Are anti-prizes as subjective as prizes?

The Guardian announces the 'Not the Booker' Prize. The winner will receive a mug, but the real purpose of the contest--entrants and winners culled from the internet masses--will be to evaluate the merit of prestigious awards. Writes Sam Jordison:

So the question that arises now, is – can we do any better? Does the blogging crowd have more wisdom than the panel? Can we come up with a more interesting shortlist than the judges? Can we pick a better winner? Or will we, indeed, choose the same one? Let's find out.

This will be interesting to follow in the next few weeks. The Booker is, IMHO, a particularly deadly bore as book prizes go, although it does go to women a fair amount. Here is this years longlist--although it has some "heavyweights" on it it just makes me want to snooze, for some reason ;)

The dumbest Harry Potter article of all time

An article by a yuppie mom complaining about the DRINKING in Harry Potter? This is totally overprotective parenting gone wild.
NYTimes fail.

People are mocking it all over the interwebs, but I had to join in. Ha ha ha ha!

Dorian Gray Trailer: "I have seen my soul..."

"there will be a price."

I've read 2/3 of the novel and seen it performed as a play in Belfast of all places... not sure how it will do in what clearly seems to be an amped up version onscreen, but it does have some good lookin' dudes in it.



h/t to the Period Drama blogosphere

The Glimpses of the Moon

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you're comfortable dealing with the assumptions Edith Wharton makes about money and the classes who have it (basically the premise that the green stuff is worth writing about, thinking about, being torn up about, etc etc) then her often-painful observations are beyond brilliant. And what carries you through those observations is this exquisite sense of longing and desire that permeates each page. At the beginning it's more of a longing to escape, but in her later novels it's distinctly sexual and romantic--possibly related to the eye-opening affair she had in Paris.

As I've started delving deeper into her oeuvre, I've noticed a lot of things changed from the House of Mirth onward. Her sense that the social order will be victorious doesn't change, but becomes less fatalistic and more bitter. There's a hint of rebelliousness. Such is the case with "The Glimpses of the Moon" a simple, less plotted but very compelling romance between two characters who, as many have said, have a resemblance to Lily and Lawrence of the House of Mirth. Suzy is a fine person who has been dulled by having to charm and sneak her way through life, living on the kindness of richer friends. Nick is a detached observer who is nonetheless uninterested in directly challenging the social set he sponges off. Attracted to each other and chummy, they make a pact to get married and have a one-year period of paradise, drifting from big European house to big house, counting on the kindness given to honeymooners. If either comes across a more advantageous match, they agree to break things off amicably.

At first their plan works out beautifully, but then they each face a crisis of conscience as the cost of living off a system of lies becomes clear. Meanwhile, the kind of moneyed-matches that might rid them of their mooching habits forever begin to appear.

SPOILERS

While the book is lighter in some ways than her other books, even the "happy ending" has a note of compromise and tragedy to it.

END SPOILERS

But it's a beautiful little book with some wonderful truisms about trying to live a somewhat moral life in the midst of a society that seeks to corrupt you at every turn. Wharton sweeps you along with her strong characterizations and sense of dread and desire even with very few twists and turns. A great read for those who like drawing-room stories or novels of manners.

View all my reviews >>

Juicy Literary Feuds and Rivalries

In time for a new book about the Hemmingway-Fitzgerald frenemy-ship Carolyn Kellogg does a great job summing up some famous literary feuds and rivalries... or more often, sickly-close relationships gone sour.

Mentioned in the post:
*Verlaine vs Rimbaud [EBC pick: Verlaine],
*Dostoevsky vs Turvenev v Tolstoy [EBC pick: Tolstoy],
*Melville vs Hawthorne [toss-up]
*Kerouac vs Ginsberg [EBC pick: Ginsberg all the way] and more.

To which I add:
*C. Bronte vs. Austen (although it's one sided, with Charlotte B. dissing Jane A while the later was posthumous) [toss-up, obvs],
*Wordsworth vs. Coleridge [EBC pick: Coleridge of course],
and perhaps my favorite,
*Henry Fielding vs. Samuel Richardson. I can't pick a side here, but I just find it so amazing and hilarious that the libertine HF wrote TWO full-length novels, "Shamela" and "Joseph Andrews" just to mock poor puritan SR.

