'm forced into a purgatory between languages and will refer to both versions as necessary.

I'll post a full review when I'm done with the book.

Onward I tread.

Death in Venice Part 2

2009-03-26T02:47:00.000-07:00

I said I wouldn't write one (because what can I say about this book that hasn't been said???), but here's a MINI review of Death in Venice. I'm going a bit into some of what I'll cover in my future posts about this story (Gus von A as a fallen dandy), but whatever. I don't think anyone is reading this blog yet lol.

In 'Death in Venice', Thomas Mann allows his readers to view a respectable man's descent into madness, into a dark, disturbing obsession where reason and logic have no impact on actions - where passion reigns sovereign... and it's jarring to *witness*.

The story begins with such attention taken to establish the story's protagonist (*Gus von A*) as hyper-disciplined, possessing the utmost aplomb and self-mastery - only to have him come undone as the book progresses.

This is one of those stories where syntax and diction play as much a part in the reader's investment as does the plot itself. Mann's sentences are at first long, and intricate - with far too many dependent clauses (seriously, try to diagram some of these suckers!)... but by the story's end, peppered amongst the ornate are an equal number of staccato phrases (often the protagonist's hurried and ill-considered decisions to act on whim).

I love the art of writing and Mann's style is the equivalent of literary porn. The subject matter isn't lacking scandal either. GREAT read. It's short enough to read quickly, but why rush. Savor it a bit.

Death In Venice Part 1

2009-03-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

I just finished Death in Venice by Thomas Mann and loved it! I have so much to say about the story that I've decided to break my entries into sections. This is part one. (Technically, it's part 2 because I posted my thoughts on a quote from the story HERE - so check that out also).

First, a summary: Death in Venice is the story of Gustav von Aschenbach (but I'll be calling him Gus von A), an acclaimed and well-respected German writer, who, in an uncharacteristic departure from his hyper-disciplined lifestyle, becomes obsessed with a beautiful boy named Tadzio while vacationing in Venice.

It seems pointless to review this classic story, so I'll be discussing some of my observations instead, starting with my thoughts on this quote:

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”

This is the absolute truth, but I can only speak from my own experience. I spend a lot of time alone these days (thanks depression!) and have never been more creative or bizarre in my life. The chance to do heaps of silent sustained reading is plenty to be thankful for, so it's not all bad and I've gotten to know what I'm like when there's no one else around, when I don't have to answer to anyone's expectations. A descent into madness isn't out of the realm of possibility though (ha!).

Montaigne's On Idleness has something to say about this and it's very similar to Mann's description of Gus von A's isolation and its effects on his mind:

"I find... like a runaway horse, [the mind] is a hundred times more active on its own behalf than ever it was for others. It presents me with so many chimeras and imaginary monsters, one after another, without order or plan, that, in order to contemplate their oddness and absurdity at leisure, I have begun to record them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of them."

Which is why I write as much as I do. Montaigne's Essays are the most honest and articulate exploration of character and personality I've ever come across (which is why we're still talking about them over 500 years later) and as I read of his epiphanies and moments of self-discovery I often find myself nodding in agreement. The same was true of my reaction to parts of Death in Venice.

When literature is truly universal, which all great literature is, any reader can see his or her self reflected in its words. The passing of 500 years, the separating distance of an ocean and several nations, a difference in sexual orientation, race, gender, ethnicity and language proves no hindrance to the power or poignancy of a great story.

That's all for now.

Part 2 - Tadzio is to Gus von A as Dorian Gray is to Basil Hallward.
Part 3 - Gus von A as a fallen dandy (as defined by dandyism.net).
Part 4 - "Who shall unriddle the puzzle of the artist nature?"
Part 5 - Death in Venice: on the page and beyond (on: the real Tadzio, Rufus Wainwright's Grey Gardens, the movie adaption, and mythological allusions).

