The Eastin Collection

Snobbery

2011-09-13T20:31:00.000-07:00

The fall semester has begun full-force and at this point I have already begun to feel the heavy blow of paper-grading. It is truly incredible how much time and energy it takes to grade and comment on student papers, especially when the intention is to give QUALITY feedback. Taxing! But I digress.

Today's post has to do with an attitude with which I have been typically associated with in my social circles; the attitude of literary snobbery. Far too many times I have found myself sticking my nose up in the air when a new popular novel has been recommended to me since, surely, I mustn't waste my oh-so-valuable time perusing a Terry Brooks novel or, God forbid, one of those overproduced and weary schoolyard rags printed under the Hogwart's banner. But as I have been teaching I have slowly been learning to reorient my otherwise derisive and dismissive literary views. This doesn't necessarily mean that I will ever get around to picking up a J.K. Rowling novel since I still believe, albeit stubbornly, that there are far better things to spend my evenings doing (provided no one asks me to justify the hours I've clocked at failblog.org). But as a professor of composition at two colleges I think I have recently learned the value of the pedagogical perspective.

About two years ago, before I began teaching, I found an article by a crotchety literary fundamentalist by the name of Harold Bloom. I call him crotchety but in reality I share a great deal of Bloom's views concerning the definition of truly valuable literature (I have, in fact, blogged on this very subject). This article, entitled "Dumbing Down American Readers" is essentially an ivory-tower literary critic's lambastation of two of our most prominent symbols of the commodification of literature, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. As I read this article the first time I couldn't help but grin wickedly and tap my fingers together, imagining how I might use this very same article to indoctrinate my future students. Surely, young and impressionable college students reading the harsh derision of a figure so monolithic as Harold Bloom would be incapable of resisting his bludgeoning logic as he denounced two of the most read and, ironically, worst writers of the past decade.

But after a year of teaching composition I have realized something important about the function of an instructor in a college classroom. Beyond the simple fact that my opinion matters less than the intended product of any class, which is student proficiency, I believe I have also seen the real value of my position which is to aid students in expressing ideas that are uniquely and inextricably THEIRS. This is the first semester that I have actually used the Bloom article in my classroom and, despite my wholehearted agreement with the critic, I have been careful to present the article as a point of argument and have worked to foster a forum for open agreement or disagreement with Bloom's work. I have been happily surprised to find that a great many students are already in agreement with Bloom in that American readers have been served much softer and less nourishing fare in recent years. But the great part about it is that most of these students have expressed these views and are currently developing arguments along these same lines that they can claim whole ownership of. The same can be said for the students whom have reacted just as strongly in the opposite direction and in fact, strong disagreement with Bloom's essay seems to have been a more interesting starting point for class discussion. And I'm OK with it!

I had a recent discussion with a friend who will remain nameless (apologies if you read this) and she was expressing frustration at the notion that a friend of hers had become interested in reading a work that she (my friend) loved immensely for both its aesthetic and literary value. She was certain that her friend could not appreciate the novel the way she did and as we discussed this phenomenon (tragically common among literary types) we both realized the type of elitism that this very response demonstrated. I've done the same thing plenty of times but looking at it then from a second-hand perspective I realized the separation that I had developed between my teaching attitudes and my personal ones. Of course any literary type should do their utmost to help any audience appreciate a work of literature, even if they are incapable of accessing it on the same level or sharing the author's views. But that is what makes each of us individuals; the readers and the non readers, the literary bourgeoisie and the philosophical proletariat, the elitists, the humble, and everyone in between caught up in this marvelously picaresque game of "what did you read today?"

E-books

2011-07-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

As usual I am a bit slow on the uptake, but I've recently felt compelled to share my views on a phenomenon that claims to have revolutionized the way we read (at least this is undoubtedly how Amazon promotes it). I am talking, of course, about the Kindle; the device that allows a single person to carry with them an entire library of books in one small tablet. There are any number of devices that have attempted, with various degrees of success, to imitate the same concept, but for the sake of our conversation here, I will focus on the Kindle itself.

Now, I am by no means a Luddite. Despite my stodgy, vintage, professory exterior I do, in fact, enjoy a great deal of technology. I have a smartphone, I love Garageband and my MAC, I have even seen the merit of using classroom technology, and I have even embraced certain aspects of electronic classrooms. But I also think it is important to approach each new leap in social and professional technology with a certain level of skepticism. Undoubtedly, part of this paranoia stems from a sci-fi geek's subconscious fear of a Matrix-like universe. But a great deal of it has to do with a separation of two concepts that are often conflated in a commercialized society like ours: technological advances and Progress. I use a capital P on purpose since we must realize that, when speaking of Progress, we don't simply mean that we have placed one foot in front of the other; indeed we might very well be walking backward. When I say Progress I mean that we have made advances that truly lead to the betterment of the world around us. The use of software like Skype to connect family members across the world would be a prime example of Progress; the use of a Flash media player to watch porn would not...but I digress. When thinking about a technological invention like the Kindle in terms of Progress I must force myself to consider what it is actually adding to the reading experience.

I have to admit that one of the most attractive aspects of e-readers, especially the Kindle, is the instantaneous and free access to public-domain material. Being a medievalist, this means that I have essentially gained access to every book I could ever want at no charge, provided I have the patience to read it on the screen of my Droid. Bullocks to the New York Bestseller's list; it has been ages since I have picked up a book that was written after 1950. I understand, of course, that I'm probably not the target market for the Kindle, those who live and die by those lists being Amazon's moneypot, but I have to admit that I do get a profound grin when I can download a digital copy of Chaucer's Troilus and Creseyde without paying a penny.

But is this access worth the price? "But" you will say "you just said that you didn't pay a cent!" This is true. But I think there is a higher price to pay for instant access to every book you could ever want. When you sit down and think about it logically, how many books can a person possibly be engaged in at any given time? I probably have far to many forlorn bookmarks on my shelves but in reality, I am only truly engaged in a single book at a time. Even when traveling I can hardly expect to make it through more than two volumes at a stretch. It took me nearly my entire 20-day European vacation to make it through Holy Blood, Holy Grail which I reviewed last month. But this kind of practicality is in neither part of the marketing technique, nor the burgeoning reading culture being fostered by e-readers. Amazon makes money based on the quantity of books you purchase. This is their primary reason for including a Wi-fi and 3G feature into their devices (despite the Siren call of automatically-updating e-newspapers). Does this mean, then, that each member of the reading public is essentially being encouraged to have their noses in as many different texts as possible at any given time? Probably. And isn't this simply an extension of the Attention Deficit being cultivated by websites with multitudes of hotlinks that will access countless pages of condensed information at any given time? I must again answer in the affirmative.

In my series of admissions I must also admit that I am a casualty of this very same culture. So often in conversation I find myself attempting to recall the source of a particular piece of information and wind up wondering if I had found it in one of the many academic articles that I have downloaded in PDF format (I may dedicate an entire blog to this alone) or one of my casual forays into Wikipedia. Undoubtedly this confusion has forced upon me a certain staunch sense of third-party-nostalgia since, as I understand so many of the intelligent men and women who existed in the days before sound-bites and streaming video, the ability to quote poetry and prose was so much more profound. I think this must be partially due to the fact that, when there was no Facebook to interrupt a reader after each chapter in a good book, there was only the book itself. When people read, they did so to understand. For some reason I imagine men like Ben Franklin or Winston Churchill sitting down in their respective studies and reading the first stanza of Milton's Paradise Lost. And when they arrive at the end of the stanza, rather than reward themselves by hopping on Netflix.com for a quick episode of Dr. Who, they simply sat and thought about what they had just read, or even went back to read some of the most profound stanzas and committing them to memory because the experience had been pure, profound, and uninterrupted. There was only the one volume of poetry in their hands; to get up and walk to the bookcase for another volume would be to break the poet's spell, and who really want's that?

Not Amazon, of course; the commodity of reading must demand the breaking of spells on a regular basis. God forbid a person grow attached to the physical experience of breaking spines (though, I don't agree with this practice), smelling paper, dog-earning pages, underlining passages, feeling through leaves, or simply forcing themselves to commit a portion of their time to a Book (capital B).

Holy Blood, Holy Grail - Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln

2011-06-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

"Any responsible researcher must, like a detective, pursue whatever clues come to hand, however seemingly improbable."

As you may have noticed I have a tendency to include in each blog brief quotes from the books I write about to help give an idea of the effect that each book has had upon me. It is rare that I include this quote with disdain or irony but, sadly, this entry, which may appear more like a review, does just that.

The work of Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln is the very same that, just a few years ago, inspired Dan Brown to write The DaVinci Code. The basic hypothesis is that Jesus in fact did NOT die on the Cross in Biblical times but lived to sire a family through Mary Magdalen and that this issue was transplanted across the Mediterranean to France where it eventually integrated into a French royal line known as the Merovingians who, when deposed by the Carolingians, went into hiding and have been so for the last millennium and a half protected by an offshoot of the Knights Templar know as the Prieure du Sion. Wow, that's a mouthful.

Now I will admit that I was intrigued by this particular book since one of its basic arguments is one that I myself had deduced in my experience with medieval romances; that the term Holy Grail, sometimes 'Sangraal' was a mutated form of 'Sang Real' or Blood Royal. This was as far as I had gotten in my own researches, which were only limited at the time having no real indication for what kind of Royal Blood the romances I had read could possibly be referring to. But the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail have developed one such conclusion, albeit tragically far fetched, so I picked it up from Amazon this past Christmas and have just gotten around to giving it a read.

Now I could spend pages nitpicking the many minor claims and questionable connections that these fellows have made but I would run the risk of treading trodden ground (the book is nearly as old as I am). Instead I'd like to simply meditate on these authors tragic misallocation of time and energy in the composing of this particular book.

For nearly twenty years historians, theologians, and literary critics have been avidly discrediting the claims made in this text. In fact even one of the authors governing premises has been found to be a complete fraud (the existence of the Prieure du Sion was found to have been falsified). But in truth, it does not take a professional to notice the cracks in this edifice of pop-history; one has simply to notice aspects of the authors style.

It is probably worth mentioning that the author who received second-billing, Richard Leigh, was not a historian but a novelist. Accordingly, the book reads much like a novel; it is typically presented in first person as if the reader were looking over the researchers' shoulders as they discovered more and more intriguing "evidence" that eventually leads to an earth-shattering hypothesis in chapter 11. The result makes for an entertaining read but at the cost of grossly misrepresenting not only standard research procedures, but those of the authors as well. Now I may sound like a stolid college professor, but any freshman learns (ideally) that the hypothesis comes first and the writer must spend the larger portion of the composition supporting that hypothesis. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail present their research as if each new piece of "evidence" were a trail of breadcrumbs that lead incontrovertibly to their hypothesis. The problem is; there are so many rhetorical leaps, so many instances of the least likely solution being favored, that one cannot help but think that, like me, they had begun with a simply grammatical transmutation and built their story around it.

I should mention that I can't say for certain that the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail are entirely mislead. In fact there are a great many questions raised in their book that warrant further investigation. But the problem here is method. As you see in the quote included above the authors of this book are more than ready to justify any number of violations of established scholarship and therefore it is not surprising that established scholarship has spent the last two decades beating this book's theories into the ground; if not for the sake of Christian tradition then at least for the defense of their own professions whose faces are often spit in by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

2011-05-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Rosencrantz: "I can't think of anything original. I'm only good in support."

I recently received a point of criticism from my wife who claims that I will lose touch with the modern world if I don't spend some time away from the ancient texts I love so much. As you may know, I am a medievalist and frequently take forays into the early modern world of Shakespeare, but rarely venture into literature more modern than that. Some of this may be due to the fact that, so often when I DO bravely decide to read something modern, I often end up bitterly disappointed and relapse into the safety of The Old (don't get me started on Beckett's Endgame). So, taking this criticism in hand, on the recommendation of a student from my recently ended Shakespeare class (this may explain my belated return to Blogging) I picked up Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The play itself was interesting in that it expanded upon two of Shakespeare's very minor characters and even pushed the limits of theatrical performance and for that I commend Stoppard. But two things specifically that left me rather leery of this piece of modern theatre:

The first thing I noticed was a rather overbearing intrusion of the playwright. Now I know that, when reading a play, one must remember that performance is far different than simply reading. Maybe it is all the time I have spent reading Medieval and Renaissance drama, which is rarely self-conscious and is always open for reinterpretation due to its very minimal inclusion of stage directions and heavy reliance on the language of the characters to convey the scene. Stoppard, on the other hand, takes nearly as much time to describe the physical appearance and movements of his play as he does to write the characters' lines. This seems drastically limit the artistic possibilities of the play, essentially leaving room only for a performance as Stoppard envisioned it. It all seems rather heavy-handed and makes me think that, if Stoppard had any confidence in the significance of his dialogue, he wouldn't need to so strictly define describe his play. And I suppose I can see why he may have this concern, what with characters who rarely speak more than two lines of simplistic dialogue at a time. All of this is undoubtedly a criticism that could be knocked down by any number of experts in modern and post-modern theatre. Perhaps I am basing my standards on Shakespeare and his ilk. But then, isn't Stoppard?

The most worrisome thing that I noticed about this play is its rather heavy reliance upon canonical literature. Now, this may be overwhelmingly obvious since the play essentially expands upon some of Shakespeare's own characters, but bear with me. It seems to me that one of the tendencies of modern and post-modern literature is their inability to separate from canonical works. In rewriting aspects of Shakespeare's play Stoppard admits that his play, as an example of postmodern drama, cannot exist without Shakespeare (whom some believe to have defined the canon). While it may be interesting for Stoppard to provide us with this very interesting piece of drama, in making it defy the conventions of Shakespearean theatre Stoppard only proves his reliance upon Shakespeare's prefiguration of his own. Much like atheists cannot exist without a religion to deny, postmodern literature, as much as it tries to define it self by NOT being what came before, it is inextricably bound to its predecessors. Perhaps this is why I always gravitate toward things that are old. Writers like Shakespeare and Chaucer seem, to me, less conscious of their place in the canon and simply preferred to write good stories. Yet in seeking to do little else than to entertain their contemporaries have become immortal figures. Maybe this begs the question: do postmodernists simply try too hard?

As a hilarious sidenote: in Act III multiple times Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) say "We're on a boat"; I couldn't shake the image of Andy Samberg...
----
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

2011-04-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

I believe I have read this story four times total and in each the context was significantly different and my experience changed significantly as well. Oddly enough, I think each time that I have read the story I have done so in a different volume as well so this posting will be much more oriented toward the story than the physical object.

Each of the volumes in this picture correspond, from left to right, to each of my four readings below.

For anyone that doesn't know, Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is an embedded narrative told by a character named Marlow who, during the height of British Imperialism, was sent up the Congo river in search of a London trading company's most profitable, but also most disturbed agent. As Marlow travels slowly up the river in his steamboat, continuously contemplating the white man's intended (but failed) efficacy on the African continent, he discovers more and more that, as he approaches Kurtz (the agent) he is departing more and more from what is considered civilized and is instead plunging into the savage and eponymous Heart of Darkness, a philosophy entity practically embodied in the powerful and simultaneously overwhelmed existence of Kurtz.

1. Oddly enough, my first ever experience with Heart of Darkness was by accident. My freshman year of college Dr. Reynolds had put Heart of Darkness on her syllabus for her World Civilizations II class. It seemed an odd choice for a History class but I went with it. When it came time to read the book for class, I sped through its entirety on a Sunday afternoon only to discover that, amidst her endless powerpoints Dr. Reynolds had forgotten to leave time to discuss Heart of Darkness (I might mention that she was by far one of the worst professors I have ever had. Don't use powerpoint, kids; every time you do a kitten is murdered). It is hard to remember my first response to Heart of Darkness since the entire event remains tinged with frustration at having read something that wouldn't be discussed in class (or even end up on the final).

2. The second time I read Heart of Darkness was significantly more relaxing. It was my semester in London and Conrad's work was a part of my British Short Fiction class with Dr. Carl Winderl. For most of the semester we had one of the most tranquil locations to meet; with only six or so students we would often gather around the garden terrace in the backyard of our Kensington hostel. Somehow here I began to see the significance of Marlow's gradual journey into 'darkest Africa' though I had not yet learned to put it into context (although a visit to the British Museum later that semester undoubtedly gave me a unique glimpse into Britain's persistent celebration of their own imperial age).

3. My third reading was the summer after graduation from college when I was studying for the GRE English Subject Test. If you do not know, studying for this test is an entirely futile endeavor unless you are somehow capable of matriculating every key work from all of Literature and synthesizing it into the format of an objective test (or if you are Harold Bloom). You will find, however, that as you inevitably embark on this futile exercise you will find that you come upon works of literature that you are happy, if not exhilarated to read once again. This time, I was not reading Heart of Darkness for any particular goal but to really enter into the world that Conrad paints; I even found myself becoming more and more immersed into the subtle yet powerful character of Kurtz and discovering what it meant, psychologically, to approach something that is primordial and savage and still attempt to maintain your supposedly civilized humanity. This is really what Conrad wrote about. Of course the book carries the dense overtones of the ugly side of British Imperialism and even earns a place as a transitional work that heralds the 'modern' age of literature. But it also represents something long buried in the dark past of humanity, something that we like to ignore and forget.

4. Finally, the reason that I have decided to discuss Heart of Darkness today is because I have just finished teaching it for the first time. I am confident that I have done a much better job than Dr. Reynolds and I hope that I have come close to Dr. Winderl's endeavor. My British Literature class is quite small, only six students, and as a result our discussions are often quite interesting and significantly more productive than a larger class might be (as seems to be the case with small classes). I did my best, of course, to communicate something of my experience with Conrad's work. Hopefully the next few times my students read this story (which I hope they do). They can grow with it as I have.

As a piece of literature Heart of Darkness holds a unique position in my mind. I wouldn't begin to say that it is the best piece of literature that I have ever read. It doesn't carry the same kinds of universals that we sometimes expect from really great literature nor are its characters as dynamic and interesting as some from more prominent works. But whenever someone asks me which book is most worth reading, Heart of Darkness is always at the top of my list. Perhaps because I feel that people need their psychologies and even their moralities to be challenged. Conrad does both of these things. He erases our notions of moral justification and, through the enigmatic Kurtz, seen through the eyes of a curious Marlow, reveals the embedded darkness, the primordial savageness within each of us.