Any feuds I'm forgetting? I'm sure Alexander Pope must have been pissed at someone.

Fighting words: Six classic literary feuds

from Jacket Copy - Jul 26, 2009

This Week's NYTBR broken down by gender: lookin' ugly

This Week's Issue:
July 26, 2009

Cover: male author, female critic

authors

male: |||||||||||||| (12)
female: ||||| (5)

Reviewers/bylines

male: ||||||| (7)
female: || (2)

Question of the Weekend: Broadway, Much?

My wonderful HLP knows I liked musicals so he kindly bought me home a copy of the original Ethel Merman Gypsy cast recording--which is exactly the version I grew up singing and dancing to as a little kid. I spent much for the morning soft-footing it around the apartment, bellowing "Let me entertain you!" in appreciation.

It may be incongruous with my penchant for Victorian novels, feminism, and hippie music, but golden age musicals are my not-so-secret passion. Along with Gypsy and South Pacific, my faves are Guys and Dolls, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Peter Pan, Show Boat, She Loves Me, Oliver! The Most Happy Fella, Kiss Me, Kate, and the other Rogers & Hammerstein gems.

I'm less into more contemporary musicals--hate Andrew Lloyd Webber and have more limited appreciation for Les Mis and Rent.

Do you like musical theater, readers, and if so, how does your taste in them compare to mine?

Bright Star Trailer

and h/t to tweep @kafkatronic for reminding me to post THIS!

Alice In Wonderland Trailer

h/t to Zach for reminding me to post this!

Frazzled Question of The Week: How's the Summer Reading Going?

Greetings, readers.

I am buried beneath two interesting but involved projects for two different news outlets right now, so I'm afraid posting will be light to nonexistent through the weekend. I'm bummed because my summer reading and writing projects are kind of stalled by said projects, but I'm hoping once the smoke clears on Friday they will be back on track... I may even get some time to plop in the sun with a book, hopefully The Glimpses of The Moon, a lesser, lighter, later Wharton novel which I'm absolutely entranced by.

How's your summer reading going? Read any surprising books? Immersed in junk beach-reads that have derailed your plans to conquer Proust? Or are you methodically checking the books off your summer list?

Share your tales below.

Deep Thoughts Re: the Harry Potter Canon Via G-chat

...with HLP's sister/ friend 'o'mine Molly.

WARNING: Major Harry Potter 6+7 Spoilers ahead:

Sarah's G-ghat away message:just wasted my morning re-reading key chapters of Deathly Hallows Invited

Molly: hahah i just wasted two days doing that!

was this for an article or something or just for good old fashioned fun

me: no no just because the movie made me want to revisit all that stuff

[discussion of the movie ensues]

2:28 PM me: your brother and i have been debating the end of deathly hallows

Molly: haha

me: do you feel like the part where harry comes back to life after accepting he's going to die is explained enough?

it's kind of hard to swallow

2:29 PM we were looking over the scene in limbo or whatever where dumbledore explains it

Molly: yeah well what doesnt make sense

is that if he was the "master" of death because of the the hallows and because he had accepted his own death

then why did he have the interlude w/ dumbledore at all?

2:30 PM me: yeah exactly

Molly: i guess the point is that he got to choose? because he had mastered death

me: and the thing about voldemort taking his bloodand entwining them

is a weaker explanation than the master of death thing

Molly: yes definitely

and it doesn't make sense

me: and then during the battle he throws in the idea that his "protective charm" of sacrificing himself for everyone at hogwarts has saved them

Molly: that voldemort "killing" harry

2:31 PM would have only resulted in the death of the part of voldemort in him

like that squealing devil baby

me: yeah exactly

Molly: why did that die?

me: yeah freaky devil baby

Molly: yeah the protective charm over hogwarts thing is ridiculous

2:32 PM because its impossible that lily and harry are the only people in history to die to save someone else

me: yeah she threw in too many things there at the last minute

Molly: so why isnt that like common knowledge that the killing curse doesn't work on people who've had someone die for them?

yeah i agree - its too much

i mean frankly the hallows thing at all

2:33 PM is like enough to add in the last book

2:34 PM me: yeah she should have just made that clear

Molly: yeah agreed

me: and left the other stuff out

2:35 PM the scene in the final movie when harry announces to voldy that he is the master of the elder wand is going to rock though

Molly: 2:36 PM yeah that is gonna rock

that whole last thing

I really hope the movie version lives up to it

when I was rereading it too

Molly: hahahah

the line when Harry has accepted that hes gonna die and hes walking out to the woods

me: and he asks "does it hurt?"