My First Poem For You by Kim Addonizio

2009-03-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

This is by far one of my favorite poems. I could go on and on about it - but read it first:

I like to touch your tattoos in complete
Darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
Where they are, know by heart the neat
Lines of lightning pulsing just above
Your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
Swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
Twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
To me, taking you until we’re spent
And quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
The pictures on your skin. They’ll last until
You’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark, but touch them, trying.

See? What did I tell you? AWESOME!

'My First Poem For You' is pretty much a sonnet: rhyme scheme? check! 14 lines? check! the meter fluctuates, but for all intents and purposes, this is a structurally sound sonnet - down to the final reflective couplet.

Kim Addonizio is a TRUE talent; this piece is so precise, but reads so casually and intimately (sensually???) and with such fluidity, you'd never notice how formally it's written on a first reading - and that takes some SERIOUS skill to pull off. But it all works because the structure of the poem is in such direct opposition to the conversational tone and the subject matter.

The speaker obviously has some complex feelings about whoever this "you" character is; she freaks out about the permanency of his tattoos, which she only appreciates and explores in the dark - which I read as her ACTUALLY freaking out about the increasingly serious nature of their relationship. DEEEEEEEEP!

And if you break it down by sentences, its all "I like," "I can't," "I'm sure," "I pull," "I love"... bla bla yadda yadda - and then out of NOWHERE it's not about the speaker any more in the last lines and she finally hits us with "permanence is terrifying" (say whaaaaaaaa?). The last word, "trying" leaves me reeling everytime - she leaves the verb unsatisfied like that - just like her ongoing struggle with her feelings this "you"..... which makes sense because this is the "FIRST" poem for whoever this person is - and probably not the last.

I.
LOVE.
THIS.
POEM.

I'm not going to write a PAPER about this poem on my blog - but there are a million reasons to love this poem... above are a few.

nothing like a good nerd tattoo.

because I like my books with pictures...

2009-03-23T13:21:00.001-07:00

Marvel is a corporation after my own heart.

I finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray a few weeks ago and I keep renewing it at the library because I don't want to give it back. It has some deliciously animated descriptions and colorful turns of phrase - and the setting and themes of the book are so parallel to contemporary events (the glorification of youth and our pleasure driven society), so naturally I can't put it down (even for reading the 6 or 7 other books I have from the library).... add my love of that book for my love of comic books and graphic novels and you'll see where I'm going with this.

MARVEL ILLUSTRATED has taken upon itself to prey/capitalize upon my love (and I suspect the love of many others around the world) of classic literature and comic book format by creating a mashup of the two mediums....

I found out about this from a random comment left on my blog by some guy I'd never heard of before and will probably never hear from again - he found my blog, left a comment about this mashup and that was that.

WELL - today I found volume 1 of Marvel's interpretation of The Picture of Dorian Gray online and it's AMAZING! The characters look just as I would imagine them, the composition of each panel is deliberate and compelling, and they've distilled the action of the book into the perfect concentration of dialogue and narration....

NOW, I have to get my hands on the other 5 volumes. As much I love patronizing the library, I'm definitely purchasing these - they're only 2.99 each.

I've posted volume 1 in its entirety between my gushing about its existence. Check it out and read the book if you get the chance. This interpretation of the source work really brings the story to life.....

On Trend Literature + Book Reviews

2009-03-23T13:19:00.001-07:00

I've decided not to read anymore trendy, commercial crap like Twilight, so Minion by L.A. Banks is getting returned to the library ASAP. It's a trilogy, and I know once I read the first book, I'll be obligated to read the second and third, so I'm saving myself the trouble of being latched to the series for any period of time by reading none of it. To quote a review from ReadySteadyBook.com, I refuse to read books that are "not so much ‘compelling’ as ‘enslaving’". I'd rather read something of substance if I'm going to take the time. It is wrong to yearn for literary merit????

ANYWHO - The Razor's Edge was a GREAT read. It reminded me of The Picture of Dorian Gray in that Dorian Gray, the character, is a lot like Larry in The Razor's Edge: they're both young, attractive men with no family, of middling social status - charming, charismatic, peculiar. Both cease to age as well, but for very different reasons and in very different ways. The Picture of Dorian Gray's Lord Henry is reminiscent of The Razor's Edge's Elliot Templeton in that they're both obsessed with social status, and strive to remain relevant by being in the favors of those in certain circles and of a certain class. Both are great books that I enjoyed immensely.

