I've read Leavitt's fiction, though he's come out with several books since I picked one up. Tonight I went around the block to Black Oak Books to hear Leavitt give a talk based on his new biography of Alan Turing called The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Leavitt brought transparencies and used an overhead projector to throw the images on a screen. Oddly, he didn't seem familiar with the properties of an overhead projector, the way to enlarge the image, for instance, being to physically move the projector farther from the screen. When the bookstore clerk didn't get it either I hopped up, mumbling something about grade school, and helped drag the table with the iffy legs far enough from the screen to give the people in the back (or the older people in the front) a better chance at seeing. Leavitt's transparencies were from the biography and were illustrations of Turing machines.
Leavitt wrote the book having become fascinated by the creativity of mathematicians, a creativity very different from the fiction writer's, a mathematician's way of thought, Leavitt said, being at once baffling and intriguing. I like that.
I didn't buy the book. I did buy some used copies of Leavitt novels.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Saturday, November 26, 2005
more excerpts from Kafka's diary
There may be a purpose lurking behind the fact that I never learned anything useful and -- the two are connected -- have allowed myself to become a physical wreck. I did not want to be distracted, did not want to be distracted by the pleasures life has to give a useful and healthy man. As if illness and despair were not just as much of a distraction!
...
An endless, dreary Sunday afternoon, an afternoon swallowing down whole years, its every hour a year. By turns walked despairingly down empty streets and lay quietly on the couch. Occasionally astonished by the leaden, meaningless clouds almost uninterruptedly drifting by. "You are reserved for a great Monday!" Fine, but Sunday will never end.
...
An endless, dreary Sunday afternoon, an afternoon swallowing down whole years, its every hour a year. By turns walked despairingly down empty streets and lay quietly on the couch. Occasionally astonished by the leaden, meaningless clouds almost uninterruptedly drifting by. "You are reserved for a great Monday!" Fine, but Sunday will never end.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Dead but still among the best poets writing today
Elizabeth Bishop had been dead nine years by the time the annual anthology series Best American Poetry began publishing. I read BAP every year as a sort of penance for caring about poetry, the most irrelevant artform on the planet.
Jeff Bahr has a chart that logs how many times a poet has had work chosen for BAP. John Ashbery, it seems, is America's Best poet. Donald Hall is America's second Best poet. Charles Simic is America's third Best poet. And so on.
Each new BAP culls poems from magazines published in the preceding year. They have to be American (or Canadian) and written in English -- no translations are eligible. Even considering the years of backlog at many literary magazines you could be forgiven for assuming that the appearance of a dead poet in BAP would be unusual. So how many times has Elizabeth Bishop had a poem in Best American Poetry?
Four times.
Jeff Bahr has a chart that logs how many times a poet has had work chosen for BAP. John Ashbery, it seems, is America's Best poet. Donald Hall is America's second Best poet. Charles Simic is America's third Best poet. And so on.
Each new BAP culls poems from magazines published in the preceding year. They have to be American (or Canadian) and written in English -- no translations are eligible. Even considering the years of backlog at many literary magazines you could be forgiven for assuming that the appearance of a dead poet in BAP would be unusual. So how many times has Elizabeth Bishop had a poem in Best American Poetry?
Four times.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Conduct Unbecoming
I always have several books going. When I sit down to read I often read a page or two from one, then move on to another and so work my way down through the pile. Conduct Unbecoming is Randy Shilts' book about the US military's ongoing assault on gay Americans, specifically rooting them from the ranks and impressing upon all those nongay that to be gay is the worst thing one can be.
The book has been on the bottom of the pile for months, maybe as long as a year. The placemark sat in place about a hundred pages in. Yesterday I picked the book up again. It's well written. But I quickly figured out what had caused its stay at the bottom of the pile to have remained unrelieved for so long. This book is fucking depressing! It tells the stories of people whose lives are destroyed by the US's crazed notions of manhood (& womanhood). Or rather, by the agents assigned by government to enforce those notions. Drill sargeants, doctors, military police ...
The book has been on the bottom of the pile for months, maybe as long as a year. The placemark sat in place about a hundred pages in. Yesterday I picked the book up again. It's well written. But I quickly figured out what had caused its stay at the bottom of the pile to have remained unrelieved for so long. This book is fucking depressing! It tells the stories of people whose lives are destroyed by the US's crazed notions of manhood (& womanhood). Or rather, by the agents assigned by government to enforce those notions. Drill sargeants, doctors, military police ...
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
The Man Who Tasted Shapes
The Man Who Tasted Shapes is Richard Cytowic's investigation of the phenomenon of synaesthesia, a conflation of senses wherein one sees sounds or, in the case of his subject (& friend) Michael, feels a flavor.