2:37 PM Molly: omg YES that whole part

and when the mom says hes so brave

but what I was gonna say

is when he says he wishes he could see the weasleys one more time, but that if he looked at them "would he ever be able to stop looking?"

i burst into tears just as hard as the first time i read that

that and "does it hurt"

2:38 PM killed me

me: yeah that scene is so poignant

2:39 PM it's funny isn't it that both her and tolkein are essentially writing these books whose theme turns out to be death?

2:40 PM Molly: yeah totally!

2:41 PM they both seem to be about like the fate of the world and the destruction of evil

but turn out to be abt reconciling yourself to dying

me: yeah man

we are so deep
me: even though they both have their share of resurrections, it can't stop the march of time2:42 PM Molly: hahaha

me: no it's so true though

Molly: and on the opposite end of the spectrum

Molly: the fact that harry named his son albus severus made me even angrier the second time around

me: yeah agreed

Molly: that whole epilogue

me: FUCK SNAPE

Molly: is embarrassing to read

me: fine he helped them out somewhat

but he was still a royal asshole

Molly: yeah he was NOT the bravest man harry knew

2:45 PM me: he was a creep

2:47 PM a pervy little lily-loving creep

Molly: hahah

me: yo i can i publish this g-chat, abridged, on my blog?

2:48 PM Molly: hahah obv

the second time i read it i also cried hardcore at: dobby's death

2:49 PM and the end when kreacher is fighting

i fucking love kreacher

all the house elf stuff is actually really good

me: yeahhhh i never really had the dobby's death reaction that others did

BUT i did love that scene at the end

Molly: hahaha WHAT

me: i mean it was sad! but it happened so fast

my dad and my best friend julia were devastated and so was simon

2:50 PM but i was too busy speeding through trying to find out what happened next to cry

i am a heartless heartless person

Molly: hahahah

its because you think house elves are beneath us

me: yeahhh

2:51 PM although when my people read the S.P.E.W stuff they all start comparing me to hermione

but i guess im more interested in saving them in theory than in practice

Molly: ahhahah

yeah whereas i didnt give a fuck abt spew

2:52 PM but poor lil dobbbbbby!!

me: "harry...potter..."

Molly: hhaha

harry potter must not die!

yeah.

me:that bellatrix is a sick fuckstabbin house elves

2:53 PM me: avada kedavra'ing siriusMolly: all the deaths in hp7 actually

are like way below the belt

she picks the meanest possible deaths

me: i know

lupin!!!!!

Molly: dobby who is so brave and tiny

and george

me: FRED

Molly: fred?

yeah

NOT OK

me: FRED

2:54 PM hahahaha

Molly: and yeah lupin and tonks!

right after they have teddy!!

that still makes me so mad

how she just puts that in as like a footnote

oh yeah, theyre dead too

me: i guess she did that to complete the cycle or something

another orphan

me: whom harry will help raise just as lupin helped raise him

2:55 PM Molly: and harry can be the godfather that sirius couldnt because of azkaban

yeah

but still

it wouldnt have been as bad if she had just given them a death scene worthy of them

like they are not thaaat below the belt

me: yeah i agree

Molly: but fred and dobby were way. harsh.

me: like have them kill some death eater

2:56 PM Molly: yeah cause you know that when they died

me: why couldn't she kill percy instead of Fred?

Molly: they were bringing death eaters down fighting

so why couldnt we have seen that? so at least their deaths meant something

yeah

i think it was supposed to be molly

it was supposed to be molly and hagrid

2:57 PM and then she switched it to fred and lupin and tonks

i thought in the movie

2:58 PM draco malfoy totally lived up to draco of the books

3:00 PM me: yes he was great

in the other movies 2, he embodies both his arrogance and his cowardice

3:01 PM he could be a a total nyc prep school a-hole

3:10 PM Molly: hahah yeah totally

FINIS

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: What Did You Think?

