I'm not often willing to identify myself with people who are all into books and how smart they are and whatever. Like many book lovers, I don't care whether a book has a leather cover, or what kind of edition it is, as long as it is readable. (But I will admit to feeling a thrill every time I got a book out of the Folger library and found a famous reader's marginal notes scribbled in it.) I try to read as widely as possible, from the lowbrow to the high, and have little patience with folks who want me to list titles or review every single blame thing I read; some are fleeting pleasures and others are best forgotten. However, yesterday I found these song lyrics, parodying "Baby got Back," by following the link on Bookshelves of Doom:
chavelaque.blogspot.com/2008/04/baby-got-book.html
and I enjoyed the heck out of them.
It made me think about a story in the April issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, entitled The First Editions and written by James Stoddard, in which the main character, Jakob, finds himself turned into a book by a book collector/sorceror who calls himself "a student of the lives of others." The collector reads all the books (autobiographies) that he has turned people into over the centuries, and it's an unpleasant sensation to be read, Jakob discovers, because: "after several tries I saw within my own pages. I could scan the words; I could skip from page to page. Everything was there: my thoughts, my dreams--and my humiliations and cruelties. Nothing was omitted. I inwardly blushed to see my lowest desires in print." When he tries to close himself rather than let the collector read him, he is threatened with the fire, and then the collector makes an attempt to appease him: "You should be satisfied here. You will be satisfied. Think! How often have you longed to spend your days in such a library, in the company of good books? And these are the best of books. You can read them; they can read you. Idyllic. The slow turn of library days. I have given you what you always dreamed."
Eventually, Jakob falls in love with the book next to him, Janine. They read selections from each other's pages:
I looked inward and found a humorous incident from my childhood on page twenty-three.
"Perhaps this one," I suggested.
She gave me her page ninety-seven, an account from her teenage years. I gasped as her page sprang to my mind, vellum-white with golden letters--Janine was beautiful inside and out.
We read together, a brief passage, and it was the most intimate experience I had ever known. Her soul lay before me, captured in lines rhythmic as poetry. More than the words, it was the order and the shape, the letters and punctuation, the sentences and paragraphs, the way her thoughts rose and fell. It was an ecstasy, holy and wonderful. At the same time, I felt her partaking of me. She murmured in delight as she read me; I basked beneath her approval; our thoughts intertwined in the reading. Our covers touched lightly; I felt the passion of her soul.
But the book collector moves the books around periodically, and Jakob is separated from Janine, causing him to first edge himself out in the hope that the collector will read his final pages and see that he has fallen in love with Janine, and when that doesn't work, to hurl himself from the edge of the bookshelf to the floor below in a plea for attention: "perhaps the sorceror was not as insightful or as curious as I suspected, for upon seeing me on the floor, he clucked twice....he picked me up and examined my spine. 'No harm done,' he proclaimed, placing me back on the shelf.
'Read me!' I yelled. But he gave no sign of hearing."
Finally, however, Jakob and Janine are successful at throwing themselves to the floor and having their last pages read. The collector is unwilling to have his "books dictating their positions." At length, however, the lovers' plight foments rebellion among the books, and they all manage to fling themselves on the floor. At first the collector is angry, but eventually he speaks softly to the books: "you should be honored to be a volume in this library. I have chosen each of you carefully. Some of you, I traveled hundreds of miles to find. Others came into my hands by chance. Yet, all of you I have treasured. Many of you have outlived your entire generation, your words and thoughts given immortality. Would you leave here only to turn to dust?"
The books agree that it is only the lovers and a few other books who desire to leave the library, and the sorceror eventually agrees to try to free a few of them. When he turns Jakob and Janine back into people, they are surprised to find books with their names on the covers still sitting on the shelf. They look at the collector inquiringly and he says "they do not live. But if a man can't own a first edition, a second will have to do."
