So, last year I made a few New Year's resolutions. This is a recap of what I actually did. Warning: Yes, it is depressing.
1. Read more.
Er, well, maybe I read more. You see, in 2011 I spent most of the year working at a bookstore warehouse surrounded by books, many of which I wanted to read, but couldn't (you know, what with working getting in the way and all).
I was textually frustrated.*
In 2012, I got another job, and then ANOTHER job, neither of which involved books. I did read a few books. I did not read as many as I would have liked.
New goal: get paid to read books.
Truthfully, I still read all the time. Probably for hours a day. I just read online material: blogs, Slate, articles, more blogs.
2. Write more.
I did write more (mostly for this blog). I did not, however, get published all that much. I kind of stopped trying after submitting to two places and not getting published.
One blog post that I wrote, Are You Experienced? I originally submitted to Relevant. They didn't take it.
However, I don't regret the effort that I put into that essay. I worked a little harder than I normally do on the craft of it, and I took the time to be really honest with myself about not only what I felt but why I felt that way.
I think it paid off.
It's gotten more of a response than any other thing I've written.
Although my top post of all time is still How to hit on a girl on facebook. Thanks, Google.
3. Think less.
There's no real way to measure this. Did I go with my gut more? Worry less? Overanalyze less? Now I'm thinking about thinking!
4. Participate.
I'd like to think I participated, at least a little bit. I also blew off social commitments and plans for no other reason than that I was tired. I was that lame person who fell asleep by 11pm on New Year's Eve. I was the person who RSVP'ed on facebook and then never showed up. Sorry everyone.
5. Shoot more.
This one was actually kind of a success--I shot a lot, especially toward the beginning of the year.
I shot a short film with my sister. I shot footage for a music festival near San Diego, I shot a friend's feature-length Shakespeare adaptation. I had fun.
There are studies that say sharing goals actually makes you less likely to achieve them because just by getting positive social feedback, you already FEEL like you've achieved your goals, when actually you've only stated them out loud (or online).
I think this year will be more about discerning the difference between what I think I should want to do and what I ACTUALLY want to do.
I'm pretty sure I want to do more of the above.
*My theory about working in/at/for a bookstore or owning a bookstore is this: You should love books, but not too much. If you love books too much, you will want to keep them all for yourself, so you can read them or decoratively display them in your tastefully furnished hipster apartment. You won't want to let them go. Working around books without being able to read them is hard. Luckily, I have the willpower of small, scrappy mule with an eyepatch.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Who I Am v. Who I Wish To Be
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
-Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
I read (most of) an intriguing little book by Parker J. Palmer called Let Your Life Speak. It's a book about calling, vocation and listening as a means to discovering calling and vocation.
Part of letting your life speak is separating who you are from who wish you were.
To give an example: I wish I were more of a technical/visual filmmaker than I am. I wish I could get excited and nerd out about new technology. I wish I cared about the visual style of David Fincher or John Ford. I wish I intuitively understood the difference between different video codecs.
Zadie Smith wrote a great essay about ideal readers and the authors they do not choose (rather, the writing of that author chooses you). She writes of E.M. Forster:
I admire writers who can write for miles, days, pages and pages, but I am not that kind of writer. I struggle to reach page and word counts. When I write, I often skip over a bunch of explication and get straight to the point (or at least that's what one professor said). Am I leaving things out because I assume they are obvious? Am I just too lazy to properly set things up? Is this just the way that I write?
In a similar vein, to go back to filmmaking, I wish I had the compassion of a director like Cameron Crowe or Brad Silberling. I wish I cared about my characters the way that they do. I wish I had that kind of empathy, which is to imply that I don't.
All of this is to say a lot about who I am not--not technical, not obsessed with visuals, not given to torrents of words, not empathetic. I know less about what I am. I think that's where the listening comes in. Or the just doing. Relaxing into vocation.
If I'm hearing correctly, I think my life might be saying that I don't write/create within a social vacuum. Filmmaking is always collaborative and I enjoy that aspect of it. I create with my friends and the quality of the work reflects the quality of my relationships. I used to see that as a liability, because if the relationship fell apart, so would the project. But maybe it's more of a gift than a liability.