Just got back from my showing and WOW. This may have been the best yet. Share your thoughts in the comments, readers, and I will add mine in the morning once I recover.


Critical roundup below via google reader:

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

The sixth film in J.K. Rowling's series has beautiful special effects, and something even more rare: Magic

from Salon - 11:57 PM (1 hour ago)

Harry Potter: the verdicts

few seem willing to condemn David Yates's second effort in the director's chair out of hand.Most seem of the opinion that Half-Blood Prince is a perfectly entertaining if somewhat work...

from guardian.co.uk home | guardian.co.uk - Jul 9, 2009 12:17 PM

Half-Blood Prince Suffers From Lack Of Action, Emma Watson's Hotness [Critical Mass]

Critics say Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is entertaining and well acted, they also worry that its teenage stars are now too attractive. Half-Blood Prince opened today and has already earned $22.2 million from midnight showings last night, making it the biggest midnight gross of all time, according to Variety.

from Jezebel - 5:23 PM (7 hours ago)

Unaccustomed Earth

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For those who love Lahiri's previous works, the first group of stories in this latest collection are up to par, full of the breathtaking tragedy of everyday life: aging, illness, the march of time. Her treatment of the immigrant experience and the separation of the generations is still there, but her themes have broadened Her characters are real, from new moms to elderly travelers to awkward grad students. Her prose is close to perfect, more noticeably stylized than in The Namesake but still fluid, rhythmic and accessible.

All that being said, [SPOILERS AHEAD] the book's final novella had the kind of weird tragic ending that made me feel like I'd been cheated or duped by the author. I felt it to be sort of a nihilistic cop-out that gave the whole novella a bit of a sour taste.

HIGHLIGHT THE TEXT BELOW IF YOU WANT MY THOUGHTS ON THE ENDING:

Basically, she sticks one of her characters on Phuket Beach during the Tsunami. I felt that this was a totally weird and unnecessary way to end a story that would have been plenty tragic and horrifying without such a gratuitious finale.



Still, no one's perfect, and despite this failing Lahiri may be as close as any writer gets in my mind....so still a collection worth reading.
View all my reviews >>

Anyone Want to Do an EBC Book Club?

Hi faithful readers. While cleaning out my apartment yesterday I found a trade paperback of Daphne DuMaurier's Jamaica Inn that I picked up as a beach read. Its extremely cheap price and quick, summery nature got me thinking that maybe some of you would like to read it too and then reconvene towards the end of the summer to discuss it, book-club style without the deepness. Nothing formal, just a fun way to read a good mystery and chat about it, compare it to Rebecca and talk about how creepy it was. I won't be able to start it until next week at the earliest which would give people time to purchase it.

If this interests you or you have a better book idea let me know. Otherwise I'll plunge into it on my own and review it as I always do, with no hard feelings ;)

The Blythes of Ingleside are Back

Fans of Lucy Maud Montgomery, rejoice! My twittersphere sent me to this guardian article about a new book in the "Anne " canon due to be published in the fall by Penguin Canada.

The Blythes Are Quoted was intended to be the ninth volume in Montgomery's series about her heroine Anne Shirley, she of the freckled face, green-grey eyes and the "two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair". Featuring 15 short stories about Anne as an adult and her family, it also includes a series of vignettes between the stories – poems "by" Anne and her son Walter, who dies during the first world war – and sketches of Anne and Gilbert Blythe discussing the poems.

The book is divided into two sections, set before and after the first world war, and according to Penguin sees Montgomery "experimenting with storytelling methods in ways she had never attempted before" as she moves between prose, dialogue and poetry.

.....

The book looks set to reveal a darker side to the author, with its publisher promising themes of "adultery, illegitimacy, misogyny, revenge, murder, despair, bitterness, hatred, and death – usually not the first terms associated with LM Montgomery".

Rilla of Ingleside, until now the final book in the series, was always one of my favorites* despite its darkness. I have a distinct memory of sitting in the back of my parents' car on the way to Maine reading it for the second or third time (yes, I used to read in the car all the time, I was a freak) and bawling. It was one of the first really sad books I ever read, along with Little Women, and even though it's jingoistic it really is a wonderfully vivid description of what the "home front" of a foreign war is like, the agonizing waiting and wondering and the patriotic one-upsmanship that sweeps communities. It's hard to see Anne as a sad grownup having lost a child, but just as my other favorite YA author Madeleine L'Engle does when she writes about Meg Murray's kids, Montgomery unflinchingly shows us the march of time in both its happiness and pain.

