Tuesday of this week, February 7th, was the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth, his bicentenary. Various events were held worldwide and we did a little bit here in Sioux City at the Bishop Mueller Library at Briar Cliff University.

Late in January, thanks to having most of our Dickens’ texts around me due to a reclassification project, I decided to see if I could do an exhibit in the campus library. I had been aware of the (then upcoming) Dickens’ bicentenary for a good while based on seeing reviews of new biographies of Dickens, commentaries on his status as a literary icon, and so on.

I asked the director and she said, “Certainly,” and we found a spot. A few days went by and then I got busy and picked the books I wanted to use, found the illustrations within a few that I wanted to display, located the stands, and made a few info sheets with a mini-bio, some web sources for more information, sources for free ebooks and subscription ebooks via the library, and the call number range(s) for books by or about him and his works in our library [the reclass project is not done]. The display debuted on the 1st of February.

Charles Dickens Bicentenary display at BCU Mueller Library

A day or two after putting the display together, and no doubt prompted by gathering links about the bicentenary, I thought that it would nice to host a reading ourselves, a Read-a-Thon. I asked the library director if we could do it in the library and got a definite “Yes.” I then asked the president of WREN, our student Writing and English club, if they would co-sponsor the event, which for me simply meant telling the Writing/English students about it and letting me put their name along with the Library’s on the flyer I would make. Alex did a great job and even secured permission from the Dept. Chair for the students to get service credit for reading. [Juniors and seniors have to do so many hours of service to the department and/or university to graduate.] I then asked the prof who teaches Victorian Lit, Dr. Jeanne Emmons, if she would give us a short introduction to Dickens at the start to which she readily agreed, and also claimed the education portion of Hard Times.

From there I designed a flyer with the help of my lovely wife. I found a photograph of Dickens that I could legally use and had Sara place a birthday hat on it at a ‘jaunty angle.’ [See above. Original photo found at Flickr and supplied by the Penn State Special Collections, Darrah Collection, Image 61680. The photo is licensed as CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, so feel free to use this transformed work under the same license. Thanks for sharing, Penn State!]

I then hung these up around campus several days in advance. The library director sent out an all staff email advertising the event, too, as I wanted any interested party to be able to come and enjoy listening and to read, if they chose.

On the day of the event, I came in about an hour and a half early to push around some of the furniture to make a space and provide more seating. I also went to the stacks and grabbed a pretty much complete set of Dickens’ works and brought them down on a small cart. A big pot of coffee was brewed and the cake and cookies I bought that morning were put out.

The event was scheduled from 4-5 pm and people started showing up a half hour in advance. By 4 PM we had a good 20+ people with 6 pre-signed up to read.

I gave a brief welcome, introduced myself to those (few) who didn’t know me, and provided the ‘rules’ and encouraged people to sign up on the list of readers. Then I handed the stage to Jeanne who gave us a nice introduction to Dickens’ life, works, and enduring influence and then she read from Ch. 2, Bk. 1 of Hard Times, “Murdering the Innocents.” Next up was Great Expectations from another of our English and Writing profs. Several folks read from A Christmas Carol, one from David Copperfield, and Sara read excerpts from letters Dickens wrote to his friend and sometime collaborator, Wilkie Collins, which can be exceptionally funny.

We only got two additional takers who weren’t pre-signed up but all in all it worked out great as we went the whole hour. I, too, read from Hard Times, and as there is so much wonderful material there I had a hard time (ha ha) narrowing it down. I initially read from Ch. 15, Bk. 1, “Father and Daughter.” I read a fairly lengthy selection making sure to encompass Luisa’s all important ‘digression’ to her father while he is presenting Mr. Bounderby’s marriage proposal to her:

“There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!” she answered, turning quickly.

I went near the middle of the pack and as we wound down and got no other takers but still had a few minutes left, I took the emcee’s prerogative and read a shorter section from Ch. 8, Bk. 1, “Never Wonder,” as I figured it would be good to end with the library scene and “these readers [who] persisted in wondering.”

Dickens Read-a-Thon at Bishop Mueller Library, Briar Cliff University

More folks had shown up throughout the event, including the University President. All in all, I would say that it was a roaring success. More importantly, many others, including most of the English and Writing faculty, the president of WREN, and the librarians, thought so. They were still talking about it the next morning.

Success! And Happy 200th Mr. Dickens!

My friend Jess talked me into participating in JaPoWriMo, or January Poetry Writing Month. At least that is how I am parsing it out.

The idea is simply to write one poem a day. She insisted they could be a short as haiku and that there was no requirement for them to be any good. I am sharing them with her and my wife, of course and, so far, one or two with the odd other here and there.

Much of my month is taken up with my Grimm’s Fairy Tale class and editing and other magazine production duties putting together this year’s issue of the Briar Cliff Review. Thus, a couple have been about Grimm’s; I foresee one or more about editing; I have written a couple about books, those I’ve read and those I won’t be reading (end-of-2011 book post); one about meetings (after a long meeting on Friday); one about our SirsiDynix Symphony ILS (subject of said and several other meetings); one about not having a subject; and so on.

