August 2009

Here is my monthly “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” post.  If I were truly dedicated to blogging and reviews, I’d write a litte blurb about each one, but…

• With Lawrence in Arabia by Lowell Thomas
• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
• The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, “Fifth Day” to “Postscript”
• The Soloist by Mark Salzman, to page 156
• Genesis by Bernard Beckett
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Home by Marilynne Robinson
• The Gospel of Judas by Simon Mawer, to page 72
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk
• Straight Man by Richard Russo
• Borges on Writing edited by di Giovanni, Halpern, Macshane
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

Disregarding my two half-finished books, I maintained my thirteen book standard (and some of them were impressively long, too).  You see far fewer rereads this month than usual – only one and a half, actually – so I feel as though I’ve covered a lot of ground.  Aside from The Name of the Rose, which is always excellent, my favorite book this month was Genesis.  And aside from the two books I abandoned, my least favorite was The Sheltering Sky, which I almost left for dead along with the others.  Snow and Home were both excellent, as was Straight Man, surprisingly, but in a vastly different way than the other two.  And then I took in some Hemingway and Austen, and naturally UKL.  I’m not sure whether a whole month has gone by without her.  If so, it was a sad month.

Starting next month, however, you will begin to see some textbooks; for instance, I am halfway through Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs – something I would not have chosen for pleasure.  Something I would distinctly not have chosen for pleasure.  Ah well.

Borges on Writing

I found this little book in my new favorite used book store, on the “books about books” shelf.  Borges on Writing is a transcription of the closed sessions that Columbia University hosted with the author and their graduate writing students in 1971.  Borges and his translator comment in three sessions on fiction, poetry, and translation.  If you don’t like Borges or aren’t familiar with some of his works and biography, this book wouldn’t appeal very much.  The gems are scattered fairly generously throughout the book, but the format, is, after all, a Q&A session, an interview, which is precisely what you get. 

At the end of the book is a short address from Borges to the university called “The Writer’s Apprenticeship.”  Here is the first paragraph, an example of the gems to be panned from this little book.

The poet’s trade, the writer’s trade, is a strange one.  Chesterton said: “Only one thing is needful – everything.”  To a writer this everything is more than an encompassing word; it is literal.  It stand for the chief, for the essential, human experiences.  For example, a writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it.  He needs love, and he gets shared and unshared love.  He needs friendship.  In  fact, he needs the universe.  To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer – to be living a kind of double life.

8.0 / 10.0.

Classes You Get Paid For

Before class began this morning, I was sitting with the other academic assistants on the third row of a classroom that could seat upwards of a hundred students.  A student taking that section of the class sat down on the other side of me, smiled, and made eye contact.  Knowing that I look exactly like an underclassman (for which I was mistaken on my very first day of grad school), I made sure to say casually in the first few sentences of our conversation that I was an assistant for the class.

I joked, “It’s kind of nice to be able to come to a class without the pressure of performing.  You get all the benefits of taking the class and get paid for it too.”  I knew that I would have exemplary attendance – since I’m paid by the hour – would read every word of the text – since I’m paid by the hour for that too – and would be paying close attention and taking careful notes.

The girl shook her head.  “I don’t think you could pay me to take a class.”

“Really?” I said.  The student actually wanted to pay for her schedule than be paid for it?  Perhaps she wasn’t thinking about what she was saying; but probably I was not conversing with a career academic.  (Though what else she thought she could do with an English major I would be interested to know.)  “It’s much better this way,” I assured her.

And it was.

Chapter Eight Excerpt

Tom crawled on until he reached the end of the corridor.  Fortunately it ended in a tiny closet where there was a hot water heater and cleaning supplies.  Unfortunately, there was nothing underneath his feet to break his fall; so he eased himself out of the vent feet first, dangled from the edge of the vent until he was stretched his full length, and dropped carefully down.  He landed flat on his feet and hunched down in a squat, waiting for discovery, but his movement must have sounded much louder to himself than to any of Spence’s men who may or may not have happened to be patrolling that hallway.  Tom poked around in the cleaning supplies to see whether there was anything to be found that could release him from his handcuffs, but he didn’t have enough time to make use of the tiny metal file that was his only discovery.  He took the file with him anyway, just in case.  He might need to defend himself, and though an eight inch file wasn’t much against a gun, it might be the element of surprise that he needed.  He stowed it away in a pocket in his scuba suit, which was covered in dust, then he opened the door a crack wide enough to peek out of.

