I remain a little freaked out by Ben Ehrenreich. The Suitors definitely didn't get any less strange as I finished it. Which is not to say that it isn't really good and intriguing and all that - because it is! - but dude, it's a bit of an emotional roller coaster.
Suffice it to say that not only is every character flawed, but they are deeply, deeply so. Drunk with lust, gluttony, avarice - all of the deadly sins, in fact. And while the motley crew that form Penny's kingdom (formerly Payne's army) love one another, they will betray that love in a moment to get closer to Penny, and will blame anyone - including Penny herself - who pierces through her defenses.
I wish Ehrenreich had written more about Bobby, Penny's son, a preternaturally solemn child growing up in a sea of anarchy. And he eventually takes to the sea. He reminded me of Gunter Grass's Oskar, in The Tin Drum, carrying more meaning than his little body could possibly hold.
Anyway, what this all makes me realize is that I should read (or re-read - have I read it before?) The Odyssey.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Suitors, or Acid Trips with Homer
(No, not Homer Simpson, although that would be interesting too.) I want some of whatever Ben Ehrenreich was smoking when he wrote The Suitors, a modern retelling of The Odyssey. It's a timeless, placeless setting, in which there are sidewalks and cars and televisions, but sometimes there are no phones and people run around naked. Oh, and creating a moat and filling it with sewage when you can't find crocodiles makes sense. And there are chamber pots. And a band of free spirits (although that's too high-minded a phrase) who spend their days loving and gamboling and huffing paint thinner. Until our modern Odysseus Payne comes along and conscripts them into his dream.
What is his dream? Well (and it sounds a little something like some presidents we know):
And now he gets them started on his arsenal. And then the looting and the wars. And coming up, the War.
And you wonder, what binds Payne and Penny together? And why are you willing to continue to spiral downward with them?
What is his dream? Well (and it sounds a little something like some presidents we know):
...the everlasting glory of a nation founded on the vital principles of freedom and opportunity, of the responsibilities that accompany good fortune, the sacred obligation to boast of one's virtues and display one's wealth for all to see, and thereby, he said, spread freedom to the farthest corners of the globe [...] A free people always wins.
And now he gets them started on his arsenal. And then the looting and the wars. And coming up, the War.
And you wonder, what binds Payne and Penny together? And why are you willing to continue to spiral downward with them?
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Angelica, or The Perils of Parenthood
It seems appropriate that on Father's Day (happy day to all the dads, including mine who is on the 5 right now) I get to blog about a father-daughter relationship. And a father-mother one. And a mother-daughter one. Oh, and the mother-daughter-ghost one. And the spiritualist. And the maid, and ...
Anyway, Arthur Phillips has shown he likes to write mysteries. Not of the whodunit kind, but of a deeper, where is the truth when everyone can see only their own experience of the truth? variety. Even in his first novel, Prague, he employs multiple viewpoints to get at a wider sense of expat Budapest. (Siel has been reading about subjective reality too.)
In Angelica, Phillips goes all out - and shows how entirely people create their own truths. And with each retelling (there are 3 1/2) of the haunting of the little girl and her mother - possibly by the spectral manifestation of the father's sexual appetite - sympathies shift and misunderstandings are laid bare. And still any objective truth remains elusive. As a grown Angelica finally laments:
Anyway, Arthur Phillips has shown he likes to write mysteries. Not of the whodunit kind, but of a deeper, where is the truth when everyone can see only their own experience of the truth? variety. Even in his first novel, Prague, he employs multiple viewpoints to get at a wider sense of expat Budapest. (Siel has been reading about subjective reality too.)
In Angelica, Phillips goes all out - and shows how entirely people create their own truths. And with each retelling (there are 3 1/2) of the haunting of the little girl and her mother - possibly by the spectral manifestation of the father's sexual appetite - sympathies shift and misunderstandings are laid bare. And still any objective truth remains elusive. As a grown Angelica finally laments:
If each of the players performed his own unconnected drama, then it is only in the intersection of those dramas that my life can be seen, through the latticed spaces where light can pass between three stories laid over each over. And yet when I lay these stories atop each other, no light does pass and no space remains. All my knowledge consumes itself.
