I feel bad that I haven't posted much in the past few months. The problem isn't that I haven't had enough to read...it's that I've had too much to read! To give you an idea, here is a list of books I've read since September:
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman
America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Vanishing Hitchhiker (you don't want to know)
Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare (as are the following)
As You Like It
Henry V
Macbeth
King Lear
Antony and Cleopatra
The Winter's Tale
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss
I think that's all. So amid writing papers on these, which I don't think you would particularly enjoy reading on this blog, I haven't had time to post recently. But that's all about to change! I need to get back in the blogging habit so I can blog when I'm in Russia. So get ready to read your brains out!
In my modern American literature class we have been studying literature from 1914-1960. This has honestly been one of my favorite classes. The professor was amazing and I absolutely love modern literature. I went into this class expecting to study all of my favorites (cummings, Frost, Pound) but ended up studying some writers that I was not familiar with at all. One of the most ironic things of the class was that we ended up reading Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In ninth grade our English class read this book...and my friends ended up making fun of it the whole time. For this round though, I loved it! Who knew a book about a society comprised entirely of women could be so much more interesting when you're twenty as compared to when you're fifteen?!
But hands down the best thing I read this semester for this class was "Gay Chaps at the Bar" by Gwendolyn Brooks. At the end of the semester when we got to choose what we wanted to write our final research papers on, I easily chose this work. My professor said I was the only one in the class to choose this work. I was shocked, SHOCKED, to hear that! And for the record, this is not about a homosexual drinking spot. The title refers to WWII soldiers and their return from war, trying to be happy and assimilate into American life again.
"Gay Chaps at the Bar" is a collection of twelve sonnets about black soldiers during WWII. In my paper I talked about how the soldiers in the poems were constantly referencing two wars, the war abroad in the fight for freedom, as well as the war in America for racial tolerance. This was one of the most interesting papers I have written in a long time. I could go on about it for a while, but I won't because that's not what this post is about! Rather, this is about my favorite line from Brooks's work..."nothing ever taught us to be islands."
Chills when I read that line. "Nothing ever taught us to be islands." In our world we are taught how to interact, to become what people expect from us, to show that we stand a chance in this world full of billions of people. But there is nothing that teaches us to be alone. In elementary school the teachers tell you to go play with your friends at recess, to be a kid, to have fun. But they never teach you how to be by yourself. To be honest, I realized more this year than ever that I have never learned how to be alone. No one ever took the time to teach me. This line troubled me for some time. Why would everyone in the world be so cruel, so ignorant to the loneliness that is so adamant? However, I found my answer a few weeks later as we studied another work in our class.
We discussed an essay by Antonio Benitez-Rojo called "The Repeating Island." This essay addresses the idea of the "chaos theory." This is a complex theory, far too complicated for my mind to understand so I'll give you the basics of what I know about it. This theory basically says that there is order in apparently random events if you can look at them closely enough. This discussion got us on to the "butterfly effect." The butterfly effect theorizes that the flap of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world could eventually completely alter the weather in another part of the world. Are you still with me? Keep trying for just another minute, there's a point here. The butterfly effect led us briefly to the discussion of "six degrees of separation." This one is easy enough, everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by six people. So I know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who is a politician in Brazil or whatever.
Now, to the point. "Nothing ever taught us to be islands." Why is this? After discussing these three theories, I had the answer. "Nothing ever taught us to be islands" because we are not meant to be islands. These arguments are all in favor of everyone being connected in the smallest, most detailed ways. But these tiny interactions, the most insignificant connections keep us from becoming islands. It isn't natural for us to be islands. We are human beings, not rocks, not land masses. We speak, learn, teach, laugh, cry. We feel for each other and with each other. We do not feel alone because whether we realize it or not we are not alone. We are connected to every other person on the earth.
To wrap things up here is a little number by Simon and Garfunkel that my professor felt so inclined to share with the class. "And a rock feels no pain; and an island never cries." Why we were created to be what we are, to feel pain and cry.
Even though I have been bad about blogging, I have not been bad about reading! A while ago I finished the first Sherlock Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet." I loved the first half. It was hard to stop reading. The second half was shockingly...anti-Mormon! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is going along showing off Holmes' great deduction skills when all of a sudden it side tracks to a story about Mormons and how horrible the pioneers were. Honestly, I was laughing way too hard to take offense to it. Oh my dear, dear British man. How little you really know.
