Note to self:

Don't bring up Rilke in a seminar that is not about Rilke. You will dreamily ramble about angels and terror and God when you "come to" only an awkward silence will be there to greet you.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Esquire recently published a list of "75 Books Every Man Should Read."

Only one of the seventy-five was written by a woman.

P.S. Somebody else post something.



(I assume it's obvious which book it was.)

Infinite Rest

"Did you see that David Foster Wallace committed suicide? I wasn't all that familiar with his work, but I know he was considered a very gifted writer. They didn't come out and say so in the obits, but he certainly sounded bipolar."

I did minimal research, as I'd never read him either:

"I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering… We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with characters’ pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might be just that simple.” - DFW

Needless to say, I want to.

But I won't. At least not for awhile. It's so tacky to discover an author this way, you know?

Brown Sugar

"What I remember then was Reenie, from when we were little. It was Renie who’d done the bandaging, of scrapes and cuts and minor injuries: Mother might be resting, or doing good deeds elsewhere, but Reenie was always there. She’d scoop us up and sit us on the white enamel kitchen table, alongside the pie dough she was rolling out or chicken she was cutting up or the fish she was gutting, and give us a lump of brown sugar to get us to close our mouths. Tell me where it hurts, she’d say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where.
But some people can’t tell where it hurts. They can’t calm down. They can’t ever stop howling."
- Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin

Indelible Ink, Unbearable Lightness

To be on my self-constructed pre-class schedule, I need to read 100 more pages of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain before Monday, so I’m going to keep this entry a three-for-one (longer than a normal entry, but shorter than three separates).

There are three lines from summer reads that have lingered* with me. I’ll include the source, the quote and what I suppose is the reason for its indelibility.

Source: Affliction by Russell Banks
Quote: “As for forgiveness: it must be spoken of, I suppose, but who among us can hope to proffer it? Even I, at this considerable distance from the crimes and the pain, cannot forgive him. It is the nature of forgiveness that when you forgive someone, you no longer have to protect yourself from him.”
Reason: I used to think of myself as an especially forgiving person. What I mistook for an impressive ability to let go of past harms, was actually a startling ability to let go of people the instant I felt they had crossed a line of my own mental drawing. Forgiveness was something that I assumed would come naturally and effortlessly in the afterglow of the thrill of liberation, of skipping town, changing locks, screening calls, blocking numbers, junking letters, burning pictures – all of these things literally or figuratively. Russell Banks appeared to concur that when you had evicted an individual from your tender places could you forgive him or her. But, when I brought this quote up to someone who: A) I love dearly, in a way I’ve never loved anyone else B) has suffered through my reckless rage, has seen me bolt and managed to catch up to me and reign me back and C) has been a consistently safe place for me since, my first real home, and not given me a cause to leave – he became quiet and thoughtful, and then said he disagreed with my interpretation. He believed it meant that until you were able to once again make yourself vulnerable to the one who had hurt you, you hadn’t truly forgiven. I know he’s right. In fact, our relationship is proof – proof whose beauty and pleasure more than reward the demons I wrestle so that I may keep loving and trusting and giving myself. But on the other hand, it isn’t reasonable to keep handing chances to everyone. By this high standard, there is one person in my life who I may only be able to forgive after his death, which makes me sadder than I want to consider and guiltier than I can bear.

