will work, for money

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i20/20b01701.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

If someone would seriously turn out their pockets and give me their loose change for my contributions to the field of gossip and innuendo I will gladly accept.

P.S.

Hands down favorite line of the week, maybe month...

Shesgreen also details Abrams's innovations in comparison to existing anthologies like the College Survey. Abrams, he says, respected students as "aspiring scholars, creating sophisticated historical introductions, biographical narratives, and innovative special topics." But elsewhere in the essay he argues that Abrams's influence has had negative elements, for example his resistance to expanding the early limited number of female writers in the NAEL's pages (Norton Anthology). In the article, Shesgreen quotes Abrams as saying during the 2004 visit, "I have not found 10 lines worth reading in any of the women added. People want these but don't use them. And we have to put them in to be PC."

Haha! That's good stuff! Sophisticated historical introductions, biographical narratives, and innovative special topics!! That's my Sh-eeyt!
And, come on, "10 lines worth reading" from any of Norton's writers is a lot to ask.
Just one man's opinion.

Abbers

convinced that no opinion is worth more than another: all views are equal

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/08/2008080101c.htm?utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

And Thus

You will remain forever the orphan of those adolescent loves you never experienced.

Michel Houellebecq

Name That Tune

Much later, during an uncertain period when I was trying to understand something of myself by selling encyclopedias and medical books in the towns of Guajira, by chance I got as far as that Indian death village. At the window of a house that faced the sea, embroidering by machine during the hottest hour of the day, was a woman half in mourning, with steel-rimmed glasses and yellowish gray hair, and hanging above her head was a cage with a canary that didn't stop singing. When I saw her like that in the idyllic frame of the window, I refused to believe that the woman there was who I thought it was, because I couldn't bring myself to admit that life might end up resembling bad literature so much.

someone wrote this about lorrie moore on amazon.

"She went out of her way to be delightfully "kooky" by, (Oh my God this is SO original), writing a full page of HA!'s. As in "HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!" for a whole page. Yes, to some this may come accross as a truly brilliant idea, a veritable stroke of genius, intelligence, originality and so on, so on. In my case, it came off as the work of a writer suffering from either A) ADD B) Too much cafeine and/or sugar C) Cocaine Abuse."

Thank you, Amazon, and all other web pages, for allowing people to comment. Comments get me through the day.

P.S. I love Lorrie Moore. Ah loht.

back with the opposite of a vengeance

September Three Years Later


It’s simply
this

You would rather spend another year in Minnesota
working with bottles
than a day like today in Philadelphia, a day like waiting for something to become involuntary
a man to look up your skirt as you bend down to pick up a knife
it is simple really – you don’t need Heidegger to unravel the worry you feel stepping down the subway stairs. You might stop thinking at night
There’s a lot to remember
Remember the day we met for a drink across the street? And moved down the street for a real drink. You let me drive home. But you were on the answering machine

How can Philadelphia feel so lonely when there are just as many people. In the garden tonight a cicada was whirring to the ground. I prodded the desiccated wings and watched the legs tremble

It is simple though my money has gone far, far, far as the couch and he says it’s not serious enough. He says I have choices to make. I said the check's in the mail. I need to find a new head
but in the meantime, I’m planning a party. And I will get drunk and some people will come
And some will snarl at their invitation. And at some point, inexplicably, I’ll start talking about Minneapolis

spitzer this

that character rick sounds like my kind of guy

mind is a razorblade

fucking covers: i love them when they're good like the following example.
i can swear as i'm the only one working this bitch.







amd

slow day at work

http://www.admissions.ox.ac.uk/interviews/tests/philmodlang.pdf

amd

I would like to add the question:
Can your education make you exponentially dumber [sic] (Hint: I'm thinking of a particular institution)?

and the way a character goes away

A little after came Glahn, with his rifle under his arm, all ready to go out. He looked gloomy, and did not even say good-morning. I noticed, though, that he had got himself up and taken special care about his dress.
I got ready at once and went with him. Neither of us said a word. The first two birds we shot were mangled horribly, through shooting them with the rifle; but we cooked them under a tree as best we could, and ate in silence. So the day wore on till noon.
Glahn called out to me:
“Sure your gun is loaded? We might come across something unexpectedly. Load it, anyhow.”
“It is loaded,” I answered.
Then he disappeared a moment into the bush. I felt it would be a pleasure to shoot him then—pick him off and shoot him down like a dog. There was no hurry; he could still enjoy the thought of it for a bit. He knew well enough what I had in mind: that was why he had asked if my gun were loaded. Even to-day he could not refrain from giving way to his beastly pride. He had dressed himself up and put on a new shirt; his manner was, lordly beyond all bounds.
About one o’clock he stopped, pale and angry, in front of me, and said:
“I can’t stand this! Look and see if you’re loaded, man—if you’ve anything in your gun.”
“Kindly look after your own gun,” I answered. But I knew well enough why he kept asking about mine.
And he turned away again. My answer had so effectively put him in his place that he actually seemed cowed: he even hung his head as he walked off.
After a while I shot a pigeon, and loaded again. While I was doing so, I caught sight of Glahn standing half hidden behind a tree, watching me to see if I really loaded. A little later he started singing a hymn—and a wedding hymn into the bargain. Singing wedding hymns, and putting on his best clothes, I thought to myself—that’s his way of being extra fascinating to-day. Even before he had finished the hymn he began walking softly in front of me, hanging his head, and still singing as he walked. He was keeping right in front of the muzzle of my gun again, as if thinking to himself: Now it is coming, and that is why I am singing this wedding hymn! But it did not come yet, and when he had finished his singing he had to look back at me.
“We shan’t get much to-day anyhow, by the look of it,” he said, with a smile, as if excusing himself, and asking pardon of me for singing while we were out after game. But even at that moment his smile was beautiful. It was as if he were weeping inwardly, and his lips trembled, too, for all that he boasted of being able to smile at such a solemn moment.
I was no woman, and he saw well enough that he made no impression on me. He grew impatient, his face paled, he circled round me with hasty steps, showing up now to the left, now to the right of me, and stopping every now and then to wait for me to come up.
About five, I heard a shot all of a sudden, and a bullet sang past my left ear. I looked up. There was Glahn standing motionless a few paces off, staring at me; his smoking rifle lay along his arm. Had he tried to shoot me? I said:
“You missed that time. You’ve been shooting badly of late.”
But he had not been shooting badly. He never missed. He had only been trying to irritate me.
“Then take your revenge, damn you!” he shouted back.
“All in good time,” I said, clenching my teeth.
We stood there looking at each other. And suddenly Glahn shrugged his shoulders and called out “Coward” to me. And why should he call me a coward? I threw my rifle to my shoulder—aimed full in his face—fired.
As a man soweth...
Now, there is no need, I insist, for the Glahns to make further inquiry about this man. It annoys me to be constantly seeing their advertisements offering such and such reward for information about a dead man. Thomas Glahn was killed by accident—shot by accident when out on a hunting trip in India. The court entered his name, with the particulars of his end, in a register with pierced and threaded leaves. And in that register it says that he is dead—dead, I tell you—and what is more, that he was killed by accident.

amd

Best Character Ever

One of the universal aspects of genius writing is the quality of introduction that an author gives her readers to the characters. Let's compare some of our favorites on this post.

