Moby Duck!

I hope everyone will pick up the new Harper's; Donovan's got the Folio piece, and it is absolutely fantastic. Hooray Donovan!

howdy

Hi all (it's Rachel L.),

I thought I'd do my part to revive the blog, since I loved reading it while it was jumping and was consistently lazy about contributing.

Get this: I'm reading Gilead and a waspy book about money management called "Rich Dads, Poor Dads" that my dad gave me...AT THE SAME TIME. It's not just contradictory; it's unholy. Anyway, it's been out for awhile, so this may be an unfashionable proclamation, but: Gilead just leaves me shaken. It reminds me of what I liked about religion when I was young (and maybe what I liked about writing back when I actually wrote)--I liked the imperative to examine and explore your motives and tendencies, to think of what would be virtuous, of how you would like to be, of what you respect...and then to go out into the world and try to remember it. Doesn't it seem like much of the bad you've done, you did because you simply forgot how you wanted to be?

On that note, check out these R Kelly videos: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=trapped+in+the+closet&search=Search

They're old news too, but I've rediscovered them and can't stop laughing.

I miss you guys.

R

Satisfaction

What, is this my personal blog now or something? I feel ashamed to post twice in a row, like I'm the jobless no-life junkfood-guzzling loafer who doesn't change out of her pajamas till dinnertime and has whole conversations about ass-licking with her dog. Oh, wait, I *am* that jobless no-life junkfood-guzzling loafer.....

Anyway, I know some of you out there bemoan the fact that Harper's Magazine turned into one long left-wing rant in 2000 and never looked back, but like I said before, their ranting makes me happy, and this here below (you will have already seen it if you subscribe or read regularly), I don't know if it's a rant or a dare or a hoot, but it's oh-so-clever and I want to read it over and over again and so should you if you are the sort of person who will be glad that someone has stepped up to fill Lapham's reflective wing-tips:


http://www.harpers.org/OnSimpleHumanDecency=1149635660.html


Yes I know it's months old but I can't stop reading it.

Three Questions

Ha! No one wants to be the first to answer Starrykick's summons. But the thought of her sitting before this moribund blog in her windowless office is so sad, people, isn't it sad? Isn't it? Where is everyone?

1) Has anyone read Kathryn Davis before? She had a brief mention in a sort-of-recent New Yorker and I got curious and started reading excerpts on Amazon. They are weird and wonderful. If anyone has actually read her, perhaps you can tell me if I should read something of hers from start to finish, and if so, what (please keep in mind that reading something from start to finish is a RARE and MAJOR commitment for me).

2) Has anyone every noticed how easy it is for a dog to look like a gangsta rapper if you put it in a hooded sweatshirt?

3) Does anyone else here read Tomato Nation, in particular the letters to the advice columnist(s)? A visiting friend who shall remain unnamed just introduced me to the website. Well, they were PRETENDING to be a friend, but I think they must be secretly plotting my ruin, because why else would anyone foist yet another addiction upon me? I mean, how could anyone have expected notoriously week-willed me to resist the variegated temptations of an unlimited reservoir of human foolishness on public display? Such great fodder for nightmares, indigestion, and stories, if I wrote them. I particularly recommend the letter about the roommate with the prolapsed anus.

Leftover Mashed Potatoes

These leftover mashed potatoes have been made into a soup.

where are you robotdinosaurs??

can we stage a resurrection? I think we should. the whole point was to keep in touch about writing matters when people moved away. well look, it's officially winter here, and it's been clear to me for some time that People Have Moved Away. so: please start by posting anything--a hello, an update, a book you're reading or thinking about reading, a rant about your students, a picture of a leftover pile of mashed potates. remember blogs? remember when they were hip? I want you back, people. Ready? Go.

This Is Just to Say

That if you buy only one piece of music this year, it should be Beirut's Gulag Orkestrar. Please. It is wonderful. Fantastic. I can't get enough of it.

And if you only buy one book this year? Anyone? One anything else? Let's get some lists going.

a war worth fighting

Who else has www.kittenwar.com on their dashboard?