Friday, June 08, 2007
House of Meetings, or Wanting to Kill Yourself
As I mentioned in my earlier post (below), Martin Amis' House of Meetings is a downer. The main character has returned to Russia to die. First revisiting the prison camp where he spent over a decade, a time where he protected his brother even while hating him for having the girl he loved.
The love triangle never really explodes, as I had expected, but that just makes the reading all the more tortured. God, this is a sad book. One of the characters explains, about pity:
Thus it is only fair that Amis evokes the reader's pity as well. These poor broken souls. They are fucked up, and you can't really sympathize with them. But you can pity them.
My understanding of Derrida was pretty paltry, but I remember a main point of my professor's being that Derrida eschewed the center in favor of the marginalia, that it was that edges that had the most meaning. I thought of this when considering House of Meetings. The novel's center - what happens on a fateful night at the eponymous House - is ultimately less than what surrounds it at the edges. What is supposed to have the most meaning may in fact have the least.
Or maybe not. If you've read it, or read other Amis, let me know what you think.
The love triangle never really explodes, as I had expected, but that just makes the reading all the more tortured. God, this is a sad book. One of the characters explains, about pity:
She understand, and she pities me. In the end you finsih with self-pity. It's too tiring. You want someone else to do it for you.
Thus it is only fair that Amis evokes the reader's pity as well. These poor broken souls. They are fucked up, and you can't really sympathize with them. But you can pity them.
My understanding of Derrida was pretty paltry, but I remember a main point of my professor's being that Derrida eschewed the center in favor of the marginalia, that it was that edges that had the most meaning. I thought of this when considering House of Meetings. The novel's center - what happens on a fateful night at the eponymous House - is ultimately less than what surrounds it at the edges. What is supposed to have the most meaning may in fact have the least.
Or maybe not. If you've read it, or read other Amis, let me know what you think.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Misery a la Russe
In September 2004, a group of Chechen rebels took more than 1200 hostages - many children - in a school in Beslan, Ossetia. When all was said and done, almost 400 lay dead. (It's a testament to the Russianness of this all that I almost wrote "400 souls were lost.") And as a Russian historian, perhaps I expected tragedy. And it was that weekend, walking by the Russian embassy on Wisconsin Ave., that I saw the memorial wreaths and burst into tears. Painful, impotent tears.
These memories came back to me as I began reading Martin Amis' House of Meetings, a gulag novel. Damn, I was expecting old tragedies, not recent ones. But the narrator has traveled back to Russia, to revisit his prisons and perhaps to repent, right as the siege occurs. Thus it has a place in the letter - which comprises the novel - he writes to his step-daughter Venus. And Amis' narrator has the same dull dread I had:
Although this leads me to my biggest quibble with the novel thus far. A gulag survivor who eventually escaped to America. Who is old and cranky. Of course he has issues with Russia. And of course he will generalize about his land - Russians and Westerners have been doing it for centuries... the Russian soul, the Russian craving for centralized authority, etc. But Amis does it too much. He spends too much time opining on the deficiencies of the Russian people. It gets old.
I'm much more interested in his characters. The narrator, back in the late 1940s and '50s, is a cipher of sorts. A survivor. A war hero stripped of his heroism. Not a big thinker. He kind of makes me think of Gleb in Cement, a major socialist realist novel. His little brother, Lev, is an intellectual, a dreamer who survives by stubbornly holding to principal. Oh, and he's the one that got the girl. The love triangle is bound to explode - we've already learned as much. It's just a matter of biding our time to find out how.
