“my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.” (5)
In describing her vision of the future relations between information, theory, and theorists in terms of fantasy, seduction, and dreams, N. Katherine Hayles taps into an undercurrent of aspirational idealism that is as palpable in many contemporary examinations of the twentieth century’s evolving theories of information as in the documents and practices of the time. Most obvious in the work of futurists like Ray Kurzweil, who describes, in glowing terms, the possibility that “information-based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the … emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself” (8) this tendency to romanticize the disembodied flow of information is also apparent within more intellectual histories. An emphasis on diffuse yet interconnected systems of information and collaboration can lead to a sensitive history that avoids valorizing a few great men at the expense of those around them, but it can also lead to a masked enactment of that very mistake.
In histories of the information age, two kinds of information sharing systems are foregrounded: the newly-invented media themselves (e.g. radio, television, and the internet), and the structure of relationships that led to their invention and dissemination. As Thomas Streeter reminds us in his history of American radio broadcasting, “the electronic media did not fall from the sky or emerge fully formed from a test tube; they are the product of knowledgeable people doing things in a concerted, organized way, with certain purposes in mind” (7). His formulation carefully acknowledges both the people and their collaboration, avoiding the trap that Hayles cautions against in her description of the “posthuman.” She uses this term as a kind of shorthand for a point of view that “privileges informational pattern over material instantiation” (2), one she locates both in theories of cybernetics and in the literary and historical documents that surround those theories. Within the historical documents, “informational pattern” may refer to the networks of theoreticians and inventors who create the media, and “material instantiation” to the individual actors within those networks.
Extrapolated into the future dystopian world of Craig Baldwin’s “Spectres of the Spectrum,” that network of innovators, experimenters, programmers, and who-knows-who-else becomes a shadowy, ill-defined enemy, a media conspiracy called the “New Electromagnetic Order” that threatens to destroy the possibility of memory. In Baldwin’s vision of the future, embodied individualism is literally destroyed by this emphasis on interconnection; information sharing leads not to productive diversity, but to assimilation. Kurzweil’s singularity is Baldwin’s nightmare. In his version of the past, eccentric inventors like Nikola Tesla are portrayed as the naïve victims of a military-industrial complex that sought to assimilate their insights and inventions while denying them either formal or financial recognition. Here, this particular kind of inter-institutional information sharing is understood as a problematic necessity, contributing to a dominant hegemony rather than preventing it.
In competing histories of that same past, the collaboration between academic institutions, businesses, and the government is figured in much more utopian terms, as a kind of open-source ideal. In Why The American Century?, Olivier Zunz writes about an “institutional matrix of sponsoring universities, professional associations, churches, corporations, state and local governments, foundations, labor unions, and others” (26), a “diffuse national research establishment,” and a “radio empire connecting science, business, and the military,” as democratizing, practical influences that “defined new possibilities” and “stood in the way of special agendas” (17-19). Even the loaded phrase “military-industrial complex,” though used only twice in the entire history, is given unusually positive connotations, described as an institution that “Americans naturally credited … for serving democracy” (166).The individuals that Baldwin celebrates disappear into the institutions that sponsored them, as in Zunz’s brief history of radio, which lauds the Navy’s influence in the development of the medium, and among private-sector innovators, names only David Sarnoff, the former head of RCA whose rapid rise up the industrial ladder can be perhaps attributed more to his people skills than his technical ones. Though the informational pattern is the focus of Zunz’s analysis, one charismatic man is still credited with having created and maintained each instance of that pattern.
A single charismatic man also lies at the center of Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture, a book that attempts to write equally about “[Stewart] Brand’s unique individual talents, the networking tactics he employed, and the increasing influence of the networks he helped build” (8). Though Turner argues that the “flourishing of nonhierarchical, interdisciplinary collaboration” he chronicles was first conceived within “a fabric of military-industrial-academic collaborations that has persisted to this day” (18), his primary focus is on the countercultural movements that spawned first the Whole Earth Catalog and then various online and business communities, culminating in Wired Magazine. These he describes as intentional communities, hand-picked groups of cultural figures that grew not out of an organic process of information exchange and cross-pollination, but out of the mind of one man: Stewart Brand. Though Turner nods to the fact that this emphasis on the network can function perversely as a hero-making rhetorical move, where “those who could most successfully depict themselves as aligned with the forces of information could also claim to be models of those forces” (260), this does not prevent him from being captivated both by Brand’s idealistic rhetoric and by the force of his singular personality.