What about you? Is there a gap between who you are and who you wish you could be?
To give an example: I wish I were more of a technical/visual filmmaker than I am. I wish I could get excited and nerd out about new technology. I wish I cared about the visual style of David Fincher or John Ford. I wish I intuitively understood the difference between different video codecs.
Zadie Smith wrote a great essay about ideal readers and the authors they do not choose (rather, the writing of that author chooses you). She writes of E.M. Forster:
It happens that I am E.M. Forster's ideal reader, but I would much prefer to be Gustave Flaubert's or William Gaddis's or Franz Kafka's or Borges's. [...] Rightly or wrongly, I feel I get all his jokes and appreciate his nuances, that I am as hurt by his flaws as I am by my own, and as pleased when he is great as I would be if I did something great. I know Morgan. I know what he is going to say before he says it, as if we had been married thirty years. But at the same time, I am never bored by him. You might know three or four writers like this in your life, and likely as not, you will meet them when you are very young. Understand: They are not the writers you most respect, most envy, or even most enjoy. They are the ones you know. (from The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003)I love this idea of writers and readers meant for each other like soul mates. Again, it's not about who you wish you were drawn to but about who you actually get, I mean really get. I can remember having feelings like this whilst reading Jane Eyre, though I'm not sure who I am the ideal reader for. I suppose I wish I were the ideal reader for Henry James.
I admire writers who can write for miles, days, pages and pages, but I am not that kind of writer. I struggle to reach page and word counts. When I write, I often skip over a bunch of explication and get straight to the point (or at least that's what one professor said). Am I leaving things out because I assume they are obvious? Am I just too lazy to properly set things up? Is this just the way that I write?
In a similar vein, to go back to filmmaking, I wish I had the compassion of a director like Cameron Crowe or Brad Silberling. I wish I cared about my characters the way that they do. I wish I had that kind of empathy, which is to imply that I don't.
All of this is to say a lot about who I am not--not technical, not obsessed with visuals, not given to torrents of words, not empathetic. I know less about what I am. I think that's where the listening comes in. Or the just doing. Relaxing into vocation.
If I'm hearing correctly, I think my life might be saying that I don't write/create within a social vacuum. Filmmaking is always collaborative and I enjoy that aspect of it. I create with my friends and the quality of the work reflects the quality of my relationships. I used to see that as a liability, because if the relationship fell apart, so would the project. But maybe it's more of a gift than a liability.
What about you? Is there a gap between who you are and who you wish you could be?
Sunday, January 15, 2012
New Year's Resolutions: The Who, What, Where, and When
1. Read more.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Wings of the Dove
Tropic of Cancer
The Grass is Singing
Anna Karenina
Art and Madness
Bleak House
The Rings of Saturn
Possession
TBA
In coming up with a reading list, I realized that I want to read "the classics" less than I thought I did. Maybe this is because there are relatively few "classics" (intellectual snobbery alert) that I have neither read nor attempted to read. I have an especial distaste for books that I have--more than once--tried and failed to finish. (I'm looking at you, Slaughterhouse-Five and Huckleberry Finn.)
I find myself drawn more to memoirs, essay collections and literary theory.
The thing about a childhood spent reading is that it's extremely difficult to live up to as an adult, at least for me. I despair of being able to replicate the wonder and delight of reading certain books at a certain age. More than I want to read more great books, I want to re-experience reading the great books of my past. Am I doomed to an adulthood of literary nostalgia?
Of course, there is always re-reading. But there's something risky about re-reading a book you once adored. It might not stand up the second time around, which is why I've probably never reread a certain book I read at age eleven. I want to preserve the sacred memory of that first reading.
2. Write more.
Specifically, I'd like to be published in 10 places other than this blog--this can include web or print. One down, nine to go. (update 1/25: At least one of these must be in print)
3. Think less.
This is a difficult one. How does this even work? I suppose the only way to plan on thinking less is to plan on doing instead of thinking. So far, I've tried to put this into practice with mixed results.