Both ways were clear, and only a few feet away was a door under a promising red neon EXIT sign.  Tom slipped out of the storage closet and into the wide hallway, where he stopped short.

The mongoose Tatiana was standing there staring up at him.

Cursing, he snatched her up.  “How did you escape?” he whispered.  “Where’s Gayla?  Why didn’t you go back to your little burrow in Environment F?”

The mongoose sniffed his finger interestedly.  Her prominent pink nose was soft, cold, and damp, and made tiny heart shaped nose prints on his hand that disappeared in seconds.  She licked his hand experimentally with a narrow tongue that was rough like a cat’s but not as dry.  “Why are you so adorable?” Tom exclaimed.

Tatiana made no answer, so Tom said, “I don’t want to leave you in the storage closet because there are chemicals and air ducts and I would never find you again.  I guess you’ll just have to come with me.”

And with that decision made, Tom opened the door.

Setting off the emergency exit sirens.

Austen

I have inadvertantly hit upon a technique to increase traffic to my blog: mention Jane Austen.  It is for this reason that I have created a new tag in her honor, which I have purposed to apply liberally, and whether or not appropriate.

This afternoon I finished reading Sense and Sensibility to the tune of Anastasia’s bell.  She was attempting to climb a stack of boxes, but a full two feet still separated her from her goal of the kitchen counter.  Alas to be scarcely sixteen inches long.  No doubt she would have taken great consolation from Volume the Third of Jane Austen’s second novel, as I did, but ferrets are unable to read.  To increase her joy and my own in the conclusion of the book, I read aloud the last paragraph.  Anastasia was very relieved to learn that both Elinor and Marianne were settled to their mutual happiness.

At present I am eating dinner at a certain cafe-style restaurant which offers a $2000 incentive for a lucky individual who fills out the online survey.  The manager happened to deliver my meal during the course of said survey, and told me in a most cordial tone to “let us know if you need anything.”

What I need is $2000, actually.

Abandoned Books

I believe I have set a precedent this month.  I have abandoned reading two books, which is exceedingly unlike me.  I’m not sure where to locate the origin of this shocking behavior, though the fact that I’ve had the luxury to be picky during my gap year might be a contributing factor.

The first book I abandoned was The Soloist by Mark Salzman.  A music teacher in his thirties, formerly a child prodigy, is summoned to jury duty at the same time that he acquires a new student.  On page 156, this was all that had happened so far, and it had happened in the first three chapters.  I decided to believe that the protagonist’s experiences helped him back into the concert hall, which was where he really wanted to be anyway.  Perhaps it was a moving psychological study, but all it did for me was encourage me to move on.

The second book I abandoned was The Gospel of Judas by Simon Mawer.  I was pleased to have found it at a nice used bookstore in my new town, because it came highly recommended by another author I like, Mary Doria Russell.  However, it had a bit too much Catholicism and sex for my taste.  The recent discovery of manuscripts predating all the other gospels was apparently a side note, though much advertised on the back cover.  On page 75, the timelines were still too jumbled to justify so much repressed sexuality.  Therefore I repressed the sexuality between the covers and returned the volume to the shelf.

I immediately dosed myself with some Jane Austen, but found to my horror that I had no copies of Sense and Sensibility, a discovery that drove me to the nearest bookstore with haste; and I am feeling much better now.  Both Elinor and Marianne believe themselves divided from their dearest loves forever.  One is wrong about being divided forever and the other is wrong about her dearest love.  Thank the Lord for books we can never live without.

Egoizing

I have written thirty thousand (30,000) words since the beginning of the month.

I just thought I’d mention it.