England

2011-03-03T13:13:00.000-08:00

I get the impression that a great many people find it confusing that anyone would spend their time studying the literature of the past and as a result I feel a need to work this inclination out in prose.
English as a discipline is already in a weird position to modern-minded people. Most folks see science as the way of the future ans wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to spend their time analyzing what they consider simply a glamorized form of escapism (I will save my rant on this particular brand of ignorance for another day). So when I tell people that I study the literature of the middle ages I get smiles and nods that bear the subtext of "why the hell would anyone do that." So, rather than try to convince you WHY it is worthwhile, I think it may be best to take a less defensive stance and simply explain my reasons.
One of my earliest literary memories was watching a pirated (thanks Dad) VHS version of the animated film The Hobbit. In my timeline the film had come first but I very quickly found the tattered copy that my parents owned from before I existed and tore through it. What I found in those old pages was a very different story than I had seen in the film. There was so much more happening in the book than the film apparently had time for. Yet, unlike so many malcontented Twilight and Harry Potter fans (there is another rant in here somewhere) I still loved the movie version. In fact I believe that this may have been what inspire my entire literary career in a weird way. In seeing the comparison of film and book and knowing which had been created first I felt a need to understand "the origins of the myth." Mind you, I was NOT seeking to compare the two and discover which was better (*ahem* Twilight/Potter fans) but to simply comprehend the transmission of a tale from one medium to the next over time.
Only in knowing one's origins can one truly see one's present. It is my belief that this philosophy rings most true with the cultural conception of language and so in college I found myself enthralled with Shakespeare. His language seemed so much older, more formal, more glorified than our boorish, modern American vernacular. Yet even in Shakespeare (who wrote in what we call Early Modern English, NOT Old English) there were echoes of history waiting to be discovered, origins to be traced further back than even The Bard knew in his time. I'm fairly certain that this is why I ended up so focused on medieval literature. The Middle Ages were a time when those who spoke English were only beginning to become aware of the significance of their speech and to record it in ways that established the structure of an entire cultural identity that is still standing today, albeit morphed and mutated into something so very different.
Sometimes I look at the modern world and this fervent gusto for progress and looking toward the future but it concerns me. While so many Americans are still enraptured with the concept of The Frontier and this exaggerated desire to tread the untrodden paths (a mindset that carried us all the way to the Pacific Coast, where we stopped with nowhere else to go but up, into the starts). I, on the other hand, feel myself called to be a curator of the past.
This morning I was looking at photographs of Skara Brae and thinking about the fact that so many people have come and gone through such a place, almost all of which are long dead, but despite the fact that these places were discovered long ago and offer very little to that modern drive for "progress" these are the places I most want to be and truly hope that I am capable of imparting some of this same desire to future generations if for nothing else than to help humanity remember where it came from so that it may better judge where it is going.

Book Buyback

2011-02-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of the semester I had a short conversation with a student about textbooks. My college has a two-semester requirement for its freshman writing courses and uses the same book for both. Unfortunately this means that a lot of foolish freshmen sell their books back to the bookstore after the first semester only to rebuy it again in the spring at full-price.
I had run into this former student in the hall and had mentioned this phenomenon.
"I guess I'm lucky that I didn't sell my book back" she said.
"Well, if you think about it" I replied "even in a composition textbook there are a lot of essays that are worth re-reading"
She thought about this for a moment and replied, "I guess you're right. There are some good essays in there."
I then proceeded to share my philosophy on textbooks: "I'll admit that I've sold most of my general ed. textbooks back myself, but I've never gotten rid of an English or history textbook or at least one that contained any kind of literature. That stuff is timeless."
"You're right. I think I'll hold on to mine too. Thanks Mr. Eastin."
It was a rewarding exchange but it highlighted something funny that is apparently not nearly as common sense as I would hope. I understand that most college students are poor and an extra wad of cash for end-of-semester parties is nice. But the thing is, that small and usually pathetic amount of cash (pathetic, often because of the piddling prices that most bookstores offer) is entirely visceral. It may be because I am a Literature-person by nature but I cannot conceive why anyone would want to dispose of a Norton Anthology so carelessly. Is twenty bucks really worth losing some of the most significant ideas of all time? These anthologies attempt to capture what it is to be either British, American, or even a citizen of the World as understood through literature. Isn't there something empowering about simply having this book on your shelves, even if that same shelf is populated with soccer trophies, Twilight paperbacks, or Economics textbooks?
I can only hope that this readiness to dispose of this wealth of knowledge is a matter of foolish youth and that these same kids will one day realize what they have lost and possibly reacquire it through Kindle or one of Barnes and Noble's budget editions...but I doubt it.

Christmas Plunder

2011-02-08T19:39:00.000-08:00

I've been saving this post for quite some time, mostly because its taken me far too long to decide what to do with my Borders gift cards and twice that amount of time to receive everything in the mail. But I present to you my winnings from this past Christmas's gift fest:

I know the picture is bad but the books are as follows (left to right, top to bottom):
Willim Caxton and English Literary Culture by N.F. Blake (been wanting this one for quite some time)
The Western Canon: The books and School of the ages by Harold Bloom
Tales from the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien (a nice new collection that I didn't even know existed until I unwrapped this gift from my mum)
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White
Sir Gawain and the Green Knght translated by Burton Raffel (a new translation to me. should be interesting)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (this was a sentimental gift from my mum since I'm teaching it for the first time this semester)
Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (the controversial and mostly ridiculous history that inspired The DaVinci Code)

Excuses...

2011-01-30T17:49:00.000-08:00

One year before I began my undergraduate career the author Ray Bradbury spoke on the campus of Point Loma Nazarene University. Being the avid fan that I am I managed to find the videorecording of his talk. Among the multitude of nuggets of wisdom that the ol' boy dropped during his time rambling on the stage of the Crill Auditorium, one thing he said has stuck with me for better or worse. Concerning the writing process Bradbury said, "the moment you stop loving to write is the moment you should stop writing." I may be paraphrasing but I find this to be a poignant commentary on my perseverance in the world of writing and absolutely affects how I approach this blog. Rest assured I fully intend to continue writing it, but as I've suggested in the last few postings I get the feeling that a format change may be in order.

I would never allow my students the excuse that "they just weren't feeling it" when a writing assignment has not been completed (although I've heard this one before). Yet somehow I've justified hypocrisy when it comes to blogging. I get the sense that some of this might be a result of the general book-report feel that I think I've developed so far, as well as my own tendency to blog in long-form rather than short-form. But I've been giving a few other blogs a regular read and have to admit, the shorter form may be capable of engaging not only the writer but the audience a bit easier. I'm sure plenty of Luddite writers become restless in their graves at the thought of short-form, electronic composition overtaking more polished writing, and though even I cringe at the thought, I feel as if it may be an improvement to my commitment to the project.

Let's be clear on one thing; I DO still love to write. Yet sometimes the prospect of posting a picture, composing a discussion, and carving time away from other projects (or Dr. Who time, as has been the case lately) simply seems daunting. Although, here I go again with an extended discussion that I hadn't intended in the first place...

So, I propose the following: I think from this point on, I will make my book-ish postings only once a month and will reserve the rest of my time for shorter blog postings on any number of literary and artistic topics that pop into my mind (and I'm sure that my students will give me regular material. Woot.). Hopefully I'll even force myself to dust off and post some more stories. This is my plan. Blogging ho!

Charles Dickens - Christmas Stories

2010-12-20T23:50:00.000-08:00

"...and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!"

Last year around this time I focused on one of my ironic choices for Christmas reading by discussion what I consider to be the antithesis to Dickens; James Joyce's The Dead, but in the charitable spirit of the season I think I will break my miserly tradition and embrace the tale which has come to define, in more ways than one, the Spirit of the Christmas season.

Whenever we think of Charles Dickens, especially around December, immediately images crop up of faces in door knockers and frail children making exclamations of blessing. I enjoy a hearty rendering of A Christmas Carol as well as the next bloke, but I get the sense that our preoccupation with Ebenezer Scrooge's humbugging often obscures Dickens' literary preoccupation with the meaning of Christmas. This is not to downplay one of the Victorian author's most iconic tales; in fact, I almost feel that many of Dickens' other Christmassy short stories are searching for some kind of meaning in the winter holidays; a search that reached its culmination in the message of generosity and kindness that has come to epitomize nearly every piece of Christmas entertainment since the composition of A Christmas Carol. Indeed, one can find Ebeneezer Scrooge in any number of cinematic and literary incarnations from Dr. Seuss' Grinch to National Lampoons' Clark Griswold. Some of these incarnations are more overt than others but all point to the profound effect that Dickens' Victorian holiday narrative has had upon the cultural discourse of the English speaking world.

What one must, of course, consider here is to what extent we are willing to accept this particular holiday message. Most people will agree that the progression of Scrooge's character from miserly grouch to generous chap is a positive message for anyone during the Christmas season but we have to wonder if this particular narrative coincides or muscles out the intended meaning of the Christmas Holiday. The term holiday of course is an old portmanteau of Holy Day; a day reserved for the catholic (and later Anglican) Christ's Mass which was a period of community celebration that fit nicely into the December church calendar.

The importance of this holy-day, of course, was the celebration of the incarnation of the Christian messiah; the moment at which God committed a part of himself to earthly existence in order to demonstrate to humankind the significance of his willingness for self-sacrifice on their behalf. While the life of Christ as we understand it in the gospels certainly demonstrated values that undoubtedly align themselves with Dickens' narrative, the holiday itself seems to represent a significantly different narrative. At what point does our appreciation for God's mercy become supplanted by a sense of social generosity? According to some sources (and admittedly I have not done much research beyond wikipedia. So sue me) it is with Dickens.

Of course it would be too much to blame the prolific Victorian author with the sad slide toward the commercialization of a formerly sacred holiday but the circumstances surrounding this shift must make one think. That said, I cannot in my right mind diminish the importance of a holiday that emphasizes a general sense of unselfishness. Perhaps this is the way in which we may justify the holy-day to the holiday. In either case, on a literary level I must admit that I'll never stop reveling in the lush spirit of Dickens' Christmases, past, present, and future and the ghosts, holy or otherwise, that descend upon us with the snow of late December.

The Familiar

2010-12-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

I've always enjoyed the notion of good fiction beginning with a dream and in the case of this heretofore unpublished short story this is exactly what happened. Oddly enough, at this point I can't entirely distinguish the story from the dream that came out of it. Undoubtedly the dream lacked much of the detail and meaning that the story has but in the mysterious workings of the human mind the two have fused. Enjoy, and as always, critiques are welcome (since someday it might be fun to publish this for real).

The Familiar

by Schuyler Eastin

In the cool, bright morning she woke me. Her black hair spiraled down over my face like a wind chime crowned with a pair of emeralds. "Open your eyes," she said, her voice a distant mission bell. I did, and saw golden rays sitting patiently on the balcony outside our room, politely requesting admission. She leapt nimbly from the bed and flung open the double doors, granting the sun's request.

She flitted across the room, an epiphany framed in sunlight like the dream that fades when eyes open. Leaning on the balcony rail she turned her head over her left shoulder to the east, then to her right, examining both horizons. I sat up, silently observing a bohemian curiosity in her face that I knew foretold change.

The little house slept in the bosom of the open plains near the heart of the continent. The cottage was simple, with a peaked roof, like the teepees from that land's past. A single dirt road ran to us from daybreak in the east and only took a moment nod at the front porch before rambling west towards twilight. Behind the house ran a stream that returned the liquid memories of the road back to their origin. This balanced the house, in a way, making it a wheel that spun slowly between two tracks. The house had been our home for almost a year, which, for as restless a woman as she surely felt an eternity. But we had been happy.

By the time my feet touched the cold wood floor she had disappeared and there was no telling where she would materialize. But I had the comfort of knowing that the whirling gyre of her fancy would eventually lead her to the backyard where I intended to absorb myself in a book.

After dressing, I descended the stairs and opened the back door. I stepped out into a yellow day and sat down in the old Adirondack chair that faced the stream. A glass filled with ice and an opaque orange liquid sat sweating on one of its arms. I sipped and could faintly hear her whispered voice echo from the quiet choirs of grass blades, giving away the drink-conjuring trick.

It tasted of pineapple and coconut dirtied with Pacific trade winds and a twist of watery sunsets; a stark change from the comfortable country apple and abiding oak flavors of yesterday.

She returned when the day had grown hot and the white haze of the morning sun had transformed into the dense orange of afternoon. She entered her grassy stage prancing, every bit like a creature born in a fireside tale. Her nimble figure seemed to navigate air as deftly as it managed the ground. She jumped, seemed to pause, and then slid to the ground with the tiniest, catlike effort; always sure to land on her feet. I had tried to dance with her once, but was too slow and she had left me wobbling like a spent top.

I enjoyed the drink and watched as she whirled away in a graceful imitation of dandelion seeds. Her hair swung loose and its long black fan folded around her arms and shoulders, making them pale islands of rock in a strong dark river. Her voice wavered through the breeze as she danced, half humming, half singing:

“...falling all around, time I was on my way. Thanks to you I’m much obliged such a pleasant stay...”

She tossed a mischievous glance at me, bold eyes acknowledging my suspicions and thanking me for my acceptance. I smiled and took a deep breath, archiving its taste for later remembrance before returning to my book.

Before her reappearance I had been partway through some hypnogogic tale of mystery and imagination but my reentry into that world felt barred. I was unable to draw myself back into fiction, as if my environment had grown uncomfortable; some important element lacked. Listening, I soon found that silence had overtaken the yard. I looked up, half expecting her to be sneaking up behind me, impulsively diving for a kiss.

Instead she stood at the far end of the yard, in the shady parts beneath the passive trees that stretched to the creek. She stood rigid and in her profile I read wild fear. It was a look I had never seen in her before and I rose startled, following the line of her eyes to the opposite end of the yard where a tattered gate opened onto the banks of the stream.

In the opening prowled the monstrous black shape of a panther with an open mouth and vicious eyes pointed directly at her. Though its back ran parallel with the top of the short fence the cat seemed monstrous, as if the gravity of its dangerous darkness gathered the world around it and squeezed out drops of submission. The panther scrutinized her with calm, wise strength, but also with brutal intent companioned by a leaden rumble in its throat that seemed to make the house and the watery glade shimmer like a mirror in an earthquake.

Not thinking, I threw my book to the ground and leapt to her side. Only after I stood between it and its prey did the reality of danger reach me. I had thought nothing of the mad fear in her eyes which had filled the sails of my courage. Only when the hands of my frightened gypsy sheltered on my shoulders did I glimpse the murderous power in each of the hunter’s obsidian claws. But I had stood and would stand though courage had grown damp.

This was a shrewd animal. It would not pounce unless its quarry was assured, so when I jumped the huge black cat stepped back and began pacing a circle around us. As it turned so did we and soon our backs were facing the break in the fence. The cat paused. I urged her to run and turned her quickly towards the gate.

Terrified she sprang toward the rusted gate, but to my horror the panther sprang too. I froze as the cat launched itself with locomotive strength. But at the same moment its paws left the ground, an exposed root from one of the trees caught the foot of the gypsy girl and threw her on the bank of the stream. Time slowed as the blurred black mass sailed over her head like a zeppelin. A paw lashed but grasping only air thrust forward to meet the opposite bank of the creek, an unnatural distance that revealed the strength beneath the panther’s oily fur.

I lifted her from the soft ground as the huge cat had turned and was regarding us coldly, pacing and patiently planning a second assault. The panther's eyes never strayed from her, even as she regained her feet. Her hands sought mine and squeezed but her eyes had locked on the cat. There seemed to be some ethereal fear or distant recognition that I did not understand. But her grasp empowered me as I slowly led her downstream.

The creek widened to the East but the more water that ran between us, the harder the panther's resolve seemed to become. I halted in a silent glen where the drooping trees created a shady cave, permitting only splattered bolts of sunshine to drop onto the water's surface. I glared across the water at the haunting mass of midnight, silently daring it to do its worst. The cat only stared, unblinking, amidst the babbling pulse of the stream.

The panther's drooping head was defiant as it calmly mounted an old log that lay in the water like a natural wharf. It crouched, drawing its hind legs like a bowstring and was still.

I grew tense and gently drew the girl behind me, ready to shield her as best I could. But her still, soft voice spoke; “No.”

She squeezed my hand once and stepped out from behind me. Though I still glared at the cat I felt her slide away from me. I had been her protector, some strange, lanky, white knight, but when she parted from me I felt my fortitude deflate and all the fear that I had pushed away rushed back like sand into a lonely coastal grave. Still holding my hand she took one step, then two, and then stood. She demurely faced her hunter with a kind of phosphorescent mourning around the rims of her eyes and then let my hand drop from hers.

In a frozen moment the yellow eyes of the feline flickered at me and I silently dared the hunter to spring while terror left me inert and froze my throat.

Her hand was still falling to her side when the taut tendons of the cat released. I blinked. I heard a hollow crunch followed by a tremendous splash. The panther, gasping amid the floating remnants of the log that had collapsed beneath its strength, disappeared under the swift current that carried it forever away.

By twilight the house stood empty and lifeless save for two sets of footprints on it's doorstep that turned left toward the setting sun.

----

On Writing

2010-11-16T17:49:00.000-08:00

"Biting my trewand pen, beating myself for spite,
'Fool' said my muse to me 'look in thy heart and write!'"
-Sir Phillip Sidney

Now, I could apologize and make excuses for not having posted in nearly a month and a half but in defiance of sounding anything like my students I shall, instead, stoically make no excuse and merely plod on with a new post.

This posting may take this little blog in a bit of a different direction since, as I've been poring over these great many books that tower behind me as I type, I've been feeling a need for a little variety. This may shed some light upon my reluctance to post as of late (but again, I refuse to make excuses). What I've been thinking about is how it came to be that I chose my current profession; that of professing and specifically, professing English Literature (since such is what I profess to do). This little mental exploration requires a context which I will now set:

A number of years ago while I was studying abroad in London, I frequently found myself drawn to a particular room in the old house in which our group was lodged. The house itself was a converted block of those old Georgian semi-monoliths that line the streets of London from the central neighborhood of Kensington to the shady surburban outskirts of Islington (I know this because this house was on a particularly well-treed little avenue just a two-mile walk from the Highbury-Islington tube station in northeastern London). The architecture in these houses was designed to progressively diminish the ceiling height as well as the window area of each subsequent floor in order to present the illusion that they towered much higher than they actually did; thus my term 'semi-monolith.'