I laughed and laughed at the end of the story. Finally, in the tradition of Little Miss Sunshine, which made the prostitution of little girls in beauty pageants literal, a story that shows the vanity and uselessness of preening yourself on owning first editions!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Meme
This is an interesting word, meme. I had to look it up; it means "an idea gene." My first reaction is to wonder whether ideas can't be disseminated across the world wide web except in some kind of unconscious, genetic way. At any rate, I got tagged by Harriet the Spy at Spynotes to complete a meme. (I can't do it without including a poem, though!)
Here are the meme rules:
1. link to the person who tagged you
2. post the rules
3. write six things about yourself
4. tag six people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their sites.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.
Okay, so here are six things you wouldn't necessarily know about me from reading this blog.
1. I think that people generally fall into one of two very broad categories: people who see the world in terms of plot, and people who see the world as a puzzle or game. I come down very strongly on the side of plot. While I admire people who can work out games and puzzles (many of my friends and relations, including my son, are mathematically minded), it is not one of my interests or skills. So that's why I like this poem but could never have written it:
Anagrammer by Peter Pereira
If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives
And Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.
If you believe the letters themselves
contain a power within them,
then you understand
what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.
The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.
That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.
That if you could just re-arrange things the right way
you'd find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions:
you'd understand how the Titanic
turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.
How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.
I don't mind watching other people re-arrange things to find patterns; it's kind of like when we were in college and I told my friends that they could speak mathematics at breakfast, but then I wanted them to speak English with me at lunch and supper.
2. I do like some games. My favorite card game is Rage. It has an element of skill, but also an element of luck, so my mathematical friends can't figure it out to the extent that it's no more fun to play it. I also like to play croquet. When we lived in the suburbs of Washington, DC we tried the competitive kind, with tall wickets and manicured lawns. But we prefer the backyard kind. One year my brother and sister-in-law gave us a glow-in-the-dark croquet set so we wouldn't have to shine the car headlights on the yard to finish those late evening games.
3. My favorite vacation is to go to the beach. Almost any beach will do, but I prefer the warm ones with sand. Every other summer a group of my friends from college (including the math major I married) rent some houses at the beach and spend a week together making sand castles with our kids. Yes, it's true, this is what academics do for fun: they dig ditches--you have to start a good sand castle with a moat. One year we made Minas Tirith and then watched the ocean destroy it.
4. I play the violin in the Knox County Symphony. I've played the violin most of my life, except for eleven years after my first child was born, when I thought I was too busy. Now I play once a week during the academic year. I play second fiddle. Also I took piano lessons for twelve years, played the trombone in marching band, and learned alto clarinet and cello while in high school because that got me out of study halls. I sing alto, but while I have a very good sense of pitch, my voice itself isn't lovely. So at heart, I'm an instrumentalist.
5. My parents both taught college. My mother taught speech pathology and my father taught speech and theater. He directed plays, and as a kid, I could take my friends to see plays at the college. It was almost as good as having a swimming pool; I went to see Once Upon a Mattress for eight nights in a row when I was 14 or 15. One time I asked a friend to see The Man of La Mancha with me, and her parents said no, because there's a rape scene. And one time my parents wouldn't let me go to a play. I think I was under the age of 12, and the play was Marat/Sade. As a result, I've always wanted to see it.
6. I stopped biting my fingernails at the ripe old age of 42. I had to; my teeth, which look great but are mostly reconstructions of former teeth, just weren't up to it anymore.
Now I tag anyone else who would like to spread this meme. I'd especially like to hear from:
Pages Turned
Kitchen Witch
Libby
Amblus
Gotu
Permanentquivive
Here are the meme rules:
1. link to the person who tagged you
2. post the rules
3. write six things about yourself
4. tag six people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their sites.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.
Okay, so here are six things you wouldn't necessarily know about me from reading this blog.