But I want to talk about something other than the book's purported topic. In a review on Amazon.com of George Takei's autobiography the reviewer notes, "George never mentions getting married or wanting to get married. He never mentions going out on dates. ... He never says he was too busy for a love life. He mentions that other Star Trek actors and other relatives are married, but he never says anything about himself." The reviewer asks, "Is George Takei gay?" This was back in Sept 2003. Now we have it from Sulu himself.
Reading The Man Who Tasted Shapes I also noticed that Richard Cytowic never mentions a love interest. (Though the book is not a biography, exactly, Cytowic talks a lot about his personal history.) Surely if he were married with children that would at least be included in the five paragraph bio in the back of the book. We all know there are straight men (or asexual men) who never marry. But my gaydar pings when Richard describes hanging out in the new neighbor's kitchen. The neighbor, Michael, is preparing dinner. Says Richard, "I sat nearby while he whisked the sauce he had made for the roast chickens. 'Oh, dear,' he said, slurping a spoonful, 'there aren't enough points on the chicken.'
"'Aren't enough what?' I asked.
"He froze and turned red, betraying a realization that his first impression had been as awkward as that of a debutante falling down the stairs."
... excuse me? A debutante falling down the stairs? How gay!
Later, when the scientist is trying to talk his subject into submitting to an elaborate test procedure he says, "'This is your big chance for the fame you wanted,' I cajoled him. 'I can't bestow the Tony Award, but I can promise when you're all wired up that you'll look better than the Bride of Frankenstein.'"
... better than the Bride of Frankenstein? It'd be a rare straight boy who'd feel enticed by that kind of cajoling.
No, Richard never explicitly outs his subject or himself. But how many clues do you need?
Here's an interview with Cytowic. You gotta love how he describes meeting gay artist David Hockney, "Well, David, he is so sweet. He’s brilliant. He was big news because he was painting the opera sets at the Met. And everybody was saying how totally fabulous they were, and how totally different from his painting style that everybody had been familiar with. And in these interviews I’d read, he was talking about the fact that the music had a certain shape and color. So I wrote to him.
Five or six months went by, and I finally got back a hand-written letter on a yellow legal pad in red ink which said: 'I’ve been carrying your letter around with me for months wondering whether to answer or not. Would it tell me anything that I really want to know or would it be better not to know? I’ve never heard of synaesthesia. At first I thought you were just trying to scientifically analyze what I always thought of as artistic. But, anyway, curiosity has the better of me so let’s get together and talk about this.' So we did. I went to Los Angeles and spent two days with him, a highlight of which, for me, was swimming nude in his pool. His famous pool painted with those blue marks. So I thought 'Oh, boy! I’m in David Hockney’s wavey pool.'
So that’s how we met. We did some experiments there, and sure enough he was genuine. And for him it’s the melody, it is the sequence of things that gives him the impression of size, shape, color, and form as well."
But I want to talk about something other than the book's purported topic. In a review on Amazon.com of George Takei's autobiography the reviewer notes, "George never mentions getting married or wanting to get married. He never mentions going out on dates. ... He never says he was too busy for a love life. He mentions that other Star Trek actors and other relatives are married, but he never says anything about himself." The reviewer asks, "Is George Takei gay?" This was back in Sept 2003. Now we have it from Sulu himself.
Reading The Man Who Tasted Shapes I also noticed that Richard Cytowic never mentions a love interest. (Though the book is not a biography, exactly, Cytowic talks a lot about his personal history.) Surely if he were married with children that would at least be included in the five paragraph bio in the back of the book. We all know there are straight men (or asexual men) who never marry. But my gaydar pings when Richard describes hanging out in the new neighbor's kitchen. The neighbor, Michael, is preparing dinner. Says Richard, "I sat nearby while he whisked the sauce he had made for the roast chickens. 'Oh, dear,' he said, slurping a spoonful, 'there aren't enough points on the chicken.'
"'Aren't enough what?' I asked.
"He froze and turned red, betraying a realization that his first impression had been as awkward as that of a debutante falling down the stairs."
... excuse me? A debutante falling down the stairs? How gay!
Later, when the scientist is trying to talk his subject into submitting to an elaborate test procedure he says, "'This is your big chance for the fame you wanted,' I cajoled him. 'I can't bestow the Tony Award, but I can promise when you're all wired up that you'll look better than the Bride of Frankenstein.'"
... better than the Bride of Frankenstein? It'd be a rare straight boy who'd feel enticed by that kind of cajoling.
No, Richard never explicitly outs his subject or himself. But how many clues do you need?
