I need to find a man my own age. I’m beyond the desperate need for a boyfriend stage, I just mean that if I am to like someone, it should be someone at least from my own generation. A friend of mine told me the problem is I go after men on my intellectual level and that’s why I’m drawn more to a young professor than an old student. It all makes sense but it does me no good at my current stage in life. I suppose it is for the better, most crushes end up being very petty. Am I content and truthful when I say I would rather have an improbable, even impossible, crush than waste my time pining away for a crush, one that is ever so probable that I will hardly fail to grasp it? I would like to think I am. That last phrase, of course, is a The Great Gatsby reference. Among my list of writers to read all the works of, F. Scott Fitzgerald is definitely high. I have only read that one by him and started another (but only read a few chapters) many years ago. I will get to him soon, I’m about halfway through The Sun Also Rises.

The week of as little black as possible is off to a good start. I’ve decided rather than just getting up and throwing on clothes, which has served me well in the past, I’m going to dress for a reason. This week it’s all about proving I can wear minimal black and still pull an outfit together.

I’m thinking next week I will dress each day inspired by a book, movie, musician or character suggested to me by one of the wonderful people out there who read this. (That still amazes me, and I seriously appreciate it). I’ve had random comments on my outfits in the past, twi-hards (or not) yelling at me for my opinion on those movies and random link-backs and it’s awesome. So, I figure I’ll give five of you a chance to dictate how I dress next week.

(This isn’t meant to sway you, just give you a brief overview of some quick inspiration points I thought of.) Obviously who/what I use as inspiration will be very specific to the clothes I already own, since I’m not spending money for the next month (already failed on that end. But that has to do with food, not clothes), so I will either remix stuff I have, edit it or just work with it!

Please leave your suggestion below. I will either do another post letting you know who will be my inspiration or I’ll just dress like them next week, depending on how many suggestions are left.

Thanks!

*The latest ruminations from LUPEC Boston, in case you missed ‘em in the Dig.

by Pink Lady

There’s just something about The Great Gatsby: the gilded, glamorous, Jazz-era setting, the rich, drunk characters—as decadent as modern-day reality show stars. Plus, it’s a good book, a classic most people seem to have actually read, and one that LUPEC is very much looking forward to hearing again.

Not via book-on-tape, silly. At the American Repertory Theater’s latest show, GATZ, in which an employee at a low-rent business office finds a ragged old copy of The Great Gatsby in the clutter of his desk and starts to read it out loud—and doesn’t stop. It’s not a stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but a verbatim reading of the entire text. And it lasts six hours.

It sounds more like a “serious” episode of The Office than traditional theater, to be sure, but our faith in the A.R.T. has been sealed since they brought us Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, which transformed an abandoned elementary school into a 1930s-era set that featured a bar, an awesome band and authentic classic cocktails. And GATZ has received rave reviews in the eight countries it’s toured since its premiere in 2006.

What better way to usher in this exciting new show than with a 1920s-themed party at the A.R.T.’s restaurant partner, Upstairs on the Square? You have our word that the drinks will be the bee’s knees. LUPEC curated the list.

We suggest you come dressed to the nines tonight, and sip a Seelbach as you don your spats and flapper hats. The drink was created at the Seelbach Hotel circa 1917, a haunt of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s as he was writing The Great Gatsby. Its history is a Lazarus tale if there ever was one: The recipe was lost during Prohibition, not drunk again until a hotel manager rediscovered and revived it in 1995. Legend has it that Gatsby was modeled on a gangster Fitzgerald met at the Seelbach Bar, probably while knocking back many of these.

Fitzgerald himself was a party man, after all, notorious for drinking too much gin with his wife Zelda and jumping into the fountains at the Plaza Hotel, boiling party guests’ watches in tomato soup and stripping down to dance naked at parties. The Seelbach was probably right up his alley. To paraphrase LUPEC member emeritus Barbara West, “One Seelbach makes you feel like you’re at a lawn party in  West Egg; a few Seelbachs make you feel like you’re in a nightclub balancing glassware on your boobs.”

Look out, Daisy, here we come.

SEELBACH COCKTAIL

1 oz bourbon

0.5 oz Cointreau

7 dashes angostura bitters

7 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

5 oz chilled brut champagne

Build in a champagne flute, stir, add champagne, stir again and garnish with an orange twist.

CIN-CIN!

Yes please, I’ll take the bakers dozen… Junya Watanabe Spring-stepping in Great Gatsby styles: cravats, caps, and correspondent shoes…

Read for one hour, then slept for three. What a productive day.

Man. What a wonderfully productive day. I read one chapter of The Great Gatsby and slept for an hour. Then I read another chapter and slept for two more hours.

————————————————

There’s a “House” marathon on USA today. I’ve watching it alllllll day. Even though I’ve seen every episode from this season. I think this is season four? I’m not sure. The season where House is hallucinating about Amber?

Let’s see. I woke up at 11:30, watched “House”, ate sugar cookies and oyster crackers, “House”, more “House”, read a chapter of The Great Gatsby, slept for 1/2 an hour, woke up, ate left-overs from “Five Guys”, even more “House”, more more “House”, read another chapter of The Great Gatsby, slept for another two hours, woke up, more “House”, and updated 365 and here I am. Back to more “House” and The Great Gatsby.

First off: happy new year Am quite tired from all the partying, y’know. Have yet to stop eating since the eve of X’mas eve. But yeah:

• first there was the dinner mom hosted for her colleagues.
• then x’mas eve proper.
• then a dim sum buffet stuff ourselves silly at Pine Court with my gfs. I ate so much that I had to cut down in the next few meals… *oink*oink*
• then dad’s big 70th with Jimmy Cheok in residence (food was good, the portions generous) and with loads of close friends and family (see the pix here:)

• then of course, the tanglin club ball more eating and drinking. The Great Gatsby theme went down well; everyone was dressed to the nines. But dancing in 2 inch heels is no joke ok. (the pix are here. )
• should also add that i took in more nature in these few days than I have in the last three years; took a walk in Macritchie on28 Dec. Then did the HSBC Treetop walk on NYE morning.  And u wonder why my legs ache. or why am still tired all the physical activity tossed in with the partying…

Have only just recovered from the lack of sleep and too much alcohol. Pictures will follow: once I get my hands on them since I don’t take pictures and they are in other people’s cameras!