1. I think that people generally fall into one of two very broad categories: people who see the world in terms of plot, and people who see the world as a puzzle or game. I come down very strongly on the side of plot. While I admire people who can work out games and puzzles (many of my friends and relations, including my son, are mathematically minded), it is not one of my interests or skills. So that's why I like this poem but could never have written it:
Anagrammer by Peter Pereira
If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives
And Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.
If you believe the letters themselves
contain a power within them,
then you understand
what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.
The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.
That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.
That if you could just re-arrange things the right way
you'd find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions:
you'd understand how the Titanic
turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.
How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.
I don't mind watching other people re-arrange things to find patterns; it's kind of like when we were in college and I told my friends that they could speak mathematics at breakfast, but then I wanted them to speak English with me at lunch and supper.
2. I do like some games. My favorite card game is Rage. It has an element of skill, but also an element of luck, so my mathematical friends can't figure it out to the extent that it's no more fun to play it. I also like to play croquet. When we lived in the suburbs of Washington, DC we tried the competitive kind, with tall wickets and manicured lawns. But we prefer the backyard kind. One year my brother and sister-in-law gave us a glow-in-the-dark croquet set so we wouldn't have to shine the car headlights on the yard to finish those late evening games.
3. My favorite vacation is to go to the beach. Almost any beach will do, but I prefer the warm ones with sand. Every other summer a group of my friends from college (including the math major I married) rent some houses at the beach and spend a week together making sand castles with our kids. Yes, it's true, this is what academics do for fun: they dig ditches--you have to start a good sand castle with a moat. One year we made Minas Tirith and then watched the ocean destroy it.
4. I play the violin in the Knox County Symphony. I've played the violin most of my life, except for eleven years after my first child was born, when I thought I was too busy. Now I play once a week during the academic year. I play second fiddle. Also I took piano lessons for twelve years, played the trombone in marching band, and learned alto clarinet and cello while in high school because that got me out of study halls. I sing alto, but while I have a very good sense of pitch, my voice itself isn't lovely. So at heart, I'm an instrumentalist.
5. My parents both taught college. My mother taught speech pathology and my father taught speech and theater. He directed plays, and as a kid, I could take my friends to see plays at the college. It was almost as good as having a swimming pool; I went to see Once Upon a Mattress for eight nights in a row when I was 14 or 15. One time I asked a friend to see The Man of La Mancha with me, and her parents said no, because there's a rape scene. And one time my parents wouldn't let me go to a play. I think I was under the age of 12, and the play was Marat/Sade. As a result, I've always wanted to see it.
6. I stopped biting my fingernails at the ripe old age of 42. I had to; my teeth, which look great but are mostly reconstructions of former teeth, just weren't up to it anymore.
Now I tag anyone else who would like to spread this meme. I'd especially like to hear from:
Pages Turned
Kitchen Witch
Libby
Amblus
Gotu
Permanentquivive
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Happiness
Yesterday everyone was so tired that some of us were sick, but everyone feels better today. Ron and I went to bed at the same time as the kids, and the phone kept ringing. One of the calls was an amazing offer from someone who had formerly spurned one of us. It made me think of this poem:
Happiness by Jane Kenyan
There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
I love that image of the mother passed out (my perpetual pose when Kinsey, the friend of Eleanor's from the very Christian family, passes my car after school), and then the revelation that her wineglass is also weary!
Happiness by Jane Kenyan
There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
I love that image of the mother passed out (my perpetual pose when Kinsey, the friend of Eleanor's from the very Christian family, passes my car after school), and then the revelation that her wineglass is also weary!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Christopher Moore
The peak of Christopher Moore's career was when he wrote Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal and Fluke: Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings. His previous novels, despite their amusing titles (Island of the Sequined Love Nun, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove), just lead up to those two. (But take note: they are prerequisites for full enjoyment of The Stupidist Angel, which is just about worth doing a little bit of background work to enjoy.) I liked A Dirty Job, which was almost as clever as Lamb and Fluke, but I didn't much care for You Suck. That may be because I'm so tired of vampire stories; everyone's trying to top The Vampire Lestat, and it not only can't be done, it's not worth doing.