Aside from the sketchiness of the second half, I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes quite a bit. However, it is not a book I could just sit down and read a bunch of different stories from. Seeing Holmes solve a case while you sit in the dark is fun for a while but would get redundant really fast. I didn't even have the patience to read the next story (from my complete Volume 1 which I am very proud to own). So if you're looking for the next step up from the Hardy Boys (who are so much better than Nancy Drew) or you want a break from Crime and Punishment (which I desperately did) this is a good read. Maybe just don't start with the first story...
How am I so bad at this blog thing?! I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get a good background! So for now I'm going to be stuck with this happy little grass scene. Oh well.
To the point now! It's a blogging sort of a day. Actually it's a "do anything except homework" sort of a day! I started out the day by putting all my pictures from my camera on my laptop. It was a ton of fun. No, really. I love looking at picture. (Thus the creepy allure of facebook.) I was actually glad I did it because I remembered a little memory from this summer!
One day I was home alone with Erica and we were just hanging out, doing our own thing. And then it started raining. We're talking "Northern Downpour" potential here! Er was watching TV and I walked by and went outside. She thought I was crazy. But there is nothing quite as cliche or quite as fulfilling as standing in pouring rain. Then for some reason I decided I needed to take a picture. After several tries, I pretty much gave up. This picture was the best one I got which is kind of sad. But you can definitely see that it's raining. I desperately wanted to find a video of "The Permanent Rain" by The Dangerous Summer but to I couldn't find one that satisfied me. So just pretend like I did. Same difference.
I was having my semi-annual school crap clean up when I found some work I had done for my creative writing class. I decided to daringly put one of my poems on here. This one was, not to toot my own horn, a hit with my peers.
Yesterday I took the time to finally wash my car. It was beautiful. I even cleaned the mats, steering wheel, mirrors, and inside of the windows! If it hadn't been so late in the evening, a wax would have happened too. I was feeling PUH-RETTY good!
Flash forward...today...approximately 7:00 pm
It rained. A dirty, filthy, horrible rain. My car is nasty now.
My conclusion: Fear is good. Fear warns us. Fear keeps us in line. Even if it doesn't do much to get our cars clean.
Today I was driving home from the store and going through a neighborhood. I saw some guy out washing his car and immediately my first thought was, "Now it's going to rain tomorrow. I'd better not wash my car." What is it with people and the fear of washing their cars because of the anticipation of rain?!
I have a theory!
Humans are either one of two things. They either plan so much that it becomes impossible to get anything done. Or they have such a fear of negative outcomes that nothing is ever accomplished. Either way, it's hard to get things done. I've been putting off washing my car for at least two weeks because I've been afraid it will rain (which it has twice by-the-way!). So yeah, I'm pleased that I didn't do that work for nothing but I'm also kind of peeved because my car is still filthy!
Moral of the story is not that I want some kind soul to come wash my car (hint hint, wink wink). Seriously though, it's one of my random thoughts with a little bit of a point at the end. Like the videos they show in seminary classes. Fear holds people back whether we know it or not. And until you get over that fear, not much gets done.
Goal of the week: Wash my car and get over the fear!
This is totally an Emma inspired post. I've been dying to post for a while but I haven't finished any books lately (shame on me)! So I stole from my friend's blog and decided to do a bit of a follow up from my discussion on William Fitzsimmons. As much as I think that literature and art go hand in hand, I also have to believe that music is a part of this three-some.
"The Old Guitarist" by Pablo Picasso has reminded me of the songs "Find it in Me" and "Northern Downpour" by William Fitzsimmons and Panic! at the Disco respectively. For me, one is not complete without the other. I even have this poster hanging in my room. Most people think it's creepy or weird. But I see it as part of a definition for these songs. The struggling artist overwhelmed by the emotions of life has no choice but to do what he knows. Cliche? Yes. But true for me? Most definitely.
But that is not all...
"The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch has always reminded me of "Alice in Wonderland." It's not even that they have the same themes or anything like that. Basically....it just looks like a trippy place to go. Wonderland? I would say yes. Now look over to the right panel, just above center. What's that? An egg man? I am the eggman. He is the eggman. I am the walrus... Okay, it's a stretch but I've heard somewhere before that the eggman mentioned in the song "I am the Walrus" by The Beatles is the eggman in this painting. Possible? Yes. Likely? Goo goo gajoob. (That means I haven't the foggiest.)
