Literary Snobs

Long, long ago (before the 2nd year of law school started) in a galaxy far, far away (Medford) I asked most of the people I know who like to read and think what is their definition of a "literary snob." I did that because it was implied that I, alone among earthlings not being in the throes of Deathly Hallows, possibly was one. A literary snob, not a deathly hallow.

So, I asked all the peoples just what exactly they think a literary snob is. Then I began compiling the answers. Unfortunately I never got around to revealing all the answers and the consensus. But this weekend I've been cleaning out my email inbox (duh, I have finals approaching, it's the perfect procrastination) and I came across those old e-mails. So I decided in my effort to attain the "nirvana of the clean inbox" (I first heard that phrase from Brian) I'd better post about this whole literary snob thing.

Turns out I think I am one. At least if you abide by my friends' definitions. Some of them actually hastened to point out that I am totally not a literary snob, but others threw my own words and actions back at me.

For example, Mordena from my Cambridge writing group, said, "Someone who refuses to read genre fiction on principle." Gulp. Yes, I remember saying that one day at the Hi-Rise cafe. But I meant it sardonically, if not sarcastically. Of course I read some genre fiction. One of my favorite authors is Nelson DeMille. (Hofstra alum, p.s.!) Although I am aware how much that sounds like, "Some of my best friends are genre authors..." Oh dear.

And my high school best friend Marcia said, "Someone who refuses to read Harry Potter!" which was pretty much a direct hit. I liked Mo's (also an Arizona friend) one-liner, "Someone who outright refuses to buy their books from Rite-Aid." I noticed that a lot of friends compared literary snobs to film snobs and music snobs in their efforts to define.

But here's the main thing I noticed: it's not as if anyone disagreed on what people would be literary snobs about. (preposition used at sentence end for dramatic impact) In fact, around ten people named names or cited examples, and most of those named Harry Potter as one of the names. Like Kim D., an L.A. Borders musician friend, who said that like music snobs, lit snobs are educated and active in their field and then upon finding that their preparation is of no monetary value take out their bitterness by being critical of those who make money in the field, such as "Kenny G is no Steve Coleman" and "J.K. Rowling is no C.S. Lewis." (Although they do both have pretty famous initials; what is it with those Brits?)

So at the risk of further cementing myself in literary snobdom, I must say it's interesting that everyone recognized the dichotomy. They'd say that the snob reads Tolstoy but not Harlequin, or Tom Wolfe but not Danielle Steel, or Moby Dick but not the "little black dress" novels, or literary magazine poetry but not mass markets. My point is, maybe we all recognize, without wanting to admit it, that some books are better than others. That maybe we can't define literature, but we know it when we see it.

So basically, I don't really care if you relegate me to literary snob status. I like reading, and I think some books are crap. (Note I didn't say they shouldn't exist; I just said they're crap.) I totally read and enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, but I AM proud that I was the first on my block to read it (Borders got advanced reader copies, so I was alerted early to the next big thing, and even got to meet Dan Brown three days after it came out). I joke about my "bestseller backlash," but anyone who has worked at a behemoth bookstore and seen the blatant shove-it-in-your-face (often-with-Oprah's-help) factor of the bestseller lists knows what I mean.

And speaking of Oprah, I think she has chosen some great books, at least when she was still reading fiction. Admitted fiction, that is. I was the biggest champion of Elizabeth Berg ever - but yes, I am proud that I knew her before Oprah did. As for Harry P - I DID read the first half of the first book -- twice -- and I am just not interested. It's not because it's popular, it's because I'm not interested. So does it convert me into a snob when I also make fun of how popular it is? I mean, I saw Titanic in the theater and enjoyed it, but I can still make fun of the Celine Dion song or the "I'm the king of the world!" nonsense at the Oscars. Harry Potter's an easy target, as are some of his fans. What can I say? I might add that I think J.K. might just be full of crap in this lawsuit she's brought against one of 'em.

I make fun of snobs, too, though. I particularly enjoyed making fun of the Harvard guy when I showed Brian around Harvard Square and we sat next to a self-important grad-student type who was reading at the bar in Grendel's. (Are we snobs for enjoying the name of the bar? Or not any longer now that Angelina Jolie has had her way with Beowulf?) Brian and I still fondly recall that guy, who gave off a "Does it get any better than me?" vibe.

But the thing is, I can also make fun of myself. I love the cheese-tacular things I love but I self-deprecate with the best of them. And yeah, I generally don't go looking for new books in genre fiction, because they're not my personal preference. Neither is "Business Life" nor "Gardening Essays." But I adored The Orchid Thief, and I confidently make fun of Who Moved My Cheese?