There is no need to worry—not much anyway— as I will not be sharing all of them with you here. Many of them are bad, and I doubt that any of them are actually good. But I agreed to commit to this writing a poem a day in an otherwise already quite busy month as I hoped that more writing, even if mostly tossed off, would help me in assorted ways as a poet and a writer. The bottom-line is that I am a lazy poet. Perhaps this will cultivate a habit, perhaps this will leave me with a few choice phrases or lines or ideas, perhaps nothing will come of it.

With all of that said, I would like to share two that I wrote in response to my Grimm’s class. The first was written about 15 minutes before the class met for the first time; the second was written this morning and is a conflation of “Snow-white and Rose-red” and “Little Snow White,” which we read for and discussed this past Friday, along with other generic thoughts on the role of “beauty” in the tales we’ve read so far (~10).

Grimm’s excitement today
Innocents start to play
Villains and ogres slay
Justice wins come what may

3 January 2012

Beauty for its own sake, enticement.
Or is it really entrapment?

The hunter spares her …
The wicked queen poisons her …
The dwarves domesticate her …
The prince wants her … dead and mute.

Snow-white. Rose-red. Two
Halves of the same girl.
A maiden on the edge
Of womanhood.

Tame the bear,
Emasculate the dwarf,
Remain kind to the vile.
Gentleness, purity, innocence

Retained. These are the steps to
Make oneself a woman.
Chaste, yet chargedly erotic.
Snow-white. Rose-red.

Beautiful.

8 January 2012

I may spend some time with the second as it could undoubtedly be improved. But, considering that I wrote it in about 10 minutes this morning I can live with it.

This is the 3rd update to the Two-Thirds book Challenge.

Sara

Themes are the structure to Sara’s Challenge so we’ll honor those here. Her comments on the following four books can be seen here: Books of 2011

Writing:

The Late American Novel, edited by Jeff Martin, “was an excellent choice.”

“Dozens of writers of various genres put in their two cents about the future of writing, reading and books. The reactions are all over the place, the styles vary dramatically, and the different voices are very strong. Out of all these essays, there were only a couple I found myself skimming through rather than reading carefully and soaking up. I took many notes and in some places laughed out loud. Ironically, I read the book in the Kindle app on my iPad. I would love to get a paper copy and read it again in a year to see how the predictions are faring. Highly recommended for personal collections and gift giving.”

I am hoping to read this so I sure hope lending is enabled on this title.

Fiction:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

“Gaiman takes Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book and changes the setting to a graveyard. He pulls it off in a wonderful way, and without a tacky ending. I would love to see more stories with these characters.”

Perhaps this can be my entrée to Gaiman.

The Magicians AND The Magician King by Lev Grossman

“When Magician King came out, I saw all sorts of interviews and reviews on book blogs discussing the allusions and references to writers like C. S. Lewis, J. K. Rowling, J. R. R. Tolkien, Neal Stephenson, and many others. Just like my fascination with retold myths, I was intrigued by this series that admitted to so many influences. It took me a couple times to start The Magicians — Quentin is not the most sympathetic character, after all. But once I pushed through the first few chapters, the book really took off for me and the second book was even better.”

E

E found Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End “an enjoyable, engaging read” that she “zipped through” in a couple of days for her book club. She found several aspects well done: “the first person plural narration, the sense of futile frenetic energy in a workplace trying to justify its existence, the disconnect between real life and work life. I loved the bits and pieces of Chicago that emerged throughout the story. The interlude at the center of the book – a meditation on a woman’s cancer diagnosis – was moving and effective.” But she also felt that on occasion it fell flat and was clichéd.

Part of the problem for her might be that it reminded her of Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, one of her favorite books. If you are not overexposed to the workplace novel, or simply love them, then check out E’s review in its entirety and consider Then We Came to the End.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Another book club selection for Miss E, and a Kindle read. She thinks she may have gotten through it primarily by being stuck in a lengthy blood drive line, which gave her “time to really get hooked on the story, if not on the characters themselves.”

“I can say definitively that Egan is a master storyteller. A Visit from the Goon Squad weaves in and out of time, with a number of stories told in layers, folding and unfolding onto themselves. The reader encounters characters at different points in their lives. … Each of these stories – episodes – windows of time is deftly, though not always gracefully, presented, surrounded by music and an indelible scene, whether it is the Bay area in the 70s, New York in the early 90s, full of optimism, or New York in the near future, recovering but not recovered from 9/11.”

She certainly has some more to say so check out her review if the above intrigues you.

Jen

Jen has been ripping through books!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Jen almost beat the buzz around this by starting on it with her son a few years ago. He finished it but she did not. With the family slated to see the new movie (Hugo) and a bit of peer pressure she read it.

Her bottom line, post-movie: “To sum up: great book, great movie, just see the movie first.”

Sara and I both also read this recently. We loved it! It is a ~530-page book but with so many beautiful illustrations I read it in under 2 hours. It isn’t a graphic novel but it isn’t simply a text novel either. It is something else and, whatever that something is, it is wonderful.

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Jen didn’t have a lot to say about this one directly, but we’ll chalk that up to her being under the weather. It sounds like this is a book to focus on, unlike how many of us read sometimes.