A few days ago, I read:
What does that even mean? Do people really do that?
I'm kind of kidding.
I have recognized a tendency to read about doing things (like writing a screenplay) rather than actually doing them. That madness has got to stop.
4. Participate.
Anyone up for some beer pong?
5. Shoot more.
One short film per month.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Wings of the Dove
Tropic of Cancer
The Grass is Singing
Anna Karenina
Art and Madness
Bleak House
The Rings of Saturn
Possession
TBA
In coming up with a reading list, I realized that I want to read "the classics" less than I thought I did. Maybe this is because there are relatively few "classics" (intellectual snobbery alert) that I have neither read nor attempted to read. I have an especial distaste for books that I have--more than once--tried and failed to finish. (I'm looking at you, Slaughterhouse-Five and Huckleberry Finn.)
I find myself drawn more to memoirs, essay collections and literary theory.
The thing about a childhood spent reading is that it's extremely difficult to live up to as an adult, at least for me. I despair of being able to replicate the wonder and delight of reading certain books at a certain age. More than I want to read more great books, I want to re-experience reading the great books of my past. Am I doomed to an adulthood of literary nostalgia?
Of course, there is always re-reading. But there's something risky about re-reading a book you once adored. It might not stand up the second time around, which is why I've probably never reread a certain book I read at age eleven. I want to preserve the sacred memory of that first reading.
2. Write more.
Specifically, I'd like to be published in 10 places other than this blog--this can include web or print. One down, nine to go. (update 1/25: At least one of these must be in print)
3. Think less.
This is a difficult one. How does this even work? I suppose the only way to plan on thinking less is to plan on doing instead of thinking. So far, I've tried to put this into practice with mixed results.
A few days ago, I read:
"Try an experiment today: What would happen if you did NOT conceptualize everything before taking action?" (Understanding the Enneagram, 93)
What does that even mean? Do people really do that?
I'm kind of kidding.
I have recognized a tendency to read about doing things (like writing a screenplay) rather than actually doing them. That madness has got to stop.
4. Participate.
Anyone up for some beer pong?
5. Shoot more.
One short film per month.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Year's Resolutions
1. Read more.
In 2011, I rediscovered the audiobook, which is all well and good. However, I'd like to actually read a few books this year, eye to page, balls to leaf, etc.
2. Write more.
Maybe I should specify: write more for public consumption. I write a fair bit--I can't imagine NOT writing. It's part of who I am. A delightful cocktail of perfectionism and procrastination keeps me from writing for persons other than myself--I'm always looking for the perfect title, idea, opportunity.
So yeah. I'd like to write a feature length screenplay, and you can hold me to that. And more blogs.
3. Think less.
In the same category as thinking: talking about it, reading about it, writing about it. Write more, think less--sounds paradoxical, but there is certainly an element of writing that does not come from thinking but from putting pen to page. In other words, just do it. Less theory, more praxis.
4. Participate.
Sometimes, this means playing beer pong.
5. Shoot more.
Ideally, at least one project per month. Starting tomorrow.
In 2011, I rediscovered the audiobook, which is all well and good. However, I'd like to actually read a few books this year, eye to page, balls to leaf, etc.
2. Write more.
Maybe I should specify: write more for public consumption. I write a fair bit--I can't imagine NOT writing. It's part of who I am. A delightful cocktail of perfectionism and procrastination keeps me from writing for persons other than myself--I'm always looking for the perfect title, idea, opportunity.
So yeah. I'd like to write a feature length screenplay, and you can hold me to that. And more blogs.
3. Think less.
In the same category as thinking: talking about it, reading about it, writing about it. Write more, think less--sounds paradoxical, but there is certainly an element of writing that does not come from thinking but from putting pen to page. In other words, just do it. Less theory, more praxis.
4. Participate.
Sometimes, this means playing beer pong.