Source: Run River by Joan Didion
Quote: “You’re strong enough to make people take care of you.”
Reason: And so, dear reader, our theme emerges! When is independence a denial-muddled mislabel of cowardice? Well, I’ll back up and give context. This sentence is spoken to Lily McClellan by her sister-in-law, Martha. Because I share a name with the main character, I involuntarily measured her against myself to see if there were notable commonalities. Instead I discovered that Martha, to me, was more relatable and sympathetic (although she would only resemble me on my drunkest/cattiest/bitterest/most immature day, and is nothing of which to be proud). So when that utterance came from her, I paid attention. It consisted of two halves I found irreconcilable, but equally provocative. Strength is something a woman should always seek and prize. To make people take care of you is shameful and pathetic. I considered maybe it was more a point of characterization of Martha, made a mental note and kept reading. Well, spoiler alert: Martha drowns herself. At which point, I decided Didion was composing a real message in all those details and I’d better listen up. I now think that as is the case in many of the most brilliant books about women, (think Sense and Sensibility, The Unbearable Lightness of Being) – the two characters are personifications of often conflicting sides that, in real life, share space within every one woman. I read it as a multifaceted indictment that calls out, to name a couple:
1. Those whose solitude is more self-neglect and self-harm and self-pity than self-reliance.
2. Those who victimize themselves into justifying manipulation and selfishness.
So where is the healthy middle ground? Here we go to number three…

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love by bell hooks
Quote: “Women who learn to love represent the greatest threat to the patriarchal status quo.”
Reason: Contemporary fiction’s strength is in its ugliness, it coughs up a lot of gunk and the questions squirm around in front of you and what the author articulates, he or she never answer. (Ah, our postmodern age.) For answers, if you want answers, (cue too-cool eye roll from postmodernism) you’re best bet is nonfiction. I don’t trust answers, I really don’t trust people who think they have them, and really really really don’t trust people who want to sell them to an audience. I much prefer to try to figure shit out on my own. (And overanalyze everything, which makes for very long diary entries and pretty good English essays.) However, bell hooks is my exception. Her superior bravery, experience, intelligence have totally earned my respect and in a rapidly mobile movement like feminism, it’s rare I encounter something I believe will age with relevance and grace. Her writing picks up where much of the women’s movement drops off: addressing the crucial point that patriarchy is as much a psychological problem as a sociological one and it damages men and women alike. There’s more to go into than I can right here, but overall Communion catalyzed my arrival at this conclusion:
Being healthy and strong is the most radical feminist act – do it for yourself, do it for the world.
Strength is loving, respecting and caring for yourself.
When you achieve this strength, you will naturally expect to be treated with respect and care.
You will only nurture relationships in which that treatment is genuine and is mutual.
I’m trying. I’m growing. I’m getting better. In hooks’ words:
“I was rescued from madness by feminist movement.”


And now, I’m out.
Thomas Mann won’t read himself.

*Is it just me, or does that word ALWAYS make you think of The Cranberries?

Taoist, Buddhist, Catholic or Just Your Average Library Book Stealer?