This house had a particular room that sat between the reception area and the path to the kitchen. This room was unlike any other in the house in that, rather than the drab taupe or yellowing, patterned wallpaper in the rest of the house, this room was bedecked with the colour blue from top to bottom. The carpet was a lush sapphire; the wallpaper, striped with azure and robin's-egg reached from the elegant white chair rail to the crown moulding far above my head. The small couch that I sat on had been upholstered many years ago with a royal blue that had since adopted subtle shades of grey that seemed to match the dining table's place-settings. And when it rained the room itself swam all the way from the backyard window, over my knees, past the room's little piano parlour and out toward the tree-lined street.

This was my writing-room and I had spent many an hour there attempting, to the best of my ability, to translate the feeling that I had when sitting there into some kind of a narrative. I had always been an avid reader. During High School I had devoured Tolkien and Bradbury, spent a summer following the cases of Sherlock Holmes, and in college, after a short and silly attempt at studying Psychology, decided that I was best suited for studying Literature, which would hopefully allow me to continue to read for the rest of my life. But at that point I looked on this field not with a sense for the academic pursuits in which I now find myself enmeshed, but rather with the increasingly universal desire (at least among English majors) to become canonized myself. Unfortunately it was with this inflated Ego that I hacked away with my then blunt creative instrument, attempting to conjure some sense of the fantastic; an affective experience of inspiration that might someday spur some reader to the same pursuit. I have since learned that writing creatively is significantly less self conscious, at least for me.

Oddly enough, what I discovered after a semester of sitting in this room and throwing inspiration at the page like so many Jackson Pollock paintings, hoping that a story would arise, is that, though some narratives DID indeed manifest themselves they all appeared to be about the same thing: inspiration. Some say that writing will always reflect the writer, and despite the fact that many modern literary critics would rail at such a notion, at least for me this is tragically true. There I was, sitting in a room seemingly full of inspiration, ready to conquer writer's block and produce a truly incredible work of fiction yet so much inspiration oddly enough only bred itself and the only characters I appeared capable of producing were ones who, through various fantastical or magical experiences, sought this same Holy Grail of 'Inspiration' as if it were a mythical item to be found and possessed.

Oddly enough, since turning my pursuits to the academic rather than the creative aspects of literature, I have discovered that, at the heart of Arthurian mythology, the Grail Quest is not one of possession but one of understanding; specifically, an understanding that shall forever alter the life of the worthy knight or, in my case, the unworthy writer. I still feel as if I am somewhat barred from the real experience of creative writing, perhaps as a factor of my initial hubris (much like Malory's Lancelot is barred from a true vision of the Grail. But I mustn't attribute quite so much nobility to myself), and consider myself, in a way, relegated to the position of talking about literature rather than producing literature. But then again I have quite a collection of manuscripts that have been sitting around for the past few years, waiting for a more patient, and perhaps more mature writer to re-approach, remould, and resubmit them for publishing.

Since I've been looking for a change of pace (at least temporarily) I have thus decided that The Eastin Collection would be a nice format to submit some snippets in-work to an "audience" (I place all of you in quotations simply because I'm not entirely sure that you, my audience, even exists. Apparently I'm not much of a blog-networker). So in the next few months expect to see something a little different and while this probably won't be a regular thing, since my primary goal is still to talk about books, I'll still hold on to the hope that at one point I'll be talking about a volume in my collection that I quite literally had a hand in...

Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers

2010-10-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

"What a godsend this would be for His Majesty, who is seeking everywhere for brave fellows to recruit his Musketeers!"

Who doesn't love the swashbuckling tales of the four legendary friends of the French 16th Century? Funny how most people adopt a puzzled expression when one mentions the four main characters in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. Despite our usual familiarity with the novels main character most forget that D'Artagnan was only the younger addition to the already seasoned brotherhood of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; characters that have seeped out of the national identity of France and managed to make their way, in an odd fashion, into the idealistic anachronism of the U.S.

The book itself was a gift some Christmas long ago from my paternal grandmother. This was a particularly exciting gift since, for the previous eighteen or so years I had always had the impression that Grandma Pauline wasn't exactly sure what to get me for Christmas or Birthdays. Usually it was Grandma Jane that would pore over book after book and Lego set after Lego set to find the perfect gift. I don't hold it against Grandma Pauline, of course. Her number of grandchildren was quickly approaching the double digits even then while Grandma Jane had an even three, my sisters and I, and me the only one old enough to appreciate it. But around the same time that I asked Grandpa Harry for a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy I had asked Grandma Pauline for a copy of Dumas. I had no idea what to expect but I definitely did not expect a volume from the Franklin Collection.

In case you aren't in the know, the Franklin Collection is a hoity toity retailer of expensive collectors items; brass Monopoly sets, useless busts of eagles, and decorative shelf-versions of classic Harley Davidson's. Mostly junk...mostly. To my knowledge I had been completely unaware of a line of books and as a result I was astounded with this volume. You may not be able to tell from the photograph above but it is completely bound in sturdy green leather with gilded letters and finely gilded pages. It even contained a number of full color prints of a watercolor series inspired by the novel. Needless to say I was in awe and profoundly appreciative (I hope). But what was greater was that I feel that there was finally something that Grandma Pauline could be excited about getting me for Christmas. An avid reader herself she began committing quite a lot of time finding nice volumes of books I was interested in and in the few years she had left, managed to find fantastic versions of Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Shelley's Frankenstein (which I will surely blog about someday).

As for the story itself, I feel that my experience with The Three Musketeers may, in fact, have been plagued by uninspired translation. I have always had the impression that Dumas was quite a skilled writer and most readers of The Count of Monte Cristo agree but after reading this novel I felt like I had missed a great deal of the wit and excitement that I'm sure characterizes other translations from the French. That said, there is still a great deal to be said for the sense of heroism and camaraderie that characterizes the Musketeers' books (since the three appear in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragellone, the inspiration for the 1998 film The Man in the Iron Mask). In the end there is a great deal that the novel establishes that has been a staple of re-imaginings of the tale; aspects such as the villainy of Cardinal Richelieu, the youthful arrogance yet lovable heroism of D'Artagnan, and the Musketeers' unfailing loyalty to the king. Despite the fact that aesthetic turds such as The Musketeer still make it to film, many of these elements remain and somehow keep, even us Americans fascinated with visions (albeit altered ones) of French national identity. In many ways (and I may be overstepping, but so be it) these characters serve a similar function as the Round Table knights do for England.
----
Dumas, Alexandre. The Three Musketeers. Franklin Center, PA: The Franklin Library, 1978.

Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates - Mary Mapes Dodge

2010-09-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

"On a bright December morning long ago, two thinly clad children were kneeling upon the bank of a frozen canal in Holland."

It is rare that I find myself willing to write about a book that I haven't even finished. In fact it is one of the cardinal sins of English Departments around the world (despite the fact that it happens daily by students and faculty alike). But this book holds a bit of a different significance for me than a great many in my collection. In fact this is one of those instances where the story within the book is overshadowed by the story of how I acquired it.

A great deal of the story you can glean from the quote below. The book is about children in Holland and they are cold. The main character's story, the story of Hans Brinker, is a classic bildungsroman told in the mode of a children's story. Hans is a poor child who skates around the canals of Holland on a poor boy's wooden skates. But eventually he is able to prove his worth in a skating contest in which he wins a pair of silver skates. This is as far as I ever got in the book and may not even be that entirely accurate. I stopped reading it mostly because my second semester of college was looming and the tale itself didn't carry quite as much appeal for a lad of nineteen than it might for a boy of ten.

But as I said, it was the acquisition of this volume that makes it a valuable piece in The Eastin Collection. When I was young my grandfather had a close friend named Addee. To this day I can't quite recall how we managed to gain her acquaintance but she was an elderly woman with a bright spirit. If I recall right she didn't have a great deal of family of her own and may, in fact, have never married at all. As a result she would often join my family during events or holidays. Each Christmas my sisters and I would receive a gift certificate from Addee (she had no other title than her first name). And my mother would always emphasize the importance of Thank You cards. Each year after Christmas we would faithfully write our Thank Yous to Addee, an act which, at that point, we did not understand the significance.

One year, instead of a gift certificate, Addee brought over this book. It was an old and yellowed volume even then but she handed it to me with a little sparkle in the corner of her wrinkled eye saying that she thought I might enjoy this book and that she had searched for it specifically. Looking back I feel slightly guilty for filling my childhood brain with Goosebumps instead of moral tales like this one but, so it goes.

Some years later Addee passed away suddenly and while we were sad that she would no longer be joining us for Christmas we soon learned the importance of common courtesies. I don't know many of the details but it had apparently been stipulated in Addee's will that a certain amount of her estate would be split between my sisters and I. It was by no means a large estate but it was the gesture that impacted us much more than the gift. To this day this little book, faded and musty as it may be, is a reminder of the importance of a simple Thank You even for simple gifts.
----
Dodge, Mary Mapes. Hans Brinker or, The Silver Skates. Illus. Hilda Van Stockum. Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Co., 1946.

New Digs

2010-09-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. It has been far too long. Lesson plans for college courses do, in fact, take a great deal of time and energy, including the brainpower normally in reserve for the blog. I hope to re-regularize my postings and I expect to be held to this goal by you, my ambiguous cloud of readers. Next week I will talk about Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge but I have reserved today's posting to introduce you to the new home (physical, not electronic) of The Eastin Collection.

You may recall the howling mess of stacks depicted in my inagural blog. As you can see I had been horrendously taxed for space, what with a bookshelf full to the brim; a bibliophilic sin since, as you know, bookshelves should always have room for expansion. Not to mention the disarray with which my various anthologies and lesser-bound tomes were strewn about the floor. Well, back in March my wife and I bought a house and this meant that I got my own office space. I've since painted it blue (the rest of the house is beige. For some reason I feel like blue promotes a scholarly/artistic environment) and acquired a nice big wooden-slab-of-a-desk. But the bookshelves took some time.

Ever since our offer wen through I had been scouring craigslist, thrift stores, even Ikea and World Market for the perfect shelves. I was beginning to despair and became willing to simply grab a cheap particle-board set which is all too easy to find in the online classifieds when finally THE shelves appeared. Some may call me an old soul; I enjoy tweed, medieval books, old maps, and even have a quill pen sitting ready on my desk. So I was not about to fill my office with any of this modern Swedish junk, no. I was waiting for shelves of monolithic mahogany with beveled feet and crowns. This is precisely what appeared, and then some. Long story short, I picked them up and have only recently managed to organize the entirety of my book collection in the massive, tripartite book-castle (for it is hardly 'shelves') that looms behind me as I type.

You may not be able to tell, but the center unit is nearly 7 feet tall! Also, the right side of the image may be a bit cut off because I had to stand in the closet in order to get the whole bookcase in the shot!

As you can see, I'm getting closer to that distant ideal. I, of course, have yet to have either the volume of books, the estate, or the time to construct the gigantic laddered affair that's been waiting in the attic of my imagination but this is good enough for now.

Annie Dillard - For the Time Being

2010-08-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

"Does God cause natural calamity? What might be the relationship of the Absolute to a lost schoolgirl in a plaid skirt? Given things as they are, how shall one individual live?"

I know, I know. Its been over two weeks since my last post and I know I've left everyone hanging. I just want to apologize to both of my readers for my absence... The last few weeks have been particularly hectic what with the moving to San Diego permanently, writing syllabuses for my classes which begin on Wednesday, and most especially realphabetizing The Eastin Collection. But more on that next week...

The book we are talking about today breaks the typical genre even more than Emily Dickinson. I'm sure you've noticed by now that the larger portion of my collection is novels or short stories. And barring Emily, nearly everything I own contains a standard narrative of some sort. Annie Dillard, on the other hand, was my first introduction to a genre known as Creative Non-fiction.

Like so many of my books For The Time Being became part of my collection as a result of a college class. Originally I had been skeptical of creative non-fiction and even more dubious of reading an author who was still alive! For The Time Being came out in 1999 which makes it one of around five books that I've read in the past ten years that were published in my lifetime. As a medievalist I've become somewhat skeptical of new works and have a tendency to sequester myself amidst dusty tomes that with pages that smell rich and aged rather than the decadent white of a new book. To cut to the point; Dillard blasted all of my sketpicism with this truly incredible book.

To attempt to create a summary of For The Time Being would not only be unproductive but inarticulate. The best way to describe the book is to treat it as a collage of smaller narratives that, when considered all together, create a marvelous picture of humanity attempting to make sense of its temporal moment. Dillard mixes short vignettes of everything from discussions of birth defects to the trials of mid-century rabbis to a man standing alone by the Great Wall of China. One cannot read each snippet and expect to gain any sense of direction but once one arrives at the final pages and draws ones consciousness back for a moment, only then can we see what it is that Dillard has created. It is not a painting that began with sketching and slowly developed layers, but rather a jigsaw puzzle, where each little piece is a polished fragment of the whole that can only be understood once it is set in its place in the whole puzzle.

I wish I could do Dillard's book more justice and though I rarely like to recommend books to people, mostly because I know my own reading list is so long that I can only limply accept recommendations from others, I have to say that For The Time Being may entirely reboot how you understand the narrative and completely restructure how you understand your place in this vast, weird, beautiful, and cathartic world.
----
Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. New York: Random House, 1999.

Emily Dickinson - The Complete Poems

2010-08-03T00:02:00.000-07:00

"When it goes, 'tis like the distance
On the look of death."

You may have noticed that of all the books I have discussed so far none of them have contained more than a few lines of poetry. As a student of literature I must understand and appreciate the significance of poetic expression and the vast array of forms and meters in which poetry is found. That said, I must openly admit that poetry rarely attracts my attention and I tend to encounter verse more often through drama or narrative (Shakespeare or Chaucer) than by reading short poems. Some of this might have to do with just how concentrated the artistic effect of poetry can be. What I mean is this: in narratives the artistic significance has a great deal more to do with structure and character development whereas in poetry, given the short form we must search for artistic significance in word choice, cadence, and the subtle imagery created by interplay between the two. Poetry is significantly more condensed and as a result open to an unfortunately larger degree of critical license in its interpretation. While some might see this as a point of greater interest in poetry to me I find that it also opens the critical world up for a greater degree of disparity. Besides, I think I just like stories better...

Now, with the above it may seem strange that Emily Dickinson, a poetess who is admittedly generally out of vogue in critical circles, is my absolute favorite. I'm not exactly sure what it is in Dickinson's poetry that strikes a chord with me but it must be a weird and wonderful combination of her simple yet accessible rhyme scheme (she is often maligned for her nursery-style rhyme), profound vocabulary, and her pleasantly macabre style.

The particular poem I've chosen to quote above I first read in high school and even wrote a short bit of accompanying guitar music to perform for a class project. For some reason "There's a Certain Slant of Light"'s depiction of autumn as a prefigured memento-mori reminds the reader of the perpetual presence of death but in a way that has potential for comfort as well as sadness, like the prismatic aspects of church organ music.

Another aspect of Dickinson that, like a bad critic, I can't help but attach to my reading of her poetry. So much of Emily's poetry focuses on death and the potential for human sadness yet it was written by a woman in near seclusion and never intended to be published. in some ways I can't help but wonder how this woman appears to have captured such a profound vision of a nearly universal human experience that may only have touched her to a limited degree. But perhaps this is merely the purest distillation of a human pondering of the ending of life. Perhaps I'm simply morbid and simply find her poetry interesting but in any case I don't mind in the least that hers is the only book of poetry on my shelf (at least the only one that I have ever actively sought).
----
Dickison, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1890.

Charles Dickens - Great Expectations

2010-07-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

"I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance, that suffering has been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be."
or
"I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her"

Oddly enough this week I am choosing to blog about a book that is not in my bookshelf, despite the fact that I've read it twice. The first time I had borrowed it from a now ex-girlfriend. The second time I'm pretty sure I had my own copy but now have no idea where it ended up. In either case the novel is a fantastic tale of misguided idealism and one that resonates particularly well after high school breakups (at least I can say so from personal experience). I could review a number of interesting and not-so-interesting topics along this vein but in reference to last week's post, today I want to further discuss the effects of serial publishing on our whole view of a novel.

It is widely known that Dickens wrote two endings to his novel. The first was stark and not particularly uplifting but stoically committed to Dickens' overall tone throughout the novel. The second, on the other hand, is what some might call a 'Disney' ending which makes the audience feel good despite the fact that it appears to compromise the moral system that the rest of the narrative seems to establish (one last thing: I must warn you before you read on that the rest of this blog is one big spoiler).

These two endings revolve around the narrative significance of the callous and enigmatic Estella, a woman whom the main character Pip grows to idealize far beyond the reality that continues to smack him in the face with a leather glove despite his persistent belief in her near-divinity. Plainly put Estella is a bitch, yet she is that special kind of bitch that somehow becomes more and more compelling the more she acts this way. Undoubtedly all of my male readers (if there are any) understand what I mean and just as us guys still can't figure out why pursue these women so Dickens and his audience appear to have been unsure of where to place her.

With a character like Estella Dickens presents an interesting set of narrative choices. Since Great Expectations is essentially a bildungsroman (or a coming-of-age tale) Pip's interaction with Estella can be resolved in a few ways: either he grows out of his childish infatuation or Estella grows out of her bitchiness in order to see Pip for the good man he has become. These are Dickens' primary conclusions but we also have another set of unused alternatives: one being that neither character progresses (which Dickens is of course an astute enough author to avoid such a lack of character development), or both progress into an ideal and thus marriageable state (which of course is the FULL realization of the Disney ending. An ending which, fortunate for us, was quite far fetched for the bleak cultural and literary landscape of Victorian England).

So we are left with our two choices: either Pip grows up or Estella grows up. It is worth noting that the former was Dickens' first published ending (for a full analysis of both endings I found this little site). As a scorned lover this remains the ending that most resonates with me because rather than attempt to redeem either character Dickens commits himself to seeing the fates of both Pip and Estella through to their just desserts. I can't say that I advocate the suggestion that Estella's husband beat her and it is somewhat disappointing that Pip ends up growing old a single man, but this ending represents a whole and unflinching moral code that is unwilling to redeem characters so irrevocably sullied by their own selfishness: of course I don't want to see Pip or Estella suffer, but I can't accept a bright future in light of their respective pasts.

Yet the second ending appears to throw this entire line of logic out of the window. If you reference the link above you will notice that Dickens changed his ending on suggestion of not only his audience but that of Wilkie Collins as well. I can't help but feel somewhat strange that an author as prolific as Dickens was influence in the construction of his narrative by a still decent but clearly lesser artist. But then again this whole mutability of a work of literary art brings us back to the issue of serial publishing. As mentioned last week, an author like James Joyce would hardly let another soul view his work until it was complete in its entirety since the calculated integrity of the whole was essential to its aesthetic impact. Dickens, on the other hand, knew he was playing to a crowd and despite my wish to believe that such an author is willing to martyr himself rather than compromise his own art, with this particular author we have no such ability.