(Now on with the rest of the show)

Spurt#1: on entering my 30s.

OK it is official that I am now in my 30s. *gak*

I meant to post the pics of the big party up earlier but as work has been incredibly insane and so forth (plus with me getting horribly sick. then the dog going missing. etc etc. you know the drill. ) But yes, we made the party Indian-themed…if only because mom decided that the food should be Indian, so therefore I decided that everyone should come dressed suitably indian themed. I was quite convinced that people will not obey this edict but they did! You can view the pix at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=121486&id=532935993&l=8a40aba3b5

Spurt #2: Re-assessments

so tired @ work. so tired OF work. and of various sorts of BS that float around. so i need to take a step back. I am on a vacation from work (ie taking time off from work but not going on a holiday – just need to get out of the office). and will only venture back on 4 Jan. so it’s welcome time at home. But while I am not thinking about work, it means that I have time to think about other things and re-assess. Relationships for one thing.

I scared him the other day when I said something that he felt was a red flag. He mentioned how he could not fathom staying in Singapore for the long-term; I said that would make things difficult for me. He then asked whether that’s a red flag, which then led to a discussion about me saying I can’t figure out if he cares about me or not, and him responding adamantly that he DOES care about me. At any rate, I let him know that my emotional investment in the r’ship is obviously much more in his favour than it is in mine; he gets that now. FINALLY. (But I may have to back off a bit for a while; I think he is starting to think that I may be going too far in pushing the envelope It’s all gd, y’all.) I have yet to see him in a while; his folks are in town and he has been travelling with them and when he is not he is down with colds, and so forth. But i think all my talking and musing lately has gotten him suitably anxious that I might just up and leave. Heh.

OK. I think I have exhuasted the stuff that I have yet to report on. Enjoy the long weekend y’all.

Since it was Christmas, and I didn’t want to hunt down a nice Jewish girl with a not so nice nose, I decided it would be a nice day to spend in isolation. I got my parents new Old fashioned glasses for Christmas, and my dad a very nice bottle of scotch. I “borrowed” the bottle of scotch, and christened one of the glasses. I took out my copy of Trimalchio and hunkered down by the fire.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Girls named after flowers are decidedly dangerous. Depending on the day I would either instantly propose or tell off a girl I met if her name turned out to be Daisy.  At the very least, I would throw a bunch of lavish parties, hoping she would show up. But unfortunately,

Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs and So I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan scornful mouth smiled and so I drew her up again, closer, this time to my face.

Highschool Travis tried to make every girl out to be Daisy. I even think I tried to make Kara my Daisy for a little while there. I’m actually enjoying a few other girls right now too. Back then I wanted every girl to haunt the very fiber of my being, the minutia of my day.  And these days it feels like I’m just drawing up the girl beside me with scornful mouths.

I’m at the mid-way point here and I feel as if I’m already slightly tarnished. I start this out playing the field, and I can’t even think of more than five of these girls that I even really want to see again, much less see on a consistent basis. And about 1/5 of those have I actually felt comfortable, and dare I say, myself next to.  Even when I sleep with a girl, the sleep is never sound. It’s never solid, or comfortable. It’s shallow, and I spend the night stirring.

     It’s a little self-serving to do a whole post on my own lyrics, but sometimes people are interested in the creative process. In this spirit, I am offering this discussion of my song “Within and Without”. Please refer to yesterday’s post to hear the song and follow along with the lyrics. 

     “Within and Without” is based on a moving quote from Ch. 2 in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In this excerpt, the narrator is feeling vaguely disgusted with the people around him. Although he’d rather make his exit, somehow the conversation keeps drawing him back and he finds himself unable to leave: 

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” 

     The shallow nature of the people around him alienates the narrator, and thus he feels at once observer and participant. The “inexhaustible variety of life” foreshadows the novel’s tragic end, where each of the characters are undone in their desire to have it all. 

     I saw it as my responsibility to capture the original intent of the excerpt but also create a satisfying work for those unfamiliar with Fitzgerald. This was a challenge, because every line had to reference the novel and stand alone as a lyric. Also, to better serve people’s pre-existing impression of The Great Gatsby, I moved the setting to Ch. 3 in which the narrator, Nick, attends the first of  Jay Gatsby’s opulent parties. 

     While the popular draw of the novel is the romance between Gatsby and Daisy, I chose to focus my song on the relationship between Nick and Jordan. Whereas Gatsby and Daisy have a star-crossed romance, Nick and Jordan are simply unable to connect; either because they are too guarded, or too distracted by their indulgences to value each other. 

     This is related in the second half of the first verse. Jordan’s character is introduced as “nonchalant“, which communicates her feigned indifference. Also, throughout the lyric there is an emphasis on words that denote division; she “crosses” the view, the currents are “parted”, etc. This ties in the relationship element, and reminds the listener this is a song about people being torn apart. 

     The second verse was the most difficult to write. The “champagne pours like rain” section illustrates that the party, once frustratingly meaningless to the narrator, has begun to take on an air of profundity in his drunken state. Then, despite first desiring to leave, he is last out the door. He has lost his night, and for all the protestations of friendship during the party each person “parts” to go their separate ways. 

     Which brings us to the “wants, they still elude us” section. This is the bridge of the song and reiterates the novel’s lesson. As Fitzgerald writes at the novel‘s end, tomorrow we reach further and sail harder to fulfill our endless want; however, we are hindered by who we are in our efforts to become who we wish to be. Social currents press against us, part our course, and bear us ceaselessly into our past.