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten; large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at the table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been in school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, "on account of his delicate health." Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.

from Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

On a bed, surrounded by a confusion of potted plants, exotic palms and cut flowers, faintly over-sung by the notes of unseen birds, which seemed to have been forgotten--left without the usual silencing cover, which, like cloaks on funeral urns, are cast over their cages at night by good housewives--half flung off the support of the cushions from which, in a moment of threatened consciousness she had turned her head, lay the young woman, heavy and dishevelled. Her legs, in white flannel trousers, were spread as in a dance, the thick-lacquered pumps looking too lively for the arrested step. Her hands, long and beautiful, lay on either side of her face.

The perfume that her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odour of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire. Her flesh was the texture of plant life, and beneath it one sensed a frame, broad, porous and sleep-worn, as if sleep were a decay fishing her beneath the visible surface. About her head there was an effulgence of a body of water--as if her life lay through her in ungainly luminous deteriorations--the trouble structure of a born somnambule, who lives in two worlds--meet of child and desperado.

from Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes

The day dawned bleak and chill, a moving wall of gray light out of the northeast which seemed to disintegrate into minute and venomous particles, like dust that, when Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into her flesh, precipitating not so much moisture as a substance partaking of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil. She wore a stiff black straw hat perched upon her turban, and a maroon velvet cape with a border of mangy and anonymous fur above a dress of purple silk, and she stood in the door for a while with her myriad and sunken face lifted to the weather, and one gaunt hand flac-soled as the belly of a fish, then she moved the cape aside and examined the bosom of her gown.

The gown fell gauntly from her shoulders, across her fallen breasts, then tightened upon her paunch and fell again, ballooning a little above the nether garments which she would remove layer by layer as the spring accomplished and the warm days, in color regal and moribund. She had been a big woman once but now her skeleton rose, draped loosely in unpadded skin that tightened again upon a paunch almost dropsical, as though muscle and tissue had been courage or fortitude which the days or the years had consumed until only the indomitable skeleton was left rising like a ruin or a landmark above the somnolent and impervious guts, and above that the collapsed face that gave the impression of the bones themselves being outside the flesh, lifted into the driving day with an expression at once fatalistic and of a child's astonished disappointment, until she turned and entered the house again and closed the door.

from The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner

Ansatz

zootsoot2006
+1
Reply
You go into any mental asylum you're bound to meet one guy who thinks he's Jesus. What is so amazing is that this guy had such a successful career. He truly muddied the line between the mad and the sane. I think that can only be a credit to him.

VorticD
-1
Reply
klinski is ein psycho der idiot ich hoffe der stirbt qualfoll

michets82 +10
Reply
zu spät...

p.s.



amd

How it is

Country, and we like it that way.

Ever wonder why those dang Colombians are so fascinated by the fantastic? Never quite able to wrap your taste around a literature obsessed with localized, pure, drunken, magical gore? It's because the national literature is country, m'am. Other Latin nations may be expert at narrating the clash of urban and rural world views, like Mexico with Carlos Fuentes' profound Terra Nostra, or Cuba with José Lezama Lima's staggering, twisted, Three Trapped Tigers, or they may be unsurpassed at examining the city life, as with Argentina's Cortázar and Borges. But no one does country like Colombians, little missy, not ever. If you want to get into Colombian literature, best not to bother with political history, which is way too complicated to worry over. Best instead, start with bucolic tales. Like thissa one here in that fancy New York Times news report. This pastorale is set inland a couple hundred miles from Cartagena de las Indias, near abouts the same place as Macondo, Gabriel García Márquez's mythical departamento and setting for One Hundred Years of Solitude and other stories. Yeehaw!

Malibooty

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/24/071224fa_fact?currentPage=all

Thinking now of a quote I read ...
"The author, then, started life as a line of bullshit and to bullshit the author has returned. Ashes to ashes."
--
So I drafted a plot (with appurtenances) of an Entourage episode. The highlights indicate the revised text. This is the version I got back from my editor. *sigh* The original text can be found below.

In a major role-reversal, Vince and the guys are crashing at Drama's place. While Turtle tries to identify the senior Chase's whacked-out health food - "What's a psyllium husk, anyway?" - the man of the house returns, offering bagels and good news. Donna Devaney, an L.A. party girl from Drama's surprisingly lengthy past, has finally agreed to hook up with him. Plus, she has a hot friend for Turtle. Vince and E aren't sitting so pretty with the Medellin cut, so E tries giving Walsh some notes to spruce up the film. Predictably militant about protecting his vision, Walsh won't cooperate, and making things worse, has already sent a print to the Cannes Film Festival. E runs to Ari for a solution and settles on the option to ditch Walsh by selling the movie to Harvey Weingard.

Vince rolls with his brother and Turtle, promising not to steal their thunder, and they couldn't be more thrilled when he hops out at a stop light to join a random hottie in a convertible. She takes him to the home of her "family friend" to go swimming, which turns out to be Dennis Hopper's beach house. Hopper and his buddies tempt Vince into placing a $100,000 bet - that he can't cover - on a soccer game. The future holds less uncertainty for Drama and Turtle; their cougars are ready to pounce. Too bad for Turtle, Donna's "hot" friend Marjorie is twice his age, not to mention twice his size. But, in a typical turn of Drama's luck, Donna decides at the last minute to opt for Turtle, leaving Drama manhandled by Marjorie in the hot tub. Vince's soccer win comes through, infusing him with some much-needed cash, but he and E still differ on the direction they want to take 'Medellin.' When E says Harvey made an offer of $25 million, Vince throws him for another loop: Cannes accepted the film. "Maybe you should watch it again," Vince tells him.