5. Shoot more.
Ideally, at least one project per month. Starting tomorrow.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Lose Yourself: Submission, Emotional Abuse and the Dorothea Effect
[I'm having a hard time writing this. I'm not sure if it's because my ideas haven't coalesced or because I keep seeing connections everywhere--in a way, I think in writing I figure out what I want to say--I start in in one place with one end in mind and then end up somewhere completely different.]
Holy Not Happy - An Unnecessary and Misleading Dichotomy
"What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?" asks the subtitle of Gary Thomas's book Sacred Marriage.
It's a sobering thought. I suspect it's written as an anecdote to those Christians who divorce because "God wants me to be happy."
However, both these conceptions of happiness seem suspiciously shallow. Surely there is more to happiness than the mere absence of physical, emotional or psychological pain.
If God doesn't just want me to be happy, does that mean he wants me to suffer? So I can be more holy? If that's the case, the more marriage makes you suffer, the better.
I'm taking it a little far, but I think the subtitle in question sets up an unnecessary opposition of holy versus happy, or being a person of character versus being happy (in a deeper sense) with your life.
I also think that this opposition can be twisted into a justification for either perpetrating or enduring emotional abuse.
The Problem with "Twilight" or The Lure of False Submission
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship once, in a professional, not a romantic, context. And there's one thing that the other person would say to me that sticks out in memory: "I believe in you."
He meant to imply that as much as I failed to live up to my potential, if only I would give in to him and do what he said, I could be better. I could be more holy: "Let me control you and everything will work out."
As much as it stings my pride to admit it, there was something undeniably attractive about this offer. I knew I was flawed. That I screwed up. And here was someone honest enough to call me on my crap.
If only I could be better. If only I could stop failing. Maybe if I submitted my will to his, I would stop hurting people and actually become a better person.
It's the "this is for your own good" line of abuse--and there is something subtly alluring about letting go of responsibility for and control of your own life, your own dreams, your own being. I don't know how else to explain the success of "Twilight," which trumpets the kind of all-consuming love that demands the loss of self in the Other. I know only that self-immolation and self-abnegation are a temptation--particularly to those who feel less than whole to begin with.
The Dorothea Effect - It's About to Get Literary Y'all
Dorothea Brooke is a character in the novel "Middlemarch" by George Eliot. At base, she is a crusader without a crusade, a missionary without a mission field, a saint deprived of martyrdom. Being so, she makes her own martyrdom, choosing to marry a dourly pedantic and humorless man (Edward Casaubon) over twice her age, so that she might help him in his great, world-changing work, "The Key to All Mythologies" (as bad as it sounds--worse, actually).
Of course, if she were a man in nineteenth century England, her ambitions and ideals would find an easier outlet. As it is, she makes a disastrous marriage to the wrong man--dare I say because she desires holiness (to serve God by serving Casaubon) over happiness (in the sun is shining, birds are singing, isn't it a lovely day to be married to a hot young artist sense. *Spoiler alert* this happens later in the book).
Jane Eyre faces a similar temptation in the form of the handsome and deeply religious St. John Rivers. He asks Jane to marry him and follow him to the mission field as his help-meet. He does not love her, nor does he find her attractive. He simply sees that she is constitutionally and temperamentally suited for the rigors and challenges of missionary life. How romantic.
Adrienne Rich calls this the temptation of self-immolation--literally burning oneself alive.
Jane is tempted to a living death--sacrificing her life to St. John's missionary calling; denying her need to love and be loved by marrying a man for holiness and not happiness.
Dorothea falls into this temptation. Jane does not.
I would define "the Dorothea effect" as denying your own dreams/art/work/calling to serve the dreams/art/work/calling of another person.
In other words, find your own damn "Key to All Mythologies."
More to come on this later.
Inspirations:
1. This article about the end of a Christian marriage.
2. A talk at church (for women) about submitting to God's will.
3. Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas (which I haven't read in full).
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot
5. "The Temptations of a Motherless Woman" by Adrienne Rich.
Holy Not Happy - An Unnecessary and Misleading Dichotomy
"What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?" asks the subtitle of Gary Thomas's book Sacred Marriage.
