School, journals, a new start

Much to my surprise, school will be starting again in about a week. I've missed it, to be honest. I love school and have since I was very young. I was the kid who when asked were they enjoying their summer went, "I'm ready to go back to school." It's true, too. I never cared much for summer. After the first month, I was ready to die of boredom. I have other things to occupy my time now and am not so reliant on school for my social life but I still love it. I suppose that is why I want to be a professor--I can't think of anyplace I would rather be.

I discovered the Moleskine journal back when I was at UTM and loved it almost immediately. It was the first journal-- the only journal-- I truly enjoyed writing in. Now-- I can't draw as the example in the photo-- but certainly, mine is filled with everything. I'm on my 7th one and am starting to really get a stack full. I like seeing them lined up all together, like taking them down and reading a bit of what I was thinking. I suppose that is part of why I have a blog about books and not my normal bitching about life-- I have my journal for that. And, I have about 3 years worth of bitching and worrying in them.

When I taught last year, I tried to get my students to journal. It didn't go well. I don't think I checked them enough or gave them enough class time to write in them. I know had I not had a prof who demanded about 100 pages (typed) journaling, I wouldn't write so much as I do now. So, I don't think it's that important what you write so much as you write something. I'll have my little students writing all manner of stuff come this fall so they are in for a treat. I am told that when I talk about these things, I look animated and very happy. I suppose that says a lot, doesn't it?

Writing isn't easy though. I suppose for some folks it is. But for me, it's so hard. One word after the next and it is always easier (and perhaps more desirable) to take them away than to add them on. But, I love to write-- doesn't matter if it amounts to anything. Goethe said, "Writing is busy idleness." Goethe was right. Good writing, however, is terribly more-- it's strenous editing!

It took me three years and four false starts...

but I finally finished The Sun Also Rises. I have mixed feelings about Hemingway. Tammy says he's silly and he is in many ways. But there are moments when it is just so good-- when his writing just comes together and it moves you, you feel there, in the moment. There are a couple of scenes like that in SAR and it just makes your mouth hang agog to read some of it. Other bits are tedious and silly.

I had much the same reaction to To Have and Have Not. I very nearly gave up on the book and probably would have had I not be competing with someone to read it. So, I pushed on. And, much to my very great surprise, I found that the ending of the book was one of the greatest pieces of modernist literature that exists. The last image of the hero the reader gets...my god, it sums up an entire age. Hemingway knew what he was doing with that-- no question about it.

Will he replace Faulkner? No, nor Steinbeck nor Fitzgerald nor Norris either. But, I can say I have read it and enjoyed it and see why others like it. I prefer the short stories, myself, but to each his own.

I'll sum up the book in the words of one of his characters--

"Amusing, but damned unpleasant."

The memory of books past...

So, I discovered Shelfari, a place to build a virtual bookshelf. It's cool. I've spent a lot of time recalling books I have read. Some I remember far more fondly than others.

I've put books from my college days-- both graduate and undergraduate. I've put books from before I went to college-- when the bulk of what I read was horror. I recall fondly reading Clive Barker at the kitchen table at our house in Como-- I remember I had to have a dictionary, he used words I didn't know and would have to look up. I learned what antediluvian meant. I learned, too, just how far the limits of good taste ran in his books. He was a favorite writer perhaps because he pushed the limits of what could be written. Some things were truly disturbing.

Unlike Stephen King, Barker never shied away from sex. Men and women, women and women, men and men...nothing was taboo. Normal sex, deviant sex, sex with otherworldly beings, it was all just out there for you to read about. Stephen King, my other favorite writer of that period, rarely wrote about sex. His books were virtually sexless where Barker's world was a magical place where anyone could have sex with anyone else. It was eye-opening.