Here's an interview with Cytowic. You gotta love how he describes meeting gay artist David Hockney, "Well, David, he is so sweet. He’s brilliant. He was big news because he was painting the opera sets at the Met. And everybody was saying how totally fabulous they were, and how totally different from his painting style that everybody had been familiar with. And in these interviews I’d read, he was talking about the fact that the music had a certain shape and color. So I wrote to him.
Five or six months went by, and I finally got back a hand-written letter on a yellow legal pad in red ink which said: 'I’ve been carrying your letter around with me for months wondering whether to answer or not. Would it tell me anything that I really want to know or would it be better not to know? I’ve never heard of synaesthesia. At first I thought you were just trying to scientifically analyze what I always thought of as artistic. But, anyway, curiosity has the better of me so let’s get together and talk about this.' So we did. I went to Los Angeles and spent two days with him, a highlight of which, for me, was swimming nude in his pool. His famous pool painted with those blue marks. So I thought 'Oh, boy! I’m in David Hockney’s wavey pool.'
So that’s how we met. We did some experiments there, and sure enough he was genuine. And for him it’s the melody, it is the sequence of things that gives him the impression of size, shape, color, and form as well."
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Dykes to Watch Out For
Piles. We have piles. Piles of papers mostly. Piles of CDs and books, too, of course.
But I sorted a ple of the SF gay papers this weekend, intending to skim them to keep from throwing them out largely unread.
I see the Bay Area Reporter finally has an online presence. Looks like old BARs will fill a shopping bag and go to the recycler.
What about the SF Bay Times? Yup, looks like they're current with the web, too. Maybe I should just read them online, stop bringing home the hardcopy that I eventually have to bag for the curb. But what about Dykes to Watch Out For? I've neglected the strip for months. I have to catch up! ... I suppose I could wait for the trade paperback.
Or I could read it here, huh? (Though I don't like the way the strip gets broken up to fit on the scrolling webpage.)
Then there's the yearworth of New Yorkers. Must. Get. Full. Value.
But I sorted a ple of the SF gay papers this weekend, intending to skim them to keep from throwing them out largely unread.
I see the Bay Area Reporter finally has an online presence. Looks like old BARs will fill a shopping bag and go to the recycler.
What about the SF Bay Times? Yup, looks like they're current with the web, too. Maybe I should just read them online, stop bringing home the hardcopy that I eventually have to bag for the curb. But what about Dykes to Watch Out For? I've neglected the strip for months. I have to catch up! ... I suppose I could wait for the trade paperback.
Or I could read it here, huh? (Though I don't like the way the strip gets broken up to fit on the scrolling webpage.)
Then there's the yearworth of New Yorkers. Must. Get. Full. Value.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Death on the Fourth of July
Had the day off today, it being Indigenous People's Day. (Eat your heart out, Columbus.)
Lovely day so I sat outside awhile, ate some leftover pizza I'd toasted and read a few pages from books in my current stack. The one I've spent much of the day reading is David Neiwert's Death on the Fourth of July. Neiwert covered the trial of a young Vietnamese-American man who was being prosecuted for stabbing to death a burly white man 6 inches taller than him. Even the white man's most ardent supporters emphasized the man was spoiling for a fight that night. He had draped a Confederate flag over his shoulders (even though this was in the state of Washington) and swaggered around the convenience store parking lot with his bored buddies shouting racial epithets. The prosecutor brought the law down on one of the victims of a hate crime because he defended himself excessively -- that is, he actually killed the white racist who sought to terrorize him and his companions.
Author Neiwert keeps a blog that I read now & then. This is the first of his books I've read. I find it compelling. In Death on the Fourth of July Neiwert puts the crime in the context of America's history of hate crime, from lynchings in the late 19th Century through the mid-20th to the ongoing anti-gay campaigns of the religious-ideological heirs of the slaveholders. Demonize the Other so you have someone to blame for your own failures.
Lovely day so I sat outside awhile, ate some leftover pizza I'd toasted and read a few pages from books in my current stack. The one I've spent much of the day reading is David Neiwert's Death on the Fourth of July. Neiwert covered the trial of a young Vietnamese-American man who was being prosecuted for stabbing to death a burly white man 6 inches taller than him. Even the white man's most ardent supporters emphasized the man was spoiling for a fight that night. He had draped a Confederate flag over his shoulders (even though this was in the state of Washington) and swaggered around the convenience store parking lot with his bored buddies shouting racial epithets. The prosecutor brought the law down on one of the victims of a hate crime because he defended himself excessively -- that is, he actually killed the white racist who sought to terrorize him and his companions.
Author Neiwert keeps a blog that I read now & then. This is the first of his books I've read. I find it compelling. In Death on the Fourth of July Neiwert puts the crime in the context of America's history of hate crime, from lynchings in the late 19th Century through the mid-20th to the ongoing anti-gay campaigns of the religious-ideological heirs of the slaveholders. Demonize the Other so you have someone to blame for your own failures.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Title
I'm almost halfway through the poetry notebook I've been working in.