Our former housemate Miriam, a former Missouri synod Lutheran and preacher's kid, sent us a hardback copy of Lamb when it first came out with this instruction written on the flyleaf: "If you observe Lent that is when I recommend you read this." We read it as soon as we got it, of course, and chortled happily all the way through at the way it's told:
Then he put his hand on my head and I suddenly felt better, stronger.
"Don't try your Son of God mumbo jumbo on me, you're still a wuss."
"If it be so, so be it. So it shall be written."
Well it is now, Josh. It's written now. (It's strange, the word "wuss" is the same in my ancient Aramaic tongue as it is in this language. Like the word waited for me these two thousand years so I could write it down here. Strange.)
Most of the novel is a description of how the Messiah (Joshua, or Josh) and his best friend Levi who was called Biff spent the thirty years between the nativity story and the telling of the parables. And as a bonus, at the end of the novel, you find out what the H. stands for in Jesus H. Christ.
The first half of Fluke seems like a fairly normal mystery story in which the characters try to find out why one of the whales they have been watching has "Bite Me" written on its tail. They start to find out on p. 119, part two of the novel, which begins a story so unlikely that I can't even outline it here for fear of spoiling your pleasure. Suffice it to say that Christopher Moore is no Jack McDevitt--if he outlines a plot that is too incredible to flesh out, he'll do it anyway. The results are hilarious and reveal the secrets of the universe.
That is, if you think the secrets of the universe can be revealed in a moment of revelation like in the movie Independence Day when the President says "there's no Area 51. There's no recovered spaceship." and the defense minister says "Uh...excuse me, Mr. President. That's not entirely accurate."
Our former housemate Miriam, a former Missouri synod Lutheran and preacher's kid, sent us a hardback copy of Lamb when it first came out with this instruction written on the flyleaf: "If you observe Lent that is when I recommend you read this." We read it as soon as we got it, of course, and chortled happily all the way through at the way it's told:
Then he put his hand on my head and I suddenly felt better, stronger.
"Don't try your Son of God mumbo jumbo on me, you're still a wuss."
"If it be so, so be it. So it shall be written."
Well it is now, Josh. It's written now. (It's strange, the word "wuss" is the same in my ancient Aramaic tongue as it is in this language. Like the word waited for me these two thousand years so I could write it down here. Strange.)
Most of the novel is a description of how the Messiah (Joshua, or Josh) and his best friend Levi who was called Biff spent the thirty years between the nativity story and the telling of the parables. And as a bonus, at the end of the novel, you find out what the H. stands for in Jesus H. Christ.
The first half of Fluke seems like a fairly normal mystery story in which the characters try to find out why one of the whales they have been watching has "Bite Me" written on its tail. They start to find out on p. 119, part two of the novel, which begins a story so unlikely that I can't even outline it here for fear of spoiling your pleasure. Suffice it to say that Christopher Moore is no Jack McDevitt--if he outlines a plot that is too incredible to flesh out, he'll do it anyway. The results are hilarious and reveal the secrets of the universe.
That is, if you think the secrets of the universe can be revealed in a moment of revelation like in the movie Independence Day when the President says "there's no Area 51. There's no recovered spaceship." and the defense minister says "Uh...excuse me, Mr. President. That's not entirely accurate."
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Against Reading
I'm hardly ever against reading, except when it comes to plays. If there is a play that's better read than performed, then probably we should invent a new genre category for it and call it by any other name.
Last night was the final performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Eleanor's high school. She played Snout, who is also Wall. So I was prejudiced in favor of enjoying the group of players, but they were as funny as any group of players I've ever seen. Wall had very active eyebrows and played the part, well, broadly. Snug/Lion fell off of the end of the bench a lot. Peter Quince, a very short guy, threatened the much larger Bottom with his walking cane, Starveling/Moonshine was pointedly skeptical about how much use she was as a character, and Flute/Thisby was played to perfection by a pretty 14-year-old boy, slight of stature, whose voice was actually in the process of changing during the weekend of performances.