I post my books on this site and it makes me a bit sad, too. There are so many great books I haven't read. I never finished Les Miserables. I never finished The Count of Monte Cristo (my copy was abridged-- when I read that on the cover, I stopped reading) or Madame Bovary. I've never even attempted Huck Finn and couldn't get past page 20 in Frankenstein. I say that I am a book snob. I don't know if that is true so much as I just can't read what I am not interested in. I'll find something else to read or do-- constructive or not.

I remember, too, reading The Winter of Our Discontent late one night at the house in Como. I had a bowl of rice with butter and sugar. I simply remember being totally engrossed in the book and not even noticing the time or anything else. Tammy was gone to work and my rice had so much butter, it looked more like soup.

I also remember trying to read Austen's Emma in college and wondering why in hell anyone would ever read such boring garbage. I've never seen so much walking and talking and nothing going on in all my life. Jane Eyre on the other hand was a wonderful book that won me over to the Brontes forever.

So, who's to say what books we will and will not like? I suppose I prove that we can have a markedly wide range of tastes across a plethora of genres.

The writing life

Tammy's been after me for years about how great Annie Dillard is. I tried to read one of her books once and it made me feel rather stupid. Granted, I had just quit smoking and my thinking wasn't all it should have been. However, with the discovery of this book, I realize that Tammy was right about Dillard; She is a profound writer with amazing insight.

Of course I say that. I say it because Dillard seems to understand the fundemental problem with writing-- the inability to make oneself do it. The desire to do anything but write but to know that eventually, you'll come back to it just like a tongue to a rotten tooth-- probing, tinkering, pushing and pulling and finally, no matter how painful, full in, trying to get out what of the painful offender you can extract.

It's true that I don't want to write yet the more I say, "I do not want this" the more I do it, the more I think about it, the more I have to do it. Anne Lamott wrote once that she didn't have to write, she could just go shoot herself. I don't know that I have ever felt that compelled to write but certainly, I find when I am writing and thinking about writing and planning on writing and gathering ideas for writing, I am quite content. It's once I sit down and actually write something, then I am filled with dread. What, I wonder, has come through me and where did it come from? Was it any good and do I dare share it with anyone?

Dillard says there are two questions to be asked when writing a novel-- "Can this be done?" and "Can I do it?" Pretty good questions, I think. The only way to answer, I think, is to try.

The topic they never cover...

in history survey courses is Reconstruction. Never. It's at the end of the first section of US to 1877 and invariably, it gets left out. When you go to US after 1877, the assumption is, "They covered this in the last class." So, it falls in the cracks of American Historical Education. I have a BA in history and am getting a MA in history-- trust me, I know.

I suppose all survey classes are rooted in the interest of the professor. My US to 1877 professor was interested in the Puritans and England so I can tell you all about the Puritans and John Winthrop but couldn't tell you the periods of Reconstruction to save my life. Though, being a reference librarian at heart, they can be found here. Just because I don't know it, doesn't mean you can't. I am, after all, learning it with this book.

So far, it's an enjoyable read. I can't say you would want to spend your Saturday evening reading it, but I am interested in the book and think Foner has an engaging writing style and the book is very well balanced. Not too "Damn Yankees" or too "All Southerners were racist pigs" thus far. He seems to take into account class and race issues and realize that because things went a certain route doesn't mean everyone wanted it to go that way. He isn't overly sympathetic to Southern whites but he doesn't think they are all devils and doesn't seem to think all Northerners were saints.

That being said, we'll see how it goes. A lot can change in 500 pages!

It was a pleasure to burn.

I wanted a book. Any old book. One I hadn't read before. One that was a classic but not ancient. American. 20th Century. Less than $8.

And I found Fahrenheit 451. I had heard of it. I had heard for Bradbury. I had, in my snobbish way, dismissed it, having no interest in sci-fi. Now, please know that I have only encountered Sci-fi as a genre through really bad writers I have met who want to write about unicorns and princesses. While I realize they are not representative, I had suspicions those hacks were mimicking a standard sort of prose, a way of conscructing a story.