It's a sobering thought. I suspect it's written as an anecdote to those Christians who divorce because "God wants me to be happy."
However, both these conceptions of happiness seem suspiciously shallow. Surely there is more to happiness than the mere absence of physical, emotional or psychological pain.
If God doesn't just want me to be happy, does that mean he wants me to suffer? So I can be more holy? If that's the case, the more marriage makes you suffer, the better.
I'm taking it a little far, but I think the subtitle in question sets up an unnecessary opposition of holy versus happy, or being a person of character versus being happy (in a deeper sense) with your life.
I also think that this opposition can be twisted into a justification for either perpetrating or enduring emotional abuse.
The Problem with "Twilight" or The Lure of False Submission
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship once, in a professional, not a romantic, context. And there's one thing that the other person would say to me that sticks out in memory: "I believe in you."
He meant to imply that as much as I failed to live up to my potential, if only I would give in to him and do what he said, I could be better. I could be more holy: "Let me control you and everything will work out."
As much as it stings my pride to admit it, there was something undeniably attractive about this offer. I knew I was flawed. That I screwed up. And here was someone honest enough to call me on my crap.
If only I could be better. If only I could stop failing. Maybe if I submitted my will to his, I would stop hurting people and actually become a better person.
It's the "this is for your own good" line of abuse--and there is something subtly alluring about letting go of responsibility for and control of your own life, your own dreams, your own being. I don't know how else to explain the success of "Twilight," which trumpets the kind of all-consuming love that demands the loss of self in the Other. I know only that self-immolation and self-abnegation are a temptation--particularly to those who feel less than whole to begin with.
The Dorothea Effect - It's About to Get Literary Y'all
Dorothea Brooke is a character in the novel "Middlemarch" by George Eliot. At base, she is a crusader without a crusade, a missionary without a mission field, a saint deprived of martyrdom. Being so, she makes her own martyrdom, choosing to marry a dourly pedantic and humorless man (Edward Casaubon) over twice her age, so that she might help him in his great, world-changing work, "The Key to All Mythologies" (as bad as it sounds--worse, actually).
Of course, if she were a man in nineteenth century England, her ambitions and ideals would find an easier outlet. As it is, she makes a disastrous marriage to the wrong man--dare I say because she desires holiness (to serve God by serving Casaubon) over happiness (in the sun is shining, birds are singing, isn't it a lovely day to be married to a hot young artist sense. *Spoiler alert* this happens later in the book).
Jane Eyre faces a similar temptation in the form of the handsome and deeply religious St. John Rivers. He asks Jane to marry him and follow him to the mission field as his help-meet. He does not love her, nor does he find her attractive. He simply sees that she is constitutionally and temperamentally suited for the rigors and challenges of missionary life. How romantic.
Adrienne Rich calls this the temptation of self-immolation--literally burning oneself alive.
Jane is tempted to a living death--sacrificing her life to St. John's missionary calling; denying her need to love and be loved by marrying a man for holiness and not happiness.
Dorothea falls into this temptation. Jane does not.
I would define "the Dorothea effect" as denying your own dreams/art/work/calling to serve the dreams/art/work/calling of another person.
In other words, find your own damn "Key to All Mythologies."
More to come on this later.
Inspirations:
1. This article about the end of a Christian marriage.
2. A talk at church (for women) about submitting to God's will.
3. Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas (which I haven't read in full).
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot
5. "The Temptations of a Motherless Woman" by Adrienne Rich.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
How Not to Waste Time
"Query: How contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language one doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth."
-from The Plague by Albert Camus
This passage made me laugh.
-from The Plague by Albert Camus
This passage made me laugh.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Nostalgia and the Unreflective, Active Present
"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?"
This is perhaps the most famous quote from Henry James' The Ambassadors. And that's certainly understandable.
I recently listened to Juliet Naked, another book by Nick Hornby, and I groped my way back to this quote.
The heroine of the book, Annie (age 39), has lived very little. Stuck in a dead-end relationship with Duncan (40ish, a drip), Annie feels she has wasted the last 15 years of her life. This is a shock.