Each of these histories struggles with the tension between historicizing the disembodied flow of information and recognizing the embodied persons who produce, transmit, engage, and utilize that information. Other writers, such as Lawrence Lessig, have focused on the material networks over which that information is transmitted, bringing physicality into their histories not by focusing on specific persons, but by focusing on the technical structures of information flow. Still, Lessig’s own cult of personality should not be ignored; within the community of those concerned with the future of the internet and copyright, he is undoubtedly more famous than most of the people he writes about. Like Stewart Brand, Lessig operates as a figurehead for a diffuse network of thinkers, capitalizing on his own personal charm and intelligence in an attempt to promote information systems that de-emphasize the individual. The paradox here is palpable, and potentially inescapable. Yet Hayles’s sense that we must attend to the complexity of embodiment is instructive here. Rather than understanding this as an imperative to isolate the individual from whom the rhetoric issues or who best embodies the ideals of a movement, we might take it as an enjoinder to attend to the multiplicity of ways in which the ideals are embodied, experiences ranging from active participants in these intellectual exchanges to the outliers who benefit from them.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
dear readers
I started this blog sometime in early 2008 (or maybe 2007, i'm not sure), because I needed a space in which I could talk about books. Being in grad school has made it not only redundant but also impossible; I could post the things I write for school here, but I really don't have the time or mental energy to write anything else, and I doubt my three readers have any interest in those things anyway. So I'm moving on, at least for now.
This should be more fun for you to read anyway.
I may post a link or two here from time to time (although don't hold your breath), but primary blogging activity will all happen in letter form. At least until graduation, which happens sometime in June. We'll see what happens after that.
This should be more fun for you to read anyway.
I may post a link or two here from time to time (although don't hold your breath), but primary blogging activity will all happen in letter form. At least until graduation, which happens sometime in June. We'll see what happens after that.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
one of the boys
Edna St. Vincent Millay never described herself as a feminist, and the truth is that she said some pretty awful things about her sex. That said, she let her husband handle the housekeeping, and she never shied away from anything just because it was considered unwomanly. Thanks to her undeniable poetic talent, her strikingly expressive voice, and her unusual beauty, she was able to live a life that was impossible for most women at the time. The darling of not just the literary community but the whole country, she was celebrated as much for her girlish appeal as for her strong and individual writing, but in truth it was the contrast between the two that made her so irresistible.
A lush and a womanizer, living off money borrowed from her publisher and cuckolding husband with a wide assortment of lovers, even moving out of her home to live with a poet many years her junior, she spent the last years of her life in a state we’d decry in a man. But there’s something all too appealing about a woman who embraces her vices, who grasps wholeheartedly all the privilege her talent and circumstances afford her, who lives, and it’s hard to phrase this any other way, like a man. She was a pretty and brilliant bad girl, the kind of character you can’t take your eyes off, equal parts seductive and heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking not just because her story ends in tragedy, not just because she dies beloved but broke, addicted to opiates and drink, but also because of the first two things I mentioned. Despite being an inspiration to many young women and a hardworking advocate for young, gifted poets, she didn’t learn from her own example. Or perhaps she simply didn’t want to admit the fact that her clothes were discussed as much as her books, or that her libertine ways helped feed the national fascination that helped sell those books. It’s all conjecture, of course, but it’s hard not to imagine that being the subject of such constant examination must have been exhausting, must have made her realize the contrast between coverage of her life and work and that of her contemporaries. But she, so daring, so flirtatious, so ahead of her time, and so direct in so much of her correspondence, never told the world that more was required of her simply because she was a woman.
If it’s not obvious, I just finished reading her biography. The year it came out, everyone and their sister gave me a copy, because apparently it was the perfect gift for me. Despite the near-unanimity of the gift, it took me a while to get around to reading it. Instead, I dutifully thanked them, returned the extra copies, and shelved one copy to read later. Seven years later, I finally read it, and though I’m not generally into biographies, it actually was a pretty damn good gift. If you don’t know me (and if that’s the case, seriously, what are you doing reading my blog? You’re probably the first.), you may not be aware how easy it is for me to identify with a pretty, young, outspoken poet who grew up in Maine and likes to cause trouble. But it’s very easy, and that’s why I’ll treat her life as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. The moral: speak up. Even more.