These memories came back to me as I began reading Martin Amis' House of Meetings, a gulag novel. Damn, I was expecting old tragedies, not recent ones. But the narrator has traveled back to Russia, to revisit his prisons and perhaps to repent, right as the siege occurs. Thus it has a place in the letter - which comprises the novel - he writes to his step-daughter Venus. And Amis' narrator has the same dull dread I had:
And why is it that we are already perparing ourselves for something close to the worst possible outcome? Why is it that we are already preparing ourselves for the phenomenon understood by all he world - Russian heavyhandedness? For what reason are our hands so heavy? What weighs them down?
Although this leads me to my biggest quibble with the novel thus far. A gulag survivor who eventually escaped to America. Who is old and cranky. Of course he has issues with Russia. And of course he will generalize about his land - Russians and Westerners have been doing it for centuries... the Russian soul, the Russian craving for centralized authority, etc. But Amis does it too much. He spends too much time opining on the deficiencies of the Russian people. It gets old.
I'm much more interested in his characters. The narrator, back in the late 1940s and '50s, is a cipher of sorts. A survivor. A war hero stripped of his heroism. Not a big thinker. He kind of makes me think of Gleb in Cement, a major socialist realist novel. His little brother, Lev, is an intellectual, a dreamer who survives by stubbornly holding to principal. Oh, and he's the one that got the girl. The love triangle is bound to explode - we've already learned as much. It's just a matter of biding our time to find out how.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Lost City Radio
Sad. I am feeling sad right now. Why? Not sure, but I partly blame Daniel Alarcon.
Such a pretty day, so I went out to walk some errands, and ended up drinking chai at Synergy Cafe. Which is where I finished Lost City Radio by the aforementioned Alarcon, a Peruvian transplant to Oakland.
The novel is set in the capital city of a nameless Latin American country, still recovering from a bruising civil war. The central theme of the novel is memory and the struggle to remember against an authoritarian government that is determined to disappear the past. Towns are renamed (actually, renumbered) and the missing seem to number in the tens of thousands.
In the midst of this Norma hosts "Lost City Radio," a weekly program that allows people to share their memories of missing loved ones, and reunites a lucky few who lost one another in the war and mass in-migration to the city. Oh, and Norma also has her own missing: her husband, who disappeared in the jungle shortly after the war ended and who may have been working with the rebels. But he, he remains nameless.
Alarcon weaves together tales from Norma, her husband, the child that appears at the station one day, his cowardly teacher, and a man who ruined other lives and had his own ruined all by accident. They run forward and backwards in time, and you're often trying to place yourself. Is this the present? Right after the war? Before the war? In its midst? City or jungle? The effect is disorienting, but so in many ways are the characters' lives.
What struck me most was the way that simple actions in the novel trigger a string of events that had unforeseen and tragic consequences. And Alarcon shows us the consequences well before delving back to the causes. The cumulative effect is powerful, and troubling. Or, like I said at the beginning of this post, sad.
Such a pretty day, so I went out to walk some errands, and ended up drinking chai at Synergy Cafe. Which is where I finished Lost City Radio by the aforementioned Alarcon, a Peruvian transplant to Oakland.
The novel is set in the capital city of a nameless Latin American country, still recovering from a bruising civil war. The central theme of the novel is memory and the struggle to remember against an authoritarian government that is determined to disappear the past. Towns are renamed (actually, renumbered) and the missing seem to number in the tens of thousands.
In the midst of this Norma hosts "Lost City Radio," a weekly program that allows people to share their memories of missing loved ones, and reunites a lucky few who lost one another in the war and mass in-migration to the city. Oh, and Norma also has her own missing: her husband, who disappeared in the jungle shortly after the war ended and who may have been working with the rebels. But he, he remains nameless.
Alarcon weaves together tales from Norma, her husband, the child that appears at the station one day, his cowardly teacher, and a man who ruined other lives and had his own ruined all by accident. They run forward and backwards in time, and you're often trying to place yourself. Is this the present? Right after the war? Before the war? In its midst? City or jungle? The effect is disorienting, but so in many ways are the characters' lives.