Apparently Angel Poo (right, or look under "winningest kittens") has won 75% of 796 battles. Crackers, please. That coy little paw! Those foldy ears! Let's make it 100%.

free fun at the aadl

When I go to the public library, I like to pick up one of the free bookmarks that they give out at the front desk. Today I got this. I am confused and delighted. What to make of this? Are we meant to assume since "dooooo" is replaced by "read" that the rooster is telling us, "Do(oooo) read!"? I know that the rooster is not really telling us anything, but I have spent perhaps too much time thinking about this bookmark and the people that designed it, and whether they just wanted any excuse to include the word "cock" on a bookmark. (Hello new readers/searchers for roosters/porn/roosterporn!)

There were still a few bookmarks left, but I can't imagine they'll be there long.

Best Books Written Since My Birth

Any thoughts on this list?

I haven't given it too much thought beyond noticing it's the #1 most e-mailed article today and was #2 yesterday. I have yet to even read A.O. Scott's related essay.

Perhaps some of you have considered this list (or your own) at greater length and wish to share. Beloved is certainly one of the finest books I've read in my 25 years on the planet, and maybe later I'll have the brainpower to think about why.

Magical Realism in Action

Just in case any of you missed this, I thought I'd post it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/asia/09cnd-runner.html

Also because it made me think of this Rushdie quotation I read a long time ago, about how magical realism might've been invented because life in some places is too absurd and too huge for the language of realism. It's a familiar idea, of course, but Rushdie put it better than I can, so if anyone knows where I can find that quotation, let me know. I think it was in a book by someone called Daniel Chua, maybe (?), about postcolonialism or anti-imperialism or some such Thing.....

News Flash (woosh!)

Why, you ask, does a story like this make the news? Maybe the creators of Southpark were right: everyone loves a cripple fight. The headline says it all.

Loose Motions

Ha ha. The title is a reference to a conversation some of us had a few days ago; I think I'll just let the rest of you wonder about it (and no, it's not a problem currently affecting me, thank you very much).

Anyway, where is everybody? Shall we make more lists? Here are some things, literary and non-literary, currently making ME happy (and I hope you all appreciate the gall involved in creating a NEW POST for my list rather than appending it as a comment to Bizness's post):

1) Not having to teach anymore, particularly because it means I won't ever again have to lay eyes on a certain lumpy lab rat of a boy who only bought the textbook 3 weeks before the semester ended;

2) The tulips in my front yard -- we didn't plant them, so what a nice surprise! Tulips, where there were none before! Just like that! 0 effort, all reward! The tiger-striped ones are my favourite.

3) Frozen treats (and the weather to eat them in): lime popsicles, red bean popsicles, green tea mochi, passionfruit sorbet.

4) The hubbub over Kaavya Viswanathan (age 19)'s fourth-rate plagiarised novel:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/04/23/young.author.ap/index.html

And more here, to lend credence to the accusations of plagiarism:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512968

I swear I wasn't originally jealous of Viswanathan's big contract, because what's to be jealous of? So some college sophomore writes a shitty book that everyone wants to read -- I do believe any of us could've written such a book as college, if not high school, sophomores. If anything, it made me sad (once again, or still) that that's what people want to read these days. But then, after the plagiarism accusation, when she came out and said she'd read both _Sloppy Firsts_ and _Second Helpings_, and that these books really "spoke to me," I thought, okay, this girl needs to be taken down. To find nothing better to copy, when Dickens and Nabokov and Rushdie and Ian McEwan exist or have existed, now THAT'S a crime.

5) This and other poems by Nancy Willard:

http://maggles.stumbleupon.com/

6) The Martin Amis story in the most recent New Yorker -- okay, at one point I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it because terror clogged my throat and I couldn't swallow my mochi (by the by, do you know that choking on mochi is one of the most common causes of death among old people in Japan?) -- also, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can list this story as a thing that makes me "happy." Nevertheless, there it is. A thing that keeps me awake at night.