The Handmaid's Tale was a surprisingly quick read - and equally disturbing. The matter of the book overshadows the manner in which it was written 100 fold, though it is impressive prose. It tells the story of a dystopian, but not too distant future in which a fundamentalist Christian group takes over America by killing the President and Congress - forcing women into subservient roles, including the eponymous Handmaid, whose sole purpose is reproduction, as most women have been rendered barren by pollution and environmental toxins. THE STORY IS DISMAL! I definitely recommend it to everyone who can read!

I just started The Reader today, but I accidentally read a HUGE plot spoiler online... so the big 'OH NO SHE DIDN'T' of the book isn't going to have as big an impact for me. I won't spill that moment here.... The book is now a movie starring Kate Winslet, and 18-year old German actor David Kross (who is hot! too bad he's so young....). Here's the basic plot: A 15-year old boy is sick on his way home from school and rescued by a woman over twice his age, with whom he then begins an illicit affair - the strangest part is that she makes him read aloud to her. The woman disappears for about 10 years and they run into each other again when he is in law school and she is on trial for war crimes in post WWII Germany.... he's conflicted because she has a huge secret and it's even worse that the heinous acts she committed in the war.

David Kross & Kate Winslet @ The Reader Premier

Best part - David Kross had to learn English for the role.

Can't wait to finish reading this. EDIT: Finished it in about a day. The book has a great plot and full characters, but it's written so clinically.... I'm glad it was short. It felt less like a novel and more like a piece of academic writing or a 200+ page newspaper article. It was very cold, somehow. That said, I did enjoy it and think the way it was written lends itself well to the subjects with which the story dealt. There's a lot of talk of detachment and divorcing oneself from one's actions - and that's exactly how the book reads, so perhaps it was an intentional choice.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie - mainly because David Kross is HOT!!!! lol

and this is funny: According to the Washington Post, December is National Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give It to Somebody Not Black Month... amazing! AMAZING! As someone who plans to be a novelist (soon?), is in marketing, and is Black - I call 'MARKETING SCHEME' on this one - but it's a good one.

book guilt and frustration

2009-03-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

I feel bad when I don't finish a book; it's a terrible feeling - like leaving your dog outside in the cold overnight (WHICH I'D NEVER DO!) and not coming back to get her - EVER.

So excruciating was the decision not to finish Awesome: a novel by Jack Pendarvis. I love urban fantasy movies and literature, so when I read reviews about the humourous tale of fabled giant making his way across the country to win back his true love, I thought, HEY - THIS IS RIGHT UP MY ALLEY!

Unfortunately, that was not the case. I can imagine that this book would be very funny for some people. I am not one of those people - and it's not the fault of the author and the book is not a poor(ly written) one. Awesome is written in a voice and style that I can appreciate, but can't relate to on any level.

The protagonist is a megalomaniacal giant, the eponymous Awesome, that I couldn't force myself to like or care about. His world of obligation was limited solely to himself, which made it difficult to invest my interest as a reader in his interactions with the other characters.

It also didn't help that the reviews I read were completely inaccurate. The book was described as 'cute' several times; while whimsical, cute, the book was definitely not. If I had to label it - I might call the genre Adult Whimsy (which, if you think about it, doesn't make sense because only adults are aware of the concept of 'whimsy' anyway. Children express, and if I remember correctly, sometimes perceive the mundane and the whimsical interchangeably and with equal conviction - which must be nice - so there's no suspension of disbelief required for them to become lost in fantasy. But I digress.) - or maybe Adult-THEMED Whimsy.

There's lot of talk of ejaculation and bodily fluids, which isn't what I was expecting. I'm not opposed to toilet humor but it didn't seem to serve a purpose in Awesome. There were some parts so ridiculous that I couldn't help but laugh - but they were few and far between for me. That said, I DO think Pendarvis has succeeded in creating challenging prose; I think it was too unconventional for my taste, which is difficult for me to swallow.