This is about when I start thinking about a title.
There's a long piece that takes up most of the pages -- it posits a man trapped in a nothing, the word/letter I alone on a blank sheet of paper. The piece doesn't conclude, not unlike many another longish project I've undertaken.
But I've gone on to write several page, page-and-a-half poems.
Until now I hadn't been thinking about titles. I'll run my tongue over a few until the flavor of one overwhelms the others and the only thing left to do is write the title down. I won't decide today. Sometime in the next month maybe.
This is about when I start thinking about a title.
There's a long piece that takes up most of the pages -- it posits a man trapped in a nothing, the word/letter I alone on a blank sheet of paper. The piece doesn't conclude, not unlike many another longish project I've undertaken.
But I've gone on to write several page, page-and-a-half poems.
Until now I hadn't been thinking about titles. I'll run my tongue over a few until the flavor of one overwhelms the others and the only thing left to do is write the title down. I won't decide today. Sometime in the next month maybe.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
what I bought at Watershed
The new issue of Bay Nature, a magazine that covers the greater San Francisco Bay area. I was interested in reading their article about the Laguna de Santa Rosa, a marsh between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. I grew up in Sebastopol and my mother got involved in saving the Laguna from development. There's also a piece on the shore parks of the East Bay.
I paid for a 3-issue subscription to a new literary magazine, Parthenon West Review. I put the first two issues under an arm. The third will be sent to me when published.
There was a table for Sixteen Rivers Press so I bought the new book by Lynn Trombetta, a poet I knew slightly from the Sonoma County poetry scene. I was surprised to see it described as, "her first full collection."
I bought Joanne Kyger's Again: poems 1989-2000 and had her sign it. I would have said I'd heard her read before but once she was on stage she didn't look or sound familiar. Her name certainly is.
These join the great book drifts that ebb and flow (though there's precious little ebbing involved) through our house.
I paid for a 3-issue subscription to a new literary magazine, Parthenon West Review. I put the first two issues under an arm. The third will be sent to me when published.
There was a table for Sixteen Rivers Press so I bought the new book by Lynn Trombetta, a poet I knew slightly from the Sonoma County poetry scene. I was surprised to see it described as, "her first full collection."
I bought Joanne Kyger's Again: poems 1989-2000 and had her sign it. I would have said I'd heard her read before but once she was on stage she didn't look or sound familiar. Her name certainly is.
These join the great book drifts that ebb and flow (though there's precious little ebbing involved) through our house.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Half Price Books
Half Price Books used to have two stores in Berkeley, one on Telegraph, a short four blocks from UC campus, the other on Solano Ave between the Oaks Theatre and Peet's Coffee. Both locations were odd-nook-and-cranny stores.
In the Telegraph Ave store you had two second floors -- one above your head as you came in, then there was a gap and another more substantial second floor began. Both second floors were served by separate staircases. The fiction room was in the back and down a step. It wasn't exactly a basement but felt like one.
The Telegraph store shut down a few years ago.
The Solano Ave store also had two storeys. Just inside the front door a staircase spiraled down past mirrors to the basement. Fiction and children's books were on the ground floor, everything else was snuck away downstairs and if you didn't have to brush cobwebs aside as you ducked toward the clearance shelves at the back you wouldn't have been surprised to.
The Solano store closed up and reopened downtown in the Kress Building. It looks like a Barnes & Noble or something. Everything is on one floor. It's airy, well-lit.
I hate it.
In the Telegraph Ave store you had two second floors -- one above your head as you came in, then there was a gap and another more substantial second floor began. Both second floors were served by separate staircases. The fiction room was in the back and down a step. It wasn't exactly a basement but felt like one.
The Telegraph store shut down a few years ago.
The Solano Ave store also had two storeys. Just inside the front door a staircase spiraled down past mirrors to the basement. Fiction and children's books were on the ground floor, everything else was snuck away downstairs and if you didn't have to brush cobwebs aside as you ducked toward the clearance shelves at the back you wouldn't have been surprised to.
The Solano store closed up and reopened downtown in the Kress Building. It looks like a Barnes & Noble or something. Everything is on one floor. It's airy, well-lit.
I hate it.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
what'm I reading?
So. What's in my current stack? Can I remember without going to grab it and read off the titles?
Let's see ... I just started Dora, Doralina, a novel assigned more than ten years ago in my Brazilian Literature class at Cal. I'm reading an English translation. I like the voice -- grumpy but philosophical. The narrator is recalling herself as a young woman living on her mother's fazenda (ranch). She met the man who became her husband when he came to survey the property line. She often fights with her mother, whom she calls "Senhora" rather than "Mama".