ORIGINAL:
In an obviously insincere and illegitimate turn, Vince and his team of seventh grade intellects decide to open and develop a non-profit shelter for the homeless. While Turtle tries to identify the first of several economic bubbles that led us down this highway of shit - "What's a subprime mortgage, anyway?" - the man of the house returns, offering bagels and good news. Donna Devaney, an L.A. party girl from Drama's pointless and vacuous past, has made a donation of six million dollars towards their organization's endowment. Plus, she has continuous income pouring down on her from her investments in Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Well, not so much real estate. Vince and E aren't sitting so pretty with the tax cuts for the wealthy, so E tries giving Walsh some advice on how to live humanely and meaningfully in an increasingly disproportionate society. Historically militant about his increasing anxieties and dystopic vision, Walsh won't reason, and making things worse, has already lost hope in the power of reason and has begun speaking of the cult of reason's responsibility for world wars. E runs to Ari for a temporary, but material, solution to a metaphysical problem and settles on the option to read more and think more.

Vince, his brother, and Turtle drive up and down Sunset Blvd, handing out hot meals to the displaced and hungry, promising not to compound the problem of homelessness through the creation of a dependency on temporary aid. They couldn't be more thrilled when he hops out and approaches several local businesses, securing the written agreement of over 85% of the area to provide assistance, jobs and donate a portion of their profits to food/shelter/general care to those in need. A woman working for a 501C3 called Up From Office Chairs! asks Vince if he wants to collaborate on a fundraiser. She takes him to the home of her "family friend" to do some groundwork, which turns out to be Dennis Hopper's beach house. Hopper and his buddies tempt Vince into placing a $100,000 bet - that he can't cover (along with 98% of the world's population) - that Hillary's going to get the nomination and it's going to be HRC vs. McCain. He also bets him that McCain's only running so he can cross it off his Bucket List, once and for all. The future holds the same degree of uncertainty for Drama and Turtle (as it does for everyone, everywhere); their 'consciousness raising' San Diego Zoo Wild Cats of the Brush promotional exhibit is off and running. Too bad for Turtle, his "adopted" cat has fallen ill with a mysterious malady, not to mention has recently mauled one of the handlers. But, in a typical turn of Drama's luck, Turtle's cat pulls through and even ends up saving a small child who fell into the cage while his parents were arguing. The cat approached the child, licked his wounds and carefully carried him between his jaws to the outstretched arms of the zoo keeper and then to the hysterical mom and shell-shocked dad, leaving Drama to wonder about the theodicean nature of life. Vince's soccer win comes through, infusing some of the 30+ million Americans who have been left behind with some much-needed cash, but he and E still differ on the direction they want to see the next economic bubble manifest (Vince is calling for biofuels and the support of environmentally conscious venture capitalists). When E announces that through grant-writing exercises he was able to get a super grant from Verizon, valued at $25 million, Vince throws him for another loop: "We're all going to die someday." Vince stares in the distance. "Yeah," he ponders, "you're right. Maybe we should say fuck it and start a T-shirt company; our logo will be the Clinton generation children all grown up; ironically posing on all fours, pulling on their shirt sleeves (stained by that afternoon's hot lunch), doing a stag leap in a purple unitard and bifocals, opening their legs and drooling, lolling, rolling, staring into their camera phones, wide eyed and mesmerized by the spandex proletariat…"

amd

b&s

[CLICK ME]

uhm,hmm,mmmhmm

Question One:



Question Two: What book is this person not reading?



Question Three: How is this different than American Apparel's ads/photos/prints



Question Four: How is this?



Question Five: And this?



amd

Up with American Apparel, If I Must

[First, a disclaimer: I have only seen Seasons 1 and 2 of Entourage, and my beef with the show is based on limited knowledge. I have not seen any of the seasons that won all the fancy prizes, so I don't know if the writing grew more complex as time went on. Arguing about AA being "better" or "worse" than Entourage, with citations, is therefore pointless. I would like to discuss, instead, the cultural space that these institutions occupy.]

It is now 2am, officially "super late" by my standard. The one-man audience for the Entourage v. American Apparel (hereafter: AA) throwdown grows impatient, and one hopes never to disappoint the Wag. I still do not know who it was that challenged me to this; as it's part of the charm, I'll choose to remain ignorant. But, the reasons themselves are clear. Both Entourage and AA are LA-based phenomena, both savagely feed from the local culture's chic trough like it was yesterday's tater skins, both equate pop culture's sense of the Beautiful with its notion of the Good, and, finally, both monger the cult of authenticity.* They are therefore hateful to me. But like any good hypocrite, I partake of both with relish. I have watched Entourage and will, in time, watch more. Also, as I write this I am wearing an article of clothing from AA--this red, hooded sweatshirt, staple of my personal aesthetic.

The final likeness, the authenticity-mongering, is where I actually think they differ most significantly. Entourage, I posit, is selling us the same old Hollyworld glamour life that we got, in the 90's, from Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place, and are currently getting from MTV shows like Newport Harbor and The Hills, except in the latter two the acting is fake (i.e. the "stars" pretend to not be acting). While the MTV shows sell themselves as portraying "real" people who are obviously fake, Entourage uses the Marky-Mark-Wahlberg-created-this-show premise to assert that these fake people are actually "real," as in "the real deal," or, at least, more genuine human beings than the other Hollywoodians, personified by Ari Gold. Entourage banks on the audience loving its characters, and therefore taking stake in their misadventures, because of their Authenticity, personified by Eric "E" Murphy, the show's moral barometer. They did this to us with Fresh Prince of Bel Air, whose tough Philly moral code and softer, bumbling side made him the genuine article. You are meant to relate to this and every other show I've cited because you stand alongside the heroes in moral triumph over fake-ass, plastic corporate culture. Even while you're selling out there's no way you could ever sell out.

Now, what AA does is sell covetousness and nostalgia. They sell us what we want to be like in the most vain corners of our filthy minds: sexy, young, urban. AA sells the counter cultural aesthetic to the mainstream, marked up 300%, no apologies.** The "urban" aspect they promote heavily on their website: all of the clothes are made in Downtown LA, all of the photo shoots done on the premises, all of the models amateurs who often pose pro bono. The look of the models is "urban" as well: vague ethnicities, many shades of brown, dark, curly hair, etc. Their ads, as everyone knows, are erotic. If you're dressing for pragmatism and warmth, you're missing the point. AA also commodified thrift store shopping. For every time you went in a thrift store and were disappointed: if only these pants didn't have a poo stain, if only this shirt was in a different shade of gray. AA is vintage clothes outside of time. No more vintage-style; Vintage is the style, reduced to color, line and form. The wave of the future. The fashion aesthetic for these people is not a certain cuff, a certain seam, a certain pattern, a certain material. All of those things are basically set, with minor wiggle room. The clothes are cotton, unisex, solid colored (most often primary colors and grays). The fashion is, simply, what is fashionable. With the rise of AA we are seeing a move toward the apogee of fashion in late-stage Capitalism: virtual fashion. The simulacrum of fashion. At American Apparel we sell you solid-colored silhouettes of your remembered self, now with sex. Watch. The style at AA will progress steadily twenty years behind whatever is contemporary.