She wants to live. She very much wants to have a baby. By random chance, she begins an email correspondence with a cult rock musician. Then she actually gets to meet him in person and he comes to stay with her in her small, depressing seaside town in England.
You may see where this is going. When confronted with the choice of whether to sleep with him or not, a minor character delivers a speech similar to the one in James' novel.
But sex aside, what does it mean to live? Unless it means wearing really short shorts and sitting in a book warehouse, I'm not sure that I'm truly living at this moment. And what about the moment after that? What about now?
I'm afraid it's quote time again, straight from Annie's brain, courtesy of Hornby's narrator:
"The cliche had it that kids were the future, but that wasn't it. They were the unreflective, active present. They were not themselves nostalgic because they couldn't be. And they retarded nostalgia in their parents. Even as they were getting sick and being bullied and becoming addicted to heroin and getting pregnant, they were in the moment. And she wanted to be in the moment with them. She wanted to worry herself sick about school and bullying and drugs."
That phrase, "the unreflective, active present" is striking. I feel most alive in my unreflective, active moments. Anything that takes me out of myself--like writing or filmmaking.
I leave you with another part of that famous quote in The Ambassadors:
"The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have [...] Live!"
This is perhaps the most famous quote from Henry James' The Ambassadors. And that's certainly understandable.
I recently listened to Juliet Naked, another book by Nick Hornby, and I groped my way back to this quote.
The heroine of the book, Annie (age 39), has lived very little. Stuck in a dead-end relationship with Duncan (40ish, a drip), Annie feels she has wasted the last 15 years of her life. This is a shock.
She wants to live. She very much wants to have a baby. By random chance, she begins an email correspondence with a cult rock musician. Then she actually gets to meet him in person and he comes to stay with her in her small, depressing seaside town in England.
You may see where this is going. When confronted with the choice of whether to sleep with him or not, a minor character delivers a speech similar to the one in James' novel.
But sex aside, what does it mean to live? Unless it means wearing really short shorts and sitting in a book warehouse, I'm not sure that I'm truly living at this moment. And what about the moment after that? What about now?
I'm afraid it's quote time again, straight from Annie's brain, courtesy of Hornby's narrator:
"The cliche had it that kids were the future, but that wasn't it. They were the unreflective, active present. They were not themselves nostalgic because they couldn't be. And they retarded nostalgia in their parents. Even as they were getting sick and being bullied and becoming addicted to heroin and getting pregnant, they were in the moment. And she wanted to be in the moment with them. She wanted to worry herself sick about school and bullying and drugs."
That phrase, "the unreflective, active present" is striking. I feel most alive in my unreflective, active moments. Anything that takes me out of myself--like writing or filmmaking.
I leave you with another part of that famous quote in The Ambassadors:
"The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have [...] Live!"
Monday, June 27, 2011
Light of My Life
I almost just finished listening to Lolita (performed by Jeremy Irons) and I'm not sure quite what to say about it.
The novel is brilliant, obviously. But having listened to it via audio book, what I really want is to read it via book book (visual book?). In other words Lolita makes me miss the textual, word-on-the-page experience of reading.
Nabokov crams in gads of verbal puns and other delights, many of which I'm sure I didn't get. I suppose any reading of Lolita must also take into account the mean spirited nature of much of the humor:
"I had glanced at her as she smiled in her sleep and had kissed her on her moist brow, and had left her forever, with a note of tender adieu which I taped to her navel--otherwise she might not have found it."
Still hilarious.
And then there's the subject matter. I'm struck by the ease with which Lolita is transformed from a 12 year-old child to a 15 or 16 year-old adolescent, both in the film versions of Lolita (1962, 1997) and the imagination of the average person--a "Lolita" is usually well past puberty. The ease is striking because of the lengths that Nabokov goes to elucidate Humbert Humbert's interest in the physical immaturity of prepubescent girls.
