Category Archives: Literature

19
November
2012
Tags: Literature
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The Longest Read of My Life

A friend had warned me that I would grow tired of it before it was over. I scoffed at the notion – at page 200 I was still enthralled with the Dickensian atmosphere of ‘An Instance of the Fingerpost’ by Iain Pears, and loving the historical world of Restoration England in the 1600’s. Yet he insisted that I would soon find the book unnecessarily long. I fought him for a bit, then let it go, content with the knowledge that if I was enjoying a book a few hundred pages in, I wouldn’t find it tough to finish in the least. Then I looked forward to composing a snotty little told-you-so message proving myself right for the cajillionth time.

As it turns out, by page 400 I was starting to wonder if I might be wrong. And by the time the FOURTH narrator began his take on the tale, I had to admit defeat. It was getting difficult to trudge through the last couple of hundred pages. But I did it, even if it took me three times longer than it normally does to finish a book. This post is dedicated to James, who was right when I was wrong ~ which happened at just about the 500 page mark as he had predicted. (And essential component of growing up is learning how to accept when you’re wrong. Perhaps there is hope for me after all.)

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03
October
2012
Tags: Literature
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Like A Virgin Suicide

“It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.” ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, ‘The Virgin Suicides’
 
Jeffrey Eugenides wrote one of my favorite books, ‘The Virgin Suicides’. At the time of its release, it resonated on a number of levels. Above all else, I fell in love with the beauty of his words – the way he put them together, both sprawling yet sparingly. In the claustrophobic world of the Lisbon sisters, he created an entire universe of the pain and ache of being young and seeing no way out of it. Life expanded and pronounced itself in the details of being a girl – and a boy who watched a girl. In the grooves of a record, in the chopping down of a tree, in the bathroom of adolescent secrets.
 
While browsing the bookstore the other day, I came upon his latest work “The Marriage Plot” which I happily snatched up for our upcoming trip to Maine. Though I wasn’t the biggest fan of ‘Middlesex’, I’m hoping that this new one has a few gems in it. I tend to be a fan of individual books rather than authors – in the same way that I enjoy singles over albums. Obviously there are exceptions, and notable ones at that ~ Edith Wharton, Gregory Maguire, Shirley Horn, and Madonna to name a few masters and mistresses of words and music ~ but for the most part I get too tired of one voice or sound after a while, and feel the need for change. That restlessness was something the Lisbon sisters couldn’t overcome, not in that house, and not in that time.
 
“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher than the pyramids; they had killed themselves over the failure to find a love none of us could ever be. In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.” ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, ‘The Virgin Suicides’
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30
September
2012
Tags: General, Literature
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Squeezing the Sperm

“Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me, and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-labourers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally, as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill humour or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.”

~ Herman Melville, ‘Moby Dick’

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18
March
2011
Tags: Literature
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And At The Break of Day

About the only thing I can control in life is my artistic output (and what I wear). This is somewhat infuriating, as I tend to need control to feel safe and secure. Without that control, I often have to rely on others who are usually not as dependable as me. Sorry, but the truth is the truth, and one of my greatest strengths is my dependability and sustenance. (You don’t keep a website going with daily posts for eight-plus years, or hold down a job for almost ten if you are inconsistent or unreliable.)

That said, it’s not always fun to find the control, (and even those enterprises over which I have complete autonomy aren’t entirely joyful all of the time). This passage, another from John Tarrant’s Bring Me the Rhinoceros, has been teaching me to let go. It’s been a revelation – and a rather freeing one at that:

Maybe nothing will change and the uncertainty will continue. What has changed is that he doesn’t torment himself with his thoughts. He has breakfast, goes to work, comes home, has dinner, plays with the children, reads a novel. He lives. He does not require the moment to be different in order to be happy. He is happy…

The Buddha doesn’t say that nothing happened, that someone didn’t beat you, that no pain was caused. He is not encouraging you to pretend you are a robot, to go into denial, or to take up positive thinking. He just says that feeding the story of suffering makes you suffer. And he doesn’t say that not feeding the story of suffering will make you happy. His words are a koan; they take away the story about suffering. How happiness appears is your business.