I'm reading a book on the Ba-Benzelle pygmies written by an American who has been living with them for the last ten or fifteen years. He fell in love with their music and traveled to central Africa to record it and stayed. The book accompanies a CD of music.
Have two or three poetry anthologies going, a huge one of poetry from around the world that was published a few years ago by the Book of the Month Club. It's not bad. But I'm indifferent to most of the poems. I started another anthology to get some contemporaries in my head, The Heights of the Marvelous, a gathering of poets in New York City published in 2000. It's more fun than the world stuff.
I just finished the second volume of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Did he write it after the Hollywood movie adaptation of the first volume? The movie seems to have been based more on Moore's concept than any story he wrote. Anyway, I wonder if anger at Hollywood led Moore to kill off two of the Gentleman ... the pages seem cluttered with 19th century fiction's fantastic elements and the result rather a mess. There's a long prose travelogue at the back of the book which I guess I'll read. Also reading Grickle, a collection of short comics starring very expressive stick figures.
Anything else? ... A book by a man who wanted to see what the contemporary Maya are up to. A thousand years ago they were the height of American civilization -- one of two (or was it three?) cultures in the world that invented the zero, had a calendar more accurate than any in the world, built grand pyramids and domesticated chocolate. So far the accounts of his travels have been superficial. Am I on the fourth chapter? He's only spoken at length with one contemporary Mayan person, and that man was quite Americanized having grown up in (I think) Chicago.
Volume two of Kafka's diaries. So unhappy! So dissatisfied!
Let's see ... I just started Dora, Doralina, a novel assigned more than ten years ago in my Brazilian Literature class at Cal. I'm reading an English translation. I like the voice -- grumpy but philosophical. The narrator is recalling herself as a young woman living on her mother's fazenda (ranch). She met the man who became her husband when he came to survey the property line. She often fights with her mother, whom she calls "Senhora" rather than "Mama".
I'm reading a book on the Ba-Benzelle pygmies written by an American who has been living with them for the last ten or fifteen years. He fell in love with their music and traveled to central Africa to record it and stayed. The book accompanies a CD of music.
Have two or three poetry anthologies going, a huge one of poetry from around the world that was published a few years ago by the Book of the Month Club. It's not bad. But I'm indifferent to most of the poems. I started another anthology to get some contemporaries in my head, The Heights of the Marvelous, a gathering of poets in New York City published in 2000. It's more fun than the world stuff.
I just finished the second volume of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Did he write it after the Hollywood movie adaptation of the first volume? The movie seems to have been based more on Moore's concept than any story he wrote. Anyway, I wonder if anger at Hollywood led Moore to kill off two of the Gentleman ... the pages seem cluttered with 19th century fiction's fantastic elements and the result rather a mess. There's a long prose travelogue at the back of the book which I guess I'll read. Also reading Grickle, a collection of short comics starring very expressive stick figures.
Anything else? ... A book by a man who wanted to see what the contemporary Maya are up to. A thousand years ago they were the height of American civilization -- one of two (or was it three?) cultures in the world that invented the zero, had a calendar more accurate than any in the world, built grand pyramids and domesticated chocolate. So far the accounts of his travels have been superficial. Am I on the fourth chapter? He's only spoken at length with one contemporary Mayan person, and that man was quite Americanized having grown up in (I think) Chicago.
Volume two of Kafka's diaries. So unhappy! So dissatisfied!
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Mars trilogy
This morning I finished Green Mars, the second volume of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. The story traces the settlement of Mars and the terraforming of the planet. Robinson invents a longevity treatment that allows him to follow the same set of characters for decades. At the conclusion of Green Mars the characters are about a hundred years older than at the beginning of Red Mars. They're old and wrinkly and achy but I wouldn't be surprised if they had 600 pages of life left in them.
Robinson's prose? I don't know that there's much to say about it. He does description tolerably well, though mostly avoids metaphor (and, thankfully, knows to step over a cliche). His dialog is believable and the characters distinct. When style doesn't call attention to itself it's easy to forget that poor style is too ready to fill a page. And, of course, one reads a book about settling Mars for the ideas, doesn't one? How do people live in such a hostile place? How do they get there in the first place? Once settled in, how do they relate to their home planet? Toward the end of Green Mars Robinson describes a common graffito, "You Can Never Go Back".
I think I'll take a rest before I start the third book but I'm looking forward to it.
Robinson's prose? I don't know that there's much to say about it. He does description tolerably well, though mostly avoids metaphor (and, thankfully, knows to step over a cliche). His dialog is believable and the characters distinct. When style doesn't call attention to itself it's easy to forget that poor style is too ready to fill a page. And, of course, one reads a book about settling Mars for the ideas, doesn't one? How do people live in such a hostile place? How do they get there in the first place? Once settled in, how do they relate to their home planet? Toward the end of Green Mars Robinson describes a common graffito, "You Can Never Go Back".