“Most books I can easily drop in and out of and not lose my place, as it were, but I had trouble with this book. That aside, the book is both as fantastical in parts as it is earthbound and realistic in others. Since the voice changes between characters, I was sometimes lost if I went too long without reading or was waiting to hear the voice from someone in another book (the problem mentioned above). I don’t think that these characters will haunt me in the ways that other ones do, but I will carry with me some of the observations they made along the way. I wish I had marked pages and passages that touched me, but I didn’t.”

Between Jen’s comments and looking at the book at amazon (gorgeous covers on her books!) this one sounds intriguing as hell.

Black Like Me (50th anniversary ed.) by John Howard Griffin

“This is a wonderful book about racial inequalities, laid about as bare as possible. While the writing isn’t eloquent, it doesn’t need to be. The author used medicine to change the color of his skin from white to black and lived for ~6 weeks as a black man. Nothing else changed about him–he kept his name, profession, history, etc. While I found the whole of the book to be enlightening in many unexpected ways, I found the last part and the afterward the most intriguing.”

This is one of those books I need to read. Many others, I suspect, do to.

My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business: A Memoir by Dick Van Dyke

A memoir in the man’s own words. Nothing shocking here, Jen says. But would one expect shocking from Dick Van Dyke?

“He did smoke for a long time, and was an alcoholic and that’s as scandalous as it gets. If you’re looking for something disreputable, stay away from this book. Instead, it’s a happy walk down a fantastic memory lane.”

Mark (me)

I called Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov an “odd text” and that it is. Nowadays there are more things like it but for its time it was pretty groundbreaking. I had a fair bit to say about it in my post but the gist is that:

“I did enjoy Pale Fire although I doubt that I yet appreciate it as much as a few trusted recommenders do. I will need to reread it some day to better appreciate it in all its nuances: hidden, overt, and otherwise. Nabokov is a master of indirection as Rorty points out in his introduction.”

Transformations by Anne Sexton

“Brutal. Unflinching. Caustic. Anne Sexton let loose on fairy tales.”

“Sex and death. The never-ending story. Incest. (Real or contrived.) Old aunt. Father. Mixed in with the typical fare of lust, greed, hate, pride, and all of the other human foibles.”

Not, as I say, for the uninitiated. Sexton is quite powerful: pulls no punches, spares no sacred cows.

Beware.

That does it for this installment in the Two-Thirds Book Challenge. Stay tuned.

Transformations.

Anne Sexton; Houghton Mifflin 1971

WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder

Brutal. Unflinching. Caustic. Anne Sexton let loose on fairy tales.

This is another book in my Two-Thirds Book Challenge.

There isn’t a lot to say here unless one is a fan of Sexton. We read a few of these along with many other Sexton poems (and those of Sylvia Plath) in the Madwomen Poets class I took in fall of 2010. I found an excellent copy of this in a lovely used bookstore (Defunct Books) in Iowa City sometime after the class was over so I bought it.

There is a forward by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. but I honestly don’t know what role it is supposed to play. From a purely mercenary capitalistic perspective I guess it was even better than a blurb by a “name.” ::sigh::

These are not accessible poems to the uninitiated. Clearly, most adults brought up on the Disney-fied versions of fairy tales can appreciate some of what is going on here. But Sexton pulls no punches and, as she is a confessional poet, one needs to know her story.

Sex and death. The never-ending story. Incest. (Real or contrived.) Old aunt. Father. Mixed in with the typical fare of lust, greed, hate, pride, and all of the other human foibles.

The poems are:

• The Gold Key
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• The White Snake
• Rumpelstiltskin
• The Little Peasant
• Godfather Death
• Rapunzel
• Iron Hans
• Cinderella
• One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes
• The Wonderful Musician
• Red Riding Hood
• The Maiden Without Hands
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses
• The Frog Prince
• Hansel and Gretel
• Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)

Some excerpts to whet your appetite (or not):

From “Iron Hans” p. 50

“Without Thorazine
or benefit of psychotherapy
Iron Hans was transformed.
no need for Master Medical;
no need for electroshock—
merely bewitched all along.
Just as the frog who was a prince.
Just as the madman his simple boyhood.”

Opening to “Cinderella” p. 53

“You always read about it:
the plumber with twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son’s heart.
From diapers to Dior.
That story.

…”

From “One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes” p. 60-61

“The unusual needs to be commented upon…
…
The idiot child,
a stuffed doll who can only masturbate.
The hunchback carrying his hump
like a bag of onions…
Oh how we treasure
their scenic value.”

One group I can recommend this book of transformed fairy tales to, besides Sexton fans who have yet to read this, is those interested in critiques of the “traditional” Disney-fied, male-centered fairy/folk tale.

Sexton, as usual, is quite powerful.

Beware.

Disclaimer: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this book as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewer Program.

I read this book from 23 Nov – 13 Dec 2011 and the bottom line is that I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Contents:

• Prologue: English after the fall
• Ch. 1: Literature and its others
• Ch. 2: The limiting concept of literature
• Ch. 3: Textuality and the teaching of reading
• Ch. 4: Textual power—sacred reading
• Ch. 5: Textual pleasure—profane reading
• Epilogue: A sample program in textuality
• A Note on Sources
• Works Consulted
• Index [missing in this uncorrected proof copy]

This book is a follow-on to his previous book, The Rise and Fall of English, which he claims “came about because of the alluring but ultimately fatal choice of literature as the central object of the English curriculum” (xiii). I have not read that book but will probably do so now; I will certainly be looking into other books and writings by Robert Scholes.