Dicken's second ending to Great Expectations leaves its readers with the notion that Pip and Estella, despite the chapters upon chapters that have exposed the major flaws in both characters, will spend the rest of their lives together. This ending apparently satisfied Dickens' reading audience much better but the question is, why? Could it be that, like so many uber-nerds responding to each and every modern comic book movie, they simply want a hand in shaping their favorite narratives? Is it because we have some draw to a romantic conclusion to every novel we read despite the fact that the entire narrative has been anything but romantic?

I suppose the question that I have begun asking myself is: is this ending as satisfying as we tend to believe that it is? Most critics tend to find that the original ending is more consistent with the rest of the work (which says a lot for a serially published novel) and though I tend to agree, my goal in this discussion is not to try to reach an ultimate answer in the debate but to speculate as to why two endings exist at all. We have established that the first ending seems to serve karma while the second seems to serve a simpler pop-media agenda. But if Charles Dickens himself is willing to claim that "Upon the whole I think it is for the better" there must be more to it.

The first ending unabashedly understands Pip and Estella to represent two irreparably flawed characters and though we might initially believe that a marriage between the two might suggest a form of redemption it might not be the case. Dickens' revised ending still shares the kind of tragic tone and faded virility of the original suggesting that despite the fact that both Pip and Estella appear to have grown through their experiences they are both tragically flawed characters (Pip through his selfishness and Estella through her cruelty). If this is the case then they don't represent an ideal couple (in fact Joe and Biddy are much more representative of unsullied innocence and thus it makes sense that Pip is barred from access to Biddy) but they do appear to be made for each other. Pip may not see 'any shadow of parting from her' but that may simply be because, at this point in their fallen lives they are forever linked in a shared aesthetic impotence that is the ultimate (moreso than the original ending) comeuppance for their wasted lives.

Charles Dickens and Serial Publishing

2010-07-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."

In any modern composition class a professor is likely to heavily emphasize the importance of repeated revision in order to perfect the final product of a piece of writing. Though I myself am guilty of limited revision (this blog may be a sad example of this) I've always known how much better any given essay, poem, or short story can be if it is revised. In fact I have a small novella that's been cooling somewhere in the basement of my hard drive for a number of years that is still in desperate need of revision. But ultimately what can make this valid bit of wisdom unstable is the strange anomaly of authors like Charles Dickens. Though he is one of the most prolific English novelists of the Victorian era his writing context essentially removed him from our conceptions of revision.

Top to Bottom: A Christmas Carol and other Christmas Stories, David Copperfield, David Copperfield (again, an old copy), Hard Times, The Old Curiosity Shop (and Hard Times in one volume, another old copy), and Oliver Twist (I apologize for the poor image quality. I was in a hurry this morning).

I would like to first point out a few technical items:
1) The first is, though Dickens takes up a considerable amount of space on my bookshelves, as you can see from the above photo, I must tragically admit that I've read far less of him than I own. I of course LOVE Great Expectations, but beyond Hard Times and A Christmas Carol and some of his other Holiday short stories I simply haven't been willing to devote the considerable chunk of time and mental energy to tackle another one of Dickens' monolithic volumes
2) I am glad to say, however, that Dickens is another one of those authors that I enjoy a particular amount of context for. Of course I've read a great deal of Victorian literature since I had once considered specializing in it, but I have also had the pleasure of visiting Dickens' house during my time in London and having the opportunity to understand more profoundly the literary figure that he cut during his time. In many ways I consider Dickens to be England's version of Mark Twain. In either case I got to collect this fantastic Jacob Marley door knocker at the museum's gift store, an ornament that now decorates my office/library door.

My brass Jacob Marley door knocker, just as he first appears in the book. At this point his face is described as having "a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." On the plate beneath the face is the sculpted shape of a lobster...

Now back to that revision issue: Part of Charles Dickens literary significance lie in his genius scheme to market his writings. Dickens himself ran and published a periodical pamphlet containing one or two chapters of his current novels. In the Victorian period this did two things: first it made his stories accessible to a wider audience at a time when books and bindings were luxuries enjoyed solely by the bourgeois. Secondly it allowed him to cash in on every chapter of a novel which, despite the constraint this put on him to produce stories at a rapid pace also provided motivation for drawing out his stories as much as possible especially once an audience had been hooked (there are countless examples of this in modern media albiet to significantly less literary merit. I'm looking at you, J.K. Rowling). This clearly is the root cause for the now massive and imposing books with Dickens' name on the spine (which is interesting since neither he nor his contemporary readers would have even seen his novels published in this way).

But if we compare this style of composition to modern methods we find that Dickens was uniquely capable of performing a rather intricate task. Whereas a novelist like James Joyce would never let a publisher even view his novel until it had been perfected in its complete form Dickens would write his first few chapters and send them directly to press hoping to heaven that he could manage to make something out of the rest of the story which may or may not have been fully planned. Also this causes a particular limitation on the writer since he must conform every subsequent chapter to the ones previously published since the narrative can no longer be changed to suit an incidental plot change later on. Undoubtedly this may be the source of many of his extended narratives; explaining away plot threads that were in need of resolution. Yet in the end we are left with countless iconic novels that seem to define the cultural landscape of Victorian England which is quite a feat for a writer under such constraint and speaks volumes to his ability to know his audience (although I have more to say on this subject in reference to Great Expectations in particular. But I will dedicate a complete blog to this subject).

Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma

2010-06-26T01:06:00.000-07:00

"You're to be different now. Your behavior will be changing. Your thinking is to change. And people will watch these changes in you and they'll come to experience the world in your new manner."

Though the title inevitably evokes the classic Smiths song this novel is quite literally centers around a main character's girlfriend who falls into a coma. Though this seemingly mundane premise quickly turns interesting when said coma is the catalyst for a post-apocalyptic world in either instance this particular novel seemed a strange choice for an undergraduate religion class.

I first read this novel as an assigned text in Dr. Harrison's lower division Christian Tradition class and amidst a slew of other religious/philosophical texts this seemed a very odd choice. In some ways I feel that pedagogical choices like these probably contributed to Dr. Harrison's limited presence on campus in subsequent semesters (the guy somehow managed to eek discussions of The Matrix into a class focused on the development of later Christian religious philosophy...seriously).

To summarize, Girlfriend in a Coma tells the story of a group of mediocre high school students, one of whom falls into a coma after overdosing on Ecstasy the night after losing her virginity and conceiving a child with her jock boyfriend. Years later after each member of this group of friends has been partway down the road into mundane lives the girlfriend wakes up at the same moment of an unspecified apocalyptic event that leaves the very same group of friends (including the coma-delivered daughter of the eponymous girlfriend) the only survivors on earth. Though apparently the last humans left on the planet this group of now thirty-somethings proceeds to simply survive in an unremarkable and rarely commendable fashion. Most of the hard questions of the novel are asked directly by the ghostly narrator, a high-school classmate and football jock (hardly a likable character but somehow his death gives him the perspective to put the philosophical screw to his former friends), questions which ultimately amount to: what does it take for one to want to live remarkably.

Now I won't be the one to say that the question Coupland poses is invalid or even dismissible. In our media-saturated and leisure-oriented culture I would hope that even more people were willing to answer the call to live remarkable lives. But for some reason the context in which this novel was presented sidelined the question. Admittedly Girlfriend in a Coma is not a novel I would have ever picked up but for some reason attempting to appropriate a secular perspective on finding meaning and purpose in one's life to a Christian context somehow seemed like a backwards move. As a result the novel led me further into musings on post-apocalyptic narratives than existentialistic introspection.

Modern media has no lack of exploration into post-apocalyptic narratives. Indeed Hollywood has been dreaming up new approaches from Mad Max to Waterworld to I Am Legend (though this last started in comic form). Literature has been considering the same concept since Mary Shelley's The Last Man to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. All of these narratives leave us with a more general question that Coupland seems to ask, which is: if we are stripped of everything we know, what do we do? Think about it...what each of these narratives have in common is the complete removal of the character from all social, economic, sanitary, gastronomic, etc. norms that we in our civilized and industrialized societies are able to accept as consistent realities. But if everyone but you and a few others in the world were dead, contaminated, or simply disappeared what would it all mean and what would you do?

Even after providing for basic survival (made particularly difficult without electricity, running water, gasoline, or fresh food) the next mental void to fill is to make that very same survival justifiable on an existential level. With a constant social network it is easy for us to find meaning and importance even in the most mundane of tasks (doing dishes, depositing paychecks, writing blogs, etc.) because even such minuscule acts represent a re-validation of an individual's existence since the effects of these acts is perceived by others from without the individual. Conversely, in a post-apocalyptic world with no apparent hope of global reconstruction the weight of solitude on our vast, spinning rock-in-space is likely to make any lone individual either commit suicide for the sheer futility of continued existence or simply relapse to a hedonistic and short-sighted manner of existence. In Coupland's novel it is the latter which his characters pursue and if you think about it it is difficult to blame them despite the fact that the author does. But the reason for this may be the fact that he offers the prospect of redemption via a magical jump back in time to the narrative's catalyst (the coma-event). Of course in retrospect all characters have the perspective to pursue wildly different and philosophically informed and significant lives (which seems to be Coupland's point throughout). But I have to feel somewhat cheated by this particular deus-ex-machina since a regression to a more primitive survivalist mindset is probably the only way to mentally cope with the essential end of life on earth that post-apocalyptic narratives depict.
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Coupland, Douglas. Girlfriend in a Coma. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.

Disney - The Emperor's New Groove

2010-06-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

"If you had done what I ordered you to do in the first place, we all could have been spared your little 'kiss of life'."

I'm diverting a bit from the formula today to relay the meat of a debate I had with my mother in the past few weeks about the evil, bloodsucking, corporate monstrosity that bleeds the minds of children and the wallets of parents in order to uphold a fictionalized concept of American society that its deceased creator is still channeling from beyond his frozen grave. I am speaking, of course, of Disney. Now before you all get excited and angry at me for talking about a movie rather than a book let me say that 1) this does technically belong to The Eastin Collection and 2) though they might not have pages to flip and words to read (ha!) Disney films still represent fascinating artifacts of modern American culture especially since they are often placed in settings that are not America.

Let me also offer a proper preface for this discussion since the above conspiracy-theory preface tragically derailed any productive details in my previous conversation. Though the above is true (I'll be sure to modify the Wikipedia entry for 'Disney' to comply) it still represents an opinion and opinions are things that one must at least appear to leave at the door when engaging in literary inquiry. Being such a massive economic force as Disney is it is inevitable that the entertainment media they produce will reflect the culture for which it is made and this is the main assumption with which I begin.

I first saw The Emperor's New Groove on a into-town foray on what was meant to be a camping trip and I soon discovered that it was one of the funniest and my favorite Disney film. This may have something to do with David Spade or the fact that the music-and-dance moments were kept to a minimum but in either case I thoroughly enjoyed it. In case you haven't seen it, the film is basically about a young, spoiled Mezzo-American monarch named Cuzco (voiced by David Spade) who is put in his place by an ambitious advisor (imagine a cross between Cruella DeVil and Jafar) who turns him into a llama and sends him home with a peasant. He must then find his way back to his kingdom to reclaim it with the help of the Peasant (Pacha, voiced by John Goodman) and discover himself along the way, etc, etc.

There are plenty of scenes in the film that are hilarious and quotable and my sisters and I have enjoyed doing so on many occasions but there was one scene that recently struck me as somewhat odd and the more I thought about it the more I found was happening beneath the surface of an otherwise lighthearted film.

We've all heard the stories about Disney animators inserting little goodies, often of a sexual nature, into their family films (for full discussions check out Snopes.com). While strange and controversial these little nuggets of animated tomfoolery are, for the most part, juvenile. But what I noticed in The Emperor's New Groove carried a much more prominent representation of cultural discourse.

After a classic cartoon plummet over an enormous waterfall a soaked Pacha drags the unconscious Cuzco (in llama form) to shore and begins administering CPR. Now, what got my brain turning along this vein was the strangeness of a Mezzo-American peasant being capable of performing this life saving technique. According to Wikipedia techniques of Cardiopulmonary resuscitation as it is currently practiced and as it is practiced by Pacha in the film, have only existed since the 1950's yet the supposed period of the films setting would have been during the height of the Aztec empire circa 1500. Now don't get me wrong, I don't expect Disney to portray historical accuracy especially since we are considering these settings as mere backdrops for realizations of modern American cultural discourses. But it still struck me that an emperor who should have had no knowledge of CPR would undoubtedly find it odd that his big bear-like companion was leaning in close with his eyes closed...

And Cuzco responds just as we expect him to, with the line included above. As an audience we laugh at this joke and then move on unaware of what exactly it was that just happened and I suspect that this same joke was written edited and animated with a similar chuckle. What we have here is a homoerotic moment in a Disney film but presented in such a way that it immediately becomes a homophobic scene. Despite a nearly romantic dressing to the scene both characters are quick to refute any possibility of the scene turning out differently. I imagine that if Cuzco had sighed and thanked Pacha for saving his life families everywhere would have been up in arms. But instead Cuzco's eyes go wide and he scrambles away spitting and disgusted and we as an audience think nothing else of it.

To me (and I admit I may be reading too far into it, but Disney films are just so fascinating when you really rip them apart!) the unquestioning nature of a homophobic hue is possible because of the nature of Dinsey films as cultural artifacts. It doesn't take a genius to realize that 109% of Disney's marketing campaigns are marketed to citizens who will be spending other people's money (i.e. kids). And as such it makes perfect sense for this media/consumer interchange to have no doubts about its validation of familial units. In fact it makes biological/fiscal sense for an established economic force like Disney to reinforce heterosexual units since it can probably cash in on its investment in twenty-year intervals.

Now if you find yourself thinking that I've taken this too far, you're probably right, but then again I'm just happy I've gotten you to read this far. I don't necessarily think promoting heterosexuality is an intricate part of Disney's master plan to take over the world. In fact this scene is so small that it is practically negligible. I merely wish to point it out to illustrate a small manifestation of cultural discourse within the film (and hopefully destroy some of its innocence in the process). There is so much in Disney films to read into (a professor of mine discussed Beauty and the Beast as reinforcing young American girls' need to remain in potentially abusive relationships) and I imagine I'll find another way to fit a Disney film into this blog again (if nothing else I'm sure I could get a hugely interesting racial discussion about Pocahontas, Mulan, and The Princess and the Frog).

Julio Cortazar - Blow Up and other stories

2010-06-10T00:41:00.000-07:00

"It'll never be known how this has to be told, in the first person or in the second, using the third person plural or continually inventing modes that will serve for nothing..."

I was introduced to Julio Cortazar in a class I didn't really want to take entitled "Latin American Literature." It wasn't that I necessarily didn't want to take the class since it contained a number of modern Latin American works of literature that I have come to appreciate and laud, but mostly because a schedule conflict kept me from taking the Medieval Language and Literature class (sometimes I feel like I would have decided to be a medievalist much earlier. Drat). I will fess up to the fact that I have only read one story out of this collection but it leads me to a very interesting issue in teaching literature.

The text assigned for the class was Cortazar's story "Blow Up" which is a postmodern foray into the concept of our perception of time as understood through a photograph (really, that's the best I can do to sum it up). This story was one of those that I'm sure we've all encountered where we read it through a few times yet it still doesn't seem to make sense. The ensuing class discussion subsequently revealed an interpretation that I hadn't even considered and probably wouldn't have if not for the professor's suggestions. After class I went back to read the story again and still found that the consensus at which the class had arrived still presented some problems. It was not until recently, ironically after a great deal of experience with the varied presentations of language in Medieval Literature that I have arrived at some explanation for my confusion.

It is a common oversight in English classrooms to ignore the linguistic heritage of a text. This is not always an intentional oversight and is often simply done as a result of time or contextual constraints. Cortazar, obviously, wrote his original text in Spanish but since Latin American Lit. was essentially an English class we worked exclusively with translations. I find it somewhat interesting that despite our professor being mainly teacher of Spanish classes (she taught this class since she was still connected with the rather broad Department of Literature, Journalism, and Modern Languages) she had a tendency to present the texts read for the class as authoritative and unfortunately ignored the idea that despite the editor's best efforts there is no one-to-one transmission of a text from a different language and the class, especially in light of our postmodern course canon, may have suffered from this oversight.

As a medievalist I must be constantly aware of the effects of translation upon our reading of the text. I've read multiple translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and each offers a very different reading. Thinking in terms of texts which I will be teaching this coming fall I am quite aware of the undergraduate students difference in response to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf (or 'Heaneywulf' as it is known in some medieval circles) and other more academic translations. As an undergraduate I read Heaney's version and must admit that despite its anachronism, Heaney's translation does do significantly more to excite the literary tastes of the medieval novice.

To bring the discussion back to Cortazar I find that, in retrospect, the language and imagery that I may have seen as lofty artistic flourishes or intentional ambiguities may actually be confusions caused by the shift from Spanish to English rather than deficiencies in my own understanding. In either case Cortazar's short fiction is challengingly abstract but I feel that, had my classroom context been cognizant of translation issues I may have felt a bit less belittled by the text. Hopefully such a mindset will help in my own classrooms.
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Cortazar, Julio. Blow Up and Other Stories. Trans. Paul Blackburn. New York: Pantheon, 1967.

James Fenimore Cooper - The Prairie

2010-05-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

"His dress was chiefly of skins, worn with the hair to the weather; a pouch and horn were suspended from his shoulder and he leaned on a rifle of uncommon length, but which, like its owner exhibited the wear of long and hard service."

I have returned, fell readers, and am now more master of one trade rather than merely jack of all. It has been a busy month but I am happy to say that I have successfully completed my M.A. degree at Cal State Long Beach. How does this affect you, you ask? Well now I have the time and motivation to consistently entertain you once again! So keep your eyeballs glued to your screen, keep your asses installed in your chairs, and don't touch that 'home' button!

I must apologize in advance for my over-excitement above since the text I will discuss today probably excites me as much as cold quiche. My introduction to James Fenimore Cooper took place in the context of two important influences: First I had been particularly familiar with Mark Twain's satiric essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" and with my veneration of Twain's wit and narrative genius, I could not help but approach the novelist of the American frontier with some skepticism. Second I first read The Prairie in an American literature class that had just finished delving into the macabre hypnogogic psychology of E.A. Poe, an author whom most if not all will agree far outstrips the genius of the former.