So now do you see how art, literature, music, and really any form of creative media are all intertwined? Exciting,isn't it? So next time you see a painting maybe take a moment to wonder, "How has this influenced other things I enjoy?" That's all I have for now so I'll leave you with this final thought.
....... "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller? It's a Wonderful Lifewith James Stewart?? "The Weight" by The Band?!
Yes. The creative process is life. Constantly making way for new interpretations, ideas, feelings, and "overflow of emotion." It is all one work for us to sort through and connect with until we believe we are like this and are part of more than we even know.
Apparently I've been a little "blog hungry" yesterday and today so here I am posting again.
One of my music obsessions for the past couple of years, thanks to one of my friends, has been William Fitzsimmons. He's a singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania whose first CD "Until When We are Ghosts" came out in 2005. My favorite song by him, "Find it in Me," is from this album.
I got on to google today and what did I discover? It is Frida Kahlo's birthday! Kudos to google for celebrating! Who is Frida Kahlo? Only one of the kookiest (that's right, I said kookiest!) painters of the 20th century. For real. She had a uni-brow and was quite proud of it! Seriously, check it out! Way to go Frida! I am definitely not sure enough of my self to basically tell the world, "Hey! I have a lot of hair on my face and I don't care if you know it!" This little beauty to the left is called "Self-Portrait with Monkey" (go figure) and was done in 1938. Kahlo is described as a surrealist painter and once said, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." Honestly, I think she's crazy. But I have to say that she's also pretty awesome. New goal for myself. I want to be the subject that I know best. How well do we really know ourselves? I feel like I make new discoveries constantly. So I'm going to strive to know myself, my strengths as well as my weaknesses and become really comfortable with who I am so if I had to I could say, "Hey! I have a lot of hair on my face and I don't care if you know it!"
So I'm a little late in posting. I actually finished this book a few weeks ago but due to other awesome things keeping me busy, I haven't found the time to post until now. The book: Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death The author: Kurt Vonnegut Trust me, not nearly as gruesome as it sounds. When I had this book with me during my break at work I got some kind of crazy looks and comments to which I had to reply, "It's not gross and it's not about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Then they would pretty much either roll their eyes or give a sigh of relief. This is actually an anti-war book. Go figure! But I was hoping you might have figured that from the "Children's Crusade" part of the title. The most basic gist of the plot that I can give is this: One man retells the bombing of Dresden, Germany through one of his fellow POW's perspective. Both men experience severe PTSD and have difficulty moving forward with their lives without looking back as well. I thought this book was totally fiction but after a little research discovered that there was a Dresden, Germany that was bombed at the end of WWII in 1945. Some reports say that it killed as many if not more than the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. That author claims that some parts of the personal stories are true as well, so I'm going to side with him and say that they are too. I was a little skeptical reading an "anti-war" book. I just knew it was either going to be laced with a political agenda or be full of hippies dancing around doing LSD and saying "War is sad, man!" But really in its simplest form this book is just saying that war hurts. No obvious political activism or discreet hippies. There was one part of the book that I found particularly interesting. The main character, Billy, says that he was abducted by aliens and they showed him that humans see life all wrong. Humans see life as a time line, continuing on chronologically until death and then it's over. But the aliens see that living goes on forever because moments don't just happen and then disappear. They are always happening and never end, and there is no chronological pattern to events. I had to wonder what this idea had to do with the book and I honestly had no clue...until I looked it up. Yes, I'm such a cheater. Oh well. Vonnegut was big on fatalism, apparently he had some sort of connection to it in each of his books. Fatalism is essentially the idea that fate and pre-determination exist and are indeed inescapable. This being known it makes the alien knowledge of time a little easier to understand. According to Vonnegut, events will always happen no matter what, the bombing of Dresden happened and would have happened even if it was seen into the future and people wanted to stop it, it would have occurred anyway. This is loosely just my interpretation (and I'm crossing my fingers that it's right!). From all of this I'm going to say that from my not so professional opinion this book is simply saying war is bad and horrifying and awful...and unavoidable. So long as there are humans, there will be war. "So it is" as Vonnegut repeated in the book. But just because it is doesn't mean it's good. So there, that is what it is. If you're going to read this book here's a disclaimer: It's not gruesome and gory but there is quite a bit of language and...references. But if you are one who can see past that then this is probably an A- book on my list. Not my favorite but still quite enjoyable.