Thus concludes the examination of my literary snobbery and/or lack thereof. (Unless you want to comment.) I will end with the words of wise John Frank, whom I worked with in L.A. when he was cafe manager at Borders:

"A literary snob, to me, is someone who won't read Stephen King, Anne Rice, Sidney Sheldon, Dean Koontz, Neil Simon, or any other big name writer who sells plenty of books the common folks like to read. However what they don't remember is that 500 years from now Neil Simon will be remembered as the Shakespeare of our time, Stephen King will be remembered as a master of his genre, etc. etc. etc..."

Zipless Jest

NOW FINISHED: El bosque de los pigmeos de Isabel Allende
NOW READING: Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
NOW NOT READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

I suppose I should also point out that my first final is in two weeks and two days and I am plunging headlong into all things review and studying. So it's not as if I'm reading much of Erica. Although I was pleased to see this in last week's New Yorker. Girl is still relevant. Woo hoo! I am rather enjoying the book. As with most things created before I was born, it doesn't strike me as partiuclarly scandalous; shock and awe just don't endure, I guess.

What I like about Fear of Flying isn't that Isadora/Erica is willing to "get real" about men, sex, marriage, affairs, orgasms, and the like -- or at least that's what she tells herself/us as she narrates this little European escapade and its frenzy of flashbacks -- but that it is so literary! There must be hundreds of literary allusions. In fact, I think there might be thousands and I am only getting hundreds. A girl can only be so well-read, you know. Especially if one's literary blog projects are so totally always on hold because of silly ol' LAW SCHOOL. That, or a thousand page Infinite Joke...or Jest...or something. Ha.

Thought: Erica Jong and David Foster Wallace having a few beers together (and/or sitting around taking hits from the bong), discussing literature and life. Hmmm...

Or did I actually mean to say "Finite"...

now reading: El bosque de los pigmeos de Isabel Allende
now not reading: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

I have missed Nadia and Alexander! aka Aguila y Jaguar. El Bosque de los Pigmeos is the third in Allende's young adult series in which these two have adventures all around the world. I've read the series en espanol but I urge you to read them even if you do all your reading in English. They are clever and creative and fun and heartwarming and have good messages about environmentalism, respect for other people and lands, judgment, spirituality, and so on. GOOD stuff. Plus some of the characters are super sardonic. I've had this one sitting around for a while and was really excited to start reading it the other day. In the first book they were deep in the Amazon, in the second an isolated kingdom in the Himalaya, and now Africa. ("Bosque" means forest, "pigmeos" is pygmies.) I adore these books.

What about Infinite Jest? Well, it's not over but let's just say we're taking a break. Yes, I do mean that the way it sounds (as in, relationship code for "it really might be over.") There may still be a chance, but David Foster Wallace has disappointed me greatly and it might be better if we just go our separate ways. I have some friends who are encouraging me not to give up, but I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do.

Don't forget all the Con Law reading I have to do, though, too! What a thrill that is.

i

now reading: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

I have just made a shocking discovery. Or at least what passes for one on MySpace. I have been using the illustrious social networking site to randomly peruse the profiles of people who list Infinite Jest in their "Books" category. Why? Just for fun and procrastination, mostly, and also to see what they have to say about it, if anything. OK, so when I did a search for "Infinite Jest" in books, I got 182 pages of results. Wow, right? Except it's pretty easy to skim through them, looking for people I might actually care to hear from, and ignoring the bands, the people who put fake ages (like 0, or 102), the people with pornographic profile pictures, the people who haven't logged in since 2004, etc. Still, 182 pages? Impressive.

Then I went and did some other things and then went back to peruse a bit more. Only this time I got only four pages of results. I looked to see if I had made sure to type "Infinite Jest" in the Books category search and not General Interest or something. I had - but then I saw that I'd typed it so quickly that I had left out the final 'i' and typed "Infinte Jest" and THAT had returned four pages of results. Can you imagine? I mean, I'm actually not all that surprised that a significant chunk of people leave/never notice typos in their profiles. But don't you think it's funny that there are that many people who made the same typo? FOUR PAGES of people who typed "Infinte." (By the way, I totally hear that in my head as a three-syllable word, like"infanty.") I think that's hilarious. And kind of less for what it says about careless profile-building then about the sheer number of people who like this book. Maybe I'll try leaving out other random letters, too, and see what happens. (No, I won't. But it was fun to ponder for a moment.)

Conquering Infinite-y

now reading: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

I am halfway through!

This news is definitely worthy of shouting that originates on a rooftop. It is a long book. And, I am a law student. This day might never have come...

Actually, on a total digression, sometimes I don't even feel like a law student. I feel like I am just doing my own thing and then sometimes I get really stressed out because I have to do a lot of the same things the law students have to do. Then, I think, 'Well, OK, maybe this is what a law student looks like!' Gloria Steinem would be proud.