I have included a fair few quotes from the book to give you an idea of his style.

Prologue: English After the Fall

The Prologue gives us an overview of how the book came about, what the Fall of English is, provides a quick overview of the argument for “textuality,” provides Scholes’ qualifications and interests in this arena, and outlines the rest of the book.

“This book is simply a profession of faith in that fallen field of studies and an attempt to suggest a direction for its future” (xiii).

“The fall of English is actually part of the fall of all the humanities in a world that is driven by technological progress and the bottom line” (xiv-xv).

“In the case of English, the more obviously useful features of the field have been relegated to the bottom of the reward system, …. What is needed, as I understand the situation, is a broader reconsideration of the purpose of English studies. We need to see the main function of English departments as helping students become better users of the language—basically, better readers and writers. Literary works have a role to play in this function, but they are a means to, not the end of, studies in English, though they have often been treated as the end. In this book, I want to make the case for a shift in the field—from privileging literature to studying a wide range of texts in a wide range of media—so that what I call “textuality” can become the main concern of English departments” (xv, emphasis mine).

English as an academic field and the rise of such departments is about a century old. They replaced departments of rhetoric and took students from classical studies (xv-xvi) and this change coincided with the rise of modernism in literature and other arts (xvi).

Outline:

• history of ‘literature’
• how a constricted notion of literature contributes to the fragmentation of the field
• expanded field of textuality
• illustration 1: the sacred
• illustration 2: the profane

The prologue is quite understandable and provided me a bit of enthusiastic anticipation for what followed.

Ch. 1: Literature and Its Others

This chapter provides a rapid-fire intellectual/conceptual history of the concept of ‘literature.’ While it was interesting, it was not at all as clear as I had hoped it would be. This is definitely the weakest link in the book and its argument. Thankfully, it really isn’t required for the argument in any serious way; although it could certainly strengthen the argument if done well.

Intellectual history, and its close kin conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), are my favorite kinds of history and I was highly interested in learning about the concept and idea of ‘literature’ as it has developed. Sadly, I am still pretty much in the dark after reading this romp of a chapter. I do understand Scholes giving just under 10% of the text to this chapter, seeing as it isn’t really fundamental to his argument, but I am still disappointed. Thankfully, this is really my only disappointment with the book.

Ch. 2: The Limiting Concept of Literature

Discusses the limits put on the concept of ‘literature’ within English departments and how that constrains what is taught.

“At the simplest level, as we have seen, this literary designation may rule excellent written texts out of consideration in our basic courses in reading, writing, and thinking. And that is one reason why we need to free ourselves from a restricted notion of literature” (23).

“We would not deny that certain kinds of texts, like instructions, are usually very low on the literary scale, but we all believe that there is a scale, and that there are poems, plays, stories, and expository texts all along that scale. This scale is a measure of a quality we may call “literariness” (which I would define as a combination of textual pleasure and power), but it is neither easy nor right to draw a line across the scale at some point and call everything on one side of the line literature” (24-5).

Provides a couple examples of the literary used for other forms of teaching and of the ‘nonliterary’ as examples of the literary.

Ch. 3: Textuality and the Teaching of Reading

(Some) problems with the restricted notion of reading:

• “you can read it but you can’t write it”
• “led to the separation of the study of reading/literature … from the study of writing/composition”
• led to hierarchical structure of faculty
• “further split between those kinds of writing that can be designated as ‘creative’ and those that cannot.”
• “now have programs claiming creative status for certain sorts of writing not included in the restricted notion of literature, like the personal essay.”
• “tied too tightly to the book”
• “tied to a narrow view of what makes a text creative or literary”
• “prevents us from demonstrating in our classrooms the relevance of the texts we cherish to the actual lives of our students” (33-34)

“To solve these problems we need to redefine English as the study of textuality rather than literature. Such a redefinition has a number of aspects, but it begins with the recognition that English is all about teaching—not research—and that this teaching has two main branches: reading and writing. That is, the business of English departments is to help students improve as readers and writers, to become better producers and consumers of texts” (34, emphasis mine).

Scholes claims that “textuality has two aspects:”

1. “broadening of the objects we study and teach to include all of the media and modes of expression.”
2. “changing the way we look at texts to combine the perspectives of creator and consumer, writer and reader” (35).

“The basic purpose of humanistic education is to give students perspectives on their own cultural situation, opening the past so that they can connect it to the present” (35-6).

“…, we must find ways to make what students actually want and need more rewarding for their teachers, and we must find ways of making what teachers wish to teach more interesting and useful for those who may come to them for instruction. The solution, in my view, is to put these two aspects of English education back together. That is, teachers must not simply advise students how to consume texts but help them understand how these texts were constructed in the first place. The study of textuality involves looking at works that function powerfully in our world, and considering both what they mean and how they mean” (37).

“Cultural studies have actually been a part of the English curriculum for a while now. I am suggesting that English departments move these studies to the center of the historical dimension of their enterprise, using the connections between contemporary audiovisual media and the earlier print media as a way into our cultural past. This action also means historicizing cultural studies, …” (47).