I think I'll take a rest before I start the third book but I'm looking forward to it.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Born Free
Born Free is the book Joy Adamson wrote about raising Elsa the lioness and reintroducing her to the wild. The insanely catchy, treacly song comes to mind immediately. But of course Adamson did not write her book with that ditty plinking away in the African trees above her. I remember the movie, too (for which the song is the main theme). I'm sure I watched it at school. I'd thought it was a documentary. There are lots of pictures of Elsa in the books and Adamson mentions filming her antics. But I guess it's not.
In my stack of books I like to keep a book about animals going. I thought I had the sequel to Born Free. After I finished Born Free this afternoon I went upstairs to the library but found only the third book, Forever Free. Oh. Third book? Guess I'll have to check the bookstores for Living Free, the second book, if I don't want to miss anything. The Berkeley library only has Born Free. It has a single book condensation of the trilogy, but I want every word. Every word, I tell you!
Not that the writing is great. It's the story that's fun, not the prose. Prob'ly the shorter version is better. I mean, even in Born Free do we need to know about every time Elsa shows up after a few days living on her own? When for the fourth time she greets everybody by bumping her face against their knees, well, it's like a series of baby pictures ... if it's not your kid every forehead wrinkle is not equally interesting.
Still, if I see Living Free for a couple bucks I'll pick it up.
Sadly, both Joy and husband George died in the 1980s at the hands of human beings.
In my stack of books I like to keep a book about animals going. I thought I had the sequel to Born Free. After I finished Born Free this afternoon I went upstairs to the library but found only the third book, Forever Free. Oh. Third book? Guess I'll have to check the bookstores for Living Free, the second book, if I don't want to miss anything. The Berkeley library only has Born Free. It has a single book condensation of the trilogy, but I want every word. Every word, I tell you!
Not that the writing is great. It's the story that's fun, not the prose. Prob'ly the shorter version is better. I mean, even in Born Free do we need to know about every time Elsa shows up after a few days living on her own? When for the fourth time she greets everybody by bumping her face against their knees, well, it's like a series of baby pictures ... if it's not your kid every forehead wrinkle is not equally interesting.
Still, if I see Living Free for a couple bucks I'll pick it up.
Sadly, both Joy and husband George died in the 1980s at the hands of human beings.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Kafka's diary
some excerpts:
"I can't endure worry, and perhaps have been created expressly in order to die of it."
*
"Leafed through the diary a little. Got a kind of inkling of the way a life like this is constituted."
*
"The beginning of every story is ridiculous at first. There seems no hope that this newborn thing, still incomplete and tender in every joint, will be able to keep alive in the completed organization of the world, which, like every completed organization, strives to close itself off. However, one should not forget that the story, if it has any justification to exist, bears its complete organization within itself even before it has been fully formed; for this reason despair over the beginning of a story is unwarranted ..."
"I can't endure worry, and perhaps have been created expressly in order to die of it."
*
"Leafed through the diary a little. Got a kind of inkling of the way a life like this is constituted."
*
"The beginning of every story is ridiculous at first. There seems no hope that this newborn thing, still incomplete and tender in every joint, will be able to keep alive in the completed organization of the world, which, like every completed organization, strives to close itself off. However, one should not forget that the story, if it has any justification to exist, bears its complete organization within itself even before it has been fully formed; for this reason despair over the beginning of a story is unwarranted ..."
Saturday, August 20, 2005
writing in books
Neighbor across the street was hosting his annual yard sale fundraiser for the Oakland Jazz Choir today.
I poked around the tables. Spotted the Collected Poems of George Oppen, gave its pages a cursory flip through, then saw Mina Loy’s Lost Lunar Baedeker. Even in Berkeley one doesn’t usually see such poets in the rummage. I also picked up The Trouble with Harry Hay, a biography of a “founder of the modern gay movement” (as the cover has it). A couple bucks for a good cause, right? I figured I would get around to reading these.
Once home, turning the pages with more care, I discovered the Loy and Oppen had been annotated by a jittery black pen. The reader didn’t say much, usually seemed satisfied with underlining and drawing arrows. Loy’s vocabulary seems to have given trouble. Her “Diurnally variegate” is translated as, “daily diversifying.” And “sialagogues” gets this definition, “anything that stimulates flow of saliva” – had I paper to write I’m sure I would have broken out the dictionary at this point, too.
In one rare bit of editorializing the reader cries out, “Oh yeah! baby” to the following Loy couplet:
I am the false quantity
In the harmony of physiological potentiality
… On the whole marked up books bug the fuck out of me. Had I seen the student’s scrawlings I would have put these back on the table.