This is all very unsettling--as it should be and as Nabokov intended it to be. Why then have we taken the book and turned it into the prototype for one of the conventional sex interests of men? Because it's more titillating and less horrifying?
If I could assign a few companion pieces to Lolita, I would assign a short story by Milan Kundera called, I think, "Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead" and a short story by Doris Lessing called "The Habit of Loving."
The novel is brilliant, obviously. But having listened to it via audio book, what I really want is to read it via book book (visual book?). In other words Lolita makes me miss the textual, word-on-the-page experience of reading.
Nabokov crams in gads of verbal puns and other delights, many of which I'm sure I didn't get. I suppose any reading of Lolita must also take into account the mean spirited nature of much of the humor:
"I had glanced at her as she smiled in her sleep and had kissed her on her moist brow, and had left her forever, with a note of tender adieu which I taped to her navel--otherwise she might not have found it."
Still hilarious.
And then there's the subject matter. I'm struck by the ease with which Lolita is transformed from a 12 year-old child to a 15 or 16 year-old adolescent, both in the film versions of Lolita (1962, 1997) and the imagination of the average person--a "Lolita" is usually well past puberty. The ease is striking because of the lengths that Nabokov goes to elucidate Humbert Humbert's interest in the physical immaturity of prepubescent girls.
This is all very unsettling--as it should be and as Nabokov intended it to be. Why then have we taken the book and turned it into the prototype for one of the conventional sex interests of men? Because it's more titillating and less horrifying?
If I could assign a few companion pieces to Lolita, I would assign a short story by Milan Kundera called, I think, "Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead" and a short story by Doris Lessing called "The Habit of Loving."
Sunday, June 19, 2011
"How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?"
This audiobook version of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is superlatively good. Just amazing.
I had wanted to read "Their Eyes" after listening to an essay by Zadie Smith in her collection "Changing My Mind." In this essay, Smith writes about the universal literary tradition vs. the particularity of blackness--of female blackness. In sum, "It is not the Black Female Literary Tradition that makes Hurston great. It is Hurston herself."
I'm reminded of several things:
One, in my American literature class at community college we read "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison. A classmate (white, sheltered) began wondering out loud whether or not black people were too invested in feeling sorry for themselves. The professor got upset.*
Two, a columnist in my college paper wrote in response to a lecture on God and black suffering, "We're talking about black suffering again?" or something to that effect.*
My American literature professor used to make a point about subjectivity--that saying, "You can't understand this book because you're not ____ (black, white, female, etc.)" is a fallacy.
It's like saying you have to be white, male, middle class and born in the 1930's to get "Rabbit, Run" or have lived with seven men of dubious appellation to properly decode "Snow White."
Hurston writes in her essay "How it Feels to be Colored Me":
"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me."
And so, maybe its not just black suffering we talk about, but human suffering.
Speaking of pleasure, this is one of my favorite scenes from the book:
"The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy.
'Tea Cake, where you git uh comb from tuh be combin' mah hair wid?'
'Ah brought it wid me. Come prepared tuh lay mah hands on it tonight.'"
*I mean, slavery was SO two centuries ago.
I had wanted to read "Their Eyes" after listening to an essay by Zadie Smith in her collection "Changing My Mind." In this essay, Smith writes about the universal literary tradition vs. the particularity of blackness--of female blackness. In sum, "It is not the Black Female Literary Tradition that makes Hurston great. It is Hurston herself."
I'm reminded of several things:
One, in my American literature class at community college we read "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison. A classmate (white, sheltered) began wondering out loud whether or not black people were too invested in feeling sorry for themselves. The professor got upset.*
Two, a columnist in my college paper wrote in response to a lecture on God and black suffering, "We're talking about black suffering again?" or something to that effect.*
My American literature professor used to make a point about subjectivity--that saying, "You can't understand this book because you're not ____ (black, white, female, etc.)" is a fallacy.
It's like saying you have to be white, male, middle class and born in the 1930's to get "Rabbit, Run" or have lived with seven men of dubious appellation to properly decode "Snow White."
Hurston writes in her essay "How it Feels to be Colored Me":
"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me."