We’re cursed by life’s variety.

Click here to listen to my original music: http://www.myspace.com/methesnake

It’s officially finals week for me, and I hate all this reading that I have to do! I love my classes and I worked hard all semester, but the reviewing of readings from the beginning of the year is INSANE!! I have always loved reading, though, so I thought I would share some of my favorite books of all time:
6. A Year in the World This is one of Frances Mayes’ books (“Under the Tuscan Sun” is her most famous). I think this is what inspired me to make a career out of two of my passions: traveling and writing. I someday hope to be a travel writer, and Mayes’ ability to incorporate local flavor of every place she visits is inspiring. This book is literally a mind vacation as you can picture every place she visits.
5. Paula This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. Isabel Allende wrote this about and for her daughter who was dying of porphyria. It is the story of Isabel Allende’s life, but reads exactly like a novel. It is such an underappreciated piece of work.
4. Little Women In third grade, this was the only book I wanted to do book reports on. I loved Jo and Amy, to me they represented girls I wanted to be. And one of my favorite episodes of “Friends” is when Rachel gives Joey “Little Women” to read and he falls in love with the story. It’s truly an American classic!
3. The Little Prince Yes, this is a children’s book but it is a GREAT children’s book. I read this when I was little and I liked it, but I actually got more out of it senior year when I read it for a class. The book is very philosophical and makes you want to appreciate everything you have in life.
2. The Great Gatsby This is the great American novel. Hands down, my favorite of all American literature. I don’t know what else to say except that this book is so amazing. There is so much in there and even though it isn’t that long, it is one of the greatest stories and critiques of life ever told.
1. Wuthering Heights I participated in a summer reading program at the library in 6th grade and as part of completing the program, I received a book. This book was “Wuthering Heights”. I never read it until junior year of high school when I had to for a class and I fell in love. It’s beautiful. It’s haunting. And I love it. I think I was the only one who did by the time we finished the book.
So there you have it! Maybe you can pick one up over the holidays, I think they are all fantastic!

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

“How do you get to West Egg Village?” he asked helplessly.

I told him.  And as I walked on I was lonely no longer.  I was a guide, a pathfinder, an orignal settler.  He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

If you have never moved to a new city, this particular passage may not have much resonance with you.  Possibly you recognize it from the opening chapter of The Great Gatsby, and possibly you do not (if not, for shame).  I first read the book the summer after graduating high school and have read it every summer since (ironically, I was never assigned any Fitzgerald for any class I ever took in high school of college, even though I was an English major… I may have read the short story “Babylon Revisited” for a class, but otherwise, nada).

Since I started moving every year, reading this book has taken on new life and meaning.  You see, for me, this is not just a story about doomed love or the symbolism of the American Dream squandered.  This is the story of Nick Carraway, a man who doesn’t quite belong anywhere and finds himself enigmatically linked to Jay Gatsby, a man just as disconnected from the world.

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

The truth is, Nick and Jay were no longer Westerners, and I’ve always felt that if we were to follow Nick after the end of the novel, we would find a character somewhat like Rabbit from John Updike’s novels (though, more sympathetic), a person not really suited to be tied down to one place (or one life).  You could simply call that projection, but in many ways Fitzgerald was the same way, so it’s not too much of a stretch.

The reason I opened this post with that passage is because it is one of the little nuggets peppered throughout the novel that makes me love the book.  It’s so manifestly true.  I’ve had that moment in every city I’ve lived in when some driver or pedestrian has stopped me while I was walking and asked me the directions somewhere and when I was able to point them in the right way, I instantly felt like I was home.  It’s the moment when you realize, I know this minuscule portion of the world.  It’s one of those exhilarating instances that makes the whole grand ordeal of relocating survivable and perhaps, even, worth it.

I think the real moment when I feel like a new city is truly home is when I (finally) get a job.  Starting a new job sucks.  You don’t know the procedures, you don’t know your coworkers, you sit there doing your job watching from the outside of the inside jokes, relationships and gossip that makes any job worth it.  When you get down to it, unless you’re doing something you truly love for a living (like, say, writing), every job is exactly the same.  You’re doing a task that is meant to increase the bank account of your boss(es), usually someone you will never ever meet.  And for reward, you get a paycheck that’s never big enough.  Liking your job is all about enjoying your coworkers and feeling like you fit in.  So, inevitably, the first couple weeks to a month of a job will suck (certain jobs never stop sucking, but that’s a different issue).

I’ve been working at a job for just shy of a month here, doing retail work I care nothing about with a product I have no interest in (I’ve bitched plenty about working at bookstores, but in the end, when all else fails, at least with books I love the product I’m selling), and all the while I’ve been very slowly getting to know my coworkers.  It’s one of those jobs where the amount of people I work with far outnumbers the amount of names I’m capable of remembering at any given time (that number, by the way: 4, and one of those is mine).  So, needless to say, this has been a job that’s taken me awhile to start to feel like I have a place.  But I’m getting there, slowly.

Regardless, I have a job (for the moment).  In this economic climate, that statement is one to be happy about.  All the more so for having moved to a new city.  When you get that call and are offered a job position, it has the same sort of euphoric effect that Fitzgerald illustrated so well.  You aren’t just a visitor to the city, you aren’t just a hobo waiting for the next train out.  You are a part of the mechanism that makes the city run, and even though you as an individual are as replaceable as the proverbial cog, you have a role.  If you’re one of those people who defines themselves by their work, well, that might not sound so satisfying.  But, if you’re like me, and a job is just the means to an end (keeping me alive long enough to finish my 10 cities goal and get a novel or two published), then being a part of the machine can be just as satisfying as the couple in the Ford asking you how to get to Lake Shore Drive.

Straight ahead, take a left on Irving Park.

More often than not I will lay off the fiction when I’m choosing a book. For faintly ridiculous reasons, really. I like to know what’s really going on in the world, or has gone on in the world in the past. I like reality. I like facts and information I can utilise in a pub quiz (how sad, eh?). I like tidbits I can bore my friends and family with on high days and holidays.