Won't you all come out to play? If not with lists, with amusements of your own?

small bright things

When I move away, I’ll get my own blog and it will be nothing but useless lists. Until then, link-lists (with little to no book/writing related content) and the occasional embarrassing comment will likely be my only contribution to this fine robotblog:

1. Michael Chabon writes about the good his MFA program, with its “regular exposure to the healing rays of healthy disillusion, and in particular the hard-earned skepticism of grown women,” did him. I very much like the end, where Chabon manages to mention Doritos and the smallness of our lives in a single paragraph. (The Doritos-&-life-is-finite combo. actually seems a pretty natural match. Doritos totally freak me out though, for reasons I won’t get into here). [Via Bookslut]
2. I read “Black Hole” by Charles Burns this weekend and was mesmerized. Any recommendations of other graphic-novel/comic series that I should immediately read (besides Optic Nerve, Strangers in Paradise, and Jimmy Corrigan—my only other genuine forays into the genre) would be most welcome.
3. None of the aforementioned comics brings me as much glee as my new favorite. I sure hope there is more to come, and soon. (Click the pictures to make them bigger.)
   
4. The main squeeze and I saw “Thank You for Smoking”last weekend and both dug it (a two thumbs up from the Bizness/Squeeze duo is far rarer than the Ebert/Roeper variety). It was quick and fun; I’m not sure how long it will stick with me, particularly since it seemed to last a little over six minutes. The Michigan theater screening room was totally packed and while I love watching funny movies in full theaters (never were burp jokes funnier than when I watched “Monster’s Inc.” seated behind a class full of kindergartners) the laughter was so riotous as to obscure some of the very hilarity it was in response to. It reminded me of concerts where you can’t hear the singer’s banter over the fans. Let Debbie Gibson talk, people! (Hers was the first concert where I personally experienced this frustration).
5. As hard as I try, and the Squeeze can attest to the fact that I have been trying very, very hard, I cannot grow tired of this song.
   

Please: tell me about the ephemeral pleasures that have recently made you glad for your short, orangecheesefood-fingered time on Earth.

in the what of experience?

This is a two-part question, first "deep" then shallow. Does anyone know anything about Lawrence Durrell? I'm asking because I have this quotation from him on my little bulletin board, and I've been thinking about it lately. I can't decide if it's really inspiring or sort of obnoxious in a self-help kind of way. Here it is:

"Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might surprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough."

It's from Durrell's book Justine, which is part of a four-book series called The Alexandria Quartet. I have never read these books. Maybe a character who's a real jerk says this statement, or maybe it's meant sarcastically. I know it as the epigraph from one of my favorite collections of poems: Order, or Disorder by Amy Newman.

I like the quotation, I think, because it is something I want very much to believe. I dislike it a little because it's so instructional: be more loving! You are not patient enough! These are concerns I have already, so I don't need Mr. Durrell to let me know how my lack of patience means not only that I'll never be a good kindergarten teacher, but also that I'll never surprise the order of experience.

If you've read Durrell, should I tackle this four-book series? Is he worth it? And what do you think about this order & coherence idea? Isn't it what really good writing does--brings a little order to the chaos?

The shallow: does anyone tape The West Wing? Because I really want to watch last week's episode where Josh and Donna FINALLY made out.

Someone Please Make This Man a Hero of a Novel, or a Poem, or a Story

You'll know who I'm talking about.

I've been reading Jesus' Son again for one reason or another, and when I came across this following paragraph it struck me as being the whole purpose of the collection, as though everything written before it existed just to give this passage its maximum effect, and everything written afterwards is merely a fuller cushion. And not necessarily because it, the passage, is in itself the most brilliant...although maybe it is...but just: this seems to be the whole point of what Johnson was trying to do here, here in these stories, arguably among the best put together in our lifetimes....

But without further ado:

There was a guy with something like multiple sclerosis. A perpetual spasm forced him to perch sideways on his wheelchair and peer down along his nose at his knotted fingers. This condition had descended on him suddenly. His wife was divorcing him. He was only thirty-three, I believe he said, but it was hard to guess what he told about himself because he really couldn't talk anymore, beyond clamping his lips repeatedly around his protuding tongue while groaning.

No more pretending for him! He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson, I really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I Likes Chocomuts

This post isn't really about chocomuts, or chocolates for that matter, so move along now if that's what you're expecting or hoping for. I only borrowed the title from the "American Voices" column in The Onion, in which they ask the same six faces (with different names) every week what they think of a particular current issue? Anyway, one time the question was about US-Cuba relations or something and one of the guys said, "Uh, I likes chocomuts."

