Hello readers! Sorry I let almost all of May slip by without posting anything. I'm going to make up for it with a vengeance this summer, hopefully, because this week I started reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This has been an intended project of mine for a long time, and now I feel ready. According to Dave Eggers' foreword, I am two years older than the book's average reader.
There are several blogs and websites about people's experiences reading this novel, notably Infinite Summer, which provided a place for those reading it during the summer of 2009. I just now read the reading tips posted there by Matt Bucher, and am glad to see I was doing some of the things already, like:
Read the endnotes.
Use bookmarks.
Abuse your copy. (I already have quite a few dogears & underlines: part of what I'll share here.)
Keep notes.
One that I might do additionally is "Employ a reader's guide." One of the books Bucher recommends, for example, has a chronology. The book's chapters are arranged in a non-linear fashion, labeled with sponsored years such as "The Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar." I've been keeping a running list of the years to try to make my own chronology.
One note before I get into my own reading: I just looked up Infinite Jest in WorldCat, and it only has two subject headings: Addicts - Fiction and Compulsive behavior - Fiction. Is the second meant to describe the entire book, product and process?
I'm 60 pages in (921 + endnotes to go), and already I have so much to think about. I've already written quite a bit on this blog about how brilliant DFW's writing is, and what a tragedy it is that he won't write anymore, so I'll try to avoid generalizations like that. Why don't I start with something simple, like a quotation and a list of words?
"Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency." (p. 54)
(by the way, I'm reading the 2006 Back Bay paperback 10th anniversary edition)
To me, this is a classic DFW passage. A brilliant and concise observation that reflects a large theme but doesn't diminish the book's other details, followed by pull-back, a deflection that there might be judgment or superiority in said observation.
Okay, now for a list of the words I've so far encountered with which I was previously unfamiliar, and then I swear I'll stop. All definitions are (selectively) from the OED, unless otherwise noted.
1. wen (n.) A sebaceous cystic tumour under the skin, occurring chiefly on the head.
2. creatus (imagine a horizontal line over the a) "Latin for "creation," the line over the a indicates the vowel is pronounced as in "hate" rather than in "father." " (from the Infinite Jest wiki)
3. caries (n.) Decay of the bones or teeth or decay of vegetable matter.
4. amanuensis (n.) One who copies or writes from the dictation of another.
5. fantod (n.) A crotchety way of acting. ("gives her the fantods")
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
To Do
Every morning when I get to work, I make a to-do list for the day. I have one for the week, and one for the semester/summer. I have a personal one on my iPod. I email myself things to do, write them down, and think about them on the bus and when I'm going to sleep. And Molly Peacock wrote a poem about this process that I wish I'd written. It captures both the anxiety and reassurance of having, and coming up with, things to do on both the smallest and largest of scales - a distinctly adult feeling, I think.
I got her book Raw Heaven last night, at the money pit that is Harvard Bookstore's extensive and wonderfully organized used section. I know the poetry section well enough to know that a lot of the books were new additions, and this was one of them. Anyway, on the last day of National Poetry Month, here's the poem for you.
Things to Do
Planning and worrying and waking up
in the morning with items on the list
clanking like quarters in the brain's tin cup,
this and that and what you might have missed
or who pissed you off, suspends you in a state
that wishes and hopes for its goal like some
little one wiggling in a chair who can't wait
for when her legs will reach the floor. The numb
knockings of anxiety are like the heels
of sturdy little shoes steadily beating
on upholstery. It's how anyone feels
having been put into a chair, meeting
responsibilities from a padded perch
too big for anyone's ass. As monarchs
we make ourselves small and govern in search
of what we'll grow into. Except we are
as big as we'll ever get and have gone as far.
From Raw Heaven by Molly Peacock. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. (p. 18)
I got her book Raw Heaven last night, at the money pit that is Harvard Bookstore's extensive and wonderfully organized used section. I know the poetry section well enough to know that a lot of the books were new additions, and this was one of them. Anyway, on the last day of National Poetry Month, here's the poem for you.
Things to Do
Planning and worrying and waking up
in the morning with items on the list
clanking like quarters in the brain's tin cup,
this and that and what you might have missed
or who pissed you off, suspends you in a state
that wishes and hopes for its goal like some
little one wiggling in a chair who can't wait
for when her legs will reach the floor. The numb
knockings of anxiety are like the heels
of sturdy little shoes steadily beating
on upholstery. It's how anyone feels
having been put into a chair, meeting
responsibilities from a padded perch
too big for anyone's ass. As monarchs
we make ourselves small and govern in search
of what we'll grow into. Except we are
as big as we'll ever get and have gone as far.
From Raw Heaven by Molly Peacock. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. (p. 18)
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Slapdash & vigour
Though I finished Volume One of Virginia Woolf's diary a long time ago, I still have flags sticking out of pages everywhere, marking passages I wanted to record. (And you'd better watch out, because not only are there several more diaries, but I also picked up all six volumes of her letters for a very reasonable price at a used bookstore a couple of weeks ago.)
Without further ado, here are some thoughts V.W. had on writing.
"L[eonard] and I argued...about the worthlessness of all human works except as a means of keeping the workers happy. My writing now delights me solely because I love writing and dont [sic], honestly, care a hang what anyone says. What seas of horror one dives through in order to pick up these pearls -- however they are worth it." (20)
"It is fatal not to write the thing one wants to write at the moment of wanting to write it. Never thwart a natural process." (198)
"Its [sic] the curse of a writers [sic] life to want praise so much, & be so cast down by blame, or indifference. The only sensible course is to remember that writing is after all what one does best; that any other work would seem to me a waste of life; that I make one hundred pounds a year; & that some people like what I write." (214)
(That last sentence one of the understatements of the century.)
And finally, on writing her diary:
"[I] read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough & random style of it, often so ungrammatical, & crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat....And now I may add my little compliment to the effect that it has a slapdash & vigour, & sometimes hits an unexpected bulls eye....What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit, & yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace any thing, solemn, slight, or beautiful that comes in to my mind." (267)
Without further ado, here are some thoughts V.W. had on writing.
"L[eonard] and I argued...about the worthlessness of all human works except as a means of keeping the workers happy. My writing now delights me solely because I love writing and dont [sic], honestly, care a hang what anyone says. What seas of horror one dives through in order to pick up these pearls -- however they are worth it." (20)
"It is fatal not to write the thing one wants to write at the moment of wanting to write it. Never thwart a natural process." (198)
"Its [sic] the curse of a writers [sic] life to want praise so much, & be so cast down by blame, or indifference. The only sensible course is to remember that writing is after all what one does best; that any other work would seem to me a waste of life; that I make one hundred pounds a year; & that some people like what I write." (214)
(That last sentence one of the understatements of the century.)
And finally, on writing her diary:
"[I] read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough & random style of it, often so ungrammatical, & crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat....And now I may add my little compliment to the effect that it has a slapdash & vigour, & sometimes hits an unexpected bulls eye....What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit, & yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace any thing, solemn, slight, or beautiful that comes in to my mind." (267)
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Bitchy book review
When I first saw the pile of copies of Marilyn Johnson's book This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All at ALA Midwinter, I was naturally very excited. Not so excited that it didn't get in line behind a lot of other books, but still. Anyway, now that I've finished the book, I have very conflicted feelings about it. A librarian writing on her blog about a book that's about librarians and blogs and books is either very meta or very insular. I can't decide.
In any case. Around the halfway point of the book, I was feeling really irritated with the whole thing. I wasn't sure why Johnson was choosing to concentrate on things that I personally find sort of useless, like Second Life and book cart drill teams. Eventually I accepted that Johnson wasn't writing a comprehensive or focused book. She was following the random threads and paths that research often takes.
And she's narrating her personal experience the whole time. I think part of why I reacted to the book so personally was because her tone is so personal. (I also reacted personally because I'm a librarian, but I'll get to that later.) I just occasionally found her tone (well-meaning, enthusiastic) a little irritating. One manifestation of this is the generalizing about librarians as a group. She refers to cupcakes as the "official snack of young librarians" (211). "The silver-haired librarians who got their library degrees way back in the twentieth century came from backgrounds in history and literature" (26). The word visionary pops up about every five pages.
Of course, I am a member of the profession being written about here, so naturally I want to correct what I see as generalizations or inconsistencies. Johnson, for example, dismisses cataloging near the end of the book as one of the more "bloodless" parts of librarianship, but is impressed by how archivists and librarians organize and describe information, both online and in paper. Which IS cataloging. And most librarians I know thought this New York Times article about "hip librarians" (which makes an appearance in the book) was cringe-inducing. It's now become a stereotype to think of librarians as stereotypes (old, shushing, blah blah). And those librarians are hip(ster) because they live in Brooklyn.
Okay, I don't want this to become a total jeremiad, because I do appreciate where Johnson is coming from. I enjoyed many of the interviews she did, and I think librarians need all the positive publicity we can get. There were a couple of chapters that lived up to the book's subtitle, about Radical Reference, the librarians who challenged the Patriot Act, and librarian "missionaries" training students from developing countries. I wish the whole book had been like that. Johnson does get across, for the most part, that librarians are far from being obsolete, and that we want to help people escape "information sickness" and discover the best information for their needs. And she cites her sources, too.
Quotations from This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.
In any case. Around the halfway point of the book, I was feeling really irritated with the whole thing. I wasn't sure why Johnson was choosing to concentrate on things that I personally find sort of useless, like Second Life and book cart drill teams. Eventually I accepted that Johnson wasn't writing a comprehensive or focused book. She was following the random threads and paths that research often takes.
And she's narrating her personal experience the whole time. I think part of why I reacted to the book so personally was because her tone is so personal. (I also reacted personally because I'm a librarian, but I'll get to that later.) I just occasionally found her tone (well-meaning, enthusiastic) a little irritating. One manifestation of this is the generalizing about librarians as a group. She refers to cupcakes as the "official snack of young librarians" (211). "The silver-haired librarians who got their library degrees way back in the twentieth century came from backgrounds in history and literature" (26). The word visionary pops up about every five pages.
Of course, I am a member of the profession being written about here, so naturally I want to correct what I see as generalizations or inconsistencies. Johnson, for example, dismisses cataloging near the end of the book as one of the more "bloodless" parts of librarianship, but is impressed by how archivists and librarians organize and describe information, both online and in paper. Which IS cataloging. And most librarians I know thought this New York Times article about "hip librarians" (which makes an appearance in the book) was cringe-inducing. It's now become a stereotype to think of librarians as stereotypes (old, shushing, blah blah). And those librarians are hip(ster) because they live in Brooklyn.
Okay, I don't want this to become a total jeremiad, because I do appreciate where Johnson is coming from. I enjoyed many of the interviews she did, and I think librarians need all the positive publicity we can get. There were a couple of chapters that lived up to the book's subtitle, about Radical Reference, the librarians who challenged the Patriot Act, and librarian "missionaries" training students from developing countries. I wish the whole book had been like that. Johnson does get across, for the most part, that librarians are far from being obsolete, and that we want to help people escape "information sickness" and discover the best information for their needs. And she cites her sources, too.
Quotations from This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
A room full of books of one's own
I promised to keep updating with things I liked from volume 1 of Virginia Woolf's diaries. So here are some things she had to say about books and libraries.
"L[eonard] found Desmond at the L.L. [London Library]: together they look up the word f--- in the slang dictionary, & were saddened & surprised to see how the thumb marks of members were thick on the page." (82)
On a London bookshop:
"He would not commit himself to name any probable price, from which I judge that he is calculating on the lust to possess it when I see it. And, after all, nothing gives back more for one's money than a beautiful book - obviously I'm slipping....These bookshops have an air of the 18th century. People drop in and gossip about literature with the shopkeeper who, in this case, knew as much about books as they did. I overheard a long conversation with a parson, who had discovered a shop in Paddington full of Elzevirs." (126)
Apparently the huge publisher Elsevier has been around for a long time, or else the name has been resurrected.
Then there's this slightly puzzling footnote by the editor, Anne Olivier Bell, about a librarian at the London Library who I want to know more about:
"Frederick James Cox (1865-1955) joined the staff of the London Library when he was sixteen and worked there until the year of his death. Installed near the entrance, he acted both as sentry and encyclopaedia." (177)
So there you go. As usual,
All quotations from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One 1915-1919, ed. Anne Olivier Bell. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977.
"L[eonard] found Desmond at the L.L. [London Library]: together they look up the word f--- in the slang dictionary, & were saddened & surprised to see how the thumb marks of members were thick on the page." (82)
On a London bookshop:
"He would not commit himself to name any probable price, from which I judge that he is calculating on the lust to possess it when I see it. And, after all, nothing gives back more for one's money than a beautiful book - obviously I'm slipping....These bookshops have an air of the 18th century. People drop in and gossip about literature with the shopkeeper who, in this case, knew as much about books as they did. I overheard a long conversation with a parson, who had discovered a shop in Paddington full of Elzevirs." (126)
Apparently the huge publisher Elsevier has been around for a long time, or else the name has been resurrected.
Then there's this slightly puzzling footnote by the editor, Anne Olivier Bell, about a librarian at the London Library who I want to know more about:
"Frederick James Cox (1865-1955) joined the staff of the London Library when he was sixteen and worked there until the year of his death. Installed near the entrance, he acted both as sentry and encyclopaedia." (177)
So there you go. As usual,
All quotations from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One 1915-1919, ed. Anne Olivier Bell. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977.
Paper and electronic books - energy smackdown
I thought this was an interesting comparison of the relative environmental friendliness of e-readers versus books. I'm not against e-readers (though I think I'll always personally prefer a book), and this comparison isn't quite fair, since one e-reader represents several books (though it would have to be replaced more often).
See the NY Times' "op-chart" here.
See the NY Times' "op-chart" here.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Accelerated consciousness
Just a quick post. I've been catching up on issues of Poetry, and have had a page in the February issue dogeared for a while now. I've often wondered why poetry - a generally compact form - isn't more popular in a low-attention-span world. Is it because it takes time to create, unlike a Twitter update? Anyway, Durs Grünbein touches on this in a much more articulate way in his essay "Why Live Without Writing." You can read the whole essay here, but I liked this paragraph in particular:
"A few clusters of words express what the lavish epic draws out over hundreds of pages. Or to put it another way: couldn’t it be that poems, as long as they are alert and open to impressions, are novels by other means—and therefore do sterling service to readers short of time and hungry for intensity? What they have to offer are lessons in accelerated consciousness, machete slashes through a tangled world. For aficionados of the concentrated and powerful, they are distilled experience, abbreviations of existence, shocks and pronouncements in droplet form."
"A few clusters of words express what the lavish epic draws out over hundreds of pages. Or to put it another way: couldn’t it be that poems, as long as they are alert and open to impressions, are novels by other means—and therefore do sterling service to readers short of time and hungry for intensity? What they have to offer are lessons in accelerated consciousness, machete slashes through a tangled world. For aficionados of the concentrated and powerful, they are distilled experience, abbreviations of existence, shocks and pronouncements in droplet form."
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
They published your diary, and that's how I got to know you....
For the last couple of weeks, I've been reading volume 1 of Virginia Woolf's diary. Some of it is slow going (I can't keep straight all the people she mentions), but for the most part I am enjoying it very much. VW comes off unquestionably a snob and a classist; she really believes her servants are fundamentally different kind of people than she and her family are. That doesn't keep her, however, from saying wonderfully put things about books, ideas, and humanity (even the servants!). There are also lots of interesting details, especially about the Hogarth Press. Less than one hundred years ago, for example, she saw setting eight pages of type in one day as very fast and efficient.
I've dog-eared about every fifth page so far...so I'll give periodic updates on my favorite bits, hopefully grouped thematically (there are lots of visits to the library). Today, I'll give you the "unclassified" quotations. Also, bonus points to whomever can place the quote that serves as this post's title.
"What a terrible grip Xianity still has -- she became rigid & bigoted at once, as if God himself had her in his grasp. That I believe is still the chief enemy -- the fear of God. But I was tactful enough to keep this view dark." (165)
I think here VW is not criticizing Christians per se, but how the structure and power of organized religion can stifle progress.
"But I was glad to come home, & feel my real life coming back again -- I mean life here with L.[Leonard, her husband]. Solitary is not quite the right word; one's personality seems to echo out across space, when he's not there to enclose all one's vibrations." (70)
"The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think." (22)
All quotations from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One 1915-1919, ed. Anne Olivier Bell. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977.
I've dog-eared about every fifth page so far...so I'll give periodic updates on my favorite bits, hopefully grouped thematically (there are lots of visits to the library). Today, I'll give you the "unclassified" quotations. Also, bonus points to whomever can place the quote that serves as this post's title.
"What a terrible grip Xianity still has -- she became rigid & bigoted at once, as if God himself had her in his grasp. That I believe is still the chief enemy -- the fear of God. But I was tactful enough to keep this view dark." (165)
I think here VW is not criticizing Christians per se, but how the structure and power of organized religion can stifle progress.
"But I was glad to come home, & feel my real life coming back again -- I mean life here with L.[Leonard, her husband]. Solitary is not quite the right word; one's personality seems to echo out across space, when he's not there to enclose all one's vibrations." (70)
"The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think." (22)
All quotations from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One 1915-1919, ed. Anne Olivier Bell. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Mirror, Lamp
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a poetry reading by Dan Chiasson, an fellow alumnus who I've seen read before. He has a new book out called Where's the Moon, There's the Moon. I really like his poems; I could never write poems like his - there's something about them, I want to say detachment, but that's not quite right. The point of view is not dependent upon a personality, but it's not impersonal. I don't know. In particular, I liked this short section of a longer poem. I was trying to find a short version of "what M.H. Abrams called 'the lamp,'" but I guess I'll just have to check out from the library, and read, The Mirror and the Lamp. The poem is below. He may not have been talking about this, but it makes me think about fleeting and/or undeserved fame.
8. Abstruser Musing
To be no one at all, merely the latest
to have had his brain
turned inside out by vanity,
so that it shine entirely on itself--
is this what M.H. Abrams called "the lamp"?
I call it masturbation,
not as an insult but an accurate name:
it feels good doing it, and people like to watch.
From Chiasson, Dan. Where's the Moon, There's the Moon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
8. Abstruser Musing
To be no one at all, merely the latest
to have had his brain
turned inside out by vanity,
so that it shine entirely on itself--
is this what M.H. Abrams called "the lamp"?
I call it masturbation,
not as an insult but an accurate name:
it feels good doing it, and people like to watch.
From Chiasson, Dan. Where's the Moon, There's the Moon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The miracle of adverbs
I was going to write about Adverbs by Daniel Handler along with Jonah Lehrer's book in the previous post, but then I decided it needed its own entry. So here you are.
One look at the jacket of this book and you have an idea of what you're in for. Cover art by Daniel Clowes, blurbs by Dave Eggers and Michael Chabon, and a meta-blurb by the author on the inside jacket about how authors often write their own dust jacket summaries. Adverbs is subtitled "a novel." Each chapter deals with a set of characters, sometimes with the same names as characters elsewhere in the book and sometimes not. It's clear that some things in the book happen before others (that is, the chapters aren't in chronological order), and there are several repeated themes and places (volcanoes, a San Francisco bar, diamonds, birds, obscure cocktails).
I was at lunch one day reading it, and thought, okay, I need to stop and make a chart with all these people and places and times, and figure out what's going on here. And then in the very next chapter, I read this, in which Handler implies that the same name doesn't always mean the same person:
"...so many people in this book have the same names. You can't follow all the Joes, or all the Davids or Andreas....it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets down despite every catastrophe...." (p. 194)
I can't decide if this is an admission that there's not a logical grounding in time and (fictional) reality - or if Handler's just letting his readers off the hook, while secretly encouraging the more ambitious among them to track those images. Either way, I decided to stop worrying about it and just read, the way one of my college Spanish instructors encouraged us to read in a foreign language - just take in the picture the writer is painting, and don't worry about every little word. As a former English major, that's a little difficult for me to do, but not impossible. Especially when there are so many other books to read, and I'm already a couple books past this one.
Despite this quality, which might be frustrating, I did like this book very much. It has clear relatives in David Foster Wallace's stories and Mark Danielewski's books House of Leaves and Only Revolutions - all of which I love. There are very moving parts, especially the chapter entitled "Soundly."
One look at the jacket of this book and you have an idea of what you're in for. Cover art by Daniel Clowes, blurbs by Dave Eggers and Michael Chabon, and a meta-blurb by the author on the inside jacket about how authors often write their own dust jacket summaries. Adverbs is subtitled "a novel." Each chapter deals with a set of characters, sometimes with the same names as characters elsewhere in the book and sometimes not. It's clear that some things in the book happen before others (that is, the chapters aren't in chronological order), and there are several repeated themes and places (volcanoes, a San Francisco bar, diamonds, birds, obscure cocktails).
I was at lunch one day reading it, and thought, okay, I need to stop and make a chart with all these people and places and times, and figure out what's going on here. And then in the very next chapter, I read this, in which Handler implies that the same name doesn't always mean the same person:
"...so many people in this book have the same names. You can't follow all the Joes, or all the Davids or Andreas....it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets down despite every catastrophe...." (p. 194)
I can't decide if this is an admission that there's not a logical grounding in time and (fictional) reality - or if Handler's just letting his readers off the hook, while secretly encouraging the more ambitious among them to track those images. Either way, I decided to stop worrying about it and just read, the way one of my college Spanish instructors encouraged us to read in a foreign language - just take in the picture the writer is painting, and don't worry about every little word. As a former English major, that's a little difficult for me to do, but not impossible. Especially when there are so many other books to read, and I'm already a couple books past this one.
Despite this quality, which might be frustrating, I did like this book very much. It has clear relatives in David Foster Wallace's stories and Mark Danielewski's books House of Leaves and Only Revolutions - all of which I love. There are very moving parts, especially the chapter entitled "Soundly."
Decisions, decisions
I can't remember how I noticed Jonah Lehrer's book How We Decide. I think I was searching for something else in the library catalog and saw it - or maybe it was on the new books cart. In any case, I was very intrigued and checked it out. As someone who is indecisive, and often rehashes old decisions, I thought - ah, this will offer some insight into what my brain is doing. Well, the book turned out to be more about decisions where there is a clear "good" and "bad" outcome - not the sorts of decisions I was thinking about. Not a lot in there about decisions that involve relationships with other people. The interesting thing is, though, I got to a certain point in the book, and one of the illustrative examples started sounding familiar. I realized I had heard Jonah Lehrer on some NPR show, and not remembered his name - but maybe that unconsciously figured into my decision to check out the book. (How meta!)
Anyway. It is a very interesting book and a quick read. A lot of it is about how the brain uses both emotion and reason to make decisions, and when is the "best" time to use each of those. There was also one sentence that stood out to me: "From the perspective of the brain, new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time." To me, this was very encouraging. To me, it means that innate ability and quick reactions mean very little without constant thinking and learning. That effort and study and actually thinking about things contribute to our ability to solve problems and make decisions. Maybe that's an obvious point. But I thought it bore mentioning.
Anyway. It is a very interesting book and a quick read. A lot of it is about how the brain uses both emotion and reason to make decisions, and when is the "best" time to use each of those. There was also one sentence that stood out to me: "From the perspective of the brain, new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time." To me, this was very encouraging. To me, it means that innate ability and quick reactions mean very little without constant thinking and learning. That effort and study and actually thinking about things contribute to our ability to solve problems and make decisions. Maybe that's an obvious point. But I thought it bore mentioning.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Free thinkers
I just finished tearing my way ravenously through A.S. Byatt’s latest novel, The Children’s Book. There was so much stuff in it that I’m still thinking about a lot of it and how it fits together. It’s about Victorian and Edwardian England, artists and how what they do affects other people, the idea of “having” children and what that means, and the whole idea of progressiveness and free thinking –the way it sometimes leads to absolutely nothing, its unintended effects. Take “free love” in an era without widespread access to birth control. Guess who bears most of those consequences? (I’ll take “women” for $400, Alex.) Anyway, I raced through the end, as I often do, and was disappointed (as I often am; see my last post). Part of that disappointment, though, I think, comes from how realistic Byatt’s characters are. They make decisions based on circumstances, whim, pragmatism; they die suddenly; they don’t think about how their actions affect others.
Well, I’m done reading it now. It’s received a lot of critical praise, and I think that’s warranted. Now, however, I’m ready for something completely different. This is how I tend to read. I don’t go on “kicks” where I read a lot of the same kind of thing. I just finished an exhaustively researched and detailed historical novel by a British woman, so what’s next? Eldridge Cleaver’s 1968 memoir Soul on Ice (sure to be unsettling in many ways), alternated with Molly Peacock’s book of poems Take Heart. Then on, perhaps, to my long list of “Books to Check Out”....
Well, I’m done reading it now. It’s received a lot of critical praise, and I think that’s warranted. Now, however, I’m ready for something completely different. This is how I tend to read. I don’t go on “kicks” where I read a lot of the same kind of thing. I just finished an exhaustively researched and detailed historical novel by a British woman, so what’s next? Eldridge Cleaver’s 1968 memoir Soul on Ice (sure to be unsettling in many ways), alternated with Molly Peacock’s book of poems Take Heart. Then on, perhaps, to my long list of “Books to Check Out”....
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Endings
I never had the desire to read Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones when it was first published. I knew it involved the rape and murder of a teenage girl, and I thought: No thanks! Not right now. But the book entered my consciousness again because there's a film adaptation coming out soon (which I've heard is pretty awful). I was in a bookstore in California last week and started flipping through it, and I found myself immediately absorbed, in a way I haven't been absorbed in a book in a while. So when I got back to the East Coast, I checked it out from the library and finished it in about three days. It's very well-written. The scene where the main character is killed, narrated by her, is particularly haunting. And though a lot of the book takes place in "heaven," there's no syrupy morality or religion to be found. I appreciated that there were few "justice being served" moments or big revelations for the reasons behind both horrible and wonderful events. The events just unfolded, sometimes as a result of a person's will, and sometimes against his or her will.
The trajectory of finishing the book was very familiar - after being very engaged for most of it, I didn't like the book's climax, and found the last chapter or so unsatisfying. This happens to me a lot, and I'm not sure whether it's due to each individual novel, or my own propensity to rush to the end because I'm so involved and want to find out what happens. Or - I suppose there's a third possibility, that the end of a novel will almost always be disappointing, because what I loved was the book, and the book is now over. Which fits sort of nicely into the themes of The Lovely Bones, in fact. Though the dead character is still conscious and observant, nothing, she says, compares to the feeling of actually being alive.
The trajectory of finishing the book was very familiar - after being very engaged for most of it, I didn't like the book's climax, and found the last chapter or so unsatisfying. This happens to me a lot, and I'm not sure whether it's due to each individual novel, or my own propensity to rush to the end because I'm so involved and want to find out what happens. Or - I suppose there's a third possibility, that the end of a novel will almost always be disappointing, because what I loved was the book, and the book is now over. Which fits sort of nicely into the themes of The Lovely Bones, in fact. Though the dead character is still conscious and observant, nothing, she says, compares to the feeling of actually being alive.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Progenitors
Sorry, again, for the long gap. I've been taking a bit of a reading break to concentrate on another project...one I can't talk about just now.
Anyway, the last book I read was The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. My first (and only, aside from a brief linguistic analysis in college) encounter with Hemingway was A Farewell to Arms, which I read as a junior in high school. I had very little use for the simplistic style and the macho factor; I much preferred Fitzgerald and Faulkner. Recently, though, Michelle convinced me to give him another chance, that this was his most readable novel. And I did like most of it, though I struggled to get through the bullfighting scenes. And the drinking! My God, the drinking! If I put away four bottles of wine in one meal, I'd probably make bad decisions, too. Actually, I'd probably be unconscious.
More than that, though, I could see clearly (much more than being told, or in high school) the influence Hemingway had on subsequent novelists. I can appreciate that. It's similar to how I feel about the Pixies. I never really listened to their music; I just knew of and about them. And I'm going to see them play their album Doolittle this Friday, in their hometown, Boston. I realize this is a big deal. Like Hemingway, I appreciate and recognize their influence. But listening to them, and reading Hemingway, feels a bit more like conscious self-education than pure enjoyment. (Though maybe that's good for me.) Does that say something about my generation or my personality - that I like the derivative more than the original? I don't know.
Anyway, the last book I read was The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. My first (and only, aside from a brief linguistic analysis in college) encounter with Hemingway was A Farewell to Arms, which I read as a junior in high school. I had very little use for the simplistic style and the macho factor; I much preferred Fitzgerald and Faulkner. Recently, though, Michelle convinced me to give him another chance, that this was his most readable novel. And I did like most of it, though I struggled to get through the bullfighting scenes. And the drinking! My God, the drinking! If I put away four bottles of wine in one meal, I'd probably make bad decisions, too. Actually, I'd probably be unconscious.
More than that, though, I could see clearly (much more than being told, or in high school) the influence Hemingway had on subsequent novelists. I can appreciate that. It's similar to how I feel about the Pixies. I never really listened to their music; I just knew of and about them. And I'm going to see them play their album Doolittle this Friday, in their hometown, Boston. I realize this is a big deal. Like Hemingway, I appreciate and recognize their influence. But listening to them, and reading Hemingway, feels a bit more like conscious self-education than pure enjoyment. (Though maybe that's good for me.) Does that say something about my generation or my personality - that I like the derivative more than the original? I don't know.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Numbers
I was just thinking about two quantities: the number of posts I've made on this blog in the past few months, and the number of books I've read in the same time period. I've read at a steadier clip than I have in a while (though I suspect I might have missed recording a few in the August-September area). This might have something to do with the number of nonfiction books in the mix. Not only do they whiz along a little faster than Pale Fire or the entire Lowell-Bishop correspondence, but they tend to have large sections of endnotes. I'm talking about Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and Dave Eggers' Zeitoun (not strictly nonfiction, but based on a real story).
The thing that struck me about both of these stories was the profound effect misunderstanding can have. In Fadiman's book, there's a total misunderstanding between doctors and patients, which leads to an outcome that neither group finds ideal. (Interesting to read in light of the current health care situation; this was written in the '90s about events in the '80s). In Eggers' book, it's the paranoia and blinders in an emergency situation - the kind of pileup of small misunderstandings that leads to total disaster that I tend to hear on This American Life.
In any case, I recommend both of them. The Fadiman book is a journalistic piece (though the author clearly cared deeply about her subjects) and the Eggers book is a novel that veers close to sentimentality and preachiness, but never gets there.
Well, there are your mini-reviews. Speaking of mini, okay, I'm on Twitter. There, I said it.
The thing that struck me about both of these stories was the profound effect misunderstanding can have. In Fadiman's book, there's a total misunderstanding between doctors and patients, which leads to an outcome that neither group finds ideal. (Interesting to read in light of the current health care situation; this was written in the '90s about events in the '80s). In Eggers' book, it's the paranoia and blinders in an emergency situation - the kind of pileup of small misunderstandings that leads to total disaster that I tend to hear on This American Life.
In any case, I recommend both of them. The Fadiman book is a journalistic piece (though the author clearly cared deeply about her subjects) and the Eggers book is a novel that veers close to sentimentality and preachiness, but never gets there.
Well, there are your mini-reviews. Speaking of mini, okay, I'm on Twitter. There, I said it.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Foxy Brainiacs
Well, it has been a long time. That's how it goes at academic libraries in September. I've been busy showing students how to navigate American FactFinder and telling them where the printer is.
But I have been doing other things too. Last night I saw Nick Hornby read from his latest novel Juliet, Naked (about to check it out from the library!) and do a very funny Q&A. It's a week full of shows - the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Girlyman, and Brandi Carlile. I've read Pale Fire (more on that in a later post), and I just finished a really enjoyable book I bought a long time ago at the Friends of the Library bookstore - Only in London by Hanan al-Shaykh. I thought it might be a run-of-the-mill mediocre novel, but the characters were pretty wonderful, and the ending satisfying (something I can't say about most of the books I've read this year).
Anyway, I also wanted to share a very funny synopsis of Dan Brown's new book from Powell's Review-a-Day. The whole review (which was written by Jeff Baker and appeared in The Oregonian) can be found here.
"Does this sound familiar?
World-renowned symbologist and all-around cool guy Robert Langdon is summoned to an Imposing Architectural Landmark, where something Really Yucky has been left in a way only he can recognize. You know, as a clue. Langdon snaps into action, and it isn't long before he's uncovered more clues that lead to a Secret Society full of Famous Dead Guys. There's a Super-Duper Secret, and the fate of the universe is at stake, but thank goodness Langdon has help from a Foxy Brainiac, which he needs because he's up against a Major Freak. Langdon and the Foxy Brainiac race through more Imposing Architectural Landmarks, pausing only to lecture each other about symbols and whatnot, and try to win a Race Against Time against the Major Freak.
That's the plot of Dan Brown's new novel, The Lost Symbol. It's also the plot of his last novel, a little number called The Da Vinci Code. It's also, more or less, the plot of the novel before that, Angels & Demons."
But I have been doing other things too. Last night I saw Nick Hornby read from his latest novel Juliet, Naked (about to check it out from the library!) and do a very funny Q&A. It's a week full of shows - the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Girlyman, and Brandi Carlile. I've read Pale Fire (more on that in a later post), and I just finished a really enjoyable book I bought a long time ago at the Friends of the Library bookstore - Only in London by Hanan al-Shaykh. I thought it might be a run-of-the-mill mediocre novel, but the characters were pretty wonderful, and the ending satisfying (something I can't say about most of the books I've read this year).
Anyway, I also wanted to share a very funny synopsis of Dan Brown's new book from Powell's Review-a-Day. The whole review (which was written by Jeff Baker and appeared in The Oregonian) can be found here.
"Does this sound familiar?
World-renowned symbologist and all-around cool guy Robert Langdon is summoned to an Imposing Architectural Landmark, where something Really Yucky has been left in a way only he can recognize. You know, as a clue. Langdon snaps into action, and it isn't long before he's uncovered more clues that lead to a Secret Society full of Famous Dead Guys. There's a Super-Duper Secret, and the fate of the universe is at stake, but thank goodness Langdon has help from a Foxy Brainiac, which he needs because he's up against a Major Freak. Langdon and the Foxy Brainiac race through more Imposing Architectural Landmarks, pausing only to lecture each other about symbols and whatnot, and try to win a Race Against Time against the Major Freak.
That's the plot of Dan Brown's new novel, The Lost Symbol. It's also the plot of his last novel, a little number called The Da Vinci Code. It's also, more or less, the plot of the novel before that, Angels & Demons."
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Imagined works of art
Sometimes you see people and you instantly know who you would cast to play them in the movie of their life. The other day I was at a meeting and as soon as someone started speaking, I had cast this character actor from In and Out and Six Feet Under. (For my part, people have variously suggested Anjelica Huston, Rachel Griffiths, and Tina Fey.) Not that anyone's going to make a movie out of either that professor's life or mine.
Then this morning as I was walking to the bus, I caught a glimpse down a side street of a truck slowly hauling up onto its base a big dumpster that said "BAY STATE" in big clean letters. Then I met the assembled truck as I crossed a different side street. And I just had this feeling that if Robert Lowell were alive and had seen it, he would have used it in a poem perfectly.
Do others do this - imagine good projects for people other than themselves? I just wish I could appropriate some of it for myself.
That's all for today. It's a lull in a very busy week at work, and I'm reading Pale Fire by Nabokov. I don't think I'm going to be able to tell you what I think of it until I'm done. I feel like I need a commentary on the commentary that is the book.
Then this morning as I was walking to the bus, I caught a glimpse down a side street of a truck slowly hauling up onto its base a big dumpster that said "BAY STATE" in big clean letters. Then I met the assembled truck as I crossed a different side street. And I just had this feeling that if Robert Lowell were alive and had seen it, he would have used it in a poem perfectly.
Do others do this - imagine good projects for people other than themselves? I just wish I could appropriate some of it for myself.
That's all for today. It's a lull in a very busy week at work, and I'm reading Pale Fire by Nabokov. I don't think I'm going to be able to tell you what I think of it until I'm done. I feel like I need a commentary on the commentary that is the book.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Word of the day (and it's a noun)
Anthimeria: the use of a word as if it were a different part of speech. In other words, verbing nouns and nouning verbs. I was thinking about this recently because I heard "the reveal" one too many times on reality shows and commentary on reality shows. Why is this a thing? I guess the word "revelation" has connotations that reality show producers don't really want to convey. But what's wrong with "unveiling?"
Then, of course, there's "impact" as a verb, which I'm afraid seems here to stay. I understand that language changes and that no amount of prescription can halt large changes, that doesn't mean I have to use it for anything but wisdom teeth.
Other nouned verbs: compile ("I like that photo compile"), fail, spend, ask. I've never heard "ask" a a noun, but apparently it's gaining currency; see this blog entry.
Other verbed nouns: gift (hate this one!), leverage, action, friend, favorite (the last two very 'Web 2.0'), and incent (apparently a back-formation of "incentive").
Here's another take on anthimeria from Daily Writing Tips.
Then, of course, there's "impact" as a verb, which I'm afraid seems here to stay. I understand that language changes and that no amount of prescription can halt large changes, that doesn't mean I have to use it for anything but wisdom teeth.
Other nouned verbs: compile ("I like that photo compile"), fail, spend, ask. I've never heard "ask" a a noun, but apparently it's gaining currency; see this blog entry.
Other verbed nouns: gift (hate this one!), leverage, action, friend, favorite (the last two very 'Web 2.0'), and incent (apparently a back-formation of "incentive").
Here's another take on anthimeria from Daily Writing Tips.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Water: libraries' worst enemy
I'm going to be lazy about this, and just give you the link to Clare's blog post about how the recent flooding in Louisville affected the library there. And by affected, I mean devastated. I still think of Louisville as one of my homes, and of course any library is as well.
Clare's blog post detailing the damage
Rachel Walden's post about how to best help out
Clare's blog post detailing the damage
Rachel Walden's post about how to best help out
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
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