This is, of course, forgetting that you can get all this, and more, from good fiction. I can find out just as much, and be just as moved, as I would be by a true-life story.

This was certainly the case with F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. After reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, which features Fitzgerald around the time The Great Gatsby was written, the novel itself seemed a sensible next stop. Here I could perhaps flesh out that 1920s world, and see if Hemingway was right about this being Fitzgerald’s best work.

It did also help that the book is my Significant Other’s favourite. She has pretty good taste (well, she lives with me, right? OK, apart from living with me, she has good taste) and I doubted she’s recommend a book I wouldn’t go for.

You’ll be pleased to hear, dear reader, I wasn’t disappointed.

Here is a wonderful snapshot of 1920s decadence. Here was that sense of freedom and abandon after the First World War. Here was the truly modern(ist?) world, with its pleasures and its pitfalls. The book chronicles the recklessness of the age, which would eventually lead to the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression (although obviously Fitzgerald was not to know of this when he was writing the book). People wallow in excess, on money that appears from nowhere, with no foundation, a modern Gomorrah, heading for disaster. Sounds familiar, eh?

Money is no object, and with Gatsby, he appears to have magicked it from thin air. The allusion is that he has gained his fortune by nefarious means (perhaps he is a con artist, perhaps a bootlegger, perhaps a fixer of the World Series). But the great and good are more than happy to accept his charming self, and more importantly are happy to see his money spent on their own enjoyment, at his countless parties. No questions asked.

I found Gatsby such a fascinating character as he does not seem of this (that?) world. He is a mirage. He seems to have appeared from nowhere, and can disappear just as quickly.

In the early passages of the book, Gatsby is but a mythical presence. The narrator, Nick Carraway, hears of him but does not meet him, despite living next-door. When he first catches sight of him, he vanishes. When they first meet face-to-face, Nick does not immediately realise who he is talking to.

Here is a character who is dropped into the ‘normal’ world and seems to unsettle everything. Yet, by the end, on the surface, normality has returned, or at least the unrest has been suppressed. This lends Gatsby an almost ghostly,dream-like air. For the main characters, to the outside world at least, it is as if nothing has ever happened. The status quo is restored.

He is soon forgotten by high society. They move on. Those who he genuinely touched will at least pretend to forget him, or wish that they could. Only Nick remains to mark and remember Gatsby. And so, Gatsby starts and ends a myth. He lives only in Nick’s words and memory.

Was Gatsby an illusion? Just as all that surrounded him was, and as the riches of that time were? It seems that way.

10. 1984
George Orwell

Orwell’s dystopian novel of a world controlled by Big Brother has become the quintessential cautionary tale for the far-reaching arm of government and the dangers of totalitarianism. Orwell has designed every corner of this futuristic world and transports us to a place where we may not want to be, yet cannot tear ourselves away from. It is a strong message about uniformity vs. individualism and makes us question what freedom really means while at the same time frightening us by showing that freedom may be slipping away from us as we speak.

9. To Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird is a tale of racism and bigotry seen through the eyes of a child. At first, the novel works as a story of what it is to be young and free. Then the novel moves into issues of social justice as Scout and Jem have their eyes open to the larger world. Atticus Finch is a hero of morals and values who fights to do what is right even when he knows he will lose. The novel is rich with themes and characters which are almost impossible to forget once you have read it.

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce

James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of this century, and this semi-autobiography led Joyce’s movement into modernist literature. This novel outlines the main characters journey to grow in his intellect, philosophy and spirituality. Joyce’s style here is inventive and thought-provoking and has made this one of the best novels of the last one hundred years.

7. The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

A tale told from the viewpoint of multiple characters, The Sound and the Fury is a masterpiece at describing the thought processes of humans. Faulkner damn-near perfected the stream-of-consciousness thinking. Faulkner moves us with his tale of the decline of a southern family and their struggle to maintain honour.

6. The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

Teen angst has never been so literary. Catcher in the Rye is one of the most popular books in the world. Its biting satire and well-constructed anti-hero have made this an exceptionally brilliant novel, definitely worthy in its inclusion as one of the greatest ever written.

5. The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

There may be no better written recording of the Great Depression than Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath. It tells the tale of the Joad family on a quest for a better life in California and it is a tale of adversity and perseverance on a scale which sets the bar for all other American novels.

4. The Lord of the Rings
J. R. R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings has become a cultural phenomenon in the latter half of the twentieth century, a masterpiece of high fantasy on an epic scale in both scope and depth. Lord of the Rings is not a simple fantasy tale but is in fact a story rich in themes; loyalty, friendship, fate, duty, corruption, etc. Tolkien has created a world so full and complex you are immediately transported into it and become engrossed with every detail. Literary critics often dismiss The Lord of the Rings because of its genre, not able to look further to see that it is the masterpiece of its genre and is a work of genius.

3. Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

Perhaps the greatest piece of post-modern literature, Pynchon’s masterpiece is a story about post-war Europe and the production of the V2 rocket. Pynchon’s novel is complex in its plot and structure. Gravity’s Rainbow also uses a lot of science and mathematics in its story, adding a level of sophistication and even greater complexity. Many critics argue that this may be the greatest literary work on the last one hundred years, while other claim it is far too difficult to be read. Nonetheless it is a massive achievement in writing and storytelling.

2. The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is often called “the great American novel”. Jay Gatsby is living the dream; riches, women, high society lifestyle. Everything seems to be going his way. Fitzgerald uses this character and situation to explore they areas of morality, materialism, and what it means to have wealth and worth. It is a true classic that was never recognized in its time, but grew into one of the most acclaimed novels of the modern era.