Back to Jest. Recently I became annoyed with the fact that I had soooo much left to read in it. That to-read pile is growing larger. And I can't read for pleasure all the time these days anyway. And all that. It just seemed so cumbersome to have hundreds of pages left. Brian swore he was still relishing it. I missed the relish. But bringing it with me to read on my commute on Monday really made a difference, because I read sixty pages in one day. Usually I spend my commute to school reading for a class and my commute from school reading The New Yorker, but I really want to finish IJ* by March 10. WISH ME LUCK. (Alternatively, by March 17 is also allowed. I just want it to be by the 10th. But I am bound and determined to finish by the 17th. You hear me?)

*Did you know "IJ" also means "Immigration Judge" and I talk about those a lot this semester.

However, after tearing through 80 pages in the past 36 hours, I have now come to another annoying part, a random digression in first person about a recollection of a childhood mattress-moving incident and some psychotic parents.* It's Jim Incandenza, I surmise. As I plodded through it, wondering if its point/tangential relevance/amusement factor will soon be revealed, I got to a great part in which he recalls that as a boy he was terrified of the sound of vacuum cleaners. I love it! Me too! I still don't like them, but now that I am a rational adult I can deal with their sound, obviously. But I so too recall "hurrying to get some distance between myself and the vacuum cleaner, because the sound of vacuuming has always frightened me in the same irrational way..." (p. 501) (That's right, FIVE hundred. And halfway through. Yeah.)

*Then again, what parents in this book aren't pretty much psycho?

Don't get me wrong. This book isn't filled with annoying digressions. Most of it is wholly bad-ass. I was particularly delighted a few pages back to re-encounter Madame Psychosis. Only, she's gone. Basically, we re-encountered her absence. How sad for me.

Do any of you even, like, know anyone who has read it?

Avoiding Reality

NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Have I mentioned that a lot of the plot of Infinite Jest takes place in the footnotes? It's not nearly as annoying as it sounds. Ordinarily, I do find it completely tiresome when reading something to be constantly referred to footnotes. Especially if it's because the author has incomplete thoughts and jumbled organization, or when they are an academic and so they like to write one narrative in the paper and another in the footnotes. UGH. What DFW does in Jest, however, is write the plot in both the main text and the footnotes. I kinda dig it.

Also, the footnotes are pretty good and even f-in' hilarious from time to time. Sometimes they go on for pages. Sometimes there are footnotes to the footnotes. I reiterate that none of this is as annoying as it sounds. Also, how can you get mad when one sequence of footnotes reads like this:

a. Don't ask.

b. Ibid.

That is pure genius!

Recently in a footnote he referred to the prorectors at the tennis academy having "that grad-schoolish sense of arrested adolescence and reality-avoidance about them." (p. 1003) That is a great way to put it. It also makes me think I was, like, destined to go to grad school. As much as I hemmed and hawed and put it off, I can avoid reality and/or dwell in adolescence with the best of them. But I'm intelligent and like to read. So it had to happen eventually, right?

Reality is overrated. I prefer the Oscars.

Oooh! I almost forgot the most important part. I totally want to read Infinite Jest all the time when I have so much to do for law school, so I'm totally conflicted and I never get to make any progress in the novel and then I get all mad and on my days off I just read it and don't read things for school. THAT'S what's* so great about it!

*I have a new fondness for/obsession with noticing when I happen to write two words in a row that might mystify a novice pronouncer of English because they look the same but sound different. Example: "That's what's..." Also earlier today I noticed it when elsewhere I wrote "come home."

Tennis, anyone?

NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Those of you who have not read it may not know that Infinite Jest is largely about tennis. Much of the action ("action") takes place at a tennis academy boarding high school in the Boston area. So in reading the book, you actually get to read a lot about tennis as well. But it's not, like, breathtaking accounts of tennis matches. (Are those even possible? I may be cynical, but tennis is seriously up there on my list of sports that are FAR more fun to play than to watch. Maybe just behind golf and bowling.) Instead this book is a lot of description of what daily life would be like for these hard-core tennis teenagers among themselves.

This life generally involves the usual mixed emotions that come with being really successful at something, the struggles and pressure that come with being really successful at something, and the things all teens do to thwart authority figures whom they also follow in many ways. The book also contemplates the deeper meanings of competition, success, and what one does with one's life. Much of this is seen through the prism of the game of tennis, and a lot of it (at least in these first three hundred pages) subtly contrasts these tennis phenoms with the drug addicts, corrupt political types, pretentious arty/film types, and random weirdos that fill out the lesser ranks of life. So far, no pronouncements on who, if anyone, actually will be deemed in the end to have their shit together.

I don't even mind the footnotes. So far.

NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Those of you who have not Infinitely Jested may wonder what this tome is all about. Three hundred pages in, many things remain mysterious, but I can at least tell you some of what I like about it:

• Much like Margaret Atwood and South Park, our boy David Foster Wallace skewers all manner of viewpoints by following them to their logical extended result. This, of course, has the effect of being both amusing and chilling.
  