This koan raises the idea that freedom might be freedom from your own stories about life and who you are and who you should be. When you first see that you suffer from your thoughts, you might want to get rid of the difficult, painful thoughts and put good ones in their place. This is not the koan approach. What might it be like if you got rid of the painful thoughts and didn’t put anything in their place? Then you might not be struggling to make the world fit your fiction. You wouldn’t suffer from bad art…

When the Buddha made his discoveries, he said, “I have found the builder, and I will not build the house of pain again.” Without your fictions, life has a simplicity that is full of beauty.

There is nothing I dislike.

~ John Tarrant, Bring Me The Rhinoceros

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10
September
2010
Tags: Literature
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My Main Summer Read

There is usually one book that stands out above the rest in the course of a summer. I still remember David Copperfield in the sunny weeks between ninth and tenth grades, and Treasure Island in the summer leading up to eleventh grade. In recent years the Harry Potter series became an annual summer rite. This past season, Kraken by China Mieville captured the hot spot – a memorable romp of wickedly wild other-worldly mayhem. It doesn’t fall into an easy genre, and to be honest I picked it up in the bookstore not knowing anything about it.

More often than not, I have an idea of what book I want to read next – based on the news or reviews, or even the simple suggestions of online alchemy. Not so this time – I picked up Kraken based on the title and my fascination with Architeuthis dux – the giant squid. There was no indication whether this was a comedy or a tragedy, reality or fantasy, fun or scary, so it was a bit like boarding Space Mountain for the first time without having heard anything about what it would be like. Thankfully that was part of the thrill.

So many preconceived notions are brought to the books we read, based on the title, the cover, the author, the synopsis – how many of us simply pick up a book and read it for the sheer thrill and joy of reading, regardless of content? Yes, it’s a crapshoot, and a rather Russian-Roulette-like danger of disappointment lurks beneath every cover, but in this instance it turned out for the best. Kraken is the kind of wonderfully weird corkscrew of a book that benefits from a cloak of mystery.

Being that I had no background knowledge of it, I also didn’t know whether what I was reading was actually happening, which only added to the heightened sense of suspended belief. Mieville manages to fry the mind in this giddy brain-fuck of a book, going so far as to seemingly bend time, erase and eradicate both history and memory, and kick up so much pseudo-scientific dust that you can do nothing but marvel at what has been conjured before your eyes.

The author has also crafted two of the most terrifying manifestations of pure evil in Goss & Stubby. They will hunt and haunt you long after their story ends. If you’re feeling adventurous, and want one more magical go-round before the summer ends, put Kraken on your reading list.

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06
January
2010
Tags: Literature
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Last Night

On the trusted advice of a friend, I read my first John Irving book, A Prayer for Owen Meany, a few months ago. I loved it so much that I was reluctant to start another. It’s also good to have a break between books by the same author – no matter how different the content or form, there’s something stale about beginning that second book. A few months’ time is enough to break the spell, so when I spotted Irving’s latest, Last Night in Twisted River, I picked it up. (It was a spur-of-the-moment purchase as well, since I was about to see a movie alone and had nothing to read before it began. I can do anything alone as long as I have a book with me. Most people use their cel phone for safety in solitude – I’ve always relied on a book.)

It took a few tries, but eventually I got into it, and by the middle of the story I couldn’t put it down. He is indeed a masterful story-teller, and I loved how he wove a bit of what I’m assuming is his own writing process into the book. He also created another favorite character of mine (in addition to Owen Meany) – Ketchum is my new hero. Rough, tough, ornery, and prickly – he’s my kind of man, hiding a fierce loyalty and love for a few select friends.

In the book, the protagonist is an author, and one of the criticisms made about his writing is that it features such unsavory characters. The same might be said about Last Night in Twisted River, but not by me. Some of them may be hard to love, but some of us know what that’s like. The thing I admire most about Irving is his way of conveying that love through the smallest of gestures.

It’s in a fleece vest, or an oiled knife, or a dancing moose. It’s there in the most obvious places, but also in the most senseless acts of violence – the bludgeoning of a woman in the throes of passion or the self-severing of a hand. It’s not easy to find tenderness or compassion in such a harsh world, but Irving makes his heartbreaking aches a source of solace, even in the coldest Winter.

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