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libraryland:

(via jjparker)

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fyeahenglishmajorarmadillo:

[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating black and grey. Foreground — a picture of an armadillo. Top text: “Don’t read for the entire day” Bottom text: “Feel guilty.”]

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"All that unsayable life! That's where the narrator comes in. The narrator comes in with her kisses and mimicry and tidying up. The narrator comes and makes a slow, fake song of the mouth's eager devastation."

Lorrie Moore, from "People Like That Are the Only People Here" in Birds of America

OOF. Devastating, yet so, so, so true.

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summer reading 2.0 #4: invitation to a beheading by nabokov

Last summer, I tackled my first Nabokov novel, Lolita. Since I adored that, it only made sense that I try to incorporate more Nabokov into this summer's reading list, and the first one to make the cut was Invitation to a Beheading. I'm also hoping to fit in Pnin as well, but we'll just have to see

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Invitation to a Beheading is certainly very different from Lolita, though Nabokov's voice still there, loud and clear. It reminded me of (my probably limited knowledge of) Kafka, in a way. Cinncinnatus C, the protagonist, is imprisoned and sentenced to a death in a nonsensical world and an even more nonsensical prison for an unknowable crime ("gnostical turpitude," which to me sounds like the name of a fatal tumor, but that probably was not the author's intention). He is sentenced to be beheaded, though he cannot know when or where. As he interacts, albeit reluctantly, with the guards, prison director, a young eccentric girl, his wanton wife, his in-laws, and his long-lost mother, we begin to see the absurdity of the imminent death of this man, who seems to have committed far less crimes than anyone around him. Yet the ending is mystifying--just as Cinncinnatus begins to truly believe he will die, after all of that waiting, he realizes he can will away the guards, his inevitable beheading, as well as his entire reality. Has he gone crazy? Has he died? Did he make up the entire story? Well, I suppose it's up for debate.

Nabokov really does set up this reality/non-reality beautifully--Cinncinnatus' prison is a setting we know and can believe in, but is simultaneously filled with strange and alienating features. When Cinncinnatus is fed by the guards, the guards also feed the spider in his cell. Two of the prison rules include that prisoners can be convicted of rape just for having sexual fantasies, and that prisoners can only joke around with guards on certain days if both "give mutual consent." Cinncinnatus' in-laws bring their own furniture when they (very awkwardly) come to visit him. These details of non-reality felt like dark humor at first, but with the context of the ending, just add to the doubt that the story could have ever really happened.

It's hard to compare Lolita and Invitation because they really are incredibly different--Lolita is constructed entirely of the narrator's thoughts, and in Invitation we only get those when we are privy to Cinncinnatus' writing. Invitation feels more political, more philosophical than Lolita, though I'm sure one could argue that that's not true. But something about the insanity of imprisonment, the plight of the spirit when faced with mortality, feels somehow less about narrative and more about our own limited lives (which may not be limited, if we are to believe the imagination is as strong as Nabokov is right). Still though--if you like Nabokov, but haven't given this one a try, please do! It's a wonderful work, and a very different kind of summer reading.

It looks like, as long a list as I have of books I want to read, I will probably need to begin to read for senior project. But, I plan to hopefully write about that too. Stay tuned!

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apoetreflects:

“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

—Salvador Dali, from Preface to Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1968)

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summer reading 2.0 #3: letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke

I mean, seriously, how had I not read this before? Someone ought to revoke my college major. Stephen Mitchell is the man.

And yes, I have sucked at updating my tumblr on what I've been reading. Things came up--namely a one-week job then a 5-day jaunt to Chicago which was wonderful but didn't add up to much reading getting done. I finished this a week and a half ago--I'll try to get better. As always, as always.

I don't think the book needs a ton of introduction--after all, it's all in the title--but it is a compilation of letters Rilke sent to a young poet who would periodically send him his work and letters detailing his worries and woes as a young writer. The book is only Rilke's replies, which are now infamous and are seen as one of the best guides for young writers on dealing with loneliness, anxiety, inspiration, love and motivation in the process of writing. It's difficult to simplify his ideas and literary calls to action, but if I didn't, I'd just be spewing out his words myself, and the letters are far too beautiful for that. I can't imagine how exhilarating it must have been to open up these electric letters addressed to yourself from him, that detail the wonder of solitude and the ecstasies of love and creativity. Though there are only 10 letters, they are beautiful, thought-provoking, and made of the kind of language that sticks with you.

Reviewing this book seems pointless because honest to God, what is there to review? This is RILKE. I suppose my biggest regret is not having had this book sooner, in that I honestly feel if I'd had this as a teenager it may have changed how I approached my writing and writing style. Though I myself have been dealing with issues of writer's block, lack of confidence, and a fear that I may not have what it takes to write, and reading this book quelled some of those fears (though not all), I wish I had had time to grow with it. It's themes are universal, so I feel I can continue to grow with it still.

I suppose what I can say is, if you feel you are a writer, in any kind of capacity, this book is a must-read. It's life and literary guidance is essential and classic. I'm so, so, so, SO glad I ended up reading it.

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apoetreflects:

“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”

—James Joyce, from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Love me some pictures of Joyce. Writing too, obviously.

OK FINE I'VE GOT A CRUSH.