• I love the way he writes long convoluted sentences that hold my interest, but also occasionally writes using a very casual form and the word "like" to great effect. In other words, proving that people can use that word as a random interjection and not sound insipid. Yeah!
• Making fun, but with just a hint of admiration, of the 12-step recovery scene, most prominently with the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol (sic) Recovery House. I love it. It's great, from the guy running around creating major social theory about everyone's tattoos to the bit I read today in which he demonstrates how a conversation goes between a platitude-spouting counselor and an educated person who joins the Program, who is not unwilling to engage in recovery but is questioning everything intellectually and trying to reason through the cliches about denial and the like. It was awesome. Kind of reminded me of some experiences I had back in the day, especially in L.A. where everyone had a therapist. (Myself included.)
  
• I love anyone who can discourse handily about the danger of black widows dropping onto your picnic blanket from their homes in the Arizona palm trees.
  

I'm trying to think if any of my friends have read this book. Have you? I think I mostly know OF people who've read it. And I definitely know people like myself who have felt for ten years that we SHOULD read it. Well, anyone? Who loves this book? And why? No spoilers, please. One avid reader friend said she hasn't read it, and her idea is that mostly guys like it. True? A cursory MySpace search for people who'd listed it among their favorites turned up some scary results, indeed...

Here's the story...

NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
NOW DABBLING: Collected Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson
NOW VOTING FOR: Hillary Rodham Clinton
(oh, just got carried away with the three-named folks there. but i am voting for her, of course, not sure why you wouldn't.)

I continue to like our friend David Foster Wallace here, and to relive my life as I read. (Have I mentioned the book takes place in Boston and Arizona? Well, when it can be located in anything so traditional as a geographical place, that is.) Today, it was The Brady Bunch. In one of his dropping-in-and-out-of-random-conversation scenes, he gives it a full paragraph amidst many mere one-line conversation fragments. But he doesn't even mention The Brady Bunch, just "Eve Plumb," "Henderson." "Alice" and so on. As it turns out, if you don't know about The Brady Bunch you wouldn't even know he was talking about The Brady Bunch. I have verified this with someone who doesn't know about The Brady Bunch. (Yes, I pity this person.)

It does beg the question how many things he's alluding to about which I have no earthy clue...

Howling, even. Huck would be impressed.

NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

So here's a thing I really, really like about Infinite Jest, a thing which I bet approximately two other people on the planet would even notice, much less care about. But here it is. So there's this word, see, that leapt out of the pages of Huckleberry Finn at my my friend Marcia and me back when we read it in high school. (Huck Finn, you say? I thought we were infinitely jesting...well, stick with me here.) We loved it. Early in Huck's journey, while he and Jim stay on that little island in the river, there is a dead body and Huck, creeped the hell out, says, "It most give me the fantods."

Fantods. How could you not love it? I mean, who even (besides Mark Twain, apparently) ever even knew there was a synonym for heebie-jeebies? But they're not just heebie-jeebies. They are darker and more demonic. The word is just so perfect! Marcia and I used "fantods" as frequently as we could from that point forward. It may have been the best thing we took away from that book. (Discussing all the issues swirling around when/how our AP English class came to read Huckleberry Finn under the tutelage of Patti Patti is defnitely another story for another day...)

I can recall a moment in college, lying around with a dozen or so girls from the dorms after staying up way too late being silly, when I told some story and noted that whatever freak thing I described "totally gave me the fantods." I remember Heather -- smart, ever proper Heather -- asking, "Just what is a fantod?" And some of my other crazy best friends sort of rolling their eyes and saying, "Oh, Linda and her fantods..."

You can imagine my delight, then, when I first came across the word in Infinite Jest. It was all I could do not to shriek on the bus where I was reading it and cry aloud, "Fantods! He knows about fantods!"

But now, now, now here gloriously on page 189, it gets even better. First of all, I love Madame Psychosis and her radio show, and I love M.I.T. and its weirdness, and I love the random engineer because he is just like so many engineers I knew back in my radio day. But here is Mario, listening to the show and sitting up close to the speaker, because he has to have the sound low, "because Avril has some auditory thing about broadcast sound and gets the howling fantods from any voice that does not exit a living corporeal head..."

I. Love. It. I'd be happy enough just to see anyone using that word anywhere, period, but then he goes and does it repeatedly. And when you get right down to it, it IS a little creepy, isn't it, to think of voices emanating from something other than talking heads?

Just keep on sprinkling them through this story. Fantods. Wonderful, howling fantods.

That good ol' resilience of the human spirit and stuff

NOW FINISHED:
Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

OK, so I'm done randomly picking up books upon which this awards season's films are based. I think. As previously mentioned both Lust, Caution and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are tiny books, so reading them in, like, an hour each was no feat. And I do so like to read books before I see the movie! So now I have to go see those two movies.