In a departure from the tradition of children's/adolescent theater in which A Midsummer Night's Dream is done so frequently because there's less for parents to object to than in other Shakespeare plays, this production had Puck dressed and voiced as a satyr, reminiscent of Stanley Tucci's movie role. Puck took obvious delight in causing mischief, and his prancing presence always livened up the stage. While Oberon and Theseus were a little stiff, as adolescent boys are apt to be in the part, Titania and her fairies were lively and noisy. Even the lovers, who have some speeches that can be deadly dull, livened up their performances with physical humor and convincing stage fights.
It was the least tedious high school play I've seen in a long time, and seeing it reminded me of how much more fun it is to see a play than to read it.
Last night was the final performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Eleanor's high school. She played Snout, who is also Wall. So I was prejudiced in favor of enjoying the group of players, but they were as funny as any group of players I've ever seen. Wall had very active eyebrows and played the part, well, broadly. Snug/Lion fell off of the end of the bench a lot. Peter Quince, a very short guy, threatened the much larger Bottom with his walking cane, Starveling/Moonshine was pointedly skeptical about how much use she was as a character, and Flute/Thisby was played to perfection by a pretty 14-year-old boy, slight of stature, whose voice was actually in the process of changing during the weekend of performances.
In a departure from the tradition of children's/adolescent theater in which A Midsummer Night's Dream is done so frequently because there's less for parents to object to than in other Shakespeare plays, this production had Puck dressed and voiced as a satyr, reminiscent of Stanley Tucci's movie role. Puck took obvious delight in causing mischief, and his prancing presence always livened up the stage. While Oberon and Theseus were a little stiff, as adolescent boys are apt to be in the part, Titania and her fairies were lively and noisy. Even the lovers, who have some speeches that can be deadly dull, livened up their performances with physical humor and convincing stage fights.
It was the least tedious high school play I've seen in a long time, and seeing it reminded me of how much more fun it is to see a play than to read it.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Enthusiasm
We could not have gotten through the past fourteen years at my house without the book Raising Your Spirited Child, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. One of the most valuable things she does for parents is remind them that when their child gets overstimulated, often they do too. Occasionally my friend Amy, a former child psychologist turned elementary school teacher, would remind me to reread part of that book--and she was right; it always helped.
I've been reading a book that isn't half so good: Mellow Out, They Say. If I Only Could, by Michael M. Piechowski. Sometimes it helps me to look at a new book on the subject, just as a way of reminding myself that the members of my family need to put positive names on the way we can't help being--we're enthusiastic people! Yeah, enthusiasm; that's a good word.
Which brings me to Beth Ann Fennelly's poem "I Need to be More French. Or Japanese." I love this poem excessively; I've read it out loud to everyone who will listen, and now I will type it here for you all, now:
I Need To Be More French. Or Japanese.
Then I wouldn't prefer the California wine,
its big sugar, big fruit rolling down my tongue,
a cornucopia spilled across a tacky tablecloth.
I'd prefer the French, its smoke and rot.
Said Cezanne: Le mond--c'est terrible!
Which means, The world--it bites the big weenie.
People sound smarter in French.
The Japanese prefer the crescent moon to the full,
prefer the rose before it blooms.
Oh, I have been to the temples of Kyoto,
I have stood on the Pont Neuf, and my eyes,
they drank it in, but my taste buds
shuffled along in the beer line at Wrigley Field.
It was the day they gave out foam fingers.
I hereby pledge to wear more gray, less yellow
of the beaks of baby mockingbirds,
that huge yellow yawping open on wobbly necks,
trusting something yummy will be dropped inside,
soon. I hereby pledge to be reserved.