And so, maybe its not just black suffering we talk about, but human suffering.
Speaking of pleasure, this is one of my favorite scenes from the book:
"The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy.
'Tea Cake, where you git uh comb from tuh be combin' mah hair wid?'
'Ah brought it wid me. Come prepared tuh lay mah hands on it tonight.'"
*I mean, slavery was SO two centuries ago.
Friday, June 17, 2011
The Best Contraception
I can't get over the way posh English speakers pronounce the word "condom." They pronounce the "dom" as in "dominate" or "domicile" whereas American speakers pronounce it as in "wisdom" or "freedom." In the British pronunciation, both syllables end up having equal weight.
Try saying it out loud: "con-dom."
Now say it ten times fast.
I've been listening to the audiobook version of Nick Hornby's "Slam," a British YA novel about teenage pregnancy. The word condom comes up a lot.
I had just finished another book about teen pregnancy, "After"--as in after the 15 year-old protagonist dumps her unplanned baby in the trash. Yeah, hard-hitting stuff.
And so "Slam" launched me on the second half of my unintended teen pregnancy double feature, one told from the girl's perspective and one told from the boy's.
I can tell you this: listening to "After" made me never want to get pregnant. Even as a non-teenager. No way.
I liked "Slam" better. Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity", "About a Boy") has a way of making immature and clueless male beings sympathetic and even likable. Fundamentally, Hornby is a funny writer. His female characters are less fleshed-out, but this might be the by-product of first-person narration.
Hornby also wrote the screenplay for "An Education," which is told from a teenage girl's point of view. I don't remember "An Education" being particularly funny. Maybe I need to watch it again.
In conclusion, perhaps the best contraception of all is a book about getting pregnant at 15. That or a conDOM.
Try saying it out loud: "con-dom."
Now say it ten times fast.
I've been listening to the audiobook version of Nick Hornby's "Slam," a British YA novel about teenage pregnancy. The word condom comes up a lot.
I had just finished another book about teen pregnancy, "After"--as in after the 15 year-old protagonist dumps her unplanned baby in the trash. Yeah, hard-hitting stuff.
And so "Slam" launched me on the second half of my unintended teen pregnancy double feature, one told from the girl's perspective and one told from the boy's.
I can tell you this: listening to "After" made me never want to get pregnant. Even as a non-teenager. No way.
I liked "Slam" better. Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity", "About a Boy") has a way of making immature and clueless male beings sympathetic and even likable. Fundamentally, Hornby is a funny writer. His female characters are less fleshed-out, but this might be the by-product of first-person narration.
Hornby also wrote the screenplay for "An Education," which is told from a teenage girl's point of view. I don't remember "An Education" being particularly funny. Maybe I need to watch it again.
In conclusion, perhaps the best contraception of all is a book about getting pregnant at 15. That or a conDOM.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
On listening to "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick
The book is a few funny/poignant anecdotes floating in a morass of paranoiac, hallucinatory ramblings.
Also, I'm glad that "balling" is no longer used as a synonym for, um, you know.
Addendum 11/7/11:
It would be remiss of me not to mention one hilarious episode in this morass: After ingesting a number of pills in order to die, one of Arctor's buddies finds himself trapped in an endless hallucination in which God takes him over each and every one of his sins, from the beginning. "Know your dealer," he intuits.
Also, there is Donna's rationale for rejecting Arctor's sexual advances, which I won't repeat here, revolving as it does around smuggling drugs and a certain part of the female anatomy.
Also, I'm glad that "balling" is no longer used as a synonym for, um, you know.
Addendum 11/7/11:
It would be remiss of me not to mention one hilarious episode in this morass: After ingesting a number of pills in order to die, one of Arctor's buddies finds himself trapped in an endless hallucination in which God takes him over each and every one of his sins, from the beginning. "Know your dealer," he intuits.
Also, there is Donna's rationale for rejecting Arctor's sexual advances, which I won't repeat here, revolving as it does around smuggling drugs and a certain part of the female anatomy.
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