We DID see yesterday -- at long last -- The Kite Runner. I found myself more and more looking forward to it as the day went on. It's one of those books that I still don't think is perfect or anything but taught me so much about Afghanistan (and, well, kites!) and really held my attention; as it settles in my memory I've grown more and more fond of the story. I thought the movie did a superb job of staying true to the book while leaving things out. I get angry at movies that do NOT stay true to the book when they leave things out. I'm not saying you can ever exactly reproduce a book on the screen but my point is exactly that: of course you cannot. The onus is on you to be faithful to it knowing it won't be the same. Some people seem to miss that point.

Anyhoo, I liked The Kite Runner film as well. The kids really were quite good. And by the way, I totally commend Paramount and all the effort that went into moving the four child actors from Afghanistan to the United Arab Emirates to keep them safe. I think Paramount did all they could/should do. I think it's pretty pathetic that the boys or their families would have to fear any sort of reprisal for making the film. In Afghanistan, the U.S., or anywhere, I wish religious and conservative people could just chill out and let others live their own lives. Who made you the judge, the punisher? Who said vengeance is OK? Then again, this very question is confronted in the book/film, in what I thought was hands down the most powerful scene while I was reading. I even had to stop and take a breather on the plane after I read it. I refer to the stadium scene of course. Anyway, kudos to Paramount and everyone who helped with that. (Here's an article about moving the boys, very interesting...)

So NOW, back to Infinite Jest! Have I mentioned that I really like it? I am on page 130. In a normal book, this would be a significant chunk, but Infinite Jest being so...infinite, it is a drop in the bucket. I have already spent time with loads of quirky characters in their bizarre situations. He does this amazing thing where he plunges you in and out of these various people's lives, and each time a new bit starts you don't know if you're going to revisit some athlete/druggie/spy you've already met or discover someone new, but you never feel lost. You do, however, feel very very amused.

No diving country for the infinite butterfly runner

NOW FINISHED: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

OK, so I read another book that has recently become a movie. Interestingly (or is it?) I wasn't really going to read the whole thing; I just picked up No Country for Old Men to peruse it last Sunday afternoon because we were planning to see the film that night. And after seeing it (no spoilers) we were so confused about the events following the climax that I decided to read it just so I could figure out what happned.

I have also read a bit of Infinite Jest this week, in between seeing other movies. Today I just read the filmography in the footnotes. Those of you who have inifinitely jested will know what I'm talking about. Those who have not...well, it's a big 'un but if you feel like getting lost in a book, this is a funny and damn smart one in which to do just that. The filmography saw me laughing aloud several to many times, and reminded me how much I love reading it and how I will likely spend the entire remaining week of winter break doing just that.

But The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is so little...surely I could read that in just one sitting before seeing the film this week...ditto for Lust, Caution...and in an ironic twist we still haven't even seen The Kite Runner, which is the book I picked up immediately upon completion of my reading for finals and finished reading on the plane to Phoenix...

Sadness and jest

NOW FINISHED: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
NOW READING: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

At some point, there in the haze of it all, I finished this semester's finals. Once I no longer had any law-text-casebook-exam studying-law-law-law-law reading left, I picked up a novel. It was almost frenzied how I went about picking it up. And it was amazing how good it felt to plunge into it. I felt like I was escaping from a day of stress and collapsing back into the most luxurious, soft, silky, five-million-thread-count sheets bed, enveloped in relaxation.

But while buying it I felt law school stress-like fettered, desperate, where-is-it, needy desire to get my hands on it. The allegedly available copy at the Hofstra undergraduate library was missing; two librarians, an assistant, and I searched to no avail. I wandered over to the bookstore not really wanting to pay full price for a book, but really wanting to start reading it on the Long Island Rail Road on my way home from school. I had resigned myself to not being able this semester to getting around to reading any of the books before this year's crop of films (Charlie Wilson's War, Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, No Country for Old Men, etc.) (I've already long since read Beowulf and Into the Wild.) But then I just thought, well, maybe I have time to get through The Kite Runner...I really wanted to read that one before seeing the film...

Behold, in the university bookstore, it was buried in an under table stack but it was 30% off! I felt I had uncovered a treasure. I started reading it on my train ride home and read 100 pages that day. It goes pretty quickly; if you, like me, are imaging it as a very literary piece with difficult language and comlex sentences that move slowly, think again. It's more Hornby-paced than Roth-paced. Kind of like a male version of Elizabeth Berg, gone global. With Judy Blume's teenage precocious hidden wisdom and Maeve Binchy's melancholy accompanying him on the world tour.

OK, so I am not describing the tone that well. But I did enjoy the book, finishing it on the plane to Arizona for Christmas. However, in addition to finishing it on the plane, I also had to actually stop reading and take a breather on the plane, somewhere in the 200 pages, after one of the most good-yet-awful stop-you-in-your-tracks scenes in literature I've read in quite some time. If you've read the book, you will undoubtedly remember. You know, when he goes to the stadium, to make an appointment with the man in the sunglasses. If you haven't read it, I will never spoil it here. The book is good if not great, the writing is occasionally quite touching and occasionally so-so, but the last third is worth reading, and that scene alone should - must - be read by all thinking, feeling people. And perhaps by all unthinking, unfeeling people, that they might reconsider.