Pressed, I choose American Apparel simply because it is much more fascinating. It is more revealing of where we are as a society in the 20-oughts than Entourage is (or was). Entourage pretends to reflect our social mores back at us. American Apparel doesn't bother with all that nonsense. It just reflects reflects reflects reflects. Like the sphere in Michael Crichton's The Sphere. Like the hall of mirrors in Enter the Dragon. Bring on the Nostalgia; this is as real as it's gonna get.

* This phrase belongs, whole hog, to Brandon Holmquest, coiner extraordinaire.
**There is a cognitive dissonance here for me. The AA clothing aesthetic is designed around recalling the colors, cuts, and styles of our youth (or, if you're me, the style of the people about five years older, whose girls you stood really really close to in a crowd and whose boys you postured). There's something uncanny about it all. This sweatshirt I'm wearing, for example, fits like sweatshirts fit me when I was eight or nine, long in the sleeve, tight at the waist, yet the intended efffect is sexual. It's a sexualized version of young me, a curious amalgam that combines two vanities: youth and sex. This line of thought intersects, somewhere, with an essay in the first issue of n + 1, about how the people at McSweeney's are selling us "childhood as a way of life."

I cannot

I cannot begin to handle the second post, but regarding the first:

that neck tie!!!!

#2,#3,#5,#6,#10. Steve, you have this way of expressing indifference that is so life-affirming. I remember it from back in the day when I actually used to speak with you in real life. Usually this is a quality found in slackers of the highest order, but you are a legitimate work horse. Nice contrast my friend. Also, I forgot how I lent my copy of Into the Wild to a friend in 2000. He never gave it back, nor does he speak to me. He hates me I think. His name if you must know is Johnny. I stayed at his house once when I was 'in a fight' with my boyfriend, Ben. They lived in Whitewater, Wisconsin. We were all in college. I thought they were both sweet and vulnerable at the time. In hindsight, they were sort of cruel. Moving on. I would like that book back. The book is excellent. The movie is a piece of garbage. Or at least pretty bad. They take Jon Krakauer right out of it. Or Sean Penn does I guess. Jon's narrative IS the book, the story, the tension and philosophical lens through which all of the events are considered. Sean replaces this with the younger sister's musings.

I have lost a number of books, but I have found a great deal more. My friend Chris used give me books here and there. Once, I was like: stop buying these at an expensive bookstore; I can get them across the street at Magers & Quinn (used bookstore in Minneapolis (now I am sentimental)). He was like, I don't buy them.* This is how I acquired THE COSSACKS, for example.

* http://www.bordersstores.com/stores/store_pg.jsp?storeID=27

this is a machine designed for reading a book written by a Cronopio

This is a Cronopio

de ser...

has pasado a ser una persona indispensable en mi vida

THE ONLY BOOK I MISS


But I guess that's not totally true. I also miss TEMPORARY HELP. I've lent/given it away four times.


And lastly. Any book by one of these guys



In looking for the definition of Cronopio (as in Cronopio carelessness) I came across the quote at the top of the page. It made me wistful... like, there was this boy I met in Bologna, Italy and with whom I hung out. His name was Davide and he was very kind and smart and rare and genuine. He was like my only friend that entire year. We didn't really do anything except listen to music, share awkward silences and smoke pot standing by his bedroom window at his parents' apartment on via delle belle arti, and we talked about poetry and filosofia because that was what he was studying and I am obsessed with death. We weren't a couple or anything; we never 'did anything.' But he gave me small gifts -- mix tapes, necklaces, books... it was really intense in a way and still stirs within me a very physical sense of anguish. The things he gave me before I left are things I still have and sometimes when I open a book I find things he wrote, notes. We spoke via letters and email for a while after and to this day sometimes exchange an email, but it is gone. I know for sure because two years ago we were Instant Messaging (the first and only time I have done this) and it was strange sort of; it sort of highlighted the impossibility of the illusion I'd been harboring. Also, he sent me a picture of himself and he was more handsome than ever and I was like, oh, how does this make me feel? And I felt, well, sort of vaguely nostalgiac I guess--

Anyway, that line (You were once just someone I wrote to...) made me think of these things...

TMI, as they say. Next time I will talk about Anne Sexton's obsession with being admitted to McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA.


-abbi

"there's a chance of rain on Minnehaha Avenue. that's how a poem should start."

books i miss

I'm still not ready to write anything about American Apparel. I spoke to a cashier/model at the store in Santa Monica and she told me that the "flagship store" (a real quote, here) is a t-shirt stand on the corner of E. Second Street and South Central Avenue. I checked the website and this address is just a regular American Apparel store in Little Tokyo. Either the cashier/crackhead doesn't know what company she works for, or she doesn't know how to read. So far so good, I guess.

While the research continues, I'll pass the time with the first-annual "Books I've Lost" list: 2007. This is a list of books I own(ed) which went missing in the past 12 months, either because I lent them to someone and forgot who (to whom?), or they were lost by me in my typical Cronopio carelessness.

1. CA Conrad, Deviant Propulsion. I got this book autographed at the book release at the Kelly Writer's House, before I'd ever heard Conrad read. By the time I had my first conversation with him about books, his had gone missing.

2. Robert Creeley, The Island. I'm pretty sure I left this in my old office at Temple. Though Brandon is shaking his head no, I thought it was very good.

3. Julio Cortázar, A Manual for Manuel. I think this book disappeared the same night I threw a house-warming party on 9th Street in South Philly.

4. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire. I'm almost certain Brandon Holmquest borrowed this before I had a chance to finish it. I only read the Introduction, 13 pages of black humor and painfully vivid description. These pages alone could serve as a whole course in dramatic structure. So enjoy it while you can.

5. J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey. A friend borrowed this and I never told her I moved to LA. I still haven't. It's gone now.

6. Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters: A Comedy. Assigned by Sandra Newman in a Creative Writing seminar I took with her, but we never read it in class. Very possibly still in a shipping box in the Temple mail room.