“If English teachers can accept the responsibility to teach all aspects of textuality—the production, consumption, and history of texts in English—we will have a curriculum that can be competitive in an academic world in which the humanities have been marginalized.
In what follows in this book I take up some of these issues and pursue them to greater depths, concluding with some attempts to illustrate the kind of cultural work I think we should be doing, using the full range of texts available to us in the realm of textuality” (48).

He lays out and considers 3 levels or phases of reading, which are also further considered in rest of the book:

1. Reaction – personal response
2. Interpretation
3. Criticism (50-2)

Ch. 4: Textual Power—Sacred Reading

“… we should treat all texts held to be sacred with interpretational respect. That is, we must see them as attempts to present a true version of events or a valid way of life, even if they seem to contradict our own views. Which does not mean that we need to believe any of them—even our own. Respect is different from belief” (53, emphasis mine).

Sacred reading includes both main sources of sacred texts: religions and governments.

Several sections are included in this chapter:

• The Nature of Sacred Texts
• A Fundamental Problem
• A Failure to Communicate
• Lots of Folks Forget That Part of It

Nature:

“To simply make sense of it [notion of 'sacredness'] in a basic way, however, we must perform an imaginative act, which tells us, I believe, that no text can be perfectly sacred in actuality—precisely because it is a text” (57)

US political sacred documents are “ideal for the study of interpretation” because we do know a lot about who wrote them and how they were composed (59).

Fundamental:

“One of the main functions of textual education is to help people learn how to see things from more than one perspective, and to understand that these perspectives are not exactly matters of choice for many people, but ways in which they have been conditioned to see the world. ‘To see ourselves as others see us’ is important, but so is the ability to see others as they see themselves” (61).

“The textualist reader, then, must acknowledge the seriousness of fundamentalist readings, while resisting and criticizing the zeal that often results in interpretive leaps to an unearned certainty of meaning, achieved by turning a deaf ear to the complexity of the texts themselves, their histories, and their present situations” (63).

“them, there, then” ==> “us, here, now” “… “we must try to determine the text’s proper bearing on our own values and our conduct in the world” (71).

Ch. 5: Textual Pleasure—Profane Reading

“All texts that are not accorded sacred status may be considered profane—especially if we can do away with the semi-sacred category of literature” (89).

Focuses on musical drama and, in particular, opera in this chapter.

“Because performative works depend on audiences, the question of what they mean to “us, here, now” gains in importance. We live in a performative world, which is another reason why we should pay special attention to enacted stories in our classrooms” (92).

This chapter also has several sections:

• Sacred versus Profane on Screen and Stage in the Twenties
• Can’t Help It
• Nobody’s Perfect
• I’ve Become Lost to the World
• The Pleasurable Pains of Opera
• Send in the Clowns
• Put on the Clown Suit
• It Ain’t Over ‘Till the Fat Lady Sings

This chapter focused a lot on performance and roles.

Epilogue: A Sample Program in Textuality

“The essential matter for teachers of textuality is to get the interpretation of sacred texts into the curriculum, and to help students take pleasurable texts seriously—and to care about both the texts and the students” (142).

He ends with a “suggestion for a core of courses to be followed by advanced work drawn from whatever curriculum is already in a given institution” (142).

Most of these courses probably already exist, at least in title and with some applicable content. They would need to be restructured to focus on the textuality of the, hopefully, broadened range of texts used to comprise the content. I do see this as a totally doable venture, though.

Recommended! In particular, I feel that, at a minimum, the following folks could benefit from reading and thinking about this text: Lit majors [all languages], writing majors, and humanists of all stripes including digital humanists. This includes everyone from undergrads and their parents, through grad students on up to professors, department chairs and anyone else involved with or concerned with curriculum of literature(s) and writing.

This is a short but, nonetheless, important book. It is a quick read but supplies plenty to think about and act on.

Cribbed from Angel at The Itinerant Librarian.

1 The book I am currently reading. Like Angel, I usually have more than one book going. I am currently reading the following: The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore; Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces; Hermann Melville’s Billy Budd and other stories; and about a half dozen others that I have been stopped on for a while now.

2 The last book I finished. Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Last night. My comments are here.

3 The next book I want to read. Again, ditto Angel, “there are all sorts of books I want to read next.” There are two books from the Library Thing Early Reviewer Program that need to be read so that I can write reviews: Delavier’s Stretching Anatomy and Gerhard Klosch’s Sleeping Better Together. I will probably take the stretching book with me on our trip to DC to visit family for Christmas. Then there are the books on my Two-Thirds Book Challenge list: Transformations (poems) by Anne Sexton is near the top of the list due to my Grimm’s Fairytales class starting in early January. Not on that list but recently purchased is Voltaire’s A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, which I’d like to read prior to Enlightenment Lit in the Spring term. I could go on and on here but I’ll stop. My goodread’s to read shelf would give you a small inkling of possibilities.

4 The last book I bought. On the 10th I bought Voltaire’s A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary (Oxford World’s Classic ed) in a Kindle ed. and I ordered a used copy of Tzvetan Todorov’s A Defence of the Enlightenment from England via abebooks. I have been wanting that book for quite a while now and it is already out of print. I foresee wanting/needing it for Enlightenment Lit for whatever paper topic I choose. I adore Todorov even though I don’t always agree with him. And Voltaire is simply delectable!