But what I really wanted to post about was this: remember when Jonathan Franzen was here, and he said -- either at his round table or his lecture, I can't remember which -- that the greatest novels are all comic novels? It emerged, subsequently, that he had people like Gogol in mind, but the comment got me thinking (I know, I've been thinking about it a long time). There are some amazing comic novels out there that say profound, uncomical things -- even if we want to talk only about 20th-century-and-later books, _Midnight's Children_ comes immediately to mind (or, really, any of Rushdie's books, but I don't know whether the rest of them qualify as great novels), as does Peter Carey's work in general.... But recently, for reasons of my own, I've been taking another look at _Atonement_, which I consider a great novel, and not comic at all. I also think it's one of the most moving novels I've ever read, as is _The Story of Lucy Gault_, also patently un-comic (if you haven't read these, bear with me, because I'll soon be getting to a point for which you won't have to have read them, and you'll probably come up with lots of examples I haven't read).

The point is this: I can't really think of a novel that combines the high humor and boundless energy of _Midnight's Children_ with the cathartic, punch-in-the-gut, let-me-just-lie-here-and-cry-for-a-week sadness of _Atonement_. _The God of Small Things_, at the mere mention of whose title our esteemed faculty (and many other people besides) shudder (but oh, I love that book, I do!) comes pretty close, I think (though how comic is its comedy to people unfamiliar with South Asian culture? I can't really tell). But I'm having trouble coming up with another recent novel that combines comedy and tragedy like that. Is it even possible to write a novel that's both comic in the grandest sense and moving in the best way? Because I just love bawling when I get to the end of a novel, but I also love wit and silliness and nonsense and playing with words, and I love a writer who can show off those aspects of his or her writerly personality. I really do. As writers, do we always have to choose? Is this a very foolish question with very obvious answers? Am I missing something? Are your bookshelves full of flawless tragicomic novels?

corazones dulces

happy heart day, robotdinosaurswithhumanhearts. you can make your own chalky masterpiece here. i thought about trying to make this literary by asking for your favorite love poems or love stories or romances depicted in film, but really i just wanted to post this cute heart. i'd still love to hear what you love, though. xo.

Post about the Black Eyed Peas. And also misery.

Hey all. It's Rachel L. I won't type out my full last name for fear of exposing this secret little blog to the millions who have me on Google Alert. Bizness just invited me, and although I was initially certain I'd have nothing of value to contribute besides inappropriate jokes and updates on 2 Live Crew, I find myself already wanting to ask a really depressing question: what are your thoughts on writing and misery? I'm going to be frank: writing poetry depresses the shit out of me and for all of the obvious reasons: Introspection ends in the recognition of futility. Introspection magnifies and mythicizes one's mistakes. Writing often requires analysis of the past and all the bad memories thereof. Even good memories are often painful, in the way that snowfall and christmas lights and thinking about perfect fishing trips with your brother as a child make you cry. Beauty is painful. The sublime is painful. My arm is painful. Oh wait, that's because I did a cheesy aerobics class last night...or IS it? DAMN you, poetry!

Maybe this is specific to poetry and not fiction? Maybe this is specific only to me. Maybe this is specific only to people who would be depressed anyway, and writing only exacerbates it. But I feel like I remember being happier before I wrote poetry (though maybe that's because I was young and lithe and didn't have hormones). I wonder if what would make me happier is thinking about those fishing trips, watching the snow, crying, and leaving it alone.

Did I even ask a question? Oh, writing and misery? Does writing make you miserable? If so, what ever will you do about it? Anyone ever consider just stopping? There's also the entire side issue of writing making you miserable not for the personal, psychic crises it causes, but because it's so difficult not to sound like yourself...or for me not to sound like myself...which is taxing and sad. I give up. Thoughts?

Glad I can bring so much mirth to my inaugural post! I absolutely must end this on a lighter note. Hey did anyone hear that that song "My Humps" was the most successful download campaign ever...or something? I have no absolutely no documentation of this, nor can I cite where I heard it...or if I dreamed it...which would be alarming....

Love,
R