7. Roberto Bolaño, Putas Asesinas. Had this book abroad; it may not have made it back.

8. Jaime Bayly, El Huracán Lleva Tu Nombre. You may know him from the movie remake of his La mujer de mi hermano, a shitty soap opera. But this one is an amazing book about a psycho ex-girlfriend. This play off the "mad woman in the attic" trope is from the perspective of a guy who comes out to her. I wanted to translate this one but the author didn't return any of my dozen emails. He's a bigtime TV celebrity in Miami. Oooh...

9. Gabriel García Márquez, Strange Pilgrims and the Spanish original. Counted as one because I want to include...

10. Franz Kafka, The Castle. I began this on the Orange Line in Philly on fine day. I think I lost it transferring to the El.

Adieu, books. Auld lang syne and all that mess.

Re: Technicalities

While preparing for my hopeless defense of American Apparel I ran into "Technicalities" and thought I'd offer a quick response by way of "What am I reading now" (the "now" is redundant there, isn't it).

A week ago, I picked up The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass. I stole this particular copy from the ex-office of one Alan Singer, PhD, but had yet to get into it. In this book (the only Grass I've read) a man in a mental hospital recalls his German childhood (so far, as I'm only halfway thru). There is a technique Grass uses, where he transitions between the man speaking from the mental hospital and the story's main narrative. Over the course of a paragraph, the narrator steps into the background, and we simply see the action. I have no word but "fluid" to describe the process. At the beginning of a paragraph, the narrator is speaking and we see him. Four or five sentences later, we are in the past. And I mean in it. If it's cold in the story I shiver. I haven't been that physically involved in a story since I first read The Hobbit circa 1992. It's like Grass is drawing us into the narrator's mental eye. I call it fluid because we have no choice but to follow him, we are "carried along" as the cliche tells us. For a careful (read: anal) and painfully slow (read: dyslexic) reader like me, "finding" myself at the bottom of a page is startling. I have not been able to pin down the technique. It has something to do with the order in which information is given. To follow my jalopy metaphor, it's like Grass understands the way the reading mind works, the way it flows from idea to idea, and he throws information (visual, tactile, psychological) ahead of the current, so our mind catches up to it at the perfect moment.

Glancing over the pages I've read so far, it seems too much effort to come up with an exemplary passage, as the techniques vary so much from passage to passage. How lazy!

Technicalities

When I was a kid my parents had this notion that my proper place was outside. Anytime they noticed me in the house they'd tell me to "go outside and play." I would take whatever book I was reading at the time and go sit under a tree in the backyard. Really, this backyard exile probably just kept me from smelling all the weed they smoked and hearing them fuck and otherwise act like two not very smart people in their twenties. Whatever. The point is that I developed this intense habit of reading as an aid to forgetting how shitty my life was. My memories of all the different places we lived over the years begin and basically end with my reading/hiding spots. An attic. Up in a tree. A cornfield. Rocks next to a creek. Etc. Now that I have myself become an apparently not very smart person in my twenties, this habit of obsessive reading is the only thing that supports my otherwise obviously false conviction that I am very different from them.

This habit has asserted itself to a shocking extent of late. I have developed an impossibly complex system to manage the reading of as many as seven books at the same time. Two large books, a novel and a nonfiction (usually history), as well as one or two books of poetry at home. A book of stories and usually one but sometimes two books of poetry for carrying around the city for reading on subways, at lunch breaks, in coffee shops or any other opportune moment. At least one of these books, though preferably two, in Spanish. And no TV reading, meaning crime novels, cheap memoirs, pop non-fiction, or any other bullshit. I have a TV.

The fruits of this weird yet somehow functional system have led me to think a lot about technique lately, and the way that technique leads to form. Vague discussions annoy me, so let us proceed to the particulars of three books, and try to bring it all together to some extent at the end.

"Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schulz
I happened to find a cheap copy at a book stall downtown, so I bought it. I've read this many times, but it had been a while.

Schulz wrote little stories, some of them just a few hundred words. They're all set in a small town and involve a young boy and his family. Very little happens in any of these stories. They are not about plot so much as moment. Schulz's main skill as a writer is his ability to cast a very persuasive aesthetic. All of his stories, and there aren't many of them, cast a palpable mood. They literally enchant you. He's not trying to put you inside the boy's head. He's trying to turn you into the boy. They way he does this is with verbs. He assigns unlikely verbs to everything, especially inanimate objects. Houses sink, windows cling, night caresses, and everything in the story seems to have more agency than the boy does. He is the object of everything, observing it and experiencing it but with no ability to do anything to change or affect it.

Once Schulz has paired an unusual verb with an unlikely noun, he stretches the image out. His paragraphs usually begin with the houses sinking, then go on to draw a variety of usually visual metaphors from that verb/noun pairing, all of which are presented as though they were literally happening. When he does this over and over again in every story, haze lifts up from the text and a little while later you realize you've been a child in Poland for the last half an hour.

"The Melancholy of Resistance" by László Krasznahorkai.
A while back I read a book by this guy, "War and War" and it broke my heart. So I wrote him an email, which said, "László you broke my heart." He wrote me back and said, "I am sorry I broke your heart. With my next book I will try to heal you." Krasznahorkai is Hungarian, somewhere around 55 years old, and a goddamned genius. The two books I've read by him are the only ones that have been translated into English thus far. Another is in the works but a long way from done.

His technique has three main features.

The first is extremely long sentences. Like 500 words long in some cases. Whole pages of margin-to-margin text broken only with commas. These require ATTENTION. They can be tough to follow unless you're just poring over the book. The sentence demands a very high level of focus and because every sentence does that, the whole book does it. It opens you up to all the other things the book is doing, all the things it is saying. It also allows him to really dig into anything he might be talking about at a given moment.

The second point deals with how he structures his scenes. A scene begins with character A and character B involved in some action. At a certain point the scene will transition to a supplemental scene in which character B is telling other, anonymous characters about what happened between B and A. Then back to the scene in the "present." It's a short of shifting of tenses, inserting after-the-fact retrospection into the scene, then alternating between the present and a later remembrance of the same event. The narrative possibilities of this technique are incredible. László builds layers of impression, memory, misunderstanding, motivations and divergent perspectives. He can take apart the act of one character lying to another and break it down into all of its constituent parts and make them all dance and then put the whole scene back together and move the narrative along to the next scene.

The third thing is about choices. It gives away nothing for me to tell you that the next to last scene in "Melancholy" is a funeral. Now comes the last scene. The technique here largely consists in making the exact right choice about what comes next. In "Melancholy" the last scene is a long, detailed description of the decay of the body buried at the funeral, the way that substances already present in said body break it down into organic compounds that are then recycled into the environment. This goes on for several pages. When it ends, László has said everything he wanted to say, philosophically, and done it in a way that is so artful that it is literally chilling. And all of that happens because he stopped, thought it out, and made the exact right choice.