1. Ulysses
James Joyce

As almost any literary scholar what the work of the century is and you will almost get a unanimous decision: Ulysses. It seems to almost be a given that Ulysses is the best novel of the 20th century. Ulysses has strong characters, humour, technique, style; it is perhaps the most important piece of modernist literature. James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of the modern age and he has given us the greatest novel of the century.

It’s endemic to English majors. You know you were born too late. You were supposed to have been hanging around Paris in the twenties, nodding politely to Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck – or even Cole Porter – as you pass them on the street. Maybe you’d even chat with one of them, these expatriate American writers – but not that surly madman Ezra Pound. He was the Ty Cobb of that literary scene – great talent, everybody hated his guts.

But that wouldn’t matter. You’d soon enough retire to your unheated garret and knock out another chapter of the Great American Novel. Or like Hemingway, you’d write at the table of the local café – perhaps a clean, well-lighted place – nursing one cup of bad coffee all afternoon. It’s all very romantic. Damn, you were meant to be young, devastatingly insightful and down-and-out in Paris, where it’s always raining, in those few years, inventing the modern world with these guys.

That was the time and the place. Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet were in town. Sylvia Beach was chatting with James Joyce over at her bookstore, about publishing Ulysses for him, and so on. It was A Moveable Feast. Of course you’d probably cross paths with that odd Gertrude Stein and her even odder partner, Alice B. Toklas – but that would be okay. She was the one who named the local crew. They were The Lost Generation.

Stein is said to have heard her French garage owner speak of his young auto mechanics, who couldn’t do anything right, as “une generation perdue” – and that struck her as about right. It had been that war – France lost a generation of men, for no good reason, as the war gained no one much of anything, and what all of her crowd was writing about was disillusionment and the pointlessness of what followed the war, and about being brave in the face of a world with no meaning. Read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises – Jake Barnes gets it. And oddly, Hemingway says Gertrude Stein didn’t get it – “I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought ‘who is calling who a lost generation?’” Things may be awful and meaningless, or awfully meaningless, but there is self-discipline and self-control. Do the honorable thing and write dead honest perfectly lucid prose, damn it. That’s all we have left.

Ah, those were the days. And then it all fell apart. Hemingway blew his brains out in Idaho and F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his last year just down the street here on North Laurel Avenue in Hollywood, waiting for the final heart attack, which came soon enough. It was over.

But the disillusionment and pointlessness of what followed the war, and the notion of being brave in the face of a world with no meaning, stuck around, as did the whole concept of a Lost Generation. Anytime you lose a decade or more, when what everyone thought was progress turns to dust, where you find yourself right back where you started in spite of it all, is a lost generation. It’s a useful term.

People use the term now for existentially absurd economic conditions, as in Japan’s Lost Generation:

There’s an entire generation of people in their late 20s and early 30s who came of age during Japan’s so-called lost decade, a stretch of economic stagnation that started to ease in 2003. Through that period, with Japanese companies in retrenchment mode, young people faced what came to be known as a “hiring ice age.” Many settled for odd jobs or part-time work to make ends meet but hoped eventually to find their way into regular employment with the stars of corporate Japan. Instead, they’re being passed over in favor of new graduates – a serious problem in a country that still values lifetime employment and frowns on midcareer job-hopping.

This group is called the “lost” or “suffering” generation. Some 3.3 million Japanese aged 25 to 34 work as temps or contract employees – up from 1.5 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These young people have earned various less-than-desirable classifications in hierarchy-conscious Japan. They might be keiyakushain, or contract workers, typically lower-paid than full-time staff, with fewer benefits and minimal job security. Or they’re hakenshain (people employed by temp agencies); freeters (those who flit from one menial job to the next); or, at the bottom, NEETS (an acronym coined in Britain that stands for not employed, in education, or in training).

The plight of such folks was the subject of a recent TV drama called Haken no Hinkaku, or Dignity of the Agency Worker, the saga of a twenty-something temp who must put up with the snobbery of full-time colleagues despite her long list of qualifications.

Why does that sound familiar? Maybe we’ll have our own Lost Generation here too. Who needs Paris?

And of course, the roots of what happened in Japan also sound familiar:

Briefly, a combination of incredibly high land values and incredibly low interest rates led to a position in which credit was both easily available and extremely cheap. This led to massive borrowing, the proceeds of which were invested mostly in domestic and foreign stocks and securities.

That sounds familiar, but our guys didn’t do that dumb thing the Japanese did:

Recognizing that this bubble was unsustainable (resting, as it did, on unrealizable land values – the loans were ultimately secured on land holdings), the Finance Ministry sharply raised interest rates. This popped the bubble in spectacular fashion, leading to a massive crash in the stock market. It also led to a debt crisis; a large proportion of the huge debts that had been run up turned bad, which in turn led to a crisis in the banking sector, with many banks having to be bailed out by the government.

Ah, that led to a bad place:

Eventually, many become unsustainable, and a wave of consolidation took place (there are now only four national banks in Japan). Critically for the long-term economic situation, it meant many Japanese firms were lumbered with massive debts, affecting their ability for capital investment. It also meant credit became very difficult to obtain, due to the beleaguered situation of the banks; even now the official interest rate is at 0% and have been for several years, and despite this credit is still difficult to obtain.

That too sounds familiar, even if we didn’t make the Japanese mistake:

Overall, this has led to the phenomenon known as the “lost decade”; economic expansion came to a total halt in Japan during the 1990s. The impact on everyday life has been rather muted, however. Unemployment runs reasonably high, but not at crisis levels (the official figure is a little under 5%, but this is a considerable underestimate – the real level is probably around twice that). This has combined with the traditional Japanese emphasis on frugality and saving (saving money is a cultural habit in Japan) to produce a quite limited impact on the average Japanese family, which continues much as it did in the period of the miracle.

Hey, we’re turning Japanese – saving what we can and making do. And with consumers unwilling to spend much, we’re heading for a lost generation. Everyone sits at home, quietly.