The Prairie was an interesting choice for Dr. Desaegher to study in a survey course since it is the third and final installment in what is known as the Leatherstocking Series, Fenimore Cooper's trilogy surrounding the enigmatic and highly criticized grizzled white man Natty Bumppo. The novel itself is tragically aware of the popularity of this character and suffers terribly from what I call "The Leonard Nimoy Reveal."

Star Trek fans or pretty much anyone who knows who Spock is and has seen the most recent installment of the popular Sci-fi franchise will know what I mean. In an attempt to cross temporal boundaries and offer an alternative explanation for a different direction in the franchise J.J. Abrams managed to insert the old Spock, played by an aged Leonard Nimoy, into the film. In a moment of abject suspense undoubtedly designed to induce nerdgasm in overstimulated Trekkies the introduction of Old Spock was designed to prolong the moment between his entrance and the actual presentation of his instantly recognizable visage, at which point I'm sure most of the aforementioned Trekkies likely fainted in their seats. A similar moment occurs in the final episode of the X-files inspired show Fringe which reveals a mysterious character over the span of about thirty seconds of said character talking from the shadows before he is revealed to be portrayed by none other than Leonard Nimoy. Though this show was in no way connected to the Star Trek universe its audience is similar causing the significance of the character's revelation to be underscored by the cultural significance of the actor himself.

I include this illustration at length not to suggest that either film is faulty (since I like them both) but to show that posterity is likely negatively affected by such a temporal 'playing to the crowd.' Natty Bumppo is a character who had (despite Twain's distaste) excited and titillated the 18th century American audience and Fenimore Cooper, perhaps far too conscious of such an impact allows his narrative to make the same mistake that future generations of science fiction fans might find in Star Trek or Fringe. Though most Leatherstocking fans would be capable of assuming that the softspoken, wrinkled and aged rider in leather chaps was Natty Bumppo, Fenimore Cooper makes an overt effort to confirm the readers suspicions. Undoubtedly this technique would have been so very exciting to fans of the series but to a new reader with no context to the character and attempting to analyze the novel's literary value the technique makes the narrative hollow and contrived. No doubt it still chronicles a significant idealization of the American frontier but at the same time calling attention to just how idealized the concept had become.
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Fenimore Cooper, James. The Prairie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

The Master

2010-04-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you noticed, it has been longer than usual between posts. Though I would truly love to post soon, I just can't seem to find the time or motivation. There are two reasons for this:

1) The next time I post, I will have earned the title of 'Master.'...I guess not really, although it would undoubtedly fuel my ego if any of my readers called me that. In reality I have entered the last few weeks of M.A. classes, which means I am knee, nay, navel deep in studying and researching for both Comprehensive exams (the equivalent of a thesis) and final papers. At this very moment, in fact, I am procrastinating on finishing a particularly devilish annotated bibliography. Needless to say, I hope you will bear with me.

2) The next book on my shelf is James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie... As I'm sure would be obvious to anyone familiar with the Leatherstocking Series, it is not a post that I have been overly eager to write...

The Canon

2010-04-13T23:19:00.000-07:00

“The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is why we should read, and why we should read only the best of what has been written.” -Harold Bloom

As a student of English as well as an avid reader the issue of canon becomes very conflicted for me. This always seems to come up for me, at least internally, whenever I talk to...well, anyone outside of the academy about books. I can't remember how many times I've been talking to someone about some abstract idea and it comes up in the course of the conversation that a book they had read had been particularly insightful on the topic. The subsequent conversation goes something like this:
-Have you ever read [book] by [author]?
-No I haven't heard of it.
-Oh, you gotta read it. [author] talks all about [subject in context]. Its a great book. You would like it...

At this point in the conversation I have two options; 1) take the high road and tell the person that I will definitely look it up. I don't like being insincere but I don't want to burst their bubble since the topic is clearly exciting to them. 2) If I have the time and the listening ear of my audience I expound my philosophy on selecting books as outlined at length here:

When I was very young my grandmother set aside a set of old paperbacks for me that she had bought years before for my mother. The set fit perfectly inside of a plastic case, each book fitting evenly next to the other to form a complete collection. The set consisted of childhood classics like Black Beauty and Treasure Island, a set undoubtedly designed to introduce a young audience to what is termed generally 'Classic Literature.' I think one of the important aspects of this set (sadly lost, now) was that its construction attempted to collect the essential representatives of literature in one compact space, building, to me, an odd hierarchy of literature, as if there were a certain number of important books that one must read in order to be considered 'well-read.'

To a certain extent I will agree that there are certain books that are unanimously part of what we now call The Canon; we can't imagine American Literature without Mark Twain and we can't conceive of British Literature without Shakespeare. But it is 'everything else' that becomes difficult to define. My bookshelf represents one person's attempt at defining this thing called 'Canon' but it is something different to everyone. The same attempt is made by numerous book publishers, as can easily be seen in some of the supposedly 'complete' collections printed by Everyman's Library, Penguin Classics, and The Modern Library. New critical modes have even further eroded this concept of Canon with theories like New Historicism placing the legal records of an English burgh on par with The Second Shepherd's Play as literary artifacts. As a result we, as readers, have to learn to lower our noses when a supposedly non-literary person suggests a book since, who knows? It may just be important.

That said: If I will return to Harold Bloom's suggestion above that we should only read the best of what is written, I am forced to admit that literary texts do tend to form a sort of hierarchy and be it a result of Westernization or academic preference Shakespeare is on top and Marlowe will forever be in his shadow; Fenimore Cooper simply cannot live up to Twain's brand of Americana. Whenever I am placed in the awkward situation above I am subsequently forced to admit two things: the first silently, that I am very aware where the book being suggested is on the literary totem-pole, and the second out-loud, that with my particularly long list of books to read (many more of which are on Bloom's list merely as a factor of my chosen profession) I highly doubt that I'll ever have a moment to read a book about a drug-addict's recovery or the history of a 60's folk musician hangout (apologies to Taylor and John).

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

2010-04-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

"In justification of the highly unprofessional sacrifice to mere curiosity which I thus made, permit me to remind anybody who may read these lines, that no living person (in England, at any rate) can claim to have had such an intimate connexion with the romance of the Indian Diamond as mine has been"

At first the lines above seem a little bit like the musings of Watson before recounting one of Holmes' great adventures. But this novel becomes somewhat awkward when we understand that these words are put in the mouth of the simple groundskeeper whom Collins has chosen to narrate his tale. But more on that in a moment.

The Moonstone is another one of those books on my shelf that has a good story attached to it. In my last two years of my undergraduate degree it was Victorian Literature much more than Medieval that had grasped my fancy. Motivated by the Gothic and Romantic vein of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Frankenstein I had developed a great affinity for the literature of England's most decadent and most depressing literary eras. Resultingly I developed quite a rapport with my department's Victorian specialist, a professor for whom I have a profound degree of respect for both her strong Feminist beliefs as well as the purposeful strictness with which she ran her classroom. Around graduation time it was customary for the English Department to hold a little luncheon which gave faculty and students a chance to mingle in a less formal setting as well as say their farewells. As is fitting for the English folk, most of these farewells were delivered in the forms of books. Tragically my professor was not present but she left this book in the care of our Department Chair to present at the luncheon. Accordingly it was the first book I read during my summer as an unemployed graduate...

If I were to describe the book in a single sentence I would say that I imagine this to be the result of Charlotte Bronte having read a great deal of Arthur Conan Doyle. The Moonstone takes place on an aristocratic estate and involves the mystery and intrigue surrounding the theft of a precious gem that had been stolen while a group of characters had been on a military tour in India. There is a love story intertwined and the cathartic death of the villain but the most significant aspect of the novel in my memory was its narrative mode.

The story was related in the first person by a man named Betteredge, a groundskeeper/butler to the estate on which the book is set and an unaccountable fanatic of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. It is his words which appear above. Now, I have read Robinson Crusoe and despite its supposed fame as one of the first modern English novels I cannot say much to the book's moral or aesthetic merit. Yet the narrator, this Betteredge, whenever events become confusing or difficult, rather than turn his eyes to some religious or philosophical text, somehow manages, within the context of his narration, glean insight from a tale about a man trapped on an island and describing every boring detail of his survival... Now if said butler had been reading Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy I might understand but Defoe? I'm really not sure what Collins was thinking. The only thing I can imagine is that Crusoe maybe had some kind of contemporary cultural significance that is currently lost on me. But be that as it may, I can't say that this at all interferes with the book. Collins' novel is quite fun, slightly slow at parts and not as difficult a mystery as most of Doyle's work, but entertaining nonetheless and an undoubtedly interesting study in Victorian pop-literature.
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Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005.

Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote

2010-03-25T23:39:00.000-07:00

"He so immersed himself in those romances that he spent whole days and nights over his books, and thus with little sleeping and much reading his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the use of his reason"

I must preface this post by mentioning that I haven't actually read Don Quixote. Now before you all lambast me for writing about something that I haven't read let me remind you that English majors are professionals at that very thing. But really, despite the fact that I haven't read Don Quixote (I assure you, it is near the top of my 'when-I'm-done-with-my-masters' list) I am well aware of its literary impact and artistic significance. But first lets describe the books themselves.

I have two copies of Cervantes' master work. The first was a fantastic impulse buy from the wonderful Barnes and Noble imprint. This version is a huge, backpack-defying tome, worth it not only for its price but moreso because it includes those wonderful Gustave Dore engravings I've discussed before in this blog. This will likely be the book I'll read when I get around to it, despite the fact that if I read it in public I'll likely get the question readers of big books often get when reading such tomes: "Are you reading the Bible?" (Can anyone explain why 'large book' automatically means 'Bible' to so many people?).

The second version of Don Quixote would be somewhat more difficult to read as it is a complete Spanish edition. Despite the fact that I've retained my Spanish fairly well since high school I don't think this particular language ability is quite up to par with Cervantes'. What makes this book significant is that it was purchased for me by my sister Tamara who spent a semester abroad in Madrid. My family and I had the good fortune to take nearly three weeks to visit her last year. This brings me to my justification for blogging on a book I haven't read.

There is so much about reading books that is augmented by context. Stories, by nature, are meant to carry you to another time and place and allow your imagination to recreate something with which you may not be familiar; literature brings far-off lands to you in a way that no picture or movie can and while there is much to be said for such an experience having context begins to make that experience particularly literary. During our trip to Spain we spent a few days driving through the countryside of La Mancha and I made sure to keep my eye out for windmills. As it turned out, Cervantes' picaresque knight practically came to me. Not only did we happen upon a fantastic statue of Don Quixote himself, but one of our stops was a castle surrounded by period windmills. In fact, my bookmark for my future reading experience will be a Spanish national parks brochure that has a Don Quixote countryside tour map printed within its leaves...so yeah, I have context, which I expect will undoubtedly enhance my experience of one of the greatest tales of blind idealism in the face of a world that is slowly turning its back on the old codes of honor.

----
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. David Stuart Davies. [city?] Barnes and Noble. 2007
Cervantes, Miguel de. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha. [city?] Lunwerg. [date?]

Alice in Wonderland review postponed

2010-03-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

For the sake of continuity I would have liked to discuss the new Tim Burton film for this week's blog but I just haven't found the time (or the marital cooperation) to go and see it. I will probably just end up moving on this coming week but I will keep you posted whenever I get a chance to see it.
In the meantime, wæs hæl!

Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

2010-03-12T00:10:00.000-08:00

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

In light of the new Tim Burton film I though it providential that I have arrived at the letter 'C' in my semi-alphabetical exploration of my bookshelf. Hopefully next week's post will be about the film which I hope to have seen by then but today I am writing of the particularly confusing opus of Lewis Carroll's known as Alice in Wonderland (and we'll go ahead and include Through the Looking-glass as well).

This book is one of the most special books in my collection as it was a gift from my late grandmother, the woman to whom I can attribute a great portion of my love for reading. What's more, as you will see from the picture below, she seems to have anticipated my love of reading and of books before anyone else. When I was quite young Grandma Jane used to pick me up from school every Wednesday, bring me home, and read with me. Unbeknown to me each week she had spent nearly the whole week prior deliberating over what book she would read with me. Though I have books that are older and even ones that have been in the family longer it is particularly heartwarming to know that this was the first ever book in my collection (by that standard I have been collecting books for 25 years!).

Since I've started at the beginning so far I have to not that the first experience of this book that I ever had were its pictures. I'm not sure of John Tenniel or Henry Holiday's status among readers of Carroll but their art has defined for me the quintessential look for the book's pinafored protagonist. Before I could understand the book (an ironic statement which I will discuss below) I used to flip through its pages just examining the confusing but expressive features of each of the strange characters depicted there. I even remember wondering how the Jabberwock fit into the plot. Now that I have read both Alice books, I smile wryly at this notion.

When I first read Alice I could not help but hope that there was something really important going on, as if the convoluted plot and colorful cast held some deep secret that could be unlocked with the proper key. I have since been dissuaded from this opinion (which I still feel is a loss-of-innocence moment for me) and rather consider wonderland and its inhabitants to merely represent an early exploration of modernism or absurdism in which the point is that there isn't one. Being at this point a medievalist and tending to study literature with a sort of Ent-ish view of the written word (medieval writers don't tend to say anything unless its worth taking a long time to say) Carroll's narrative is a bit disappointing and even somewhat annoying. That said; I want to clarify that it doesn't make me love Alice any less since her and her hatters and mock turtles are a fun crew for leisurely reading. But if someone out there has this key that I mentioned that will unlock the absurdist mystery I would love to hear it.
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Carroll, Lewis. The Best of Lewis Carroll. [city?]: Castle, 1983

Dan Brown - Angels and Demons

2010-02-28T00:04:00.000-08:00

I don't really have a great deal to say about this book specifically. When I read it I read it fast but that is Dan Brown's style. He writes page turners. His style is fast-paced and engaging without challenging his readers too much. In short, Dan Brown writes fantastic movies (note that I use the word 'movies' and not 'films').

There is an interesting phenomenon that I would like to mention before springboarding into a related rant and that is an interesting tendency for readers of authors like Dan Brown to rate the books inside the author's own canon. More than once I have heard of Angels and Demons called a 'better book than The DaVinci Code. I find this interesting since the main character is the same, the style is the same, and the plot is not all that different. In the words of Oscar Wilde "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all." Despite this, the very same system of valuation is why I own Angels and Demons and not The DaVinci Code.

This leads me to another discussion upon which Dan Brown is the subject. You will recall a few years back when The DaVinci code was on the best seller list and conservative Christianity was in uproar over the supposedly apocryphal nature of the book's narrative. The issue involved Brown's appropriation of some recent pseudo-historical research involving Jesus and the possibility of a romantic affair with Mary Magdalene that may have produced offspring. Thus the term sang riall (royal blood) came to be known as sankreall, or what we understand in an Arthurian context as The Holy Grail (the true etymology of either term is still in question and may in fact be coincidental).

Throughout the DaVinci debacle, while Dan Brown was undoubtedly sipping tumblers of Louis XIV thanks to the attention he received (there is no such thing as bad press, after all) I was wondering the whole time why it was that a work of fiction, not only that but an average work of fiction in the literary continuum should cause such an uproar. It was, after all as I've reiterated, fiction! If there was anything that we ought to be incensed over it would be Brown's lack of credit given to the researchers who developed the theory he used. Why cause such a fuss when, according to his readers, The DaVinci Code wasn't even his best book?

But I guess this is just another entry in a tradition of misappropriations of blame and misguided anger. No doubt it is the same mentality that sought to ban Huckleberry Finn for its use of the N-word. The grand irony that I can't help but point out is that all the fuss made over Brown's book served to canonize it much more solidly in the annals of pop-fiction.

Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre

2010-02-15T22:10:00.000-08:00

"Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adele came runing in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away"

I sought out Jane Eyre when I was trying to decide between the two career focuses that I had been struggling between. As we know Beowulf and Le Morte D'Arthur won out and I am now a fully committed Medievalist but there was a time when I was very close to committing my lifelong study to Victorian Literature. I know the Brontes don't necessarily fall into the usual Victorian category but there is plenty of gray area between the blissfully ignorant Romantics and the stylized realism of the Victorians. I had mostly been drawn to this ghastly and fantastic gray area by interest in the Gothic Novel. Frankenstein had been one of the most incredible novels I had ever read and I was seeking something similar. Perusals on Wikipedia led me to what some consider the first Gothic novel, the somewhat uninspired Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (which I will blog at some late point) but a former professor's suggestion brought me to Jane Eyre.

It took completing Jane Eyre for the full effect of the novel to sink in but what it ultimately left me with was a similar feel to the dark, fantastic magic of Frankenstein and the bittersweet denouement of Great Expectations (the first ending, of course). In a world of insulated nobility and romantic popular novels (we have established, of course, my disdain for Jane Austen) Bronte goes to great lengths to convey the unconventionality of the two lovers in her novel. Jane Eyre is plain and of common stock and thankfully is not found to be secretly the daughter of a Duke or any other such ridiculous deus ex machina. Mr. Rochester is a contemplative man who is kind yet has a checkered past and thankfully (spoiler alert) experiences an irreversible impairment before the tale comes to fruition. As unconventional of a pair as these two are Bronte never feels as if the match is fabricated with this intention. Her characters are imperfect people forced to make sense of a world that is grotesque and beyond their control and they do so in perfect, quiet, accepting English fashion.

Characters aside there is one moment that has stuck with me and probably with most other readers of Jane Eyre. Though I have above compared the novel to Frankenstein, Jane Eyre does not contain the magical or pre-sci-fi elements of the former novel. In fact there is only one scene that seems to evoke powers beyond the very human characters that Bronte creates. The reader may note the location of Rochester's proposal to Jane beneath a chestnut tree in the his garden. It is this very same tree that is struck by lightning the next day offering a plethora of symbolic interpretations to trouble the mind of the protagonist as well as the reader. I myself haven't exactly decided how to read this event but the effect it left upon me as a reader stems from a stark contrast with the rest of the novel. For the most part the events depicted in Jane Eyre could easily occur in the real world. Bronte's narrative shows a sustained need to remain within a realistic sphere but this scene makes an exception. It seems that in this lightning strike, despite what it might mean, it is a violent intrusion of the supernatural into a narrative that has developed a certain sense of comfort from the natural and therefore causes our reading of the entire novel to hinge upon it. 'This' thought I as I read 'is my Frankenstein moment.' Though the moment is brief the echo of thunder reverberates through the rest of the novel allowing each plant, shadow, and attic door at Thornfield Manor and beyond to pulse with an eerie life that lends Bronte's work that mysterious Gothic feel that came so close to capturing my professional interest.
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Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ann Arbor, MI, J.W. Edwards: 2006. (Borders Classics Imprint)

The Perfect Library

2010-02-11T00:43:00.000-08:00

Amidst the burgeoning hubub of my last semester of Master's work and most especially amidst the hubub of my wife and I opening escrow on our first house I have been thinking less about particular books than the idea of needing to move them as well as where I will be moving them to. I'm pretty sure that I have already picked out which room will be my office/library, pending the wife's approval (who will be seeing the house for the first time this weekend thanks to a 6-week long training on the East Coast) and I have already begun to play a mental game of Tetris in reference to exactly how everything will fit into this room. I will describe the reality of the room in a bit but I first want to detour into the train of thought that this obviously leads me to; my concept of the perfect library.