"Distant Star" by Roberto Bolaño
This is a little novella, 110 pages, of the sort Roberto cranked out throughout the '90's. If you read a few of these, you notice a definite formula. First person. Usually a narrator who was on the periphery of important, always Latin American, usually political events. Informal, oral tone.

This formula is exceptionally functional because it is variable. In the context of this formula the specific characters and story become very important to the individual book, but the book itself does not have to stand all on its own. Each of these books are linked, usually by the presence of Arturo Belano, and together they all add up to something which is more than the sum of its parts. In a certain sense Bolaño was taking a cue from Faulkner and García Marquéz, creating a free-standing area in which his fiction takes place, but Bolaño's is less a physical location than the collective mind set of his generation, Latin Americans born in the '50's. Every book adds another layer, but its the cumulative vision of ALL of the books that matters.


So what we have then is three writers who are each exercising themselves primarily on different overlapping aspects of the craft. Schulz: the word and the scene. Krasznahorkai: the scene and the book. Bolaño the book and the body of work.

What's my point? How am I supposed to know? Isn't it interesting?

Personally, a lot of my work is done in an ass-backwards fashion where I get an "idea" and then just write it out and then revise it and then move on. The idea, by which I usually mean the plot, is the main thing. That is not the case with any of the writers cited here, and maybe there's some sort of lesson in that. To take one's time and break that idea down all the way and then build it up again, taking time and care to make each of the millions of choices as well as one can, realizing that the words all matter, and so does everything else, all the way up the line.

You hear a lot of talk among writers these days about "language" and how "all stories are made out of language" and what not. True. But they're also made out of scenes, and characters, and plots or the lack of them (which is itself a sort of plot). And they also take place in time, like music and film. And they say things, even if all they say is that they have nothing to say (which itself a sort of statement).

All of these things matter. You've got to be in control of all of them and make them all work toward the larger goal, whatever that might be. As if this writing shit wasn't hard enough already, right? Still, if you're not going to really do it and do it all the way then what exactly is the fucking point?

accepted

though i hate nostalgia mongering in all of its forms, i will defend this local industry against entourage six ways to sunday. give me 72hrs; i've got to pull up my Ayn Rand marginalia from when i was 15 and had already assumed i was better than everyone around me.

yo, steve

I will set to work defending ENTOURAGE if you will give me a Defense of American Apparel.

Let's do this.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

Obviously the best book about or set in a sanatorium is "The Magic Mountain." Thomas Mann.

A sort of latter-day adaptation of the sanatorium, one employed often by Milan Kundera, is the "spa town." These are big in Central Europe. Little towns built over hot springs with chinzy psuedo-medical facilities and lots of naked bathing and promenades. My personal favorite spa town novel is "The Farewell Party" (aka "The Farewell Waltz") which features a fraud doctor specializing in the treatment of infertility. He's the best in the field, cures nearly everyone, and eventually you find out that all he's doing is injecting his unsuspecting patients with his own sperm. He spends one scene dreaming a future Czechoslovakia where everyone looks like him. Then half the characters eat poison.

I could use a sanatorium or a spa town or some poison myself right now. New York. Ugh. This last week I worked five days, 9 to 5 at the United Way, doing data entry. First of all New York rush hour, morning and evening, is an intensely psychologically brutalizing experience. There's really nothing I can compare it to. Every morning I watch grown men and women literally fight each other over the privilege of standing with their face in a stranger's arm pit. There are simply more people than space on the trains. I usually have to let two or three trains go without me being on them, all the while jockeying for position on the platform so that when the next one comes I'll be close enough to hold my own in the subsequent skirmish. Then you get to work, which is another matter entirely.

As far as I can tell, New York offices serve no legitimate purpose. They are not involved in the production (or destruction) of any object. They contribute in no way to anything. All they seem to do is to provide a place where people can roll their little rock up their respective hill (said rock often taking the form of incomprehensible digital data). Then you get paid, and can then pay your rent, bills, and go shopping. It reminds of that scene in the beginning of "City Lights" where you see a shot of all these people coming up from a subway station and over that image is quickly imposed an image of cattle being herded toward the killing floor in a slaughterhouse. Real fast, then the commuters are back and then it cuts and you're like, "Did I just see that?" Yes, you did. And that shit is real fucking life. I have been more or less against capitalism all my adult life. As a younger man I was literally a card carrying member of the Communist Party. I joined on the Internet, hoping to get placed on an FBI list. Then the Party started sending me newsletters telling me to vote for Gore, and emails addressed to Comrade Brandon which ended with the sign-off, "Yours in the Struggle, Comrade So-and-So." What I'm saying is I drifted away from Marxism for reasons that should be obvious. But being here, seeing the way New York City is essentially a giant labor camp, and living it like this, well let's just say it brings back memories and a burning sense of class rage.

I finished "The Brothers Karamazov" a few weeks ago. There is this incredible chapter in it where Ivan Karamazov talks to the Devil for a good long time, then a trial scene. The ending is very strange. I don't know if I have anything super intelligent to say about it. I'm still trying to get my head around that ending, which will probably require that I read the book again sometime in the next year. It all goes back to the Elder Zosima, and Jesus, but I'm not sure quite how.

Next I tried to read "Extinction" by Thomas Bernhard, which is basically an unremitting symphony of hatred. I loved it, but then Thanksgiving came and I was feeling so much hatred that then reading about hatred created this overload that began to push me into dark areas. So I set it aside, to be resumed soon. Bernhard is fucking great by the way. Austrian, '60's and 70's. "Frost" and "The Loser" being both excellent.

I just finished, about ten minutes ago, "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour Hersh, who is a national treasure. Fucking great book. Portrait of the President as Caligula. It deals in equal depth with Kennedy's power trips, particularly successful assassinations of foreign leaders such as Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Rafael Trujillo in the DR, and Diem in Vietnam. And of course the Castro mania. Also corrupt dealing with the mob and the Soviets. Then there's the sex. Lots and lots of sex. At this point in history everyone knows Kennedy had affairs. But no. Constant sex, neverending fuckfests with two or three or four or a dozen hookers in the White House pool, with both his brothers and their friends present. According to someone quoted in the book, Kennedy once explained this behaviour by saying: "I get a migraine headache if I don't get a strange piece of ass everyday."

Am I writing? Other than scrawling the word "fuck" repeatedly in a notebook, no, not at present, though there are some ideas kicking around. I'm translating CA Conrad into Spanish. It works really well because he's so linguistically intense, which means you can use Spanish words like APESTOSO, meaning incredibly smelly.

