the book shelf

the curious life of the dead (stiff)

2012-01-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

so i've been parallel reading howards end and stiff. since the semester starts again today, i wanted to tell you about stiff before the madness of school catches up with me. stiff was a spontaneous gift from a friend of a friend who noticed i was looking at it while they were practicing for an upcoming performance. i have to say that some passages made me feel a little unwell - i have a very vivid imagination, a very tangible, physical imagination, and if that is true for you too, be aware of it. at the same time, the book is not gross. it is in no way revolting or shocking. mary roach treats the subject of corpses with just enough humour, some detachment, and respect at the same time.

from: waterhouse: sleep and his half-brother death (1874)

the idea of death something like the waterhouse painting above is still quite common - it's a common trope in movies, faerietales, and the likes. death as the brother of sleep. death as something peaceful, something unchanging and permanent, but not utterly alienating. the body is not much changed, in fact death (on the right) looks only a little stiffer, a little less relaxed than sleep (on the left). roach suggests that in the past, often people who chose to not donate their body to science or not to allow autopsies on their loved ones did so because they felt the peace of the dead would be disturbed or the memory of the decedent desecrated. she argues that the increase in people's willingness to will their own bodies to research after death is a direct result of the increase in the general public's understanding of the chemistry and biology of the body, especially the dead body. considering the processes of decay a dead human body goes through naturally, or when buried, letting others use the body for a common good seems more of an option. eventually, each body will cease to exist, whether it is buried, cremated, embalmed or autopsied.

while i still don't know that i would offer my body up for research, roach's book has given me a much better understanding of what is in store for the body after physical death. the american practice of embalming both fascinates and frightens me: it involves replacing the blood of the deceased with a formaldehyde solution. the reason this is so popular is that it gives the dead person that "alive" look - refilling some of the tissue that has inevitably collapsed or shrunk with the dehydration and other effects of physical death. with the help of some special make-up (yes it has to be special, since most of what you and i may use normally is designed to work on warm, living skin, rather than cold) and some aces up the embalmer's sleeve [such as moisturizing creams, plastic eye caps to keep the eyes from looking sunk and collapsed, which due to dehydration they will, and then some tricks to keep the mouth from falling open], your loved one can be made to look like they were, indeed, just sleeping. as i already mentioned in my ramblings about janet frame's daughter buffalo, the whole idea of chemically treating the dead to postpone or (as in lenin's case) even halt for decades the process of natural decay seems a bit iffy. formaldehyde is not exactly spring water, and considering it is a proven carcinogen, allowing it to seep through into the ground and into our drinking water seems like a less than brilliant idea. i am relieved to know, now, after some reading up, that embalming is rarely done in germany. i know you're going to say, hey, you'll be dead, you won't even know what happens to you, but to be honest i still don't like the idea of strange chemicals messing with my body.

an ecologically sensible coffin, by http://www.englishwillowcoffins.co.uk/index.htm

here are some eco-friendly ways to go, if after reading this book you still decide you don't want to serve in one of the many capacities corpses have served in over the centuries.

another eco-friendly coffin, made from recycled paper.

roach makes a good case for the important role of donated / willed corpses for research. these have allowed scientists to learn a great many things in many areas of our daily lives. yes, virtually all crash testing is done with dummies these days, but there was and is only one way to know the limits, the thresholds of the human body, how strong an impact can be before it does organic damage or breaks a bone. once these limits are established, we can work with dummies and probes and such, but we only know these limits because there were people who willed their bodies to research. much medical training, until recently, included work on corpses when available. how else could a surgeon know where and how to find or fix a certain piece of your anatomy, if s/he has never seen it in the big picture? in the past, say, the 17 to 1800s, the bodies of executed criminals were made available to scientists for these purposes, autopsy being considered an added penalty on top of death. there were not enough corpses to go around, and so a trade in bodies began - which roach describes in chapter 2, crimes of anatomy. consider this:

[Body snatching] was a new crime, distinct from grave-robbing, which involved the pilfering of jewels and heirlooms buried in tombs and crypts of the well-to-do. Being caught in possession of a corpse's cufflinks was a crime, but being caught with the corpse itself carried no penalty. [...]
Some anatomy instructors mined the timeless affinity of university students for late-night pranks by encouraging their enrollees to raid graveyards and provide bodies for the class. At certain Scottish schools, in the 1700s, the arrangement was more formal: Tuition, writes Ruth Richardson, could be paid in corpses rather than cash. (43)

the body snatchers were also called (ironically enough) resurrectionists.the situation is different now, - according to roach there is almost a surplus of donated bodies. while there is still research that needs doing, in forensics as well as in medicine and safety testing for vehicles etc, and plastic surgeons need close-to-life materials to learn and practice their procedures on, a lot has already been achieved. roach cites alert king's calculations, in 1995, that

vehicle safety improvements that have come about as a result of cadaver research have saved an estimated 8,500 lives each year since 1987. For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seat belts, 61 lives per year have been saved. For every cadaver that took an air bag in the face, 147 people per year survive otherwise fatal head-ons. (92)

one touchy area is, according to roach, however in need to more willed corpses: pediatric impact studies, or any studies really, i would imagine, where the bodies of children would be needed. children do not usually will their bodies to anyone or anything. it's not the sort of thing children worry about, and it's not the sort of thing they should worry about. and who would want to bring up the option of body donation with grieving parents? (95)

not all the bodies researchers work with are willed or donated. sometimes, the body is all they have to solve a crime or find out the cause of an accident, a plane crash or such. there are professionals out there who have studied the types of injuries different types of accidents or assaults will create, the type of decay that occurs naturally and under various conditions, and can tell much from "just" the body at the scene of an accident or crime. (yes i know, there are lots of tv shows / series about that, right? csi this and csi that. keep in mind, as you read this blog, that i don't even own a tv.)

medical schools are beginning to work with digitized corpses, a collection of images of a great number of "slices" of an actual corpse, giving a (re-usable) three-dimensional image for medical students to work with and study.

overall, this book is fascinatingly interesting. it is well-written and quite readable, even for someone as squeamish as myself. i still have about half of the book ahead of me, but i would recommend it to anyone who is curious about the human - dead - body.

more to read:

preservation procedures for different countries: http://www.afif.asso.fr/english/preservation.htm#Europe
formaldehyde myths & risks: http://www.themodernembalmer.com/pdfs/20090620myths.pdf
thanatos, the greek personification of death: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatos
zeit: wie man in deutschland begraben wird (2004)
hygienische totenversorgung: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienische_Totenversorgung
thanatopraxie: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatopraxie

nine windows and a wych elm (howards end)

2012-01-13T17:25:00.000-08:00

source: http://www.treecouncil.ie/irishtrees/wychelm.html

i am currently reading e.m. forster's howards end. earlier today, a friend and i were talking about it and she asked, "so are you actually enjoying this book?" and the honest answer is, yes, yes i am. it seemed a bit dull at first, but once we got to margaret's attempt at reconnecting with mrs.wilcox, i was interested. but let's start at the beginning.

by the way, this norton critical edition has the complete text as well as 230 pages of critical essays, textual variants from different editions, and other information regarding howards end. if you're going to study this text, this might be a useful edition to invest in. otherwise, go with a cheaper edition (thinking about it, it should be out of copyright and available as a free e-book.)

(YES! the novel is online at the wonderful project gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2891 )

recurring / dominant themes in the text include comparisons between "teuton"(german) and british characteristics, contemporary ideas on how men and women should or should not behave or speak, inner and outer life, class issues (with the main characters all independently wealthy), manners and politeness, idealism vs pragmatism, and some others.

spoiler alert! if you DON'T want to know what happens in the book, don't read this.

the book starts out with letters between the young english-and-german woman margaret schlegel and her younger sister helen. independently wealthy but orphaned and in charge of raising their little brother tibby, they receive help from their aunt. helen is visiting acquaintances (the wilcox family) at their country house, howards end. she describes the house as having nine windows, a vine growing on on it, and a wych elm tree just outside. later, we learn from mrs. wilcox that there are pigs' teeth stuck in the bark of the tree, half overgrown because they have been there for so long, and that the villagers - superstitiously enough - used to chew on pieces of the bark to cure a toothache.

in any case, in her first two letters helen describes the place, which to her is abundant in beauty, and the charming company the wilcoxes are. her next letter comes as a surprise - it is just a short note, without explanation: "Paul and I are in love - the younger son who only came here Wednesday." margaret and her aunt decide something needs to be done to assure the younger sister does not end up heartbroken or in an unacceptable situation. the aunt takes a train to howards end, and as margaret returns from dropping her off at the train station, she finds this telegram: "All over. Wish I had never written. Tell no one. - Helen." this being 1910 (or round about then), the aunt cannot be reached before she arrives at howards end, and her visit results in a scene, with her not only mistaking the older brother for the younger, but also misinformed about the current situation.

some time later, helen has basically forgotten about paul wilcox, the wilcox family moves into the house across the street from margaret and helen (the misses schlegel) and their aunt. there is some concern that it might become very awkward having to deal with them / see them. helen decides to travel to the continent with her german cousin (?) and when mrs wilcox pays a visit and leaves her card, margaret deliberates for a long time before writing an outspoken letter about why in view of the past they should probably not socialize. again, a misunderstanding, as mrs wilcox only wanted to let them know that paul (the "offending party") has left england. margaret, deeply embarrassed, calls on mrs wilcox, who is not doing well that day but insists she stay a while. the two women are starting some sort of very careful approach at friendship when, suddenly, there's a chapter break, and we're at mrs wilcoxes funeral. while i had already been reminded of woolf's to the lighthouse and in my mind was drawing parallels between mrs wilcox and mrs ramsay, by this point the connection was really strong for me. i must say i was also disappointed because i wanted to see these two interesting characters interact some more, and for this peculiar relationship to evolve further.

anyway. from hereon, margaret is the heroine of the book. the plot lines all connect to her: the clerk mr leonard bast sits next to her at a concert and walks back to the house with her because helen has accidentally taken his umbrella (yes, we ARE in england afterall). they talk and he reveals he has a yearning for adventure, for a sort of inner life, a concept margaret and helen often think and talk about with each other. when they meet again years later, neither sister remembers him, but the reappearance of him and his wife are vital to the plot. after the funeral, the wilcoxes receive a note from the late mrs wilcox in which she asks her husband to give margaret the property howards end. the wilcox children are shocked and upset, and the eldest son, charles, immediately assumes margaret must have plotted to get the country house. the family decide to not mention the note and to just ignore it, since it was only written in pencil and surely not in a healthy state of mind. margaret is given a silver trinket instead, and is surprised that the family even thought of her, when she was really just an acquaintance.

margaret keeps worrying about a new place for their family, as their lease is about to run out. the siblings leave for their annual visit at their aunt's house. as they arrive, margaret receives a telegram from mr wilcox, who offers to let them rent one of his properties, on condition that she come back to london rightaway to inspect the house. supposing this would be strictly business, and telling herself off for even thinking the widower might have a different agenda, she travels back to the city. mr wilcox in a surprising scene then asks her to marry him. she travels back to the aunt's house to think about it and realizes she wants to say yes.

the wilcox's daughter is to get married first, and margaret is to be introduced to the family and friends on that occasion. margaret shows she is not your run-of-the-mill english girl on more than one occasion. helen, who has refused to attend the wedding because she cannot stand mr wilcox, suddenly appears with leonard bast and his wife, who, she claims, were starving because of mr wilcox's mean-spiritedness or at least because of his flawed advice. margaret gets angry at her sister, possibly for the first time ever. she tells her to take them to a hotel and that she will try to get her fiance to pull some strings so bast can get a job. this is where the hot sauce thickens: a little later, mr wilcox and margaret run into bast's wife, who had stayed behind at the reception to strengthen herself with food and champagne from the buffet, and she recognizes him as a former lover.

well this is how far i've gotten up to now (chapter xxvii), and i can't wait to find out how this all ends.

post scriptum:
so here's the rest of the plot. margaret reasons that the affair is in the past, and is therefore his first wife's issue, not her own. she forgives him. helen, margaret's younger sister, finds out about the disgrace of mr wilcox (who betrayed the later mrs wilcox ten years earlier) and flees to germany, leaving instructions with tibby to have a large sum of money given to the basts. they refuse to accept, and when helen has tibby try again, they have already been evicted from their lodgings. in the meantime, margaret hears that mrs avery, the charwoman left in charge of howards end, has been unpacking their boxes of books, and she goes there to try and get her to repack everything. mrs avery turns out to be less confused than she had assumed, and margaret is surprised to hear that she expects her to live at howards end immediately. the old woman's speech is prophetic and upsets and confuses margaret.

margaret is worried about helen's unwillingness to see or speak to her. the younger sister's avoidance lasts for months until finally, because their aunt becomes critically ill, she agrees to return to england for a brief visit - again refusing to see margaret. when the aunt recovers before helen's arrival from london, helen changes her plans, asking to know where the old furniture and books are so she can pick up one or two things before returning to her chosen exile. by this time margaret has spent so much time thinking about helen's peculiar behaviour and how it must be connected with mr wilcox's betrayal of his first wife that she fears helen might be ill. mr wilcox, who is by then her husband, suggests they lure her to howards end (where the furniture and books are indeed stored) and catch her there, with a doctor in tow. he makes it very clear that the ill may be lied to without scruples and basically lose their rights. he lied to his wife when she was ill, promising to take her to howards end but putting her into a care facility instead. margaret worries that he might act with too much force - her idea of illness is not at all like his. he assumes helen to be insane.

helen takes the bait and comes to howards end. they arrive at the house late, but not too late. when they arrive, margaret jumps out of the car (the second time she jumps out of a moving vehicle!) and races to the garden gate, locking it behind her, right in her husband's (and the doctor's) face. she looks to the front porch and sees her sister who is very obviously with child. she rushes her into the house and goes back to talk to her upset husband who demands the doctor see helen right there and then. margaret finally puts her foot down and tells him to go, and that she will speak with him later. it turns out that helen seduced mr bast and, knowing that english society does not tolerate adulterers (or adulteresses), has decided to leave england for good. mr wilcox's trespass has long been forgiven.

the sisters spend the night at howards end (against mr wilcox's protests) and margaret - seeing that the differences between her husband and herself cannot be bridged - decides to go to germany with her sister to take care of her and the baby. early the next morning, his eldest son charles comes to evict them from the property. as they are inside talking, mr bast, who has become a professional beggar but is now tormented with a need to confess his trespass against helen, arrives to talk to margaret. he hears the sisters' voices and shouts his confession. charles grabs the sword from the wall and hits bast with the flat of the blade to drive him away. bast has a heart attack and dies. charles is charged with manslaughter and sent to jail. this finally breaks something in mr wilcox and he turns to margaret for help. margaret, seeing her husband's state, realizes there are two invalids she needs to care for, and negotiates with him.

at the end of the novel, helen's little boy is almost old enough to walk. a farm boy has befriended him, and the sisters live fairly happily at howards end. mr wilcox is confined to the house because of his terrible hayfever, but seems to have come to terms with living in the country now. this is where margaret finally finds out that mrs wilcox, before her death, willed howards end to her. another instance of prophecy if you will.

which came first, the duck or the hot vit lon?

2012-01-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

i hope that if you did look up the vietnamese (hot vit lon) in the title, it did not turn your stomach - i never would have thought of eating such a thing, but then, who am i to speak, having been raised on horse meat, grandma's wonderful sour and savory oxen tongue ragout, and black pudding. :)

truong tran's collection placing the accents is an interesting read! the vietnamese dish makes an appearance in "recipe 5" which describes it straightforwardly as "baby ducks days from hatching" and counsels children to close their eyes while eating. clearly, this must be delicious, or people would not eat it.

"recipe 4" is another beautiful poem: instructions on how to properly eat an artichoke. i like tran's simple, uncluttered language not just in both of these poems but throughout the collection.

the collection is split into five parts, and the lines get longer from beginning to end. the form also changes to prose poetry in the last two parts. tran shares family memories, formative moments, in minute details and at times funnily strange, seemingly trivial moments. my favorite poem might be "vinyl", where

to gain attention the youngest boy farts on the vinyl cushion
the windows in back aren't made to open.

the poems become less narrative, more dense later in the book:

herself she wears tangerine peel thick to the bones and all
the moons melt fingers toes between and through i who
with but one iris is this boy

(from the poem "lost and found", p.55)

i really enjoy how truong tran's intercultural identity speaks through his poetry in vietnamese and english habits, ideas, phrases, and food. i love details, quirky little things, and i like stories. this book tells many different stories, stories of his parents, aunts, brother, of food and faith and love.

i'm a book magnet...

2011-12-28T22:06:00.000-08:00

i finally made it to some worthwhile bookstores / second hand bookstores!
books i've bought this week:

60 wild and sweet poems by hafiz

fantasy and science fiction july 1959

fantasy and science fiction october 1965

sugar house review nr.5 (poetry)

actually this was a gift :) the curious lives

of human cadavers, by mary roach

poetry by truong tran

best science fiction form if magazine, nr.1 (1964)

if - worlds of science fiction, march 1953

poetry by paisley rekdal

i'll keep you posted on these. :) and some of the other cool books i have read during the semester that just ended. i promise i will. grosses ehrenwort.

(non)ordinary reality: the teachings of don juan

2011-09-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

i recently read this book, the teachings of don juan, by carlos castaneda, for a class, and any page numbers i give here refer to the 40th anniversary edition (cover will look exactly like the image above). it's the account of a young-ish anthropologist who wants to learn from an native sorcerer. in mexico, he is introduced to don juan, who at first is not impressed with this non-indian wanting native knowledge. however, after some time he does agree to teach him.

the lessons are very tactile, very physical and experiential, which stands in real contrast to the academic and scientific concept of learning the apprentice has. i find it a little sad that even at the end (imho) he is unable to think outside of his usual notions of learning. the tension between don juan and carlos is based on their different understanding of what is real. don juan's reaction to carlos' obsession with whether he really did fly, whether he did or did not lose his body during his vision, and if he did, where that body went, is a good illustration of this. (see pp.110-111)

in any case, this is one of the "study aids":

source: http://www.botanical.com/

datura, also known as thorn apple or devil's weed, is one of three psychoactive substances the apprentice is taught to use. it is one way of moving from ordinary to non-ordinary reality, as carlos expresses it. don juan's teachings about the devil's weed are laden with gender bias. (see pages 38, 47, 81, 127 and 165) for the sorcerer, or, man of knowledge, as he refers to himself, the poisonous plant datura is

like a woman, and like a woman she flatters men. She sets traps for them at every turn. [...] I warn you against it. Don't take her with passion; the devil's weed is only one path to the secrets of a man of knowledge. There are other paths. But her trap is to make you believe that hers is the only way. (p.127)

another substance used in don juan's teachings is peyote, which don juan will only refer to as mescalito, an entity who appears to be male. carlos' first encounter with mescalito is full of interesting impressions and images, much like his later encounters will be, and - unlike his later encounters - has a rather funny side to it. also, having read carlos' vivid and detailed descriptions of the effects this drug has on his body, i know i certainly would not be tempted to try it. (some passages about peyote: p.29, 69, 73ff)

the third substance is a particular type of mushroom smoked as part of a mixture (the "little smoke"), the ritual preparation of which takes up to three years. i thought his process of "getting to know" the pipe to smoke this with was also interesting (intro to the pipe: p.51, 3rd smoke: p.103, transfer of pipe: p.105, other ref: pp.166-167).

over the course of his apprenticeship, carlos flies, becomes a crow, urinates on a dog, and almost has his soul stolen (pp. 142-147) (that part would make a great scary story / movie by itself!).

throughout the narrative part (which makes up the bulk of the book), carlos' descriptions of bodily sensations and visions are powerful and interesting. i have to say that the "analytical" part at the end of the book was, to me, boring and dry, and an exercise in futility: in this part he tries to fit his experiential learning under the guidance of don juan into a hierarchical "syllabus" type structure.

in any case, this book makes for an interesting read, although if you are very sensitive toward violence against animals (i know i am...) you might be upset by what is being done to lizards in the name of spiritual growth.

let me finish with a lovely passage that i think is my favorite in the whole book:

"Things that are alive," he said, "move inside, and a crow can easily see when something is dead, or about to die, because the movement has stopped or is slowing down to a stop. A crow can also tell when something is moving too fast, and by the same token a crow can tell when something is moving just right." [...]

"It means a crow can actually tell what to avoid and what to seek. When something is moving too fast inside, it means it is about to explode violently, or to leap forward, and a crow will avoid it. When it moves just right, it is a pleasing sight and a crow will seek it."