The latest read was a little difficult. "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" by Thomas C. Foster. First I have to admit something. I think British people are smarter than Americans. They just sound better! So rather than having the very American Morgan Freeman narrate this book in my head it was....
Michael Caine! I mean, just compare the two in this clip. Morgan Freeman talks with better jargon but Michael Caine just sounds smarter!
Now to the point. This book was not easy to read. It was not fast. It has taken me almost a month to read it. But it was definitely worth it. Because now I know how to read like a professor! No, seriously, I do! This book was like a personal journey into the mind of a real intellectual. And let me tell you, there is a lot going on in there! This book covered everything from the meaning of quests and communion, to Shakespearean and Biblical references, to the importance of religion and irony. If there was one thing I realized it is this...there is so much to read and learn!
Foster made a point that I liked a lot. He said that there is really only one story out there. And that story is everything. Literally, the story is about everything. So any story that is written or has been written is about this one "everything" story. Such a fascinating concept!
So if you like British people narrating things in your head, people telling you everything you don't know, and becoming highly motivated to read pretty much every book in the world, then this is a good read for you! Until next time, happy readings!
Today I was reorganizing my books because they just weren't fitting on my shelves anymore and I found something that made me quite excited.
My favorite book when I was in first grade was "Buddy The First Seeing Eye Dog." It was at a fourth grade level...I was pretty proud of myself. This was one of the first books that I ever remember reading and truly loving. I think I read it more times than I could count, which is a lot because I could count pretty high! I like to think that this book was what really got me into reading. Of course other factors were involved, but this is one of the earliest memories I have of reading and loving it.
In celebration of finding a new background, I thought a new post was in order as well. The only problem is I haven't finished any books since my last post (although I am working on a few). So I thought I'd mix it up with some poetry! Yes! Poetry is, as Robert Frost said, "a way of taking life by the throat." One of my top five favorite poets is e.e. cummings. I can just imagine the shock on your faces in the thought that I made a spelling mistake although it wouldn't be my first. His name is not capitalized and as you read his poetry, as I do hope you will, you may see why. Allow me to expose you to him if you have not been already. This poem, although not my favorite by him, simply speaks for itself.
you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young,whatever life you wear
it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love
whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time
that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
This poem does not have a title because, like Emily Dickinson, cummings did not title most of his poems so they are primarily known by their first line. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure what this poem means. With the first reading of a cummings' poem you have to read it with the thought of "art for art's sake" even if that is not what he intended. Only after several, several readings and careful study of the punctuation and word form can one even come within an inch of grasping what cummings really meant. For now I'd just like to focus on the final lines.
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance"
I've thought about this a little lately and have drawn a conclusion. Unfortunately it's one of those thoughts that just doesn't make sense when I try to say it. But I feel I might as well try. I kind of see it this way. Imagine a room full of experts who know one topic so well that any of them could teach you perfectly. Now imagine a room full of artists that are busy creating beautiful works in a variety of mediums. Would it be more difficult to stop the artists from creating or to find just one of the experts to teach you? Or rather, which would be more painful?
If you liked this poem, even a little bit, I would recommend you read two of his more famous poems "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and "in Just-" as well as my personal favorite "since feeling is first"
My latest read was "Night" by Elie Wiesel. A little background on the book and its author:
It was originally published in 1958 in French
In 1986 Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize
It is considered to be a part of the memoir genre
His original memoir was written in Yiddish and was over 900 pages long
It is part of a trilogy with the second and third books titled "Dawn" and "Day"
I'm not sure about all the different publications but the copy I read had a foreword written by Wiesel. (Side note: Always. ALWAYS. Always read the foreword. The author is trying to tell something important to the reader but you won't know what it is unless you read the foreword!) I'm not sure about the entire publication and translation history of "Night" but Wiesel's foreword gave a huge amount of insight into how difficult it was for him to write his story. My copy was published by "Hill and Wang" and is the entire trilogy.
It's hard to find things to say about this book. I'm afraid that something I say will either not do it justice or in a way "disrespect" the grave subject. But here is my attempt to say something worth saying.
This book didn't really do anything to make the Holocaust "more real" for me. I've learned about all the physical torture these people went through so that wasn't especially new for me. What did become real was the psychological and mental torment that they were put up to. There was a big build up to the whole point, which I saw as being that by the end he and the other prisoners were living for a piece of bread. They didn't live for family, for themselves, or the joy of being alive. They lived for something that you and I wouldn't even call a snack. What would you have to go through to live for a bread crust and nothing else? What would your mind and soul have endured?