5 The last book I was given. Not counting Library Thing Early Reviewer books or books weeded from the collection at BCU, it appears the last book I was given was a copy of Jeni Bauer’s Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams by my daughter for Father’s Day. Eat Jeni’s ice cream! Support Jeni’s! Buy this book and make your own Jeni’s! Did I mention you should eat Jeni’s ice cream? It is beyond awesome!

6 The last book I borrowed from the library. Public: Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Traveled, which I did not finish but put on my wish list. University: Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer’s Selected Poems, and Truth Barriers.

8 The last translated book you read. Lysistrata, and the Tranströmers just before that, in November.

9 The book at the top of my Christmas list. Like Angel, the list is not exactly specific to one title but the short list I culled from my Amazon wish list for the more immediate family included: Barbara McAfee’s Full Voice: The Art and Practice of Vocal Presence (seen in GradHacker); James Attlee’s Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight; Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer; Douglas Thomas’ A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change; Gloria Ambrosia’s The Complete Muffin Cookbook: The Ultimate Guide To Making Great Muffins; Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions; Tolkien on Fairy-Stories; Mircea Eliade’s Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. These are all titles both Sara and I would like to read. If I were compiling that list today instead of just a couple of weeks ago it might be quite different as we both have added several (or more) titles to our wish lists. ::sigh::

10 The so-far unpublished book I am most looking forward to reading. Normally, I rarely know about books before they are published unless Amazon manages to send me a timely pre-order email. But. Kickstarter! We helped fund a book on Kickstarter recently so we are looking forward to Kio Stark’s, Don’t Go Back to School: A handbook for learning anything.

9780679410775

Pale fire

Vladimir Nabokov; Knopf 1992

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This was the first book I started reading for my Two-Thirds Book Challenge, although it is the second one that I finished.

I started reading this on 2 October and read the foreword and the poem itself within the first couple of days of starting. Then I did not get back to it—due to reading other books, Challenge and otherwise—until 26 November. I finished it on 17 December.

**Possible (minimal) spoiler alert**

Pale Fire is an odd text, classified by some as “Experimental fiction” (LCSH). The text proper consists of a foreword, “Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos,” commentary, and an index. The poem is by one John Shade, an Appalachian poet and academic, and it was composed “during the last twenty days of his life” (Foreword, 9). The rest is purportedly by a Dr. Charles Kinbote, a recent Zemblan émigré, academic and, perhaps, a loony.

The edition we have, the 1992 Everyman’s Library v. 67 has an excellent introduction by Richard Rorty.

Sara suggested that I read the poem first and then go back and read the other material along with the poem it supposedly comments on. I left the introduction until I finished everything else as it contains spoilers. I did read Kinbote’s Foreword and then the poem. Sadly, it then took me about a month and a half to get back to it.

The main text of the book is Kinbote’s commentary on the 999-line poem “Pale Fire.” Some of the comments are short and to the point while many are long, rambling, and tell a completely different story than the one(s) the poet Shade was addressing in his poem. What is fact and what is not? What is real and what is fiction? What is fiction yet real? Is Kinbote who he claims to be? Is he as loony as the killer may be?

The index, besides being an index, is also a glossary, a gazetteer, a who’s who, and part of the work proper. Ensure that you read it.

I did enjoy Pale Fire although I doubt that I yet appreciate it as much as a few trusted recommenders do. I will need to reread it some day to better appreciate it in all its nuances: hidden, overt, and otherwise. Nabokov is a master of indirection as Rorty points out in his introduction.

Gingko Press has a new edition of Pale Fire out this year that Gabe Habash at the Publishers Weekly news blog Pwxyz called “The Most Beautiful Book of the Year.” Seeing as Sara has added this to her wishlist and, admittedly, as I am kind of lusting over it too we might be able to have a completely different kind of textual experience when we reread the work. I have read a few other reviews of this Gingko Press edition and it is supposedly both exquisite and provides an experience better suited to how both “Pale Fire” and Pale Fire are described to have come about.

This is the 2nd update to the Two-Thirds book Challenge.

This time of year is always busy and for one of us facing a big move it is especially so. Thus, not many of us were able to finish reading and/or write up any of our books.

Helen read Steve Martin’s An Object of Beauty.

An Object of Beauty

Steve Martin; Grand Central Publishing 2010

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As a rule, Helen says, she loves Steve Martin’s books. Although she had been warned that she might not “really get or enjoy this story” as she has no specific interest in the art world, she found that it provided “a glimpse into a world I will never be a part, giving it a sense of fantasy while referencing things I know are real having lived in New York.”

She adds:

Steve Martin is gifted at laying out spans of life in a effortless way, showing the through lines of a persons life so subtly that it’s as if you’re going through it with them. In the case of this story, we follow the rise and fall of an intrepid, sometimes devious, always ambitious, woman in the high powered art world of New York.

She found it a little forced at the end but forgivable in light of the rest and considering how authentic it seemed.

I finished William Stafford’s The Way It Is which I quite enjoyed.

The Way It Is

; Graywolf Press 1999

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I’ll start with the negatives and finish on a more upbeat note as I do like Stafford’s poetry. One drawback of this book was that there are simply too many poems here to digest at once. That, though, could easily be handled by reading it in a different manner, which I mentioned in my review post.