What struck me most was the way that simple actions in the novel trigger a string of events that had unforeseen and tragic consequences. And Alarcon shows us the consequences well before delving back to the causes. The cumulative effect is powerful, and troubling. Or, like I said at the beginning of this post, sad.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Mercy of Thin Air
The above is the title of Ronlyn Domingue's first novel, which I read earlier this week. I had an advance copy, and the novel - set in and around New Orleans - was set to release in September 2005. Not sure how Hurricane Katrina may have affected that. (A peek on Amazon shows that it was indeed released that month.)
The heart of the novel is Razi Nolan, a sparkling 1920s co-ed who died tragically young and remained "between" to guide others through the process of moving beyond. Or really, she stayed because she couldn't let go. It's 70 years later, and she is still trying to find out what happened to her beloved, Andrew, who was essentially ruined by her death. Mirroring Razi and Andrew's love story is the present-day struggle of Amy and Scott to build a life together despite the ghost that haunts them. (It brings to mind the Magnetic Fields, and the song "The One You Really Love.") And of course, the two stories intertwine and solve one another.
It's a prettily constructed tale, that jumps forward and backward in time, and allows the coincidences to feel acceptable and fated, rather than trite. Mostly, at least. Razi's character is a little too much, and I would have toned her down a bit, but I still grieved over the idea that one with so much life could die so young. Domingue offers a reminder that life and death are often unfair, but that acceptance is the key to moving on, in life and in death.
The heart of the novel is Razi Nolan, a sparkling 1920s co-ed who died tragically young and remained "between" to guide others through the process of moving beyond. Or really, she stayed because she couldn't let go. It's 70 years later, and she is still trying to find out what happened to her beloved, Andrew, who was essentially ruined by her death. Mirroring Razi and Andrew's love story is the present-day struggle of Amy and Scott to build a life together despite the ghost that haunts them. (It brings to mind the Magnetic Fields, and the song "The One You Really Love.") And of course, the two stories intertwine and solve one another.
It's a prettily constructed tale, that jumps forward and backward in time, and allows the coincidences to feel acceptable and fated, rather than trite. Mostly, at least. Razi's character is a little too much, and I would have toned her down a bit, but I still grieved over the idea that one with so much life could die so young. Domingue offers a reminder that life and death are often unfair, but that acceptance is the key to moving on, in life and in death.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Someone's feeling a little touchy
I'm feeling too lazy to dig up all the links, but there's been some discussion lately in the press about the plight of newspaper book reviews, and the role of lit bloggers in this trend.
On Sunday, the LA Times ran a piece by film and book critic Richard Schickel. The title? "Not everybody's a critic," i.e. "anyone with a blog can express an opinion about a book. But real criticism is so much more." And all these faux critics are messing things up for the real guys. So I guess I'm part of the problem.
Except am I really? I wouldn't even call this a lit blog; it doesn't purport to be literary criticism. It is overtly a set of (often un- or at least underinformed) opinions about whatever it is I'm reading. And if I don't know you and you're reading this, awesome, but this was always intended as a way for me to share with family and friends my thoughts about the books and articles that occupy so much of my life.
That said, I think Schickel must be trying to provoke when he says
Dude. Chill. We respect you.
Even more, I respect D.J. Waldie, who you quote as saying that "blogging is a form of speech, not of writing." Good point. I don't suffer over turns of phrase on this blog the way that I did when writing even grad papers, at least not usually. But I wish I did. And I think a lot of bloggers wish they did too. Cut them a little slack.
On Sunday, the LA Times ran a piece by film and book critic Richard Schickel. The title? "Not everybody's a critic," i.e. "anyone with a blog can express an opinion about a book. But real criticism is so much more." And all these faux critics are messing things up for the real guys. So I guess I'm part of the problem.