But things are more dynamic than that. Things are not flat, they’re spiraling down:

In Arizona, the budget has grown so gloomy that lawmakers are considering mortgaging Capitol buildings. In Michigan, state officials dealing with the nation’s highest unemployment rate are slashing spending on schools and health care.

Drastic financial remedies are no longer limited to California, where a historic budget crisis earlier this year grew so bad that state agencies issued IOUs to pay bills.

A study released Wednesday warned that at least nine other big states are also barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services.

That’s all based on a report by the Pew Center – Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are “at grave risk.” Wisconsin officials disputed the findings. But the “double-digit budget gaps, rising unemployment, high foreclosure rates and built-in budget constraints” are real enough. We may not have had the Great War knock the stuffing out of us, turning us into brave and stoic cynics writing great prose, but this will do.

Of course not everyone is hurting. The New York Times drills down deep into the unemployment data and produces this snazzy interactive graphic – some people will keep their jobs, as their particular demographic group is in a profession, or trade, or service, that is okay at the moment. They won’t feel lost.

But at Free Exchange there’s this comment:

It is worth thinking about the fact that probably 90% or more of the people who make economic policy, write about economic policy, and produce journalism on economic policy fall into demographic groups in which the unemployment rate – during perhaps the worst recession since the Great Depression – is comfortably below 5%.

That’s something to keep in mind when you read that things aren’t that bad, or, maybe they are, sort of, but they can be fixed. The happily employed are telling you that. As Hemingway once said, “What every good writer needs is a foolproof, shockproof crap detector.” The Lost Generation knew a thing or two.

And James Pethokoukis reads what economist David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch, thinks about what’s really going on and distills Rosenberg in 12 Reasons Unemployment Is Going To (At Least) 12 Percent, It’s not cheery:

Optimists, Rosenberg explains, underestimate the incredible damage done to the labor market during this downturn. And even before this downturn, the economy was not generating jobs in huge numbers. If he is right, all political bets are off. I think the Democrats could lose the House and effective control of the Senate. I think you would also be talking about the rise of third party and perhaps a challenger to Obama in 2012.

Well, maybe, but his twelve reasons that things will get worse are eye-opening.

There’s this:

For the first time in at least six decades, private sector employment is negative on a 10-year basis (first turned negative in August). Hence, the changes are not merely cyclical or short-term in nature. Many of the jobs created between the 2001 and 2008 recessions were related either directly or indirectly to the parabolic extension of credit.

And this:

There are now a record 9.3 million Americans working part-time because they have no choice. In past recessions, that number rarely got much above six million.

And this:

The workweek was sliced this cycle from 33.8 hours to a record low 33.0 hours – the labor input equivalent is another 2.4 million jobs lost. So when you count in hours, it’s as if we lost over 10 million jobs this cycle.

The other nine reasons are just as disturbing.

But we may not have to worry about the upcoming lost generation, really, as Newsweek’s Daniel Gross says we’ve already sort of have had our decade of running in place, which he calls The Lost Decade. Japan may have had their decade with its “shrunken and sapped of confidence, with very little to show for a large amount of government spending and near-zero interest rates” – but if you think about it, so did we:

Let’s start with the single most important economic number: jobs. Over the past 10 years, job creation has been extraordinarily weak. In September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, there were 108.5 million private (nongovernment) payroll jobs in the United States – almost precisely the number there were in June 1999. … In the past decade, in other words, the private sector hasn’t created a single job. That’s awful, especially when you consider that the population grew 9 percent during those years, from 282 million in 2000 to 308 million today.

And the stock market went nowhere at all:

As this depressing 10-year chart of the S&P 500 shows, stocks went precisely nowhere in the past decade, despite all the efforts to help the market, from slashing capital gains and dividend taxes to keeping interest rates extremely low to bailing out just about everyone.

And now, Americans seem to have lost their interest in investing. He runs the numbers. Between 1992 and 2000, the percentage of households owning mutual funds doubled – everyone jumped in. And then they got out, so we’re back where we started:

George W. Bush made the “Ownership Society” a theme of his presidency, suggesting that investing in securities could be the solution to everything from Social Security’s long-term insolvency to the health care crisis. But Americans largely ignored these calls. According to the securities industry’s Equity Ownership in America 2008 report, the proportion of the population that owned stocks or bonds fell from 57 percent in 2001 to 48 percent in 2008. And in 2008, 45 percent of U.S. households owned stocks – inside retirement programs and in brokerage accounts – down from 49 percent in 1998.

Actually, no one had the money to play the market:

Incomes were basically stagnant during the decade while the costs of vital goods and services – education, health insurance, energy – spiked. The latest report from the Census Bureau on income, poverty, and health insurance is full of interesting data that show that median household income in 2008, at $50,303, was below where it was in 1998. The same report shows … that both the number and the percentage of people living below the poverty line rose, from 11.9 percent in 1999 to 13.2 percent in 2009.

And there are reasons for all this:

Many factors explain the sluggish performance. Globalization, the continuing information technology revolution, and the off-shoring of manufacturing and service jobs kept employment in check. But at root, it turned out that the policies enacted by the folks running the system – low interest rates, cutting taxes aggressively, disempowering unions, empowering Wall Street, deregulating the financial system – just didn’t work as advertised. Meanwhile, policymakers neglected some important areas that can help support financial stability – such as health insurance.

So don’t expect dead times ahead and a new Lost Generation writing great prose. We’ve been dead in the water for ten years, but of course pretended we weren’t. Homeownership rates spiked up, as everyone knew we were in wonderful times, then fell back to where they were:

Once the housing market peaked in the summer of 2006 and foreclosures started to mount, the homeownership rate declined. Today, it stands at 67.6 percent – almost precisely where it was in the fall of 2000.

But now the stock market is up again, for no particular reason, as investors gamble on the vague hope something will change, or position themselves defensively on the off chance they may, which would get them in early. That’s a high-risk bet. But risk is what they do.