I cannot wait for this book!

*I also love Anne of the Island cause of the romantic stuff.

This Week's NYTBR broken down by gender

July 12th, 2009 (adult books only)


Cover: female-penned book, female reviewer

reviewers:
male: ||||||| (7)
female: |||| (4)

authors reviewed:
male: ||||||||| (9)
female: |||||| (6)

Question of the Week: Which Books Would You De-Canonize?

Via Jacket Copy, I came across this literary site that's decided on ten classics NOT worth reading, including a bunch of books that I kinda agree are overrated, at least literarily speaking, and some that I think are definitely not. IMHO, the sage tomes they chose to eliminate include works by Woolf, Dos Passos, DeLillo, even Kerouac. I also agree that A Tale of Two Cities is not Dickens at his best, at all (he's better as a revolutionary himself than a reactionary!) However I'd question other excisions they made--The Road rocks! Maybe my readers vehemently disagree, though.

Anyway, take a look at their post, and then come back here and let us know which books you'd clip from the universal "must read" list. Wish you could get back those hours you spent pushing through the dense prose of a vaunted classic? Get your revenge below.

Bronte-LOLs

get me off this freaking moor

via Hark! A Vagrant on 7/10/09

Click through if you're a fan of the Yorkshire-bred literary family.

h/t to my google reader peepz.

Miss Marple

We caught the first Miss Marple last night-- "A Pocketful of Rye" guest-starring EBC hero du jour Mr. Darcy Arthur Clenham Matthew MacFayden in a silly mustache as a decently-intelligent inspector (though no match for Marple, of course).
"Pocketful"also featured Elinor Dashwood Hattie Morahan in a minor role, as well as Freddy Honeychurch Rupert Graves as the prodigal son of the deceased patriarch, home from Africa just in time to see the inspectors swarm in to solve his father's murder.

As in many Christie novels, the murder(s) echo a nursery rhyme, but as to be expected in the hands of Dame Agatha there are a number of twists along the way that belie the rhyme's seeming simplicity and reveal the depths of human psychological murkiness, or something like that. You know why AC rocks.... I'm tired! It's been a long 4th of July weekend!

Summing it all up, it was an atmospherically-accurate adaptation of a good book that I'm pretty sure I read :)... Anyway anyone else watching "Six by Agatha?" And did you like this ep or were you too distracted by Arthur Clenham's facial hair?

This Week's NYTBR broken down by gender: Surpsingly less awful

Goodish news!

It's inching closer to 50-50 gender parity in the NYTBR this week (July 5th), with the cover and fiction-chronicles endpaper slanting male but the in-between pages maybe leaning a bit female. Check it out/fact-check me--some good reviews in there too.

Bylines:

male: |||||||| (7)
female: |||||| (6)

authors reviewed:

male: ||||||||| (8)
female: |||||| (6)

Question of the Weekend: Is There Such A Thing as The Great American Novel...

and if there is one, which is it?

Is it To Kill A Mockingbird, Huck Finn, Invisible Man or Beloved for exploring race relations and the fallout from slavery, which is the ultimate American crime and eternal blot on our history?

The House of Mirth or The Great Gatsby for revealing the insider/outsider dynamic and the downside to American obsession with class mobility?

The Scarlet Letter or the Age of Innocence for plumbing the depths of Puritan prudery?

The Grapes of Wrath? The Sound and the Fury? My Antonia? Moby Dick?

If I had to vote I'd probably pick Beloved, Gatsby and the Scarlet Letter because I think they hit at three essential American themes and they're fairly accessible despite their genius, but I can totally see arguments for any of the above, plus a host of others. What do you think?

And which great American novels do you want to read, or which couldn't you care less about?

[Note: moved up from Friday]
Happy holiday.

4th of July America-a-thon: "These Yet to Be United States" Angelou

These Yet To Be United States

~

Tremors of your network
cause kings to disappear.
Your open mouth in anger
makes nations bow in fear.

Your bombs can change the seasons,
obliterate the spring.
What more do you long for ?
Why are you suffering ?