As I mentioned last week I have grown up with images of the vast, magical libraries from movies and other real-life experiences. Of course there is always the caveat of actually having the ability to read all of these collected books. As a result my concept of the perfect private library is a bit scaled down but not without its own magical perfection. Thanks to the advent of Google Sketch-up I've managed to put my imagination into some type of tangible form which I will attempt to show here.

First, my perfect library necessarily exists within the perfect house; my dream house which I have designed complete with a sweeping staircase, fireman's pole, secret passages, and a turret capped with a 360-degree reading room (if you're dreaming, might as well dream big). The library itself is just off the main hall (inlaid with a giant compass rose). The library is entered through a huge green, round door, with a brass knob in its center (I hope you recognize the reference). This door opens into a long room with a high ceiling and light pouring through the window seat directly opposite the door. Directly in front of this window is the desk; a broad flat affair with no drawers, just a nice amount of legroom beneath, and accompanied by a high backed leather executive chair and lit by a green glass secretary's lamp with brass hardware and a little hanging chain. The floor is wood and covered with a Persian rug. On the wall to either side of the door two small portraits: Leonardo DaVinci on the right and J.R.R. Tolkien on the left. Since I am a man of many hobbies the DaVinci wall is dedicated to music. It is divided into two sections of cabinetry; one with long doors opening to a miniature recording studio, the other containing drawers below and glass doors above with lights to illuminate my two most valued guitars. The left hand wall houses the books; the entire wall has been dedicated to shelves, maybe with a few open spots for knickknacks but mostly as a placeholder until more books arrive. This wall also houses the obligatory rolling ladder which leaves just enough room for the other stationary high-backed reading chair. I could tell you about the secret passage but that would be giving away too much, wouldn't it?

Now to face the reality; this dream would probably take up a space larger than the master bedroom in our new house. The room that I will probably use (again pending the wife's approval) might fit the desk and two bookshelves. The music section will likely be relegated to the closet along with a number of winter coats, I'm sure (its no wardrobe, I know). But its a first house. I can't say I've particularly earned the dream library just yet, but I'll be sure to let you know when the book deal hits. In the meantime I'll try to post pictures of the real room as soon as escrow closes.

Library Sightings

2010-02-03T00:47:00.000-08:00

So I was thurling in the borogroves of the Cal State Long Beach library a few days ago and happened upon a volume that inspired the following blog-post. The volume below caught my eye momentarily as I was walking to another section of the library. The title took a few steps to register in my brain but it was enough to make me turn back and take a second look. It was entitled How to Collect Books by J. Herbert Slater. I found this title and the existence of the volume ironic for two reasons: only a proficient collector of books would happen to have this book on his shelf, and the book itself (published in 1905) has undoubtedly appreciated, at least slightly, by the very rules to be found in its leaves.

As I thumbed through its pages, stopping here and there on pages displaying especially valuable binding types and illustrations of the tooled leather covers of a bygone era in bookmaking I began to recall some of my own inspirations for collecting books. I am by no means particularly discerning, at least when it comes to the market value of a particular book and the book pictured above seemed to focus mostly on shelf aesthetics.

In retrospect I am particularly aware of how my concept of a private library was formed. I have a bevy of images implanted in my brain, mostly from films like Beauty and the Beast (you all know which scene I'm talking about), The Pagemaster and The Addams Family (both films have undoubtedly implanted in my mind the small sliver of hope that the right book pulled from the shelf at the right time will quite literally come to life in my hands). Though fiction the libraries depicted there had a profound effect and having actually seen the private library of Thomas Edison (which I have had a hell of a time finding an actual picture of) made me think that such a dream was possible.

But there is one major issue inherent in such vast private collections: the simple fact that the more books one owns, the less likely it is that one has read them. I saw a perfect example of this my first year in college when a hallmate of mind took it upon himself to begin collecting books. Now the volumes with which his shelves were laden were typically those beautifully done printings by Barnes and Noble, often faux leather with gilded pages. I won't lie that I envied his collection as its contents were aesthetically pleasing and artistically valid. The one problem was that this particular student was a business major (I'm sorry to any of such ilk out there but these folk were notorious at my university for being meatheads; only one step above a Comm major *titter*). As a result, I would be surprised if the gilding of his copy of Plato has been cracked to this day unless by a curious houseguest.

This illustration in a way assuages my envy since, though my shelves are scattered with paperbacks, the contents are equally valid and more importantly, I can claim that I have read or intend to read (or at the very least understand) every single volume that I own. And that is a very comforting thought. In a world of Amazon and bargain used books I have learned that the content takes precedence over an unnecessarily high priced printing. Yet I still care enough for aesthetics to organize my collection in Dewey (sorry librarians, I'll need a few thousand more books for Library of Congress to be worth it) and to never, and I mean NEVER, break the spines on my paperbacks.
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(bibliography info thanks to CSULB's Library Catalogue)
Slater, J. Herbert. How to Collect Books. London, G. Bell & sons, 1905.

The Holiday Hoard

2010-01-25T00:10:00.000-08:00

So in lieu of a full blog post this week I would like to unlock my word hoard (in this sense I refer not to Beowulfian vocabulary but rather to the fun idea that collecting books is, essentially, a way to hoard words) and gloat over the increases that this past Holiday season has contributed to my collection. I'm only posting this now because the final Amazon.com order has finally arrived (Chretien was a bit of a slowpoke).

From left to right, top to bottom:
1. The Complete Romances of Chretien de Troyes, Translated by David Staines
2. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
3. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, Translated by P.G. Walsh
4. 1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth
5. Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault (I actually bought this a while ago but have started reading it during Christmas break so I'll count it)
6. The Complete Book of Home Improvement (not too literary but very practical for a guy looking to buy very soon. Thanks to my best friend Hayik, fellow handyman)
7. The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. The Metamorphoses by Ovid, Translated by Allen Mandelbaum
9. Student to Student (this is a series of devotionals for college students and I'm actually a contributor, yay for being published! Not yay for having to buy the book I'm published in)
10. The Lays of Marie de France, Translated by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante

So far I've torn through The Children of Hurin, made it halfway through Foucault, The Consolation, and 1066. Finishing 1066 is probably the last thing I'll have time for before the new semester begins but overall I'd say that this Christmas was both highly productive and highly rewarding. I can't wait to catalogue them all. I just need to find a shelf that they will fit on...

Sherlock Holmes films

2010-01-20T23:22:00.000-08:00

I had originally thought to simply review the recent Sherlock Holmes film but since I have some items of a similar flavour in my collection I thought I might try to develop some sense of the transmission of Holmes to celluloid. I'm mostly prompted by a late night TV session a few weeks ago where I caught the second half of the 1959 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles starring Peter Cushing as the brilliant detective (and though I may be the only one who either noticed or cared I feel obliged to note that the same actor also portrayed Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars Episode IV).

Some years back, no doubt after an impulse buy from the DVD bins at Sam's Club my dad presented me with a mammoth Sherlock Holmes film collection. This set included a number of the old, old Holmes films as well as episodes from the well-known television series staring Basil Rathbone, whom has come to define the classic Holmes image (Calabash pipe, deerslayer cap, Inverness cloak, magnifying glass, etc.). I can't say that I've watched them all, not only for a lack of time but in some the sound and video quality is so poor simply as a function of the age of the film that they are practically unwatchable. But some of these films, even as early as a century ago, began a trend in altering literature for film which has become an extreme point of contention among modern moviegoers.

I can say with some authority (see last week's blog) that Conan Doyle developed a very specific style and temperament for his most interesting character. Holmes is eccentric, brooding, but confident and almost unfailingly genius. Who else can keep his tobacco in a Persian slipper on the couch yet intricately outwit the most dastardly of Professor Moriarty's plans? In many of these old film versions, whether because of time restrictions for character development, the adamant stylings of directors or actors, or simply a limited familiarity with what was then a new performance medium (the oldest of the films in this set was made in 1931), Holmes usually is only capable of exhibiting the confidence and a very brief moment of genius (usually in the final denoument). Don't get me wrong, these old black and white relics are still very fun to watch, but in terms of presenting Holmes for what he really could be, they fall short (but really only in the eyes of someone who knows the detective's potential). But this brings me to the rub of the recent film.

Since discovering that Robert Downey Jr. would be playing Holmes I had been quite excited and was not at all dismayed with the more action-esque dressing the character would be receiving at the hands of Guy Ritchie (I'm a big fan of Lock Stock and Snatch. Layer Cake not so much). But it was the trailers that prepared me for the reality that the Holmes I would be seeing would not be Doyle's Holmes exactly. I personally have found this strategy quite useful in enjoying a film and I have been ever surprised when Harry Potter fans or (barf) Twilight fans express disappointment that the film wasn't exactly like the book. In this case Holmes had the advantage of being a very dynamic character not necessarily tied to a specific plot. This both made the story new (which is refreshing for one familiar with Doyle's formula) and allowed me to be rewarded every time something book-accurate did happen to pop up; thus the quote I began with last week. In my opinion never before has an actor been more committed to exploring all of Holmes character traits nor has a filmmaker been so well funded to allow it. True it may lead to some repeated Hollywood gags and action crowd-pleasers but for me they are easily forgiven.
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Sherlock Holmes Case Files: 10 Movies (plus selected episodes)

The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

2010-01-13T00:29:00.000-08:00

“You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,” said he. “It makes you quite invaluable as a companion. ’Pon my word, it is a great thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant."

Though this quote may have been used to comedic effect in the recent Guy Ritchie film it actually appears in a classic Holmes adventure entitled "The Man with the Twisted Lip." This will undoubtedly play a part in next week's blog about the film but here I find it particularly humorous when the conversation is directed at our nearly omnipresent narrator in the best loved tales by Conan Doyle. Watson, of course, was not entirely silent since he, despite his usual lack of deductive skill, provides the brilliant Holmes with both someone to talk to as well as a means through which the exploits of such an icon of the detective genre can be believably recorded.

Though Holmes had been preceded by Poe's Auguste Dupin ("The Purloined Letter") by nearly thirty years whether as a result of Doyle's more expansive works within the genre or through the multitude of idiosyncrasies that marked his character Sherlock Holmes has come to exemplify the perfect detective. It could be argued that Doyle's stories have a tendency to become formulaic or at least somewhat contrilved but their entertainment value cannot be lost and has in fact captivated its audience without slackenign since the late 1800's.

I'm not sure where I had even had the opportunity to experience any thing Holmsian in my early youth, no doubt through a cartoon of some sort, but I distinctly remember putting two baseball caps on my head, one foreward and one reverse, in an attempt to emulate Holmes' classic deerslayer. Nearly fifteen years later I actually had the opportunity to visit 221B Baker Street and peruse the museum and gift shop that has been established in that location. There I managed to pick up the real article; a genuine Holmes deerslayer cap, a souvinir which subsequently became my calling card.

The nice part was that I felt particularly qualified to wear it since a few years earlier at Christmas my grandfather had bestowed upon me the grand volume pictured above. As you might imagine it is quite a brick, containing all four Holmes novels (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Valley of Fear, and The Hound of the Baskervilles) as well as every other collection of Holmes adventures (Adventures of..., Memoirs of..., The Return of..., His Last Bow, and The Case Book of...). It must have been the following Summer break, while working as a cashier at a gas station with very little to do during the slow Saturday shift, that I managed to devour all 1122 pages, leaving me feeling particularly intelligent. For some reason reading Holmes makes one feel particularly qualified to develop grand deductions about the world around him that one realizes weren't all that grand once the book-buzz has worn off. I can't say that Doyle presents an immensely artistic series of tales but then again I don't think that is what he was going for. Ultimately Holmes is amusingly cerebral and entirely entertaining; this particular mindset also made the recent film quite fun, but I will leave this for next week.
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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. New York: Doubleday, 1930.

Let's All Kill Constance - Ray Bradbury

2010-01-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

Welcome back all. Thank you for enduring my brief holiday hiatus. The book I would like to talk about today will complete my brief Bradbury series and though I have plenty of other books by the same author I think I'll go ahead and save them for another time.

I have been looking for a copy of Let's All Kill Constance since I finished A Graveyard for Lunatics a few years ago, albeit not diligently. On a whim a few weeks ago I decided to look for it on Amazon and found a copy for a ridiculous price. I think my fellow used-book-buyers will chuckle at the familiarity of paying more for shipping than for the actual item. Though I had already decided on an ambitious reading list for my winter break when I received this novel and read its first few pages I discovered the need to put those plans on hold for two days (the time it took to voraciously devour this new adventure). Now I have the simple, nerdy satisfaction of a completed "set." I don't think Bradbury intended these three books to directly follow (though their internal chronology flows the same way as publication order) they do mark beginnings and endings for the three characters I've enjoyed discussing these last few weeks, but not in the way I expected.

I have mentioned before that I found Constance Rattigan to be one of the most interesting characters Bradbury had developed. He had built her as an icon of a tarnished Golden Age of film and Let's All Kill Constance delves deep again into the fictional history of a tarnished Tinsel Town. The unnamed narrator and Elmo Crumley search for the missing Constance from Venice Beach to Mann's Chinese Theater but the enigmatic character who begins the novel running mad in fear of her life is tragically always a step ahead of our unconventional detectives.

Though my interest in the character was what inspired me to pursue the book the further I dug into it the more I found the author forcing me to ask "who is Constance?" Ultimately this becomes the novel's main mystery; discovering exactly who to look for when searching for a person who spent their life pretending to be someone else. Of course I will not give away the ending but I will say that the experience was cathartic enough to inspire me to create a link (since deleted) in Wikipedia's list of people interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

In all Let's All Kill Constance was not the mystery I expected; but Bradbury's stories are never really what we expect. But I find that this genre leads nicely into the subject I have chosen for next week's blog, Sherlock Holmes.
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Bradbury, Ray. Let's All Kill Constance. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.

The Dead - James Joyce

2009-12-22T00:44:00.000-08:00

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead"

In observation of the Christmas season this week I will take a brief break from my Ray Bradbury series to discuss what I find to be a very poingiant if somewhat ironic Christmas tale.

When most think of literature around Christmas thoughts tend to jump immediately to either Dr. Seuss or Charles Dickens and while I love my Grinch and Scrooge I find myself year after year drawn instead to the final tale in James Joyce's book The Dubliners. While I plan to blog about this book in its entirety at some point I do think I must first preface my experience of "The Dead."

Sometime in Autumn of 2004 while studying abroad in London some friends and I decided to take a weekend trip to Dublin. Naturally our first destination was the Guinness Brewery and after some wandering back and forth across the Liffey, stopping whenever we saw landmarks from Ulysses imbedded in the sidewalk and keeping as warm as possible we arrived at the brewery gates. After taking the brewery tour we boarded an elevator which took us to a circular room overlooking the entirety of Dublin. We were handed our complimentary pint and walked over to one window to raise our glasses to Arthur Guinness. When I looked up I saw that the glass had frosted letters on it which read: "The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres." Looking past the letters I could see a stone spire peeping up amidst the houses and trees of darkening Dublin and though snow was not yet resting upon it my spine chilled nonetheless.

I am sure that this experience is what first brought me to "The Dead" around Christmastime. But is its appropriateness within human experience that continues to draw me back. If you think about it, stories like The Grinch and A Christmas Carol tend to emphasize the redemption of fallen mankind through the poigniant change of attitude in each tale's protagonist; a theme which is undoubtedly repeated in almost every modern holiday film in which Christmas as a concept must be 'saved' again and again.

"The Dead" offers a very different story. Purposefully placed at the end of The Dubliners "The Dead" emphasizes an ultimate acceptance of the Wintertime of life. Winter is not a time of rebirth and renewal but a time when leaves fall dead upon the ground and trees remain bare and lifeless until the new year allows the cycle to begin again. But this is not an ending to be mourned, it is a simple fact of life that follows poigniantly after all other points have been made, accounts have been settled, and all inconsistencies in life must be accepted for what they are since our time left is too short to pine away. Gretta mourns the death of Michael Furey not because she wishes him alive but because he was a chapter in her life that has unalterably closed. Gabriel, in a way, represents the difficulty which we have in accepting the winding down of the clock.

Don't call me Scrooge just yet. I'm by no means all gloom and doom around Christmas; very much the opposite. But perhaps it is significant to remind ourselves of the evanescence of life before we forget it completely upon the breaking of Spring.

For your viewing pleasure: a photogram of G. Matthew Varner metaphorically

violating the shoulder blades of James Joyce but thinking about Jackson Pollock

On a more technical note: this volume was purchased at Trinity College in Dublin on the same trip I spoke about above. It was part of a set of small books that my friend Matt (pictured above) refers to as my Leprechuan Joyce set. It contains the complete works of James Joyce but I will leave further discussion on these for another day (hopefully someday I will actually get around to reading Finnegan's Wake without hemorhaging my brain). I will say that I'm not really clear on the publisher of this particular volume and I have noticed a number of typological errors throughout this volume. But you can't beat the story that goes along with it.
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Joyce, James. "The Dead." The Dubliners. Dublin: Trinity College Press? date?

A Graveyard for Lunatics - Ray Bradbury

2009-12-17T23:26:00.000-08:00

"...when the sun went down each afternoon on Maximus Films, the city of the living, it began to resemble Green Glades cemetery ust across the way, which was the city of the dead"

I find it somewhat interesting that I managed to walk into Bradbury's mystery trilogy completely unawares. I talked last week about picking up Death is a Lonely Business before even knowing what I would be reading. A Graveyard For Lunatics showed up at my favorite bookstore on super-sale a few years ago (I will be sure to blog about Point Loma Books at some point). And I am currently reading, thanks to a $0.01 price on Amazon, Let's All Kill Constance.