Well, I can't make any grand, sweeping statement decrying my stupidity and claiming that I was wrong about Sci-fi and will change my ways but I can say that I loved this book. I fell madly in love with it-- it's a good story, first and moreover, it's a statement about books and ideas that I can relate to in a profound sort of way.

A world were books are illegal...the thought terrifies me. Yet, the book is about more than that. I won't give spoilers or ruin the book for anyone (I don't think I could, Bradbury writes so well.) so I will simply say that the problem is deeper than burning books. In fact, since book burning, was instituted and desired by the majority of citizens, it isn't even a book that deals with a corrupt government. Rather, politics take a back seat to the death of culture at the hands of tv and movies and the constant bombardment of advertising.

In Bradbury's dystopia, people can't live without the tv (or the wall), the headphones (the seashell) or idle chatter. There is nothing, we quickly see, that matters much anymore. People go fast, talk fast and think very little. If it sounded like the time it was written (1953) then more is the pity on all of us for letting our world become so fast, so consumed with the material nature of the world. We humans are a stupid lot.

Bradbury is admirable as well for having a gorgeous writing style. He loves writers and writing and it shows in this book.

If you love books, this a must read.

Browsing the shelves

I've had blogs before. I've had (and have) journals. I largely started this blog out of a sense that since everyone else had one so I might as well have one, too. However, after reading last night and pondering some things, I decided that I wanted to use this space to talk about and think about books and writers.

While it's true I am a writer and am in a MFA program, I don't necessarily fit in with the other writers in the program. First, because I am also working on a PhD in history. Second, because I see an immense value in Literary Criticism. Not all of it, mind you, but some of it. I think as a writer, it's a most important skill to possess. I don't think writers are always the best readers of their own work but I do think it's valuable to understand that while the story takes precedence, structural matters are important. Metaphors and technique are valuable tools. Writers insert themselves into the text-- not always knowingly, either-- but don't always have the grand interpretations that critics impose upon the texts.

That being said, we must ask, does that make the critical interpretation any less valid? It does not. I think that there are a great deal of wrong sides in debate on literary criticism.

1. Literary criticism has no value because it imposes meanings that the author did not intend.

2. Every single word in piece of literature (or any book) is there for a reason and all are clues as to the hidden meaning.

Both are complete tommyrot. In a novel of 50,000 words, can the author be expected to know and remember every word? I think not. I wrote a short story once and had 3 or 4 mentions of hair. Not intentional. However, were I a "literary figure" those 3 or 4 mentions of hair would become symbolic of something. Now, that not being my intention, does that make it a less valid interpretation? No, actually, it doesn't. It means, simply, that the reader noticed "hair" mentioned over and over and constructed meaning in the text with it.

As for me, I tend to take away historical markers away from literature. I have that sort of mind-- a bent for the historical. However, I've read some very convincing criticism about all sorts of books that I don't think were really what the author intended and yet I was convinced that the critics were right. But, you have to ask yourself, "Can Faulkner have intended that Absalom, Absalom! be both about the nature of history as well as a metaphor for movie making?" The answer is-- no. I'm pretty sure he didn't intend either of those. But, both arguments were well constructed and well supported and I believed both. Now, who's wrong?

This is why so many of my MFA cohorts hate literature classes. I truly believe this. They think it makes it harder to write. They don't know how to make all those meanings in their text. But, it's more than that, too. It's that they think because it doesn't fall under authorial intent, then it isn't valid. That only what the writer intended to be the meaning can be the meaning. Utter rubbish, isn't it? Of course it is. They are (as a general lot) too busy being clever to be very intellent. So, they can't deal with paradox and that while authorial intent is all well and good, it is not the be all end all of interpretation. If it were, then wouldn't the Bible be a breeze to figure out? Would there be any need at all in a philosopher of any sort? No.

So, that's the sort of thing-- ruminations about books, about literary criticism and about writing you can come to expect here. I don't know that it will be riveting per say, but it will be, well, it'll be here, taking up virtual space.

Like I implied-- I'm smart, but not clever.