[... Rocks or dead animals or dead trees do not move inside.] But they are beautiful to look at. That is why crows hang around dead bodies. They like to look at them. No light moves inside them." (pp.139-140)

meanwhile, back at the ranch (lit from within)

2011-08-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

so this is one of the books i am currently reading. it's "lit from within - contemporary masters on the art and craft of writing", edited by kevin haworth and dinty moore. i find writers tend to have interesting things to say about writing, and it put a smile on my face to see these writers struggle with the same "outside questions" i get and even ask myself from time to time.

david kerby's "thirteen things i hate about poetry" would make nice reading for an intro to poetry / writing poetry class, imho. thirteen common questions / (mis)conceptions he has run into again and again over the years are used as starting points for thirteen interesting comments, some of them tongue-in-cheek. let's listen in on that conversation:

Q: David, my kids listen to rap all the time. Is rap poetry?
A: No. (p.91)

Q: The thing about poetry is, I just don't get it.
A: Me, neither! Well, I don't get it if I don't work at it, at least a little bit. I read in the New York Times that if anyone considers Umberto Eco's work difficult, he receives it as a compliment. Readers want to be involved in an act of mutual seduction, says Eco: "Only publishers and television people believe that people crave easy experiences." (p.97)

and so on and so forth. then there's claire bateman's interesting essay / collection of questions about questions and how they are or can be used in poetry writing. she introduces an interesting concept, saying that the questions we don't ask, the questions we never ask in our poems, our writing, are what can help us develop "an anti-map of [our] desires." (p.107) she also draws a connection between learning to lie, at the age of 3 or 4, the concept of the other that is needed for that ability, and the turning the self into an other which underlies the creation of poetry. lies, like questions, need an 'other.'

if you are more into fiction / short stories, lee k. abbott's "thirteen things about the contemporary short story that really hack me off" might be an interesting read for you. in fact, it should be an interesting read even if you are not into fiction. it raises a bunch of interesting questions and shows up a number of trends he observes in contemporary writing. and simply reading the title of mary ruefle's "someone reading a book is a sign of order in the world" felt nice.

Reading is hazardous. Here is a true story that proves it: a Chinese student, having read The Scarlet Letter, saw an American in China wearing a high school letter jacket with the letter A on the front and said I know what that means. (p.186)

other interesting essays in this collection take a closer look at gestures (francine prose), what makes a 'collection' (peter ho davies) and persona / the myth of craft (billy collins).

birds & bees & the city: minot's "lust & other stories"

2011-08-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

disclaimer: i wanted to get this review done before leaving for mississippi but, obviously, didn't, what with all the packing and paperwork and all that jazz... so i am sorry this is not as in-depth as i would have liked it to be, but i really wanted to let you know about this book in any case.

i guess you'll just have to read it for yourself if you want more.

______________

"lust" is another book i picked off the public bookshelf. these are short short stories, and like the title story, all of them are about, well, lust. physical love. how boys and girls, men and women are and are not made for each other, how they click and don't click, how love and Love do not always overlap.

this is from the title story, one in a series of memories of boys past:

You'd go on walks to get off campus. It was raining like hell, my sweater sopped as a wet sheep. Tim pinned me to a tree, the woods light brown and dark brown, a white house half hidden with the lights already on. The water was as loud as a crowd hissing. He made certain comments about my forehead, about my cheeks. (p.4)

minot's narrator is straight-forward, honest, and observant. the book starts out with the narrator's memories of growing up, noticing how boys and men begin to act differently, treat her (and other girls) differently, how she experiences adolescence:

Certain nights you'd feel a certain surrender, maybe if you'd had wine. The surrender would be forgetting yourself and you'd put your nose to his neck and feel like a squirrel, safe, at rest, in a restful dream. But then you'd start to slip from that and the dark would come in and there'd be a cave. (p.7)

the stories are subtle, yet frank. from teenagers via hipsters to liaised couples and old friends, minot creates and illuminates love in its peculiar and commonplace forms, its complications and effects. this is not a collection of romance stories. it is not sappy. it is also not a sexy sort of book. it is, however, intimate and personal and intensely interesting.

sarsaparilla and jimson weed (the sound and the fury, faulkner)

2011-06-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

i borrowed this one from my dad's library. it actually is less creased than this picture. i'm a careful reader. :) at first glance i was discouraged simply by the cover of this book. it is so bleak, communicates so much hopelessness in just a few shades of grey and brown. having read the whole thing now, if i were to design a new cover for this book, it would have more life in it. something, however small, that is beautiful and mortal, rather than being dead already.

the book wasn't as hard to read as i expected. what helped was letting go of my constant desire to see the whole picture, or at least see the picture being painted systematically. next to the reader's "willing suspension of disbelief" this book required of me a willing surrender of cognitive control, so to speak. this was particularly so in the first and third part of the narrative. the setting is jefferson, a small town in mississippi.

part one: told from the perspective of benjamin, "benjy," a 30something year old man with the mental capacities of a toddler (well, a toddler who has been a toddler for three decades). benjamin's mind moves between past and present without much distinction, - often a smell (caddy's in particular), an expression ("You don't want your hands froze on Christmas do you." p.12), or a location is enough to draw up the experience of something similar years earlier. faulkner uses a typographic marker to show where these jumps happen by setting text in italics. the glimpses he shares cover the time span from about 1900 to 1928.

part two: told from the perspective of quentin, who gets sent to harvard and narrates his last day before commits suicide in 1910. we hear about his stuck-up "friend" gerald and his family, but mostly his concern is with the incest quentin believes he has committed with caddy, his sister. whether or not they were physically intimate does not become clear in the novel. as i was getting to part three of the novel i caught myself thinking of the girl named quentin as quentin and caddy's illegitimate daughter, but that is my own reading / speculation. when quentin finds out caddy is to marry a man who does not treat her well, he travels to meet him but cannot change caddy's mind. unbeknownst to her husband-to-be, she is already pregnant, so she feels she has no time to lose. an interesting motif here is the pocket watch quentin deliberately breaks yet carries around with him for the ticking.

part three: told by jason, the one who had to stay in the country, working in a store in town. he still lives with his mother who is / believes she is too weak and too ill to do anything for herself, his sister's illegitimate teenage daughter whom they have named quentin, and benjy and a handful of servants who take care of the retarded man. the mother makes it very clear that she sees "her poor baby" benjy as a punishment for her children's wrongdoings and shortcomings, and that it is only right that she, as their mother, should have to suffer for them. jason strongly dislikes people in general, and you will notice he has a particular dislike for blacks, women ("bitches" and "whores"), and jews. he does not beat around the bush where any of that is concerned. jason's account is dated april 6th, 1928.

part four is told by an unnamed narrator, and is set two days after part three. his teenage niece, having been caught running around in town with men rather than going to school, absconds with her lover during the night, taking a large sum of money jason had saved behind his mother's back. he tries, unsuccessfully, to track them down in his car, then returns home to jefferson.

jimson weed, painting by georgia o'keefe

things that struck me while reading:

the practice of renaming. both benjamin, whose original name must have been maury (after his unreliable uncle) if i read this right, and caddy's illegitimate daughter quentin (if her original name is mentioned i must have overread it) receive new names from the family. they are both sources of shame to jason, benjy, quentin and caddy's mother. as, of course, are caddy (for being "a fallen woman") and quentin (for committing the unspeakable sin of suicide). which leaves only jason to be trusted and relied upon. both benjy and teenage quentin are left for the servants to raise, while (grand)mother lies in bed pitying herself for being such a burden to her remaining son. at the same time she is too proud to accept the money caddy sends her every month, - she burns the checks as soon as she receives them, leaving jason with the whole burden of feeding the household.

the plants and flowers mentioned. now, i am interested in plants as it is and, well, i am sure in a climate such as that in mississippi, lots of green grows everywhere, but there are some that are mentioned a bunch of times.

in the first part, benjy is given jimson weed flowers to play with. jimson weed, also known as "hell's bells" or "loco flower", is poisonous to humans and cattle, and contains hallucinogenic substances. this may or may not have been something people were aware of at that time, but it doesn't seem like the best toy.

quentin, in part two, speaks repeatedly of the oppressive smell of honeysuckle. (see p.157 for example) it becomes much more than just the scent of a flower. it takes his breath, makes him feel helpless.

the whole aspect of scent is a theme in this book. benjy finds orientation, comfort, pleasure in certain scents, identifies people by how they smell, - caddy's smell in particular is important to him. at different instances he explains she smells like leaves, trees in the rain, or rain itself.

honeysuckle, by william curtis

to give you an idea of how faulkner creates different voices for the different narrators, here is a sample passage for benjy. he is watching some young girls pass his fence on their way from school:

They came on. I opened the gate and they stopped, turning. I was trying to say, and I caught her, trying to say, and she screamed and I was trying to say and trying and the bright shapes began to stop and I tried to get out. I tried to get off of my face, but the bright shapes were going again. They were going up the hill to where it fell away and I tried to cry. But when I breathed in I couldn't breathe out again to cry, and I tried to keep from falling off the hill and I fell off the hill into the bright, whirling shapes. (p.53-54)

now here is his brother quentin's voice:

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tide-flats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clean air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off. Benjamin the child of. How he used to sit before that mirror. Refuge unfailing in which conflict tempered silenced reconciled. Benjamin the child of mine old age held hostage into Egypt. O Benjamin. Dilsey said it was because Mother was too proud for him. (p.154)

and, finally, here is jason's. this is after he talks back to his boss and lies about why he was late. his boss warns him to be careful with how he spends his money and threatens to show jason's mother that he, behind her back, has drawn his investment out of the store to buy an automobile.

I never said anything more. It doesn't do any good. I've found that when a man gets into a rut the best thing you can do is let him stay there. And when a man gets it in his head that he's got to tell something on you for your own good, good night. I'm glad I haven't got the sort of conscience I've got to nurse like a sick puppy all the time. If I'd ever be as careful over anything as he is to keep his little shirt tail full of business from making him more than eight per cent. I reckon he thinks they'd get him on the usury law if he netted more than eight per cent. What the hell chance has a man got, tied down in a town like this and to a business like this. Why I could take his business in one year and fix him so he'd never have to work again, only he'd give it all away to the church or something. If there's one thing gets under my skin, it's a damn hypocrite. A man that thinks anything he don't understand all about and that first chance he gets he's morally bound to tell the third party what's none of his business to tell. (p.204)

this book is an interesting, intense read. turn off the radio and tv while reading this or you'll likely get confused because you miss important bits and pieces. this is a book that deserves your undivided attention and rewards you well for it. there are pages chock full of text without punctuation, there are pages that look like contemporary poems with lots of short lines, dialogue without "he said" and "she said" or explanations who is speaking and what they are doing, there are meandering thoughts, poetic little observations, patterns of repetition and fragmentation - i am impressed.

my next read: "true brits" by j.r. daeschner. (some light reading for the weekend...)

pale horse, pale rider (porter)

2011-06-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

i have to admit i had never heard of porter before a friend recommended "pale horse, pale rider" to me. the book contains three short stories (or, novels as the author preferred to call them, detesting the word "novella"):

old mortality
noon wine
pale horse, pale rider

the copy i have is browned, formerly eggshell coloured 1962 signet paperback that, undeniably, must have spent years on a smoker's shelf - not read, but exposed to lots of smoke. the lower quarter of the spine is brittle with a tear like it's been bent, but otherwise it is a good reading copy. this group of stories was first published in the 1930s.

detail from "apocalypse"
by vasnetsov

i started with the title story, pale horse, pale rider, which in this edition (but not in all) comes last. the title is a reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: the fourth horseman is death, on a pale horse. porter's tells the tale of two lovers who cannot be together because of world war 1, as well as a portrait of the circumstances of miranda, a young journalist who is the focal point of the story.

the whole, for me, falls into four parts: a very short part at the beginning, where she "meets" the pale rider, then her work and economic concerns, meeting adam, and the influenza. the first and last part, rather dream-like and disorienting, not only drew me in but drained me of energy while reading, while the other parts are much more clear and, i guess, illustrate her lucid state of mind.

old mortality i found easier to read. at times, i fell in love with little passages here and there. this story is split intentionally into three parts:

part 1: 1885 - 1902
part 2: 1904
part 3: 1912

in part 1 we meet the sisters miranda (8 at the time) and maria (12), who see their family and their own destinies through the stories about other family members. (this miranda may well be the same person as in pale horse, pale rider, only younger, and, in the last part, older.) the grandmother is instrumental in making those stories "real" in the sense that she is the keeper of tangible evidence to go with the stories: letters, photographs, a wedding dress.

Photographs, portraits by inept painters who meant earnestly to flatter, and the festival garments folded away in dry herbs and camphor were disappointing when the girls tried to the living beings created in their minds by the breathing words of their elders. Grandmother, compelled in her blood twice a year by the change of seasons, would sit nearly all of one day beside old trunks and boxes in the lumber room, unfolding layers of garments and small keepsakes; she spread them out on sheets on the floor around her, crying over certain things, nearly always the same things, looking again at pictures in velvet cases, unwrapping locks of hair and dried flowers, crying gently and easily as if tears were the only pleasure she had left.

If Maria and Miranda were very quiet, and touched nothing until it was offered, they might sit by her at these times, or come and go. There was a tacit understanding that her grief was strictly her own, and must not be noticed or mentioned. (p.11)

apart from the girls, their aunt amy, whom they have never met, is an important, if absent character here.
after refusing his advances for years, and after a scandal at a dance and a shooting, amy suddenly decides to give in to gabriel and marry him. some weeks after the wedding, she dies. mysterious aunt amy is important to the girls, even if the painting of her does not strike either girl as beautiful. in the family's stories, and hence in their minds, amy is (was) wonderful.

the defining impact of stories told on their perception of reality goes further than idealized family members: when their father takes them to see some shakespeare plays (they are not allowed trivial entertainment),

Miranda thought the magnificent lady in black velvet was truly the Queen of Scots, and was pained to know that the real Queen had died long ago, and not at all on the night she, Miranda, had been present. (p. 15)

part two tells of the two sisters' time away from home, in a convent school in new orleans. miranda has, in the meantime, decided she will never grow into a tall beautiful woman, and toys with the idea of becoming a race jockey. both girls have strong ideas about stories. when they come across a fiction paperback, they read it but do not take it seriously, taking from the book just one word: "immured" - as a more romantic adjective for their time at the school. (p. 31)

It was no good at all trying to fit the stories to life, and they did not even try. They had long since learned to draw the lines between life, which was real and earnest, and the grave was not its goal; poetry, which was true but not real; and stories, or forbidden reading matter, in which things happened as nowhere else, with the most sublime irrelevance and unlikelihood, and one need not turn a hair, because there was not a word of truth in them. (p. 32)

during the time at the convent, the girls briefly meet uncle gabriel, who is nothing like the romantic poet they had constructed in their minds from the stories they were told, and his hostile second wife.

the last part takes place on a train, as miranda, then 18 and recently married, travels to uncle gabriel's funeral. by chance, she meets old cousin eva, whom she has never met before and also only heard stories about. the stories mainly focused on eva's lack of a decent chin and her (supposedly) consequential life as a spinster. during the train ride, cousin eva tells a different version of the stories about amy and gabriel and the shooting. miranda comes away disillusioned and with the conviction that, at least, she will know the truth of her own life, her own story.

noon wine - a gripping story. i am trying to think what i can say about it without giving too much away, because this story relies much on plot events, and not so much on the characters' internal goings-ons as the other two. i hope you'll read the story anyhow, and if you don't want spoilers do not read past the following paragraph! :)

the setting: the title refers to a (real or fictitious) scandinavian drinking song about waking up feeling so great that one drinks all the wine ("likker") normally saved for the lunch break in the morning already, and feels even better. now, the story is set in south texas, and the notion of feeling great while drunk and working on the farm strikes farm owner mr thompson as bizarre, since he can barely stand the heat sober. the man who plays this song every day on his harmonica, mr helton, never touches a drop of alcohol for as long as thompson knows him. mr helton appears out of nowhere (well, out of north dakota) and asks for work, which mr thompson is happy to provide him with, for low wages. helton is a quiet character, very private and not always polite, but a hard worker and very good at what he does (tending the animals, making butter, straightening out the farm, later even making cheese for them to sell) and becomes almost a part of the family over the years.

--- spoilers ---

after many years, a stranger appears in search of helton. he makes some unsettling claims about the man who has been helping the thompson family immensely for years. he tells thompson that helton is an escaped lunatic, and a murderer at that, and the farm owner realizes this is a bounty hunter of sorts. he has to take sides. when thompson refuses to help him capture and handcuff helton, the stranger pulls out a knife. helton, hearing the argument, comes to thompsons' aid and there is a brief fight - believing the stranger is stabbing, even killing helton, thompson tries to knock him out with an axe, killing him accidentally. helton runs but then dies when caught. there are no knife wounds on him, but still, thompson goes free, claiming self-defense. despite the verdict (that he is not guilty) nobody believes him. a week after the trial, having told his side of the story to every single neighbour, finding his wife stricken with panic attacks at night, and hearing his sons warn him not to ever do her any harm again, he gives up, writes one last testimony and shoots himself in the fields.

--- end of spoilers ---

if you wanted to, you could look at the images of manliness in this story. mr thompson has clear ideas about what is "man's work" and what is "woman's work" and what is "paid help's work". helton does not, apparently. (p. 74) there is also the passage where thompson and the stranger compare their stumps of chewing tobacco. (p. 91). you'll find some more stuff in here if you want.

anyway, thanks for recommendation, i am glad i read this. all three stories (novels) are very different from each other and well-written and interesting in their own way.

the vulgarity of man: geronimo rex (barry hannah)

2011-06-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

i don't like blurbs or big praise actually printed on the book, or in the book as an introduction, but the NYT quote on the front cover is quite appropriate really:
"A stunning piece of entertainment ... vulgar, ribald, and wildly comic." and yes, this book has its share of vulgarity. it also contains violence and sex. if any of that makes you uncomfortable, you might want to read something else. :-)

harriman monroe is an acute observer as well as a musician and - occasionally - a poet. the book begins with him, age 8, secretly watching the black high school band practise in 1950. the location is a small louisiana town called dream of pines, where the two major employers are a paper mill and a mattress factory.

the book is split into three parts, which could be summarized, roughly, into childhood, student life, and graduate school / work. the title of the novel makes sense along the way, when harry finds himself suddenly fascinated with geronimo and, before long, begins dressing the part, wearing a neckerchief, boots, and even a gun.

apache leader geronimo ("one who yawns")

apart from harry, one character that keeps reappearing throughout the three parts is harley butte, "a mulatto fellow" a few years harry's senior, who places great importance in the fact that he was born the day john phillip (de) sousa died.

early on at dream of pines harry has two buddies he spends time with, bob and earl. later on, at university, robert dove fleece and silas become his closest friends. the presence of geronimo also drops in on harry at some vital moments - he cannot be seen, but harry feels him and hears his voice.

another important character here is peter lepoyster. he begins, as a character, simply as handwriting in brown ink, the composer of explicit letters to his wife, sent from a mental hospital. fleece randomly steals the letters and reads them. when he and harry become roommates, he shares his obsession regarding the letters, and through a series of encounters both young men find out more and more about peter.

a leitmotif throughout the text is harry's interest and disinterest in girls. it appears they can, to his adolescent mind, only be angelic or slutty - either too good for him or too degenerate. in some cases, his judgment of the same girl moves from one to the other (see: tonnie ray). his main "encounters" are ann, tonnie ray, the photograph of a revlon model, bonnie, patsy, catherine (peter's niece) and prissy.

the idea of beauty, and of what makes beauty, is something harry's brain is mulling over all this time, while smoking, getting drunk, playing with guns and girls, and excessively doing everything and anything a pubescent young man might do, - he might be a mess but in that mess, persistently, are concepts of art, music, poetry, ideas he holds and revises, ideas he slowly figures out, ideas that drive him into desperation. here is what i read as a crucial moment in harry's meandering toward the other sex:

This Revlon model picture stung me to the guts. She was a skinny thing lying supine in a silk outfit, with a high-heel shoe dangling off her toe. Her face was big and just this side of weird, in her silvery Revlon eye and mouth make-up. She was lying on a pillow of sand and behind her, in twilight, was the whole Sahara desert. [...] I had to have her. What kind of cruelty was this to have her photograph lying there? What did I have to do to get her? Her eyes looked as if they bragged on all she'd seen and understood. I would understand, I would learn all of Culture, if that's what it took. Tears came out of my eyes. I would go to college and study Culture. (p.116)

he will see a girl, later on, in a pose like this, complete with the dangling of the shoe, and this is the girl he decides to marry. but many adventures lie in between. at one point, his youthful male overconfidence is badly shaken when a girl gives him an honest reaction:

"Lord! Wow! You're so ugly! Men are so ugly, at last I see! Doesn't it hurt to be like that? [...] My lord, it looks like you've been wounded!" (Patsy to Harry, p.204)

but, as the novel suggests later, that perception of ugliness works both ways:

"Being absolutely honest, come on: the vagina is the ugliest, ungainliest natural creation in the known world. Perhaps when they land on Mars they might find something uglier." (Dr.Lariat to Harry, p.366)

for the most part, harry is a bully and a user of women - he chooses "roaches" and later makes fun of them. toward the end, however, he makes his choice. prissy is child-like, sweet and pure, and he tries nothing with her before they are actually married. at times, it seems like he has mixed feelings about his wife, about her looking so very young:

In the grocery store, she didn't look old enough to be filling up the cart with such calculation. She looked like the eldest urchin in a crowd in Rome, buttoned up in cunning little adult-like clothes. I would walk a piece away from her and see the men pass by her with looks of shamed lust. The poor bastards. I knew exactly what it was like, and forgave them completely. Prissy was so cute, the dream of a dago high school, and here she was choosing a roll of toilet paper, the expensive and scented kind that you imagined they hurled over a blossoming orchard of peaches and apples to get the smell all through the tissue. (p.348)

i am not going to go into the plot of this book. in fact, i have touched on some central points here, but there is much going on - the musical career of harley butte, the psychological mechanics of harry's family, the mysterious doctor lariat, all the music references, the images of women and men, - if any of the above partial summary sounded interesting to you, read the whole thing.

reading southwards (faulkner)

2011-06-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

i have read a good number of books, stories, poems, plays etc in my time, but there's always more. this is a wonderful thing! and since my exploration of literature has been somewhat lopsided toward british lit, here's my chance to fill a gap or two. in a sort of intellectual preparation for my move to mississippi i put this man on my reading list, among other people:

i had already read faulkner's "barn burning" in its handy little reclam edition last year, and re-read it this weekend, along with some other short stories, namely "that evening sun", "red leaves", and "a justice" - thanks to the fact that my sister had this on her shelves still from some american lit class she took at some point. :)

barn burning - this story is told from the perspective of a young boy whose father's mercurial outbreaks force the family to move from one town to another, again and again, because the father has a habit of burning down the barns of people who cross him, or who he feels crossed by.

the central themes in this story are loyalty - should he lie to protect his family or should he tell the truth for the sake of justice? and agency - can he choose his own life or is he stuck with his family and the troublesome temperament of his father?

here, the conflict is between different types or classes of white people - the father feels like he must sell his soul, his life, to the landowners for seasons at a time, because he does not have his own piece of land to farm on. he feels unjustifiedly enslaved.

that evening sun - again, one central motif is loyalty. should the father be more protective of his own wife, who does not want to be left alone with the children in his house, or should he protect their black servant nancy, who is afraid of the dark and of what her partner might do to her?

red leaves - this story was surprising and somewhat confusing to me. the idea that native americans might also have been slave owners had never occurred to me - the stereotypical image of "slavery" in the US normally just conjuring up images of white slave owners. i admit i double-checked to make sure it was not just fictional.

here, faulkner describes native americans slave owners, and while their attitude toward their slaves is not exactly the same as that of the white people in the other stories in this book, they do not treat them any better. the central character is a personal slave, who took care of "the Man" before he died, and is now supposed to be buried with his deceased master. this slave runs away and is pursued.

a justice - offers more details on the character named doom, aka ikkemotubbe, aka david callicoat, as well as giving us a biography of sam fathers (what the white people call him), aka uncle blue gum (what the black people call him), aka had-two-fathers (what the native americans call him). faulkner wrote up a complex world with lots of connections between his various stories, and i think that if i had not read these stories in this order, i would have been rather confused.

names also seem to hold a certain fascination for faulkner - he pays much attention to them, and they matter to his characters in various ways: at times they are seen as a definition of self, at times as destiny, at times as a means of control and oppression - people exercise a certain amount of control or authority by calling someone by a certain name, or, especially, naming or re-naming them.

there are still lots of stories in this volume that i haven't read yet, but i think i will take a little break and look into my latest, more contemporary acquisition: geronimo rex by barry hannah.

once below a time - (English Fairy Tales)

2011-06-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

*** name the origin of the title line and win 1000 internets!!! ***

we all grow up with lots of stories, in one way or another, and we have many stories in common if we grow up in somewhat similar cultures - snow-white, tom thumb, hansel and gretel, little red riding hood, king arthur and the knights of the round table, cinderella, jack and the bean stalk, stories of knights and dragons, princesses and witches, and so on and so forth.

i think we're never too old for fairy tales. so this post is about a book of fairy tales. or rather, a glimpse of what waits between these aged covers, in the hope that you might go back to some of those old stories.

the cover has a little wear but the inside is in great shape.

i thought about giving this book to a friend who has a young daughter, but find it hard to part with this lovely copy of "English Fairy Tales", edited by ernest & grace rhys, illustrated by herbert cole. mine is a 1949 reprint of the 1913 original edition, published by dent in london. what makes the book so dear to me must be the colourful illustrations by herbert cole, an english illustrator who was active from around 1890 to about 1920.

frontispiece: "the fairy horn"

cole worked mainly in ink and in watercolours, with his works in books of poetry and literature as well as in children's books. he also produced a chalk portrait of suffragette sylvia pankhurst. in any case, his book illustrations are simply beautiful. here's another one:

"the imp tree"

as you may have guessed from the illustrations themselves, cole was influenced by the pre-raphaelites, and i have to say i am rather fond of their work as well.

as you can see, his ink illustrations are no less impressive. i love the sharp lines, the fierce look of this dragon (or worm, if you will).

among several usual suspects, this collection also contains a few stories that were new to me. the contents page reads as follow:

Jack the Giant-Killer
The History of Tom Thumb
The Imp Tree
The Three Bears
Tom Tit Tot
The Lambton Worm
The Fairy Horn
The Pixy Flower
Tom Hickathrift
The Black Bull of Norroway
The Green Knight
Robin Goodfellow
The Princess of Colchester
Lazy Jack
The Giant of Saint Michael's
Jack and the Bean-Stalk
Dick Whittington and His Cat

now be honest - how many of those have you read or been told? how many of those could you tell a child right now, if asked for a story? and even if you think you are quite familiar with the story, you may find that the rhyses have found - or created - a different version of it than the one you were told. they edited, according to their own introduction to the book, to restore the plain and simple folk lore flavor of the stories, to take out unnecessary additions or alterations.
quoth the editor:

[...] a fairy tale, like a cat, has nine lives; it can pass into many queer shapes, and yet not die. You may cut off its head, or drown it in sentiment or sea-water, or tie a moral to its tail; but it will still survive, and be found sitting safe by the fire some winter night.

(page 5, introduction)

"the princess of colchester"

of course there cannot be a real fairy story book without a princess! here, the pre-raphaelite influence is pretty much impossible to miss. compare the fair maiden to this one:

edmund blair leighton: "the accolade" (1901)

i rest my case.
now, i hope i have whetted your appetite for fairy tale books!

if you would like to read the stories in this book, there is a way you can do this right now:
the whole text, with illustrations, of the 1913 (first) edition is available as pdf and in other forms online, right here: http://www.archive.org/details/englishfairytale00rhys

_____________________
sources:
http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/artist.aspx?artist=herbert-cole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edmund_blair_leighton_accolade.jpg

sugar and elementals (byatt)

2011-05-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

Mrs Smith's own life made no sense to her without her art, but she was disinclined to believe in it as a cure, or a duty, or a general necessity. Nor did she see the achievement of the work of art as a paradigm for the struggle for life, or virtue.

She had somehow been inoculated with it, in the form of the novel, before she as a moral being had anything to say to it. It was an addiction. The bright books of life were the shots in the arm, the warm tots of whisky which kept her alive and conscious and lively.

She often asked herself, without receiving any satisfactory answer, why she needed it, and why this form of it? Her answers would have appeared to Joyce, or Mann, or Proust, to be frivolous. It was because she had become sensuously excited in early childhood by Beatrix Potter's sentence structure, or Kipling's adjectives.

(from: on the day that e.m. forster died, in: sugar & other stories, p129-130)

byatt describes mrs smith as having clearly been seduced by reading itself. (a feeling i can appreciate because i have often felt this happen to me. if you are interested in this phenomenon, i recommend frances wilson's "literary seductions".) her description feels accurate and like she is speaking from experience herself. at the same time, this passage serves well to illustrate the difference between this book (sugar and other stories) and the other two byatt short story collections i have read, namely "the little black book of stories" and "elementals".

the stories that stood out for me when reading "sugar" were "racine and the table cloth" and, more so for its simplicity and almost 'black book-ish' style, "the july ghost". the first story is in fact the first story in the book. it introduces us to emily bray, a girl / young woman at a boarding school. what made this story interesting to me was the devolution of emily's belief in 'the Reader' as a higher being for whom she writes, for whom all important writing is done.
i have to admit that i find this collection more 'work' to read - my reading is slower, i feel less involved, i get less engaged with the characters. i feel much like mrs smith in the story already quoted above:

She liked things to happen.

(ibid)

that's the main point of difference i find between this and the little black book of stories - the texts here are much more wordy, much more, if you will, "thoughty" than the earlier stories. it may well be just my personal reading / due to the order in which i read the books, starting with the black book followed by elementals and finally sugar, but there seems to be a progression here - an increase in wordiness and most of all in abstraction. as a poet i am not a big fan of abstraction, though i realize it has its place. all i can say is i enjoyed the black book the most, elementals quite a bit, and am struggling a little with sugar.

lamia, by waterhouse, 1909
note the snakeskin on her lap

as for elementals - the story which stood out most here, for me, was "a lamia in the cevennes." this was my first encounter with the lamia. for those who, like me, are new to this species of mythological creature, while there is a specific person who was / is referred to by the name lamia (a queen of lybia who became a child-eating demon), the lamia referred to in the story is the creature described by keats:

"Lamia" is a narrative poem written by English poet John Keats. The poem, written in 1819, tells how the God Hermes hears of a nymph who is more beautiful than all. Hermes, searching for the nymph, instead comes across a Lamia, trapped in the form of a serpent. She reveals the previously invisible nymph to him and in return he restores her human form. She goes to seek a youth of Corinth, Lycius, while Hermes and his nymph depart together into the woods. The relationship between Lycius and Lamia, however, is destroyed when the sage Apollonius reveals Lamia's true identity at their wedding feast, whereupon she returns to her serpent state and Lycius dies of grief.

(wikipedia)

it's a good story, byatt's. read it. it's set in our day, it involves a painter, and has lots of colour references. waterhouse's lamia, inspired by keats' poem and updated by byatt's painter, is still as mysterious and stunning as in her first appearance.

p.s. - you can read the whole (long) poem by keats here:
http://www.artofeurope.com/keats/kea6.htm

"it's not a sin to have feelings" (Gay Mormons?)

2011-04-25T04:43:00.000-07:00

i told you in an earlier post that i was reading this, and that i would tell you more about it soon. today is "soon." the book, Gay Mormons?, is now available and so, now seems like a good time to talk about it.

brent kerby's book is a collection of over 30 different personal stories of latter-day-saints (nicknamed "mormon") and their experiences with same-sex-attraction (ssa). the contributors speak of how they came to realize they were not heterosexual, they speak of their fears and feelings of guilt, but they also speak of their hopes and wishes. they are sons, daughters, parents, girl/boyfriends, spouses with partners of the other or the same gender.

each story is different, yet there are some recurring themes, the strongest of which has to be the common desire for a meaningful, trusting relationship with another person - something pretty much every human being experiences, no matter what their orientation. this collection makes it very clear that those who feel attracted only or mainly to their own gender do not do so simply out of lust, and that a homosexual relationship can be (and often is) based on love just as much as any heterosexual relationship.

another commonality is having to deal with the conflict between the teachings they grew up with and the feelings and experiences they are having. what do you do when the religion, the community you trust in and live with every day of your life tells you that what you are feeling is not right? some contributors tell of their failed attempts at reconciling their faith and their orientation, others tell of success, while others again are still trying to figure things out for themselves.

since the family unit of husband, wife and children is an important focal point in the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints (as in many other churches), and many lessons in sunday school and other meetings center around this configuration, it is not easy for church members who know that they will / can never form such a family to feel included. much like single working moms, they may feel judged by others for the way they lead their lives, - others who do not understand their situation. the idea that ssa is a "choice", a more or less conscious decision that can be reversed if one simply wants it enough is still wide-spread.

some homosexual church members may enter into a heterosexual marriage in an attempt to "do what's right", some choose to never marry, live in a celibate relationship, or stay alone. others may turn away from the church community. some people may find the conflict irreconcilable and go into a deep depression or even try to take their own lives.

the book aims at giving people who experience ssa a voice, sharing the ideas, worries, and hopes others might otherwise not be aware of. as the editor of this work, brent kerby has done his homework: he has researched the church's official position on this topic and provides quotes and also a list of resources for those who want to read further. he has also paid much attention to keeping the tone in these stories helpful, - honest and straightforward, and free of anger or personal accusation.

these are real stories, from the lives of real people, most of whom were happy to see them printed under their real name. only a few contributors opted for a pseudonym. i think this book will be interesting to anyone who wants to know about mormons and ssa, to understand their experience. it will be particularly interesting to those latter-day-saints who experience ssa or have a friend, family member, spouse, or other acquaintance who does.

in the introduction one general authority of the church is quoted as saying that we (here: the members of the church, but i think it goes for all of us really) need to be more loving and more tolerant of those around us. we need to re-examine our own ideas and preconceptions. we need to see beyond theoretical rules, the letter of the law, and make sure we look at the person, their heart, their desires, their hopes.

the book is now available at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Gay-Mormons-Latter-day-Experiences-Same-Gender/dp/1461034221/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303441945&sr=8-4

enchanting territorial aggression

2011-04-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

little black book of stories,
by a.s. byatt

the "black" in the title is appropriate in that the stories each have a fair measure of darkness in them. at the same time, there is such a fascination with people, with the private worlds they inhabit, and with the acceptance, or rather affirmation of something that needs no explanation, defies explanation, in every day life, that the stories sucked just sucked me in. thank you, s, for suggesting and consequently lending me this book. (it's actually a different edition, with a red and brown-ish painting of trees in the center of the cover, but i found this literally black cover more attractive.)

i will be the first to admit that i sometimes have problems with "literature" - it tends to be so long-winded. my attention span is short, my tolerance level for superfluous words is low. i have mentioned before, in other posts, the magic 300 or 350 page limit - if a book, especially a novel, is longer than that, chances that i will finish it are not very high. but i think it would be ok if it was a byatt. because her writing is concise, observant, filled with interesting details, strong imagery, and no spare words. she is witty, too, when she feels like it:

Small feathered throats above her, and in the depths beyond, whistled and trilled with enchanting territorial aggression and male self-assertion, which were to Primrose simply the chorus. (p. 32, The Thing in the Woods)

all these stories, however varied their characters and settings, have the common theme of bodies (particularly women's bodies), ownership, and identity:

Both little girls had the idea that these were all perhaps not very good children, possibly being sent away fro that reason. They were pleased to be able to define each other as 'nice'. They would stick together, they agreed. Try to sit together, and things. (p.5, "The Thing in the Forest")

the two little girls stick together by identifying each other as good and different from the rest of the displaced children, and then later, when they meet again, each other's existence and their shared memories of "the thing" serve as reassurance that neither is insane. at the same time, somehow, the other-constituted identity no longer works the same way it did then.

in the following story, the central character, a doctor in the gynecology department of a hospital, is surprised by a falling ladder, and the person thereon.

Damian Becket [...] staggered back under the full weight of the falling artist, whose head hit his chest, whose skinny ankles were briefly flung over his shoulder. He clutched; his arms were full of light, light female flesh and bone, wound up in the rayon and muslin harem trousers and tunic, embroidered in gold and silver. His nose was in baby-soft, silver-dyed, spun-glass spikes of hair. Lumpy things began to bounce on the floor. Bitten apples, a banana, a bent box of chocolates. The woman in the nearest bed laid claim, loudly, to these last. (p.58, Body Art)

while one could certainly argue that the image of her legs flung over his shoulder in her crash landing on him / his catching her (whichever way you want to read it) is not necessarily an image of ownership (the caveman putting "his" woman over his shoulder and walking off with her, or the archetypal mills & boon or harlequin hero), it is a foreshadowing of things to come.

damian becket thinks of women as bodies, which he claims is because of his daily dealings, professionally, with women's bodies that are sweaty, naked, and in any number of forms of at times even life-threatening distress. when he does meet a woman he finds attractive, he notes not only that her clothes are very nice, but especially the fact that they are ON her, and also that, in contrast to women in various stages of labour, is "in control of herself." (p.89)

damian is in charge of an old collection of hospital "artifacts" - boxes and crates filled with specimens, medical tools, plaster casts, - that is hidden away from the public and also the hospital and its patients. there is something deeply disturbing yet touching and - no doubt - symbolic in this routinely ignored collection. when parts of this dark secret, these shut-away truths about women's sexuality and child bearing, come to light in the form of a work of art, damian cannot face them and tears up the structure as soon as he discovers it. this, i read as a panicked response to a loss of control.

damian is a controlling man. when he accidentally fathers a child, he still thinks of the child's mother as a body, and the child as his own body, his property for which he is responsible. he has no consideration for the risks he is exposing the mother to, and the idea that, because this child is growing inside her body, she should have a say in the matter as to whether she wants to risk her life to birth this baby, never enters his mind until it is too late.

the other three stories also deal with the body, our relationship to our own body - especially "the stone woman" - and identity, which for me was a particularly strong issue in "the pink ribbon", and, in between, there is a piece of meta-fiction if you like - "raw materials" is a story about a creative writing teacher. here, the theme of defining oneself comes in again, among other interesting observations.

what i like best (among many things i like about this collection) is the lack of explanation. there is a murder but we never find out who did it, or why, or what really happened. because these things are not the point of the story. we also never do get to see the "thing in the woods" in broad daylight, we get no taxonomy, no genus or subspecies, no debunking of a myth, no proof of its truth. because that is not at the heart of the story.

in any case, i much enjoyed this little black book of stories (i finished it in less than 2 days), i am quite taken by byatt's style and voice, and look forward to the other two books of hers s lent me. next on the list is another collection of stories, "elementals."

reading future books :)

2011-04-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted in the past few weeks - but that's not because i haven't been reading.

in fact, i have read quite a bit, for example, most of michael chabon's "reading and writing along the borderlands", jane palmer's "the planet dweller", joanna russ' "how to suppress women's writing" and justin richards' dr.who novel "the clockwise man". and no worries, i will share more about those once i catch my breath.

i have also been reading two books that aren't out yet. :) and since they are not out yet, i won't tell you much about them until they are. one of them is a collection of personal stories / essays by latter-day saints experiencing same-sex attraction, edited by a friend of mine, brent kerby.

the other is a new novel by g.g. vandagriff, which is set in florence, italy, and which i am proofreading right now. in fact, i am just taking a break after page 147. :D

so... expect to hear more about these sometime not too far in the future!

puppets without strings: the magic toyshop (angela carter)

2011-03-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

it's a little ironic, really, that i bought this book in autumn 1999 (when i first came to reading university) just to carry it around with me / have it wait in boxes and on shelves until last saturday, and then read the whole thing in two days. but i am glad it waited for me!

virago edition, "the magic toyshop"
by angela carter

this is quite the book - it really drew me in. the main character, a fifteen year-old english girl named melanie, the oldest of three siblings, is an introvert teenager who longs to figure out her place in the world, who she will be, who she could or should be - and she has, from the outset, quite a specific idea of what she wants from life:

She stuck moon-daisies in her long hair and looked at herself in her mirror as if she were a photograph in her own grown-up photograph album. 'Myself at fifteen.' And, following, the pictures of her children [...] and pet dogs, and summer-snapped future holidays. [...] the pet dogs, would they be Yorkshire terriers or corgis; or noble, hawk-nosed Afghan hounds or a pair of white greyhounds on a golden chain?

She said to the daisy girl with her big, brown eyes: 'I will not have it plain. No. Fancy. It must be fancy.' She meant her future. A moon-daisy dropped to the floor, down from her hair, like a faintly derisive sign from heaven. (p.7-8)

melanie is at that point where she wants to shed her childhood self like an old skin. her secretly trying on her mother's wedding gown is more than just a private rite of passage, - her entire life changes from here. like the wedding gown, the life that she is cast into seems too large, bound to trip her up and take away her freedom of moving, running, climbing. finding herself suddenly orphaned and forced to move, with her brother and baby-sister, to london to live with relatives she has never met, melanie suddenly finds herself in a whole different world, where she does not have her own perfumed bar of soap or even hot running water. the baby and the younger brother are quickly integrated into the new 'family' but melanie feels like an outsider. She feels that somehow she has caused all this.

Eve must have felt like this on the way east out of Eden,' she thought. 'And it was Eve's fault.' (p.94)

the central conflict in this book is - as i experienced it - between melanie and her uncle philip, the toymaker. secretly, he is also a puppeteer, he not only makes elaborate, almost life-size puppets, but also performs plays for his captive family audience. this is exactly why melanie draws his attention on herself - because he cannot control her like, for instance, he controls his wife, who has been mute since the day of their wedding. how interesting is the description of the necklace he gives to his wife on the day they are married:

The necklace was a collar of dull silver, two hinged silver pieces knobbed with moonstones which snapped into place around her lean neck and rose up almost to her chin so that she could hardly move her head. It was heavy, crippling and precious and looked as though it might be very ancient, pre-Christian or possibly even pre-Flood although, in fact, it was not. [...] Wearing the collar, Aunt Margaret had to carry her head high and haughty as the Queen of Assyria, but above it her eyes were anxious and sad and not proud at all. (pp.112-113)

there is so much going on in this book in terms of human relationships, family and love relationships, in terms of symbolism (birds, muteness, etc), in terms of recurrent motifs (dogs, christian references, etc etc), that i don't want to try and touch on all if it, because it would just be skimming the surface while giving away too much of the plot. it is an intense book, without being graphic. this is powerful, startling writing. even though this book has been around since the late 1960s it is certainly no old hat.

She splashed the shreds of the absurd night out of her eyes with cold water. The well-iced shock of water did her good as it took her breath away; it impinged on her, it was palpable. Water is water. You can't argue with water. There it is. (p.182)

melanie herself is like water - when her family is broken up, she goes on, she runs through the cracks, and somehow goes around the obstacles her uncle constructs. in the end, the water runs through his fingers, he cannot hold it. by the time he realizes it, it is too late, and melanie's influence has dissolved the foundations of his regime of terror and forced silence. it is good not to see an attempt at explanation of especially the uncle's behavior. this story is not about guilt and innocence, good or bad. it is much more complex.

this is a coming-of-age story if you want to throw it into a category. i thoroughly enjoyed the book, - it scared me, it touched me, it made me awkward, it made me think. it is also a love story of sorts - not the soppy kind, but an awkward, detached, somewhat apprehensive but curious sort of relationship develops. at the end, we see a changed melanie, one who has taken charge of herself.

favorite caterpillars & octopus hair (lee ann roripaugh)

2011-03-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

history was not a favorite of mine in school. why? because it was so boring, so hard to remember - countless dates, rulers' names, places of battle or signed contracts, but nothing more to it. nothing "real."
history without people - i never really saw much point in it, when it is (or should be) all about people. i find it's the only way i can tackle history. my poem "stillborn (1918)" [which will appear in barely south review's september issue this year] is one such attempt at coming to grips with history through individual narrative.

{Caption: One of the young Heart Mountain school children
enjoying a swing on the center's play ground.
Photographer: Hikaru Iwasaki -- Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
11/24/43; source: Bancroft Library}

history becomes more real when we get the "story" part of history along with the dates and names. and it becomes more interesting all of a sudden. in any case, i mentioned weeks ago that i was reading lee ann roripaugh's "beyond heart mountain" and then i never told you more about it. sometimes when i do that it's because the book was a dud. or because i ended up not reading it. but this book is no dud. and i did read it. several times. i guess it was hard to figure out what to say about it.

i would like to let the book speak for itself, sharing a few snippets - though i have to say i would love to share all of it! these poems tell stories across three parts: part one speaks of childhood during the time leading up to the relocation of japanese americans, part two is set in heart mountain, and part three seems more contemporary. antelope hunting and music lessons, a love for insects and hair streaming like octopus ink, the images in these poems are varied and vivid.

i had never heard of heart mountain before this book, but then, as i said, history was not my strongest subject in school, though i doubt they would have mentioned it in german secondary school history classes. mind you it might have been good to know about these camps at that point.

in any case, reading beyond heart mountain did not just add a historical place name to my memory, the place is alive with people, such as the little girl who can't play with her friend because the family cannot afford for her to wear out her shoes. and brothers who each choose differently - one, to fight, the other, to not become a soldier.

my favorite bits in this book - well it's hard to choose. possibly the story of miss yamada ("chrysanthemums"). also, "the fish wife" is an amazing poem. and then there are bits that sparkle and wink and entangle your thoughts as you read, on every page.

it's a short book, so i encourage you to read the whole thing, and will just leave you with a snippet that is not representative of the poetry between these covers, but nonetheless lovely.

from "songs for an approaching rainy season":

the cat curls into / my armpit - wrapped nose to tail, neat / as a croissant, / / and my chilled fingers greedily / skim the yeasty / rise of his side, buttery glaze / / of yellow fur.

dusty answer (rosamond lehmann)

2011-02-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

i finished dusty answer, and just in time too - while the book was in impeccable shape when i found it, it had been sitting on shelves in this family for the past 75 years or so and, well, i am guessing that i was its first (and probably its last) reader. the glue of the binding is breaking and the paper cover has begun to peel a little, despite my usual carefulness with books.

anyway, let me tell you about the book!
(spoiler alert: you might not want to read this if you still want to read the book for the simple enjoyment of it, because i am going to tell you what happens and how it ends!)

rosamond lehmann
(1901-1990)

the plot of "dusty answer" is simple, if you like: judith spends the duration of the novel trying to figure out who she loves, should love, should be loved by, or should not be loved by. her fixation is on roddy, although both martin and julian, who also lived next door to her as children, were kinder and nicer to her. when they grow up, judith is in for a bit of a surprise, - roddy sometimes plays along with her secret dreams, but also keeps odd company:

Tony Baring sat opposite and stared with liquid expressive blue eyes. He had a sensitive face, changing all the time, a wide mouth with beautiful sensuous lips, thick black hair and a broad white forehead with the eyebrows meeting above the nose, strongly marked and mobile. When he spoke he moved them, singly or together. His voice was soft and precious, and he had a slight lisp. He looked like a young poet.

so far so good, but -

Suddenly she noticed his hands - thin unmasculine hands - queer hands - making nervous appealing ineffectual gestures that contradicted the nobility of his head. She heard him call Roddy 'my dear'; and once 'darling'; and had a passing shock. (pp98-99)

not that roddy himself acts "unmasculine" - a little later he tells her about his past lovers: he's had "a French, an Austrian, a Russian - countless mistresses." (p.216)

then, there's jennifer baird, a stunning creature she meets at cambridge.

'Have you got a cigarette? Never mind... I've just learnt how to blow smoke-rings. I'll teach you.' More whistling. 'It's terrible to be so swayed by appearances. I'm afraid it's a sign of a weak character. Ugly people rouse all Hell's devils in me. And beautiful ones make me feel like the morning stars singing together. I want beauty, beauty, beauty.... Don't you? Lovely people round me, lovely stuffs, lovely colours - lashions and lashions of gorgeous things to touch and taste and look at and smell.' She flung her head back on its round white throat and took a deep sighing breath. 'O colours!... I could eat them. I'm awfully sensuous - I look it, don't you think? Or do I mean sensual? I always get them muddled; but I know it's unladylike to be one of them.' (pp.121-122)

jennifer's lust for life and her careless spontaneousness mesmerize judith.

'You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?'

'I love nobody.'

Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....

'You mustn't love anybody,' said Jennifer. 'I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.' Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith's lifted face. 'I love you.'

And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power. (p.134)

when jennifer leaves cambridge, dropping out of school for mysterious reasons (to be with geraldine), she leaves judith a copper bowl that judith apparently had admired, with the comment that it was the nicest thing she'd ever owned, and more:

'It's all of me,' whispered Jennifer. (p.186)

left with questions, the promise of a letter with answers, and a copper bowl, judith focuses on roddy once again. she finally finds out, the hard way, that he is not the person she has been imagining for all these years after he takes offense at her passionate admission of her feelings towards him. after a romantic, secret midnight canoe-trip to a small island where he intends to say goodbye forever, and for some reason tells her he loves her (and they kiss passionately), she sends him a letter, which is causes the following exchange:

'Well,' - he hesitated. 'If a man wants to ask a girl to - marry him he generally asks her himself - do you see?'

'You mean - it was outrageous of me not to wait - to write like that?'

'I thought it a little odd.' (p.235)

they decide to never see each other again. heartbroken, still waiting for jennifer to explain herself in the promised letter, she moves on to martin, who introduces her to his mother and shows her his farm. he shoots a rabbit right in front of her, which reminds her of roddy who, unable to bear her sadness at the sight of a dead rabbit when they were children, buried the creature for her. reduced to a pile of sobbing misery, she lets martin comfort her and when he, too, tells her he loves her, she suggests he marry her, saying she would be his wife.

she knows it is the wrong thing to do, she does not love him, and breaks up the engagement a day later. they part, and never meet again. finally, julian, the last of the boys next door, finds her in paris, explaining that he had been waiting for his turn, and courts her. they have a great time together until they hear martin has died. their ways part. julian writes to her to tell her they also must not meet again.

finally, judith is on her own, and the long-awaited letter from jennifer arrives. jennifer also wants to not see judith again, explaining that while she still loves her, she does not deserve judith's love and concern. judith wants to see her again and they arrange to meet in cambridge. when jennifer doesn't show up, judith realizes she has come full circle and is now free.

i have to say the first hundred pages or so were tedious. the style, the character of judith, her thought patterns took some getting used to. the middle part, where she is at cambridge, is much more readable, more enjoyable because of all the beautiful descriptions and because things actually happen, while in the first part, it's mainly judith thinking about stuff.

why did i read the book in the first place?
because i was curious. the book itself, the physical object, was interesting to me (see previous post about albatross books), and seeing that rosamond lehmann was involved with the bloomsbury group and also quoted by simone de beauvoir made me even more curious. also, i will admit that the comment (on wikipedia) that "dusty answer" was a succes de scandale was a selling point. :)

this book is all about emotions, muchly so because judith is nothing but emotions and wonderings.

the men we meet in 'dusty answer' are unmasculine (tony), plain (martin), and hypermasculine (roddy), its women childlike (mariella, who even after having born her son still acts and looks like a child), unfeminine (geraldine, mabel) and hyperfeminine (jennifer).

judith is trying to find her way through this maze, and it is only toward the end that she realizes how much power she holds over how people react to her, how they see her. in the end, she realizes she as one single person had enough power to break apart the circle of familiar friends of the kids next door.

a little bird told me (albatross books)

2011-02-24T12:48:00.000-08:00

i finished "whistling for the elephants" (sandi toksvig) this past weekend and it is now on my list of favorite books, which, in no particular order also includes "orlando" (virginia woolf) and "oranges are not the only fruit" (jeannette winterson) and "ufo in her eyes" (xiaolu guo) and lemony snicket's "series of unfortunate events." yes, it was that good.

there is always a sort of anxiety when i get toward the end of a book - if it's a good book i want to stay in it, i don't want it to change and move toward a conclusion that will expel me from its paper cosmos, because - well - you cannot read the same book twice. you can, but you can't. it's not the same. anyway. so usually by the time i get to the last pages i already have a rough idea of what book to start next. this time, it was a paperback with matte yellow and white cardboard covers and black print that i fished out of my grandpa's library when we were emptying the house. i picked that book up and took it home simply because of the design and feel of it. it had the charm of an early penguin*, though different, starker, more edgy.

the book is "dusty answer" by rosamond lehmann, number 26 in the albatross paperback series. it is a third impression, printed in leipzig, and copyright 1937. (can you tell i believe in reading ALL the pages of a book?!) i had never heard of albatross, or lehmann.

the book itself... is a bit of a tedious read, quite a change in pace after "whistling for the elephants", but i have decided to keep going. i am on page 97 now. just so you know what i mean by "tedious", here is a typical passage:

[Roddy] flung [the caricature] hurriedly into her lap as Julian came up; and as she stuffed it into her pocket with studied carelessness, his lips suddenly relinquished the last of his obstinacy, and he flashed her a look suffused with laughter and the sense of shared guilt. Surely he had never looked at anyone before with such irresistible intimacy and appeal. The less assured face of the child Roddy peered for a moment in that look; but the dark and laughing fascination was new and belonged to the young man; and she melted inwardly at the remembrance of it.

and another bit, just for the fun of it. this is where it goes weird. the young man roddy, who so far has shown close to no interest in judith, who of course is particularly fascinated by him, suddenly is into hair. the boys have just unexpectedly shown up around tea time, while she is drying her hair in the garden. needless to say, she is more than happy for them to stay for tea.

'Will you wait here while I go and put my hair right?'

'It's not dry yet,' said Roddy. 'Let me brush it at the back for you.'

She stood still in embarrassed pleasure while he brushed and combed her hair.

'You do it so beautifully. You don't pull a bit.'

'I'm a good hairdresser. I brush my mother's when her maid's out.'

'Has she got lovely hair?'

'Goodish. Very long. Not such lumps of it as this though.' He took up a handful and weighed it. 'Extraordinary stuff.'

a veritable hair-conoisseur, that roddy, by the sounds of it. no, really, while i was reading this bit (and all this is taken from pages 85 and 86) i was sure judith, the central character, must be dreaming things up again, which she does all the time. she's terribly introspective and (at least in her mind) almost emotionally omniscient - whatever those around her do or do not do, say or do not say, how they move or breathe or stand, everything speaks to her and she feels sure she knows what they are thinking. she's a chronic thinker, or, more correctly, a chronic worrier, self-conscious, mortified by the possibility of rejection and social blunders.

in that respect she is very much the same oddball kid she was when the boys and their sister lived next door originally, years and years ago. but time has changed not only them but also her - judith the little girl would never have gone skinny dipping in the river by their two houses in the middle of the night.

i am not sure in how far this book is going to get any more entertaining, but it is interesting and i still have every intention of reading it cover to cover.

the final page, before the ads, is beautiful as well:

THIS EDITION IS COMPOSED IN

GARAMOND TYPE CUT BY THE

MONOTYPE CORPORATION. THE

PAPER IS MADE BY THE BAUTZEN

PAPER MILL. THE PRINTING AND

THE BINDING OF THIS THIRD IM-

PRESSION ARE THE WORK OF

OSCAR BRANDSTETTER

LEIPZIG

(too bad blogger does not let me put this in garamond... but, you get the idea. details mattered.)

now what i find much more interesting about this paperback is the history of the albatross books. wikipedia, my old friend, has an interesting if short article about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross_Books

basically, i wasn't far off when i immediately took to the book for its penguin-flavor. it's just that it's the other way around - albatross came first. penguin is the same idea of cheap mass produced paperbacks, but this time taken up in britain. truth is, albatross started three years earlier than penguin. it was founded in 1932 in leipzig, germany, to print english language paperbacks for the continental market (which explains the subtle "NOT TO BE INTRODUCED INTO THE BRITISH EMPIRE OR THE U.S.A." on the cover...)

early penguin book cover
design by jan tschichold

in 1935, penguin was founded and did in britain what albatross had tried in continental europe: cater to a market for "serious" literature that had been hitherto widely ignored. and somehow it all worked out.

the albatross, like the penguin, is a beautiful thing. a beautiful idea. making literature and biography, science and art, available to "the masses" - gotta love that. those two are probably my favorite birds in all the world... (though the european starlings who visited me this winter were pretty cool too!)

___________________
*the link here is http://www.flickr.com/photos/davekellam/308608465/ - a cool photo of early penguin cover designs by jan tschichold, as shown in an exhibit in reading, england.

books from strangers / whistling for elephants

2011-02-19T13:14:00.000-08:00

i am reading. a novel. and loving it. i got this book from a complete stranger, via the public bookshelf the mercator foundation set up downtown. the whole thing is simple enough:

it's a simple construction that keeps the books safe from wind and rain, while still letting you see what's there. people can just take what they're interested in and / or drop of books they no longer need or want to share. of course a fair share of the books are lame old things but i continue to be surprised by some of what i find there. i stop by there at least once a week, have a look and tidy up the shelves a bit. i think every city, every town should have one of these! what a brilliant idea!

anyway, this is what i found on the public bookshelf yesterday:

1967 ladybird book, good shape

which, while fiction, is not the book i was talking about in the introductory sentence of this post. :) but i did want to mention this, because it is a neat little item - i remember when i volunteered at the reading oxfam bookshop we had a number of customers who came in for these little books especially; collectors who were looking for specific editions and many of whom found at least some of what they were looking for on our shelves. finding this on the public bookshelf was a big surprise for me - sure, i can see where the english-language romance novels, thrillers, and chick lit might come from, but to my knowledge these old ladybird books would have come from - a british / anglophile family or collector (more likely a collector, since it is in such good shape).

anyway, this is the "real" find for this week:

whistling for the elephants
by sandi toksvig

part of what piqued my curiosity here was that i had heard neither the title nor the name of the author before, and it did not look like chick-lit. i opened the book at the beginning and ran into the main character, a girl named dorothy:

I was ten. Almost certainly I was wearing a short tartan kilt (Clan McLadybird), a white shirt, a very neatly tied tie, a blue blazer and a peaked sailor's cap which hid my long curly ginger hair. No-one made me dress like that. It was a kind of school uniform I had invented for myself. In the photos the combination tie and skirt made me look a strange boy / girl hybrid. My face, born with a frown, was obscured by the peak of my hat. I had spent most of my early childhood shielded from a full view of anything. The cap and I were inseparable. I was, even in my tender years, trying to develop a rakish look. I spent many hours trying to persuade people to call me Cap'n instead of Dorothy. It didn't work. Not a popular child. Not even with my parents.

by then i knew dorothy and i would be fast friends. :) she is a truly intriguing girl who is not so much raised as she just sort of grows and raises herself. her most prized possession is a "piece of illuminated manuscript" that illustrates the structure of the animal kingdom according to (supposedly) 10th century chinese thought. reading up on this just now, i found this is a direct quote also cited by borges (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge's_Taxonomy to read this thing - quite poetic really!) first it seems that the reason dorothy (never dottie!) sees this item as a treasure is because it was the only gift she ever received that was unasked for, even unexpected, but this whole theme of animals is deeply woven into the fabric of this novel and no doubt will play a vital role in her story. the "real" relationships, actual rapport, happens only between humans and animals here, among people who are just figuring out how to live after WW2.

dorothy's british family move much and, as we join her, have just moved to america, and for the first time, they could become a real family in a real home - maybe. probably not. the relationship between her and her parents is somewhat... antiseptic.

the book is full of great character descriptions and little observations dorothy makes concerning those around her, such as this when she has entered an (assumedly) abandoned grand house and admires a large painting full of animals:

"We shall have a Chinese Garden of Intelligence." I jumped as a voice spoke behind me. I thought for a second it came from the picture. "A Great Menagerie. Like King George at Windsor or the Duke of Bedford. Tropical princes shall come and bring us barbaric offerings of tigers, leopards and creatures no man has ever seen before. We shall have such a collection that the Emperor of Abyssinia will hear of it and wish to come."

I turned but couldn't see anyone. Then, amongst the great drapes which covered the walls, something moved. A giant insect woman. All in brown. Its wings closed about itself. It spoke to me.

"No one, not even in Egypt, China, India or Rome, will be able to boast of such exotica."

The huge bug shimmered toward me. She was maybe in her late thirties but when you're a kid everyone just looks old. She was probably as old as Mother, just less set in aspic.

in any case, since i got the book yesterday i've read almost half of it and can't wait to read on. i am glad i checked the bookshelf yesterday, and - thanks, stranger, for sharing this book with me!

show, don't tell / assaulting your readers

2011-02-14T08:39:00.000-08:00

ok... so a friend sent me iain m. banks' the algebraist. while two things spoke against me liking it, even before i started reading, i was determined to give it a shot - because the person who sent it enjoyed it, and because, well, it's been a while since i last took a dive into fiction.

the blurb on the back of the book sounded promising:

"Brilliant ... a triumphant return to SF" (The Alien Online)

"Brimming with wry, caustic humour and vivid, energetic creativity, The Algebraist yet again shows Iain M. Banks to be a consummate player of science fiction's best games." (Interzone)

"The standard by which the rest of SF is judged." (Guardian)

and my favorite:

"The master's characteristic touches are present in great abundance." (The Independent)

(if anyone ever puts anything like that on the back / cover of any book i publish, i promise i will personally punch them. hard.)

the two things that spoke against me liking the book (apart from the glorious reviews above):

some friends and i went to book launch / reading by the same author a bunch of years ago, and i was not impressed with his style, both on the page and off.
the book is 534 pages long (any book longer than 350 pages needs to be DARN good or super-interesting for me to finish it)

i did start reading it. at the beginning. which is actually quite promising (the beginning of the book, that is.) the prologue is charming and really made me want to know the whole story. the first page or so of the first chapter is also interesting and promises a good story, by introducing an entity with immense potential, great intelligence, and not a snowball's chance, hiding in deep outer space from its pursuers.

then, however, it's as if someone took the pages just read and stapled them to a poorly written teenage attempt at science fiction / fantasy: enter archimandrite lusiferus, who is, you guessed it, a bad guy. now, there are many ways of characterizing someone, and countless ways of showing someone is "evil" - unfortunately, banks chooses the in-your-face-and-in-your-face-again method. the sadistic acts of lusiferus are not only appalling but also so overly, intentionally and crudely constructed by the writer that i just got bored.

now, i am the type of person who does not watch violent movies. i like a good murder mystery as much as anyone but i do not have to see blood and guts all over the place, - in fact, i believe that technically, those writers and directors who manage to produce a good mystery or a thrilling story without being graphic work on a skill level much higher than the rest. and i feel particularly strongly about this when it comes to writing.

movies have ratings - i know what to expect when i see "all ages" or "pg" or "r" / "18" on the dvd or at the box office - and often times it is easy enough to find out why the movie is rated the way it is, whether it is language or nudity or violence. books, however, are usually not rated. and in my experience, the blurb often has little to do with what you'll find between the covers. picking up a book and starting to read is an act of trust. it's the start of a relationship or sorts, where you hand your mindscape over to the writer for the time being.

maybe it is the way i read, the way reading works in my brain, - books take me places, texts are real and physical the moment i read them, and so bad writing is not just a waste of my time but even a displeasure, and, at worst, an assault. the violence and sadism, for example, that banks describes in gory detail, is completely unnecessary for the story as far as i could tell. it's like he was trying to describe a cartoon of the story and handed that in as the book - but novels in my opinion don't work that way. the storyline was not advanced by it, and the hint "that guy is an unlikeable, sick-in-the-head sadist" could have been given in many more effective ways. i mean, even the name screams out, "dude, i'm bad!"

i am not saying all books / stories / texts should be peace and pansies, butterflies and puppies - i am saying that when we write we might want to give the reader some credit. sure, if you are a big fan of splatter movies / splatter fiction, blood and guts is what is expected. but many of us, i think (i hope!) have interests beyond blood, bones, and skin. beyond pointless fictional suffering. when i picked up the algebraist i was looking to read a story. who is the algebraist? who is this mysterious head gardener, HG, whom we meet in the prologue? who or what is the entity at the beginning of the first chapter, and who are its enemies, and why?

to be honest, the prospect of having to wade through any more adolescent morbid fantasies and running into lusiferus possibly throughout the book really put me off reading any further. and so, unless my friend would like me to send him the book back, it will go to the public book bank downtown sometime this week. it's just not for me.

have you read the whole algebraist? do you disagree / agree / beg to differ? post your comment or your own review below if you like.

i do love science fiction / speculative fiction - i love playing with ideas, and many of the best SF is about ideas, not the number of heads / eyes / other body parts potential aliens or androids might have, or in which ways they might massacre / be massacred. i usually find something that tickles my brains when i pick up something like this:

visit your local second hand bookstore (or use the link to sam weller's bookstore at the bottom of the page) to find some old-school sci-fi. not saying there is no good new science fiction, just that the old stuff is still interesting and sometimes can be real fun.

dancing like candy wrappers on the wind (guevara)

2011-01-19T14:44:00.000-08:00

so i am reading - three books parallel. these are the books:

beyond heart mountain (lee ann roripaugh)
autobiography of so-and-so (maurice kilwein guevara)
der einarmige pianist (original title: musicophilia) (oliver sacks)

to be honest i really find the original cover (right)

much more attractive than the german cover. AND

the original title would have worked in german too.

but then, nobody asked me...

for today, i am going to talk a bit about guevara's autobiography of so-and-so. by the looks of it, i must have bought this book at sam weller's in salt lake last time i was there. like, two years ago? it's a first edition, 2001. i think it was the violet, green and white cover design that got me, although the vertical title is quite an eye-catcher too.

the collection is divided into seven sections of 3 to 9 poems each. the first section is called "History before Me" and the last one, fittingly enough, "Afterlife." when i choose a book of poetry i open it at a random page and read wherever i happen to land. if it grabs me, i will likely buy the book, if it's in my budget. it's that easy. here is the passage that struck me (and very likely caused the purchase), it's from the poem "Mirror, Mirror":

My twin brothers were conjoined at the elbows until the age of two and a half. When one walked forward, the other pedaled backwards. They learned to dance by watching two candy wrappers swirl in the wind. If one said, "Tree," the other whispered, "Root."

another gem, from "My Father Half-Stoned in the Projects":

My father was drinking beer after supper, exhaling pale tendrils of marijuana like a beast with seven eyes. His hair was as long as that night, and he'd begun to teach himself to play a tin whistle he found abandoned the season before in the green dumpster.

whether "so-and-so" dreams before his birth or follows a cockroach through the innards of the walls, his language is always concrete, his images are tangible and real. scissors, a short wave radio, an old black and white tv, sugar ants, vietnam war soldiers, a burning cross, and a man dressed like adolf hitler, each has a story, a particular significance in this autobiography which, in defiance of the whole technical idea of a biography, gives us no particular dates, times, or places, except when "so-and-so" feels like sharing that information. yet nothing is missing - the prose poems flow with their own logic and an enviable ease. in "Why I Return to Colombia," so-and-so asks:

What if all the stories you knew about the past fit into tiny photographs the size of slides, black & white with crenulated borders?

and guevara's poems are much like a collection of such photographs, telling a disjointed yet coherent story of life in the culture that makes its place between cultures. i am very much enjoying this book, not just because i like detail and am partial to insect imagery (the cucaracha appears more than once).

i also like the subtlety - saying much without using more words than really necessary, without exaggerating or numbing through excessive clarity. often, subtlety can be so much more effective that the more prevalent "in your face" approach.

for more poetry by maurice kilwein guevara, check out this video / animation of one of his poems:
Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears : Poetry Everywhere : Video : The Poetry Foundation

reading other people's mail (stieglitz)

2011-01-03T13:49:00.000-08:00

click here to read my first post on charlotte stieglitz (including one of her poems).

i must say that i find charlotte stieglitz an interesting character, the way she comes across in her letters, the way she presents herself to one person or the other - her beloved heinrich, her brother, her sister, her mother, heinrich's rich uncle (baron l. stieglitz) to whom they are much indebted, and to others. since she and her husband both traveled, and not to the same places at the same time, these letters form a vital connection between their then separated lives.

a "typical" biedermeier family
(detail) (artist unknown)

charlotte's letters give some impression of what kind of relationship the two had. in her letter dated 22. of july 1833 she teases him with a mock-outrage about his adventures as a young man, which she just barely heard about from an old friend of his, and makes up a bunch of interesting compound words (mostly nouns, some adjectives):

Aber warte nur, du böser Mensch, was muss ich alles von dir hören? Du Ball-Flatterherz! Du Cotillon-Aufführer! Du Hengstchen-abgesattelter Rittmeister! Du wilder Rapierjunge! Du Thüringer-Wald-Durchstreifer! Du Musikbanden-Anhängsel! Du Dorfschenken-Flötist! Du früh-vorkonzertierender Demagoge! Du Klosterjungfraun-Ständchenbringer!

she explains she wants to find out all his old stories and then seek her own kind of revenge:

[...] dann lach ich mich halbtot über all die tollen Streiche, die du närrischer Kerl, warum nur? mir noch gar niemals erzählt. Hältst du mich denn für so einen eingefleischten Philister? - Ja, ja, ich armes Kindlein! keinen Ball vor deiner Ära mitgemacht, kein Stammbuchblättlein geschrieben, keine Locke abgeschnitten, keinen Kuß gegeben - wart, warte nur, den bösen Mund, den früh so küssedurstigen,will ich strafen wenn er mir wieder unter die Augen kommt, strafen mit so heißen Küssen, daß er gar nicht zur Verteidigung kommen soll und ihm das Blut bis hoch an die dunklen Rabenschwingen steigt.

my favorite word here is "rabenschwingen" = raven's wings, assumably referring to his dark hair. in these lines she shows she is quite the writer herself, with an acute sense of the different tones and layers of language, and the seductive nature words can have.

she gives him feedback on his letters and his writing, telling him first to be more mindful of the world around him, then later to put more of himself and his thoughts into this letters as she and all others who read them (letters are passed around for the whole family and friends, as appropriate, to read) find him missing from his latest letters. (29. july 1833) in the same letter, she advises him to take everything in - the good and also the grime - and not let his innate aversion steer him away from that which is not pure or pretty. to learn about life, she believes, he needs to look at all things and places, even the ugly, dusty, hidden corners. she assures him that he himself will not be tainted by this, but rather become more pure in mind and understanding.

where in letters to heinrich she fashions herself as "the poet's wife" or (as in several of her poems for him) "the poor child", her correspondence with theodor mundt shows her as a clear thinker, an intellectual who, while showing some deference toward those like mundt who write literary criticism and critique "serious" writers, has a mind of her own and is not shy to express her thoughts. (see letters dated 7. and 8. of november 1833, for example)

charlotte grows more and more open in writing to baron l. stieglitz, heinrich's uncle (and sponsor), after they visited him in russia. clearly, she found her time with his household very enjoyable: in a letter not too long after the trip she complains to him about the lack of intellectual stimulation she experiences when visiting with "certain people" back in berlin. she has certain expectations that they just do not meet - they are intellectually not their equals - but what makes the whole thing nearly unbearable for her is their trying to be what they are not, which is (she explains) unenjoyable and tiring for everyone involved:

Eine solche farblose kalte Glaceehandschuh-Unterhaltung, die vornehm sein soll, eine solche aufgesteifte Puppenhaftigkeit ohne Saft und Blut, deren Atmosphäre in Dunst aufgelöste Langeweile, alle echte Lebensregung schon im Vorraus erstickt, flieht man doch wohl weit lieber als daß man sie sucht! (20. december 1833)

she also explains that they stay home on fridays to receive their friends and (interestingly enough, i thought) those who were referred to them by their friends. those evenings were spent reading, singing / playing music, and conversing. reading this, i had to think (fondly) of the open mic nights at the windsor girls' place when i attended the u of utah - about once a month all sorts of interesting people would congregate at their house, bring their own instruments / songs / poems / texts, and of course the odd snack or two, and everyone would share. it was great. (thanks, girls!)

now while i am sure jello-based snacks and maracas probably did not play any important role in the stieglitz' "open mic nights", i can see how they would find them intellectually stimulating and highly enjoyable. and to be honest this is something i miss - the direct exchange, the contact with other creative minds, writers, musicians, artists - and something i am looking forward to having more of once i get back into university. so keep those fingers crossed for me!

in a letter to baron stieglitz on the 20th of december 1833, charlotte speaks about writers' correspondence being published and made available for all to read (specifically, the letters between zelter and goethe). having seen herself from the very start of her involvement with heinrich, years ago, as "the poet's wife", has she been writing all this time with the idea in mind that one day the public would read her private letters? but this is not what she comments on. rather, she is concerned that soon, the value of a book - the monetary price of a book - might be determined by how interesting (read: scandalous) the writer himself is, rather than the actual quality of the work itself.

one last bit i want to share is an intriguing image charlotte uses in her letter to mundt on 24th of january 1834 - i really like it and i think i may play with it before long. here goes:

Eine auf dem Tisch liegende Brille hatte schon von Kindheit auf etwas etwas Unheimliches für mich, und ich habe oft gedacht: welche Augen mögen schon durch diese Glasaugen gesehen haben! -- Eine geerbte Brille eines Menschen, den man nicht gekannt, denken Sie sich, wie schauerlich! --

A pair of glasses on the table, ever since childhood, has been something uncanny for me, and I have often thought: which eyes may have seen through these glass eyes! -- An inherited pair of glasses from a person one never knew, just think, how frightening! -- (my translation)

so, i think i have sufficiently introduced you to charlotte stieglitz. i think some more poetry reading is in order - which is good, because i am waiting for some to come in the mail soon.

some things never change...
(detail from above painting)

btw if you are curious to find out about her husband, heinrich stieglitz, the poet she needs for her self-definition as "the poet's wife" and "muse", you can find his autobiography here: http://books.google.com/books?id=DkE6AAAAcAAJ&hl=de&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false (scanned text)

if only i were a whale (charlotte stieglitz)

2010-12-23T15:53:00.000-08:00

i hardly ever read in german these days, but i just picked up a nice, pale linden green volume titled "charlotte stieglitz - gedichte und briefe" (edited by franz josef görtz) - poems and letters by charlotte stieglitz. i must have found the book when we were helping my grandmother move out of her house and into an apartment, because i am sure i did not buy it. so it has been sitting patiently in one of the cardboard boxes that constitute my bookshelves, waiting for its day to come.

a portrait of charlotte
from an article in die gartenlaube,
(germany's TLS of the 1800s)
(image found here: wikimedia commons )

i confess that charlotte was a complete stranger to me, so after reading the handful of poems and before reading the letters, i did some looking up. charlotte stieglitz was born in 1806 in hamburg. at age 22 she married the unsuccessful, possibly manic-depressive poet heinrich stieglitz.

on december 29, 1834 she sent her husband to spend the evening at a concert, washed herself, put on a clean white night dress, wrote a letter, went to bed and stabbed herself with a dagger she had bought as a bride (some accounts say it was her wedding gift to her husband, which would add yet another symbolic layer to her act). in her letter she explains her conviction that the sorrow and suffering caused by her death would make him a better poet. the irony here is that her husband became known because of her suicide, but she ultimately received more public attention (and does to this day). the woman who passionately cast herself as the poet's muse instead became more of a poet in everyone's eyes than he ever did.

here is one of her poems, first in the original (german) and then in translation (by yours truly) just to give you an idea of what it's like - and here again we have irony because i don't really believe that poetry can be translated effectively - layers and dimensions are lost and new ones are added and interpretation must take place in any translation - but i am just doing it for the sake of sharing and giving you a rough idea. so bear with me. :-)

Ein andrer Liebhaber

zum Hackebrett

Wär' ich doch ein großer Walfisch,

O Du meines Lebens Lust,

Jeden Tag 'nen Wasserschwall frisch

Brächt' ich, Kühlung Deiner Brust.

Wär ich nur 'ne kleine Katze,

O Du Herzens-Sonnenschein,

Strecktest Du nach mir die Tatze,

Blinzt' ich mit den Äugelein.

Ja, zugleich wär' Bär und Basse,

Katz und Maus ich, Seel' und Leib,

Wünschtest Du mich so zum Spasse,

So zum süssen Zeitvertreib.

here my translation - note that the original has a consistent abab cdcd efef rhyme scheme, which does not work in translation. also note that the apostrophes in the original in several places make the line sound more colloquial than in my translation attempt. in some cases they are just there to get the rhythm of the line right though. :D again, this does not make it into the translation. anyway, here goes:

another lover,

to accompany the dulcimer*

if only i were a large whale

o you joy of my life

every day a fresh burst of water

i'd bring, to cool your bosom

if only i were a little cat

o you heart-sunshine

if you reached your paw toward me

i would blink my little eyes

yes, at the same time bear and boar

cat and mouse, i, soul and heart,

if this your desire was

to sweetly pass the time

the whale image got me. i think it's great. charlotte was writing this with her tongue in her cheek, i bet. it certainly isn't in keeping with the stuffy biedermeier mindset for a young woman to wish to be a whale. bear and boar are equally unfeminine, although the cutesy little kitten blinking its eyes at the beloved as the beloved reaches out towards it breaks that pattern. i think it is this inconsistency that got me interested. i am not quite sure yet what to make of charlotte.

the six poems in this volume (the letters make up the bulk of the book) are full of pathos, wordless, patient, suffering love, almost morbid, a lust for life and death in equal measure. repeatedly, charlotte speaks directly to her poet, whose muse she tries so hard to be, she portrays herself as a child who everyone thinks is too young to know of love, but - as she says - is prematurely wise in these things. she has strong convictions about how relationships work, what her mission in life is, and how she can, if not must, support heinrich.

the letters are much the same, the voice here is clearly the same as in the poems and many ideas show up again in more detail, with more explanation. i feel like i am eavesdropping, and i wonder how she feels about people reading her private correspondence. at the same time, it feels like a whole different world - in her letters, she uses the formal (Sie) to address her own sister, but uses the informal (Du) to address her brother and her beloved.

it also got me thinking about how communicative (or potentially communicative) we are today. in her letters she asks, for example, her brother to send her greetings and best wishes to mutual friends when he next writes to them, but also explains that she will not ask him to greet certain other friends from her since she has not written to them in over two years and she would be ashamed to send her greetings before she has written herself.

her letters, especially those to her beloved, are so immediate, so full of the present moment - she is speaking to him, she can hear herself telling him the things she is writing or see him read the words as she composes her letters of encouragement, caution and advice, and her many testimonies of her love for him. she writes him as if she was writing an email today, asks many questions and writes as if she expects an immediate response - just that her letters took at least one, two days (weather permitting) to reach the addressee, rather than two seconds.

i have not finished this book yet, but will do before the year is out. with christmas craziness, i have not received a single actual christmas card (mind you, i did not send any myself this year, since i was all wrapped up in getting my grad school applications ready... think that might have something to do with it?!) or even much email the past few weeks, so reading someone else's mail might be just the ticket. hee hee hee.

further reading (these are kind of a note to self... i stumbled across them and they look interesting):

over her dead body - death, femininity and the aesthetic, by e. bronfen. (book)
respectability and deviance - nineteenth century german women writers and the ambiguity of representation, by ruth-ellen boetcher joeres. (book)

_____________________

* in the 19th century, after enjoying some popularity in the 18th, the hackebrett / hammered dulcimer was mainly played in homes and pubs rather than for higher audiences / in concert, as far as i understand it.
___________________________

click here to read my second post on charlotte stieglitz (and excerpts from her letters).

das ruhr-atoll (exhibition catalogue)

2010-12-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

this is what living in this year's european capital of culture (ruhr2010) boiled down to for me - conceptual artist norbert bauer's ruhr-atoll project. seven months* of hands-on and hands-off exhibition support, some press conferences, meeting a couple of new (to me) artists (ilya and emilia kabakov for example), lots of interaction with visitors from all sorts of backgrounds, and generally the creative chaos that comes with these types of projects. i loved it! and now, it's all condensed into this:

the catalogue: quite a handful

to be honest i somehow feel that this post only marginally qualifies for the bookshelf blog, since i am not reading this book - on the other hand, i have read it about 25 to 30 times over the past two months while it was being put together. i did a lot of proof reading for typos, clarity and style, as well as researching and double-checking information for some of the texts etc.

model for "amphitheater" by stefan sous

when the three plastic wrapped crates of books plopped down onto the concrete floor of the exhibition hall three days ago it was an emotional moment. on the one hand, it felt nice to have the finished book in hand, and of course it took less than two minutes for me to find the one typo we missed (it's on the last page), but on the other hand it felt like now the project was truly over.

model for "project for the preservation of natural resources"
by ilya & emilia kabakov

i spent every single day since mid-may working for this exhibition, telling people about it, answering the phone and innumerable emails in the name of it, i even overcame my deep and utter distrust of water so i could be on the baldeney lake for hours at a time one or two days a week minding one exhibit or other.

the baldeney lake: not for swimming
(not that i was going to anyway...)

today, i spent almost five hours in the unheated exhibition hall (formerly a large production room for a factory for high voltage electricity dingbats) presenting the catalogue and telling the stories once more of the ruhr-atoll and of the other projects that came before it.

one of 395 pieces of art that form the
"grundsteinkiste" - our 1994 project

despite three layers of clothing and some mulled wine, i got pretty cold pretty soon, but it was ok. i can handle one more day. tomorrow i will wear a skirt over the other three layers to keep my kiste warm - depending on how things work out, i might be stuck in the cold (the door is open, so it is the same temperature as outside, which is currently -7 celsius) from 11am to 6pm.

detail from model for "space elevator"
by gloria friedmann and olivier boissard

so here it is - the catalogue for the ruhr-atoll. 158 pages, a lot of stunning full colour photographs (some double-sided) and explanatory texts (in german) for all of the project entries, not just the ones that ended up on the lake. for those of you who like numbers, the exhibit on the lake was seen by about 3 million people, and about 35,000 people made their way across the water to explore each of the artificial islands for themselves.

a summer (and autumn) well spent.
________________
*) only seven months for me - norbert had been working on this project for seven years already when it finally took form. talk about perseverance!

telling it slant: happy birthday ED!

2010-12-11T00:58:00.000-08:00

i just wanted to point out an interesting resource to you, on the occasion of emily dickinson's 180th birthday (dec.10th) - the emily dickinson lexicon. (http://edl.byu.edu/)

it pairs up every single word ED uses in her poetry with the matching definitions from the edition of webster's that she was using. this is particularly interesting if you are studying ED's poetry rather than just reading it (which btw is cool too): in some places she uses what lexicon creator cynthia l. hallen calls "webplay" - word play that draws directly from webster's definitions.

in addition to pairing up words and definitions (as well as word-origins), the emily dickinson lexicon also lists poems in which the word appears, - i've found this useful when i knew a line from a poem but could not remember the first line / the number (since most of her poems are simply numbered).

... and if you are here because you are googling emily dickinson for homework, a term paper, or some other assignment, the emily dickinson lexicon also has a page full of ED study-related essays and a long bibliography: http://edl.byu.edu/essay.php

of course i won't end this post without sharing one of ED's poems with you, - it's part of your healthy 5-a-day which, though most people don't know it, applies to reading as much as to fruit and veg.

MUCH madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye;

Much sense the starkest madness.

’T is the majority

In this, as all, prevails.

Assent, and you are sane;

Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,

And handled with a chain.

and then there is this one, which contains what must be one of my favorite sentences in the english language - kind of like a mission statement - right as the first line:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---

Success in Cirrcuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightening to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind---

into the woods, etc. (oswald)

2010-12-01T11:12:00.000-08:00

another souvenir from england

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.

Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.

Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening

Blowing the stars toward them, bringing snow.

(from "various portents")

oswald plays with the language, subtly, rubs her thumb over the surfaces of words, weighs them in her hand, sings them tentatively, then takes or abandons them. when i first bought this book i started at the beginning, grew impatient with the first two poems, and decided to finish it "later." that time has finally come. and i am glad it has! there are some wonderful poems, swift and elegant turns of phrase, and intriguing stories, like "The mud-splattered recollections of a woman who lived her life backwards":

No eyes no matches and yet mathematically speaking

I could still reach at a stretch a wispish whiteish [sic]

last seen outline any way up, which could well be my own

were it only a matter of refolding.

So I creased I uncreased and the next thing I knew

I was pulled from the ground at the appointed hour

and rushed to the nearest morgue to set out yet again

from the bed to the floor to the door to the air.

one of the recurring techniques* i noticed was repetition - repetition of whole phrases, at times the way you would find in song lyrics, at times the way you'd expect in a classic form poem, at times following and illustrating their own logic. "Walking past a Rose this June Morning" is a great example of how oswald makes this work for her. In fact, it may just be my favorite poem of the lot. it's lines like these that do my heart good:

is there a new world known only to breathing?

now inhale what I remember. pause. how unbreathable

other poems in this book that made me feel that way: "Poem for carrying a Baby out of Hospital" and "Head of a Dandelion."
i think i want to play with questions and repetitions for a bit for my next few poems... hmmm...

______________
*) i wish there was a nicer word, something smoother, softer, that sounds less like it must be made of surgical steel because that's not at all what this is.

current currents

2010-11-24T12:47:00.000-08:00

current currents of thought are influenced by the following books i am reading right now: (in no particular order...)

sexual fluidity - understanding women's love and sexual desire,

by lisa m. diamond (2008)

i've been reading IN this book, on and off, since it came out, but have so far not really read it from cover to cover. i've been reading it because i was curious. not just about the topic but also because i like to read stuff by people i have met. (and vice versa, which made it extra-cool that after studying derrida at the university of reading, i actually got to meet the man! but i digress.) and it just so happens i took dr. diamond's class on "the psychology of love" a few years ago (she teaches at the u of utah), and worked in her lab on one of her grads' studies for a bit. it was a fun and very interesting time!

anyway. the title basically says what the book is about. to make it very short (and i am most probably generalizing to a painful degree here! so if you are at all interested in this, better read the thing yourself!!!), diamond suggests that the commonly used labels of hetero-, bi- and homosexual don't really work - she supports this with a long-term study of 100 women, describing how - over time - most of them moved from one label to another in behavior and / or self-labeling, or even gave up labeling themselves. as i said, i am still reading this, so this is a rough idea of what is in the book - as far as i have read it. :-)

apparenly, even oprah invited her to talk about the book on her show, and if nothing else, something you could take away from reading this book (or hearing her speak about it) is that maybe we should not ask ourselves so much, "what am i?" or "what should i be?" and rather figure out "who do i want to be with?" in the sense of "who is the right person for me?"

sound advice, if you ask me.

krishna (stories for children), by tiny tot publications (delhi, 2007)

i picked up this book on my last visit to utah - there is a krishna temple there, and i like to go because of the llamas and the little shop they have. i have a weak spot for exotic little things like anklets with bells, long silk skirts, sari fabrics - you get the idea. in any case i bought this because i felt ignorant and figured it might give me a little insight into the mythology / the stories around krishna, in a way that's a bit more entertaining than reading up on it all on wikipedia or in big fat books. the book also has a lovely look and feel to it - the print is large, the formatting very simple, and there are colourful illustrations on every page.

i guess it reminded me of the big book of stories i had when i was a child; that particular, oversized bulk of a book contained over three hundred stories, both folk tales and tales from greek and roman mythology, and illustrations that really impressed me (i still see the same drawn image of medusa's petrified head before my mental eye when i think of gorgons). i read in it or was read from it every night for years. i am not sure what became of that book, but it is quite possible i loved / read it to bits.

cogswell & spano: spock messiah (corgi edition, 1977)

some escapist pulp... this is one of the first star trek novels (i.e. a story that is not adapted from an episode or movie script) and it is certainly not the best ever written... (if you are looking to read a good star trek novel, try the "homecoming" or "spirit walk" novels by christie golden) so, back to the reading. the plot is as follows:

kirk's crew are testing some new equipment that is supposed to make first contact / first assessments of new civilizations much easier. the trick is that it establishes a telepathic link between the wearer and a native, thus giving the wearer access to the language as well as mannerisms of the local people. it turns out, however, that the little gadgets are not without flaw, so that some crewmen begin to behave like the persons they are linked to (which is not really desirable if you are linked to a pickpocket for example). it also doesn't help that somehow, mr. spock, who has also been sent planetside with one of these gadgets, suddenly believes he is the messiah who will unite the hill people and the city people and take over this world. and just to make things interesting, a mysterious radiation front is approaching rapidly, and it is strong enough to destroy the ship.

if you pay attention you will find little inaccuracies that show how early on in the life-cycle of star trek this was written - like, scotty being described as red-haired for example. and not to forget the footnotes that link the story to the original episodes, to try and create a continuum in which the story is situated.

i will gladly admit i bought this book for the cover art and for the grainy paper and the smell - the smell of an old paperback. seeing i paid one british pound for it, i think that was a reasonable buy. i mean, just look at the cover! there are three (four if you look really close) completely different fonts used in the design, and i just adore that image of spock as a lighting rod.

so... no poetry recommendation, no deep literary explorations today, just food for the brain and lots of random diversion. i am however watching my mailbox very closely these days, because any day now i should get a fat envelope with a bunch of chapbooks from dancinggirlpress! i will tell you all about them once they get here! :D

killing angels & demons (women & writing)

2010-11-16T06:58:00.000-08:00

I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I had to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.

this is from virginia woolf's killing the angel in the house, from a lecture on professions for women, read at the national society for women's service in 1931. i would have loved to have been in the audience is all i can say. but, i'll let you have more of this so you know who is being killed here, and why.

... you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must - to put it bluntly - tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard.

ok so this is eighty years ago. why can i relate? i wasn't raised in a home that was built around the image of woman as the angel in the house, - which is a phrase taken from a poem by coventry patmore, written in 1854. here's patmore's ideal of womanhood:

Man must be pleased; but him to please

Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf

Of his condoled necessities

She casts her best, she flings herself

Her heart to an icicle or whim,

Whose each impatient word provokes

Another, not from her, but him;

While she, too gentle even to force

His penitence by kind replies,

Waits by, expecting his remorse,

With pardon in her pitying eyes;

And if he once, by shame oppress'd,

A comfortable word confers,

She leans and weeps against his breast,

And seems to think the sin was hers;

... be honest. were you able to keep a straight face while reading this?! i know i wasn't. in all fairness, this poem goes back over a century and these ideas had been around for a while at that time, so patmore didn't come up with them but rather bundled them up into a neat, readable little package that serves well to illustrate the mindset of the day.

so. surely with feminism (several waves of it at that) and emancipation and all that, woolf's struggle with the angel in the house should be over and done with for us. well, i am not so sure. i think feminism isn't done yet. because feminism is much more than a focus on who earns how much, or who can show how much skin where and when, or who gets to raise a child when partners split up, and such. i believe many people today underestimate the female experience, falling into the trap of "we're all the same" where really it should be, "we are all equal, of equal worth."

i do feel i can relate when woolf speaks of the angel who threatens to "helpfully" guide her pen. how do i write?

how do i write as a woman, as a mormon woman, as a woman of my generation, as a woman of my nationality, as a woman of my colour?

there are expectations for each of these aspects of who or what i am, and they are inside me as well as outside.

how do i deal with these expectations? how do YOU deal with them?

adding glass snails to your CV (hejinian, "my life")

2010-11-14T03:31:00.000-08:00

i had to think of this book this morning, for some reason, and so i'm going to share... this was actually homework for a class a few years ago, but since i really did enjoy this read, and since the actual book is safely tucked away in a cardboard box along with many other (book) treasures in a good friend's garage in utah, awaiting my return next year (fingers crossed), i thought i would just post this rather than writing up a new review without the book on hand... 'tis the season for reading, so here's another suggestion for your autumn afternoons.

Constructing the Self – Hejinian's My Life

Lyn Hejinian's poetic prose / prosaic poetry is a patchwork of experiences, thoughts, and tidbits of information that leads us from her childhood to adulthood. She makes use of repetition in many instances: Phrases and section titles reappear in later sections again and again.

Examples of this are: A pause, a rose, something on paper (which is the title of the first section), As for we who love to be astonished (title of section 2), Religion is a vague lowing (also a section title) and others. Objects that keep reoccurring include a stone egg / enormous egg / a rock shaped egg / alabaster teasers (used to replace real eggs), as well as snails and glass snails, artichokes and artichoke hearts, and roses in various contexts and states. (For example, roses appear as flowers, wallpaper and upholstery.)

It is this repetition that holds the sections together and gives this work a feeling of wholeness that is in stark contradiction with the fragmented nature of every section, sometimes even on the sentence-level. It can also be seen as one of the most basic necessities of a sense of self: The ability to remember past events, the repetition of behaviors and the reoccurrence of feelings, these are important elements that enable us to think of ourselves as a person. Without at least some constancy, there can be no self.

My Life is a delicate balance between constancy and fragmentation. A counterpart to the repetition of phrases and words are the frequently fragmented sentences, incomplete on their own and intelligible only in context with the preceding or following sentences.

One example is found in the fragment titled “No puppy or dog will ever be capable of this, and surely no parrot”:

Then the mud cracks and the tadpoles turn in the nick of time to frogs. At twilight, as the babies cry. In those days I had the mistaken notion that science was hostile to the imagination.

The speaker herself remarks on the fragmentary nature of experience when she says Life is hopelessly frayed, all loose ends. A pansy suddenly, a web, a trail remarkably's a snail's. (section 3)

Much like Virginia Woolf's Orlando (my favorite book of all times?!), Hejinian's My Life is an anti-biography: All the elements typical of the biography genre are deliberately left out. Dates, place-names, names of parents, siblings and friends are not given. This suggests that Hejinian is making a point of the fact that life and the individual experience of one person simply cannot be accurately summarized, described or understood through “hard facts.”

Hejinian builds on Woolf's experiment and takes it further by fragmenting not only the narrative but even the narrative's syntactic sub-structure. “Hard facts” surface throughout the text, but usually in the form of almost random associations, such as Europeans shake hands more often than we do, here in America, or, a weasel eats twenty times as much as a lizard of the same size.

The self is absent in the choppy list of the few dates and accomplishments that make it onto the curriculum vitae. In the section “At the time, the perpetual Latin of love kept things hidden,” the speaker states I only want the facts. What are these facts? What follows is this:

It's o.k. to have pancakes for dinner. Before a busy day, one wants to “get” a lot of sleep.

Clearly, she challenges the conventional idea of “hard facts” - but she does it by replacing “important” facts with “trivial” facts.

My Life is a celebration of the minute things, the living, breathing, overlooked details of daily life, more noticed by children than by busy grown-ups. There is a sense of wonder and fascination that permeates the text, and that is part of what makes this an enchanting read.
_____________

you can read some of hejinian's poetry here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lyn-hejinian
thank you, poetry foundation!

the beauty of bits & bobs (carson's "if not, winter")

2010-11-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

so... here is the book i have been carrying with me longer and that i have read in more than in any other over the past 12 months: anne carson's if not, winter - fragments of sappho. if i have spent so much time with this book, why is it i never really posted about it here? afterall, this is where i pour my booklovin' heart out!

to be honest, i just don't know. i just don't know what to say about this book, other than that it utterly fascinated me from the moment i took it off the shelf in the small second hand bookstore in downtown salt lake. i only knew of sappho at that time, i knew about her - second hand knowledge, rather than having read any of her poetry. i had, however, read carson before - thanks to a cool poetry teacher who introduced me to the autobiography of red, which just swept me off my feet, it is truly an amazing book. i will have to tell you more about that another time...

now, what is this book? what carson has done here is place the fragments and her own translations of them next to each other, on pages facing each other. what makes the whole thing even more interesting is how she keeps the missing bits, how she tries to recreate the visual experience of the fragmented texts.

some of the fragments are longer than others. some are complete sentences or at least phrases, others are missing bits in the middle or on the edges. carson has found a good way of marking these sorts of "holes" in the text with a simple system of brackets.

some fragments consist of just one or two words. for me, those were the most intriguing ones. like these: (the layout is me playing around)

fragment 119:

cloth dripping

fragment 145:

do not move stones

fragment 176:

transparent dress

fragment 191:

celery

fragment 192:

gold anklebone cups

these made my fingers itch and my mind started putting together poems around those fragments. i ended up with a chapbook's worth of poems all triggered by fragments from carson's translation. i didn't do this with the intent of recreating anything, rather, i was making something new out of something that was already there. creative recycling, i guess? in any case, i really enjoyed this!

but i didn't just have fun... i learned one or two things as well. (which, really, to me is also thoroughly enjoyable, but that's beside the point - or is it.) carson gives a good introduction to the background of sappho as well as the manuscript(s) she retranslates here. she also provides insightful notes to many fragments and words, and a "who's who" - very helpful.

carson's translation is very readable, and she treats the original text with much respect. she doesn't go about assuming and claiming to recreate the original text. she lets the fragments breathe, makes available what is there - i doubt i would have read as much of sappho's verse had i bought another translation. and i know i would not have looked at the original text, for the simple reason that the language is beyond me. (which touches on the next little project i have in mind, and why i chose not to pick it for my research topic for my ph.d. applications. i have been reading gilgamesh. in translation of course. can't see myself learning to read cuneiform anytime soon... but more about that another time!)

if you are curious about sappho, even just a bit, this might be a good place to go. and the paperback has been out for a while, so you should be able to get it second hand too. (mind you, i am hanging on to my copy! not that anyone else would want it now, it's been very patient and longsuffering, traveling many miles in my bag and letting me use the blank spaces.)

________

p.s. - i just saw that you can actually look at excerpts online, right here:
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1102/sappho/
with links like this one:
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1102/sappho/excerpt_48.html
thank you, bold type!

the last taboo? (daughter buffalo)

2010-10-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

so this is what i am currently reading. janet frame's daughter buffalo. it's been on my list of books to read for a while now, - about ten years ago i "discovered" frame for myself, when i found one of her books (her first, the lagoon and other stories) in the foreign language section of a german bookstore. i devoured the book and decided to read as much of her writing as i could lay hands on.

i did read a bunch of her books, though by far not all of them. i thoroughly enjoyed the lagoon, - a collection of very short, intensely interesting short stories, - and fell in love with owls do cry and also with scented gardens for the blind (both novels). her short story collection you are now entering the human heart is also good, though (maybe because it was "first contact"?) the lagoon stories still seem the strongest to me. i got swamped with work somewhere during the adaptable man, and also never finished reading her three volume autobiography. i remember reading her poetry collection the pocket mirror and being a little disappointed - i guess her intense, poignant prose is a hard act to follow. her prose, in itself, is very poetic, maybe that's why.

so now i am reading daughter buffalo. i am noticing more and more that i am getting to the point where, while i can hardly wait to read on, i am also reluctant to read on because it means coming closer and closer to the last page. this happens to me a lot when i read a "good" book. its words and images weave a world around me that i want to stay in just that little bit longer. at times finishing a "good" book can be a real struggle that way - because you know that, while you can of course read it again and again and again, it won't be the same. no two readings are ever the same. finishing a "good" book is a bit like a tiny death in itself. which takes us right into this novel!

talbot edelman, a NYC medical student specializing in the study of death, unexpectedly finds a friend in a random stranger, turnlung, who is a poet from a different place and also deeply interested in death. they exchange the lessons in death education they have had through their lives so far. they take turns in narrating this novel, independently of each other, so we get to see both sides of the encounter. frame is a fine observer of persons and behaviors, and these two characters are more than interesting. and while you may shudder at the idea of a novel all about "death education" and dying, or may already have decided not to read it, it is not really a gloomy book.

how do we talk about death? do we talk about death? do we have our own words for what we feel when someone dies, or when we talk to someone who has just lost someone? when we talk about those who have passed on, - how do we talk of them, how do we think of them? is death part of life, or apart from life? are we curious about it? are we allowed to be curious about it?

death, probably more so than anything else, is possibly the last taboo of our day. on my way to work and back and during any visit to the newsagent's i see so much openly advertised and published that - fifteen, twenty years ago, when i was a teenager - would not have been displayed so publicly anywhere. the only thing you cannot find magazines about at that generic newsagent's is death. there are health magazines, yoga magazines, periodicals on parenting, tattooing, fetishes, growing cannabis, and training your dog, journals for birdwatchers, astrology rags and supernatural magazines, but nothing on death and dying.

are people really not curious? i have to admit that i am. i have been for a long time. and i will also admit that there are questions i ask myself that i have not really dared ask aloud. even simple, technical ones. like, is it true that when people die, in the U.S., they replace the dead person's blood with some chemical to slow down decomposition? how does that affect the environment? and is it true that, again in the U.S., lots of make-up is applied to the corpse to make the person look, well, less dead? and there are so many other questions. but how, who and when do you ask?

in any case, talbot and turnlung have set out, independently at first, to explore death. they make many interesting observations and have different motivations for wanting to know. i will let turnlung introduce himself (taken from chapter 4):

I said that, to survive, from the moment we are born we must be capable of turning against. Before birth, we are against air, against breathing, yet we survive to breathe and love the air, we become turncoats - turnskins, turneyes, turnmouths, turnhearts, turnlungs. And having known life, we are against death even when all messages from the country of death convince us that our final role must again be that of turncoat, turnheart, turnlung.

but talbot and turnlung are not the only intriguing characters in this novel. we also meet talbot's dog sally, and a headmistress of a northern school who shares her own death education. different types of death are considered: death in youth, in old age, in sickness, sudden and unexpected deaths, literary deaths, anonymous deaths, deaths in the family, and one's own personal death. the passage about literary death, to me, was particularly interesting, since it ties in poetry and how literature can serve in mourning by lending to us feelings we might feel we do not have enough of all by ourselves. how do we mourn? how long should we, could we, may we mourn?

this book gives no answers. it gives no recommendations. it piques your curiosity and lets you look right at death where you would usually feel worried people might think you're staring. it is because of the peculiar character of talbot and because of his detached observations that it becomes ok to be curious - and to maybe learn by proxy. meet talbot. (this is from chapter 1)

I learned little of [death] in my own home. Our garbage was removed by an automatic disposal unit. Everyone took many baths, drying with thirsty towels which in their turn played the family game by seeming to render invisible all traces of hair, stains of living, dust, sweat. All our happy conversations, our plans lovingly composed together, had no mention of death. In winter, when the snow was deep and the year's leaves had died and were buried, when only a few creatures - squirrels, cardinals, crows - could be seen, you might have imagined that even we would be tempted or persuaded to surrender ourselves or part of ourselves to the surrounding death-light, [...]

Yet each winter we let pass the opportunity to invite death as a rightful guest, without fuss, into our home, and before we knew it the trees had new leaves, the sun melted the iron bars of the winter prison, and death, unfrozen, flew away as a scarlet bird, a golden bee or fly, as if it had never been; and for us, it had not, for us, the sun was like money, always with us and in use.

i am now half-way through this book. i am enjoying it because it deals with an interesting subject in a way i can handle. in a language i understand - the language of experience, image, and poetry. even if i did not know this book was by janet frame, i would have guessed it - the characters, their voices, the detailed observations, all her strengths are there. if you feel up to it, if i have managed to make you at least a little bit curious, go see if your local library has a copy of this book. it's been published a few times since it first came out in 1972 (i have the flamingo edition from 1993) so should not be too hard to find.

chill poetry for eyes and ears (Jean Sprackland)

2010-10-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

so... today was definitely the right day for reading jean sprackland's collection Tilt. the wind, the temperature on the train to work, the mutterings of the tracks. but before i tell you about this book, just a quick note on the side - a site i came across when looking up jean online - this might be interesting to you if you like poetry and if you are, like me, curious.

i believe poetry is about as personal as writing could possibly get, so hearing the voice of the poet is always interesting to me. i remember when, in school, a teacher played us a recording of dylan thomas reading "fern hill," "do not go gentle," and - most of all - "death shall have no dominion" - i was stunned. (the links will take you to youtube videos with audio recordings of thomas reading these poems)

anyway. here is a site that has lots of recordings of english language poets reading their own work: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/poetWelcome.do (and the link to jean sprackland is, she is also involved in the making and running of this site)

and now the book. it is a fine case of packaging matching content. the book itself is slim, with a cool, simple cover design. the title poem is quite something. so are pretty much all of the others, too! poems containing cows, crime scene investigation, anesthesia, love, miracles, loss, pirates and sandcastles. you will run into fish and chips and babies and waterfalls and shards of ice on a beach. the strength of her poems are in the simplicity of the images, and the chilling moment when it all falls into place.

there are many "cold" images here, so maybe that's why reading this today, on an autumny october day, felt so right. here is an example:

...

But thirty miles south,

in another town, [the ice] creaks

under the pier, where someone kneels,

staring down like a god

through a damaged sky, onto wilderness

of ridges and blue shadows.