A Graveyard For Lunatics follows a similar vein that Bradbury began in Death is a Lonely Business. The main characters are the unnamed writer/narrator, detective Elmo Crumley, and the faded movie star Constance Rattagan. The story surrounds a series of odd deaths plaguing a past-its-prime movie studio in Bradbury's faded-glory vision of 1950's Hollywood. The novel has a number of fascinating shadowy characters that populate the mystery aspects of the novel as well as build on Bradbury's modernized vision of the Phantom of the Opera tale (a sidenote: I HIGHLY recommend Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera. The original novel is quite exciting and not nearly as cheeseball as the Andrew Lloyd Webber envisioning, unfortunately I don't have it in my collection...yet).

As a mystery the novel might disappoint hardboiled readers but Bradbury has never really been a genre man. This is perhaps one of the interesting things about this book as it relates to the Bradbury canon. The poor guy has a tragic tendency to get lumped in with Science fiction authors yet this is really not what he is all about. As I was explaining to a colleague of mine earlier this week: Asimov is science fiction; he loves robots and rockets and explaining how they might work. Bradbury presents us with a rocket and simply asks us to believe that it could fly; he is much more interested in how the people around said rocket are able to cope with its existence. The same goes for Bradbury's dabbling in the realm of mystery. Neither Death is a Lonely Business nor A Graveyard for Lunatics are Doylian unravelings of seemingly arbitrary clues by geniuses of detection. Bradbury presents a mystery and then trys to figure out how his characters react to it.

Since we've already established the nature of his three main characters in A Graveyard for Lunatics Bradbury sees what they can really do. Constance rushes around like a hare-brained Hera, Crumley strains his brain to sniff out the terror of tinseltown, and our narrator attempts to keep himself from sinking too far into the macabre fiction of Hollywood's heyday to solve the case. At least this is how I remember it (its been a while).
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Bradbury, Ray. A Graveyard for Lunatics. New York: Knopff, 1990.

The Catalogue

2009-12-16T23:50:00.000-08:00

So I know I don't have this week's blog up yet (I promise it will be done soon) but thought I might share something that my readers might find interesting and engaging: the complete Library Catalogue! Follow the link below to see everything that I've got:

The Eastin Catalogue

I thought this might help begin to make the blog somewhat interactive. So far I've just been making my way throught the collection alphabetically. But I imagine that when I come to Bradbury (which I have) or especially Tolkien, the blogs might get a bit tedious. So I've decided to continue more as my whims happen to take me than in a particular order; that being said I would love if my readers (all two of you) might want to contribute to what exactly said whims will be. If something on the list strikes you as interesting I will blog it! If not, well I'll just have to find out how to make it all interesting.

Either way, enjoy the list and stay tuned for A Graveyard for Lunatics!

Death is a Lonely Business - Ray Bradbury

2009-12-07T01:25:00.000-08:00

"Venice California, in the old days had much to recommend it to people who liked to be sad."

You may remember a certain book I spoke of in that ever-so-long ago last blog. To refresh your memory: I had attended a Ray Bradbury book signing on the suggestion of a friend of mine before I had ever read one of his books. As a result the first Bradbury novel I ever read bears his real signature on its title page, which somehow made the experience all the more interesting.

What also made it interesting was the familiarity with which I could recognize the setting. Death is a Lonely Business, as is obvious from the above quote, is set in Venice Beach, a town that Bradbury knew quite well and which he paints with a kind of barren notstalgia that brings to life an even less glamorous but still romantic past of a now ultra-funky neighborhood.

The novel itself is a detective story yet it is by no means hard-boiled. In fact the murder that initiates Bradbury's narrative is less gruesome than it is puzzling and less violent than it is mysterious. This novel is the first to introduce some of Bradbury's most eccentric but interesting characters that show up twice more to form a sort of disjointed trilogy of an unashamedly dusty vision of Los Angeles's golden-days as they have solidified in the mind of the author (the other novels are A Graveyard for Lunatics, which will be the subject of my next post, and Let's All Kill Constance, which I have yet to add to the collection).

The two most active characters in the narrative are the unlikely duo of an unnamed writer (the narrator and no doubt a pseudo-biographical avatar of the author) and the detective Elmo Crumley. My memories of Crumley lack the kind of lost-innocence, unshaven, and jaded depiction that we are used to in our noir-stories. Instead Crumley is a man of everyday ideals who must use his brain as well as the help of his writer-friend to find the reasons that a man has been found dead in the submerged circus-lion cage of a Venice canal.

Though she does not play as important a role in solving the mystery Bradbury's most fascinating character by far is Constance Rattagan. Constance is a retired movie star who lives alone in a huge house by the beach and enjoys swimming naked, drives a huge convertible, and unabashedly keeps her old films on continuous reel in her parlor so she can revel in her glory days. Constance has always represented an interesting balance to me. Anyone familiar with Bradbury knows that he constantly explores the concept of nostalgia. To most people an overbearing sense. But Bradbury paints Constance differently. She takes absolute pride in her age and owns up to the fact that her glamorous youth can never be reclaimed. But that doesn't stop her from taking pride in the actress that she once was. Quite frankly I have no recollection of how she fit into the plot of Death is a Lonely Business but her characterization left a heavy impression on me and is most of the reason I hope to seek out Let's All Kill Constance as soon as I have time to read it.
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Bradbury, Ray. Death is a Lonely Business. New York: Avon Books, 1999.

Ray Bradbury

2009-11-25T00:49:00.000-08:00

Now that we are well into the 'B's I find it fruitful to have a little pre-blog about Ray Bradbury, since there are a few volumes of his on my shelf and I wouldn't know how to fit my thoughts on the man himself into a blog on either of those. Besides, there are a few novels which deserve mention that are sadly NOT on my shelf, them having been read at a particularly cash-less time in my life. But I digress.

I was introduced to Ray Bradbury when a high school girlfriend of mine suggested that we head down to the local Borders where one of her favorite authors was signing books. Having spent most of my high school years with my nose buried in the medievalesque worlds of Tolkien I had not taken much time to venture into the science-fiction realm and had not yet read any Bradbury. I knew he had written the Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 but it was easy to simply classify him as a sci-fi author and dismiss him. This is a perception which I now fight to mend, but I will talk more on that below.

When we arrived at the Bookstore a modest line had wrapped itself around the side of the building. As it wound its way inside I perused the stacks of books set out for the occasion, deciding that I might as well get a book signed while I was there. The volume I chose was entitled Death is a Lonely Business which I will talk about next week. But some of the volumes that I did NOT choose strangely became some of my most significant experiences of that author.

Photo appears on the back cover of A Graveyard for Lunatics, 1990

Past the table of books was a small card table with a white haired, kindly old man in shorts and sitting in a wheelchair. He signed each book with a swift flick of his wrist which I would later discover to be incredibly consistent (keep posted on this) and a surprisingly firm handshake that made him seem genuinely glad that each fan had at some point enjoyed his writing. I received the same signature, the same smile, and the same handshake and I like to think that Bradbury himself had welcomed me into the fraternity of his readers.

There are a number of books of Bradbury's that I have read and own but there are four in particular which define for me the experience of his writing. In no particular order:

Fahrenheit 451: despite Michael Moore's unwelcome intrusion into the signfication of this title, this novel illustrated something that I myself have come to hold more and more dear as our technological world progresses; the preservation of our cultures works of literary art. Bradbury's high expectation for a literary aesthetic is a perspective I have easily adopted first as a book lover and now as a student of literature (in a lecture delivered at my alma mater, Point Loma Nazarene University, just one year before I started there (unfortunate, I know) Bradbury spoke long on how a writer MUST be capable of reading, enjoying, and carrying with him/her the classic works of literature, a form of preparation that is all-to-often ignored in modern writing programs).

Dandelion Wine: Bradbury grew up in the mid-west and in no other work does he share his sense of mid-american nostalgia quite so poigniantly. I can't remember exactly how he did it, but this homogenous collection of stories easily brings a native Generation Y Californian boy into some golden vision of the boyhood of a mid-american member of the Silent Generation. This book embodied nostalgia without the kitsch; it was youth distilled and fed through a typewriter.

From the Dust Returned: I read this book in a single day and though I am not sure how that effected my experiece, it undoubtedly says something about the author's ability to engage his audience. I suppose the only identifiable comparison we could make to the narrative of this novel would be The Addams Family, but only if the Addams lacked silly humor, took pride in their mysterious genealogy, had a proud genealogy, took their relationships seriously, and lived in fear of being forgotten. I could probably devote a whole blog to simply explaining this book but to be brief: imagine if all of the classic movie monsters cohabitated in a spooky old house yet composed a loving family unit while the changing world outside seemed intent on depriving such creatures of the magic that had made them a poignant part of the human imagination.

The Martian Chronicles: If you have ever watched Star Trek you know that science-fiction, while it uses the backdrop of fantastic new worlds and alien races and astounding technology can tell us much more about what it is to be human. The Chronicles does exactly this. Though usually classified as a good spaceship story Bradbury's vision of another planet and what our race may actually do to it makes a particularly embarassing commentary on our own internalized justification of exploitation. I won't do it here but this book has a lot to say about the modern world that some people may do well to examine.

I have only selected a few books of Bradbury's but I hope it is easy to see that merely classifying him as a sci-fi author really does not do the man credit. I wouldn't begin to plase him in a category since each new story of his that I have read seems to explore a new avenue of human experience that may not be as artistic as Joyce or as prolific as Shakespeare but definitely strikes a quiet but rounded chord in my soul.

Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges

2009-11-15T22:29:00.000-08:00

"In the entrance way hangs a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances..."

My first introduction to Borges was in a collection entitled Labyrinths that I had found in my mother's bookshelf, a remnant from the general ed. English classes that even she admits she does not remember well enough. That particular book has since been lost but I was fortunately able to refamiliarize myself with Borges in a Latin American Lit. class I took as an undergrad (a necessary evil since language requirements prevented me from attending the Medieval lit. class that I had hoped to take. Oh cruel fate!). In that class we had only read the story "The South" but having a chance to look back through Borges stories sparked my memories of two tales that nested very well together called "The Library of Babylon" and "The Garden of Forking Paths."

Reading these stories a second time at a much later date revealed so much more about the author that was not yet available to me intellectually as a high school freshman, though then think I knew that I was missing something under the surface of the narrative.

I think Stephen King (or maybe just his filmmakers) may have clumsily stolen the concept of "The Library of Babylon" for the internalized narrative portions of Dreamcatcher. On a basic level the Library was a tower of six sides that housed bookshelves on its interior and expanded to infinity both above and below. As exciting as this concept sounds to a bibliophile like me where Borges begins to defy our expectations is in descirbing the content of the Library's books. Desribing them here would not do the story justice but suffice it to say that the contents are entirely relative. The concept of this library, ornate and fantastic in my imagination yet infinitely frustrating as well, was a great introduction to the genius of Borges.

"The Garden of Forking Paths" performs a similar function in telling the story of a man expecting to find the eponymous garden yet discovering (though not entirely understanding) that its medium is not soil and seed but pen and paper. I believe this may have been my first introduction to metanarrative. I remember understanding the story for the first time, setting the book down, looking at the wall and feeling somewhat dizzy, then grinning wildly at the startling fact that the book had practically come to life in my hands.

I think it is moments like these that make a lifelong student of literature's pursuits wholy worthwhile. Though that class had introduced us to a number of very fascinating Latin American authors (some of whom I'm sure I will introduce to you soon) in my experience Borges is number 1.
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Borges, Jorge Luis. Ficciones. Ed. Anthony Kerrigan. New York: Grove Press, 1962.

Deferment

2009-11-13T11:06:00.000-08:00

True believers,
Thank you for your patience these last few weeks. In finishing a paper and preparing a lecture this past week I have not been able to carve out the time to write a blog. But never fear, this coming Monday shall find us with good tidings of a great blog which I believe will be about Ray Bradbury. Stay tuned!
-SE

The House with the Clock in its Walls, etc. - John Bellairs

2009-11-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that I am, to my knowledge, completely alone in my experience and appreciation for the children's author John Bellairs his novels have come to occupy a poignant and terrifying position in my literary development.

In my elementary years I had been all but obsessed with the popular book series of the time known as Goosebumps by the pseudo-author R.L. Stine. The series was fun and satisfied the prepubescent need for thrills along with the illusion that reading such stories somehow undermined the parental establishment. But after Monster Blood IV I began to recognize the formula upon which the series was based and their exciting glamor began to fade. It was around this time that I began to notice a certain book being advertised in the Scholastic Book Fair flyer. I had nothing to go on besides the cover but it appeared far more terrifying than anything Stine's imagination could conjur up.

The book was titled The House With the Clock in its Walls and though Bellairs' intended audience was similar to that of Stine the thrills and chills as well as the poignancy of the bildungsroman (protagonist's coming-of-age) made Goosebumps look like bland oatmeal. In retrospect I find it somewhat humorous that my middle school, a conservative protestant organization, was the very institution that handed out the Book Fair flyers. At the time it was the popular response of the overprotective parents of the school's students to make doubly sure that the dastardly Goosebumps series did NOT find its way into the susceptible paws of their little foo-foos, but their sensors failed to catch the presence of this novel, probably due to a lack of awareness. Had they known the content of Bellairs' stories (and had they been more popular, I beeing the only person I know to have read him) a similar stink to that of the Mid-american Christian response to the supposedly demonic content of the Harry Potter series would have been made.

I personally have always maintained that Bellairs' stories were the aesthetic precursors to Rowling's books. The House with the Clock in its Walls tells the story of a young boy named Lewis Barnavelt, orphaned at a young age and sent to live with his uncle Jonathan and his uncle's friend named Mrs. Zimmerman, both of whom turn out to be amiable users of magic. The story that unfolds is undoubtedly familiar: an evil wizard, long since considered dead, has hidden away a secret device that will allow him to return from the grave to wreck havoc upon the living. Bellairs' wizard preceeded Voldemort by nearly thirty years.

It is hard to say exactly what it was that made Bellairs' novel strick so much richer a chord with my sense of the macabre than those of Stine. Both authors had a tendency toward the formulaic plot and fairly standard narrative styles (from what I remember). Perhaps the reason I found The House With the Clock in its Walls so much more effective in portraying an accurate presentation of terror was his use of darkness. In many ways Stine's novels had a tendency to reveal the final trick at his novels' conclusions and even though this often presented itself in some final contrived twist, repetition from novel to novel made the technique lose its effect. Bellairs, on the other hand, was on intimate terms with darkness and the unknown.

In each of his novels a mythology is built around the antagonist, often involving a particular talisman, a spooky location, and some echo of his or her dastardly personality. But this was the extend of the portrayal of those ghosts. Like so many early Christian martyrs the legend that grows out of their death becomes more powerful than their corporeal existence could possibly have been, albiet in a far more sinister and demonic manner. Often the legend would be passed to the main character (ie. Lewis Barnavelt or one of his analogues) through an older, wiser character who left out just enough to get Lewis' imagination running, along with that of the reader. So when a ghostly shadow with red eyes appears in the graveyard it carries with it not only the terror of the moment defined mostly by the hazy and ambiguous atmosphere in which imaginaton may run wild, but the terror that the trajectory in which those imaginings has been pointed. The figure behind the gravestone is not simply the horrific blackness of the unknown; it is still this because its features are obscured, but because the reader has begun to connect the mythology of the dead wizard (for this is often the type of antagonist Bellairs uses) with this new manifestation.

Keenly put; Bellairs knew how to tell stories. My best illustration occured when I was probably in sixth grade. Up until fourth grade I had devoured every R.L. Stine book available in pursuit of the thrill that I know I might regret. Up until that point I had read plenty of 'scary' stories but the inherent campiness of Stine's books would permanently keep the horror bar quite low; nothing he wrote ever kept me up at night. One night, after spending most of the day reading of the exploits of one of Bellairs' protagonists as he wandered the maze of a vast and abandoned mansion alone at night in search of a talisman that would allow him to defeat the ghost of the mansion's undead master, I was attempting to go to sleep. But in that halfway point, the twilight of waking, the darkness that had surrounded the novel's protagonist began to creep over my brain, taking shape but remaining without a definite form. I began to sense what Anthony Monday (the antagonist) must have sensed always just beyond his view in the blackness of unlit staircases and creeping beneath the rugs in dusty corridors. Somewhere out of this darkness a hooded figure reached out with a tentacled hand to pull me into the black madness when I awoke, trembling with adrenaline and completely unable to peel my eyes away from the door of my childhood walk-in closet (which is another issue altogether). That night I kept my reading lamp on and read old issues of MAD Magazine until the sun came up. The experience was terrifying but effectively illustrated the art of trusting your audience's imagination to provide its own version of fear.
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Bellairs, John. The Best of John Bellairs (includes: The House with a Clock in its Walls; 1973, The Figure in the Shadows; 1975, and The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring; 1976). New York, Dial Books.

Peter Pan films

2009-10-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

"First star to the right and straight on 'till morning"

Maybe because Hollywood is captivated by the idea of never growing up but possibly because Barrie's story simply allows those who have to stop the clock for a space, there seems to be a steady rehashing of the Peter Pan myth in modern cinema. This seems particularly appropriate to me since the story began as a play and grew from there and thus must at least in some ways be exempt from the purist's everpresent need for 'accuracy to the book.' Each of the films I want to discuss in this post have captivated me in a different way yet with certain common elements imagined in a way that, at least to me, has felt fresh each time.

I feel that I must frame this blog within the history of my Pan experiences: I was first introduced to (although not quite yet captivated by) the Peter Pan story as many folks my age, to the musical Disney version of the story. As catchy as "You Can Fly" or "Following the Leader" may have been I felt that the campy goofiness of Hook seemed to downplay something more potentially sinister in his character than The Mouse felt it could portray. Though I have to admit I may have clapped a bit during Mary Martin's performance of the character I still wasn't hooked (pun intended).

I can probably say that my experience of Peter Pan lore was somewhat backward since the first experience to really fascinate me was Speielberg's otherwise panned film Hook. Now here was a Captain with all the folly of hubris but the sinister visage of a true 'bad guy.' Sure there were many overproduced and campy moments in the film; maybe the fact that it was the only recent movie my sisters and I had on VHS and our subsequent repeat viewings allowed us to overlook these things. But as I watch the film now (which I still do on occasion) I find new things that tickle my fancy especially the care that Spielberg took in imagining a post-Pan Neverland. The dreamlike island had all the remnants of the stories of the Darling children but modified and mutated by the power vacuum left by Neverland's muse. For me this presentation mystified the tales that came before despite my more passing awareness of them. This made it particularly exciting when I finally obtained and read Barrie's original story in high school.