And finally, a response to Abbi's question: What is an author?
An author is a creature who was invented by writers a long time ago to try to pass off what they did with their time, namely writing, as something more respectable than it really is. This was a dishonest act on the part of said writers. Writing is not supposed to be respectable, and if it is you're probably not doing it right. (I leave the inevitable sexual analogy to the reader's own mind.) The author then became a device by which "successful" writers could differentiate themselves from novices, upstarts, amateurs and genuine talents. Think about it. What kind of a prick douchebag says "I am an author" in response to a banal "Whaddya doo" type question? Then the author got highjacked by French intellectuals who, after the Second World War, were busily attempting to make European culture commit suicide. To this end, they postulated all sorts of theories of who or what the author was. The author either didn't exist, or was guilty of some bad postmodern thing (such as being French). Roland Barthes was the principal offender here. Nowadays the author does not exist. The author does, however, appear. This occurs during Author Appearances at places like Barnes and Noble and the Library. It is part of the now mandatory push to promote the latest Best Book Ever during the short window of time that exists between said book's publication and everyone forgetting that it ever existed. The author, then, started life as a line of bullshit and to bullshit the author has returned. Ashes to ashes.

How I Wrote Certain of My Books

How is Swann's Way coming?... And the Brothers K?... are you reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky trans? He seems to catch a lot of shit, but it's hard for me to say if the criticism is warranted. It probably is, but I liked their Notes from Underground. Sandra did not care for the translation of "The Lady with the Little Dog." As you (Steve) recall, we rewrote it for her class. I read over my rendition the other day and was disappointed. I was trying to draw out some kind of unfelt drama and make it... felt. It was not a success. At any rate, this is one of my interview questions. Please be patient, the full interview is coming soon. I am reading FOUCAULT: A Very Short Introduction. I love this series. Sorry. Sorry. Next I will tackle SCHIZOPHRENIA: A Very Short Introduction. Then, FREE WILL... but, first: 'What is an Author?' More soon. My boss just called. - abbi

Sanatoriums

What ever happened to sanatoriums?

Have they been replaced by rehab clinics and spas?

I would like to know if there are still places for the simply infirm, of moderate income. In Arizona, maybe. Cheap labor and a dry climate would make such a place possible there. Nationalized health care could recall the word 'sanatorium' into common use. The times being what they are, people might even use slang to refer to them. "I've been feeling burned out so I spent a long weekend at the sana'." The first 'a' would be softened in abbreviation, as in 'saw'. Owing to the similar contexts, friends might be confused, especially if the cell phone reception was spotty. "You spent a weekend in a sauna? What?" People from the North Atlantic region of the US would make it sound like 'santa'. Imagining it, I hear half-Dominican young women intoning the word. "Didjew hear about that new Santa in Worcester (read: Woostah)?"The New York Times Magazine would devote a full issue to the best and brightest among them. Zoloft, the modern man's Ether, may have made the need for such places redundant. But their usefulness, at least in literature, extends beyond the calmative, the curative. Doesn't Vronsky return from the sanatorium he was sent to after his horseracing accident more heroic than before? Or was the opposite the case? Is it only after his return that the affair with Anna K. turns sour and perverse? Was it used as a thematic turning point in the story?

Brandon's post about the Russians got me thinking about sanatoriums. They're a kind of part-time Elysium in these books, and Chekhov writes some about them too, if I'm remembering correctly. In which case, I'd like to read a history of Slavic literature tracking the motifs: extraction to a sanatorium, export to a gulag.

I can't think of an analogue in Latin American literature, where most of my own attention is focused, except in AIDS literature. In this, though, the effect is ironic. It is strange, thinking it over now, that there is not a tradition of sanatorium visiting in Latin American literature and culture. The politics alone, with its tendency toward decadence, neglect and repression, would make sanatoriums useful, at least to the educated class, doctors, lawyers and so on, both as a means of recovery for the individual, and for silencing, on the part of the state.

the LA scene: part 1

It's about time to write something from LA.

Last night Mary and I went to our first reading. It was at Beyond Baroque, a literary arts center and chapbook archive in what was once Town Hall in Venice. We walked there. On the way we stopped at a little J-boutique looking for shoes for me and all we found were the "latest style" from Japan, this from the proprietor who said we were very welcome even though they'd closed an hour before. Les Figues, a local press, was featured. Most of the stuff was utter nonsense and/or gobbledegook. I don't know enough about poetry to tell which. Fortunately, the person we were there to see was kickass, and read her poems in French and English. Except for the fact that most of the people seemed to be in a good mood, it was like any other reading I've ever been to. It ended and we went home, where we opened the laptop to watch our "stories".

Here I begin the true subject of this post: Entourage, a show that may be fun or funny if you don't live here, but which is just the stupidest show I have ever seen because I am here. Because I've been looking to get into a fight for a while, I want to announce an open challenge to ANYONE WHO LIKES ENTOURAGE. I challenge you to defend this poorly-orchestrated cliche orgy as a form of entertainment. I challenge you to prove it better than watching chimps knife fight. Anyone.

That aside aside, there do seem to be things going on. In Chinatown, for instance, Eileen Myles was recorded this evening in a basement down an alley off a boulevard. The place is called Betalevel, and they record readings and interviews with writers. We missed this one. But it did get me to Google "Eileen Myles" and I got her website where in addition to the usual writer stuff I found a link to her "blog," some kind of monster gross thing "curated by Infiniti". It looks to be some kind of lifestyle blog for intellectual types: how to be bored in hotel rooms when you've run out of cigarettes, and so on. Interestingly, you can't navigate back to the eileenmyles.com from the totally punk blog sponsored by MSN. I had to reload her page, ended up on her "bio" page and found out that her new book of poems describes "the transmigration of souls from the east coast to the west". If she means that literally, I wonder whatever became of my body--but she couldn't mean that literally because a few lines down she calls herself a "virtuoso."

What's the story with this poet?

Other news: Just finished Ryan's book of poems, "when i come here" from Plan B. It was great to see in print so many of the poems I'd heard, especially "boy" which turned out to be shaped like a kite turning left.

Currently reading the Overture to "Swann's Way" in the C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation. Let's see how far I get.

scooters, vacation, fall

1. Currently reading…
David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. No, not really. I'm actually reading nothing but magazines right now. The first "Reading" in this month's Harper's is good, and the one about the contractor working in Afghanistan. Also, there's a Bolaño poem…

I'd like to be reading a novel.