Of course it all has its ironies, as in this breaking news:

It was the sale of the season. When a seminal Warhol – one of the artist’s first silk-screen paintings – came on the block at Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art on Wednesday night, the auctioneer, Tobias Meyer, opened bidding at $6 million and was stunned when a bidder instantly doubled it.

The price rose at breakneck speed as five collectors vied for the classic image, “200 One Dollar Bills.” It ended up selling for $43.7 million (including fees to Sotheby’s), more than three times its high estimate of $12 million. The buyer, whom Sotheby’s refused to identify, bid by telephone through Bruno Vinciguerra, the company’s chief operating officer. Sotheby’s would also not identify the seller, although people familiar with the collection said it was Pauline Karpidas, a London-based collector.

That’s funny – we may be a lost generation, in the middle of a lost decade, or two, but the rich are spending obscene amounts of money to buy ironic pictures of money. It’s like a scene from Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Yes, the Lost Generation knew a thing or two. Who needs Paris?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I have been anticipating the arrival of Halloween since I learned that the students of the London program were orchestrating a river cruise!  I was even more anxious once I learned that the theme was to be The Great Gatsby, one of my all time favorite novels.

However, I started the weekend out with a fever on Friday.  I mostly spent the day trying to feel better and catching up on my blog.  I was supposed to spend the day at some local markets, and I was pretty disappointed to not be able to make it.  However, I felt much better by Saturday and was luckily still able to go on the river cruise.  There will have to be other weekends for the markets.

Saturday morning I went with some of the girls to get groceries to host a pre-cruise gathering.  We made a bunch of food appropriate for fall and got ready for the cruise together.   We also played a series of clips from very popular Halloween movies while getting ready.

The river cruise turned out to be a huge success.  In addition to having 120 of the 130 London students attend, 50 ND students from other study abroad programs came to London for the event.  It was very nice to see some friends I have not seen since last semester.  We set off from Blackfriars Pier around 8pm and ended promptly at midnight.  We had to start the event a little late, however, because 9 students were stuck in our flat elevators for almost an hour.  We also have a flat with bed bugs and most have mice so the elevator breaking was not really much of a surprise to anyone.  Aside from that minor mishap, the cruise was great and the view from the boat was amazing.  Cruising on the Thames gave us the best possible view of London at night. Everyone partook in dressing up, although a group of the boys decided to go as French Ghosts rather than Great Gatsby-like characters which was highly entertaining for all the cars who drove by 170 students making the 20min walk from our flats to the river as “ghosts” were trying to scare them.

At the end of the night, we walked back to our flats and hung out with the friends who were in from out-of-town and watched the ND v. Washington State game.  The next morning,  we went to a close cafe called Caffe Nero for tea and to do some homework.  I spent the rest of the day doing homework and attended church at St. John’s.  The weather was perfect and leaves have changed colors and started falling.  The walk to the church was very relaxing and all-in-all it was a great day and weekend! 

I have some books for sale on my amazon.com site at http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom.  Most people are familiar with buying used books on amazon.  For any particular book, you can find a certain number of used copies for sale listed by price.  So for example when you search on “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway, the audiocassette version, this comes up:  “2 new from $100.39, 15 used from $5.45.”  So the cheapest one is $5.45.  I always list mine as the cheapest, with the exception that I won’t go below $4.50.  Sellers constantly lower prices by a penny at a time so at any one time there may be a book that is slightly cheaper than mine, but for the most part I make sure that my books are the cheapest ones you can buy.  I have a lot of books on art, history, and fiction, and they include hardbacks, paperbacks, and books on tape (cd or cassette).

Here’s a list of some of them:

• Call of the Wild by Jack London (audio book)
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (audio cassette)
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Antietam (Audio CD) by James Reasoner
• As I Am: Abba Before & Beyond by Agnetha Faltskog
• AWESOMISM!: A New Way to Understand the Diagnosis of Autism by Suzy Miller
• Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend by Joshua Blu Buhs
• Freedom Congress (Audio CD) by L. Ron Hubbard
• FRENCH ART OF THE 18TH CENTURY by Abert Gilou
• Mark Twain: A Life (audio CD) by Ron Powers
• Mix with love: Cookbook for dogs by Maddelena Herbig
• Modern Jewish history: A source reader by Robert Chazan
• NEW ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES #25 (Audio Cassette) by Anthony Boucher
• Pt 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II
• The Great Gatsby CD (Audio CD) by F Scott Fitzgerald
• The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations, by Robert L. Cross
• The Manchurian Candidate (Audio CD) by Richard Condon
• The Perfect Storm (Audio CD)
• The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy (Audio Cassette) by David Brock
• The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life (Audio CD) by Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel
• The Two Dragons of Dim Mak: Pressure Point Techniques for Healing & Martial Arts (Paperback) by Dr. Pier Tsui-Po
• Writer’s Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents: Who They Are! What They Want! and How to Win Them Over! (13th Edition) by Jeff Herman
• Wolverine Vol. 3: Return of the Native by Greg Rucka
• Your Sixth Sense: Activating Your Psychic Potential (Audio Cassette) by Belleruth Naparstek
• X-Men: The Complete Age of Apocalypse Epic, Book 3 (Bk. 3) by Warren Ellis

Once again, the site is http://www.amazon.com/shops/mikeneedsakidneydotcom.  Thanks.

A ball, The Great Gatsby; a big band; strings of pearls and drop-waisted dresses; dancing, dancing, dancing; laughing; dancing.

Sheer exhaustion. A cup of tea. Conversations surprised by the infrequency of such nights of dancing. Sleep.

Aaaahhh…it’s good to be back pecking at my blog after more than a week away. I was in Australia visiting family among other things. More on that in my later posts.

The most exciting news so far after I got back from my trip…my Maggie Sottero Gatsby gown is arriving this Monday!!! Uncle Herman in the US did all the checking and packed it all properly, insured it and sent it via UPS complete with tracking and so I can follow the progress of my gown every step of the way. So exciting!