A lush and a womanizer, living off money borrowed from her publisher and cuckolding husband with a wide assortment of lovers, even moving out of her home to live with a poet many years her junior, she spent the last years of her life in a state we’d decry in a man. But there’s something all too appealing about a woman who embraces her vices, who grasps wholeheartedly all the privilege her talent and circumstances afford her, who lives, and it’s hard to phrase this any other way, like a man. She was a pretty and brilliant bad girl, the kind of character you can’t take your eyes off, equal parts seductive and heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking not just because her story ends in tragedy, not just because she dies beloved but broke, addicted to opiates and drink, but also because of the first two things I mentioned. Despite being an inspiration to many young women and a hardworking advocate for young, gifted poets, she didn’t learn from her own example. Or perhaps she simply didn’t want to admit the fact that her clothes were discussed as much as her books, or that her libertine ways helped feed the national fascination that helped sell those books. It’s all conjecture, of course, but it’s hard not to imagine that being the subject of such constant examination must have been exhausting, must have made her realize the contrast between coverage of her life and work and that of her contemporaries. But she, so daring, so flirtatious, so ahead of her time, and so direct in so much of her correspondence, never told the world that more was required of her simply because she was a woman.
If it’s not obvious, I just finished reading her biography. The year it came out, everyone and their sister gave me a copy, because apparently it was the perfect gift for me. Despite the near-unanimity of the gift, it took me a while to get around to reading it. Instead, I dutifully thanked them, returned the extra copies, and shelved one copy to read later. Seven years later, I finally read it, and though I’m not generally into biographies, it actually was a pretty damn good gift. If you don’t know me (and if that’s the case, seriously, what are you doing reading my blog? You’re probably the first.), you may not be aware how easy it is for me to identify with a pretty, young, outspoken poet who grew up in Maine and likes to cause trouble. But it’s very easy, and that’s why I’ll treat her life as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. The moral: speak up. Even more.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
portland, portland, chicago
A city of books and bridges, roses and almost ripe tomatoes, turning from green to gold to orange to a bright sweet red I won’t get to see. I’m not (and if I’ve seen you in the past week, I’ve told you this) a crier, but Portland’s a hard city to leave, and it’s hard for me to tell if it’s worse this time than when I moved away from that other city with the same name, but I can tell this much: it’s wrenching.
It’s not just the people, nor the restaurants and shoe shops, the famous bookstore or my favorite grocery store; it’s not anything I can define or describe, just the last eight years of my life. But this isn’t really a personal blog, so I won’t go on for long. I’m reading Nicholson Baker, and he writes about himself in a way that’s more compelling than my own self-description could ever be. It makes me want to try, but I do think it’s dangerous to dip too far into that sort of blogging. It’s just not the kind of thing a girl like me ought to do.
Last time I was in Maine, I spent the night at a lakeside cottage, playing Scrabble and drinking wine and eating pasta tossed with olive oil and mushrooms gathered from the neighbors’ yard. In the morning, we swam in the lake between turns of a slow and lazy Scrabble game, and talked about local politics. At some point my hostess made passing reference to a friend of hers who lived nearby, a man she’d just seen at town meeting, her friend Nick Baker. And then she asked me if I’d ever read any of his stuff. I was so starstruck that I think I actually gasped. Audibly.
I realized less than halfway through the book I read before this one (Elizabeth Hand’s Saffron and Brimstone), that its author is from Maine, too. Though I do admit that sometimes, due to a perverse kind of home state pride, I seek out Maine writers, this was just a happy accident. I’d like to ascribe this to some kind of regional magic, some brilliance imbued upon Maine residents by the rocky coast and nasty weather, or some unconscious kinship that makes me pick these books by instinct, but I can’t. All I can say is that it is an indisputably nice thing. And maybe, a few years from now, I’ll find an abundance of Oregonians popping up on my bookshelf. It’s hard to say.
It’s not just the people, nor the restaurants and shoe shops, the famous bookstore or my favorite grocery store; it’s not anything I can define or describe, just the last eight years of my life. But this isn’t really a personal blog, so I won’t go on for long. I’m reading Nicholson Baker, and he writes about himself in a way that’s more compelling than my own self-description could ever be. It makes me want to try, but I do think it’s dangerous to dip too far into that sort of blogging. It’s just not the kind of thing a girl like me ought to do.