I poked around the tables. Spotted the Collected Poems of George Oppen, gave its pages a cursory flip through, then saw Mina Loy’s Lost Lunar Baedeker. Even in Berkeley one doesn’t usually see such poets in the rummage. I also picked up The Trouble with Harry Hay, a biography of a “founder of the modern gay movement” (as the cover has it). A couple bucks for a good cause, right? I figured I would get around to reading these.
Once home, turning the pages with more care, I discovered the Loy and Oppen had been annotated by a jittery black pen. The reader didn’t say much, usually seemed satisfied with underlining and drawing arrows. Loy’s vocabulary seems to have given trouble. Her “Diurnally variegate” is translated as, “daily diversifying.” And “sialagogues” gets this definition, “anything that stimulates flow of saliva” – had I paper to write I’m sure I would have broken out the dictionary at this point, too.
In one rare bit of editorializing the reader cries out, “Oh yeah! baby” to the following Loy couplet:
I am the false quantity
In the harmony of physiological potentiality
… On the whole marked up books bug the fuck out of me. Had I seen the student’s scrawlings I would have put these back on the table.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
CMJ New Music Monthly
Favorite song from the newest (issue no.133) sampler CD:
"Be Careful What You Wish For, It Might Come True" by Gabby La La
"Be Careful What You Wish For, It Might Come True" by Gabby La La
Monday, August 08, 2005
The New Yorker
I've let my New Yorker subscription lapse. How much of it did I read?
I did read one short story.
Several poems.
Most of the cartoons.
Entered the cartoon caption contest two or three times. But the winners usually weren't funny. (Kent was all excited about the thing until they'd print the finalists ...)
Realized how much the Talk of the Town political essays have been superceded by my blog reading.
It's not like I need to turn to the NYer for movie reviews. But I probably read a higher percentage of their movie reviews than any other department.
Why do I so often feel I'm wasting my time when I'm reading magazines?
This is from the July 4 issue, which happens to be on the floor near me, "Nearly every statement [Clothing designer] Kawakubo makes about herself is hedged or negated by a contradiction, and she resists being defined even by her own words. The desire to be unique and the sense of isolation that the feeling generates are a predicament common to artistic people." -- Judith Thurman
The first statement is true enough about me, I guess.
But the second annoys me. It may describe Kawakubo accurately but I know "the desire to be unique" is not the reason I hedge and speak slowly around what I mean. It's my not wanting to lie, it's my wanting to be precise, it's my following the travel of my thought. Do I feel a "sense of isolation"? I do. It's not because I want "to be unique". I also wonder about Thurman's "artistic people" ... does she mean "artists"?
I did read one short story.
Several poems.
Most of the cartoons.
Entered the cartoon caption contest two or three times. But the winners usually weren't funny. (Kent was all excited about the thing until they'd print the finalists ...)
Realized how much the Talk of the Town political essays have been superceded by my blog reading.
It's not like I need to turn to the NYer for movie reviews. But I probably read a higher percentage of their movie reviews than any other department.
Why do I so often feel I'm wasting my time when I'm reading magazines?
This is from the July 4 issue, which happens to be on the floor near me, "Nearly every statement [Clothing designer] Kawakubo makes about herself is hedged or negated by a contradiction, and she resists being defined even by her own words. The desire to be unique and the sense of isolation that the feeling generates are a predicament common to artistic people." -- Judith Thurman
The first statement is true enough about me, I guess.
But the second annoys me. It may describe Kawakubo accurately but I know "the desire to be unique" is not the reason I hedge and speak slowly around what I mean. It's my not wanting to lie, it's my wanting to be precise, it's my following the travel of my thought. Do I feel a "sense of isolation"? I do. It's not because I want "to be unique". I also wonder about Thurman's "artistic people" ... does she mean "artists"?
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Free Lunch
Free Lunch is a digest-sized poetry magazine that's been publishing for several years. Now that I think about it, for a little magazine, it's quite longevitous.
Its name comes from its queer genesis. Ron Offen is the editor & publisher and, I believe, founder, and he thought, the not unusual thought, there aren't many rewards to being a poet these days. Sure, you toil away perfecting your little objet d' language and once you've got it tweaked and retweaked its little word-shaped heart is buzzing away like a whiskery snouted shrew's, sure either to burn out in days and leave a fuzzy corpse or incandesce in a way that surprises everybody. That's not a reward? What more can you ask!
But Ron said to hisself, I could start a magazine and gift a subscription to every True Poet I find.
Well. Indeed.