Except am I really? I wouldn't even call this a lit blog; it doesn't purport to be literary criticism. It is overtly a set of (often un- or at least underinformed) opinions about whatever it is I'm reading. And if I don't know you and you're reading this, awesome, but this was always intended as a way for me to share with family and friends my thoughts about the books and articles that occupy so much of my life.
That said, I think Schickel must be trying to provoke when he says
Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.
Dude. Chill. We respect you.
Even more, I respect D.J. Waldie, who you quote as saying that "blogging is a form of speech, not of writing." Good point. I don't suffer over turns of phrase on this blog the way that I did when writing even grad papers, at least not usually. But I wish I did. And I think a lot of bloggers wish they did too. Cut them a little slack.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
My unfortunate new obsession
I love Twitter, the web/text/IM 140 character "what are you doing?" application which is apparently sweeping the nation, b/c Barack Obama is now one of my friends.
But a more intriguing friend is TwitterLit, with roughly twice/day posts of first sentences of books. I love this idea. Would that we were all this clever...
Anyway, if you are a Twitterer, feel free to come visit me.
But a more intriguing friend is TwitterLit, with roughly twice/day posts of first sentences of books. I love this idea. Would that we were all this clever...
Anyway, if you are a Twitterer, feel free to come visit me.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Sitting at the Kids' Table
I know I'm partial to the name Simon, but in the case of Simon Rich, author of a recent New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs piece, I think deservedly so.
Shouts & Murmurs, the magazine's comedic short, is very inconsistent. It's not even that it depends on the writer; just some weeks it'll be funny, others it will totally bomb. But the March 26th issue carried a piece on children's perspectives that I thought was pretty awesome.
Called "The Wisdom of Children," it imagines what happens with adults when they're not around, and how they respond to the machinations of the young. Here is a clip from the first section, entitled "A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table":
And in the final section, the US Govt. responds to youth political engagement:
And a description of Woodstock: "Apparently, young people hate the war so much they’re willing to participate in a musical sex festival as a protest against it."
Shouts & Murmurs, the magazine's comedic short, is very inconsistent. It's not even that it depends on the writer; just some weeks it'll be funny, others it will totally bomb. But the March 26th issue carried a piece on children's perspectives that I thought was pretty awesome.
Called "The Wisdom of Children," it imagines what happens with adults when they're not around, and how they respond to the machinations of the young. Here is a clip from the first section, entitled "A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table":
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
[snip]
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
And in the final section, the US Govt. responds to youth political engagement:
—Did you hear the news, Mr. President? The students at the University of Pittsfield are walking out of their classes, in protest over the war.
—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say?
—Apparently, students are standing up in the middle of lectures and walking right out of the building.
—But students love lectures. If they’re willing to give those up, they must really be serious about this peace thing! How did you hear about this protest?
—The White House hears about every protest, no matter how small.
And a description of Woodstock: "Apparently, young people hate the war so much they’re willing to participate in a musical sex festival as a protest against it."
Saturday, May 05, 2007
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a la Turk
Last summer, I wrote about Elif Shafak, a Turkish author who faced defamation charges because of her characters' comments about the Armenian genocide. The charges were dropped, and the novel in question is available in English.
So this week, I read The Bastard of Istanbul. It is beautiful, full of richly eccentric characters and scents and sights. Women dominate this book; men, to the extent they appear at all, are foils to their more colorful female counterparts, even as their actions have such an impact on the course of all their lives.
The book is about family, in all its convoluted and messy forms. That alone would make a compelling novel. But Shafak has greater aspirations.
It is also about discovery and reconciliation. Within the family, and within the broader family of the old Ottoman Empire. The interplay of memory and forgetting is constant. Characters shed old identities in order to forge on; the matriarch slips into Alzheimers, the "bastard" of the title knows nothing of her past. And superimposed on each character's battles with memory is the broader Armenian-Turkish dispute. Were the events of 1915 a genocide? Why is it important to know? Sometimes it's necessary to forget the past in order to escape its grasp.
Trained as a historian, I obviously have pretty strong views about why we need to address and study the past. For the beauty of its stories, for one, and in order better understand ourselves and those around us. Maybe even to learn from it. But despite (or maybe because?) of my historical bent, I can also see the need to address it and move on. And why for so many individuals and even culture, the second step in that process is often so much easier than the first.
These themes come out clearest in an exchange between Asya, the eponymous fatherless young woman, and Armenian Americans on a message board. She writes,
And a response from another poster, after her "private" apology is rebuffed:
And there you have it. An argument for why history must neither be shunned, nor wielded as a weapon. And yet so much easier said than done.
So this week, I read The Bastard of Istanbul. It is beautiful, full of richly eccentric characters and scents and sights. Women dominate this book; men, to the extent they appear at all, are foils to their more colorful female counterparts, even as their actions have such an impact on the course of all their lives.
The book is about family, in all its convoluted and messy forms. That alone would make a compelling novel. But Shafak has greater aspirations.
It is also about discovery and reconciliation. Within the family, and within the broader family of the old Ottoman Empire. The interplay of memory and forgetting is constant. Characters shed old identities in order to forge on; the matriarch slips into Alzheimers, the "bastard" of the title knows nothing of her past. And superimposed on each character's battles with memory is the broader Armenian-Turkish dispute. Were the events of 1915 a genocide? Why is it important to know? Sometimes it's necessary to forget the past in order to escape its grasp.
Trained as a historian, I obviously have pretty strong views about why we need to address and study the past. For the beauty of its stories, for one, and in order better understand ourselves and those around us. Maybe even to learn from it. But despite (or maybe because?) of my historical bent, I can also see the need to address it and move on. And why for so many individuals and even culture, the second step in that process is often so much easier than the first.
These themes come out clearest in an exchange between Asya, the eponymous fatherless young woman, and Armenian Americans on a message board. She writes,
perhaps it is exactly my being without a past that will eventually help me to sympathize with your attachment to history. I can recognize the significance of continuity in human memory. I can do that...and I do apologize for all the sufferings my ancestors have caused your ancestors.
And a response from another poster, after her "private" apology is rebuffed:
the truth is [...] some among the Armenians in the diaspora would never want the Turks to recognize the genocide. If they do so, they'll pull the rug out from under our feet and take the strongest bond that unites us. Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Armenians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victimhood. Apparently, there are some old habits that need to be changed on both sides.
And there you have it. An argument for why history must neither be shunned, nor wielded as a weapon. And yet so much easier said than done.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Festival of Books, Day 2
I almost forgot that I went back to the Festival on Sunday. Essentially just to see Jane Smiley, b/c it wouldn't be the same without her. She and Times book editor David Ulin discussed literature, sex, Boccaccio, politics, 9/11 fiction, and more. Smiley is so good in conversation. I don't know if it's from practice, or if she is just naturally a good speaker. She is comfortable being on stage, and doesn't patronize her audience, but is also clearly really intelligent. Also self-deprecating and witty. This wasn't the most entertained I've been by her, but still worth the trip.
Purchases:
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory (I've made fun of this book for ages; figured it was finally time to read it)
Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger (the tv show is one of my guilty pleasures)
Swag:
more Ghiradelli chocolate
Purchases:
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory (I've made fun of this book for ages; figured it was finally time to read it)
Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger (the tv show is one of my guilty pleasures)
Swag:
more Ghiradelli chocolate
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Ode to a Library
As a graduate student at Georgetown, I relied heavily on inter-library loan and the Library of Congress. But occasionally, I liked to get away from the academic grind, and turned to the local library.
My local branch was a beautiful mansionesque building at Wisconsin and R. Set up on a hill, it looked over the rest of the neighborhood. And on Monday, it burned. And I can't tell from news reports how much was salvaged. It wasn't alone either - another DC treasure, Eastern Market - was also heavily damaged by a fire earlier in the day.
History suffered too:
I have no words. Libraries and history should never be lost.
My local branch was a beautiful mansionesque building at Wisconsin and R. Set up on a hill, it looked over the rest of the neighborhood. And on Monday, it burned. And I can't tell from news reports how much was salvaged. It wasn't alone either - another DC treasure, Eastern Market - was also heavily damaged by a fire earlier in the day.
History suffered too:
The library's archivist, meanwhile, stood at Wisconsin and R streets, heartbroken over warped and soot-covered historic paintings and documents that firefighters were bringing out and placing on plastic sheeting on the sidewalk.
The branch's holdings include photos, maps and paintings of the neighborhood and individual files on each home in Georgetown that have been donated over the decades.
I have no words. Libraries and history should never be lost.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Festival of Books, Day 1
It was that time of year again, where I drop everything and spend the weekend traipsing around UCLA. I was choosier this year about panels, but still spent 8 hours at the Festival on Saturday.
My morning began with a trip around the grounds before heading to "Food Fight: When Did Eating Get Controversial?" moderated by Times columnist Russ Parsons. Joining him were three professors: sociologist Barry Glassner (USC), nutrition scientist Marion Nestle (NYU), and journalist Michael Pollan (Cal). Discussion ranged from GMOs to industrial farming to the rise of farmers markets to the cultural identities involved in eating. And probably more. Calories and corn made several appearances as well. I was utterly taken with Nestle, who was joyful and enthusiastic. I imagine she is amazing in the classroom (not to imply that the others aren't). Several books going on my list after this.
Next up, a trip across campus to the oddly named "Fiction: Jumping Off the Page," I guess referring to the vivid nature of these writer's prose. And the writers? A uniformly witty crew: Chris Bohjalian, Peter Orner, Gary Shteyngart (the only of the writers I knew before), and Marianne Wiggins, whose name was familiar but unplaced. The authors discussed their upcoming/most recent books, their writing habits and styles, how they are best friends with their editors, and... oh, and lots of comments about various quirks and neuroses. I want to read all of their books now. And I kind of have a crush on Orner.
Next came more wandering and time for reading the paper. And finally, a reading by T.C. Boyle. He read the story "Beat," a pulsing account of a adolescent boy's rendezvous with Jack Kerouac and his cohorts. He said, and I forget how often this is true, that there is something so valuable about hearing a work in the author's own voice. I would add that hearing it at all is a different and important way to experience fiction. Cadence and timing become important, and it's utterly unlike reading, where I see at least 5 or 6 words (if not more) at once. So that was cool, and of course he is himself an epitome of sorts of cool. And therefore a good way to end the day.
Day 1 Purchases:
"Save a Child, Save the World" t-shirt from Skirball, supporting International Relief Committee work in Darfur.
Day 1 Swag:
Ghiradelli chocolate squares
free copies of The Nation
soundtrack to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, coming soon to HBO (plus bookmarks!)
BookTV totebag
Walt Disney Concert Hall magnet
Organic basil seeds from Toyota
Shake and light flashlight (also from Toyota)
My morning began with a trip around the grounds before heading to "Food Fight: When Did Eating Get Controversial?" moderated by Times columnist Russ Parsons. Joining him were three professors: sociologist Barry Glassner (USC), nutrition scientist Marion Nestle (NYU), and journalist Michael Pollan (Cal). Discussion ranged from GMOs to industrial farming to the rise of farmers markets to the cultural identities involved in eating. And probably more. Calories and corn made several appearances as well. I was utterly taken with Nestle, who was joyful and enthusiastic. I imagine she is amazing in the classroom (not to imply that the others aren't). Several books going on my list after this.
Next up, a trip across campus to the oddly named "Fiction: Jumping Off the Page," I guess referring to the vivid nature of these writer's prose. And the writers? A uniformly witty crew: Chris Bohjalian, Peter Orner, Gary Shteyngart (the only of the writers I knew before), and Marianne Wiggins, whose name was familiar but unplaced. The authors discussed their upcoming/most recent books, their writing habits and styles, how they are best friends with their editors, and... oh, and lots of comments about various quirks and neuroses. I want to read all of their books now. And I kind of have a crush on Orner.
Next came more wandering and time for reading the paper. And finally, a reading by T.C. Boyle. He read the story "Beat," a pulsing account of a adolescent boy's rendezvous with Jack Kerouac and his cohorts. He said, and I forget how often this is true, that there is something so valuable about hearing a work in the author's own voice. I would add that hearing it at all is a different and important way to experience fiction. Cadence and timing become important, and it's utterly unlike reading, where I see at least 5 or 6 words (if not more) at once. So that was cool, and of course he is himself an epitome of sorts of cool. And therefore a good way to end the day.
Day 1 Purchases:
"Save a Child, Save the World" t-shirt from Skirball, supporting International Relief Committee work in Darfur.
Day 1 Swag:
Ghiradelli chocolate squares
free copies of The Nation
soundtrack to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, coming soon to HBO (plus bookmarks!)
BookTV totebag
Walt Disney Concert Hall magnet
Organic basil seeds from Toyota
Shake and light flashlight (also from Toyota)
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Foodie in Action
I made it to the end of The Omnivore's Dilemma. I partook, vicariously, of Michael Pollan's four meals: industrial, organic, local, and foraged. I thought about my own food choices, and how to reconcile (or at least recognize) the contradictions within those choices.
The book was often bedtime reading, and there is just something about food that makes me sleepy, so it took a while to get all the way through. And I was still reading the final pages with Michael Pollan on stage before me (more on that later). But it was worth the long haul.
The mix of fun facts and lively language kept the book moving briskly. I love random statistics and explanations, so parts that should perhaps have been boring weren't. On the other hand, you could tell that Pollan wrote the sections piecemeal, and the editing process didn't remove places where he explained or cited the same information again and again. Repetition can turn me off. (Yes, I can hear the snide laughter from all of you who have been subjected to my stories multiple times.)
Anyway, some fun passages:
Excellent to have an excuse for my sugar cravings. And, regarding pigs aerating manure into compost by rooting for corn kernels...
In fact, witnessing this "essential piggyness" is key to Pollan's philosophical coming to terms with eating meat. I can't do that chapter (number 17) to justice, but suffice it to say that I was impressed. Which goes for the entire book, really.
The book was often bedtime reading, and there is just something about food that makes me sleepy, so it took a while to get all the way through. And I was still reading the final pages with Michael Pollan on stage before me (more on that later). But it was worth the long haul.
The mix of fun facts and lively language kept the book moving briskly. I love random statistics and explanations, so parts that should perhaps have been boring weren't. On the other hand, you could tell that Pollan wrote the sections piecemeal, and the editing process didn't remove places where he explained or cited the same information again and again. Repetition can turn me off. (Yes, I can hear the snide laughter from all of you who have been subjected to my stories multiple times.)
Anyway, some fun passages:
The first bias predisposes us toward sweetness, a taste that signals a particularly rich source of carbohydrate energy in nature. Indeed, even when we're otherwise sated, our appetite for sweet things persists, which is probably why dessert shows up in the meal when it does. A sweet tooth represents an excellent adaptation for an omnivore whose big brain demands a tremendous amount of glucose [...] The adult human brain accounts for 2 percent of our body weight but consumes 18 percent of our energy, all of which must come from a carbohydrate.
Excellent to have an excuse for my sugar cravings. And, regarding pigs aerating manure into compost by rooting for corn kernels...
Buried clear to their butts in composting manure, a bobbing sea of wriggling hams and corkscrew tails, these were the happiest pigs I'd ever seen.
In fact, witnessing this "essential piggyness" is key to Pollan's philosophical coming to terms with eating meat. I can't do that chapter (number 17) to justice, but suffice it to say that I was impressed. Which goes for the entire book, really.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