Now, I have moved on to my winter "big book," which Brian is also starting now: Infinite Jest. I remember when this came out. I was in L.A. What was that awesome bookstore in Los Feliz...small and independent...I remember they were all hopped up about it. So was one of the women for whom I house-sat. It was totally on my radar as one of those books philosophical, coffee-drinking, hipster-aspiring, college students and twentysomethings who still live like college students should know and love. Therefore it went on my mental to-read list, where it has stayed. To be retrieved now thanks to Brian's getting hopped up about it, and that thanks to Alex. (This paragraph reminds us that Borders is good for some things.)

So far, so good. But I'm thirty pages in out of how many hundreds? I'm not even worthy to comment on it yet.

Finality

NOW FINISHED: Cuba and the Night by Pico Iyer

That's right, I read it! Hurrah! I like the ending a lot, because (spoiler alert!)the narrator main character got his comeuppance. His betrayal of Lourdes was so not OK, and he totally got his just desserts for cheating, and I. LOVE. IT. Quite frankly, I am tired cheating, lies, betrayal. People tend to forget that when you are dishonest, you are also dishonest with yourself. I can't remember the last book I read where the cheater had to face the error of his ways. I am thrilled. This book was "just OK" all along, but the ending made me so happy that I will now officially include more Pico Iyer on my list of things to read.

But when will I read these things? Good question. For the next three weeks it is going to be law school finals and nothing but law school finals. And then, the winter break big book project is a detour from the literary blog project (and an essential one, seeing as I totally abandoned this year's spring/summer big book project halfway through)(that would be Don Q). Brian and I are going to read Infinite Jest. Yay! Merry wacko Christmas to us!

So, I am still only through the letter "I," and my one-year A to Z literary blog project is going to turn into a two-year. I'm so OK with that. It was bound to happen. Have I told you about this Constitutional Law book I have sitting next to me? It's 1,648 pages.

Venceremos!

The Almost literary blog

Wow, it has been almost a month since I have uttered a literary word here. And no, in that time I have not touched Pico's Cuba and the Night. Lest you think I have not been reading, I will in fact tell you what I have read. It's not all law school all the time. It is a lot of law school a lot of the time, but not all - all. Just some - some. The other reading has consisted of the following, all of which really ramped up mid-October:

1. Magazines.
a. The New Yorker subscription found its way to my new residence, so I dove back in to that with the usual glee that accompanies receiving The New Yorker in the mail. Among other fabulous articles in the last few weeks were Adam Gopnik's thoughts on shortening and extending works of art, the former by abridging books and the latter with DVD extras, notably director's cuts, and a piece on The Wire which has officially convinced me that I need to begin watching that show immediately if not sooner. (And catch up on the prior seasons, duh.)
b. The Economist always occupies a good amount of subway reading time, although I think I'm not going to renew this currently-ending subscription. I got it for kind of free last year, with frequent flier miles, but I don't really want to pay for it.
c. Entertainment Weekly has my undivided attention right now, as we are heading into Oscar season soon. They have even offered up a few early predictions. I will offer up a few early predictions/wishes of my own on my main blog tonight, too.

2. The Almost Moon. And I'll tell you what - I have a lovely bone to pick with Ms. Sebold Thang. I can honestly say there is nary another author whose first novel so made me unquestioningly pick up novel number two. There is nothing quite like The Lovely Bones. But here's the thing: after being blown away by the unique, luminous writing of that book I naturally went right out and read her non-fiction book, Lucky, and that was all kinds of disturbing because when you read it you realize that a lot of that detail of the violent rape in The Lovely Bones came from her real-life experience. (Minus the being murdered and narrating the story from heaven, of course.) And even when I heard that five years later she had another novel coming, I harbored the same fear I had when I first read her, that she would just be trying to up the ante now, trying and failing. Because, really, after The Lovely Bones, can you really just go back to writing a "normal" novel?

So I did, I began reading The Almost Moon the day it came out. And guess what? I was right. All she is doing is showing us that she has come up with something even more shocking and disturbing for a premise, but unfortunately the writing is nowhere near the same quality this time around. I won't say she's a one-hit wonder, as that implies some kind of emptiness or frivolity. I don't know if The Lovely Bones could even be considered a hit. It is just darkness, and every time I read another word of hers, it just sheds more darkness on her darkness. I got past 200 pages in The Almost Moon and then didn't care. I'm glad I borrowed it and didn't buy it. It's terrible. Read The Lovely Bones if you haven't, but don't even bother with The Almost Moon.