It was around that time that, like a Harry Potter fan with a more refined aesthetic (yes I went there, and will again!) I jumped for joy upon discovering the release of a new full length feature film of Peter Pan. My experience of this film was less intriguing and more of a simple satisfaction at seeing the original story (albiet with some slight but, for me, forgiveable alterations) on the big screen. My reaction to this film was more in line with that of a satisfied fanboy than a developing literary critic. It was a few years later that this inquiry would be satisfied in film form.

I first saw Finding Neverland while on a weekend trip to Cardiff Wales during a semester abroad in England in 2004 and I have to admit that I did not leave the theatre with dry eyes. Again, I had to accept the liberties taken with the story; in the previous films changes had been made to Barrie's novel to bring it to the screen and here changes had been made to Barrie's own biography in order to dramatize it for the film's viewers. A professor of mine at the time balked at these changes which I thought odd since an accurate perception of Barrie's biography or that of his lady friend, Sylvia Lewellyn Davies does little more than ruin our experience of the film which, though it contained historical elements, cannot be seen as an attempt to portray them with accuracy. A film is still a work of fiction and since none of us know J.M. Barrie (may he rest in peace) how he is portrayed in the film must be met with the usual suspension of disbelief which we accept when we attend the theatre or the cinema. Only then can we leave that experience with the sense of wonder that makes us doubt if it had really been a dream.

This brings me to my most significant reaction to these three films in particular. I would have to go back and check (which I won't do for lack of time) but if I remember correctly neither the Disney nor the Mary Martin versions of Peter Pan emphasized that sense of doubt with which I believe Barrie intended his story to carry. There is something about the concept of Neverland; possibly its existence in a semi-dream world or the sense of awakening we seem to get upon returning from it, that allows the story to capture our imaginations. If I want to take a step back and look at the film as a product of Hollywood or the book as a bunch of paper I will no doubt realize, rather sadly, that these things cannot happen. But that is the point, isn't it? When we read about Peter Pan or watch him alight on a bedroom window we choose to believe that the page or the window has become a portal into another world where dreams take form and shoot cannonballs at us and we whirl around them with the help of a little fairy dust. Each of these films contains such a blurring of lines between those two worlds that everyday life forces us to draw a firm line between. This is a sense that I hope all subsequent Pan films can maintain, especially the upcoming Peter Pan in Scarlet, based on Geraldine McCoughrean's official sequel to Barrie's story (which you can read about when I get to 'M' haha)
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Finding Neverland. Dir. Marc Forster. Perfs. Johny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, and Dustin Hoffman. Miramax, 2004.
Hook. Dir. Stephen Spielberg. Perfs. Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, and Bob Hoskins. Amblin, 1991.
Peter Pan. Dir. P.J. Hogan. Universal, 2003.

Postponed Postings

2009-10-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

To all those dust bunnies who may or may not read this blog (and Grandpa). Thanks for your patience while my Master's program kicks my scholastic butt. Postings will resume next week with my take on the only three Peter Pan-related films that I find worthwhile. Until then, cheers.

Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie

2009-10-07T23:49:00.000-07:00

"All children, except one, grow up."

I thankfully did NOT grow up with the Disney or Mary Martin versions of the Peter Pan story. Oddly enough it was Spielberg's Hook that most piqued my interest in 'the boy who wouldn't grow up,' possibly because the film was intended as a sequel and despite what it may have done with the tale a great deal of its effect was to mysticize its source material. Therefore when I first went back to read Barrie's book, though I was reading a story I already knew, it had already been given a life of its own in my imagination.

As you can see I do not simply own one copy of the book, nor have I ever bought one for myself. It seems to have become a kind of joke with my family members (of whom my sisters have a shared experience with the Pan story) to find new versions of the book for me as gifts. As a result I have collected four books (so far). From right to left: a condensed version meant for an even younger audience than usual, a movie promo version which came with the Peter Pan (2003) DVD, my favorite copy, and another nice green copy which contains full color painting prints (in a very lively and realistic style).

All printings above have illustrations but it is the book in the center of this photograph which I consider the diadem in this crown of Pan. The images in this book were created by Trina Schart Hyman who I feel must have been influenced by Arthur Rackham (Rackham did the original illustrations for Barrie's novel and many other contemporary stories, I may write a blog about him sometime). This was the first copy I was given and the one I treasure most. In addition to this book being connected to my first real experience with Barrie's version of the story I have always felt that the pictures it contained perfectly captured the concept of Pan that had always been bouncing around in my head since I was young. The illustrations below are from this book.

Since I am obviously not the one boy that was gifted with the ability to never grow up I have always considered Peter Pan to be my idol. I realize that I must be very clear when making a claim like this and will explain here: Peter Pan is eternally youthful which means, in addition to having the mockng innocence of a child, he also has the carelessness and immaturity. Pan is able to shed all responsibility in favor of perpetual fun; even the dire circumstances in his conflict with Jas. Hook are a game in his mind. I say that Pan is my idol because I accept that I will never be like him. I consider idols to be unattainable desires, not necessarily containing traits to be modeled; attainable traits are exhibited in heroes, which I consider very differently than idols. Grown men with the 'Peter Pan' complex are pretty damn annoying and I hope to be anything but 'damn annoying.'

That does not mean, however, that I am unwilling to indulge my inner child from time to time with a trip to Neverland. Indeed it is the temporary dreamlike quality that has always captured my imagination. Peter Pan was one of the first examples I had of the ambiguity between dreams and reality that make stories of this nature confusing but fascinating. Even though at the end of the novel we are fairly certain that fantastic adventures have occured, we are still left with this little shred of doubt that suggests the possibility that it may have been an adventure conducted under the power of imagination from the artistic promptings of Wendy Darling's storytelling. This is a quality which gladly still makes its way into most film productions of the story which I will discuss next week.
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In order from left to right in above picture:

Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan and Wendy. Adapt. Jane Carruth. Illus. Anne Grahame Johnstone. London, Award Publications Ltd., 1988.

Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan. Images: "Peter Pan" Live Action Motion Picture Copyright 2003, Universal. New York, Harper-Collins, 2003.

Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan. Illus. Trina Schart Hyman. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1980.

Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan. Illus. Greg Hildebrandt. New York, Unicorn Publishing House, 1987.

The Complete Novels - Jane Austen

2009-09-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

I will begin by being honest...I have yet to finish a Jane Austen novel in its entirety. While this may seem an heretical statement to be made by a student of English literature I assert that it is the story of the book itself which is more exciting than its contents.

During my undergraduate education I had spent a semester in the UK which in retrospect was the absolute best thing I did during my college education (barring dating my then future wife, of course). Mid-semester our group took a weeklong trip through the English countryside. Our first stop had been the city of Bath in which Austen had spent a great deal of time (according to our guides). This coupled with the fact that we had seen Bride and Prejudice (a Bollywood retelling of Austen's second novel) begun to develop in me a small interest in this enigmatic (to me) author.

On a later day in our journey, after seeing the sun rise on the mysterious Stonehenge and channeling Earth energies at nearby Avebury Henge, we stopped for lunch and a rest in the rural burg of Lacock. I am fairly certain that since 1600 the only thing that has changed in the streets of this small town since is the addition of automobiles and the only change in its bookstore is the dusty cash register used to ring up the ten pounds it cost to purchase the handsome little volume I had excitedly snatched up upon entering.

Thinking it best to start at the beginning I spent the rest of the train time during our mid-semester sojourn wading unsuccessfully through the bourgeois slush that is Sense and Sensibility. Despite the assurance by my colleagues that Pride and Prejudice was a far superior novel the first work left me with the one major question that has plagued all subsequent attempts to engage Jane Austen: why do I care?

Maybe I should blame the separation in time periods but as a reader Austen's novels left me questioning what exactly it was about the husband-selction practices of upper middle class Victorian women that made for a rewarding reading experience. The answer was: not much.

*The illustrations, sadly, tend to reflect the same social distance that makes me dislike the novel (although notice the England train ticket I used as a bookmark, fun!)

I have since made an attempt at finishing Pride and Prejudice and must admit that the characters in this novel were significantly more engaging and multi-dimensional than those in the previous novel, yet time constraints prevented me from reaching the end and memories of a subject matter and societal perspective that I simply cannot connext with have dissolved my motivation to pick up where I had left off.

I am sure that one day I may again pick up the book again and take a stab at Northanger Abbey for I hear it offers a few jabs at the genre of the gothic novel but until then it may remain more of a reminder of good times in the English countryside than the charm of Mr. Darcy.
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Austen, Jane. The Complete Novels. London, Crown Publishers Inc., 1981.

Gustave Dore

2009-09-21T23:47:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last week, Gustave Dore's art played a major role in my fascination with Dante's Inferno when I first read it as a high school sophomore. Our text books included just a few of his key engravings to accentuate the poem, namely the dark, grotesque, yet fascinating image of Satan stuck in a lake of ice and eternally chewing on the world's three most heinous sinners.

When I received that copy of the Divine Comedy from my grandfather (I believe it would have been Christmas of 1999) he had thrown in a book of The Dore Illustrations for Date's Divine Comedy allowing me to study his dark but detailed style.

*Satan in the Lake of Ice

Dore was French an artist in the mid 19th Century who specialized in wood and steel engraving, an artistic form that involved etching an image in negative onto a piece of wood or steel and using that engraving to basically stamp the art onto print media. This was similar to some techniques used by William Blake just a generation before but with a drastically different level of detail. Dore's engravings not only demonstrate a precise understanding of the human form, but also a level of perfection that achieves in a visual form the closest approximation of the emotions prevalent in the literature from which he drew his inspiration.

*The Empyrean

Much later I discovered that Dore did not limit himself to Dante but in fact created a multitude of art series based on every classic literary work he could get his hands on. Everything from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to Milton's Paradise Lost, to Cervantes' Don Quixote was accentuated by Dore's art. A look at the collections of his art demonstrates, at least to me, not only his commitment to telling the entire story of any work he chose to translate to visual art but also the thoroughness with which he read and understood the works that he illustrated.

*From Don Quixote

Though my pictures here may not be of the highest quality, any close look at Dore's work reveals just how intricate each engraving had to be. His images tend to be rather epic in scope (which is somewhat obvious from his choice of stories, but I suppose 'go big or go home' was his philosophy) and heavy in detail. As a print medium Dore was able to work only with contrasting dark and light areas of color (the printing press had no 'grey' setting) yet both the dark and light areas of his engravings take on an expressive texture almost like an intricate topography map that omits any and all dead space. The result is a lively image where all four corners have been touched and made to live by the artist despite the apparent limitations of his medium.

*from Paradise Lost

In addition to the The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy I have sought out Dore's art whenever possible and thanks to Barnes and Noble's oversized, economical, and altogether fun printings I have also attained versions of Paradise Lost and Don Quixote Illustrated by Dore (as seen above). But I will leave talking about them for another day.
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Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Illus. Gustave Dore. London: CRW Publishing Ltd., 2007.

Dore, Gustave. The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1976.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Illus. Gustave Dore. London: Arcturus Publishing Ltd., 2005.

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

2009-09-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
-The Inferno: Canto I,1-2

My first introduction to Dante was in Mrs. Brotman's Honors World Literature course my sophomore year of high school. Despite the otherwise mediocre selections available in that class (Chaim Potok's The Chosen...the name Brotman explains itself) this particular work of poetry fascinated me. Part of this was no doubt due to our textbook's inclusion of some of Gustave Dore's illustrations of the work (which I will discuss in the following blog). But a great deal of my fascination with the work was this ethereal and alchemical exploration of the world beyond. At some point that year I had expressed my excitement to my grandfather who responded by presenting me with this volume (beautifully decorated and with ragged-edged pages, very antique) as well as a book of the complete Gustave Dore illustrations from the Divine Comedy (which I will be discussing in my next blog). This book is of particular importance as I can say that it is the first book of my collection. I had many books already on my shelves but it was this particular tome that piqued my appetite to fill my walls with more of its kind.

For anyone not familiar with the work, Dante's first person narrative begins with his allegorical straying from righteous living into a forest signifying his sin. He is rescued by the poet Virgil (The Aeneid) who takes Dante on a journey through the circles of hell (The Inferno), through purgatory (Purgatorio), and dropping him off at the first circle of heaven (Paradiso) where the divine Beatrice guides him the rest of the way toward the Empyrean, or the ultimate vision of God the creator.
Dante's work is based in Medieval Catholic tradition but with a political twist. In addition to a spiritual kunstleroman Dante offers a scathing commentary on contemporary figures, often placing local potliticians in the circles of hell that he deems fit for their apparent sins.
I think the most fascinating aspect of Dante's vision is in his sense of perfect justice. Having grown up Protestant a great deal of the punishments applied for certain sins was foreign and interesting. Though the fury of the harpies, the creaking oars of Charon, and the grotesque mastication of the most heinous sinners of antiquity (Brutus, Cassius, and Judas) by Lucifer himself provide sufficient spectacle for any reader the deeper I dug into the Inferno the more interesting the punishments became.
I remember reading of the story of Paolo and Francesca whom Dante encounters eternally circling in the wind above one of Hell's jagged precipices. This punishment was earned for their participation in an adulturous affair (oddly enough, inspired by stories of Lancelot and Guinevere, ARTHURIAN TIE IN, YAY). Surely a poet who could dream up such a specific punishment for every mortal offense has a great deal to say about the tragectory of human existence.

What is interesting is that Dante, much like Milton, is probably the source of a great number of dogmatic beliefs that were handed down, not from scripture, but from the imaginations of poets. I believe this undoubtedly attests to the social power of poetry; a power that modern education and mechanistic social values attempt to ignore.
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Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. Henry Francis Cary. Garden City, New York: International Collectors Library, 1946.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide - Douglas Adams

2009-09-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has already supplanted the Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom...[I]t scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First it is slightly cheaper; and second it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover," (6)

I was first introduced to Douglas Adams' five book trilogy (yes he calls it that) through its format as a radio drama. As the author describes in his introduction to the books, the stories of Arthur Dent and his interstellar group of friends, aquaintances, and ravenous Bugblatter beasts had been incarnated as a series of novels, radio dramas, and a film almost simultaneously to each other creating a massive set of inconsistencies and alternate avenues which udoubtedly delighted the satiric fancies of the glib author.

The story is absurd enough: Arthur Dent, after an attempt to save his own house from being knocked down to make way for a bypass is abruptly carried into space by a friend, who is actually an alien, who is aware that the earth itself, in a moment of irony, is being destroyed to make way for an interstellar bypass. Hilarity and interstellar travel ensues in a manner that is anything but linear yet still exemplifies Adams' ironic English humor. The novels contained in this book; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life the Universe and Everything, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless, do a great deal to explore the absurdity of human life and convictions. Ray Bradbury has always believed that science-fiction, while it explores the concepts of new lifeforms and new civilizations actually reveals a great deal about the human experience. No less can be said of Adams' novels with the added edge of biting humor.

One of the most exemplary moments of these novels occurs in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. In this passage Arthur Dent and his girlfriend friend Fenchurch have sought out a man considered by most on Earth to be crazy. This man calls the outside of his home along with the land beyond it as The Asylum and has designed the house's interior in such a way that it resembles the outside of a house, and its exterior contains elements of a home interior. The man, known as Wonko the Sane, explains his reasons for sequestering himself in his home, "outside" of the place inhabited by so may psychopaths as deriving from a set of instructions he saw on a box of toothpicks. This box read: "hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion." Wonko's analysis of this is, "That any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a aset of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which [he] could live and stay sane," 585-6.

It does not take long for us to examine our own culture to see that instructions for toothpicks is no isolated incident. On a plane flight recently, the package of peanuts I was given as a snack, though clearly labeled as 'Salted, Roasted, Peanuts' included the warning: "Package contains nuts" as well as the instructions: "Open package, eat nuts." I would like to pause for a moment to let this one sink in...
That should do it. As much as I would like to rant about how ridiculous this is or how frivolous lawsuits are ruining our world, I'm sure this example speaks for itself...loudly.

In writing his novels Douglas Adams was acutely aware that our culture had indeed lost its head, yet thankfully his approach, in true Monty Pythonesque fashion (a programme he wrote for in the 70's) to identify and laugh at its absurdity rather than turning his house inside out and removing himself from it. I feel that a sense of humor may, in some ways, help to reverse the growing straight-faced absurdity that appears to be becoming a part of everyday life.
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Adams, Douglas. "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide." New York: Portland House, 1997.

Inagural blog

2009-09-02T00:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the inaugural entry for The Eastin Collection. Despite the fact that no one will probably be reading I would like to extend my welcome to the odd assortment of dust bunnies and lost socks that will probably be this entry's only readers.
I intend for this blog to be a sort of literary journal that happens to have an audience in mind. I think for someone of my age I have a particularly large, ecclectic, and altogether fascinating collection of books which I would love to share musings with anyone who might listen. In addition to having these books I am obsessive enough to have organized them in Dewey much to the eye-rolling of my wife, a sociologist with little need for fictional diversion (but she's still a peach anyway).
Each weekly blog entry (feel free to hold me to this schedule) will progress in order from the top shelf to the bottom in an attempt to develop a commentary and hopefully a discussion on each and every book I have accumulated. I reserve the right to take breaks from this venture to muse upon whatever current events, holidays, obituarys, or any other tangents of a literary nature but the central pinion of this endeavor will be, undoubtedly, The Collection.

My glorious bookshelf (bursting at the seams):

I expect that such a monicker might seem a trifle presumptuous and if that is the case...I find it best to roll with it. I don't claim to own the full literary canon or have filled my shelves with fascinating rarities or to even have a lot of books in comparison to some of my colleagues. I simply love books; I love that they sit patiently on their shelves, showing a thin sliver of what contents they hold and that those contents have the ability to transport one into another time or place or mind or manner of existing before they are closed and returned to stand at attention among their brethren.

Unless of course they dribble out onto the floor:

I believe that I have always had a fascination with libraries. As a child movies like Beauty and the Beast and The Pagemaster only increased the romantic image I had of the power of a collection of books and though I don't quite need a rolling ladder to reach each tome in my collection I imagine/hope that someday I will. I believe that the sustained effect of this grandiose image I have of book collections is what makes this topic worth discussing for me and I hope I can share that with my readers.
So I invite you, my linty friends, on a journey of intellectual comiseration and likely a great deal of absurdity as I rediscover the dusty tomes that populate my shelves.