Last time I was in Maine, I spent the night at a lakeside cottage, playing Scrabble and drinking wine and eating pasta tossed with olive oil and mushrooms gathered from the neighbors’ yard. In the morning, we swam in the lake between turns of a slow and lazy Scrabble game, and talked about local politics. At some point my hostess made passing reference to a friend of hers who lived nearby, a man she’d just seen at town meeting, her friend Nick Baker. And then she asked me if I’d ever read any of his stuff. I was so starstruck that I think I actually gasped. Audibly.
I realized less than halfway through the book I read before this one (Elizabeth Hand’s Saffron and Brimstone), that its author is from Maine, too. Though I do admit that sometimes, due to a perverse kind of home state pride, I seek out Maine writers, this was just a happy accident. I’d like to ascribe this to some kind of regional magic, some brilliance imbued upon Maine residents by the rocky coast and nasty weather, or some unconscious kinship that makes me pick these books by instinct, but I can’t. All I can say is that it is an indisputably nice thing. And maybe, a few years from now, I’ll find an abundance of Oregonians popping up on my bookshelf. It’s hard to say.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
cover art
There are even more now. Always a sucker for interesting cover art, I was pretty much delighted when I found this collection of fake book covers a month or two ago (maybe via Maud Newton? I'm not sure), and am delighted again to have revisited it (via Bookslut this time, for sure) today.
Of course the covers are by turns gorgeous and silly and wonderful, but I think the thing I like most about them is the fact that they (by virtue of being imitations but not quite parodies or even derivative works) do such a wonderful job of illustrating and commenting on the conventions of cover art.
Only sort of related: There's nothing quite like finding a blog you love long after its owner has stopped updating. Judge a book is gorgeous, but I'm pretty sure it's over.
Of course the covers are by turns gorgeous and silly and wonderful, but I think the thing I like most about them is the fact that they (by virtue of being imitations but not quite parodies or even derivative works) do such a wonderful job of illustrating and commenting on the conventions of cover art.
Only sort of related: There's nothing quite like finding a blog you love long after its owner has stopped updating. Judge a book is gorgeous, but I'm pretty sure it's over.
Friday, April 18, 2008
delightful things happen
I just (last night) finished reading Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen, and, having fallen quite a bit in love with it, was thinking about ordering another of her books today, and investigating Small Beer Press a little further.
I hadn't gotten around to it yet when I found this link (on bookslut) to a free download of a whole book from Small Beer Press. Nicely timed, magic internets.
Also, it turns out you can download the Kelly Link book, too. And you should. Because it's excellent.
I hadn't gotten around to it yet when I found this link (on bookslut) to a free download of a whole book from Small Beer Press. Nicely timed, magic internets.
Also, it turns out you can download the Kelly Link book, too. And you should. Because it's excellent.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
swoon (not like lovecraft in brooklyn)
I've been a little bit in love with Colson Whitehead ever since I read The Intuitionist, and only became more so after I saw him read at Wordstock. He's just really very good at what he does. Further proof appeared over the weekend, in his NYT article attempting to debunk all our generation's endlessly romantic myths about writing in Brooklyn.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Monday, December 3, 2007
collector of books
I was fifteen years old when I saw Joyce Carol Oates read; she came to my summer camp (an academic one), and read to an auditorium full of precocious teenagers. Hearing her read the title story from Collector of Hearts sparked a full-blown obsession with her work. I had read "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" in classes before, and knew in a sort of offhand way that I liked her work, but the reading started me on the inevitably strange and wonderful journey of reading every single one of her books that I could get my hands on.
Though I am a completist, it soon became clear that I couldn't read them all, not least because I lived in a small town in Maine, and couldn't physically get them all. Even now, though, with Powell's just a few blocks away, I can't read them all. It's not that she has written too many books (what would that even mean?), just that there are so many books in the world and there is never enough time to read.
Though I am a completist, it soon became clear that I couldn't read them all, not least because I lived in a small town in Maine, and couldn't physically get them all. Even now, though, with Powell's just a few blocks away, I can't read them all. It's not that she has written too many books (what would that even mean?), just that there are so many books in the world and there is never enough time to read.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
false start
Having been raised in a household where Joyce was considered canon and books a necessity easily on par with food, it is perhaps as unsurprising that my literary tastes tend toward the unusual as it is that my appetite for literature is voracious.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
memes
Published in 1986, Ghost Dance was Carole Maso's first novel. I know this not just because all the reviews talk about it, but because I wrote my thesis on another of Maso's books, and that involved doing quite a bit of research about her and her bibliography. That's why I was really puzzled when I came across this.