And you know what? It didn't have to be like this. I worried, as I said, that it WOULD be like this, but it didn't have to be. If she were a better writer, it would not be like this. And you know how I know that? Nabokov. Good ol' Vladimir is one of the best writers ever. Like, he's maybe in the top ten of the world. And I would say that if there's anything to which I can compare The Lovely Bones, that might have to be Lolita. A novel that flings dark and sadistic desire at an adolescent...a plot that shocks...imaginative, beautiful rendering of horrid things...etc. But after Lolita, Nabokov gave us even more brilliance, such as Pale Fire, and what made it so brilliant was utterly different from what came before. He didn't just pull a key change on us. You know, like in a pop song when they get to the third verse or chorus and can't figure out what to do and the energy is fading (because it's maybe just not that good of a song) so they throw in a key change, which is basically like, "I'm going to sing the exact same thing now, but higher! bigger! bolder!" and everyone falls for it.

That's what Alice Sebold did. She kept singing the same song, but just changed keys. No, thank you.

Flying through the symbols with the greatest of ease

NOW READING: Cuba and the Night by Pico Iyer

Cuba is like a cult. And not because they are both four-letter words that start with "cu." People who travel to Cuba in this day and age, and by that I mean the 80s-90s-00s, become part of this mysterious entity they themselves cannot understand but which they want to push on all their nearest and dearest anyway. In fact, it may be less like a cult and more like, say, Prozac. Only Cuba is real.

Of course one of the things I worry about on the imminent, soon-I-swear, no-really-any-day-now publication of my Cuba book is that it will really be my traveling-to-Cuba story that no one cares about. Like when you have to look at someone's vacation photos and you don't care. And as I've written it sometimes it 's been a novel and sometimes it's been non-fiction, and my writing group and others (rightly so) tell me to stop categorizing it and just finish writing the damn thing. Still I feel I need to understand what it is I'm trying to say, or else it will end up like Pico Iyer's Cuba and the Night.

For the most part I enjoy reading this "novel" of Iyer's, which is really a travel narrative, thinly veiled. But I can be honest with myself and say the audience for the first part of this book may be pretty small--consisting entirely of people who've had a clandestine moment in Cuba. I so want the audience for my book to be bigger.

On the other hand, while Iyer's work was tolerable and only Cuba-interesting for the first 150 pages or so, now in the latter half it's actually starting to get good. To the point where even plebes such as yourself who haven't been there might enjoy it. (ha, OK? don't take me so seriously) You really are starting to wonder what will become of our narrator and his relationship with Lourdes.

But man does he capture things about visiting that island that are hard to explain. Such as how you always find yourself taking up the position you argued against the day before, how you are keenly aware of the disastrous aspects of life there until someone points them out, at which point you find yourself defending the Revolucion.

My favorite bit came when Hugo asked him wasn't he going to take any pictures where they were staying because they would be perfect.

"'Too perfect,' I said, and it was true: that was the problem with the place sometimes. The symbols came too easily. Everything was just too ready-made...a girl on a balcony at dusk, looking forlorn...next to it, another sign, in neon, with some of the letters blinking on and off: XX Siglo - Twentieth Century. If I sent that to my editors, they'd think it was a setup. The ironies here were too much to believe..." --p. 174

I is for I've missed you, dear readers!

NOW READING: Cuba and the Night by Pico Iyer

Well hello my little literary chickadees of the blogosphere. Where have I been? Oh, you know, just all over the place. Looking for an apartment, attending classes, commuting, drinking, entertaining people, entertaining myself, reading law case books, learning, working...the usual. I have, however, embarked upon my 'I' author and read all of 78 pages so far. (Are you thinking this is going to turn into a two-year rather than a one year project? Yeah, me too.)

Let's talk about Pico Iyer. He is a bit of a different choice from some of my previous alphabet author choices, as he is not primarily a fiction writer but a travel writer. Then again, travel narratives are very novel-like, and Umberto Eco writes in many genres, and all that. I'm not being exclusive about it or anything. Anyway, the 'I' pickings were kind of slim, and my other main choice was Washington Irving's Sketch Book, which is also part travel narrative-like and part short story.

Speaking of previous authors, everyone who's anyone has surely already read this FABULOUS New Yorker article about my 'D' man Philip K. Dick. Trust me: whether or not you've read the PKD, this article is a gem. If you are a fan, so much the better. Go. Go read it. I'll be here when you come back.

So anyway, back to Pico. And by that I do not mean the street in Los Angeles. I first came to know about Pico Iyer when I worked for the now defunct public radio show The Savvy Traveler. He was one of the many thoughtful travel writers we interviewed and often invoked, and I had the pleasure of cutting the tape of his interview, in fact. He said many inspiring things, among them his noting that we just have an unexplainable affinity for certain places, the same way we have an inexplicable affinity for certain people. The one to which he referred at that moment was Japan. He grew up lots of places in the world, but when he showed up in Japan one day it just felt different and more a part of him in a way he had never known. I totally got what he was saying because I've felt it before about Cuba and New Orleans, for starters.