More important as a true negative, in my opinion, is the ridiculous way the poems are arranged throughout the book. I did not follow that ordering but that also provided its own drawbacks. This is also explained more fully in my post.

More positively, here is some of what I said:

These poems accompany one as well as would a wise, world-observant, loquacious, and avuncular (but frequently solitary) companion who knows how to give one all the space and time one needs to grow just as wise and world-observant. He never gets in your way, never obstructs your view, doesn’t tell you what to think or even what to observe. The Way It Is is not a prescription but a description, and it winds its way through the whole volume and not simply the single short poem that bears that title. In fact, lines and phrases quite similar to “the way it is” are peppered throughout the poems of this volume.

Jen, along with her daughter, read Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm. [And, yes Jen, it does count even if she read part of it to you. Sara and I read books to each other and then we both consider them read. If it was an audio book it would count. Seems like the best kind of audio book to have a loved one read to you!]

A tale dark and Grimm

Adam Gidwitz.; Dutton 2010

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Enthusiasm and amazing characterizations by her daughter helped Jen succumb to the story.

Hansel and Gretel weave their way through several story lines, most of them quite tragic (as traditional fairy tales are wont to be) and prove once and for all that children (at least these children–Hansel and Gretel) should be adulated and obeyed by adults. (I might have a bone or two to pick with that assertion.) Written by a teacher, the author humorously breaks in to the story line repeatedly to warn the reader to send small children away when horrible things are about to happen.

For a while Sara and I had an advanced reader copy of this but I think we weeded it without either of us reading it. This (now) makes me sad! I’ll be taking a very short, 3-week, 1-credit class on Grimm’s Fairy Tales this coming J-Term in January. Sadly, we did that round of weeding before I knew there would be a Grimm’s course [Ah, early Sep 2010 it was weeded].

Well, that is it for this installment of the Two-Thirds Book Challenge. Keep reading and next time we’ll hear about some more enticing sounding books.

Note: In the last couple days of writing and proofing this I see that Jen has finished another book. I also know that Sara has finished something that she should be including but she hasn’t had a chance to write it up. We’ll save these for next time.

This is the first book I have finished for My Two-Thirds Book Challenge.

Sara picked this book up at the lovely Defunct Books in Iowa City. It is a nice used book store that sits atop The Red Avocado vegan restaurant. Two great places in such proximity!

The Way It Is

; Graywolf Press 1999

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At 268 pages, there are a lot of poems in this book, which cover a 36-year publication history (1960-1996). It even includes the poem he wrote on the day he died.

I quite enjoyed this book, copied out several poems and a handful or two of great lines to use as prompts, read several to Sara, and generally pondered what Mr. William Stafford was like as a human being.

The one possible drawback to these poems is that there are simply too many of them to digest at once. The reader can discern one or more minor shifts in Stafford’s work across time* which makes it a bit more difficult to get a grasp on him at any specific time. But honestly, this is a very small thing as his shifts are never very large and have more to do with his moving across parts of the country and with the normal shifts in theme and voice that a poet encounters as they age.

These poems accompany one as well as would a wise, world-observant, loquacious, and avuncular (but frequently solitary) companion who knows how to give one all the space and time one needs to grow just as wise and world-observant. He never gets in your way, never obstructs your view, doesn’t tell you what to think or even what to observe. The Way It Is is not a prescription but a description, and it winds its way through the whole volume and not simply the single short poem that bears that title. In fact, lines and phrases quite similar to “the way it is” are peppered throughout the poems of this volume.

Love, the land, family, community, death, aging, historical events, nature, academia, and writing are only some of the many topics of these hundreds of poems.

In many ways I wish that I had taken a bit more time with these poems, that I had let them sink in more. Although, I am envisioning rereading them in the not-so-distant future as a one-poem-a-day meditation over the course of a year plus (there are approx. 400 poems). My version of a bible chapter a day, if you will.

*My biggest gripe with this book is its arrangement. The approximately 400 poems were selected from “some three thousand poems published by William Stafford in either journals or in the sixty-seven volumes from West of Your City (1960) to Even in Quiet Places (1996), and from the poet’s Daily Writings, with special attention to those of the last year of his life” (253). Great so far, but then:

“The volume is organized as follows: recent poems in the first section; a second section selected from the six volumes collected by HarperCollins in Stories That Could Be True (1977); a third section of poems published by other publishers, mostly in limited editions; and a fourth section selected from the poet’s last three HarperCollins volumes, A Glass Face in the Rain, An Oregon Message, and Passwords” (253).

Who does that kind of crap? Oh, yes. Poetry editors. Idiots! To show you the order in which I read these poems, as chronological as possible, here is the listing we constructed to do so:

p. 60 1960
p. 77 1962
p. 103 1966
p. 120 1970
p. 131 1973
p. 49 1977
p. 187 1982
p. 149 1983
p. 208 1987
p. 231 1991
p. 155 1992
p. 177 1980-1993
p. 3 1992
p. 24 1993
p. 166 1996

Simply astonishing!

All arrangement issues aside, I truly enjoyed this book and look forward to revisiting it and more of William Stafford’s work.