You control the human lives
in Rome and Timbuktu.
Lonely nomads wandering
owe Telstar to you.

Seas shift at your bidding,
your mushrooms fill the sky.
Why are you unhappy ?
Why do your children cry ?

They kneel alone in terror
with dread in every glance.
Their nights are threatened daily
by a grim inheritance.

You dwell in whitened castles
with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children's throats.

-Maya Angelou

4th of July America-a-thon: "Let America be America Again" Hughes

Langston Hughes - Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!

4th of July America-a-thon: "America" Ginsberg

America

Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

4th of July America-a-thon: "Long, Too Long America," Whitman

Long, Too Long America

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and
prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children
en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse
really are?)

by: Walt Whitman

Moby Dick

Speaking of the Great American Novel.

This is a hard one to sum up... but I will try to scatter my disparate thoughts in hopes that there's a kernel of wisdom in there.

Moby Dick is notoriously lofty even though it's about a very dirty, corporeal thing--whaling--and indeed, a lot of it was dry and had to be muscled through, particularly the parts that get down into the nitty-gritty of whales, whaling, ships and all the traditions therein. Ishmael/Melville were big on refuting stereotypes and rumors, which must have abounded at the time.

However, the underlying story and Melville's use of language was as incredible and out there as I'd been told, ranging from Shakespearean to Bilblical with an authentic American touch. I adored the first third, in which we follow Ishmael (and his new BFF Queequeg) from New Bedford to Nantucket and out to sea. There were some incredibly memorable scenes, including one in a chowder house (Cod or Clam!) and of course, the sea-metaphor-laced sermon in the New England church. This first part was certainly awesome to read in Nantucket.

Then of course the final, gripping few chapters that bring the voyage of the Pequod to its fated end were devastatingly tragic and wonderful, with some incredible sentences that linger, melodically in the brain.

But what was most surprising about the book was the wit, humor, puns, philosophical musings and sly references tucked in everywhere by Melville, the former so much so that they made me chuckle. This was a pleasant gift hidden within the book's thick pages that makes me doubly glad I've finally tackled this beast of a novel!

Another Pride and Prejudice Parody

via my tweep @bethlovesbolly

@fellowette P&P with 20th century dances at the ball - SO fun. Hard to look at Darcy the same now. http://trunc.it/nqh5 starting at 2:10

The video starts around 2:10 and goes for less than a minute, but the attention to detail is very funny. The brits take their Pride and Prejudice references seriously.

Dead Until Dark

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

My review>
rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked up the first Sookie Stackhouse novel in the middle of Moby Dick to give myself a beach-read break (no one should go on a beach vacation without paging through a single beach read, even if the major novel you are otherwise reading is about The Sea).


Anyway, although it started off slow, I got into Dead Until Dark quickly : it's funny, sassy, sexy, well-paced and mysterious. Like the show it's the basis for, True Blood, it's all very absurd, particularly the fact that the townspeople in Bon Temps aren't all locked up in psych wards with extreme PTSD, but I digress...with a much stronger, funnier, more self-realized heroine than Twilight but the same "I'm protecting YOu" no "I'm protecting You" dynamic as those teen novels (and lots of very explicit sex), it's got all the heat of the Edward-Bella relationship without the ick factor. Sookie, southern waitress in short-shorts who loves beauty products through she is, actually considers the gendered implications of her relationship with Bill and values her independence. And then she has hot vampire sex with him and gets bitten. WORD.

So if you're looking for a breezy summer read that doesn't kill brain cells, I say don't be afraid to give Sookie a spin ;)

Thanks to Molly for lending me the book!

View all my reviews.

Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout


Everyone's been talking about Olive Kitteridge since it's been racking up the awards this year so I decided to see what the fuss was all about. "A novel in stories," OK consists of 13 interlocked tales that all involve--in one degree or another--acerbic, judgmental, funny yet profoundly sad New Englander Olive Kitteridge. Each story has its origin in her small Maine town, so the woods, small shops and restaurants, and even the sea of all play a background yet quietly forceful role . Sometimes Olive is the main character or a secondary character, and we get to see her in all her mistrustful, snappish (but occasionally thoughtful) glory, and other times she's mentioned in passing or comes into a room briefly. But most of the stories that don't revolve around her are as poignant as the ones that show the progression of her life, not a happy one but with small redemptions.