Nobody has made an update since March. So, because my summer is starting to feel like one very large nap, I've decided to add an entry. I read a couple of books during the school year since my last entry, but I don't remember which ones, so I'm only going to be talking about the ones that I've read over this summer (my nap) so far.
Siddhartha. I like Herman Hesse and this book was listed as the number one book at Evergreen (so says facebook, and we all know that facebook rules over all our judgements). Truth be told, I had planned on reading it a long time ago. In fact, my original plan was to get really stoned one night and read it front to back in one sitting. Well, that was wishful thinking on my part, because I'm not at all motivated, spiritual or intellectual when I'm stoned. In fact, instead of reading Siddhartha, that might have been the night that I drew faces on all of my toes and ate half the kitchen.
So I read it, sober, this summer.
When I was in eighth grade I claimed that I was either a Taoist or a Buddhist after reading a book I stole from the library (that I still have in my possession), but back then it was only a way to spark some cringes in my Jesus-loving friends and to avoid the confusing ideas of my 'pagan' mother and atheist father. What I've always known, ever since the time that I was semi-capable of conjuring up existential questions, is that I don't give a shit where I came from, what I'm doing here, or what kind of rule-making deity exists. I just don't care. At all.
But what my twenty year old self understands better than my thirteen year old self, is that you can believe in nothing and still take away valuable ideas and teachings from different religions and philosophies.
Which brings me back to Siddhartha. I'm obviously not going to give up my material life to go live in a shitty shack on the side of a shitty river to gain complete enlightenment like the book's main character, but I can resolve to stop and admire the simple things in life. One of the themes I liked about this book, and I've always been kind of fascinated by the subject in other books by authors like Faulkner and Lawrence, is how faulty language is in expressing emotions and ideas. Words are just the transportation of our thoughts, and even are thoughts are articulated by words. And around and around. "It may by a thought, but I must confess, my friend, that I do not differentiate very much between thoughts and words. Quite frankly, I do not attach great importance to thoughts either." -Siddhartha.
All in all. Read it.
I also read A Theft by Saul Bellows. It was okay. I don't think I understood the ending. I'm not going to waste my time typing about that book though.
Instead, I'm going to discuss one of my new favorite Kerouac books. What? Tara reading Kerouac?
I'm so predictable.
But this is a lesser known Kerouac novel that he considered his best book: Visions of Gerard. Its a short autobiographical fiction about the death of his young, saintly brother Gerard. You can tell that he put a lot of emotion into this particular piece of writing. Its rather heartbreaking, and it helps the reader understand why Kerouac's lifestyle was the way it was.
My favorite part and my favorite Kerouac quote comes right before the death of Gerard. Gerard, nine years old, falls asleep in Catholic school. He has a dream that the Virgin Mary floats down from heaven, surrounded by bluebirds, to take him away on a golden chariot. A nun wakes him up and scolds him for falling asleep, but Gerard explains to the nun of his vision, that she shouldn't worry, that everyone is already in heaven, although no one knew it. Kerouac later says that he learned the most important lesson of his life from his brother, the all-important truth: "All is well. Practice kindness. Heaven is nigh."

So there you have it.
Right now I'm reading a book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed for my social work class in the fall. Some of the words in it aren't even in the dictionary. Phooey.

Liberal Arts

When they returned, there was champagne. A glass was put in my hand, and the bubbles tickled my nose. She kissed me on the cheek, and the two boys disappeared. On the couch, she said she liked the way my pants fit. I touched her tongue with my tongue. We smoked weed. At one point, she said, "I have never been afraid of my body. It's the only thing in the world I can trust."
I said, "Look at the music I listen to. Look at the books. I'm not just some fucking guy. I got shit going on."

-Joseph Musso Jr.
I was Never Cool

The Blue Room

Went to Powell’s for the first time since elementary school yesterday; (with Julien, almost a floor for military history - you can imagine) It was beautiful etc., etc. and I spent almost twice the maximum I had mentally allowed myself. (“Mentally” implies a little more responsibility on my part than there actually was: also almost twice the amount I transferred to my checking account from savings.) Over the course of my visit, I picked up and put back many times more volumes than I actually took home in the end… my decisions weren’t too difficult when I reminded myself that I really shouldn’t waste the trip by purchasing...

...anything I could find in Olympia.
Goodbye, James Baldwin

…or anything I might never actually make myself read.
Au revoir, Paradise Lost

…or anything by/about an author of whose work I already have plenty.
Maybe later, weird book about Sylvia Plath that includes some creepily crude paper-doll looking… sketches? watercolors? I didn’t look too long.

…or anything strangely comforting, but inexcusably uncool.
Not in public, MLA Handbook*

…or anything interesting and probably helpful but that everyone else enrolled in “Monstrous Possibility” would be too good for, thus turning it into a vaguely shameful secret.
Ciao, dictionary of literary criticism or theory or something terms*

So my final armful was composed of some small press publications, The Divine Comedy^, and a collection of work by contemporary Northwest poets. The other half§ of my total purchase was a first edition of William Stafford poetry. Part of me knows that trying to fill the hole left by the unattainable Places Where There Aren’t Any People is unhealthy, but the bigger part of me took the owl on the cover as a sign we were each other’s destiny.