Pico Iyer was one of the things my fellow Savvy staffers, who were all older and wiser than was I, would go on and on about, showing just how intelligent/literary/NPR-like they were. Then they would cast sideways glances across the editorial meeting at me, the 22- or 23-year-old upstart who was like, "Uh, Video Night in Kathmandu? Never read it. Moscow? Never been there. Architectural Digest? Why the hell would I subscribe to that? Who? What? Where?" etc. They really knew how to make a lowly p.a. feel ... indoctrinated. Actually, I'm mostly joking. My two good friends, the producer and assistant producer, never made me feel bad about my naivete. Only a certain other staffer who shall not be named. But he secretly respected me, too, for at least having up and traveled to Cuba.

And that brings me back to the point: Cuba and the Night. This is Pico Iyer's novel. And by novel I mean thinly veiled travel narrative. Which, as you may know unless you live under a blogless, MySpace-free, text-message-lacking rock, is exactly what I've been writing (for years): a thinly veiled travel narrative about my time in Cuba that from time to time I call a novel. So you can imagine how much fun it is to read Pico Iyer's.

My edition is ISBN 0-679-76075-X.

A fine lot of lollipops

NOW FINISHED: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Fun fun fun. I finished it a few days ago but being back in school and going to Boston and running a 5K have all taken time away from posting. I am excited to watch the movie. I just love to read the book and then watch the movies. That is a fun way to approach life.

Of course I love the ending. I love Sam Spade and I knew we could count on him. As for Ms Thang O'Shaughnessy, whom I just knew was not going to turn out to be as good as Effie Perine had said, I thought it was great when Sam basically said "peace out, lady" even though he would have loved to keep getting cozy with her and when he said "you haven't played square with me for half an hour at a stretch since I've known you." You go, Sam. Send her off to the gallows. Anyway, it's not as if there's any shortage of ladies in Sam's life, it would seem. And then he gives her crap for playing all the men, which is funny.

Also funny is how Joel Cairo is gay. Who knew? Were we supposed to figure that out at the begining because he spent his time going to the theater? Perhaps something in the clothes he wore. But it's fun how Dashiell Hammett has to describe his actions and suggest things between the lines to tell us he's gay without telling us he's gay. It reminded me of how Willa Cather in One of Ours told us that Enid refused to have sex with Claude on their wedding night or even thereafter without ever actually saying that. Deftly handled. I love it. Go, writers of the 1920s!

But in the end, does it get any better than this:

"Jesus God! is this the first thing you guys ever stole? You're a fine lot of lollipops!" -p. 188

"The falcon cannot hear the falconer..."

Well, you had to know I was going to ask this. It's the quintessential question to pose and thoughtfully consider, isn't it, when one is reading The Maltese Falcon? The question is: what is your price? What value would an object have to have for you to be willing to sacrifice everything to get your hands on it?

It seems so ridiculous. People getting murdered, everyone wanting to get their hands on this "priceless" historical object. Millions. A huge cut for Sam Spade even -- if they're not lying, if they really would keep him alive after he handed it over. It's all so ruthless and I just always wonder, how can you ever really get any value from something when everyone just wants to kill you for having it? That, to me, would make the value go down substantially.

Yes, I'd rather be alive and safe and poorer.

I suppose some of our so-called leaders are willing to slaughter at least as many people hourly for oil as have so far been slaughtered for this falcon. And the oil does bring them billions...

"Mere anarchy loosed upon the world," indeed.

(Thanks, W.B.!)

Sam Spade is destined to win

Everyone is a little bit sketchy, a little bit off, but no one can put one over on ol' Sam Spade. He just does his thing, gets out of scrapes, and seems to pretty much always get what he wants. I kind of think no one in the book besides him will end up actually being a good guy, with the possible exception of his little secretary type friend. I think they might even be wrong about Ms Thang of the three names, one of which is Brigid O'Shaughnessy.

Still don't exactly know what the Maltese falcon is, although I know more now. But why does everyone want this bird statue? Why is it so valuable? I had to put the book aside for this week as I was ever so slightly busy starting law school. But don't worry. Sam Spade and I are still going to spend some quality time together. And then I will watch the movie.

I love how ol' Dashiell describes people. He pegs them so well. I keep trying to see if I fit into his "She was the type of woman who..." descriptions. Most recently, I've read about Spade meeting with the fat man, who contributes this:

"I do like a man that tells you right out he's looking out for himself. Don't we all? I don't trust a man that says he's not. And the man that's telling the truth when he says he's not I distrust most of all, because he's an ass and an ass that's going contrary to the laws of nature." - pp. 106-107

That last bit kind of reminds me of law school.