See, I’ve tried on this gown before while on holiday in Australia and I know how it looked on me, but I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to find pictures of a REAL bride wearing it and couldn’t find any until recently. Then I stumbled on a thread on weddingbee that had pictures of real brides trying on the Gatsby. The one I ordered is champagne with silver pewter embroidery, not the white or ivory one. I really think w’all should have another look at La Gatsby…you know, lest we forget…

And here’s a weddingbee member, bellamargot, who tried on the Gatsby in a blurry shot. Bear in mind she’s only 5′2 and a size 4 on a fat day, and she’s trying on a regular size 10 here:

Since I’m 5′10 and light years away from being a size 4, the gown sorta looks different on me. But the picture gives some visual reference to the colour and details, because that’s the colour I ordered!

I was planning wear the gown with my feathered birdcage hairpiece complete with a gorgeous flapper-inspired hairstyle and maybe a little fur stole to complete the look. My bridesman said “Don’t you think it would be …I don’t know…too much?” A valid point. I had no idea myself how it was all going to look, when you put all these elements together.

And then, the fabulous Drew Barrymore, did me the ultimate favour and gave me a visual!

Champagne gown with pewter embellishments – check.

Birdcage hairpiece – check.

Fur stole – check.

Flapper hair – check!

Here she is at the premiere of Grey Gardens:

(That’s her ex, Justin Long, circled in a heart, hehe).

Can we say TTDF??!!!! (Bridezilla speak for “Totally TO DIE FOR!”)

(The outfit, not the man.)

Of course, I’m no Drewby but having this amazing visual reference for my hairdresser and makeup artist is a real boon!

Will post more on this subject when my Gatsby arrives! Can’t wait!

This building is worth the whole damn block put together.

Every once in a while, when feeling attuned to my coworker’s aversion to traffic circles (as well he should be — they’re unsafe!), I walk down 15th Street in the morning, and invariably, I pass The Gatsby (pictured above). And I have to say, the naming of this building has always struck me as a bit curious. Of course, I understand the name conjures some vague feeling of opulence (if of the tumid variety), but it’s also worth pointing out that Gatsby was a serially miserable pathological liar who died young, unhappy, and unfulfilled. I suppose they could have gone with The Kurt Cobain or something, but either way, probably not the best thing for a building owner to project.

Summing up Great Gatsby, leads me to wonder if I could ever get tired of this novel. I’m guessing we didn’t get into detail with this novel in class because of the time limit, however, the symbolism in this book is full of creativity. The themes and symbols it states are amazing. Towards the end Nick states “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” To me this quote is facinating for the reason that many people live thier lives to achieve a goal of re creating something that happened in the past. Therefore, going back to a topic we mentioned in class on how Scott was writing his novel in a way to make the story very realistic. I believe this story was greatly put together.

Throughout his text, Abbot speaks of the reliability of the narrator as being one of the central manners in which the reader interprets a novel’s characters and plot. The narrator of The Great Gatsby is Nick Carraway, an individual so involved with the various characters of the narrative that his account itself turns into an impressionistic report. Because of this subjective story telling, one has a difficult time knowing how to feel about the characters themselves. Does Nick’s friendship with Gatsby shed a more positive light to his past exploits and personality? Is Nick’s perception of Daisy and Tom so personally biased that the reader feels they must dislike them as much as Nick?
This sense of unreliability compares almost identically with the narrator Nelly who recounts the tale of Wuthering Heights. Nelly served as maid for the Earnshaws and eventually Heathcliff himself. Many readers accuse Nelly of being too lax in her personal condemnation of Heathcliff’s actions, while being too harsh in her criticism of Catherine. Based on these observations, one may note that the reader may feel more inclined to have sympathy for Heathcliff and his broken heart, rather than for Catherine, even upon her death.
There are various reasons why Fitzgerald may have chosen Nick to be so involved with the other characters of the novel while also acting as the narrator. For one, it makes the story more realistic and lends it an air of credibility. How better to construct a seemingly practical and honest novel than to include a narrator with his own feelings and narrative himself? Another reason Fitzgerald may have implemented this type of narration is to present the reader with a realistic sense of memory. Throughout the novel, Nick holds vague descriptions of time, and presents openly questionable events as well as time gaps in his recount of Gatsby’s tale. For example, on page 224 of the novel, Fitzgerald alludes to a conversation between Wilson and Tom that was left out of the novel, and eventually led to Gatsby’s death. “’Tom,’ I inquired, ‘what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?’ He stared at me without a word, and I knew I had guessed right about those missing hours.” (Fitzgerald 224). By purposefully disallowing Nick to have attendance at this meeting, and then later bringing up the conversation in the novel, the reader is allowed to make their own inferences about the events leading up to Gatsby’s death. A commonly thinking reader will deduct that Tom Buchanan told Wilson that he was not the individual driving the yellow car, but in fact, Gatsby had been the one behind the wheel, which in turn caused Wilson to kill Gatsby.
Another noticeable gap in Nick’s account of Gatsby’s story happens on page 203, when Wilson terminally shoots Gatsby—or so it would seem; so our inferences tell us. The truth is, Nick was not present for this event, and in turn leaves it very open to our own interpretation of the events. “The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfsheim’s protoges—heard the shots—afterward he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything much about them…It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off the grass, and the holocaust was complete.” (Fitzgerald 203-204). Most readers would believe that Wilson shot Gatsby and then turned the gun on himself, crazy with the grief of his late wife’s death. Others may hold different interpretations of these clues. Perhaps Gatsby had fought Wilson for the gun, shot the old man in self defense, and then turned the gun on himself as a result of his deep sense of loss in regards to Daisy. It makes sense doesn’t it? Gatsby had always believed in the hope of that green light across the bay. Perhaps the loss of this hope was just too much for him to bear. These differing interpretations bring a sense of mystery to the novel, and allow the reader to hold a more personal interpretation of its events, which in turn lends it a more realistic air.