I felt like I was a slave to the book and was only continuing to read it because I had began it.... so I stopped (the only other books I can remember not finishing are Marley & Me - because I only starting reading it to waste time at the laundromat and was reading another book at the same time - and The Maytrees by Annie Dillard - which I was conned into returning to the library. I went in to renew it and someone else had it on hold so they took it from me. I have it on hold again now). The book just wasn't for me. I have a feeling it's more of a cult-following thing.

Anywho - I'm reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac now - which I'm enjoying so far. I had wanted to read it for a while. Next I'm on to The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier.... which has a trailer. I love creative marketing.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

2009-03-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

I just finished On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I don't think it has EVER taken me this long to finish a book. I've been reading it for over a month.

AND I DIDN'T LOVE IT – AT ALL. But I want to qualify that sentiment.

I didn't feel like aim of this book was a literary one. It's more about documentation – of Kerouac's experiences with Neal Cassady (in the book each are represented by the narrator Sal Paradise and Dean Moriatry respectively) and of the experiences of young people in America at the time – a documentation of the collective consciousness of the country's disillusioned youth. In that way, it's definitely significant historically and culturally.

It spoke in a new voice, with a new cadence, at a new rhythm – fast paced, wild – MAD.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

The above quote pretty much sums up the entire feeling of the book in manner and matter. It's written wildly and it focuses on the uninhibited BEAT generation.

None of this seems revolutionary to us now – but if you think of these people and characters in the context of the buttoned up times of the late 40s and early 50s, it becomes positively sinful and seductive – it becomes a new trend and era. We know that now, but at the time, this book CREATED (or labeled?) an era, a movement – something that could be pointed to, admired, aspired to, and duplicated.

I appreciate that - I get it - but as a standalone piece of literature On the Road wasn't for me. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but had I read this book unaware of its importance and context, I would have honestly regretted reading it (which sounds harsher than the way I intend it – so let me explain).

The books I enjoy are written deliberately, carefully – with care given to word choice, syntax, turns of phrase… I love the craft of writing - and the literature I love is artful, though not self-conscious. 'On the Road' was the exact opposite – everything seemed incidental. I felt like the novel's action was captured as it happened (which I know isn't true. The entire book was written during a 3 week caffeine binge on a seamless scroll) and we, the readers, were scrambling (as the narrator Sal does after Dean) to keep up with the momentum of the machine.

Jane Austen comments on the condition from which Kerouac and his narrator seem to suffer in her novel (one of my favorites), Pride and Prejudice; Mr. Bingley says (while at the equivalent of an Austen era kickback):

"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them…" to which Mr. Darcy replies, "The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance."

That pretty much sums up how I feel about 'On the Road'. Jack Kerouac himself is quoted as having said, "My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them".

But it all makes perfect sense (so was it deliberate?). The characters in the book are spontaneous, haphazard and MAD, always in pursuit and on the move (on the road…) – so if this book was written with too much structure, too much order or attention to consequence it would have felt terribly, terribly wrong.

So I can't say I HATED On the Road - it just isn't my kind of novel. I'm only one person and these just happen to be my reading preferences. I've wanted to read this book for a while. Now I have. Back to regular programming. Up next are 'The Mystery Guest', 'Revolutionary Road', and 'The Age of Innocence'.

Favorite quotes (that weren't already mentioned):

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

"Everything happened."

"He could hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life."

"He's never hung up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he know time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he's the end!"

yea... the whole book is like that.

the best of the two

2009-03-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm reading 'Death in Venice' by Thomas Mann (because one of my favorite songs is 'Grey Gardens' by Rufus Wainwright - in it he alludes to the character Tadzio from the short story, so I figured I'd read it and appreciate the song THAT MUCH MORE) and a few of Montaigne's Essays (because I've wanted to read 'The Mystery Guest' by Gregoire Bouillier for some time and in more than a few of its reviews, Montaigne is mentioned in reference to Bouillier's narrative honesty) and both are AMAZING so far.