William Stafford at The Poetry Foundation

I will leave you with an excerpt from “An Afternoon in the Stacks”

…
…. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
….

The Way It Is (235)

[Minor edit: 24 November 2011 to add links to Helen's posts at her blog.]

Over two months ago, I dreamed up a reading challenge, My Two-Thirds Book Challenge, after finishing another over the previous year. The new one began on October 1st.

So far, four people have joined me: 3 friends, E, Helen, and Jen, and my wife. This post will serve as the pointer to everyone’s lists and as the first reading update.

E – 2/3 Reading Challenge

E has listed 10 titles and has given herself 5 wild cards. Thus, she hopes to read 10 books. She got off to a quick start having finished one book and posting a review within the first month.

2/3 Book Challenge: Netherland

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

This is a book that E could neither put down, nor can stop thinking about. With 9/11 serving as a background, it is, she says, both a story of the American Dream, and one of “finding connection, finding home.” She writes:

One respondent to The New Yorker’s 9/11 project wrote that Netherland “seems to capture with great poignancy that powerful sense that a certain kind of world has slipped away.” This summarizes the book better than I possibly can. It’s wonderful and wonderfully written, full of sadness and loss and exploration.

Helen’s goodreads shelf

Helen is the most ambitious of us, at least publicly ambitious, with 75 titles on her list.

She appears to have finished one book so far.

The Believer’s Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies: How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths by Michael Shermer

I think she is going to post her reviews on her blog, Highway to Helen, but for now I am linking to her review at goodreads. [My Two-Thirds Book Challenge - Intro and My Two-Thirds Book Challenge - Book 1 added: 24 November 2011]

Helen gave it 3 of 5 stars and writes that: “I loved the first half, which explained in layman’s details how the human brain seeks patterns and forms beliefs in all kinds of things.” But, sadly, the second half focused “entirely on theories relating to cosmology and origins of the universe,” which seems to have left the subtitle a little overambitious and the text itself a little narrower than advertised.

Jen – 2/3 book challenge

I am unsure exactly how many books are on Jen’s list (13, I think), but that is perfectly OK as I told her that I am keeping this low-key. Nor is this a contest in any way, but simply a challenge to personally motivate the individual reader.

Jen has read two books so far and has short reviews at her post with her list.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak:

While slow at first, I ended up adoring this book. Set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death, the book centers around a young girl and the family that has taken her in. At times funny and, of course, quite sad, it’s a wonderful ride and an interesting perspective.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery:

I bought this book while in Seattle based on a reader review that was posted with it. The book lived up to the review and I devoured it on my flights home. Like the reviewer, I found myself getting unashamedly teary-eyed while on a flight surrounded by strangers. A secretly intelligent concierge and a young suicidal girl who lives in the building both have life-changing experiences when a new tenant from Japan arrives. A lame review, but I’m worried about giving up too much. I finished this book a couple of weeks ago and the characters still come to mind and I wonder how they’re doing.

Sara – Two-Thirds Book Challenge

Sara’s list is even squishier than Jen’s. She is pursuing themes instead of specific titles as she has learned that if she doesn’t get around to reading a book she put on a list within 6 weeks or so then it will not get read. Her themes are: Creativity, Language, Writing, Erudition, Tech, and Fiction; and, she has links to her shelves at goodreads with possibilities within each theme at her post.

Mark (me) – My Two-Thirds Book Challenge

I have 30 titles on my challenge shelf at goodreads. I will, of course, read many more than 30 books over the next year. Since the challenge began I have read and finished 9 books and have begun 5 books which I am still reading. Three of those in process books are from my challenge list: Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Stafford’s The Way It Is, and Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. None of the finished books, though, are from my list.

My books are also divided into themes but, in my case, that division is a post hoc grouping after the titles were selected.

Pale Fire – Sara suggested I read the poem first and then go back and reread the poem along with its commentary. I have read the poem all the way through, and did so within the first few days of the challenge beginning, but now need to go back and reread/read the book in its entirety.

Hero with a Thousand Faces – I am a little over halfway through with this. It is somewhat slow going as I can only stomach so much of the psychoanalytic mumbo jumbo. Also, Campbell’s writing in some sections is crystal clear and in others it is as murky as can be. The murkier sections tend to dampen my enthusiasm for reading it. I wanted to read it during the fall semester, though, as it ties in well with my Classical Lit and Mythology class that I’m taking. The class is, well, myth and our text book authors also stress the psychoanalytic interpretations.

The Way It Is – I am at least 7/8 or so done with this. It is hard to say as it is one of those poetry collections that some editor decides is best in whatever whacky arrangement they’ve dreamed up instead of simply in the order in which were poems were published. As I chose to read them in chronological order, I have to jump around the book a lot, by and within sections, and that makes it difficult to know exactly how far I am.

Future Updates

I hope to get a bit more regular and have monthly updates. With any luck they will be posted within the first 10 days of each month. I know that E has a few things read to post reviews of, and I will certainly finish Stafford very soon and post a review.

If anyone still wants to join us make a list somewhere, in some form, that contains a smattering of things which you think you can finish 2/3rds (or more) of between October 1st 2011 and September 30th 2012 and post your reviews somewhere. Of course, let me know where this happens so I can add to you to our monthly updates.

Good reading to you all!