The only book I have finished so far (I write that as though it is not also the only book I have started so far) is Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz. With the wall of spines and yellow papered/red inked employee recommendations in front of me, shouting at me in colors and clamoring for attention, I could only “flip through it” so well. But it struck me as a combination of two of my favorite things I have ever read ever ever: It seemed to have the Jose Saramago’s perspective in All the Names, which pushes a loving glow out of his portrait of loneliness and a tedious job with its menial work (and the loneliness of menial work, and the menial work of being lonely) and suspends it in this sort of golden allegorical wisdom. On the other hand, the language seemed stark and simple and played with, à la Will “Life is a word game”© Eno – with all the modern existential angst that kind of writing implies.

It actually did have the elements I predicted, but at Lutz’s hand they were weaker. He seemed kind of like a watered down Rick Moody (as in, it had gross physical stuff that was less vividly/musically described than Moody, but was also less gratuitous/meaningless than Palahniukª) The bored, fatalistic sex between strangers that pervaded throughout sort of reminded me of Miranda July’s similarly lustless Nobody Belongs Here More than You. I was certainly right about the Eno-ish wordplay, but taking common language and presenting it in a new way is much more important when the new way hits on a tender, shared nerve and becomes what language is at its best: something we all have preciously in common. Unfortunately for Lutz, he seems to think that the universal human condition is lovelessness, bad skin, a boring job, feeling somehow cosmically wronged by living with as many neighbors as apartment complexes provide and resignation, resignation, resignation. It’s not a bad book – it’s just that if Gary invited me to be his friend I would have to decline. Certain parts I did enjoy, sometimes for their accuracy and occasionally for their prettiness, rarely for their truth.

Accuracy: an articulation of my shy person’s distrust of non-shy people:
“People driven from themselves are always the ones you see the most of. They make themselves aggressively public.”

Prettiness: girls’ names, violet ink, the word “dwell”
“The name of the checkout girl would get printed in pale-violet ink at the bottom of the receipt. The receipts accumulated in my pocket. I would reach into it for my keys and feel the girls feel the sudden extra weight on themselves. People could tell when they were being dwelled upon.”

Truth: Yes?
“I kept my mouth closed and my lips still while I played everything wrong by heart.”

Well there it is. I’m hella blogging. Writing about reading semi-publicly. Hold my hand, Tara? Solidarity buddy? The last five weeks of my spring quarter are going to involve intensive peer review of my work, so I’m writing away and not even reminding myself how few people read this. I’m trying to be braver by 20. Trying not to keep my mouth closed and my lips still while I play everything wrong by heart.

The End.

(I think the excessive and compulsive nature of my footnote employment pushes it over the line from "quirky" into "disordered" territory.)

*Also categorized under the equally excluding, Anything I Could Ask My Dad to Buy for Me

^I remember my Paradise Lost reasoning too… but A) It is more readable B) It was a used, cheap hardcover in pretty good condition. And, last but least least, C) a painfully shy, directionless and possibly depressed medical student (whose parents were tearfully begging him to remain that third item) at a Christmas party made an effort to talk to me next to the hors d'oeuvres precisely because he knew from those same beggar parents that I was an English-ish major, as he was becoming increasingly interested in the subject. Apparently he was reading Shakespeare and Dante’s Inferno (“Oh, is that all?” Med students, man…) He liked my wishbone necklace and would later tell his parents he thought I was “stunning”. Had I ever been described as such previously, or would I ever be described as such in the future, I’d acknowledge that he had probably been looking at me through some kind of alcohol goggles and disregard it. But I never have and I probably never will, so I am acknowledging the goggles but keeping the compliment and reading Dante’s Inferno to have one thing besides that party in common with Ben, who made me feel like not an awkward blushing blob for a little while.

§In weight and in cost

© A line from one of his plays, The Flu Season

ª You know it’s true.