I have to say that although "small Maine town" sounds quaint, like Richard Russo, Strout is focused more on the cold granite side of New England life than the bucolic side :). The stories are about mortality, distance and separation and the imperfections of daily life. The narration is not at all obtrusive while being quite well-written-- and most of the tales really tug at the heartstrings. I definitely recommend it for a sober summer read that will stick with you long after you turn the last page.

Pamela

Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson

My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was so busy catching up on all my vacation books that I totally forgot to blog my final thoughts on this 18th century behemoth.

What to say about a book that treats virginity as the most important quality a woman has but is weirdly feminist in the agency and resistance it gives its perky heroine? A book that demonizes a tyrannical master as a would-be rapist and jailer and then turns him into a romantic hero? A book that embraces a cross-class marriage while avowing to preserve the distinction of rank? Only that the contradictory experience of reading it is exactly like the contradictions embedded within. It's remarkably funny, sly and clever in parts and ridiculously didactic and sentimental in others, incredibly quick and engaging in parts (particularly the beginning) and deadly dull in others, the characters are wild caricatures in some moments and sympathetic, fully-realized people in others.

In other words, it's the novel in the early stages of evolution, and it's fascinating. The reason one would read Pamela, as I did, was to see how clearly Richardson's influence is present in British literature of the century thereafter--and oh how evident it is in both Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte as well as many other of my faves. Pamela foreshadows the way class would be a dominant theme in the books that followed, the obsession with the condition of woman for the British novelist, and the country manor house as a vital setting for so much of literature that has ensued.

But what makes it stand out on its own, away from the importance of its legacy, is the strength Pamela Andrews' (later Mrs. B) voice throughout--funny, playful, earnest, and utterly unique, full of desires, petulance, and awareness of her audience. Goody-goody though she is, the girl has spunk, and you've got to love Richardson for creating her.


View all my reviews.

Last Week's Book Review, Broken Down by Gender

Again, an imperfect accounting--correct me if I'm wrong: This Week's Issue: June 21, 2009
Again, presented w/o comment, except for this link.

Cover: male author, male reviewer

Male authors: |||||||||||| (12)
Female authors: || (2)


Male reviewers: ||||||||| (9)
Female reviewers: ||||| (5)

Link-O-Rama: Katha Politt Says Poetry's Not Dead!

Here is Katha Politt, better known for her liberal-feminist rabble-rousing at The Naiton than for her award-winning poetry, on how we can support the neglected but vital art form'.

Anna breaks it down here.

I'm going to start printing a poem a week again. If you (my readers) have poems to recommend for this feature, let me know by sending me a line or dropping a comment. Which poets, eras, or genres have I neglected thus far?

Yours in verse,

F-ette.

Breathing Lessons

Catching up on my reading, part 1

Count me as a huge fan of Anne Tyler. Everything I've read by her--Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Amateur Marriage, The Accidental Tourist and A Patchwork Planet--has been totally breathtaking. So I thought this one, the book that finally netted Tyler her Pulitzer, would be the cream of the crop. While it was still masterful, I found it to actually be the least enjoyable of her books that I've read, mainly because her portrayal of two characters--husband and wife who absolutely cannot stop themselves from compulsively living their quirks and fucking up-- was too real and consequently painful.

The novel takes place over a single day, as Maggie and Ira Moran hit the road for a funeral of an old friend's husband, and make some unexpected stops along the way, including to drop in on their estranged daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Maggie is an extrovert--she strikes up intimate conversations with strangers all the time and can't help herself from telling little white lies and interfering where she shouldn't. Ira is quiet and no-nonsense, but can also be incredibly blunt in the name of honesty. Together they manage to make a mess of things. Tyler includes flashbacks that drift in and out of their marriage's past. It's an incredibly real, compelling, and honest portrait of a "good" marriage, in that although the couple is loyal and devoted, they have their own communication problems and bad patterns that the outside world sees better than they do. But they are both fundamentally decent people, so when Tyler ends the sad little story of their day with a hint of hope, it feels genuine. It comes from Maggie's boundless spirit of optimism.

Tyler's dedication to the truth of the average person's experience--pain, quirks, and all--is stunning, if sometimes hard to read.