When the French designer learned
I didn't like her mockups for my book cover,
she sniffed, They're not for everyone. They're
subtle. What area code is 662 anyway? I said,
Mississippi, sweetheart. Bet you couldn't find it
with a map. Okay: I didn't really. But so what
if I'm subtle as May in Mississippi, my nose
in the wine-bowl of this magnolia bloom, so what
if I'm mellow as the punch-drunk bee.
If I were Japanese I'd write about magnolias
in March, how tonal, each bud long as a pencil,
sheathed in celadon suede, jutting from a cluster
of glossy leaves. I'd end the poem before anything
bloomed, end with rain swelling the buds
and the sheaths bursting, then falling to the grass
like a fairy's castoff slippers, like candy wrappers,
like spent firecrackers. Yes, my poem
would end there, spent firecrackers.
If I were French, I'd capture post-peak, in July,
the petals floppy, creased brown with age,
the stamens naked, stripped of yellow filaments.
The bees lazy now, bungling the ballet, thinking
for the first time about October. If I were French,
I'd prefer this, end with the red-tipped filaments
scattered on the scorched brown grass,
and my poem would incite the sophisticated,
the French and the Japanese readers--
because the filaments look like matchsticks,
and it's matchsticks, we all know, that start the fire.
The redbud trees outside my window have caught fire, clashing with the cardinal sitting in the branches. The forsythias are more green than yellow. The Bradford pear may have reached its peak of bloom this morning, right before the rain comes and begins the process of knocking the blossoms off.
I do not pledge to wear more gray. I like my roses to look like what Thoroughly Modern Millie says when she orders two dozen (!) roses for her boss Trevor Grayden to send to her friend Miss Dorothy--"on the fat side."
I've been reading a book that isn't half so good: Mellow Out, They Say. If I Only Could, by Michael M. Piechowski. Sometimes it helps me to look at a new book on the subject, just as a way of reminding myself that the members of my family need to put positive names on the way we can't help being--we're enthusiastic people! Yeah, enthusiasm; that's a good word.
Which brings me to Beth Ann Fennelly's poem "I Need to be More French. Or Japanese." I love this poem excessively; I've read it out loud to everyone who will listen, and now I will type it here for you all, now:
I Need To Be More French. Or Japanese.
Then I wouldn't prefer the California wine,
its big sugar, big fruit rolling down my tongue,
a cornucopia spilled across a tacky tablecloth.
I'd prefer the French, its smoke and rot.
Said Cezanne: Le mond--c'est terrible!
Which means, The world--it bites the big weenie.
People sound smarter in French.
The Japanese prefer the crescent moon to the full,
prefer the rose before it blooms.
Oh, I have been to the temples of Kyoto,
I have stood on the Pont Neuf, and my eyes,
they drank it in, but my taste buds
shuffled along in the beer line at Wrigley Field.
It was the day they gave out foam fingers.
I hereby pledge to wear more gray, less yellow
of the beaks of baby mockingbirds,
that huge yellow yawping open on wobbly necks,
trusting something yummy will be dropped inside,
soon. I hereby pledge to be reserved.
When the French designer learned
I didn't like her mockups for my book cover,
she sniffed, They're not for everyone. They're
subtle. What area code is 662 anyway? I said,
Mississippi, sweetheart. Bet you couldn't find it
with a map. Okay: I didn't really. But so what
if I'm subtle as May in Mississippi, my nose
in the wine-bowl of this magnolia bloom, so what
if I'm mellow as the punch-drunk bee.
If I were Japanese I'd write about magnolias
in March, how tonal, each bud long as a pencil,
sheathed in celadon suede, jutting from a cluster
of glossy leaves. I'd end the poem before anything
bloomed, end with rain swelling the buds
and the sheaths bursting, then falling to the grass
like a fairy's castoff slippers, like candy wrappers,
like spent firecrackers. Yes, my poem
would end there, spent firecrackers.