I like this idea. Not just cuz I'm one o' dem Trues who gots a sub (eat your hearts out) but because the poetry economy is the gift economy, really, and it's time we faced it (I'm talkin' to you, poets). I've sent batches of poems to Ron over the years and he hasn't cottoned to any enough to publish them, but a free subscription isn't a bad rejection slip.
I read each issue cover to cover. And I don't dislike it more than Poetry Magazine, I suppose. The latest issue, which appeared in my just-renewed po box yesterday, is the first-person free issue. Ron's been buggin' about the state of contemporary poetry (he reads the unsolicited fat envelopes, don't he?) and decided one thing it could do was stop moaning about its own problems (I/me/mine) and start looking around, maybe see what's going on next door and talk about that maybe. I've only read a couple poems so far. They've done that one thing. That was the one thing they had to do in order to get in this time.
Its name comes from its queer genesis. Ron Offen is the editor & publisher and, I believe, founder, and he thought, the not unusual thought, there aren't many rewards to being a poet these days. Sure, you toil away perfecting your little objet d' language and once you've got it tweaked and retweaked its little word-shaped heart is buzzing away like a whiskery snouted shrew's, sure either to burn out in days and leave a fuzzy corpse or incandesce in a way that surprises everybody. That's not a reward? What more can you ask!
But Ron said to hisself, I could start a magazine and gift a subscription to every True Poet I find.
Well. Indeed.
I like this idea. Not just cuz I'm one o' dem Trues who gots a sub (eat your hearts out) but because the poetry economy is the gift economy, really, and it's time we faced it (I'm talkin' to you, poets). I've sent batches of poems to Ron over the years and he hasn't cottoned to any enough to publish them, but a free subscription isn't a bad rejection slip.
I read each issue cover to cover. And I don't dislike it more than Poetry Magazine, I suppose. The latest issue, which appeared in my just-renewed po box yesterday, is the first-person free issue. Ron's been buggin' about the state of contemporary poetry (he reads the unsolicited fat envelopes, don't he?) and decided one thing it could do was stop moaning about its own problems (I/me/mine) and start looking around, maybe see what's going on next door and talk about that maybe. I've only read a couple poems so far. They've done that one thing. That was the one thing they had to do in order to get in this time.
Friday, July 29, 2005
changes
Having seen 3 out of 4 of my "Viewing & Reviewing" links fade away I've decided to stop being so fussy. I changed the links heading to "Other Viewing" and signed up for BlogRolling. BlogRolling makes it a bit easier to add links -- I no longer have to edit the template and republish the blog every time I want to add a link. Thus I'm going to be promiscuous and add a bunch of links that no longer fit that demanding old criteria (Must Review Media in Relation to Personal Life) and just throw in a bunch of blogs (& maybe other websites, dunno) that I like to visit. I'll delete those that go belly up, which means I will be checking in on whatever I add to the blog roll. At present the blogs will be in no particular order.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Rogue in Space, A Choice of Gods, or The Grave
These are three paperbacks from one of the boxes of books I brought home from my mother’s house. The books belong to my brother and eventually I’ll get them to him in Seattle. In the meantime I’ve been toying with the idea of reading a couple. (Like I don’t have ten zillion books lined up already!)
Which should I read? I pulled these three out because they were at the top of the box. Of the three only The Grave by Charles L. Grant is more than 200 pages. It’s the horror novel. (Natch!)
Rogue in Space is a science fiction novel by Fredric Brown. “A lone outlaw encounters a unique being in the classic novel of alien intelligence,” says the cover blurb. A man in a yellow jumpsuit stands on a sand & rock plain in front of a big ochre spaceship (said spaceship looks a bit like the Marin Civic Center).
Clifford D. Simak’s A Choice of Gods has this front cover blurb: “The message came: Leave Earth alone. It is part of the experiment. [italics in original]” A robot knight stands in a clearing in the forest holding a lance or probe.
I can’t recall having read a book by any of these authors. David seems to own a few books by each. (Brown & Simak, anyway.)
So, D, which?
Anybody else have a rec?
Which should I read? I pulled these three out because they were at the top of the box. Of the three only The Grave by Charles L. Grant is more than 200 pages. It’s the horror novel. (Natch!)
Rogue in Space is a science fiction novel by Fredric Brown. “A lone outlaw encounters a unique being in the classic novel of alien intelligence,” says the cover blurb. A man in a yellow jumpsuit stands on a sand & rock plain in front of a big ochre spaceship (said spaceship looks a bit like the Marin Civic Center).
Clifford D. Simak’s A Choice of Gods has this front cover blurb: “The message came: Leave Earth alone. It is part of the experiment. [italics in original]” A robot knight stands in a clearing in the forest holding a lance or probe.
I can’t recall having read a book by any of these authors. David seems to own a few books by each. (Brown & Simak, anyway.)
So, D, which?
Anybody else have a rec?
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