Telepathic Gorilla-Genius

Hooray for my first post.
I was in the process of reading Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut, but I’ve put that book to the side in order to forgo the usual insecure feelings I get when I read it. It isn’t relatable to my life at all, so why do I feel insecure reading it? It has to do with certain minor embarrassments that I’ve had to suffer through in the past couple weeks and would rather forget.
Overall, the book is really entertaining and worth reading. The main character is trying to write a book about the inventor of the atom bomb. He ends up getting caught up in a cast of strange characters and a goofy religion called ‘Bokonism.’ I’m sure that Vonnegut is trying to get across some kind of "interconnectedness" concept, but I didn’t get far enough into the book to find out. I’m excited to finish it, but perhaps at a different time in my life.
So instead of Cat’s Cradle, I’ve decided to pass my pathetic, sloth-like time by reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. The book has been continuously recommended to me. I even had a guy in my previous class tell me it changed his life and way of thinking. (The same guy gave me one of the best hugs I’ve ever had, so I have faith in his opinion.)
I started it today and I’m already half way done with it. It has completely captured my attention. You start to put yourself into the shoes of the narrator. You start to believe that you’re this person sitting in a chair, in the middle of an empty room, having a philosophical conversation with an intelligent, telepathic gorilla.
Okay. Pause. I didn’t realize how retarded the concept of the book was until I just wrote that sentence. But, despite the out-there scenario, the book really does get you thinking. About what, you may ask? How we’ve made the creation of humankind into a myth. How we are disillusioned when it comes to our future. How we are flawed and bound to fuck things up. How we understand that there is some unattainable knowledge out there, some unattainable law, that can help us prevent destruction and tell us how to live. These are a few things gorilla-man has taught me so far in the book, and I’m sure there are more enlightening things to come. Wikipedia says (and we all know that wikipedia knows everything): "It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability."
I really like it. So if you're interested in a book about a telepathic gorilla-genius, Ishmael is the book for you.

Winter Rain and the Smoke it Brings

I feel a little guilty and worthless about not contributing one tiny thing to this blog so far, considering I expressed so much enthusiasm about the whole enterprise. I have been busy tackling an art history project about Humanism in the northern European Renaissance ohmyGodIamsosickofallthosewordsfldkjafkdlaga as inefficiently as possible in spite of my sincere best efforts to the contrary. (Five times the pages of notes than the page requirement of the paper. How does this happen?)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to spring break. I turned down a trip to California's better half with Mr. Inclan in favor of staying here and exploring Washington (Mount St. Helens is cool, right?) I had my selfish reasons that I won't go into because I'm old fashioned when it comes to journaling and this isn't that kind of a blog anyway... But at least part of it, I'd like to think, was my undying love for/mysterious bond with the Pacific Northwest. Which reminded me of some passages from Sometimes a Great Notion that I can't recall and a poem by Sam Hamill, which I was introduced to in Literature of the Americas a year ago. TerribleTara probably remembers it.

I'm just going to insert the link because otherwise my post will take up more room than it deserves.

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~bgoebel/members/shamill.htm

i am america (and so can you)

i highly recommend this book-maybe just because i want to do the dirty with stephsteph. it's absolutely hilarious (pricey but makes up for it in laughs). i like to read from it to my life size colbert cardboard cut-out before i go to bed each night.

signing off,

roarin

oh, and i just read on wiki that there's an audiobook feat. amy sedaris and jon stewart, among others.

Curious Carl

I had yet another brilliant epiphany while drawing Britney Spears, reading David Sedaris, and talking about Hilary Clinton with Roarin' Lauren tonight, because that's how things go. It basically went like this: "I want to have a book club/team blog where lots of people post comments, reviews, analysis, etc. of whatever they have been reading. Write about anything you want, as long as it is some form of literature.

Tell me who else should be invited to contribute, and give me their email address. If that person is you, that is especially fantastic.

Question: Should it be a public blog, or should I change the settings so that only authors can read?