After a little bit (okay, a lot) of googling, I reached two not-very startling conclusions. One is that misinformation spreads a lot faster these days, thanks to the miracles of the internet, and the second is that it's always worth double-checking your databases. Data entry is a tricky business, easily mismanaged by those clumsy human fingers we all have.
I noticed, first of all, that while 27 Amazon sellers wanted me to purchase this book, none of them had entered any supplementary information about it. Odd. Nobody on LibraryThing owned a copy of the book, either. None of the Bookfinder or Alibris sellers knew much about it, either. And it was at Alibris that things became clear, because I finally searched by title instead of author. And noticed the ISBN problem.
After a little bit (okay, a lot) of googling, I reached two not-very startling conclusions. One is that misinformation spreads a lot faster these days, thanks to the miracles of the internet, and the second is that it's always worth double-checking your databases. Data entry is a tricky business, easily mismanaged by those clumsy human fingers we all have.
I noticed, first of all, that while 27 Amazon sellers wanted me to purchase this book, none of them had entered any supplementary information about it. Odd. Nobody on LibraryThing owned a copy of the book, either. None of the Bookfinder or Alibris sellers knew much about it, either. And it was at Alibris that things became clear, because I finally searched by title instead of author. And noticed the ISBN problem.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
so, so many
A gift from my afternoon gmail inbox: it's not quite an infinity of poems, but it's damn close. I have a copy of the Oulipo Compendium, which he took this translation from, and there's something wonderful about leafing through it and using some agency in combining (composing? not quite)the lines, but this web version has a certain automatic charm of its own.
And of course, I'd love to own one of these. But that's not likely to happen any time soon.
And of course, I'd love to own one of these. But that's not likely to happen any time soon.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
one word
I used to write poems that reveled in brevity, poems that maxed out at three lines, three short lines, even. They weren't easy to write, unless they came to me entirely whole, already created out of the ether. Those were lovely, to be sure, but the majority of them were heavily polished little gems, careful creations masquerading as feats of inspiration.
Sometimes, the titles were longer than the poems. Other times, the titles were the only things shorter. Sometimes, they just had numbers. Lately, I can't write like that, but this delightful post (found via Bookslut) about short poems reminds me of how satisfying it was.
Last night, we were talking about The Fear of Losing Eurydice and AVA, because I'm re-reading the first and always thinking about the latter, and because there is a resonance between them that I was trying to explain. I think it boils down to this: each sentence in each book is as dense and vivid and carefully self-contained as one of these poems. Even in Eurydice, where they're not set apart visually, each sentence is a separate revelation, a discrete and lovely work that is linked thematically but not grammatically to the surrounding text.
Last night, I said they were similar "flights of language," a phrase I meant to reference the irresistibly infectious quality of flights of fancy, but also the delicious experience of flights of wine: words that take wing, and words that allow you to taste a range of ideas and images. Each word a rare bird.
Sometimes, the titles were longer than the poems. Other times, the titles were the only things shorter. Sometimes, they just had numbers. Lately, I can't write like that, but this delightful post (found via Bookslut) about short poems reminds me of how satisfying it was.
Last night, we were talking about The Fear of Losing Eurydice and AVA, because I'm re-reading the first and always thinking about the latter, and because there is a resonance between them that I was trying to explain. I think it boils down to this: each sentence in each book is as dense and vivid and carefully self-contained as one of these poems. Even in Eurydice, where they're not set apart visually, each sentence is a separate revelation, a discrete and lovely work that is linked thematically but not grammatically to the surrounding text.
Last night, I said they were similar "flights of language," a phrase I meant to reference the irresistibly infectious quality of flights of fancy, but also the delicious experience of flights of wine: words that take wing, and words that allow you to taste a range of ideas and images. Each word a rare bird.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
eurydice, lost
Julieta Campos died a few days ago. Searching online, I've been able to find only one English language obituary. It's short, and I hope that's because I missed the longer ones; maybe they've all disappeared since last week. This is probably not a reasonable hope, but I'm holding on to it, regardless.
I'll re-read The Fear of Losing Eurydice soon, and I'll write more about it then.
In the meantime, an interview.
I'll re-read The Fear of Losing Eurydice soon, and I'll write more about it then.
In the meantime, an interview.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
startling
If I told you the book I'm reading included a scene of attempted self-castration, I suspect you'd conclude that I was reading someone like Chuck Palahniuk, someone who would write about the heat of the blood, the snap of the tendons (are there even tendons in there? I don't know, but it sounds plausible), the sudden excess of liquid, and the undeniable sexuality of the whole experience. It would be the kind of scene that causes girls to faint in the subway.
In this case, though, it's not. It's a quiet scene, as ambiguous as anything of its kind can be. The narrator slips off into the bathtub, razor in hand, and we're told of blood, of pain, and of his eventual faint. Nothing is explicit, and it's not until a few pages later that the reader is entirely, finally convinced that their suspicious were correct, and this confirmation comes only in the form of unscarred wrists. Regardless, this particular moment of mutilation feels entirely necessary, a silent and bloody means of further subsuming the terror of sexuality.
The book? The Seraglio, by James Merrill. Published in 1957, the first of the only two novels he ever published. He's well known as a poet, but wrote the two novels when he was relatively young; neither one is anything like what you'd expect, and both are quite remarkable. Truth be told, I liked the other better, and apparently I'm not the only one. It's still in print.
In this case, though, it's not. It's a quiet scene, as ambiguous as anything of its kind can be. The narrator slips off into the bathtub, razor in hand, and we're told of blood, of pain, and of his eventual faint. Nothing is explicit, and it's not until a few pages later that the reader is entirely, finally convinced that their suspicious were correct, and this confirmation comes only in the form of unscarred wrists. Regardless, this particular moment of mutilation feels entirely necessary, a silent and bloody means of further subsuming the terror of sexuality.
The book? The Seraglio, by James Merrill. Published in 1957, the first of the only two novels he ever published. He's well known as a poet, but wrote the two novels when he was relatively young; neither one is anything like what you'd expect, and both are quite remarkable. Truth be told, I liked the other better, and apparently I'm not the only one. It's still in print.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
the bittersweet
the sweet, first: Maud Newton used the little blurb I wrote for her about Casco Bay Books, despite the fact that I totally failed to make good on my plans to write something longer and better, as well as my plans to ask her to link to me here if she was going to link to me anywhere.
the bitter: For the first time in years, my vacation to Maine was so whirlwind that I didn't make it to the store. Turns out, though, that I would have been even more sad if I had gotten there. Apparently, my favorite book store in the world is no more.
the bitter: For the first time in years, my vacation to Maine was so whirlwind that I didn't make it to the store. Turns out, though, that I would have been even more sad if I had gotten there. Apparently, my favorite book store in the world is no more.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
in french, the word for vacation is always plural
What I read on my summer vacation:
Oh, man, do I have a crush on Scarlett Thomas. I've already blogged about reading PopCo, and I plan to write something soon about The End of Mr. Y, but for vacation, I turned to her genre fiction. Dead Clever was perfect airplane reading, almost good enough to make up for being stuck in the middle seat on a red eye.
Originally published under the pseudonym of Sally Mara, We Always Treat Women Too Well isn't one of Queneau's more famous books, but I had been wanting to read it for a while. Every bit as smutty and violent as the pulp novels it satirizes, it's also ridiculously funny, and at times startlingly disgusting. In short, awesome.
Lots of Josephine Tey: Brat Farrar, The Man in the Queue, and To Love and Be Wise. As I told my mom, I only read mysteries when I'm on vacation. In response, she handed me a pile of these old paperbacks, culled from yard sales and sidewalk book stalls. She's a good mom.
Amazon has been recommending Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, to me for months. They were kind of right. I can't deny that it's a good book, smart, beautifully written and thought provoking, but, all the same, it's not really my thing.
Reading mysteries on vacation is all very well, but reading mysteries in French makes you look so much smarter. Plus, having a glossary in the back makes it easier. Hence, my dad's old copy of Tournants Dangereux, by Georges Simenon.
Last but not least, Shelley Jackson's Half Life made the plane ride back feel almost short. I saw her read from it a few months ago, and have been wanting to read it ever since. Thanks to a late birthday present, I finally go to. Now I want to read it again. Her writing is so dense and vivid and weird and wonderful; it's the kind of thing you just want to immerse yourself in.
(Next up, books I got on my summer vacation, but haven't yet read.)
Oh, man, do I have a crush on Scarlett Thomas. I've already blogged about reading PopCo, and I plan to write something soon about The End of Mr. Y, but for vacation, I turned to her genre fiction. Dead Clever was perfect airplane reading, almost good enough to make up for being stuck in the middle seat on a red eye.