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apoetreflects:

For a Woman’s Back

The French have a word for the small of a woman’s back, ensellure, and God forgive the poverty of the tongue I was born to. Whole days have stopped me dead on my shambling way to the bank or barber to watch for a time the brocade of rain streaming from a magnolia’s branches. Homeward I would think of all the ways to describe to you what I saw. Love, I thought, for I always begin with love, the earth owes us this small joy—. Or, this: Lucifer’s wife must be weeping, and soon I was lost in the tangle of my childhood, in the speech of my mother. who would have called the rain a gullywasher.  How quickly I lose my way. Forgive me.  To speak of one desire is to invite a thousand others home with you, and by their look all of them are starved for love and affection as they purr and tug at your cuffs. Over there, sharpening her claws on the refurbished heirloom divan is the desire to see Prague just once in its blush of spring. Sprawled on the couch is unrequited love, pale and wan, forever undone by countless Keatsian swoons— he doesn’t breathe so much as weepily sigh. It’s better that I keep silent. So much trouble has taken root in my life and caught me unaware, as tonight when crossing the street I stepped out without a thought for what roared down upon me, snarling smoke: nothing.  All around me, the night: as if I were the only one who had, in all the history of the world, mattered at all, as if fate perched upon my shoulder like a chattering bird and to its precocious song I ordered my steps.  And here I came alone with just these few words and this snatch of song looping again and again.  It goes like this— but you can’t hear me, or be touched at all. In the full moon’s face I see what I’ve forgotten: each star to be wished on awash in blankness and my shadow which stays put like an obedient pet, no matter how hard I pray to slip out of it, no matter what I dream.

—Paul Guest, from Notes For My Body Double (University of Nebraska Press, 2007)

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Editor: Hilda Raz

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tamburina:

Lovely one, your eyes are too big for your face, your eyes are too big for the earth. There are countries, there are rivers, in your eyes.

Pablo Neruda

Libraryland has been on a real roll lately. I'm not a huge reblogger, but boy oh boy does my love of Neruda know no bounds.

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You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.

Samuel Beckett (via libraryland)

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soiwin:

Jorge Luis Borges - LIFE

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.” -Borges

My Spanish professor once told me a great story about Borges--she was studying abroad as an undergraduate in Buenos Aires and was writing her thesis on Borges' work. She told her host mother about it and her host mother told her Borges' address and said "Just go talk to him about it." She figured there was no way he'd actually talked to her, but she went to his house anyways, and he let her in. He promised to talk to her so long as she'd read to him, since he was blind. He told her exactly which books were where in his enormous library and she would come to his house all the time and read to him. So Borges helped my professor with her thesis on his own work. How COOL is THAT?!

Apparently he was a really nice man (albeit also sort of cold as well). I always liked him, but after that story, I like him even more.

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I have little respect for Naipul at this point, but I found this interesting regardless. I got 6/10. How 'bout you?

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vintageblackglamour:

Zora Neale Hurston by Carl Van Vechten

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‘Cuz we lost it all, nothing lasts forever, I’m sorry I can’t be perfect.

Holden Caufield (via historysaidwhat)

This blog is pretty hilarious, check it OUT.

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summer reading 2.0 #2--civilwarland in bad decline by george saunders

This was one I forgot to put on my initial summer reading list. Oops. This collection of short stories and a novella at the end came out in the 90's, but is still a really respected and talked about collection. I read Pastoralia, George Saunders' other collection of short stories and a novella, and really loved it, so I was determined to get a chance to read CivilWarLand in Bad Decline this summer. And for the most part, I'm glad I did.

Saunders writes realistic fiction that is tangible, but also always teetering on the absurd. The settings and characters are all places and people we're acquainted with--historical landmarks and theme parks, that morbidly obese co-worker, the boss that hits on your significant other, the menial labor job, etc. Yet Saunders, in CivilWarLand (as well as Pastoralia), takes these everyday situations and makes them absurd, hilarious, and oftentimes heartwrenching. Not to mention the fact he throws you right into the story--minimal explanation, though in time everything does unfold.

Take the title story of this collection, about a man working for a Battle of Gettysburg family theme park trying to save itself from local teenage gangs. Though his job seems to be a normal office desk job, he finds himself burying body parts, covering up murders, appeasing Civil War era ghosts in the woods, and hiring mercenaries. His job is emasculating, frustrating, and horrific, but Saunders never allows it to be sentimental in any of his stories. Frustration is met with his incredible sense of dark humor, and it is only at the end of his stories that you can really let the misery of these men's situations truly sink in.  

An interesting theme interwoven in many of his works that I've read so far are technology, spectacle, and emasculation. The male protagonists always work in theme parks or other areas of entertainment, and if they don't work there, they are the spectacle in some other part of their lives. They are always at the mercy of technology (which is often unreliable or, oftentimes, too reliable), of corporate doctrine, and the whims of their bosses (and their wives). In the story "The 400 lb. CEO," the obese protagonist begins as the butt of every office joke because of his size, and every time he tries to make his life better, not matter how foolproof the attempt, he finds himself emasculated--he is always caught, never listened to, and always blamed, even for things he cannot help. Gender studies have tried to wrestle with masculinity and how to study it, and Saunders does this in a way that revels women--though they are often bitches, or shady, or distant, the protagonists always want them as equals, want their respect, their love. One could argue it demeans women, but Saunders places an emphasis on meaning of being a man in a world that increasingly doesn't need what men have to offer--physical strength/skill, intellect, or protection.

The only downside to this collection is the fact that the novella, "Bounty," as pretty anti-climactic. Saunders tries to go more sci-fi and to be honest I really wasn't into and (gasp! shocker!) I didn't finish it. In my defense, I read over half of it, and I wasn't feeling it, and I only have about 5 weeks or so of free reading time this summer, so if it's not cutting it, and I can't dwell on it. Sorry.

That being said, check out Pastoralia AND CivilWarLand. Both are great, despite setbacks, and Saunders is a really enthralling. Some wonderful beach reads, if you're interested.

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I know I'm late on this, but RIP Gil Scott Heron. The revolution will not, indeed, be televised. You will be missed.

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