If I were French, I'd capture post-peak, in July,
the petals floppy, creased brown with age,
the stamens naked, stripped of yellow filaments.
The bees lazy now, bungling the ballet, thinking
for the first time about October. If I were French,
I'd prefer this, end with the red-tipped filaments
scattered on the scorched brown grass,
and my poem would incite the sophisticated,
the French and the Japanese readers--
because the filaments look like matchsticks,
and it's matchsticks, we all know, that start the fire.
The redbud trees outside my window have caught fire, clashing with the cardinal sitting in the branches. The forsythias are more green than yellow. The Bradford pear may have reached its peak of bloom this morning, right before the rain comes and begins the process of knocking the blossoms off.
I do not pledge to wear more gray. I like my roses to look like what Thoroughly Modern Millie says when she orders two dozen (!) roses for her boss Trevor Grayden to send to her friend Miss Dorothy--"on the fat side."
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Problems with Execution
I've read a couple of wildly unrelated books lately that are better in their ideas than in their execution.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu, promises some kind of relationship between three exiles from three different African countries and what happens in the run-down neighborhood of one of them, Logan Circle in Washington, DC. As it turn out, though, reading the novel reminds me of watching a movie called Strangers in Paradise years ago (when I lived in the suburbs of Washington DC, in fact). Pretty much all that happens in Strangers in Paradise is that the characters smoke cigarettes and stare moodily out the window. Same for the main character of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears--he walks moodily around Logan Circle, he sits moodily in his failing convenience store, he wraps Christmas presents moodily in his small apartment. The events of the plot fall flat, unendowed with any larger meaning. If this is a new style of literary writing, it's even less interesting than the New-Yorker-approved minimalism of past decades.
The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart, is a YA novel designed to appeal to gifted children, starting as it does with a newspaper ad asking "are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?" I have to agree with Walker that the best part of the story is at the beginning, when the children have to undergo testing to see if they will be offered the "special opportunities." In fact, the author blurb on the back cover says that the idea for writing the book "appeared in the form of a chess riddle."
The frustrating thing about this book is that even though the children are supposed to be gifted and the mission they're sent on is important and mysterious, they don't end up doing anything very smart. I got quite impatient with how long it took them to figure out clues, after all the build-up about their intellectual superiority. There is one mildly clever surprise at the end, about why one of the characters acts the way she does, but that's not enough to make 485 pages of mediocre adventure seem like it was worth the trip.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu, promises some kind of relationship between three exiles from three different African countries and what happens in the run-down neighborhood of one of them, Logan Circle in Washington, DC. As it turn out, though, reading the novel reminds me of watching a movie called Strangers in Paradise years ago (when I lived in the suburbs of Washington DC, in fact). Pretty much all that happens in Strangers in Paradise is that the characters smoke cigarettes and stare moodily out the window. Same for the main character of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears--he walks moodily around Logan Circle, he sits moodily in his failing convenience store, he wraps Christmas presents moodily in his small apartment. The events of the plot fall flat, unendowed with any larger meaning. If this is a new style of literary writing, it's even less interesting than the New-Yorker-approved minimalism of past decades.
The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart, is a YA novel designed to appeal to gifted children, starting as it does with a newspaper ad asking "are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?" I have to agree with Walker that the best part of the story is at the beginning, when the children have to undergo testing to see if they will be offered the "special opportunities." In fact, the author blurb on the back cover says that the idea for writing the book "appeared in the form of a chess riddle."
The frustrating thing about this book is that even though the children are supposed to be gifted and the mission they're sent on is important and mysterious, they don't end up doing anything very smart. I got quite impatient with how long it took them to figure out clues, after all the build-up about their intellectual superiority. There is one mildly clever surprise at the end, about why one of the characters acts the way she does, but that's not enough to make 485 pages of mediocre adventure seem like it was worth the trip.
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