There are so many kernels of truth in Montaigne's writing that I won't even bother making a list - but I will say that it's hard to tell that his essays were written in the 16th century. They're an exploration of his true character and I think it's safe to say that not much has changed about the human experience or psyche in 500 years. Montaigne seems so modern (and often so humorous and frank) because he holds nothing back from himself or his readers and that's refreshing to read - to this day.

"Hardly anything stirs in me that is secret or hidden from my reason; hardly anything takes place that has not the consent of every part of me, without divisions and without inner rebellion. My judgment takes the complete credit or the complete blame for my actions; and once it takes the blame it keeps it forever."

That quote from Montaigne sums up what each essay is like. He's putting his beliefs and personality on trial and baring himself for all to see - the best and the worst of who he is.

But that's not why I made this post. I wanted to talk about a quote from 'Death in Venice' that describes the wide appeal of the main character, the fictional author Gustav Aschenbach's, work (he's a writer).

"Remote on one hand from the banal, on the other from the eccentric, his genius was calculated to win at once the adhesion of the general public and the admiration, both sympathetic and stimulating, of the connoisseur."

Well, THAT must be nice (lol)!!! Literature that can be appreciated by the critics and the average Joe.... to call literature so widely satisfactory RARE would be beyond euphemistic. I recently went on several psycho-babbles about Trend Literature and how some of the books I was choosing were "not so much ‘compelling’ as ‘enslaving’" - and it's nice to see that a writer, even if he's fictional, has managed to gain commercial success while remaining substantive and 'literary' (whatever 'literary' means....).

I wrote an ode to hip hop a few years ago, I think when I was a senior in H.S., with the lines, "...your swag is bad. I know you'd pass the test in the 'hood./You're credible with intellectuals - the best of the two./That's why I'm messing with you. You've got skills..." - and though I was 17 at the time and writing about the kind of music I then liked, (hip hop with lots of metaphors) that's also what I want to read a lot of the time. I read for the beauty of the writing - some people like to stare at paintings for hours on end. I can read the same artfully phrased sentence or startlingly accurate and insightful descriptive passage over and over and over and marvel at how the writer could ever craft something so wonderful or poignant (or in some cases pithy - it was Nietzsche's “ambition to say in 10 sentences what others say in a whole book," but most of us aren't there yet lol) from scratch.

And because I ultimately want to be a (successful? talented?) writer - and am so conscious of what I like and don't like in what I read, this quote from 'Death in Venice' stuck out immediately. I can imagine that many writers wrestle with this concept - though it's easy to just say you'll write for the sake of your writing and not care about commercial success or critical acclaim. But what's the point of that? Is it wrong to want the best of the two?

...though I feel a bit presumptuous for assuming I'll ever acheive one or the other - seeing as I've yet written nothing to submit to either court of approval - save a short story or three (and the occasional poem) I've posted here....

Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon!

2009-03-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning at ten to nine,
Harvey Moon was eating toast,
waiting for the cartoon show
that he enjoyed the most.
With only minutes left to go,
he heard the voice of DOOM.
"Today, young man," his mother said,
"Is the day you clean your room!"

It would be an understatement to say that I LOVED this book as a kid! I turned out to be a pretty messy person, so I guess my mother bought this for 5-year-old-me in a bout of psychic intuition.

I recited this book in its entirety for second grade speech fair and can still ramble off most of the poem.

SERIOUSLY, to me at 5 years old, this book represented the highest form of humor - I laughed, I empathized, I disliked Harvey's mother for making him clean his room... this book had it all.

If I ever have kids, they're getting 'Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon' (along with some Shel Silverstein, Le Petit Prince, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, Amelia Bedelia, Where the Wild Things Are, and all of my other childhood favorites).

Check out the full text and audio of the book HERE online.

5-year-old Rebecca must be having the best day ever, because the poster from the Where the Wild Things Are movie is out as well: