WonderBlog

The idea occurred to me while shopping at the B&N...I saw a shelf of Nicholas Sparks books while trying to find Nabokov..BOTH of them were in the LITERATURE AND FICTION section.

I thought, "how can Sparks and Nabokov be in the same section at the bookstore? Sparks can't touch Nabokov's hem"

[thinking now though, Sparks could probably BUY Nabokov's whole wardrobe. Sparks is a multi-million bestseller...and Nabokov couldn't even aspire to being a full-time professor at university for most of his life]

But thoughts like this take on a life of their own. I have been finishing Glory by Nabokov...since I'd only read Lolita before. This book filled me with hope, because it was good, but not anywhere near as good as Lolita , which means that he did not spring out of God fullly formed as the master author. SO, that means that I will probably have a chance of being a better writer too.

Which led me to think again of how long it takes to write a damn book. And how short of a time it takes to read a book. I am going on vacation for 11 days, and I worry that I will run out of book. And that CAN"T HAPPEN. I MUST have enough book to last me....I am a book addict, like a drug addict. A drug addict, when she runs out of her drug of choice, will take anything...even sniff glue. I don't want to my addiction to drag me down into such degradation, but I have been known to read the phone book when nothing else is available. I can't let that happen.

So I am a monstrous reader, devouring the feast that took so long to prepare. Books that took their crafters years of heart and soul wringing to write, and even more lifebeats to gain the wisdom to be able to start the writing-- these I devour callously and insatiably.

And I do feel sad that I read so fast now. And I approach each new book with eagerness, but still knowing that I am going to have a changed thing after, that the expectation is not going to be the reality.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:00 AM | Permalink

I just finished Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. Remember the Wizard of Oz? And the green Witch with the flying monkeys? Well, this book is supposed to tell her story.

I confess I didn’t really have high expectations for this book when my book club chose it. It was a popular book and had even been made into a Broadway musical—two things that made me dismiss it as intellectually shallow.

I could not have been more wrong. What a page-turner! I couldn’t put it down.

Maguire creates a full and detailed world. At his hands, Oz has climate, people groups, competing religions and mythology. Politics create rifts and alliances.

As for the heroine herself, he begins early with her. He starts with her conception and early life, but she becomes a real person to the reader when she arrives at the university. She is a hotheaded activist and sincerely believes in doing what's right even at personal cost.

She is a powerful woman. The ties and interpersonal tensions that guide her choices are utterly familiar to modern readers. Her loves and insecurities are poignant and universal.

What exactly about her is wicked? What does wicked mean in her world--or ours?

With the title he has chosen, Maguire is not being subtle. He quotes Tolstoy, Defoe and Frank Baum (the originator of Oz) before the book starts. He wants to analyze wickedness in this book.

The story itself, though, doesn’t seem to address wickedness conceptually. What it does address is the person of the Wicked Witch. If she is taken to embody wickedness, then the filling out of her character and personality in this story makes wickedness extremely ordinary and normal.

She herself seems to live leaning over the edge of despair, feeling herself and the mercy of forces outside her control. With this position, Maguire would imply that evil itself is merely a misunderstanding.

And this makes me understand that I definitely underestimated this book.

I’m going to go find all the other books this guy wrote.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A while back, a friend with a blazing smart and fast-reading niece complained that she couldn't think of books to recommend for her to read, since young miss read so fast.

I made a list of some of my favorite. Enjoy!

By M.E. Kerr I stay near you

Fell Down

Book of Fell

Fell Back

by Francesca Block.
Weetzie Bat,
Witch Baby,
Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys,
Missing Angel Juan,
The Hanged Man,
Baby Be-Bop,
Girl Goddess #9,
Echo.

Louise Erdrich ANYTHING by HER


by Robin McKinley.
Beauty,
The Blue Sword, T
he Hero and the Crown,
A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories,
Rose Daughter,
Deerskin

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by Katherine Paterson.
Jacob Have I Loved,
Lyddie,
The Same Stuff As Stars,
Bridge to Trerabinthia

Graphic novels (aka comic books) Art Spiegelman.
Maus: A Survivor's Tale;
Maus: A Survivor's Tale II.

· Cynthia Voigt.
Dicey's Song,
Izzy Willy-nilly,
Wings of a Falcon,
Orfe,
When She Hollers,
Bad Girls,
Bad, Badder, Baddest.

The Lovely Bones: a Novel Alice Sebold

Achebe, Chinua.
Things Fall Apart

by Austen, Jane.
Pride and Prejudice,
Emma (anything by her, really)

by
Charles Dickens
Bleak House, (if you like him, there are tons more)

by Bronte, Emily.
Wuthering Heights

by Buck, Pearl.
The Good Earth

by Cather, Willa.
My Antonia,
Death Comes for the Archbishop (anything by her)

by Defoe, Daniel.
Robinson Crusoe

By Dreiser, Theodore.
Sister Carrie(not an easy read, but good…sad)

by Eliot, George.
The Mill on the Floss,
Middlemarch (also not easy, but very good)

by Ellison, Ralph.
The Invisible Man

by Flaubert, Gustave.
Madame Bovary( not an easy read)

by Grahame, Kenneth.
Wind in the Willows

by Hammett, Dashiell.
The Maltese Falcon,
The Glass Key (these are mysteries, not hard to read and very good)

by Hurston, Zora Neale.
Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Keys, Daniel.
Flowers for Algernon (this will blow your mind, and it’s good)

by Lee, Harper.
To Kill a Mockingbird

by Marlow, Christopher.
Dr. Faustus (if you like Shakespeare)

by Morrison, Toni.
The Song of Solomon (anything by this author, but they are strong stuff…these can be pretty vivid stories about slavery in America)

by Munro, Alice K.
Selected Stories( these are the only short stories I know that read like a novel)

by Orwell, George.
1984,
Animal Farm(the granddaddy of science fiction…well, except maybe Jules Verne)

by Salinger, J. D.
The Catcher in the Rye (a favorite of serial killers…but why?)

by Shelley, Mary.
Frankenstein (the original is way good, and way less scary than I would have thought)

by Sophocles.
Oedipus the King,
Antigone(ancient greek plays that could kick shakespeare’s Butt)

by Steinbeck, John.
The Grapes of Wrath,
East of Eden,
Cannery Row

by Swift, Jonathan.
Gulliver's Travels

by Thurber, James.
The Thurber Carnival (this guy has the quirkiest sense of humor…AWESOME!)

by Wilde, Oscar.
The Importance of Being Ernest (also, anything by this guy)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by betty smith

Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Amy Tan (anything by her!) The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, A Hundred Secret Senses

by Madeleine L’Engle
A wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and a Wind at the Door
And ALSO:
The Arm of the Starfish, House like a Lotus,

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:22 PM | Permalink

D.H. Lawrence is scandalous. He's most famous for Lady Chatterly's Lover, which announces its scandalousness loudly by having "Lover" in the title. It screams "Sex is happening here!"

This meant that he got banned and censored. Even better! Nothing so titillating as a banned book.

Yeah, except...A lot of the time the books that are banned are not as raunchy as the imagination of the people who banned them. True smut is seldom banned; it's just put in the back room and left for the pervs who want it.

And D.H. Lawrence's smut is sort of weak and intellectual. Yes, Lady Chatterly had a lover. And yes, Lawrence tells all. But when you get down to it, the all is kind of disappointed. He tells it like it is, and wouldn't that be the definition of "prosaic"?

In daily lives, relationships are like that. They're not scandalous—even the scandalous ones.

Well, I read Lady Chatterly a long time ago, and that's not the book I'm reviewing now. I picked up Women in Love because I knew D.H. Lawrence was a highly regarded author, and I had only read LCL and one short story by him. I wondered if other his other books were worth reading.

So, this morning, I finished Women in Love. The story starts with two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun. Both of them were extremely modern ladies, but with really old-fashioned names. Gudrun especially has that contrast. I didn't even know Gudrun was a name, it's that archaic, but she herself was an artist. She made her living at it, even. Ursula was a little more tame; she was a teacher.

There were the men, too. Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin reveal themselves as the love interests for the two women in love.

All these four are strained to the breaking point with their sensitivity. They are constantly in rapturous heights, or seriously believe that they will die of their disappointments. It seemed comical to me, after the first time, how overcome they are by their feelings.

And they are constantly on very high intellectual discussions. What is the meaning of things, really? And they come to conclusions, by paths not apparent to others, which are very definite. All so important.

Love to them is not a soft pillow to fall into and languish upon. It is an argument to resolve, or a cause to take up. They snuggle sometimes, and ask "Do you love me?" of one another. But they had previously torn to shreds any assumptions about love and what the word means, so both the question and the answer are blind groping.

Oh yes, and add to the two cute hetero couples a strong homoerotic tension between Rupert and Gerald. Whew. Even I felt a little steamed up by some of the scenes between those two.

All of these characters seem to want so much. They don't believe in anything they have known, but they want to find something that they don't know to believe in.

...a phrase which sounds utterly nonsensical and as if I could have lifted it directly out of the novel. I don't think I am inadvertently quoting, though...

These people are so modern; they seem unable to exist with any satisfaction in the world they are in. Gudrun, who is the most modern of the group, can find no satisfaction of mind anywhere. She does however, enjoy nice stockings. That particular detail shows that Lawrence is in charge of this book of contrasts.

Bibliomania tells me "Lawrence maintained that it was his finest work." It was finished in 1916, but not published until 1921. I can tell that it fishes deep into the spirit of the time. Many of the ideas and impulses described seem so in keeping with what I know of the period. I could imagine that it would resonate strongly with his contemporaries.

It's not an easily understood book, but I'm glad I read it. Especially now that I know he thought it was his best. I don't feel like rushing out and reading the rest of his stuff though. But if one came to hand, I wouldn't turn it away.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:30 AM | Permalink

In this story, Orwell tells how he lives when he finds himself basically destitute. While in Paris, he runs low on money and then gets robbed, leading to a stretch of out-and-out poverty.

Since this misfortune starts in Paris, it is easier to accept. Why otherwise would a well-born Englishman end up dependent on the generosity of pawnbrokers to get food? As the story progressed, I could accept the plausibility of his dire straits only because he was in a foreign place. I’ve been in foreign places, and things are different there. I would accept discomforts and experiences that would have been unacceptable at home, because things are supposed to be strange when one is traveling.

Things got pretty strange for Orwell. He writes of how he has to fake solvency to keep his landlady from kicking him out.

He writes with both feet on the ground. The descriptions are utterly realistic—he gives exactly the sort of detail I would ask for if it were a friend of mine telling me their story over a drink. He gives exact numbers of how much things cost, and tells about the way he had to smuggle food into his room. He mourns that he must waste money on the more expensive bread, because the cheapest variety will not fit into his pocket for smuggling.

He does eventually find work as a dishwasher, which gives him enough sustenance to form the idea to ask for help from a London acquaintance. Alas, things don’t always work out as intended.

The characters that fill the Paris portion of the book are vividly drawn, including people living in the shadow of misfortunes of health and love. The cheap Paris boarding house included a share of impractical dilettantes as well. After he crosses the channel, the London characters enjoy the same brilliance of description.

While the Paris paupers have there own methods of getting by, the British differ substantially. It took the author some time to get the hang of homelessness in the UK. He describes the wandering life, going from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. In the contemporary term, they are formally known as casual houses or informally as spikes.

This is George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984. There were some well-reasoned political thoughts regarding poverty. The book was published in 1933, which means the stories related must have happened during the Great Depression. There was a whole lot of poverty to ponder on at the time. A lot of people were beginning to think ‘whatever we’ve been doing, we should stop and do the opposite.’ There was evidently a lot wrong with the world, in many people’s eyes.

So, Orwell took the opportunity to propose some new activities for homeless people. And he talked about he prejudice held in the hearts of most comfortably situated folks. He would have us realize that tramps are people, too.

This book was set about 70 years ago. When I picked it up, I wasn’t sure I would like it. I was utterly amazed by it. I don’t think I’ll forget it. Of course, I couldn’t help comparing it to Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I admit, I’ve only read portions of that book, but I know that it is hugely popular, even spawning a musical of itself.

I feel like Orwell happened upon his down-and-outness a little more honestly than Ehrenreich. She meant it to be an investigative journalistic experience, but Orwell just found himself poor and kept his eyes open to the experience. He was not ashamed of his life experiences. He published them and gave all of us a gift in the form of this book.

As a final word, I’d like to recommend the audio book that I experienced this book through. The reader did excellent reading of the many many accents of the characters in the book and made them vibrant.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:19 PM | Permalink

I dont' have time to review them all, but I would like to keep a record of the books I read.

Open Secret by Alice Munro
The man in my basement by Walter Mosely
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
I want to wear a red dress by Pearl Cleage
The Love Wife by jen Gish

Okay, I'm still in the m iddle of Love Wife. I ran out of book last thursday and Karen loaned it to me.

I have also listened to, recently, a whole lot of audio tapes with lecture series on them. Crazy wonderful, those are. LOVE LOVE LOVE the teaching company:

The history of freedom
The history of Myth
Alexander the Great and the Hellenic Age
The Middle Ages

I tried but got bogged down in:
Great Romans

too many names in that one, and I REALLY wanted to listen to the middle ages series, which was MUCH more absorbing. Middle ages knock me out.

I just checked out:
Churchill

That one should be interesting. More recent, anyway.

Okay, that's enough for now.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My home is in Claremont. I picked it carefully, because I wanted a ‘good’ neighborhood. You all know what that means, right?

I wasn’t so sure that I knew what that meant. It is my habit to question everything, and I think that the idea of a ‘good’ neighborhood is potentially prejudiced. So, I wanted hard data to make the determination. What makes a neighborhood good or bad, really? It's a complicated question, but I chose to look at crime.

I went to this site to take a look at crime statistics, and just to keep it simple, I focused on murder. What I found shocked me.

How many murders does it take to be a crime wave? How much does it take to get press?

In 2003, Compton had 43 murders, Inglewood had 32 and Long Beach had 49. That is a lot of murders. But not, apparently, enough to worry about. It did not raise the alarm, not for those cities. These areas are acknowledged black neighborhoods. Known ‘hoods. And murder has come to be accepted there.

But accepted by whom, exactly?

My town, Claremont, had 0 murders. It is part of its appeal, to be quite honest. I prefer to live in a place with a low chance of being murdered.

But we share a border with a known brown town, Pomona, which has a high Latino population. Pomona had 17 murders in 2003. In 2002, there were 18 and 2001 had 19.

Claremont stayed steady at zero.

What’s up with that? A line, a two dimensional line of no thickness at all separates these two places. One side, someone murders someone else every three weeks. The other, people don’t kill each other.

People say, “Just avoid Pomona. It’s not a good neighborhood.”

But people are dying over there. Is that what we are supposed to do for our neighbors? Just avoid them when they are in trouble?

Pomona kills people. But Claremont doesn’t. What does Claremont know that Pomona doesn’t?

I almost feel like there should be an exchange program. Maybe some people from Claremont should go over and have a cultural exchange with Pomona, so the Pomona residents could learn to use alternatives to murder to solve their life situations.

People say to me: “Oh, Pomona is suffering under discrimination and poverty.”

But being poor doesn’t make you kill. And discrimination doesn’t either. It’s a separate leap, to murder. What inspires that leap?

This is a sticking point in my relationship with my neighbor, Pomona. How do I relate to this city that allows murders at such a high rate?

To my jaw-dropping amazement, I read a book about this very problem. Not exactly my same viewpoint, but a new angle on the same problem.

Walkin’ the Dog by the incomparable Walter Mosley tells about a murderer. A man out of prison for nearly a decade, walking the free streets of South Central and trying to figure out his life. What does he do with himself and his rage and his unexpectedly returned independence?

He struggles. He thinks, and he works and he talks. He struggles against the gravity-like forces that pull him back to crime and prison. They are the things he knows, after all.

But he wrestles the demons and finds a flicker of epiphany. This book, like many great books, cannot be adequately reduced to plot summary. The story is an amazing journey of bleak honesty and real hope.

I have no doubt that the problems in Pomona and Inglewood and Long Beach are partly the responsibility of the police and the legal system. I also believe that the people in those cities have decided to allow a heightened amount of crime. They share the blame.

And I have a share of the blame too. I participate in the blind eye, in the lack of outrage and grief. I don’t know what I can do. But I know that I have to keep looking for a way to work on making it right. There may be an epiphany waiting for me, and that’s worth looking for.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My home is in Claremont. I picked it carefully, because I wanted a ‘good’ neighborhood. You all know what that means, right?

I wasn’t so sure that I knew what that meant. It is my habit to question everything, and I think that the idea of a ‘good’ neighborhood is potentially prejudiced. So, I wanted hard data to make the determination. What makes a neighborhood good or bad, really? It's a complicated question, but I chose to look at crime.

I went to this site to take a look at crime statistics, and just to keep it simple, I focused on murder. What I found shocked me.

How many murders does it take to be a crime wave? How much does it take to get press?

In 2003, Compton had 43 murders, Inglewood had 32 and Long Beach had 49. That is a lot of murders. But not, apparently, enough to worry about. It did not raise the alarm, not for those cities. These areas are acknowledged black neighborhoods. Known ‘hoods. And murder has come to be accepted there.

But accepted by whom, exactly?

My town, Claremont, had 0 murders. It is part of its appeal, to be quite honest. I prefer to live in a place with a low chance of being murdered.

But we share a border with a known brown town, Pomona, which has a high Latino population. Pomona had 17 murders in 2003. In 2002, there were 18 and 2001 had 19.

Claremont stayed steady at zero.

What’s up with that? A line, a two dimensional line of no thickness at all separates these two places. One side, someone murders someone else every three weeks. The other, people don’t kill each other.

People say, “Just avoid Pomona. It’s not a good neighborhood.”

But people are dying over there. Is that what we are supposed to do for our neighbors? Just avoid them when they are in trouble?

Pomona kills people. But Claremont doesn’t. What does Claremont know that Pomona doesn’t?

I almost feel like there should be an exchange program. Maybe some people from Claremont should go over and have a cultural exchange with Pomona, so the Pomona residents could learn to use alternatives to murder to solve their life situations.

People say to me: “Oh, Pomona is suffering under discrimination and poverty.”

But being poor doesn’t make you kill. And discrimination doesn’t either. It’s a separate leap, to murder. What inspires that leap?

This is a sticking point in my relationship with my neighbor, Pomona. How do I relate to this city that allows murders at such a high rate?

To my jaw-dropping amazement, I read a book about this very problem. Not exactly my same viewpoint, but a new angle on the same problem.

Walkin’ the Dog by the incomparable Walter Mosley tells about a murderer. A man out of prison for nearly a decade, walking the free streets of South Central and trying to figure out his life. What does he do with himself and his rage and his unexpectedly returned independence?

He struggles. He thinks, and he works and he talks. He struggles against the gravity-like forces that pull him back to crime and prison. They are the things he knows, after all.

But he wrestles the demons and finds a flicker of epiphany. This book, like many great books, cannot be adequately reduced to plot summary. The story is an amazing journey of bleak honesty and real hope.

I have no doubt that the problems in Pomona and Inglewood and Long Beach are partly the responsibility of the police and the legal system. I also believe that the people in those cities have decided to allow a heightened amount of crime. They share the blame.

And I have a share of the blame too. I participate in the blind eye, in the lack of outrage and grief. I don’t know what I can do. But I know that I have to keep looking for a way to work on making it right. There may be an epiphany waiting for me, and that’s worth looking for.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sedaris's writing makes it okay for all of us losers to admit we are. His "SantaLand Diaries" was an expose of humiliation. He was like superhero, with a big 'L' on his chest.

He managed to take all the embarrassing things, the sorts of things we don't want to admit to, and make them so wickedly witty they are badges of honor.

It inspires me; makes me brave to try to write my humiliations.

This latest offering, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, reaches a little deeper.

The fact is, there are some humiliations that you can be funny about, and some that you just can't. This book takes it there. David opened a vein for us.

There are some side-splitter stories, more of Christmas in "Six to Eight Black Men" that made me laugh till I cried. But Sedaris goes on to talk about his first pubescent sleepover, a terrifying experience fraught with danger for a fledgling homosexual. The tension of his fantasy-come-true triumph during strip poker was genius.

He told a sad story of his estrangement from his youngest sister, of his hopelessness at being the kind of brother she needed. He visits his fears and anguishes over being gay in a very straight world. His obsessive-compulsive disorders take him places he does not want to go.

I like this book. I love Sedaris. I am so glad that he keeps writing. I hope he never stops.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:23 PM | Permalink

The narrator of this story is Thersa, a 15-year-old only child. The child of her heart is her cousin, eight-year-old Daisy. It's a summer story, the time when school is on vacation and the long days belong to the children.

As simple as the surface level story is, there are so many complicated and beautiful currents running below the surface. Theresa's love for her little cousin, and the realization that something is wrong puts a tension and sorrow through the story. Theresa is only 15, but in charge of so many young lives. She is a child, but taking on the responsibilities of an adult. The true adults around her have the freedom to abdicate their responsibilities, the care of their children, to this 15 year old. She is expected to do so much.

Her relationship with the aging artist, the father of her only paid babysitting ward, brings in tensions of art and even sexuality. Well, her own budding beauty and sexuality seems to turn any adult male into a drooling imbecile. She has to resond and deflect advances before she quite knows what they mean.

And then the neglected kids next door, so needy and unintentionally destructive, keep her realizing how lonely it is possible for people to be.

It's a beautifully written story, a perfect slow bobbing rhythm, like an inner tube on the surface of the water.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:14 PM | Permalink

My new home is having an effect on me. I love it. I like to preen over it, make it pretty.

The garden especially is satisfying. I think about it, and read about different sort of plants I could have. I trim the ones I have and water and have even fertilized them.

One friend was amazed, "This is a side of you I've never seen!" she said.

Hm. Good point. I've not been such a homebody. I'm usually reading or thinking or being away, looking at things.

But this home has been a big change. It makes me happy, and I am always full of projects I want to do. People tell me that happens when you become a homeowner. But the condo, my first owned home, did not have that effect on me.

Probably because it did not have a garden.

That rung a bell for me. I remember a book that talked about leaving adventures behind to take care of your garden.

Candide by Voltaire, it is. A short little story I've never forgotten, mostly because of the pope's daughter who only had one bun because her set was divided by cannibals.

It was this book, meant to be a philosophical treatise, that talks about tending your garden. I read it again, because I am so into my garden right now.

It is more profound than I remembered, having read it the first time as an assigment for my very first college literature class. That was a great class!

But, now that I am a bit older, I can see his point.

Candide roamed the world in search of happiness, basically. And, I, for a long time, have been hitting the streets to check outwhat the world has to offer.

In the end, Candide realizes that you make your own happiness. That you cultivate it, you tend it, and it grows or dies based on what you do.

I guess I've come to some similar conclusions. I am happy to be in a place tha tis furthe away from the "streets". My suburban town has lanes, rather than streets.

And, I am ready to take charge of my own happiness. I am fairly confident that I'll be able to grow it myself. There will be troubles, but I will be ale to weather them and keep my happiness well-rooted.

I must cultivate my garden.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 11:24 AM | Permalink

I was disappointed to discover that this is not actually a true memoir of a geisha. I didn't know this when I picked it up, but it's all over the bestseller lists right now. I think it's a decent book, it just wasn't what I expected.

It's basically a kind of 20th century regency romance, set in Japan.

If I had known i was that sort of story, I would have been really impressed. The description of how Sayuri became a giesha, and the historical setting was descriptive and interesting.

But the "Pretty Woman" style happy ending was a little disappointing. I had hoped she would be a strong woman and set out on her own. I concede that was probably personal taste.

Plenty of people love that sort of story, and this is a good one of its kind.

I should say, I heard this book on tape, rather than read it. The audio version was read by a woman with a Japanese accent. Her reading was very engaging, and the accent added a dimension of location that would not have been present on the page.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:36 PM | Permalink

Another one by the great Murakami. Every book of his I've read so far (The Windup Bird Chronicals and Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World) has been really great, so when I went to the library I checked out all of his books on the shelf.

But I live in a small town now, so there was only one book by him on the shelf, South of the Border, West of the Sun. It was short, so I finished it this morning.

This one might be the most realistic book I've read. Nothing happened that was outside the range of natural life. His descriptions of emotions were very surreal, though. It was the same Murakami I'd grown to love.

This story is a very human story, and the jacket calls it a love story. There is no doubt that love is involved, but I'm not so sure it's a love story.

It starts off with the hero, Hajime, as a kid. He's 12, and has a girl who is his best friend. When his family moved to a different neighborhood, they lost track of each other. But he never forgot her.

The rest of the story talks about his romantic affairs, high school and growing up. He is finally an adult and has his life on a very successful track, with a business and a wife and family, when the childhood friend reappears.

Everything turns upside down after that.

The story is good and definitely kept my interest. I don't know if Hajime could be called typically male. If he could,this story might be very revealing of the psychology of a cheating husband. But I am not sure he could be called typical. The story is just a little strange.

In the end, it was pretty bleak. As he portrays it, tenuous nature of love and the unreliability of human character leaves little to hope for.

Reading this book makes me rethink the others. Perhaps Murakami is more nihilistic than I realized. Then again, maybe this story is just him exploring his nihilistic side.

One thing for sure, I need to read the rest of this guy's works.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:30 PM | Permalink

Los Angeles is a fun place. It's also a pretty silly place--a place that tries to invent the fashions and create the trends. And the world is just an enabler, letting L.A. get away with it.

Which gives L.A.'s silliness a self-importance it probably doesn't deserve.

But the best of that brand of uber-hip ridiculousness is self-aware. The people who know they are ridiculous--who are serious about their art some of the time but almost nothing else the rest of the time--make L.A. a fun place.

Hensley wrote up that side of Hollywood, using the jaded, pop-media-saturated 20-something zietgiest that I'm so familiar with.

The title refers to the area code of the downtown/hollywood area--part of the zip and area code caste system that allows one group to look down on another. The TV star actress, the painfully gay screenwriter and the chubby actress friend start it off and it takes off from there.

A cast of characters go around on unlikely adventures through L.A. I would usually dismiss this kind of book, but I actually enjoyed it. Having lived here for a while, I find it more believable than I otherwise would.

This is a fun read, not a challenging thought in it. But it's engaging enough to read it to the end.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you can't get this on the audio version, at least read it out loud. This epic was meant to be heard.

Gilgamesh is arguably the oldest story in the world, with all the great ancient epic tricks. I love how it repeats the same phrases, such as when Gilgamesh wakes up from his prophetic dreams over and over:

"Did you touch me? Did a god walk by?"

It had me chanting along with the CD. The adventures of Gilgamesh and Enkidu are pretty exciting.

So exciting, in fact, that I would seriously consider recommending it as excellent bedtime reading for the kids.

Except that Gilgamesh and Enkidu get up to enough high-jinks to get not only an 'R' rating, but maybe even an NC-17.

Good stuff, that's all I'm saying.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:07 PM | Permalink

Imagine a chill room at a rave. The pounding music with the repetitive but interesting sound samples, the rythmn and the heat are pervasive but still slightly removed. The pillows are beneath your dance-exhausted body and you stare at the weird visual projection provided.

Your mind is open and relaxed, ready to ponder the slow changing light-shapes metamorphasizing across the screens. You are ready to think about the relationship between circles, squares and sine waves--the universe and everything. Themes and dissonances flow, merge and separate in your consciousness. You are relaxed, receptive and passive in that moment.

That's what reading Murakami feels like for me. Except I don't feel passive. His book,The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, has some of the most far out things happen. Toru Okada, the hero of the story, lives the most ordinary life in which occur the most surprising and illogical experiences.

And yet, like a chill room, I feel totally open to the story. I do not feel passive about it though. I could not put the book down. More than 600 pages, and I could not put it down until the end. I am still thinking about it days later.

There is an emotional truth to the story that lodges deep. The love of Toru Okada and his wife for one another is so poignant, while being completely devoid of sentimentality.

And the book's struggle to write around the extra-reality of human spirit or experience leaves me very thoughtful about what it means to be human.

I am going to find more of this guy's books. As an avid reader, this blew my mind away. If you are looking for a good chewy book, this will not disappoint.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:11 PM | Permalink

Someone recommended this book to me: The Death Ship. He said, "It's by Traven."

"Oh yeah!" I remembered. "That's the guy who did The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I had to read that for a film and lit class. It was really good."

Since I had to take a test on it, I knew that Traven was kind of a pinko socialist kind of guy. He wrote TOTSM as a kind of critique on capitalism and greed, etc. The story is about goldminers, after all. How much more greedy can you get?

But TOTSM was a great story, and I actually liked hearing the description of how they did the actual mining. Being from Alaska,I ran into a few gold miners now and again.

As is often the case, the book is better than the movie, but the movie is really great too.

Remembering all this I went to check out The Death Ship. This one was in a similar style and structure as TOTSM, but unless you are really into sailing...I mean, I don't know. It didn't grab me. It went on and on in very grim depressing language about how this life was so awful and the ship was so crappy. In the end, I couldn't finish it.

Which is too bad. The other book was so great I would have loved to read another like it. Maybe I'll try some of his other books.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:49 PM | Permalink

Brancaccio is the guy who does "Marketplace" on NPR. Now, I like NPR a lot, but I do think that Marketplace has strayed from the core ideals of public radio--the peace corps, Kennedy mourning, peacenik hippie ideals I think of when I think NPR.

I mean, when the boomers went from hippie to Yuppie, it was hypocritical. And NPR's new concern with the rise and fall of the Dow the NASDAQ seemed part of that trend.

But even so, when I saw the book, I had enough affection for NPR and hippies to check it out.

Brancaccio starts off with an anectodal premise: What do you do with a surplus of money? After graduating from journalism school, he worked for a while and he and his wife managed to accumulate a little surplus--$17,000 to be exact.

They talked it over, and thought the thing to do with the money was for him to fulfill his life dream of being a foreign correspondent. They moved to London to try to make that happen, and just as they were about the run out of money, he hooked up with some radio journalism. It took him on the path to what he does now, hosting "Marketplace."

Now THAT is something I can respect. It's a crisis for the hippie-types to find themselves with more money than they need. And it's the sort of crisis that requires some action to be taken.

The book is really enjoyable. It's as if the author is taking a walk around the problem, looking at it from different angles and seeing what it's all about.

He takes a series of road trips to talk with people about what they have chosen to do with their extra money. Some people spend it on shopping, some invest, some go back to school, and some quit their jobs.

His writing is really insightful, not preachy at all, thank god. The book asked a lot of questions I've asked myself and gave a few new perspectives. I'm glad I read it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:24 PM | Permalink

Okay, I'm packing and painting like a maniac. Boy...So I am packing some books right now, and I found my copy of the Iliad.

THIS is the BEST translation. Let me tell you. I bought this copy in the Royal Museum in London. What better place, I thought. What a good souvenir. The british have long been mad about translating greek classics.

So, I had this unread copy. I read a little bit, but I didn't read too far until I had to take the classics class at my univerisity. The teacher had a copy of the Iliad at the bookstore. I thought I would use the one I already.

Then, at a study group where we were getting ready for the quiz, I read a piece from my book. The other students dropped their jaws and said, "Whoa! That's not what my books says at all!"

THIER translations were totally opaque. THey all passed around my book and said I was lucky.

SO, if you want to read the Iliad like it was meant to be read, all exciting and interesting, get this translation. It's really great.

And the Iliad is a good book to read.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:39 PM | Permalink

By Hermann Hesse

Heard good things about this guy, but I never read him. A friend gave me this book, and so I had to read it.

Not the most readable. It seemed to wander a lot. Not surprising, since it was about a dude wandering.

The book was one of those philosophical tales, where the author has a serious point to make. He tells a tortured story to make his point.

Camus, Voltaire, Rand, they all did this.

Narcissus was this thinker monk, a man who left the world and lived in the cerebral realm.

Goldmund was a young man who was an artist and lived in world of his senses.

Of course, Hesse had to make them friends so that the worlds could be juxtaposed.

Anyway, it was completely worth it for one part:

"That may be so," said Narcissus. "Niether of us can ever understand the other completely in such things. But there is one realization all men of good will share: In the end our works make us feel ashamed, we have to start out again and each time the sacrifice has to be made anew"

And to understand that part, you have to read the whole book. But that bit is really really profound. I want to always remember it, which is why I am blogging about it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 06:34 PM | Permalink

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:25 PM | Permalink

No, that's not the swimmer. It's a pathetic guy who can't get over the Smiths. He takes us back into the teenage world of the 80's when the Smiths could explain everything and save the whole world.

He writes about a poor little rich boy who can't make sense of his life without following the counter-culture movement with religious fervor.

If you ever suddenly threw out your whole wardrobe because of a new album, you will identify.

If you're like me, though, you will feel slightly sick to your stomach at the shallow angst of a Long Island jewish kid who knows so little about what's important in life.

Which is not to say I didn't like the book. It really grabs you. The story starts when the guy is already an adult, working for a rock magazine and trying to retain his hip youthfulness.

Through a series of convoluted yet rapid leaps, he comes to the conclusion that his whole life will start to make sense if he can get the Smiths back together for a reunion performance.

And more important than getting his life to make sense is getting the girl of his obsessions to be his.

If you were a fan of the Smiths, you should read the book. Like I said, despite it's stomach turning quotient, it is very readable.

Continue reading "How soon is never? by Mark Spitz" »

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:22 AM | Permalink

Hemingway. I read Snows of Kilimanjaro when I was 12. I don't remember much about it, but it freaked me out. It seemed very stark and mean and not nice.

I read it because my big brother had the book from a college class he was taking. He'd given me the Shakespeare plays, which I'd LOVED. Honestly, i think Shakespeare is very good for precocious readers. The tone and concept are fine for a young age.

But Hemingway was a different story. I was horrified by him. Therefore, I have not read anything by him since.

My alma mater, San Jose state university has a guilt list. They say "Any English Major Who Hasn't Read These Has No Right To Joy."

They deny English majors any right to joy; the list is HUGE. Shame on them for making beautiful books into something to feel guilty about! But, the fact is, it a good resource to turn to when I am looking for a suggestion about what to read next.

In this case, I thought I would try Hemingway again. Farewell To Arms. He is sad and horrifying, but I'm an adult now and I can take sad and horrifying in stride.

He's also very MASCULINE. He doesn't talk about how he feels much, just about what he does, what he says, where he's going. He'll say what he's thinking a little bit.

That book was okay. I'm not sorry I read it. It was not as great as I might have hoped. But it made me wonder some more about WW I. The Great War. I'll have to do some reading about it.

THis, of course, pleases Chris tremendously. He will happily talk all about it. Especially the ships.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:07 AM | Permalink

This book was wonderful. Top to bottom, all 811 pages of it. I was only disappointed by it being over.

Russian stories don't distance you from the people in them. I heard someone criticize them once for never using two-dimensional characters. Oh, man, no way! I love getting to know all those people in the books. It feels like I got to know a huge set of very interesting people. Anna, Karenin, Levin and Kitty were the main heroes, but everyone had their foibles and their adventures.

I loved the story, and I loved how Tolstoy told it. Basically, Anna Karenina falls in love with Vronsky, one of those fairy tale loves. Only problem is, she is already married. And she has a baby boy.

It was so great. to hear all the perspectives about the situation of women, and how faith comes into play with such a choice.

I just wish I could have really known these people Such smart, earnest interesting people.

Like I said, I only wished it had lasted longer.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 12:59 PM | Permalink

Sometimes I think I should write two book reviews. I should write one when I'm in the middle of reading a book and I don't know how it will end. And then I should write one after I've finished it.

Because a book is an experience. It's not an entire thing. You can feel one way about it in the middle and very different at the end. The middle is often the best part, it's like being on the rollercoaster. The end of the book is what you remember about being on the roller coaster.

The Bell Jar was amazing because of how it pulled me into the emotions without me realizing I was in the middle of them.

I'll tell you, books pull me in. I felt sick and scared and weird when I read Beloved. The Fountainhead makes me cold and fierce and ambitious. I cried for days and days about the state of the world after I read The Poisonwood Bible. My speech pattern change entirely when I read Sense and Sensibility; I require far more clauses to ask for a cup of tea.

And Plath sucked me into the bell jar. I was there with Esther in the middle of all her strange feelings. Plath doesn't go into huge explanations of why Esther feels pointless, so I didn't realize when I started feeling pointless too.

But oh my god, I felt pointless. Everything seemed incredibly overwhelming. While I was reading the book, I had no desire to do anything. I felt like blowing off all my responsibilities and just curling up in a chair and reading.

I feel that way sometimes. It didn't seem unusual that I felt that way while reading this book. But when some challenges showed up at work, they practically undid me. I felt like I totally couldn't handle them, like there was no way out, that I was damned if I did and damned anyway. My stomach tightened up and I felt like crawling under my desk and hiding.

It was intense.

I blame the book. I mean, my job sucks, but wow.

And that's why I think this is a great book. I didn't feel fabulous reading it, absolutely the opposite. But the fact that it could operate on me so powerfully takes my breath away.

Plath is good.

So that stuff I just wrote might have been the stuff I would have written if I hadn't finished the book. Now, after I've finished it I can say all kind of detached things.

Plath wrote a good story about suicidal urges. I have not been that kind of suicidal myself, but my frieds who have describe it in a very similar way. That suicide is a thing out there, a task to be done, something that needs to be done, and it's just a matter of finding the right time.

When Esther recieves the "good" shock treatment, she describes how she kind of forgot that she needed to kill herself. To paraphrase, she says she went to dinner and could not quite remember what she loved the knives for.

I don't know if other people would agree with me, but as I was reading the book, it seemed very easy to follow the logic Esther was using. It was hard to realize she was going crazy until she gave you the clues: she hadn't slept for a week. She hadn't bathed or changed her clothes.

The bathing part I felt was particularly significant, since she had earlier described how much she loved bathing. But then, she didn't want to bathe anymore.

It was definitely not pleasant to read this book, but it was very powerful.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:08 AM | Permalink

This book tells the story of Okuni, the woman who started the tradition of Kabuki dancing. I know nothing about Kabuki dancing. I couldn't pick a Kabuki dance out of a line up. I'm sure I would have gotten more out of the book if I had known about Kabuki.

But even so, the story is a really great story about staying true to yourself and to what you know. I mean, a lot of stories are out there about "Doing the right thing." But when it's an asthetic choice, there are not such strong guidelines. The difficulty of staying true to what you FEEL and know in your heart to be beautiful and right, that is worth a lot.

Beauty and dance are very important in life. They are the sorts of things that make life worth living. Okuni's life is inspiring, to stay true to herself and her art.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have the written version of this and I also havea recorded performance. It's a play, so it's nice to have both. It's a different thing, reading a play versus seeing it performed. Both have merit, but in different aspects.

Dylan Thomas is a poet, and his play is appropriately abstract. It's basically taking a day in the life of a Welsch town (remember, Thomas is Welsch) and writing about all the characters and dreams in it.

I reminds me of Spoon River Anthology, in it's scope of characters. But the people move in and out of each other's lives throughout the day. It is a very sweet look at what could be describes as the author's hometown, showing the foibles and meannesses as well as the aspirations of the people who inhabit it.

t's a little confusing, but I think if you let go and flow with it the experience is very uplifting. I think it shows a love for the brotherhood of humanity and a great sense of humor.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This book seems like the Catch 22 for the 80s. Not everyone in my book club agrees with me about this, but I stand by it.

Catch 22 seemed very rooted in a sense of the ridiculousness of what was happening in the world of the 60s. It centered on a single man in the military, dealing with commercial transactions and the fear that he was going to die, that people were trying to kill him. Of course, people were trying to kill him. This was war after all. But the catch was that he could not be taken out of the army for being crazy because he was sane enough to realize how crazy the war was.

Fine.

White Noise is about a man, a college professor on his 3rd? 4th? wife and the huge mish-mash of half-related children that his family has become. He is also afraid of death, but in a far more abstract way than Yossarian in Catch 22.

He is bombarded, constantly and incomprehensively with messages, the White Noise of the media. He encounters tabloids and TV news and the theories of his professorial colleagues with the same attitude of incomprehending acceptance.

The book is not so much a story as an attempt to capture a snapshot of life. I consider the snapshot to be extremely rooted in the mid-80s. THere are a number of cultural artifacts that come from that time and have passed by.

It was an interesting book. Not so much pleasant, but interesting. Worthwhile.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's a listFrom London. They are naming the 100 greatest novels. Naturally, they miss all kinds of good ones and elevate some ones I don't think deserve it.

But here's my score of which ones I've read:

1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes YES

2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan YES

3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe YES

4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift YES

5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding NOPE

6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson NOPE

7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne NOPE

8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos NOPE

9. Emma Jane Austen NOPE, but read others byher

10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley YES

11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock NOPE

12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac NOPE

13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal NOPE

14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas NOPE, I could live without Dumas

15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli NOPE

16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens NOPE, but read others by him

17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte NOPE

18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte YES

19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray OWN IT, haven't read it yet

20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne YES

21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville YES

22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert YES, love it

23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins NOPE

24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll YES, pure genius

25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott YES

26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope NOPE

27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy IN PROGRESS

28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot NOPE

29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky NOPE, but read others by him

30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James YES, I love this novel

31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain YES

32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson NOPE

33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome NOPE

34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde NOPE

35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith NOPE

36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy NOPE

37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers NOPE

38. The Call of the Wild Jack London NOPE, but read others by him

39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad NOPE, but read others by him

40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame YES

41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust NOPE

42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence NOPE, but read others by him

43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford NOPE

44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan YES

45. Ulysses James Joyce STILL IN PROGRESS

46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf YES

47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster NOPE

48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald YES

49. The Trial Franz Kafka NOPE

50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway NOPE

51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine NOPE

52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner NOPE, but read others by him

53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley NOPE

54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh NOPE

55. USA John Dos Passos NOPE

56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler YES

57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford NOPE

58. The Plague Albert Camus NOPE

59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell YES

60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett NOPE, but read others by him

61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger YES

62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor NOPE, but read others by him

63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White YES

64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien YES

65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis NOPE

66. Lord of the Flies William Golding NOPE

67. The Quiet American Graham Greene NOPE

68 On the Road Jack Kerouac YES

69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov YES

70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass NOPE

71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe YES

72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark NOPE

73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee YES

74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller YES

75. Herzog Saul Bellow NOPE, but read others by him

76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez YES, LOVE IT

77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor NOPE

78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre NOPE

79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison NOPE, but read others by her

80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge NOPE

81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer NOPE

82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino YES, it was very highbrow

83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul NOPE

84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee NOPE

85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson NOPE

86. Lanark Alasdair Gray NOPE

87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster NOPE

88. The BFG Roald Dahl NOPE, but read other by him

89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi NOPE

90. Money Martin Amis NOPE

91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro NOPE

92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey NOPE

93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera NOPE, but read others by him

94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories Salman Rushdie READ IT, own it, love it

95. La Confidential James Ellroy NOPE

96. Wise Children Angela Carter NOPE

97. Atonement Ian McEwan NOPE

98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman NOPE

99. American Pastoral Philip Roth NOPE, but read others by him

100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald NOPE

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Patrick Brogan's book World Conflicts: A Comprehensive Guide to World Strife Since 1945 is really good. It's the kind of thing I should read, but I always feel sad when I do.

Here's the layout: he gives short synopses on what's been happening in all kinds of countries since WW2. No, he doesn't cover every country. No, he isn't without bias. But this book is a great catch-up on stuff that's been going on.

And stuff has been going on everywhere. When I read his chapter on Argentina, I finally understood the Falkans. I'm sure I didn't have all of it, but I feel like I have some basic facts.

What's the deal with Africa? What's the deal with the Middle east? What is going on in the Phillipines? These kinds of questions pop up in my mind every day. THis book gives me some answers.

It's really great, and it makes me sad. I wish the world were not so full of trouble.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:12 PM | Permalink

Madonna is writing children's books.

You've probably heard this already, but it is still kind of amazing.

The Material Girl, the Pointy-bra Diva, the perennial object of lust is writing children's books.

Well, she is a mom now. I am not a mother, but if I ever become one, I could see a certain shift in my life happening.

Madonna seems to LIKE being a sex symbol. And apparently she likes being a mom.

I guess there is room in her life for both.

But it was very very sweet, a nice lesson about not judging people, and being happy with your life. A lesson mothers would like their children to learn.

And all I can say is, "good for you, Madonna!"

Posted by Murphy Horner at 03:37 PM | Permalink

I saw this on naturallycurly.com

Curly hair is a whole different ball game.

It does not do what you expect. It does not look like what anyone expects.

This book lets us curly girls in on some tips and tricks. Understand the curly hair. LOVE the curly hair.

And whatever you do, don't shampoo too often!

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:18 PM | Permalink

Don Delillo wrote this book about a murderous cult in the middle east. I read it on accident, because I thought it was the one my book club was reading.

Turns out we are reading White Noise. I'll tell you about that one when I'm done with it.

But The Names was depressing. Man! a story where a man living in the middle east, where he thinks all the time about their political situation, who finds other things to be MORE depressed about.

I guess murder is pretty depressing.

Mainly, I was depressed because he seemed to have such a tough time showing love to his wife. Sad Sad. I like to see love enjoyed. But the main guy didn't know how to enjoy his love at all. He seemed stuck.

Delillo had a lot a lot of internal thoughts about words and meaning. It was interesting, but still had a hopeless theme.

I think it was worth reading. It made me want to finish, for sure. But I was sad the whole time I read it. It made me sigh a lot.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:08 PM | Permalink

I normally don't like mysteries. They don't grab me.

For a period of time, I was thinking this was a sign of my superiority, but then I realized it's more a sign that i'm bad at finding the clues. You know? I just never catch on to whodunit.

I read books for the pleasure of the journey, and I don't want to know where it is going to end up. That is why I don't like formulaic books at all.

UNLESS! they are done with style. Which brings me to my point:

Raymond Chandler. Wow and wow again.

I was reading White Oleander a while back, and it starts out by talking about the Santa Ana winds. I was telling Chris about it, and he immediately said, "that's from Raymond Chandler."

He'd mentioned Raymond Chandler to me, telling me I should read it. So now, he dug up a paperback of short stories and I read it, once I got through White Oleander.

I loved it for so many reasons. I don't like formulaic stories, but some formulas are so true to life. Like, some people, especially people who are bent on doing the wrong thing, are so predictable.

Like the dispirited blonde lady cop who falls in love with a con and keeps on wanting to reform him. She may be more complicated than that, but while she's on the reform path, that's pretty much all she is.

During moments, people can be just the one thing, not full complex people. Chandler captures that so well. People makes types of themselves, narrow themselves down. I get the idea that the stories emerge from the character's choices, not the manipulations of the author.

And he boiled it down to such lovely sentences.

Plus, now that I live in LA and work across the block from where he lived, I find glimpses of my city in his books. He practicaly gives driving directions to crime scenes. It's a vieled realism that's really exciting.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:12 AM | Permalink

Carpe Diem and Rock and Roll!

Eric Olsen had reason to metion John Donne while talking about the Rolling Stones, the Spirit of Rock'n'Roll and Living Life fully to the end.

I am a fan of John Donne, so I thought I would take up the thread and say a little more on the subject.

Remember the Movie, Dead Poets Society? I can't remember exactly, but the super-cool English teacher teaches the boys the meaning of Carpe Diem-Sieze the Day! He says it was the poets anthem.

It was the anthem of a certain SCHOOL of poets, not all poets. They were the Cavalier poets, or the Metaphysical poets. And that other thing that Robin Williams said, that the real reason for poetry was to woo women, was really true of these guys.

That was almost all they did. They came right AFTER SHakespeare, and were constantly writing poems to get the ladies to give it up. But it was part of their Credo, Live now! Live large!

Sounds a lot like Rock'n'Roll to me.

Check out this bit by Donne:
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind

Remind you of anyone? Dylan? Hendrix?

When John Donne is young, he pretty much devotes himself to pursuit of chasing tail. His poems are almost entirely seduction poems.

But he gets older. He passes 30. And he gets religious.

But he doesn't leave it behind. "It" being the passionate intensity. If you ask me, and maybe it's because I'm a jaded female who is not impressed with seduction attempts, the religious poems are much more powerful than his earlier carnal works.

Here is my favorite:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The driving energy of that is just as much as a head-banging drum line or a squealing guitar riff. Rock on, John Donne!

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:29 AM | Permalink

You know how when you were young, you came up with all kinds of "in" words for things.

I remember we came up with all kinds of strange meaning for the colors of M&Ms. Green was supposed to have aphrodisiac powers. If you offered a green M&M to the young man of your dreams, and he accepted, it was a potent love spell.

I think the guys were completely unaware of this.

I knew one guy who referred to overly available women as puppies. Have no idea where that came from. It took him a long time to tell me that what he meant when he called a girl a puppy.

Weetzie Bat, by Fransceca Lia Block, takes that to an extreme. This very L.A. book is for young adults, a sort of fantasy coming-of-age story where there are special words to mean everything, and of COURSE everything works out in the end.

It was cute. I started reading it in the bookstore, and could have finished it there. But I was honest and bought the darn thing. It made the world feel very exciting and possible.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:26 PM | Permalink

This collection of short stories, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, blows me away. The author is an Indian female living in my old neighborhood, the San Francisco Bay area. The stories talk about husbands, children, work, school, love and ambition. They are the most modern feminine stories I have ever read.

Maybe it's because the idea of an arranged marriage strips away the necessary "happily-ever-after" fairy tale we have in the west, maybe because the Indian women feel the pull of family and children so strongly..I don't know. Maybe we have heard the feminist views here in america so long that our sincere concern for children and mothers and brothers as equally important to our personal ambition feels like a guilty secret.

The emphasis on societal pressures reminds me a lot of Jane Austen. That, and the very pragmatic view of marriage. Let's be real, kids. Marriage is very much a practical affair. Love waxes and wanes, but the solidity of married life has to remain.

I find this book affirms the real details of female life. The scariness of having children, or not having them. The struggle to evolve as a person without disrupting the lives of your loved ones. Others' expectations of you, and your expectations for yourself.

The stories are beautiful, utterly practical, and haunting.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 01:28 PM | Permalink

The story begins with the Santa Ana winds. The girl's mother tells her that women who kill their lovers on a night like this will blame it on the wind. Naturally, her mother is about to kill her lover.

You'd think that would be enough of a story. But not for Janet Fitch. That's only the setup for the main story. The main story is about the daughter, Astrid. Astrid is left to fend for herself in a series of horrific foster homes. And in those places, she goes through a very dramatic coming of age transformation. Yes, we know all about coming of age stories. But the usual problems of that time are thrown on their head. How different is it to become your own person, separate from your parent (s), when your mother is a murderer?

This story was really good. It has all the terrible sensational things in it (occult references, murder, forbidden sex), but somehow for me, it worked.

One of the redeeming features was the constant references to beauty. The murderer mother was a poet. Astrid cut her teeth on fine art. It was bordering unbelievable to me, how much this girl knew about authors and artists. But perhaps there are such people, such 14 year olds, that can know about Kandinsky and have well-formed opinions about him.

The other thing that made this story really great for me was how much it was rooted HERE. HERE, as in Los Angeles. She described exactly exactly how things are here. She talks about the wind, which anyone who is not or has not been here does not know about. The wind is crazy.

And she talks about the apartments in Hollywood, and the wildness just not very far North. She talks about how different people shop and dress differently. The author knows this area, this strange area that is Los Angeles.

The story is a good one, I recommend it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 12:23 PM | Permalink

Anybody remember Enron? Any body remember all those OTHER companies that were caught with their accounting pants down? Man, what was going on? What made them think they could get away with it?

There is no way not to think about Enron when listening to The Voysey Inheritance. Here's the story: Daddy Voysey gives his son, the one who is going to take over his investment firm for him, some papers that show how the business really works. That is, the business has not protected the capital other have invested in it. They continue to pay the dividends to the investors, but the capital supposedly producing the income no longer exists. And Daddy Voysey tells the horrified son that his father started the business that way, and handed it on to him. So, he hands it on to his son the same way.

Okay, this is Victorian England, but does it matter? How different is now? Hmm...Voysey jr. has to think about what to do. What's the true justice? To go to jail? or stay and try to amass the capital again, keep on paying off the interest to the people who are relying on it? Going to jail won't restore the money to the investors.

This story also explores what makes people trust others. Why did so many people keep giving Daddy Voysey the money? THis is a great story.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:09 AM | Permalink

I am still pondering this book.

It occurs to me that I am a gluttonous reader. I read these amazing, complicated books. I LOVE their texture and the feelings and the beautiful words I am reading.

But then...I don't stop and savor them enough. I read one, and I like it...But If I finish one early in the day, I'm on to the next one by night.

Perhaps I am too greedy for these books. I don't stop and linger.

When I am eating a truly delicious dish, I like to savor it.

But my reading does not work like that.

I miss my university classes.

I would take a class again, just for the joy of discussing the books. But the fact of the matter is, I cannot go back to literature classes at the jr. college level. They are not enough. I have more questions and ideas than would fit there anymore.

Well...So I miss those literary cud-chewing sessions. And I don't know what to do with my observations and thoughts.

Journal them?

ta da! Here i am!

I had been making a concerted effort to write short reviews of the books I read.

But then, my brother Mark mentioned that he preferred a more personal approach on my blog.

Hmm...Yes. So do I. You know what though? It's harder to be personal. I end up rambly and not particularly proud of what I write.

It requires a lot of discipline to be personal. and practice. So maybe this is practice.

Stream of consciousness shift here...My co-worker practices his keyboard (piano) 4 HOURS A DAY!

holy crap!

I told him I was ashamed, because I try to make an effort to just play one song a week. I have this whole big beautiful piano, and I squander it.

He said, He is in a band, Jazz fusion, and the sax player is so good, he is ashamed to do a solo after him. He is VERY inspired to practice.

Hey, this does wrap around. See, he is inspired to do his best because he is in an evnironment that challenges him.

Me, I was more challenged in my school environment. Because somebody there notices, cared, and I paid more attention to what I was reading.

It is important, I think, to foster environments that drive us to excellence.

Oh man. That's the tough part. Good friends are hard to find.

So.

i have finished White Oleander. I feel like there is so much I would want to think about and talk about in it.

And I have already begun A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I'm 95 pages into it, having started it yesterday.

i was reading it, and in between reading it, I was watching Zorba the greek.

I wonder if there is a mental equivalent of a vomitorium?

No, my appetite is endless.

But there are SOME books that are too steep a climb to go swiftly.

Ulysses.

I'm working very slowly on that one.
I'm on pg 122. 700 more to go. I read it in between the other books I'm reading.

Which is probably the wrong way to do it. I should sit down and savor and ponder and try to GET all the little references and stuff.

But life doesnt' let me separate and savor. It zips by, the hour gets late and then the alarm clock goes off.

More work and more meniality, and bills and catboxes and plans for the catboxes of the future.

I will tell myself that it is better to read 10 books too fast than read one slow and miss out completely on the other nine.

I can't help it anyway. I love to read.

I also have this feeling, like, I have to study, I have to get the basics down before I can get to the important question. Start working, with the right tools and theorums and laws, on the important, significant questions.

I obviously don't have the tool now, because I don't even know the question.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 11:32 AM | Permalink

A book review should include certain facts. You should include a mention of the author, the tittle, and a brief overview of the story. Probably it is bad form to give away the entire story, but it can be acceptable, or even necessary in certain contexts.

There is also another idea. An idea from the late victorian era, championed by Walter Pater and others, said that a review, or a critique, was an art form in itself.

I've talked about this before, because the idea resonates with me. Let me explain the idea in my own words.

Say, there is a work of art. A poem, a book, a painting. It is art, it is beautiful. Someone experiences it, and wants to tell other people about it.

There are two ways to do this. Let's call the first way the movie review way.

People read a movie review to find out whether the movie they are considering seeing is something they really want to see. It is really funny or thrilling or whatever it's supposed to be?

But there are some problems with movie reviews: they are subjective. Maybe that person who did the review didn't have the same sense of humor as you do. Maybe you would love a movie they hated.

Here's another idea: Have you ever been to a really good movie with smart great people, and then gone out for coffee or drinks afterwards and discussed it? That's happened to me, and we talked about the movie, and talked about the ideas of the movie...After a while, if it was a really good conversation, we would have left the movie behind altogether and started talking about the ideas.

This is the beginning. Basically, a piece of art can be a launching pad. Yes, you need it to get started but once you are launched, you may never need to refer to it again.

I feel like music does this exceptionally better than most forms. It is so abstract, you are forced upon your own soul. Pieces that are labeled "Symphony No. 5". Just what the music means to you. Not a name, not a suggestion.

What happens to me in a classical music concert is that I pay close attention to the music until I start to drift on ideas, images, colors or movement. It is an amazing source of inspiration. I feel like i could paint, or choreograph or do things I've never done before.

Now THAT is what I'm talking about!
What if I could write a review about how a book makes me feel and the ideas it makes me think without ever referring to the specific story of the book?

That would be a really great book! And I would have to be a really great writer. Or maybe i would become a great writer in the process.

All this to say, I read White oleander yesteday. In some respects, it was a very trite book. And in some respects, it was beautiful. In the way that I have been describing, it is perfect. I am filled with ideas that are connected to so many other ideas.

After reading this book, I am left thinking of Georgia O'Keefe and William Pater. Beethoven and summer stomrs. all the capitals of foreign countries that I have ever seen.

It makes me think about the troublesome people I have known, the ones whose stories I am not sure what to do about. It makes me think about the soul and the meaning of life and what that means to different people.

It makes me think about how big the world is.

All of that, and I haven't said anythink about what the book is about.
I havne't really said what I think about those varioius subjects either.

Here is the main problem with the idea of Aestheticism, the piece of Pater's philosophy that I have here described. How do you connect with the people that you are talking to?

It is a great responsibility, understanding one another. Most people deeply deeply want to be understood by others. But then, we are responsible to try and understand others too.

Some people, you have to do your homework to keep up with.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:49 AM | Permalink

I finished this a while ago. I was so completely moved by it that I have been carrying it around with me, wishing I could do a good enough review to do it justice.

But I am not going to write the perfect introduction/recommendation for this mandatory reading for the decade. I will do the best I can.

Nafisi is a professor of english literature. She is also Iranian. The first was her gift and calling. The second was a fact of fate.

How do you tell the story of Iran? They always say, "Begin at the beggining." Ah, but which begining?

Nafisi's book begins with her plan to continue teaching after she has left the university for not submitting to the extreme rules for women.

She loves to teach, and she chooses some students who love to learn. THey must be all female, because a mixed class would be too risky. She has the women come to her home to study the forbidden works of literature.

But don't get too escited; almost all books from the west were forbidden. THe book in the title,Lolita, was studied. We all know that Lolita is a risque subject. But Jane Asten, and Henry James are also studied extensively.

The characters of the women in the group are important. Not everyone in Iran is a fundamental zombie. And not everyone longs for the freedoms of the west. There are a whole spectrum of desires felt in each individuals heart.

Nafisi goes back in time to tell how things began to be the way they are. What was this revolution against and what was it for? The tensions and factions, and who won and the results of what those winnings were.

And the battleground over women's bodies. Why must a woman cover herself so completely? And why then, should she be sent home in shaame for wearing pink socks?

And what does Jane Austen have to do with all this?

Indeed, the women themselves wondered what they had to do with all of it. All this attention centered on them. THey, who felt so powerless, were so feared.

Where can a person possibly find answers for these questions?
Nafisi finds them in books.

I could kiss her for that! I find them in the same place.

Nafisi interjects her stories of happenings with what can only be called classroom lectures. BUt the subject matter of the lecture is so relevant, one cannot think of them as interruptions.

In a place where women's bodies, selves and personalities are kept so far out of sight that the manifestation seen by the public are only fictional characters, one must study real fictional characters to learn how to be real.

This is what Nafisi tells us in this book.

But she does not pretend to have answers for everything.

This book left me deeply sad for days. I felt the heavy blessing of my own freedom. I cannot more highly recommend this book. It is a new perspective.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's a familiar story: Boy grows up without dad, dad enters boy's life once more, boy must figure out what he thinks about it.

This time, though, the story is told by comics. Chris Ware takes nearly 400 pages to tell the story with comics. I'll be honest, this is really an exciting example of a new way to tell a story. Pictures can say things, repeat things, that words cannot do.

I mean, how many times can you write the word 'pathetic' in a story? Ware seems to write it all over every page, but without the redundancy. You can use the same image, when you can't use the same word. And this gives a weight to the story, the sadness of the little boy and the depths of his loserishness, that made it almost repellent.

Except, I wanted to flip the pages and see what the next page had.

In the same way that Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury was initially impenetrable, Jimmy Corrigan is hard to figure out.

'what?' i felt like asking. "what just happened here? Who's that?" It becomes more clear as the book progresses, but not so much that all my questions are answered.

I am really thinking, now, about how different mediums communicate different ways.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 02:49 PM | Permalink

Of course, Catcher in the Rye! Everyone has heard of Catcher in the Rye. A heckuva lot of people have read it. I decided i had to finally read it after Six Degrees of Separation. The con artist in that book does this whole discussion about how so many serial killers have this book.

Plus, it looked short. This was a nice diversion from the very long books I haven't been finishing lately.

Well. Having finished the books mere moments ago, and having read absolutely no criticsm of it, I can give my opinion.

Holden Caulfield is an incredibly annoying kid. I don't know why all the people in the story were so nice to him.

It's hell to be an adolescent. All dressed up and nowhere to go, basically. Holden is stuck in a very stuffy period in history, growing up in the very late 40s.

But I guess his main problem is that he can't find a way to get to where he wants to be. He is so caught up in all the details of his life, he doesn't know what he wants. He gets vague and foggy ideas from the books he reads and some snatches of moments. But in the end, all he comes up with is empty.

He seems so involved in his dissaticfaction with his life that I'm not even sure he wants to be satisfied. Once in a while, he seems to want to find something that makes him happy. But he can never grab onto it.

Is that how every kid felt in the 50s? Like Rebel without a Cause?

My dad was in high school then. He tells me he felt that way a lot. What is up with that?

Is that the sort of vague dissatisfaction the was the 50s? Is that what led to the sort of vague protest of the foggy "establishment" that was the 60s?

Maybe serial killers like this book because it is so vague. It lets them bank the fire that fuels the logicless reasoning for their actions.

I don't know. I've met some rather disassociated youth., and a lot of times I've felt like sitting them down and talking with them.

That's what Holden makes me feel like doing.

But with the fictional Holden, and with the real kids I've known, it's a little harder than a single convesation. The problems are not in their heads.

But the solution, at least the start of it is in the individual control. I do believe that.

But really. This book is also about more than just Holden's problems.

what i DID like about it was the way Salinger wrote it. He wrote in a way that would drive English teachers nuts. Repeating, and inarticulate sometimes.

But the book is from Holden's perspective, and the way Salinger writes takes the reader exactly into his head. He writes inarticulately because Holden is 16 and inarticulate.

I love the fact that this book is so "canon" while being so technically 'bad'. I mean, If I were peer-reviewing this book, I would have to redpen the crap out of it.

And I hate doing that. Because i don't like the arbitrary and inaccurate rules about what makes "good writing" in an English class.

So. I don't think that Catcher in the Rye changed my life, but it was worth the time to read it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 03:14 PM | Permalink

Every once in a while, and all too seldom, I come across an book that takes me to a new vantage of understanding. Maybe it opens up a new field of knowledge I'd never discovered. Maybe it answers a question that I'd been unable to answer on my own. But these books are real gems, the sorts of things that I mull over and chew on because there are so many good and useful ideas inside.

Guns, Germs and Steel is one of those kind of books. In this case, it answered a question that I'd been wondering for a long time. I'd phrased it like this, "What is up with Africa?"

Africa seems to be perennially fucked. They seem to be cyclically starving to death, they seem to have massively corrupt and uncaring goverments. They always need water and medicine.

Other places don't seem to be starving to death all the time. Why Africa? What's the real roots of the problem?

GG&S deals with that. And they deal with an even bigger issue: why the peoples from some areas conquered other peoples in different areas.

THAT is another question I wonder about.

Why did some peoples colonize and others BE colonized?

GG&S breaks it down into some really practical and understandable elements. To generalize: some people were better fed. And they were better fed because they had better food around.

Some PLACES had better food available than others. As enticing as it is to consider the people group to which I belong as superior, there are actually circumstantial and incidental reasons having to do with LOCATION that makes one group successful over another.

That's a real, practical and effective argument against racism as well. Another advantage to reading this book!

It won a Pulitzer, as well it deserved. I would hope that this book would go on to be read by students and others for years and years to come.

To me, it was not hard to read. As technical as some of the subject matter became, the author made it very relevant to the reader.

Also, it gave me some new trains of thought about how to manage the future. We are all in this together, all of us humans from all over the world. We inter-relate a lot, and it would be best to understand the past so that we can make wise decisions about the future.

I can hardly stop talking about this book to all the people I know. It was very exciting to read it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:07 PM | Permalink

Detriech Bonhoeffer is a thoelogian who lived in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. He's known for repeatedly attempting assasination of Hitler.

A Theologian who was a self-appointed assasin! Here is a man who is not satisfied with the abstract.

I actually had heard of him before, but only in the shallowest passing. I got to heat more about him on the radio today, because there is a new documentary about his life.

I am electrified! From the snippets I heard, he went through the fire of the mass delusion that was Nazi germany and hung on to the truth. And he found new facets of the truth, hard truths about themeaning of peace and the value and purpose of the church.

I wish i wish I could see this documentary. But it seems to be airing only in select churches. So I can't seem to find it.

But I can read his works. I am going to have to.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 05:15 PM | Permalink

Okay, so I've been looking at a lot of guide books for Germany

This one was the first one I bought, but that's because it was on sale at AAA when I went down to renew my membership. I was also trying to shake them for free maps of Germany.

They don't have them. You have to pay for maps not it America. That's what the last A in the series is for.

So, I bought this guide. It seems very good, if you don't read any other guides. But the problem, is, Rick Steves is very opinionated. He only tells you about the parts he likes. So he tells you all kinds of things about the stuff he recommends, gets you all excited. But he doesn't give you a chance to make up your own mind.

If you want to just follow his footsteps, go ahead and use this book.

Otherwise shop around.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:13 PM | Permalink

Professor Wilson was the one who taught me Victorian Literature. He was quite good at it too.

Of course, you had to get used to the fact that he would take a 3 1/2 hour class, talk for three hours without a break, then send you home a half hour early. Once you learned not to drink a lot of liquids before his class, and that all his questions were rhetorical, you could settle in and start to enjoy his very dry humor and somewhat bashful retelling of victorian scandal.

He knew his stuff, and when you learned to listen, you learned a lot. I remember he told us a story of one victorian figure (can't recall who) that had a fetish for women with strong arms. He left his wife and became involved with this cleaning woman who had very well developed muscles in her arm. However, the gentleman did not actually become intimate with this cleaning woman, much to her frustration.

I don't remember exactly, but I have the impression it ended in some sort of murder. I do remember exactly how Professor Wilson would tell the sordid details with excruciating delicacy and yet with absolute relish and delight.

When I ran across the graphic novel A Treasury of Victorian Murder by Rick Geary, the idea fit in very well with my concept of Victorian times. The artwork was a wonderful combination of cute and sinister, perfect for the subject. Geary shows all the nice little details of dress and furnishings that gladden the hearts of Victorians, but he shows the terrifying evil faces of the murders that would satisfy the judgemental souls.

The book is not very long, but it is only one in a series. Geary tells the stories in a journalistic, factual way. He lets his pictures build the drama.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:34 PM | Permalink

This novel by Philip Roth is number 52 on the "Top 100 best English language novels of the 20th century." I've talked about this list before, and I'd said how I've read a number of them already.

I hadn't read Portnoy's, although I'd read another more recent Roth novel, The Human Stain.

That one was really good. Interesting characters, challenging themes, plot twists, all good stuff. I figured I would like Portnoy too.

Mm. Portnoy's Complaint came out in '67. I think the author has matured quite alot by the time he got to Human Stain.

Intresting how there are some similar themes: Female who is illiterate, Jewishness, Racism, Sex.

But PC positively reeks of the sixties. I think, what with the sexual revolution and all that, the on-going topic of masturbation was much more compelling than it is now. And I guess all of Portnoy's sexual exploits were supposed to be deviant and shocking.

Gotta tell ya, they just aren't anymore. Other than his obsession with choking his chicken as an adolescent, his main sexual sin seems to be fulfilling his fantasy of sleeping with two women at once.

Yawn.

This is regular prime-time fare in the naughty aughts. What shocked in the 60s is discussed around the dinner table this side of the 20th century.

I found his resentment of his family to be a far more interesting story line. And his Jewishness. Ethnic distinctions have also faded in importance by now, but it is interesting to remember how important they used to be.

I'm glad that I've read Human Stain already, it lets me know that the author has also progressed with the times. The Anti-Semitism that is the obsession of Portnoy is completely outside of my own experience. And the 90s setting of Human Stain reflects that cultural change. In some ways, chronicles it.

But that's another review.

Portnoy's Complaint seems like an artifact now. Perhaps the reasons it is so heralded is because it said some things for the first time. It does not come to any kind of conclusions. It just states a problem, Portnoy's problem.

I don't identify with him that much. And even if I did, he never offers any kind of solution. He's just complaining.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I went to visit a hospital for a checkup, but they put me in a gown and gave me a bed. The bed was in this huge open room with tons of other beds and no walls.I didn't know why I was there, or what was wrong with me, other than that they were going to operate. There were going to open up my stomach and cut me.

I was so upset, I didn't want to have this operation. No one would tell me what was going on, no one would talk to me. I felt fine! I thought that if there was something wrong with me, surgery should be the last, rather than the first, effort to solve the problem.

I was crying and pleading with people as they passed, asking what was happeneing, demanding to see a doctor, but no one would pay any attention to me.

Finally a nurse stopped, and explained that I had little growths, like plantar's warts, on my intestine, and that they were going to remove those parts of my intestine.

"But, That sounds very risky! what if they grow back? Or my intestine doesn't heal properly!"

"That's ridiculous! This procedure has a 100% success rate"

I didn't believe her. I begged to see a doctor, and she left, exasperated that I was so silly about this perfectly safe procedure.
I just lay down on the bed and cried.

Then I woke up. Freaky. Dreams can be so interesting.

Fortunately, I have a marvelous book.

10,000 Dreams Interpreted

I will admit, this dream is kind of baffling, but I have found Dream dictionaries (which is what this book really is) to be quite useful for understanding what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

This book is a good resource.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 06:37 PM | Permalink

Stephen King writes books that a lot of people like. I mean, A LOT of people like his books.

I am not one of them. Can't stand horror. Not it a snide "that's so low-brow" kind of way. More in a "Oh my god, I will never close my eyes again" kind of way. So, I've avoided Stephen King books the way some people avoid battery acid. I know what they will do to me.

This book, however, I sought out and enjoyed. King was writing about how to write. That subject can be scary too, but in a totally different way.

He has some good things to say, starting with what started him off and moving on to more technical issues.

I think I might have gotten more out of the story if I were familiar with his works, but even so, I got plenty enough out. He was fairly personal, talking about his young life and influences, and even exposing his drug and alcohol addiction.

He gave out some good advice: Don't use adverbs, especially 'zestfully.' Interesting. And he even gave some real nuts and bolts, like specific magazines and books to check out if you want to be a writer.

I will say one thing, though. I listened to a recording of this book, and that was great. I got to hear King's memories and thoughts in his own voice with his own rhythm and cadence.
BUT!
The man has the strangest way of pronouncing the sound "L" that I have ever heard in my life. He closes his throat around it. And as much as I was interested in the last bit of the book, when he got into some very practical advice, I STILL wanted to strangle him for that weird gutteral "L."

Go get the book. READ it, and you will be glad you did.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:22 PM | Permalink

Shanower took the Illiad and made it, or at least the first part of it, into a graphic novel. I love the heroic epic, and comic book format is a perfect medium to use for its re-interpretation.

I confess, I've started the Illiad, but not finished it. I know the story, but I'm shaky on some of the details. Really, the poetic language of the original can obscure some of the more prosaic details.

Also, the different Gods require interpretation. Maybe the Greek listeners knew who everyone was and what their 'powers' were, but had a little trouble keeping the dieties sorted out.

This novel was great in showing the action of the story. Naturally, the incredible beauty of the poetry can't be shown to the same advantage in a comic book. But Shanower wasn't trying to go there. He has a huge Bibliography in the back, which impressed me. I feel pretty confident that he stayed true to the facts.

I could already tell the he had kept to the characters of the people. Oddyseus had the arrogant and sales-pitch kind of conversational skills i remember from the original. Achilles and his mother interacted on their comic cell the same way they did in the stanzas.

Also, Shanower pointed out some of the political implications I had missed. Somehow, I hadn't realized that Troy was such an important trade route. It made more sense that the battle be fought from political and monetary reasons than just that Helen was such a hottie.

The drawings were wonderful, too. The decorations and clothing of the people were interesting to see. Also, Shanower employed a range of graphical devices for his storytelling that kept things very interesting. He uses his drawing in 'shots' like a movie camera, sometimes. It gives a greater perspective.

This is a worthwhile book.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:35 AM | Permalink

I'm taking a night class for writing. This one happens to be a Memoir writing class.

It fit my schedule.

But it's also a very interesting style.

One of our assignments is to read a memoir and do a presentation about it.

My lazy impulse is to do a report on a book I've already read. When I stop to think about it, I have read a lot of memoirs:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Travels With Charley by Steinbeck

Walden by Thoreau

Earth Horizon by Mary Austin

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolfe

Paradise, Piece by Piece by Molly Peacock

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

As Far As You Can Go Without A Passport by Tom Bodett

Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers

On The Road by Jack Keruoac

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman

Grass Soup by Zhang Xianlang

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

Citizen 13660by Mine Okubo

Maus by Art Spiegelman

San Francisco Stories by Derek Powazek

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston

Those are the ones I just remember, the ones I've read already (or at least started).

I love all of them. But maybe I should branch out and try reading something new.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 11:18 AM | Permalink

This is the best self-help book I have ever read. No matter how sorry for myself I feel, this book snaps me out of it.

There are sections about your love life, your pets, your friend and yourself. And they say it all, right out there.

Things like:
No one really likes you.

If your pet were bigger than you, it would consider you prey.

Your significant will never be as attracted to you as they are to a person they saw on TV once.

I'm sure a psychologist could use many multi-syllabic words to explain why, but the simple fact is, I love this book.

I grab it whenever I am overcome with too much angst or self-pity. It truly works.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There was a guy at work wearing a tigger coat.

"Oh you like Winnie the Pooh?"

"My wife loves him. She has all the movies."

MOVIES?!

He didn't even know it was a book. He didn't care that it was a book.

Poor man.

Winnie is so much cleverer on paper. That's one of the best things about it, the stories work on a very sophisticated level.

I picked it off the shelf, looking for something to read before I sleep, something that will make me have pleasant dreams.

My copy of A.A. Milne's book was published in Russia. A student gave it to me as a gift when I was there. She thought I would like to have another book to read in english.

The funny thing about it, is that is has asterisks at the hard to translate bits. In the back, there is a definition of the phrase in Russian. Phrases you wouldn't expect, like "he lived under the name of Sanders", and the gender ambiguity of the name "winnie" have to be explained.

Somethings, like "Heffalump" have the explanation saying essentially, "it doesn't translate."

It's nice too, to see a different illustrator's interpretation of the characters. Disney has permanently stamped his mark on Piglet, Kanga and Rabbit. We cannot concieve of Pooh without the red shirt.

Anyway, that's just my copy.

Go get your own. Turn off the news and sit down to remember there are pleasant places still.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:28 PM | Permalink

Checked this out of the library, on CD. It was really nice to have somebody read me a story while I did computer work. THere were some really good stories on this collection.

It surprised me, because I had read a lot of them before. I thought I hadn't seen anything from the last 30 years. But it turns out I had! Imagine that.

My favorite one from the collection, I hadn't acutally read. "Pet Fly" by Mosely. It was a great story about this guy trying to get the rhythm of corporate life.

My life is a lot of corporate nonsense.

This story tells how a regular guy sees a glimpse of the underbelly. i really liked it. I had to go find the print version of it, so I could give a copy to a friend dealing with the same sort of nonsense.

Turns out the paper version has even more stories in it. I'll have to read them.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 03:10 PM | Permalink

I was killing time, waiting for a movie to start in Glendale. There was a bookstore nearby, and I thought I would go look in there.

"Hello There!" A man in a baseball cap sat at a small table right inside the doorway smiled big. "I'm doing a book signing! Would you like one? Here: The Adventures of Rodney Appleseed"

He handed me a book with a color cover. "Oh, It's fiction!" I said, "Fiction is hard."

"Thank you for saying that," he said. "Not everyone understands that."

We talked for a moment about whether Rodney Appleseed had anything to do with Johnny Appleseed. Then I decided to buy the book.

"It's like nothing else you've ever read, " the author said.

"Don't say that!" I told him. "I've read a lot of books."

Thank you, Ross Anthony, author. I've read it. Now I can tell everyone about it.

---------------

The Infinite Adventures of Rodney Appleseed
By Ross Anthony

The hero of this book, Rodney Appleseed, might be just any boy with a preponderous ability to ask questions. But if he were, his adventures would not be infinite. And when you get a bit into the book you realize that infinity is an essential part of Rodney's adventures.

Anthony tells his story with the kind of quirky irony found in The Phantom Tollbooth . He has a message, a kind of moral to the story, similar to Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Which is not to imply that the book is in any way derivative. The whole thing was quite original, and a pleasure to read.

Anthony obviously loves the fact that as the author he can do anything he wants in his book. He twists and contorts the impossible and the plausible, having his characters do impossible things that make absolute sense. It makes the reader think about the possible things that are done in real life that make no sense. The book encourages its readers to ask questions and take chances in order to reach their dreams.

Continue reading "The Infinite Adventures of Rodney Appleseed in Nothing Happens" »

Posted by Murphy Horner at 01:28 PM | Permalink

Samantha Dunn loves horses. So much that she is willing to suffer the pain of riding, and the various injuries that came from spending time with them. But one day, she was out riding with her horse and got into a life-threatening accident. Her leg was essentially severed from her body.

I have to say, this book starts out reading like the Reader's Digest stories, you know the ones where someone suffers some horrible accident and then has to crawl bleeding to help. I swear, every issue has that story in it. I find them hard to read, but somebody must be eating them up. Otherwise they wouldn't run them.

So Not by Accident must appeal to the same sorts of people. But Samantha Dunn does what I think those stories ought to do, she takes the incident as a sign to re-assess her life. The "Why me?" gets to be more than just a pathetic whine. Dunn turns it into a soul-search, which then turns into real changes.

The book was nearly 250 pages. I could not put it down. I got it from the library on my lunch break, and I was finishing it before midnight that same night.

It's terrifying! Staring into the face of death in this story, and then the relief of being saved quickly transitions into the realization of how small and vulnerable we are. Not having strength to stand. Being dependent on others. Being a burden. Who doesn't deeply fear these possibilities? And no one is immune.

I had to keep reading, I had to know how things turned out. I wanted to know that she would be okay, so that I would know that I would be okay. If anything like that ever happened to me.

Dunn realized that she got into too many accidents. She took a long hard look at herself, and began to take responsibility for these so-called accidents. There were reasons and circumstances that led to these accidents that actually were in her control. Not to say that accidents aren't also accidental, but that the individual has to be responsible for themselves. She decided to take responsibility for herself, to become bravely involved in her recovery. And then being honest with herself and the consequences of her actions started to spill over into all of her relationships.

Despite the potentially airy-fairyness of her yoga and meditation, the book feels extremely physical and earthy. The centrality of horses and the brute reality of the injury keeps it planted.This is a great story, gripping to read and giving a meaningful payoff at the end.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 11:03 AM | Permalink

It turns out that classics just sell better than best-sellers.

All those books, even if they aren't assigned for classes, get steadily picked up and read. People know about them, recommend them to other people, and they keep selling.

I knew that. I love the classics. I make a point of reading them. I feel like I can know that I will enjoy the book, if it's made the "classic" standing.

Sure, it's exhilarating to read a new and undiscovered book that knocks my socks off...I think...I'm not sure it's really happened.

Oh wait, yes it has.

But it's risky to try new things. And there are so many books that come so highly recommended. I reach for the tried-and-true.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:25 PM | Permalink

With the second graphic novel, Speigelman pulled out all the stops. He had already experienced the success of Maus, and he even addresses it in the book.

His character is conflicted about the book and his success, and of course the whole Holocaust.

But he Goes There. The first book was disturbing, but this second one went right into the camps and describes it. I found it really hard to read. I couldn't do it straight through. It was just too tough to contemplate.

I certainly wouldn't want a younger child to read this book without some adult interaction. The issues are just so disturbing.

I really appreciate that Speigelman didn't try to tell us a moral at the end of the story, that he just told the story. He just told what he could about what happened.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 11:15 PM | Permalink

13660 was the number given to the author family as they were inducted into the japanese internment camos.

This book is unusual, different from any other book I'd read because it was highly illustrated. Mine Okubo wrote the book about her experience in a Japanese internment camp. She is a talented artist, and naturally, she didn't stop being a talented artist in the internment camp.

What's with camps? Concentration camps, gulags, internment camps...It seems like the WWII era was all about camps. Everybody had to have one.

Okubo made drawings of the things that happened in the camps. She starts the book before the camps, a really dramatic place to start. She lived in the San Francisco area and was just about her business. It was hard for her to believe that the camps would be happening.

But they did.

She drew herself into almost all the drawings. The pictures are very cartoon-like, and have the same sort of impact as a comic book. THe expression on her face (it's hard to draw the right expression!) tells so much about the story. Her writing is very factual, Since the story is so dramatic on it's own, she doesn't need to get on a soapbox about how she felt or how it was wrong or what should have happened.

It's a great book. It's probalby a really great book to give to Jr. High students or high school students to learn about history. Because the book is presented plainly, and with a lot of respect for the reader. You are definitely allowed to make up your own mind.

I am far more interested in history when I can associate a story with it. This book does that very well.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This book is mostly about the Oxford English Dictionary. The title is talking about the relationship between one of the main editors and one of the main contributors who happened to be in an insane asylum.

Honestly, I'm not sure that I would have been excited to read a whole book about those topics separately, but together I think it really worked.

I didn't know about the history of dictionaries before I read this book. I knew that the OED was the biggest dictionary, but I didn't really understand why.

Now I know. THey set out the catalog and define every single word in the language. Oh my god! And without computers!

So it took a lot of volunteers to do it. That's where the madman comes in. W.C. Minor had killed someone in a delusionary state, and ended up in an asylum for the criminally insane.

But he was a highly educated man, and wanted to help out this dictionary project. He had a lot of free time.

For me, one of the most poignant things about this work is the practical story of how to live productively under the constraints of mental illness.

I hate it when I'm sick. I have all these things I wish I could do. But my body is too weak for me to run around and do them. I feel like my body has let me down.

I can not imagine how frustrating it would be to not be able to rely on your mind. I have to be honest, it scares me. Maybe that's part of the stigma of being insane. People are afraid it might happen to them.

But it's not fair to the people who suffer under this difficulty. We, the rest of the community should be compassionate and help the people who have this problem.

The Hours, especially the movie, kind of deals with mental illness too.Virginia Woolfe talks about her struggles to find fulfillment and balance in her life and yet protect herself from her own mind's machinations.

Minor found this incredibly great outlet, working on the dictionary. He was a great asset to the work, and left behind a marvelous legacy. It would be wonderful if other mentally ill people were able to do the same.

The book was a really quick read, and very informative about dictionaries. The story of the madman Minor made it really more personal too.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 02:05 PM | Permalink

Someone just posted reference to the 100 best novels in the English Language from the 20th Century.

Here is the list. Conveniently, the webauthor included links for a lot of the books. Thank you!

This is a neat list of books. I've read a lot of them, but maybe I'll try to read some more of them.

I don't think I agree that these are the hundred best. But "best" is a highly subjective word.

Let's just say they are good, and maybe I'll use it as a guide for some new books to try.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 12:50 PM | Permalink

I was very sad to discover that one of my favorite books from my childhood has been cuffed by the PC police.

I hate to think that anyone would be made to feel inferior or bad about themselves because of this book. I have so many fond memories of it. But I just don't think it's true. Tell me I'm wrong.

Doctor Dolittle, in the book, started out as a people doctor, but he loved animals. Eventually, his parrot taught him parrot language and other animal languages. He had so many adventures and interesting things happen to him.

In the first book of what became a series, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, the Doctor wants to meet the greatest naturalist the world has ever known.

His parrot scoffs at the idea that any naturalist could be better than Doctor Dolittle, but even she admits that this naturalist is a pretty good one.

He is an old old native american, an Indian who has spent his life learning about plants and animals. Doctor Dolittle is sure they would have a lot to teach each other.

On the way to finding the Indian man, Doctor Dolittle has to go to African countries. The king and his people have been mistreated by the white people that came before, and are not welcoming. But the doctor is clever, and he has a lot of help from the animals. He makes it through and escapes for the African king.

The book was written in 1920, and the illustrations are typically racist in the way of that era. The inhuman caricature of the African peoples, with the big lips and strange hair are not realistic or appropriate.

I would be happier if they were not part of the books, even though i really love the artistic style of all the other illustrations.

In fact, I remember as a child wondering about those pictures. I was confused, I thought that the illustrator had suddenly lost his skill. I asked my mom whey they looked so funny. She said that people used to draw black people like that, and that I was right, it was silly.

The characters, the africans in the story, are not treated in a racist way. In fact, the Doctor defends the Africans' suspicion of him as a white person, saying it was understandable since they had been mistreated. The Africans are a little silly, but no sillier than any of the other characters in the book (the pirates, the cat's meat man at Puddleby).

I am disappointed that they have "improved" upon Hugh Lofting's original work. I think it is fine the way it was written.

I know that I, my brothers, and all our friends would discuss at length the Doctor Dolittle books. We wondered what the Solid gold collar would look like, and I am now very aware of the different smells of water.

All of us became fascinated with ship's biscuit, and forced our mothers to buy it for it.

I still like hard tack (aka ship's biscuit)

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What are you supposed to expect, with a title like that?

This is the book my fabulous book club chose this month. I had honestly never heard of it before. The blurb just starts out "A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover--these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel."

When i read that in the bookstore, I said, "Oh goody! It's a book about sex!"

Well, that idea was killed on the first page, and I was upset.

Until I read a little further.

Masterful, yeah. And a few other words i haven't thought of yet.

My favorite parts were how he addresses ideological movements, and the smallness of individuals in the face of large forces.

His discusison of Oedipus had be pacing all night, chewing on all the ramifications and talking to myself.
Well, talking to my cat.
That's why I have a cat. So I don't talk to myself.

I finished it, and immediately wanted to read it again. That hasn't happened in a long time.

The funny thing is, I read a book that was a parody of this one. It was a parody of other books too, but as I was reading this one, I kept thinking, this is familiar.

Then I remembered, It's the sort of book that If On a Winter's Night a Traveler was ripping on.

And I suddenly realized that If On a Winter's Night A Traveler was a lot funnier than I had realized.

But hey, the point is, I love this book. I will not be selling it back.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My question, after only a few pages into this book, is Why haven't I heard more about it?

This is a really great book.

It's kind of like crossing a good Tom Clancy with Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Just imagine the marvelousness of that, and you have Catch 22. It's very funny, it's very profound. It works on almost any level you want to take it.

I heard that Tom Brokaw, in his younger days, was totally enamoured of this book. He went around writing "Yossarian Lives!" on things.

I can kind of see why.

And therefore, more people need to read this and put it on their favorites list.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:30 PM | Permalink

I was looking for a different book, but it wasn't there. So I just grabbed this one:

Jim Valentino's A Touch of Silver Book One: A Sociopath in Training

I was looking for comic books, since this funny guy at work is all into him. Every time I pass his cube he tells me the Superhero (or villain) of the day.

THese are selected by his "Superhero of the Day" Calendar. There was a time when my brothers were all into comics...And so I read a lot of them, slipping the precious booklets out of their plastic sleeve and turning the pristine pages very carefully.

The Superhero of the day is usually someone I've heard of, which amazes the heck out of me.

And it reminded me that comics are fun.

WHich is why I checked out this "Graphical Novel". That's what my comic buddy reminded me to call it, "It's not a cartoon," he said.

Okay, fine.

This book was not about superheroes, but about a kid who liked superheroes. He used them to escape from his icky life and not-very-nice family.

I like the devices Valentino uses to progress the story every once in a while, going from in the moment to after the fact. THis builds a little tension and lets the reader feel more of what's going on internally.

I'm going to check out book two...

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:11 AM | Permalink

A quote from E.L. Doctorow's introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2000:

"...it is a fiction in which society is surmised as the darkness around the narrative circle of light. In other words, the scale of the short story predisposes it to the isolation of the self. And the author's awareness of loneliness is a literary dignity he grants his characters in spite of their circumstances..."

Oh my god. I would yawn if I weren't completely paralyzed from boredom.

YES, I am about to rant.

I LOVE books. I LOVE short stories. I LOVE stories. Reading, hearing, creating STORIES.

I even went to school for a frighteningly long time and got a DEGREE in stories.

Well, that's what I wanted to get my degree in. I ended up getting my degree in literature.

Which is not the same thing. But it was the closest I could get.

Do I think that Doctorow knows what he's talking about? Certainly! It can be useful to dissect and label the pieces of stories, as you would a frog.

But the appreciation of frogs or stories is not dependent on such dissection! There is a more holistic way to approach stories.

This is one of my major frustrations with formal education regarding literature. I understand the lure of charts and diagrams and answer books.

But they are doomed to being incomplete and therefore false.

For what the codification and dissection have to offer, I appreciate them. But for what they exclude, I loathe them.

Mr. Doctorow, and all literature professors, don't kill the story to examine it. It lives in the reading. At least let the readers read it before you tell them what they have to see in it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:42 AM | Permalink

Sometimes, it's hard to make it through a whole novel. But you really want the satisfaction of reading a good story.

Short stories really scratch that itch.

When I'm busy, and I really want to escape into a story, I often read compilations or anthologies.

I found this one, The Best American Non-Required Reading from 2002. David Eggers edited it, and I had been interested in reading more of his stuff. Although I've been attracted to him through articles and other things, I still haven't read his main works, such as the magazine McSweeney's. Well, at least I admit it.

It was a wicked little collection. David Sedaris was included, although I can't say his story was the best one. I loved Rodney Rothman's story of crashing the corporate world without actually working there. Supreme.

McKenzie's "Stop That Girl" was engaging. It was a very female story, lots of interesting women in it.

But "Higher Education" by Gary Smith was my favorite. It will stay with me. So wholesome it could have done just as easily in a Reader's Digest, it was needed in this young, hip, cynical compilation.

I'm young enough to be the same kind of cynical Eggers is aiming for. And I also get cynical of my own cynicism. I love that this story ends it, and shows that yes, one person can make a difference and be as real and true to himself as humanly possible.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:08 AM | Permalink

I finally finished this book. I think it took me upwards of 6 months. It's long. And it's not really that fast-moving.

I did care about the characters though.

But the real reason I persevered is because my Victorian lit teacher said that Middlemarch is Elliot's quintessential book. I had read Mill On the Floss in his class and truly enjoyed it. He said he would have liked to have us read Middlemarch, but it was too long to read for the class. We were already reading a lot of other books.

When I finished Middlemarch, I really wished that I had read in it a class. It seems to me that there was a lot going on, and that I would have been better able to understand it if I'd had some people to talk it out with.

I especially thought that the ladies in teh book were interesting archetypes. This was not a book about one female heroine. Or even one male hero. There were a lot of stories of different people who chose to live their lives in different ways.

Dorothea is the most interesting character. But Mary Garth is very sympathetic, and Rosamond had promise. Celia, Dorothea's sister, could have gone either way. SHe ended up being a little too good a fit for the mold of society. That made her much less interesting.

But she had no desire to be interesting.

Well, in the absence of a class discussion, I looked up some websites to see what others had to say. Here is one website's list of major themes.

But the specific treatment of the women on the book was lacking.

Too bad. I guess nothing really takes the place of free discussion.

I think, right now, that I liked Mill on the Floss much better. But maybe Middlemarch will grow on me with time.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:41 AM | Permalink

(This is Cross-Posted)

Everybody knows Mark Twain, but he has written more stories than most people are aware of.

I was gifted with The Diary of Adam and The Diary of Eve for an anniversary present some time ago.

They are wickedly funny. The oldest arguments between man and wife had very early beginnings. I recommend couples reading them aloud to one another. It's fun to compare the different perspectives on the same events, too.

Check it out.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 06:21 AM | Permalink

(This is cross-posted)

Some days I go to work, and I can smile at people. We exchange pleasantries and stale jokes in the coffee room.

It is easy to forget that none of them want what's best for me. NONE of them.

In a perfect world, we would all work together towards improved efficiency, lowering costs and bettering service.

This is not that world. Everyone has to watch out for their own interests.

And that's not such a bad thing. Who is the one most qualified to watch out for your own interests than you? really, the scheme is an excellent division of labor.
In the system, NOT looking out for your own interests would really be letting your employer down.

A book that I picked up at a trade show after a cranky and frustrating morning at work reminds me of my duty to look out for number one.

What Would Machiavelli Do? the Ends Justify the Meanness

It's pretty silly, but sometimes I have to remember that I am not among friends. I am among co-workers.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My wonderfully intelligent book club voted on this book for February. I'd read a lot of Oscar Wilde, but not this one.

As far as I know, it's his only novel.

It had all kinds of interesting philosophical propositions in it. Like, what is the value of physical beauty when compared to beauty of the soul?
And, how much of our motivation to do the right things stems from whether we will be caught?

But one of the things that made this book delightful to read was the razor wit of Oscar Wilde.

Those late Victorians were just fabulous at turning a phrase on a pin. Gilbert & Sullivan spring to mind.

So wicked and most of the time, so true!

The book was a lot of fun, but it was weighty too. It was a good book to have a discussion about.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was supposed to meet someone at the Barnes and Noble in Pasadena. He didn't show.

I didn't really expect him to.

But I didn't want to miss a chance of checking out a new book store. And the meeting supplied a justification for the 6 dollars I had to fork out for parking.

In the bargain bin, for ONE dollar, I found a hardback of Molly Peacock's Paradise, Piece by Piece.

I'd never heard of her before, but the back of the book said, "By exploring her choice not to have children, Molly Peacock discovers what has made her herself."

That seemed worth a buck.

As it turns out, Molly Peacock is a poet of sonnets, and someone I should perhaps be aware of, since I aspire to be a literature snob.

Well, the book is supposed to be about her choice not to have children.

She's from an earlier time than I; to me the choice not to have children does not seem so amazing. This is due in a large part to the battle that 60s and later feminists did to change American culture. Women now are not defined entirely by the female capacity of hatching eggs and lactating.

Not so much anyway.

So for me, the thrust and thread of the stories was how Molly learned to deal with others' expectations for her.

Her mother expected things from her.
Her father expected things.
Her sister expected.

Her lovers, her husbands, her employers and her students expected things.
Random strangers expected things.

But she also expected things from herself.
She had to learn to listen to herself and screen out other people.

It's a very hard thing to do, to choose and shape your own destiny. Deciding on the shape of your life, what you will and won't do, based fundamentally on your own desires and needs takes courage. It is not accomplished in one moment.

I like how she continues to revisit her choices and decisions--sometimes because others challenge her, but sometimes because she herself is completely unsure of what she's doing.

I relate to that.

The books is on sale on Amazon, too. It's definitely worth it.
Good bathtub reading.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:40 PM | Permalink

This was obviously Cross-Posted on Blogcritics. But I didn't want my own blog to miss out
***

Blogcritics is a beautiful thing. And I don't care if it's self-promotion, it deserves to be said. It's a wonderful thing to have a collection of interesting people giving their own opinions and publishing them in a place that others can get to.

It's hard to find fresh and unfettered points of view sometimes.

Except on the internet! The internet is full of that sort of thing.

If you know where to look.

I know we are supposed to point to Amazon.com when we recommend a book. It's kind of cheating, but I want to recommend a book.

San Francisco Stories by Derek Powazek is a really good collection of stories. Derek caught the mood of foggy, laid-back, soul-searching San Francisco.

If you love the City by the Bay, or even just the idea of it, get the book!

I know you San Francisco-philes would love the feeling of getting an off-the-beaten-track book as well.

Derek started this thing as a website, sfstories.com. I don't remember how I stumbled upon it, but it touched me and I kept coming back.

I don't live in the bay area anymore, but I went back there recently and found out he'd made a book.

GO, web-boy, GO!

So check it out. It's worth a look.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:30 PM | Permalink

Readers, I am so excited about The Lord of The Rings movie coming out!

I was talking to a friend at work, and I mentioned some of the background mythology for this story. He wanted more information about it. Well, I started to write an email, and I couldn't stop. It's more of a blog post. Here you are:

Beowulf is one of the oldest books in ancient English (Anglo Saxon) still around. Originally, literacy in the British Isles was concentrated in Latin, since Latin was the language of their ruling elite, the Romans.

Although the Brits had their own language and writing (known as runes), they mostly relayed their cultural stories through word of mouth (oral tradition). Beowulf is only one of these stories, and it is highly treasured because it is one of the very few peeks we have into the culture of the Anglo-Saxons (MY people-transparently white child that I am).

I know of two main reasons why more stories didn't survive:
one, the advent of Christianity created an unfavorable environment for stories about pagan deities. The British Isles, and especially Ireland, really embraced Christianity when it arrived. Some of the stories were christianized, and deities and legendary heroes got cleaned up into "saints."

Beowulf has some christianizing in it too.

But the second reason is because of the Norman invasion.In the 11th century, I think, the French came in and enslaved (enserfed?) all the Anglo-Saxons. The Roman empire had long been dead, although Latin was still the Lingua Franca. But Anglo-Saxon writing and speech was what ordinary people used to communicate. When the French took over, they insisted that everyone speak French. Servants only spoke English to each other. And naturally, they had limited time to chew the fat. The complicated grammatical structure of Anglo-Saxon got mushed into a quicker, less nuanced speech. Anglo-Saxon wasn't really taught; if a person went to be educated, they learned Latin or French. The Anglo-Saxon words that survive in English today are servants words. Swine for a live pig, but the Norman Pork for the meat (the only part that the Lord of the manor would see). Interestingly, all the cuss words survive.

Some of that Norman/Anglo-Saxon antagonism is played on in Monty Python's Holy Grail. You've seen it, I imagine.

But English was saved, as a language, when Chaucer decided to write his "Canterbury Tales" in English. His patrons were Norman nobility, and there was a current of thought at the time which said that nothing poetic could come from this servant language. But the Canterbury Tales were written entirely in English, and this bold statement on the part of Chaucer encouraged many others to attempt the same. Shakespeare would never have written the way he did if not for Chaucer.

Of course, after Shakespeare all kinds of things happened. He was part of the renaissance, then the Age of Reason (aka the age of revolutions: American, French) happened. Then the Romantic period followed that, reacting to the cold idealization of reason. The Romantic period focused on the beauty of nature, and the transformative power of love and higher emotions. Nature elicited those emotions, so nature (with or without the concept of the Christian God, which had suffered some blows during that "reason" period), nature was raised as a saving mercy. The beauty of nature was a place of refuge and a reminder of the beauty of life, a sort of reassurance that good things endure. Thoreau, who wrote Walden, was on the tail end of the American Romantic period.

But then the INDUSTRIAL AGE began. English and American capitalists started raping and pillaging NATURE for fun and profit. Actually, all kinds of capitalists were doing it, not just the English-speaking ones.

Also, around this time, Darwin and other naturalists starting coming up with plausible theories that did away with the need for a benevolent deity. "Survival of the Fittest" was a philosophy that knocked the stuffing out of the idea of nature as a beautiful restorative refuge. Nature wanted to kill you, so that it could eat you. And if you couldn't thrive, it was probably just as well that you died. One less weak genetic contributor.

How horrifying! You can imagine the slow, sick realization of all these things. The Victorian English ended up focusing primarily on appearances. Keeping a stiff upper lip, doing your duty for your country, and not upsetting society. America also had strong middle-class bourgeois tendencies. Certainly, we were happy to keep any new immigrant class "in their proper place", often using the new Darwinistic philosophies to justify the mistreatment of other nationalities and the prejudicial racist treatment of African-Americans. "Nature" had made things hard, and the dominant culture took their dominant status as their natural (god-given?) right.

It was the "enlightened" and "modern" way of thinking. Do your duty, do the right thing for no other reason that that it was right. Until World War one happened. Then the "right thing" led to all kinds of wrong things. Thousands and thousands of good people, young upstanding soldiers died fighting for the meaningless cause of a few miles, a few feet of dirt.

The soldiers got really close to nature then. Sitting for months in their foxholes, seeing nothing but dirt, mud, excrement and the bodies of their mates decomposing nearby.

When it was all over, not much had changed but their attitudes. The "modern" way of thinking now meant utter disillusionment. It is no accident that the era was called "The Depression." God was irrelevant, nature meaningless, and hope was scarce.

It was during this period of time that J.R.R. Tolkein conceived the story of Middle Earth.
You thought I was never gonna take it back around, didn't you?

Now, most of what _I_ know about concerns the cultures that speak English--America and England. To have the full picture, I will eventually have to learn more about Germany. Because the Germans were REALLY the ones who pursued heroic legends and folks tales. They started it much sooner than the English did. Remember the Brother's Grimm fairy tales? Now that people have started to study fairy tales more extensively, we have found that they are STUNNINGLY similar across cultures. I think I read that almost every culture has a Cinderella story, which is my personal favorite.

But the German stories were very close to English stories. We actually are a Germanic people, sharing a culture with the folks over there in what's now called Germany. Wagner also took a well-known Norse legend and made it into his Ring Cycle.

Did I say "ring"? Why, yes I did! It's the same ring from essentially the same story that Tolkien was ripping off of.

But let me focus on Tolkien again. He was a Medieval scholar at Oxford, and he was probably one of the weirdest guys there. He hung out with C.S. Lewis, of Narnia fame, while he was there. I"ve been to the pub in Oxford where they all hung out. They would have a pint and read their writing to each other. Tolkien was obsessed with the Medieval legends; he has also published a version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated for the Middle English. He knew all the stories live he was living in them.

I think he tried to live in them. I have read that he wrote the Lord of The Rings series in a made-up langauge (elfin, maybe?) and then TRANSLATED it into modern English.

COOkOO!

But it is my opinion that he was trying to escape into another world. This one wasn't offering much, and he wanted to retreat into a place where heroism and courage and honor still counted.

You notice, I"m sure, that one of the characteristics of a "fantasy novel" is that it takes place before any industrialism. About the most technological they get is a windmill.

And Tolkien was the one in the English language that created the foundation of a complicated fantasy world.His universe is extremely fleshed out. He is as obsessed as you want to be. And many of his fans today are quite obsessed.

But see, he wrote these books in a particular place in time.They were moderately popular in his time, because people felt an affinity for the world that he had created. The novels are complicated. They begin in the middle, the way life does. The characters do something that will have an effect beyond the scope of the novel. They have done something lasting and meaningful. Their heroism is not wasted or twisted into evil ends, as was the heroism of the WWI soldiers.

Basically, Tolkien was calling on the power of myth, the myths that had evolved and been honed through generations of wise and intuitive storytellers. He knew the myths of his culture forward and back; and he dramatized them anew for modern sensibilities.

Society was sick and needed to hear a story. The story they needed was essentially the one we needed all along. Moses, Homer, and wise clan leaders told the stories. Tolkien put it in the language modern readers could understand, with the structure we were used to now. We didn't use poetic chants...We use dialogue and description.

We don't use campfires so much. We use ink and paper.

As I said, the Lord of the Ring was moderately popular when Tolkien first published it. But it wasn't until the hippies rediscovered it that it went platinum, so to speak.

The hippies were sick of the old ways, and they BELIEVED in a new order. Frodo's heroism was possible for them, they knew it! Hope was everywhere, and so were the Hobbit books.

This is also when the fantasy book market opened up.

NOW, with all that intro
(I am nothing if not thorough)
I would like to propose some of the original myth stories to be read by a fan of fantasy.

TRY
Beowulf
Sigurd the Dragon Slayer
Tales of King Arthur
All fairy tales
the Grimm fairy tales
fairy tales of any culture, particularly of the culture you are from
(if you are an American mutt like me, go for ALL the cultures that are in your mix)
The Iliad & The Odyssey
Gilgamesh
the Aenid (although, that's an artificial myth, just like Tolkien's)
Greek Drama (yeah, like Oedipus Rex)

All these are a little difficult to engage, because they are not told in the way we are used to. We are accustomed to being entertained in certain set ways, for plots to move in certain patterns. These stories pre-date those templates.

But they are worth the trouble of reading. You will find that they stay on your mind in ways you didn't expect. And they don't go away. The images stay, working as metaphors that give you handles on life's confusing moments.

That's what they are supposed to do.

And for learning more about myths, as a topic, I cannot more highly recommend Joseph Campbell.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Park Your Car in Harvard Yard by Israel Horovitz, produced by LA theater works

This was labelled as a COMEDY, which is completely incorrect. According to classical definitions, comedy ends in a marriage. Tragedy ends in death. Well, this ended in death.

You make the call.

Perhaps we've progressed beyond classical definitions, and find death the funniest thing we've ever heard?

Probably not. But there were a few funny moments in this play. Mostly not, though.

It's set in Massachusetts, a place that makes me think of my friend Christy. She lived there for a year. That's the east coast, the OLD part of America. They have a sense of the social class that we don't have as well defined here.

Imagine! Your family being in one area for generations, and all of them doing the same sort of work. Dock work, maybe. Or some kind of unskilled manual labor. Having the same few miles that you know. And not knowing at all how to get past them.

I don't respect those sorts of boundaries, I consider them a dare most of the time. As in, "I can't? Who says I can't? I'll show you!"

Anyway, the high school teacher that everyone was afraid of, for years and years, is finally on his deathbed. He needs someone to help him. And this woman comes to be his housekeeper until he dies.

She is his former student, only she doesn't tell him that right away. Some part of her hopes he will remember, but knows bitterly that he will not.

They have more things binding them together, being in the same place for so long, than you would expect.

He is full of rage and regret at how his life turned out.
She is too. And she actually blames him for a lot of it. Her ticket out was education, but he flunked her and slammed that door.

I'm mad at him too, for her. He should have been a better teacher, and tried to help them learn. He should not have held the bar so high and mocked his students when they could not pass it.

I think he was trying to illustrate dramatically how SUPERIOR he was to them.

But she should have kicked harder against her lot, if she really didn't like it.

At the end, though, they were both in the same neighborhood, they both endured the same cold winters.

How different are we, really?
These two were quite similar.

He was trying to die, which is a difficult thing. She was trying to live, which can be much harder at some times than at others.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:25 PM | Permalink

..."in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much the the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowningly: you and I may have sent some of our breath towards infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions..."
George Eliot, from Middlemarch

I haven't finished Middlemarch yet, but that passage stopped me cold. Eliot wrote it 130 years ago, and how true it remains! We all know those people "fit to be packed by the gross", and I for one fear daily becoming one.

But the path lays so simply and easily in front of me, of us. The path from the bed to the closet full of work clothes, the path from the door to cubicle, then back to the prepackaged, demographically designed entertainment and commercial marketing

What disturbs me so much about the demographically designed entertainment is how ACCURATE they are! yes, I AM entertained by the same things that so many others of my age/sex/ethnicity/economic strata are!

And what better proof that I am fit to be packed by the gross?!?

I have, in the past, combat this by being scornful and suspicious of anything popular. If too many people liked something, I should not. Very simple. I can't be like everyone else then.

Levi's, Disneyland, popular film, music, television, all these things were to be dismissed, or if not, became guilty pleasures. Perhaps I could intellectualize a movie, if I liked it too much. "You see, Mulan is struggling with her gender identity and trying to come to terms with her own conception of herself!"

The major problem with this approach to life is it's essential FALSENESS. It is reactionary rather than reasoned or real. It did not take into account the merit of the thing.

If I refused to like things that were popular, and tried to embrace things that were alternative, edgy, or avant garde for no better reason than because they were DIFFERENT, I am not seeking a higher path.

I realized that I must look closely at the thing in question. Be engaged in my life; and to evaluate and try to understand what I engage it. This is responsibility at work. THIS is greater individuality.

And yet, the earlier way was better defined. It is frightening to leave behind easy labels.

I was QUITE nervous to visit Disneyland. My boyfriend would not accept my dismissal of it being evil. He said, "you have not been there since you were five. How do you know it's evil?"

So. I have been to Disneyland, and I guess it is not evil. It is a tool, and it can be USED for evil in the wrong hands. That's all I will say about it for now.

Naturally, I do not have to live my life in Disneyland. I live my life between the lines from the bed to the closet and the door to the cubicle. In between the lines, and on the margins, I look for ways to creatively express my individuality. There are flashes of poetry on the meeting notes I have on the table, and I can find time to read Eliot on the bus.

But I strive to remain engaged. Does it have to be this way? In between and on the margins might be a little shabby for my individuality.

Is there another path? Surely, there are other ways to live. Millions of people have lived their lives in millions of other ways.

I have heard a story about a man who put into his margins what I have made the lines.

Sam Hamill, who I only know about because books from his publishing house have been nominated for an award, drew his own lines. He decided a life dedicated to poetry would be his. I am awestruck. He created a publishing house for poetry.

Poetry, that difficult and indescribably beautiful artform that humankind has been turning and returning to since words were formed:difficult, because we must let go of pre-established equational connections and form our minds to new synaptic leaps.

Hamill chose poetry over a pension. He decided that renewing his mind was more important than stability.

I am amazed, astounded and envious.

I heard on the radio (I have searched, but I can't find it again...suffice it to say, it was an NPR station) the story of how he started Copper Canyon Press. He found an old 1907 printing press! He set the type by hand!

Later, he moved from Colorado to Washington, because he could get free rent there.

It is not like I haven't heard of people moving around, and doing "irresponsible" things like that. I grew up with people who did not want to be packed by the gross.

Alaska. There are barely enough people to MAKE a gross there.

So, I understood the "free rent" allure. I knew family after family that moved there, bought a plot of virgin land for practically nothing, and meant to build their dream home, their special individual place for THEM and THEIR FAMILY to be unique.

So, in the three months of summer, they threw up an A-frame structure, and did their best to insulate it against the quickly approaching winter.

And for years afterwards, the pink fiberglass and bedsheets for walls became stained with use, and the path to the outhouse grew bare and hardened.

This sort of individuality was common and not admirable, in my mind. Sure, it could be called "the path less traveled." I'm sure the (non-Alaskan) parents and extended families of the people who chose this life thought their children were the only ones in the world to live this way.

Well, I was FROM Alaska and not so easily impressed. These were the people who could be packed by the gross for me.

What purpose did this lifestyle serve? "Anti-materialism" or "anti-establishment" is only a negation. What is the positive contribution?

Hamill lived in his Washington home without the "basics", in the same way as those crazy Alaskans. However, HE made a lasting contribution to the world.

I feel challenged.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:12 PM | Permalink

While looking in the library for the original Doctor Doolittle series (which, believe me, is a whole nother story) I remembered another series of books I loved as a child: Moomintrolls.

It is fun to go back to the books you read as a child and see what you think of them when you are grown up. Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh are nice escapes from the grown-up world. And they have enough good stuff to please the more sophisticated adult reader, too.

But those two books are well-known. When I would talk to my friends about the Moominfamily, I got blank looks.

This was hard to understand! My brother and I read the series voraciously, reading some of them even twice.

I asked my brother if he remembered the Moomins. He did. He even said that the author, Tove Jansson, had won awards for the psychological complexity and apporpriateness of the books.

Wow!

Well, I finally remembered to remember the Moomins when I was at the library. I grabbed the first Moomin book on the shelf that my hand fell on.

MoominPappa at Sea

Here is the first paragraph:

"One afternoon at the end of August, Moominpappa was walking about in his garden feeling at a loss. He had no idea what to do with himself, because it seemed everything there was to be done had already been done or was being done by sombody else."

Oh yes. Yes. This was going to be everything I had enjoyed as a child and more. What a perfect description!

Moominpappa and Moominmamma are so real, they have such human feelings and interactions and reactions.

Moomintroll is the perfect introspective child, and Little My is the best bratty little sister.

They meet the most fascinating people and make friends with them as best they can. The stories of their adventures are a kind of magical realism fairy tale.

As you see, I am re-smitten.

BUT! There is very little awareness in America about these wonderful stories!

It's hard to imagine.

If you have a child, run, don't walk, to buy these books and read them to your little one.

And if you are looking for a little escape from the grown-up world to a gentler place, read a moominbook. There is no way you will regret it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 06:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just finished listening to The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland. Yes, you read right. I said, “listened.” I have discovered the joy of books on tape. I love to read, and when I am doing almost anything else, I wish I could be reading.

With a recorded book, I get the joy of reading while still accomplishing the other things I need to do. While doing housework, even on the job, I can hear a marvelous story and be taken away from the mundane.

This book was read by Gigi Bermingham, who really did a marvelous job. She changed her voice for the different characters and used just the right amount of Italian accent to make it work.

Artemisia, of course, is the first female painter to be admitted to the academy of Florence. Vreeland emphasizes her womanhood with sympathy. She is not a strange martyr, like Joan of Arc. Artemisia is shown to have all the universally female issues to deal with: how to be a mother, daughter, lover and wife.

Her tutor even sexually abuses her, and her father is unsympathetic. This is, unfortunately, a familiar situation for many women even to the modern day.

Artemisia is an artist, above all. Vreeland shows how she struggles to be a great painter and to grapple with large ideas. Galileo shows up, apparently they were friends. His Earth-moving theory and her tradition-shattering career choice are well matched.

Artemisia, as Vreeland portrays her, is very human and very familiar. She triumphs and she fails. But she does not give up on her art; she does not give up her pursuit of truth and beauty.

Vreeland evokes a full range of emotion for her Artemisia. She is passionate, she is angry, she is enraptured, but she is also tired and frustrated. She is very real.

Bermingham speaks for her just perfectly, too. She enunciates carefully and in a feminine way for Artemisia. Her phrasing added to the pleasure of the book.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 05:57 PM | Permalink

This is cross-posted on Blogcritics

Yes, I recorded it. Of Course! I'll be watching it all week. The Forsytes are a complicated family, and stand up to repeat examination. Old Jolyon, Young Jolyon and Soames Forsyte are the men of note. Little June grows up before our eyes and Winifred scandalizes everyone, but harmlessly. Mostly. The Aunts tut tut over every little thing. There seems to be such importance placed on the smallest detail of propriety. And they all take such pride in the "Forsyte's good name."

The Victorian age was a tough time for people to figure out. With the Industrial era setting in, people who had no formal expectation of rising socially found themselves filthy rich and wanting to be upper class. England's class system of nobility couldn't hold all the worthy contenders.

Since nobility was not as easy to achieve as wealth, they had to settle on a different measure of what was upper class. Money, naturally, was easy to decide on. But there was that other part of nobility…nobility of character… that was implied (in complete disregard of evidence of such in their ranks) to the noble classes. Respectability was prized. If you were rich, but were vulgar or not respectable, all the other people, so desperately clawing for status, could look down upon you. You can see how the slightest impropriety would be pounced on as grounds for derision and exclusion.

Yes, the Victorians were prudish. And extremely money conscious. The Forsyte series makes that immediately evident.

But the Victorians were not without heart. Anyone who has read the Bronte Sisters knows the kind of high-flown passion the Victorians held dear. Jane Eyre and Heathcliff and all of them, falling so deeply in love, like falling off a cliff. They had nothing to orient them, and no handhold to grasp. Except respectability, which Jane had and Heathcliff did not.

So the Forsyte, and the rest of the Victorians, followed the rules to stay on track. There were so many rules, so so many, that it would keep them occupied past their moments of passion.

Young Jolyon, the artist, was able to recognize his passion. He knew enough to see the pearl of great price and give up what he had to in order to take it. He had the capacity for great love. It is easy for the viewer to recognize that—he is the artist after all.

But for poor Soames, to encounter the passion of his life and have nothing preparing him for it, the situation is agonizing. He was impeccable, always doing the right thing at the right time. Nothing but that, and always that, the right thing. He is the one who pushes the other Forsytes to harden their hearts against the members of their clan who trespass. Soames expresses the harsh opinion of "people" without a word, merely maintaining the hardness of his features.

It is chilling and wonderful.

But when he meets Irenie, he is lost. He is helpless in the face of his love, admiration and passion for her. There are so many men who are capable of falling so hard in love, but might be like Soames, having absolutely no idea what to do with their feeling.

Soames blunders it. He knows how to be respectable, but he doesn't know how to enjoy life. Irene does, but he will not learn from her. He expects her to meet him on his terms. It is not hard to see how this will turn out.

I am mesmerized by Soames, even more than Irene or Young Jolyon. He is so controlled, that when he finally says "You are charming beyond words," it is as if the words were formed in flame.

I can't wait to see the rest of the series.

Check your local listings. I think many places repeat the first episode, and the rest is still coming.

And if you don't "do" TV, then by all means read the books. They are as good, maybe better.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 05:55 PM | Permalink

THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham

There were two things that immediately put me on my guard with this book. One, the book was a takeoff on Mrs. Dalloway, and I don’t have a high regard for takeoffs. Second, the author is a male writing about the interior lives of women whish is suspect. I decided to wait and see what Cunningham had to offer, and make my assessment after I finished.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolfe expanded the significance of a single day into an entire novel. The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, takes the significance of the novel Mrs. Dalloway and tracks it across the lives of several people, still keeping the temporal window of a single day.

It’s not the same day, though. He tracks Mrs. Woolfe, Mrs. Brown and Clarissa, women of different generations, during their significant day. He manages to show how the novel has affected each woman in her own time. It is an interesting twist on Woolfe’s original work.

I remember reading Mrs. Dalloway, and thinking that it was not a long book, but that it was something I should probably read twice to get it’s meaning. I did not read it twice. Perhaps I will read it again now.

Woolfe’s novel highlights the importance of a single point in time. One of the things I took away from the book was a sense of Virginia trying to say, trying to write, trying to impress upon the reader every single impression of the characters. Every day, every MOMENT is filled past capture with sensory experiences and cognitive reaction to that experience. It is as if she wanted to capture the entirety of what a day is for the people that live in it. There is an inexhaustible fullness of joy in every moment; there is a sorrow in the passing time as well. Her sad Septimus was not able to cope with his allotted hours, the past, present or future moments which made up his life. It was too much for him.

Cunningham’s The Hours expands and savors the moments, as well. It seems that his selection of title comes from that emphasis. He has beautiful turns of phrases, capturing feeling and sensation and emotion elegantly. He put a window to the hearts and minds of the women in the book; it made me wonder how he knew. He must be very empathetic, or have some excellent female friends to share with him. It’s still a little studied, not the organic expression that Woolfe could convey.

The Hours is well worth reading. It is leisurely and lovely, and it made me notice my own moments a little more.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Dostoevsky, Anarchists, and Al Qaeda

Cross Posting at Blogcritics
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More than anything, Crime And Punishment seems to be about what the characters are thinking. Not necessarily in an inner-monologue kind of way, definitely not stream-of-consciousness, but what their ideas are.

The characters have beliefs and ideals and IDEAS. The ideas are more important to the main character than any reality that exerts itself upon him.

He seems startled when a reality that does not conform with his ideas presents itself. That’s not so surprising, I’ve experienced it and seen others experience it. When you believe something to be true, it is hard to assimilate new evidence to the contrary.

I am sure that I would not have understood this novel if I had not also bee reading The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. This book is about the cultural climate right before WWI. I haven’t finished it yet, but I had gotten to the part where she discusses the anarchist movement, AKA the communist movement. The people who were involved in this movement were taking it upon themselves to attempt assassinations, with some successes, of the ruling class. They seemed to act with terrifying randomness, because their IDEA said all rulers were bad, and needed to be brought down.

For the anarchists, there was no allowance for personality in a ruler. It was incidental if they were benevolent, and in no way saved them from attacks. The position, regardless of who occupied it, needed annihilation. Murder was not wrong, when it was correcting the evil of the ruling class.

The anarchists were not in the majority, even among those who were acting against the contemporary powers-that-be. Socialists and Unionizers were associated with the anarchists, but only a very few acted on their ideas.

So, of course, it is easy to see the parallels between the picture Tuchman drew of these idealists and Raskolnikov. He wanted to prove himself as a man of genius, above such petty moral considerations. He is motivated by his ideas about the world, and ignores realities of the world. A college drop-out, who mopes in his room, neglects to eat. And, of course, murders an old woman based on his principles.

Dostoevsky seemed to be bringing the reader through the experience of Raskolnikov in order to show the consequences, the “Punishment.” As seductive as some ideas seem, there is a reality which must be reckoned with. Our rationalization of theories and ideas is fine as far as it goes, but there is a standard to measure against. We may not recreate the world according to our ideas.

Of course, the times being what they are, I could not help but see a similarity between the turn-of-the-century idealists and the modern ones. I read the stories of the anarchists who murdered in the name of their beliefs. I saw how their zealot faith led them to an inevitable conclusion. And I remembered a certain group of men who hijacked some planes.

Wrong. When interacting with the universe, humility is required. You will not convince the world that you are right, and make it change. Not like that. The laws of the universe always get the final world: “Because I said so!” We must bend our minds to their forms, always and forever. There are consequences and reactions for our actions; and there is usually something that has been overlooked in the grand IDEA.

Raskolnikov had to understand how moral laws worked. Dostoevsky did a really good job of showing the complexities of his thoughts and experience. It isn’t simple.

Neither is the book. It’s long and often seemingly pointless. But it’s worth reading, and unexpectedly timely.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 05:37 PM | Permalink

What with all my free unemployed time, I have been working on reading all those books I’ve been meaning to get around to reading, and finding out all about those subjects I’ve been meaning to learn about, and seeing those movies I’ve been meaning to see.

Let me pause for a moment to say, this is not the most cheery chapter of history, this current moment. The economy by itself is a drag, but then there’s that pernicious TERRORIST nonsense, leading to all kinds of ominous rumblings from the Middle East and elsewhere.

So, escapism into good literature and good movies seems like a good idea.

But.

Have you ever noticed that the most recommended movies, books, etc, are extremely depressing?

I’m sort of stuck in the middle of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It’s a cheery book about the fall of the Russian aristocracy, and the section I am dealing with has to do with a poor woman’s fall into prostitution, the contemplated suicide of another young man, and his sister’s pending marriage to a cruel man she does not love.

But it hasn’t really gotten off the ground yet.

I have been meaning to watch The Godfather for some time. “They” say that it’s absolutely essential for understanding so many other films. It’s about murder, family betrayal and mob crime, I understand.

I rented One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest earlier. I’d read the book not long ago, and I figured I would see the film.

Schindler’s List is another one I’ve been meaning to see.

Do you see the trend here? I mean, really! What’s up with all these depressing movies and books?

I guess we believe in tragedy more than comedy.

Last time I went to the library, I specifically went for light-hearted reading and videos. I am just oppressed by all these horrible situations. It makes me too sad.

I checked out Bridget Jones’ Diary. It is making me laugh out loud! Her problems are so pathetic as to not really be problems, so I can freely laugh.

I actually have a great respect for good comedy. I admire the artistry of stand-up comedians, who can tell the awful truth of something, and make you laugh at its absurdity.

That’s a real gift. I think that Life is Beautiful did that, but it was so heartbreaking, that I ended up crying before I was done laughing.

Whoopi Goldberg does that with her routines, sometimes.

Alice in Wonderland does that, although some of the message is lost in modern readings. Gulliver’s Travels was pretty funny.

I’m going to have to focus on the brighter side. I just can’t take all this gloom and tragedy anymore.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:58 PM | Permalink

My last year, the last semester of my last year of college, about to graduate, I was struck with a need to know what it was all for. I was studying ENGLISH. Beautiful, meaningful books, collected and dissected for students. And I loved every minute of it, only frustrated with not having enough time to talk more in the classes. These books and scenes and characters walked with me, as real as the students sitting next to me in class. MORE real. I did not know much about what my neighbors were doing, but I knew about Tess and Deerslayer and Song Liling.

Yet. As wonderful as it was to contemplate all of these people, and the people who created these people, I felt as if I were merely amusing myself. What purpose did this exercise serve? What for is this examination of scene and plot and character and inevitability? Yes, I loved it more than a sunny day, but there are many things that people love—it does not follow that you pursue what you love for love’s sake only.

No. There must be a purpose, a product, a reason, a destination. Perhaps, after all those classes, I had missed the point, the most important point, of why I was taking the classes at all.

Naturally, I had to ask. I went to most of my professors, maybe all of my professors, and said, “What is the purpose of studying literature?”

And I found that I had to say it again, differently. I have learned to do this. In Russia, when I was speaking the listeners’ language badly, or speaking my language for a hard-of-understanding listener, I learned to do this. I call it “learning the other person’s vocabulary.”

I thought that my professors had better vocabularies than I did. Perhaps they do, but vocabularies also have the underpinnings of ideas; if the ideas you express in a familiar vocabulary are foreign, even using well-known words won’t help you.

Surprisingly, my idea was foreign. It seemed to verge on blasphemy. Maybe like an upstart Galilean fisherman telling the educated elite than they missed a spot, I pointed at a hole in the fabric of my education.

Why study literature? What product is expected? What end result? What is the point? “Well, if you don’t know, perhaps you should not be studying in this field.”

Oh no…I have heard these kinds of question-parries before. The man I respect least in the world, the pastor of my childhood church, gave me those kinds of replies to hard questions. The ones that say, “By asking the question, you have betrayed yourself as unworthy of the answer.”

I am a question asker. I find no shame in betraying my ignorance. For me, the greatest shame is willfully sustained ignorance, and the best cure for that foul state is a question.

No, I know about the glory of books and words. I know how amazing they are, how they can be. That was not my question, Dr. Squelch.

I was reminded of that conversation, perhaps still stinging from the accusation that I did not really appreciate literature deeply, when I was listening to Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible on tape this weekend.

I had a long road trip to get through, and I love listening to a good story as I drive. This was my chosen tale.

The story pulled me in, with the strangest familial recognition, like meeting a cousin after forever and comparing the eerily identical stories of childhood memories with someone who was basically a stranger. I knew these people; I knew them because I had been them—and in ways that most of the universe never had been. As I was looking at myself by hearing the story of someone else, the process began. The first papery, painless layers of my onion-self peeled off easily, with the revealed experience-truth of the story women. I was there, unarmored, hearing and knowing what the women said. I smiled as I listened, a wry, knowing smile.

But the book did not stop at the shallow layers; it went on. It peeled away more, taking me further into their lives and my own than I had bargained for. In this story that I was now a part of, more and more was stripped away. It was painful, I felt the pulling away of live heart from the center. I was crying out loud long before the end or even the middle.

I was slain; this book made me look at places I didn’t even know were they to look at before. At first, I would have sworn that this book must have been autobiographical, it was that true. But then, I saw that it was fiction, and was truer than any true story. It could be nothing else.

This is what the beauty of literature is about. This kind of self-revelation that can be done by a total stranger. Telling a story in a way that makes so true it changes your life.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 04:48 PM | Permalink

I mentioned it already, but I just finished reading “The woman warrior: Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts” by Maxine Hong Kingston. The story, like many stories about English-as-a-second-language immigrants, talks about the difficulty of her voice. She has trouble talking, knowing what to say. She even is told that her voice is wrong, like a squeaking duck.

At one point, she attacks a fellow Chinese American schoolmate for not talking.

A persons’ voice is a tricky thing. I speak English as a first language. Lucky me! It should be easy for me. But I remember, I remember so well, how difficult it was growing up. I knew so clearly in my head what I wanted to say, what I wanted to have or to be given, and how impossible it seemed to convey that information.

I believe that the Chinese girl in the book was burdened with so much meaning, she felt it impossible to express in mere words. So many layers of complications and luck ramifications that the flimsy container of English words could never contain the meaning required.

I so often feel that way now. When I look at a certain juxtaposition of ideas or objects, I can see the meaning created by those particular things being in that arrangement. Each person, idea, or object has its own meaning, but perfectly aligned with those individual meaning, a new meaning is showing itself in how those things came together.

Sometimes the new meaning is so incredible I catch my breath with excitement. Revelation!

But how to show the pattern to others? It would seem to require the invention of a new language to tell.

Industrious people that we are, we human beings have indeed invented a new language. We have developed complicated symbology to express the relationship of things to themselves and to other things. We have words for mathematical concepts like integers and square roots. We have symbols for chemistry like the periodic table of elements. Computer science has 3letter acronyms for everything!

Each discipline has a steep slope of specialized words to communicate their ideas. The higher you climb this mountain, the more you know. You will be able to communicate in tight, terse language huge complex ideas, but you will be understood by fewer and fewer people.

How sad. It takes another person understanding what you say to make saying things worthwhile. Speaking and being heard are connected. It is important that speech be comprehensible.

So often I have felt my tongue turn numb, as I try to say something important to a person who does not understand. As I speak and begin to explain concepts that I worked hard to order in my own head, the person who hears looks at me blankly or stares at me as if I were a raving lunatic. All reason leaves my speech, and my mouth fumbles on into a final “Never mind.”

Is reason and order so fragile that a look can destroy it? Another person’s immovable block of understanding, or even their refusal to understand can scatter the carefully arranged thoughts with so little care.

Of course, the thoughts are not destroyed. They simply need regrouping. But what power people hold over one another. Even pretended disinterest can destroy thought, or pretended interest can give room for ideas to coalesce.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:30 PM | Permalink