(from: Ice on the Beach)

what i also found very interesting was the sequence of poems titled Miracles. six poems look at the ministry of Christ from an angle that is tangible, surprising, anachronistic - sprackland transplants doubting thomas onto a bridge across the M6 (a busy english motorway), translates the first miracle of water turned to wine (at the wedding in cana), and lets the reader witness the casting out of an evil spirit. i personally really enjoyed the way these stories - handed down over generations and generations - take on a new life in a new light.

the book begins with lying down, waiting, and ends with moving about, an engine, a powerful force for good, "breathing in the spoilt air, / and breathing it out clean."

i was going to put another snippet or two here but... i don't want to give too much away. it would be difficult to pick out bits and pieces and still do the book justice. i guess you may just have to read it yourself...

which witch? autumn reading list

2010-10-17T05:06:00.000-07:00

hallowe'en is coming along again sometime soon, and even if you don't celebrate it in any way, there is no getting past the changes in weather, light, and temperature. with all this rain and the storms and the cool air, books suddenly become more and more interesting companions... so here are some witchy-themed autumny books:

wise child, novel by monica furlong (ages 12 and up) (i read this when i was over 20 and still very much enjoyed it, so don't let the age rating deter you.) this is set in the middle ages. wise child is abandoned by her mother and raised by juniper, a midwife, healer and - of course - witch.

wyrd sisters, by terry pratchett (this is a diskworld novel, but no worries, it is enjoyable even if this is your first contact with the disk world.) this is a facetious nod in the direction of the three witches in shakespeare's macbeth, no less.
equal rites, also by terry pratchett (same comment as above) - can a girl be a wizard?

poems bewitched and haunted (ed. john hollander) - a nicely designed little book from the everyman's series, it would also make a fun gift. poems are sorted by themes. there are many witches in this collection - scary ones, miserable ones, beautiful ones, and most of them, as befits the stereotype, are mad - happy hauntings!

the dervish and the homemaker (elif shafak)

2010-10-06T02:27:00.000-07:00

"Oh, it's no big deal, " Ella rushed to explain now. "I'm only a part-time reader for a literary agent."
But David seemed determined not to let her think too little of her new job. "Come on, tell them it's a well-known agency," he urged, nudging her, and when she refused to comply, he heartily agreed with himself. "It's a prestigious place, Esther. You should see the other assistants! Girls and boys fresh out of the best colleges. Ella is the only one going back to work after being a housewife for years. Now, isn't she something?"
Ella wondered if, deep inside, her husband felt guilty about keeping her away from a career, or else about cheating on her - these being the only two explanations she could think of as to why he was now going overboard with his enthusiasm. Still smiling, David concluded, "This is what I call chutzpah. We're all proud of her."
"She is a prize. Always was," said Aunt Esther in a voice so sentimental that it sounded as if Ella had left the table and was gone for good.
They all gazed at her lovingly. Even Avi didn't make a cynical remark, and Orly for once seemed to care about something other than her looks. Ella forced herself to appreciate this moment of kindness, but she felt an overwhelming exhaustion that she had never experienced before. She secretly prayed for someone to change the subject. (pp.6-7)

and this is how it all starts. for her first assignment, ella is to read and critique a manuscript titled sweet blasphemy which tells the story of famed poet and mystic rumi and his friendship with shams of trabriz, a wandering dervish. set in anatolia in the 1200s, this story nonetheless has a very real effect on the life of ella rubinstein, jewish american mother of teenage twins and a daughter about to marry for love. which brings us to the word that keeps popping up in this book: love. this book, in short, is all about love. not in the saccharine sappy sort of way, not in the mere physical sort of way, - this is mystic, spiritual love we are talking about.

... someone comes along and makes you realize what you have been missing all this time. Like a mirror that reflects what is absent rather than present, he shows you the void in your soul - the void you have resisted seeing. That person can be a lover, a friend, or a spiritual master. Sometimes it can be a child to look after. What matters is to find the soul that will complete yours. All the prophets have given the same advice: Find the one who will be your mirror! For me that mirror is Shams of Tabriz.
... It's as if for years on end you compile a personal dictionary. In it you give your definition of every concept that matters to you, such as "truth," "happiness," or "beauty." At every major turning point in your life, you refer to this dictionary, hardly ever feeling the need to question its premises. Then one day a stranger comes and snatches your precious dictionary and throws it away. (p.192)

this book walks a fine line. so much has been said and written about love that almost anything one could say or write now, overtly, about love, would be repetition, or a breach of copyright (who holds the copyright to love?), or wading into cliché. shafak takes the risk, talks about love, introduces us to a number of memorable, strong characters through their own voices and the voices of those who care about them, fear them, love them.

and yes, of course the book talks about the Quran. how could it not, when its central characters are passionate scholars of Islam, of religion, of God. the central theme however are the forty rules of love already mentioned in the title.

i am an unlikely reader for this book, at first glance: impatient (poetry is my fiction! short books rule!), feminist, not interested in history-themed stuff, and the type of person not to pick up anything with "love" in the title. the reason i did read this book (well, i am two thirds of the way through) is that my friend p. gave it to me, saying, "you'll like this." she hadn't even finished reading it yet, but she gave it to me anyway, saying she would read it over again in turkish. :-) thank you, p! this is quite the book, and i am enjoying it very much. i am learning much, and, like ella, i am noticing how the ideas and ideals inside shams of tabriz are getting me to think, to look at things from a different angle. if that's not a good think in a book, in a work of art, then i don't know what is.

elif shafak's forty rules of love is very readable, it is by far not as dark as i feared it might be, in fact it is enjoyable and interesting and thought provoking. spiritually and intellectually stimulating.

al and ginny: when is a book a "children's book"? (schuyler)

2010-09-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

for the past few weeks i have been reading mainly "the GRE Test for Dummies" by Suzee Vlk, but now that the test has been taken, my brain wants something more - shall we say, exciting?
so, right after the test, i went out and bought some books!

i picked up "alfred and guinevere" in the frankfurt oxfam bookshop (hooray for second hand bookshops, and hooray for oxfam!) - i bought it because i was curious. afterall, c. recommended i read "the morning of the poem" by the same author, and i did, and i liked it. but schuyler did not strike me as the children's book type. now, having read just over two thirds of the book, i must say that, well, it isn't really a children's book. it's a book that can be read by a variety of audiences, a bit like exupery's "little prince."

i half wish i had not started right at the beginning of the book! right at the beginning is a foreword / introduction by john ashbery, and while it was interesting to read, it did give things away. i wish i could have just read the story unbiased and "unwarned" - schuyler is so subtle in saying so much in such a simple story. there are bits in there that some readers would just miss, or not read the way i read them - and i am not saying that my reading is any more "right" than anyone else's. just that - with ashbery's introduction and interpretation - my reading is biased and i wish it wasn't. :-) while i think my own take on the story would have been much like his even without reading his intro, it would have been more fun figuring things out for myself, savoring the story as it evolves. so, if you haven't read this one but are going to, skip the intro and leave it for later.

so... when is a book a children's book? just because a book is not (or not overtly) about sex and violence or just because a book has children as its main characters doesn't mean it must be a children's book. when is it useful to make the distinction between children's and "regular" books?

alfred and guinevere are at a point in their lives where change is imminent or, rather, happening right there and then. the things that happen do not really make much sense to the kids, but that just means that they have to figure things out their own way. things are said without being said, there are themes of loss, of attempts at self-defintion, of death, and love, and passion versus manners.

this book is about two children and their perception of the world around them; a boy named alfred (who is about eight or so) and his older sister guinevere. most of the story is written in letters and journal entries by guinevere, and schuyler does, i think, a brilliant job in capturing the duo's mental world and their relationship. while guinevere is hopelessly devoted to movie stories (love stories of course), alfred's interests are the usual for boys his age: dares, pranks, and impressing his friends.

here are some quotes to pique your appetite:

"Alfred, don't pretend you're asleep."

No answer.

"I can tell when you're asleep. I can see in the dark like a cat. I know you believe me because I can see you squeeze your eyes shut so I'll think you're asleep."

No answer.

"Maybe he is asleep. I certainly hope so. I wouldn't want him to wake up and see what I just saw. I can feel my hair standing on end. It's a good thing I'm older or I'd run screaming out of this room."

No answer.

"There it goes again, drifting across the window. I'm covered with clammy sweat. My arms and legs are tingling. My blood is icy cold. Who will come to my aid if it slips in the window and grabs me by the throat?"

"Nobody," said Alfred, "That's who."

and a section from guinevere's notebook:

"Hints to remember:

1. Smile slower.

2. If you act a little deaf people have to lean over to talk to you. That way it is so much more bewitching and intimate."

... and this book is from an arts bookshop. it's a graphic novel, technically speaking, at the same time as being non-fiction, i suppose. an interesting mix of genres. i read the chapter about "beatnick chicks" earlier today and will read more once i have finished with al and ginny. i know little about the beat poets and all that, and i am curious. i hope the book will show up some connections between people and ideas - while i am not good with remembering names, i am pretty good with remembering interconnected ideas and such. have you read any books from the graphic history series? which ones? how did you like them? please share!

i have also started on "the fourty rules of love" and will tell you about it in my next post. :-)

a bucket full of hair and an eye wide open: one eye'd leigh (k. kilalea)

2010-09-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

what can i say? i could tell you that i read the whole of katharine kilalea's one eye'd leigh in one go today. i could tell you that i accidentally put a mark on the cover signing a receipt. or that when i looked up from reading i realized there was a robin, less than a foot away from me, watching me and - i suspect - trying to take a peak. i could also tell you that the book now has one dogs-ear - and it makes the only one poem in this book that i did not think was really, really good.

the poems - for the most part - are free form, at times prose-y, but almost all uncluttered: no unnecessary words, just the important bits, just the interesting bits, with a wonderful eye for detail. here is a bit i loved:

I stood in the flowerbed with a spade and your absence

and my boots turned a red red.

It felt like the end of us.

The winter garden we'd planted together

bloomed in your footsteps as you left.

I lost what i couldn't carry:

a necklace, a vest,

a very valuable pair of socks.

(from: Planting Bulbs at Arnold Circus)

i also love it when a poem gets me interested in something, or i learn new words and meanings through reading a poem. i was intrigued by the liberty cap, which i assumed (from just reading the poem) to be some sort of plant. turns out (now that i have had a chance to look it up) i wasn't that far off. well, sort of. :-) but even not knowing the connotations of the "liberty cap," the poem reads beautifully and tells an intriguing story: a fallen girl, a boy in the woods, paternal trees, nobbly knees, something picked with the innocence of youth. then of course the term liberty cap has a bunch of meanings, all of which seem to be blended in somehow. i like word play and i like how somehow the poem makes use of so many layers of the same word.

kilalea, originally from south africa, now lives and works in london. carcanet press actually have recordings of her reading two of her poems, on their website, - interestingly enough, one of them is one i thought was brilliant, and the other one is the one i marked, as mentioned above, with a dogs-ear. i will put both links here in case you are interested, and let you judge for yourself:

the boy with the fire in his boot:
http://www.carcanet.co.uk/data/audio/9781857549928_audio01.mp3

the way we look is a game of chess:
http://www.carcanet.co.uk/data/audio/9781857549928_audio02.mp3

i am glad i picked up this book. and i shall be looking for more by the same author. :-) i hope there will be more soon! btw, one eye'd leigh was shortlisted for the 2009 costa book-awards.

i think i live in my own mouth (kennard: the migraine hotel)

2010-08-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

this (very readable!) volume of prose poetry opens with nothing short of a love letter:

[...] When I hear you

being arrogant and argumentative, my heart leaps. Your nihilism

is fast becoming the richest source of meaning in my life and it is

my pleasure to watch you speaking harshly to others.

[...] Your promiscuity is like a

faithful dog at my side.

[...] I often suspect that you do not even like me and my laughter

overflows like water from a blocked cistern.

but in all honesty, i picked out this book i always pick out books - i took it off the shelf, opened it somewhere toward the middle, and started reading. it was the poem "wolf on the couch" that got me to buy this book. the idea of a psychoanalyst wolf was just too quirky to pass up, but the poem can handle closer reading, too. it is the love for detail in just the right places that got me. The description of the owl is plain beautiful:

When you look closely he appears to be made up of a network of tiny cities.

And in the rain?

The same, but wetter.

kennard's volume is full of gems. another one is A Sure-Fire Sign, which tells of a writer's relationship with Erica who has very clear ideas as to what writing should be:

"For instance," says Erica, "I have a rule in my writing that I'm not allowed to use the following words: WRITING, POETRY, WRITER, POET, WRITTEN, NOVELIST, POEM, JOURNALIST, DRAMATIST, DIARIST. And whenever I do, I pull out one of my fingernails and dip the finger into a bowl of vinegar."

no further comment. :-)

staying at the migraine hotel

2010-08-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

i went on a two day trip to england last week on the joyous occasion of an old friend's wedding and... i brought back a bunch of new (to me) books.

there are two places you will likely find me if i say, in reading, "i am going shopping." those are: the reading oxfam bookshop (i got the bloodaxe and the lewis book from there, GBP 2.99 each) and the waterstones in broadstreet - the inside of this building is amazingly beautiful. a kind of chapel.) chris j. wood took a great picture that gives you an inkling of what it's like in there: (image used under creative commons, thanks!)

now, THAT'S what i call a proper bookstore!

you will be hearing more about the books as i go along... here are the mugshots:

elif shafak: the forty rules of love (novel)
- recommended by a friend

luke kennard: the migraine hotel (poetry)

jean sprakland: tilt (poetry)

katharine kilalea: one eye'd leigh (poetry)

jeni couzyn, ed: the bloodaxe book of contemporary

women poets - eleven british writers

colin brake: dr.who decide your own destiny

- the spaceship graveyard (just for fun)

gwyneth lewis: parables & faxes (poetry)

(this one i couldn't find the cover art for online...)

math rules! (lovelace and babbage)

2010-07-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

ok. this is not out in print as far i know (not yet anyway) but it should be!!!
http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/

london-based canadian artist sydney padua tells the story of poet lord byron's daughter, ada lovelace, who was raised with an intense mathematical education in an attempt to counteract the dangerous blood she no doubt inherited from her manic-depressive, most passionate father. maths as the antidote to art. if that alone is not enough to get you interested, well, as you may know lovelace is regarded as the first computer programmer - she wrote programs for computers before there even were computers.

the machines she wrote for were developed and planned in the head and notes of charles babbage (another very smart person, check out wikipedia's entry on his analytical engine to get a better idea of what he cooked up) but they were never built in his (or her) lifetime.

now, this is where the comic takes some artistic liberty and assumes they did build a computer in the 1800s and did get it to work and amongst other things had many adventures fighting crime together.

call me biased, but i am glad i stumbled across this site and this comic. ada lovelace to me is one of the many examples of great women in history, and i am happy to see her get some recognition, and interest being sparked in her behalf, in an intelligent, witty and entertaining sort of way. and who knows WHAT she could have accomplished had she not died at such a young age.

i love "what if" stories, and this is a fun one. check it out! (oh yes, and at the end of each page is a link to the next installment of the adventures of lovelace and babbage so keep scrolling)

ephemeral reading - meet the thomsons!

2010-07-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

wanda gretton: The Thomsons at Home - Everyday Life in England (stuttgart, 1951, ernst klett)

Early in the morning the rising sun divides sky and sea and land. Travelling westwards across the North Sea, it reaches the green fields of south-east England. Then, after following the curving band of the River Thames for fifty miles, it comes to another sea which spreads beneath the sky in grey waves of stone. This is London, the largest city in the world.

In one of its many suburbs with their rows and rows of small houses, in Wembley, in the north-west of London, lives the Thomson family, just one of the million families in London.

after setting the scene and zooming us in on the location much as google earth does these days, the narrator moves on to describe every day life in the Thomson household.

When Mr.Thomson has finished his tea, he smokes his pipe. The usual thing to smoke in England is a pipe or cigarettes. [...]

Mr.Thomson stretches his legs and begins to feel comfortable. He wears the clothes which most Englishmen like best: flannel trousers and a sports coat. Usually he takes off his tweed jacket and puts on a sleeveless pullover that his wife has knitted for him.

He stands up to see whether there are any letters for him on the mantlepiece. The postman brings them three times a day and Mrs.Thomson puts them there together with other things which she wants to show him. But there is nothing there today.

i don't know why but reading this tanned skinny little volume, stapled, with a slightly stained cardboard cover, i have to smile. mr.thomson wearing tweeds and smoking his pipe in the largest city in the world, where every house is surrounded by a small garden and sports at least one easy-chair, a settee, and a fireplace, his quiet little wife who lays out things to show him like a secretary and tries to keep the children from using americanisms such as "okay," the boys who play cricket as every english boy does, and of course the children who demand porridge and fried bacon for breakfast -

what is the charm, the attraction here? where are these thomsons now?

turns out a similarly odd image of german family life is permeated through school books in england:
in his article "Lachen ueber einen Guten Witz" teffrey johnson points out, among other examples, anderson's das schoene deutschland, teil 1 (london, 1970) where familie mueller is presented as the typical german family: herr mueller rules, the children are silent and obey, and all work hard and much. oh and of course they live the tradition of hausmusik where everyone knows how to play at least one instrument and they spend "fun times" making music as a family.

while the gender roles and hierarchies within the family are similar for the thomsons and the muellers, the thomsons are presented as having a touch of humour and being somewhat creative, while the muellers, well, are obedient to authority mainly and are very much equipped with a militaristic mindset. they are no fun. at all.

what about you, and your family. or me and mine. are we muellers, thomsons, old mcdonalds? and how would we know? and what would it matter? why make up the typical family when the very need to make it up indicates there is no such thing?

nothing can replace the experiences you gain from traveling to places, visiting, or even living and working there. and many of us have the luxury today that we can actually go ahead and travel almost anywhere. even back in time, with ephemera...

anyway. the little school book on my desk here is aged, it smells musty, and the drawings are wonderfully dated. everyone is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and smiling. except mr.thomson, who is tired from a long day at the office. and to add to that, he got no mail. oh dear.

culture - even yoghurt has it (kloeppel vs. madison)

2010-05-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

browsing in one of my habitual bookstores i came across two books strategically placed next to each other:

carol kloeppel's "dear germany"

and...

john madison's "nothing for ungood"

not having heard of either author, and judging only from cross-reading somewhere toward the middle, the decision for me was easy. madison rubbed me the wrong way, i could tell, though i couldn't put my finger on why or how. so i bought kloeppel's book (which according to the printing information inside is a translation of an english-language book, but i have not been able to find out anything about that - please comment if you have more information, as in title, etc.)

well, on my walk home i figured out why i couldn't buy madison's book. the answer is very simple. it is because he exploits the image americans have over here as being narrow-minded and opinionated (at least as opinionated as germans themselves!) and just keeps playing on that, with snippet observations like, "germans do sandwiches wrong" etc. observations are good, but using your brain is encouraged. kloeppel however (again this is just from my cross-reading at the bookstore, i look forward to reading more) uses her brain and - while also making observations re: cultural differences, she acknowledges them as such, going further than just wanting to get a laugh out of it.

madison's research, even in the small cross-section i read, shows clearly premeditated ignorance and a refusal to get, at all, in any way, involved, even in such respects as personal observation, - anyone who spent more than a few days actually taking part in normal life in a country would notice that there are, to stick with the tiresome example of bread-usage, many different ways in which things are and can be done, even in a geographically limited area. madison is the american germans love to hate - for him, he (assumably) pretends, germany is nothing but beer, lederhosen, one-layer-bread-sandwiches, and the "chicken dance" (which really is called "ententanz" i.e. "duck-dance" if you must mention it, and is for kindergardeners and the occasional rest-home party only.)

intercultural perception has always been an interesting topic as well as a valuable resource for humour, but here the only actual INTERcultural account is kloeppel's - madison is merely a visitor to a zoo, if not a freak show. at the same time i am sure his book will outsell kloeppel's easily. why? because the freak show is free of charge, and who knows whose side the bars are on.

poetry in chains (dominic luxford)

2010-04-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

now, the title of this book is somewhat confusing: The Poetry Chains of Dominic Luxford - Ten Poets Pick Ten More And So On. ten times ten would make 100 and in fact there are 100 poems in this handy little volume, but by ten times five = 50 poets, in the form of ten chains of five poets being chosen by each other. but never mind the maths.

i found this book in the used books / english language section at slegte bookstore in amsterdam and purchased it for 8 euros. i bought it with the idea that i would probably not find an easier / cheaper way of getting an impression of that many different voices in one go. many of the names were new to me. to see the list with all contributors / all poetry chains, have a look at the poetry foundation's blog entry here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/03/“you’ll-probably-hate-some-of-these-poems”/

some of the poems in here are so-so, some i didn't like, and some are startlingly beautiful. i am glad i bought this book. if you are looking for a wide cross-section this may be a good place to start. the poetry chains book actually is part of the three volume set of "mc sweeney's issue 22" so you may or may not be able to find this one separately. one of my favorite poems in here (so far, i am about half way through) is james tate's radish poem. less humorous but all the more intense and touching, linda tommel pennisi's doll repair shop poem:

[...]
When the rain quivered and slid, we thought the dolls inside the
glass were trembling. When sun spilled in, those with open heads
toppled toward us like cups of gold light. (Think: Drink from me
whenever I am cracked.) [...]

on a more concrete, practical note i was wondering - how common or uncommon is it to have a piece of metal (!) in the spine of a paperback?! there is a 2mm thick piece of aluminium (?) the entire length and width of the spine, between glue and cover. never seen this before. in any case, while it kept the spine itself nice and uncreased, it did not keep the actual binding / the glue from breaking. i also wonder if trying to get this through security at the airport might become an issue...

click for closeup!

another acquisition from my trip to amsterdam: grant morrison's dr.who comics, issues 1 and 2, and the june 1968 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This one features a short novel by josephine saxton, titled "The Consciousness Machine" - quite a Jungian affair with an ending that, while not unexpected or surprising, is somewhat satisfying. but get this introduction to Ann MacLeod's short story "Settle" -

Ann MacLeod is young, blonde, attractive and is married to Burt Filer, whose story, "Backtracked," immediately follows this one.

it is downright ironic, seeing that MacLeod's story is about a man who literally vanishes, bit by bit, while trying to fix up the newly-bought house to his wife milly's specifications. in the end it is his own infant offspring who terminates what is left of mister bates. why is it, i wonder, that we are not told, in the intro to, say, Burt Filer's story, what his physical appearance is? does it matter that MacLeod is blonde? or married, for that matter, when all we want is to hear the story she wants to tell - and tells well? this is the 60s.

this is why i get such kick out of these old magazines - this, and because the stories are more about ideas than about explosions, atrocities, extra complicated technological explanations, or sex. the stories are short, and are told simply and effectively. and if you like "bad poetry" you may enjoy the recurring sci/fi themed verses that grace this, and some other issues.

the cry of the sloth (sam savage)

2010-04-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

ok i will admit that i picked up this book (the cry of the sloth, by sam savage) for three reasons:

i liked "firmin" (savage's first novel)
i liked the cover design of this paperback (phoenix edition)
the narrator is the editor of a literary journal

now the third point was probably the selling point more than either of the other two. thing is, i have been sending out poems / submissions to journals on- and offline again for the past couple of months and, well, am waiting to hear about most of them. i figured maybe it will help me take this whole journal thing more lightly. be more patient? kill some waiting time, in any case. :-)

the book: andy whittaker, editor of the journal "soap" and landlord to a whole bunch of non-cooperative tenants, writes. we get to see what he writes, and so he characterizes himself through his letters, notes to his maid or tenants, shopping lists, and bits of a story he works on from time to time. andy is quite the character, if not several characters - he writes himself, re-invents himself and his relationship to others anew every time he picks up his ballpoint pen. He will make you cringe. Also involved is a photograph of Marilyn Monroe in a bubble bath.

Dear Mr Mailer,
You probably don't know who I am, and that is good, since it allows me to introduce myself without having to fight through a thicket of misconception and prejudice [...] we are hosting next May or June the First Annual Soap Festival of Literature and the Arts. [...] It will be preceded by colourful brochures. Look for one in your mailbox soon. Of course you probably are thinking, what is in this for me? It is only natural that you should think this, and even ask it boldly were we in the give and take of conversation or should you be the kind of person who talks back to letters, as I am, as well as to the television. (p.192)

[...] I have not worked out all the details. There is such a chattering in my mind of dates and times, schedules and program notes, it is like having a head full of talkative mice. Of the festival itself I'll just say that it will be big. 'How big?' you ask, as well you should. Let me drop this small hint in lieu of an answer: there will be elephants. (p.194)

over the course of three, four months his own letters (sometimes letters to other editors, under fake names, all anagrams of his own) exposes andy as conceited, arrogant, paranoid, a mercurial yet long-winded man capable of impossible enthusiasm and ridiculous pathos.

According to your reporter, 'Whittaker snatched the microphone and began to rail against [Baker's] work.' [...] As a scientific man, I place a high value on precision. What does it mean to rail? What precisely was said during this particular instance of 'railing'? A factual account would run something like this: 'Mister Whittaker, in a loud voice (they had turned off his microphone), but quite calmly, gave a brief critique of Miss Baker's performance, in which he described her delivery as "menopausal mooing" and her poems as "cow farts".' [...]
I remain sincerely,
Warden Hawktiter, MD (pp 188-189)

from the beginning, little notes such as this one raise doubts as to how professional he is about his publication:

Dear Marvin,
Much as I would like to make amends for the screwup, I really can't reprint your poems in the next issue. They were legible, with a little effort, in at least half the copies, and the people who got those copies, and who worked at making them out the first time, certainly don't want to open the next issue and find them in there again. Send me something else, and if it's any good, I'll print that.
All the best,
Andrew (p.49)

andy whittaker's "furtherance of the arts" escapades are enjoyable to read. Somewhere between self-aggrandisement and self-pity, at the end of the novel, the layers are all peeled away or have fallen apart and, finally, something like a writer appears. not someone who pretends to be a poet, a writer, a man of the arts, but someone who may honestly be a poet. or not.

off the shelves - online journals

2010-03-16T03:57:00.000-07:00

poetry should be like vegetables - 5 servings a day and so forth...

get your fresh, organic, hand-harvested poems here:

the painted bride
(http://pbq.drexel.edu/)

la petite zine
(http://www.lapetitezine.org/)

failbetter
(http://www.failbetter.com/index.php)

breathing poetry
(http://breathing-poetry.blogspot.com/)

pebble lake review
(http://www.pebblelakereview.com/)

no tell motel
(http://www.notellmotel.org/index.php)

ghoti mag
(http://www.ghotimag.com/)

ok this random list really is just the tiniest tippiest tip of the iceberg, since there are - despite the many many many bad to mediocre poetry pages online - quite a few online poetry venues that are extremely readable and enjoyable. but it is a place to start. :-) or to continue. there is no such thing as reading too much poetry.

add any favorites / suggestions you'd like to share in the comments! :-) i am always keen on reading poetry i haven't read before.

cool as the other side of the pillow

2010-02-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

a dear friend recommended this book / this particular poem, so when it finally arrived in the mail the other day i started reading. here is a small sample from the title-poem:

This day, I want to
Send it to you, the sound of stirring air, soft
sunlight, quivering trees
That shake their needles and leaves like fingers
improvising on a keyboard
Scriabin in his softest mood, and the wind
rises and it all goes Delius,
The sky pale and freshly washed, the blue flaked
off here and there and
Showing white, flat and skimpy clouds haunting
a bright green, a soft blue day.

the morning of the poem is a long flow of language, intimate and honest, interesting and intriguing. it is almost a biography, at the same time a love letter, a goodbye, an introduction -

i am not a long-poem-reader sort of person. i like it short and snappy. to my standards, dylan thomas' fern hill is already "long." :-) i think it really speaks for this poem that - even though i have little patience for long poems - i kept reading. page after page after page. schuyler here has a good flow, vibrant images, and the poem feels like a deep conversation, the kind you would have with a very close friend. some people consider this poem one of the best long poems of the postmodern era (see here).

james schuyler (1923 - 1991) belongs to the New York School of Poets. he worked for and was friends with w.h. auden, roomed with ashberry and o'hara, lived in chicago, new york, italy, and finally manhattan. and he was homosexual.

this is already more than you need to know - if you want to know about him, read his poetry. in fact, i think that is the best way to approach any new poet / poetry you come across. don't read ABOUT it first. READ IT. everything else is just facts. bo-ring.

ephemeral poetry? (where have all the poems gone?)

2010-02-17T01:30:00.000-08:00

so i came across this picture in the NYPL digital gallery, and interestingly enough there is close to no information i could find on this writer:

mrs naomi anderson is called a "poetess" as well as an educator and supporter of women's rights there. so, where is her poetry? clearly there must be some, or there must have been some. how ephemeral is poetry? today, with virtually everyone having vanity publishing, desk top publishing, blogging and other private publishing right at their fingertips, what is the meaning and import of "publication" and writing anyway? clearly it has moved away from the essential record-keeping that is meant to survive long after the writing hand is gone. we have ancient manuscripts, scrolls, plates and stones inscribed with accounts and counts, - what will remain of today?

now, why am i so interested in reading naomi anderson's writing? mainly because i cannot find it. what was her writing voice? what was her rhythm? her choice of words? her topics, her imagery?

so if you come across any, do tell. i want to see.

eat more fruit - write more poems!

2010-02-10T13:31:00.001-08:00

what am i reading right now...

well i am reading lots of contemporary poetry online, in various poetry journals, magazines, reviews, whatever they call themselves. trying to do my homework so i can pick the right places to send my work to. fingers crossed. :-) in any case, i thoroughly enjoy the poetry i come across in the process - not all of it, but there are some things that are just brilliant enough to make your day. for my online research i am currently using writersmarket.com - mainly because a free one year membership came with the current edition of poet's market, which i was going to use anyway. (very useful resource, that.)

books i am currently reading -

still playing with the sappho fragments, i.e. anne carson's "if not, winter" (have you read her "autobiography of red?") and also re-reading jeanette winterson's "oranges are not the only fruit." i read this book a while ago - has it really been ten years?! gosh. anyway, i remember that i thought it was brilliant. but i could not remember much more about it, so that's why i am reading it again now. also because i have some time to kill before "the morning of the poem" by james schuyler arrives on my doorstep. :-) that one was recommended to me by a friend, and i am curious to get my hands on it.

another book i would like to dig my teeth into is "the house of leaves" by mark z. danielewski. i had it in my hands at a local bookstore here, but somehow didn't buy it. the book itself is a patchwork of texts, with typographic details such as some words appearing in certain colours, and including images and various types of text. very interesting.

if you read or have read any of these, or any other book i mention here, i would love to hear your thoughts about it - no matter if you enjoyed it or not, if you thought it was genius or lame. afterall, there are as many readings of a book as there are readers - and more. :-) so feel free to share.

new year, new reading list?!

2010-01-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

... well once i am back to regular internet access, i will take a closer look at the contemporary women writers on this list:

http://htmlgiant.com/author-news/15-significant-contemporary-women-writers/

because while i have heard of some of them, there are just as many i'm not familiar with. regarding the ones i have come across, i was impressed with each of them, so that is a good sign that the creator of this list and i operate on similar wavelengths.

what have i read in the meantime, during the long break since my last post...
worth mentioning:

the epic of gilgamesh (penguin classics, a yellowing 1960s edition which does not include tablet 12, but is very readable).
jenny boully's (one love affair)*

i was positively surprised with gilgamesh, to be honest, because i wasn't at all familiar with the story. the end (as i read it, leaving out tablet 12, so that tablet 11 - gilgamesh's return to his kingdom - is the final part) is unlike what happens in a lot of these ancient hero / god stories. i don't want to spoil it for you, in case you decide to read it. it's not a long manuscript, and, as i said, it's quite readable since there are modern translations.

as for boully's book, i love it. it just draws me in - it's breathtaking. you should read it. :-)

for now, happy new year to you, and happy reading...

workout for readers!

2009-09-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

just because you read too many textbooks, your face need not be all scrunched up! check out this gem of a video of jack lalanne showing you how to keep your face.

librophile :-)

2009-09-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

i went to my favorite bookstore the other day: http://www.samwellers.com/ (which is sam weller's downtown salt lake city. this is a link to their online rare / used books.) they have a sale with 25% off of used and rare books as they are moving. i got some good deals and found some lovely lovely things. here's what i ended up buying:

Imagination - Stories of Science and Fantasy, Sept.1951
Astounding Science Fiction, Oct. 1951 (awesome cover!!!) (see top of post)
Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1979
Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson - with a selection from his Essay on Johnson, Standard English Classics, Boston 1903 (nice little hardbound, formerly owned by someone named Flora Woodmansee, 1 USD)
Autobiography of So-and-so: Poems in Prose, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, 2001

i love the old sci-fi magazines, short stories with little blood and gore but interesting ideas. also, not a lot of tech-talk or space-boom-bang-fighting. and best of all, the covers...

now why did i buy the life of johnson, you ask? or you won't ask; you might think i just got it cos i am into literary figures. truth is, i bought it as a source book for quotes to use in the prose poems i have been writing lately. they tend to be studded with footnotes and annotations and there is nothing quite like the odd little old book to look to for ideas. in this context i have also used a copy of hippisley's haunted britain (from the early 70s) which is full of oddities. the johnson book has a large part about macaulay himself and his childhood and lifetime, and wow he sounds like he was quite the character. explaining calmly at four years old, after having been burnt by spilled hot tea (or was it coffee? does it matter?) that "The agony has abated." uh. sure. rather your kid than mine. :-)

other reading materials bought this week:

columbia poetry review # 22/spring 2009
a public space # 08/2009
simpsons comics # 157 - "Marge's extreme make-under" fun story - with a moral?!
simpsons comics # 156 - "The Simpsons save the world" not their strongest story
simpsons super spectacular # 9 - part 3 of 3 of a radioactive man story arch, a bit lame
bart simpson # 49 - "Children of the Cob" is a wacky fun story

highly recommended from the past three weeks' readings:

Ox-Tales - this is a series of four books of short stories by various well-known and skilled authors somehow connected to the UK:

Kate Atkinson, Beryl Bainbridge, William Boyd, Jonathan Buckley, Jonathan Coe, Geoff Dyer, Michel Faber, Sebastian Faulks, Helen Fielding, Giles Foden, Esther Freud, Xialou Guo, Mark Haddon, Zoë Heller, Victoria Hislop, A.L. Kennedy, Hari Kunzru, Hanif Kureishi, John le Carré, Marina Lewycka, Alexander McCall Smith, Michael Morpurgo, David Park, DBC Pierre, Ian Rankin, Vikram Seth, Nicholas Shakespeare, Kamila Shamsie, Lionel Shriver, Helen Simpson, Ali Smith, William Sutcliffe, Rose Tremain, Joanna Trollope, Louise Welsh, and Jeanette Winterson.

each volume has as focus or connecting element, one of the elements: earth, air, water, fire. my favorite so far is "fire" - although all three books i have read so far ("earth" - volume 1 of the series, ironically - is waiting for me to read when i get back home in october) had many intriguing stories. the variety of voices and backgrounds and settings is highly enjoyable. the stories are short so this makes great reading on trains, buses, planes, waiting, or just as a little brain-snack during the day. stories of love, mystery, cultural differences, discoveries, - as varied as any collection of stories could be.

a pleasing side-effect to this reading adventure is that more than half of what you pay goes to support Oxfam, a remarkable charity that works internationally as well as locally to "make poverty history", make disaster areas livable again, and educate people to help and support themselves. oxfam also promotes fair trade and arms control. to learn more about Oxfam, go here: http://www.oxfam.org/

[the original price for each book is 5 GBP, 3.5 of which go straight to Oxfam. i paid about 7.7 euros, money well spent.]

books on my MOST WANTED list

2009-08-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

right now, there are two books on my "i really think i need to read this, and soon!" list. one is "the house of leaves" (http://www.amazon.de/House-Leaves-Remastered-Mark-Danielewski/dp/0375703764) in exactly that edition as shown at that link. i actually had it in my hand earlier today but did not buy it... it is huge.
book number 2 on my list is "on native ground" by jim barnes. you can check it out here: http://www.amazon.de/Native-Ground-Memoirs-Impressions/dp/0806140925/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1249588159&sr=1-13

i am currently reading "to the lighthouse" by virginia woolf, re-reading carol ann duffy's "selected poems", and doing about four score other things at the same time, so the two books above may well become my holiday reading, in a few weeks' time. if i can get a hold of them.

what are you reading???

about kakapos, boobies, dragons and megapodes

2009-07-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

soo... i have been reading "to the lighthouse" (by virginia woolf) as well as just starting (i.e. reading at the same time) "last chance to see" by douglas adams and mark carwardine. yes, the brilliant brit, the douglas adams who presented the world with the five-volume trilogy of "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy." i have been wanting to read this book for a while now so when i finally got it in the mail, i just had to start reading there and then. btw, zweitausendeins (a german publisher) have a cd of adams reading from both the hitchhiker and this book at some university in germany. his reading is brilliant too. anyway, so now let me explain the title of this entry by adding some visuals: (all these are creatures adams and his traveling companions attempted to track down, and the book documents these attempts as well as giving memorable background stories regarding each species.)

meet the megapode, nothing to do with bigfoot btw. native to india and some indonesian islands, this is an endangered species adams learns about on the island of komodo. the edition of "last chance to see" that i have does not have a picture of this creature so i thought i would find out what they look like. this is what adams has to say about the megapode:

It looks a little like a lean, sprightly chicken, though it has the advantage over chickens that it can fly, if a little heavily, [...] The important thing is that the megapode has worked out a wonderful labor-saving device for itself. The labor it wishes to save is the time-consuming activity of sitting on its nest all day, incubating its eggs, when it could be out and about doing things. [... the device] is something that's hard to miss. It was a conical mound of thickly packed earth and rotting vegetation, about six feet high and six feet wide at its base. In fact it was considerably higher than it appeared because the mound would have been built on a hollow in the ground which would itself have been about three feet deep.
I've just spent a cheerful hour of my time writing a program on my computer that will tell me instantly what the volume of the mound was. It's a very neat and sexy program with all sorts of pop-ups and things, and the advantage of doing it the way I have is that on any future occasion on which I need to know the volume of a megapode nest, given its basic dimensions, my computer will give me the answer in less than a second, which is a wonderful saving of time. The downside, I suppose, is that I cannot conceive of any future occasion that I am likely to need to know the volume of a megapode nest, but no matter: the volume of this mound is a little over nine cubic yards.
What the mound is is an automatic incubator. The heat generated by the chemical reactions of the rotting vegetation keeps the eggs that are buried deep inside warm - and not merely warm. By judicious additions or subtractions of material from the mound the megapode is able to keep it at the precise temperature which the eggs require in order to incubate properly.
So all the megapode has to do to incubate its eggs is to dig three cubic yards of earth out of the ground, fill it with three cubic yards of rotting vegetation, collect a further six cubic yards of rotting vegetation, build it into a mound, and then continually monitor the heat it is producing and run about adding bits or taking bits away. And thus it saves itself all the bother of sitting on its eggs from time to time. This cheered me up immensely.

above, as you will have guessed, is a komodo dragon. they can be up to 12 feet long and stand about a yard tall on all fours. there is some discussion that maybe they were the origin for the myths about fire-breathing dragons (esp among the chinese), and while these creatures do not breathe fire they are indeed dangerous (man-eaters if the chance presents itself), and have, as the book attests, the worst breath of all creatures known to man. :-)

the kakapo is "the world's largest, fattest, and least-able-to-fly parrot." and if you ever thought meeting someone / dating was awfully complicated, you may rethink your perspective after you find out more about the private lives and courtship of these delightful birds. adams' remarks on the kakapo are well worth reading, just as the rest of this entertainingly interesting book.

my personal favorite, the blue-footed booby. adams describes this bird as not having been properly introduced to a hostile environment, - for example, you could walk up to this critter and pick it up and it would just wait for you to set it down again?!

there are more creatures and of course there is much interesting travelogue type story-telling in this book. do you know what it sounds like to be in the yang-tze river and hear what the dolphins there hear? or how to improvise when you realize you came all this way to china and forgot to bring a waterproof microphone? what happens when you get bitten by something deadly? (you die, of course!) what it means when an indonesian travel agents tells you your flight tickets are ok and your seats confirmed? or to what incredible lengths some creatures go in order to complicate locating a mate and reproducing? this book leaves you with a wealth of amusing and interesting information that should give you plenty to talk about / impress those around you when stuck for something to say! i LOVE this book.
_______________
p.s.: ... just to clarify, these images are NOT mine. i found them online. if you own any of these and would rather i remove them, let me know. if you own any of these and would like a link back, let me know and i'll link back.

and now, for a change of pace... (LTB)

2009-06-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

currently reading... little articles and things here and there on indo-european poetics and indonesian shadow theatre, but for bed-time reading, this is currently my fare:

and yes, i do like crispy duck. :-) now, why do i even add this "book" here, you might wonder. the answer is, cos i felt like it. cos every now and then, some sequential graphic storytelling, short and simple and full of stock type images and very few words, can be a real treat. i also enjoy the simpsons comics, and, on a more sophisticated level (graphic novel) i was deeply impressed with the books of magic (gaiman), while i have to admit some passages were too intense for me. so this is what i am currently reading. :-) it's pretty good actually.

another book encounter i thought i would mention is "markings" by dag hammarskjold. i found it in a small, used-book store in the village, and the reason it first caught my eye was that it was misshelved. then, i recognized the name from conversations i had with a friend over the years, who is very fond of this writer. i got it for her (it's ok, she already knows) and on the train started reading the intoduction - by w.h. auden, no less. the introduction is quite the text and i will post a quote or two later just to give you a taste. otherwise, i have not gotten much further in the book since i have a bunch of other things to do (read, study, whatever you want to call it) but i will comment more on this later. promise. :-)