2. Favorite Line(s):

An aristocrat was riding down the street in his carriage. He ran over my father.
·
After the ceremony I walked back to the city. I was trying to think of the reason my father had died. Then I remembered: he was run over by a carriage.

- VIEWS OF MY FATHER WEEPING, Donald Barthelme

"The roads are empty and I am driving fast. I think of my father, imagine him long ago at night casually parting my mother's legs with the mechanical indifference of someone opening a cupboard. And I say to myself: I will leave every cold man, every man for whom music is some private physics and love some unsteppable dance. I will try to make them regret. To make them sad. I am driving back to my tiny kitchen table and I will write this: forgiveness lives alone and far off down the road, but bitterness and art are close, gossipy neighbors, sharing the same clothesline, hanging out their things, getting their laundry confused.

'That's how much it costs, Miss,' says the attendant at the gas station where I stop, looking rather numbly at the price on the pump.

'Oh,' I say and fumble for my wallet. The oil cans stacked against an old truck tire are wordless and collusive. But the triangular plastic flags strung at one end of the island flutter and ripple in the wind, flapping to get my attention, my compassion, like things that seem to want to sing but can't, things that almost tear themselves in trying to fly, like rainbow-colored birds, hung by string and their own feet."

-What is Seized, Lorrie Moore

3. You should read Sandra's book. It's good. I personally felt very depressed throughout, but I'm easily depressed. Which is not say the book is sentimental—it is not. I should quote something again I think:

1.1 Three postcards arrived the following week:
1.2 Dear Mom, Got here without dying. This is just to let you know I decided to use my middle name from now on cause I suddenly realized, Eddie = Oedipus, which just freaks me out. Like, I can't believe I was so lucky to get away, now I see what's really happening. Anyway, this is the last time I'm writing, so if you want to think I'm dead, it's not my problem. –JACK
1.3 Chrysa, Here is London which SUCKS. They all look like fucking walruses, I totally get that Beatles song. So I've got this Finnish chick now, Martina, she's like seventeen. She's like, she left her hometown because 'the people were not sincere,' so basically dumb chick. But that's why I'm not writing after this cause I can only write when I'm lonely, sorry. Tell Mom I'm trying to be cool but I can't deal with her right now.—JACK
1.4 Chrysa, Getting the fuck out of Europe to Africa, I can't take it here. It's like everything's neutered with so-called 'civilization.' Like Martina ran off with some other Finnish asshole named Casper (honest to shit real name) cause he sleeps with both men and women because he's comfortable with his masculinity or some shit, which I don't have to leave California to hear this shit. Like friendly ghost jokes or what. So I'll write from Egypt if I don't suddenly have a fit and die. – JACK
1.5 That was the last we heard.

THE ONLY GOOD THING ANYONE HAS EVER DONE, Sandra Newman

-- Abbi Dion

call/response

1. I am reading The Brothers Karamazov. Fyodor Somebodyovich Dostoevsky. I read The Idiot and Crime & Punishment last year, so the Brothers shall complete the trifecta of Russian depressing.

The thing I could never understand about Dostoevsky is why I like him. There are SO many reasons to find him distasteful. For one thing, he is kitschy as fuck. For another he is extremely Christian. A third: his characters could be described as lightly personified philosophical points of view who exist only to a) argue, b) kill each other, and c) provide cautionary fables of a conspicuously moral nature. Four: every book has the same characters with different names and the basically same plot. Reason E: he is MAUDLIN, which seems like it should fall under the heading of "kitsch" but it is somehow a distinct property of his work, separate from the kitsch, and also throbbing.

I could go on. In conversations this week, I've gotten this list as high as seventeen distinct reasons to dislike Dostoevsky. The fact remains that I like him still. A lot. I finally realized that this so for the following reason: He is a great observer of human beings, a diligent recorder of our ways and means.

We really are as mean and petty and unredeemable as he makes us seem. We really do have something incandescent in us which we don't know how to handle, which usually drives us to try to kill it. We really do hate each other that much. We are that absurd. Our lives are that dumb. That Dostoevsky wrote a handful of variations on the same book stems from the fact that he could never get his head around a system of theology so generous as to offer redemption to nearly everyone. He came to his religion later in life, after having been to prison, after having faced a firing squad. The idea of Christ quite simply blew his mind, and he spent the rest of his life and career trying to simultaneously understand it and help others experience it the way he had. He's not the only writer who, having become intimate with human misery to the point of believing it to be inevitable and everlasting, had his mind blown by the concept of Grace. T.S. Eliot was another.

There's also the fact that Dostoevsky isn't the least bit afraid to say something. Even if I find what he actually says a little silly about half the time, its such a nice change from all our breathing novelists, those great masters of the perhaps, the maybe, the it seems to me. Fyodor just says, "It IS!" and its like rain after a long string of hot and muggy days.

2. My favorite line from literature? How can you even ask somebody that type of question? That is simply cruel. Its like what God did to Job, or Abraham with that whole, "Kill me a son," routine. But fine. Here it is.

Hamlet. Act 2, Scene 2. Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius are sitting around, discussing the possible cause of Hamlet's madness. Polonius is convinced its that Ophelia has begun to parry his affections. The King and Queen are dubious. Especially the King. Polonius suggests that, since Hamlet often spends four hours a day walking in the lobby, they can place Ophelia in his path, hide behind a curtain and eavesdrop on them, and all will be revealed. As they are mulling this over, enter Hamlet, with a book in his hand. The Queen sees him and says:

"But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading."

3. I don't know about Sandra's book, having not read it. If someone will kindly mail it to me I would be glad to read and then give my answer. And I concur with Steve, her Khlebnikov translation is amazing.

- Brandon Holmquest

that other book of Jane

hey abbi

i've been reading Jane Austen for a while now. i'm deep into "Emma," fantasic, amazing, so good--the narration, the humor, the ironic characterization, all of it drool-inducing. just bought a copy of Junot Diaz's novel and am keeping it from myself intentionally.

i can't tell you my favorite line. it's the last line from Woolf's Between the Acts; and if i said the last line it would ruin the whole book. either that or EVERY LINE by John Banville, my gallant Man-Muse.

haven't bought Sandra's book yet, but i'll take this opportunity to shamelessly plug Calque 3 (forthcoming in November), which includes a translation of Velimir Khlebnikov's "Ka" by Sandra Newman.

steve

Three Questions

Hi everyone.

What are you reading right now?

What is your favorite line from fiction?

Why is Sandra Newman's book THE ONLY GOOD THING ANYONE HAS EVER DONE the most depressing book of all time?

--Abbi