In Wiesel's preface he said that he wasn't sure if he wrote his book to prevent madness or "to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness." At first I though he meant the madness it would take to cause a holocaust. Maybe that is what he meant. But I understand it to mean that only madness can understand what madness feels like, what it brings upon a man, and how unforgettable of a feeling it truly is.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had..."
Oh F. Scott Fitzgerald, so wise for being so young. Did you know he was 29 when his most famous work, "The Great Gatsby" was published? And he was first published at the ripe old age of 24. Kind of makes you wonder if he ate literary Wheaties for breakfast, doesn't it?
All joking aside, I have to say, I love this book. Yes, I did read it in high school and I loved it then too, like most of my peers. It was one of the few understandable books that we read our junior year. I decided that if I read it again now I would probably get more out of it than when I read it 3 years ago. And if I read it 3 years down the road I would, once again, comprehend something else. One major aspect I realized this time: If you don't read the entire novel with the first few pages in mind, you are missing so much about how the narrator sees his fellow characters and how you as the reader are intended to see them. The quote above was taken from the second paragraph of the first page. It is the idea that Nick Carraway, the narrator, lives by his whole life...until he meets Gatsby.
One theme that struck me more than in high school was the importance of eyes. I remember my teacher saying something about how important Doctor Eckleburg's sign was. But now I can see (oh haha, a pun!) that there is a major emphasis on eyes . When a character is described there is always a description of the eyes included. All of this builds up to the scene in which Wilson proclaims that the "all seeing eyes" in the sign are those of God. It should also be noted that the novel is written with a first person narrator. Coincidence? There are no coincidences in literature.
There's more to be said than I could possibly say in one post (obviously since books upon books have been written on just this one novel). If you read it keep in mind the importance of social classes and roles, the prominence of wealth, locations of the characters (Nick tries to escape the west but still lives in West Egg, etc), and all those fun things that make reading a novel just oh so exciting!
I've recently learned that I am way too ambitious for my own good. I plan things out in my head and get really excited about doing them but usually the projects are far too big to actually accomplish. So I've done it again! One of my main summer goals is to read one book every week for the entire time I'm home. I've been successful so far:
Week 1 - Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper
Week 2 - Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Week 3 - Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Next up on the schedule:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Night by Elie Wiesel
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (I know, SUPER ambitious. But I don't plan on finishing it. Just starting it to say I've at least started reading it. It's an English major thing.)
I suppose if I'm going to say what I'm reading I might as well say my thoughts on them as well. A bit of a review and critique if you will. First: Out of My Mind The whole novel is about an eleven year old girl with cerebral palsy who cannot communicate with the people around her. She is the narrator and it is all coming from inside her head. It's a perspective on how she learns, what she thinks of other people, and what other people think of her. I thought it was a very eye opening novel about how people with disabilities are viewed in general. Usually abilities are underestimated and disabilities are overestimated. Second: Life of Pi I've been dying to read this book for quite a while and finally got around to doing it. I was expecting it to be a little slow. After all, how much can really be written about a kid on a boat with a tiger? But the plot was beautifully executed with a steady pace set throughout the novel. It gets a little "existential" at the end but I've read that Martel was influenced by Samuel Beckett so I can see where he's coming from (if you want to see too then read the play "Endgame" by Beckett. But be warned, it is guaranteed to be like nothing you've read before and is even a little gruesome when you think about it). I've heard mixed reactions on the "plot twist" ending but I thought it went very well with the overall theme of the book. Morals, existence, life and death are all heavy themes in this novel. Third: Of Mice and Men I didn't get to read this in high school and I'm kind of glad. I feel like I appreciated it more now than I would have as a Junior. It's a very quick read but also very "Steinbeck-ie" just so you know if you are interested. I'm sure most people are familiar with the generals about this book just from pop-culture and hearing about it in school. Two men in California are looking for work in tough times (typical Steinbeck) and find it on a ranch. One man looks after the other who has some sort of mental incapability. The thing I do like about Steinbeck is that he is very detailed and because it's a short story you do have to think about why he includes these details: are they symbols, what they add to the plot, what it tells you about him as a writer, etc.
And that is that for now. Hopefully I can keep up with myself. Next up...Huck Finn! Here we go down the Mississippi River!