Originally published under the pseudonym of Sally Mara, We Always Treat Women Too Well isn't one of Queneau's more famous books, but I had been wanting to read it for a while. Every bit as smutty and violent as the pulp novels it satirizes, it's also ridiculously funny, and at times startlingly disgusting. In short, awesome.
Lots of Josephine Tey: Brat Farrar, The Man in the Queue, and To Love and Be Wise. As I told my mom, I only read mysteries when I'm on vacation. In response, she handed me a pile of these old paperbacks, culled from yard sales and sidewalk book stalls. She's a good mom.
Amazon has been recommending Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, to me for months. They were kind of right. I can't deny that it's a good book, smart, beautifully written and thought provoking, but, all the same, it's not really my thing.
Reading mysteries on vacation is all very well, but reading mysteries in French makes you look so much smarter. Plus, having a glossary in the back makes it easier. Hence, my dad's old copy of Tournants Dangereux, by Georges Simenon.
Last but not least, Shelley Jackson's Half Life made the plane ride back feel almost short. I saw her read from it a few months ago, and have been wanting to read it ever since. Thanks to a late birthday present, I finally go to. Now I want to read it again. Her writing is so dense and vivid and weird and wonderful; it's the kind of thing you just want to immerse yourself in.
(Next up, books I got on my summer vacation, but haven't yet read.)
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
cinematic
For the last few days, I've been reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's an amazing book, and I’m embarrassed that I hadn't read it before, especially now that I'm (like Mr. Kesey) an Oregonian. Of course, I've seen the film, which is a classic— I think I first saw it in a high school film class, where I watched intently, trying to pay attention to every detail. I've seen it once or twice since then, as well, so it's pretty well burned into my brain. Turns out, I remember it even better than I realized.
Maybe this is common, maybe it's nothing revolutionary or even surprising, but it's very strange to me to read a book and have Jack Nicholson cavorting around in my head, and to have my understanding of the ward's layout already fixed, even before I've finished the first (short) chapter. It's kind of neat, sure, but even more than that, it's distracting. It's harder to pay attention to the language, and I don't feel like my understanding of the book is evolving in the same way it does with a story I've never heard before.
I don't watch a lot of movies, and I do read a lot of books, so it's possible that this is truly the first time I've encountered the movie before the book. I can't think of another pair that I've experienced in this order, and this is certainly the first time I've had the two intertwine in this way, which makes me wonder. Does this happen to people all the time?
Maybe this is common, maybe it's nothing revolutionary or even surprising, but it's very strange to me to read a book and have Jack Nicholson cavorting around in my head, and to have my understanding of the ward's layout already fixed, even before I've finished the first (short) chapter. It's kind of neat, sure, but even more than that, it's distracting. It's harder to pay attention to the language, and I don't feel like my understanding of the book is evolving in the same way it does with a story I've never heard before.
I don't watch a lot of movies, and I do read a lot of books, so it's possible that this is truly the first time I've encountered the movie before the book. I can't think of another pair that I've experienced in this order, and this is certainly the first time I've had the two intertwine in this way, which makes me wonder. Does this happen to people all the time?
Monday, July 30, 2007
shhh
On Sunday, I went on a library adventure, seeking out the Itinerant Librarian to become a member of her traveling library. Despite my initial confusion regarding the location (the bookstore where she was set up is at 8 NE Killingsworth, not NE 8th and Killingsworth, and I drove around the latter a few times), I was successful, and am now an official, card-carrying member of the library (luckily, my hairstyle was deemed inoffensive). I also got to read some wonderful poetry, including books by bill bissett and Suzanne Stein.
Most importantly, though, I remembered how much I like libraries. When I was a kid, I spent hours at the library every week, and when I was in college, I spent hours there every day. Now, I rarely venture into one, but visiting this briefcase-sized library reminded me that I should visit those more permanent institutions with more frequency. There's something rather magical about the presence of books that you absolutely cannot own, and about a space policed by a librarian (whether s/he rules with bylaws or bye-bye laws). Yes, the whole thing made me very happy.
Most importantly, though, I remembered how much I like libraries. When I was a kid, I spent hours at the library every week, and when I was in college, I spent hours there every day. Now, I rarely venture into one, but visiting this briefcase-sized library reminded me that I should visit those more permanent institutions with more frequency. There's something rather magical about the presence of books that you absolutely cannot own, and about a space policed by a librarian (whether s/he rules with bylaws or bye-bye laws). Yes, the whole thing made me very happy.
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