“Sure you can, old sport,” Gatsby said. Boy, was he wrong.  I remember when professor Wadlington talked to us about this Gatsby, and how he’d been so misguided. He’d invested everything into going back in time to get something that was impossible. Poor Gatsby. It was always too late.

I’m only looking forward. Back there is nothing. Absolutely nothing.  Everything is ahead.

Mr. O'brien

I’m in the mood for ambitious fiction. Earlier this year I was blessed with a run of incredible reads,  topped off by Yvegeny Zamiatin’s masterpiece, We.

Mr. Zamiatin

Since then I’ve taken on more projects that inevitably have eaten into my reading time, and I am becoming more zealous in my quest for inspired reads. Ambition is the only flavor my literary palate wants to taste right now. I’m hungry for books that make me break out the booksdarts and re-read for pure pleasure. I want prose and plots that cause reactions, page turners that remind me how lucky I am to know how to read.

I’m compiling a list (in no particular order) of ambitiously written books and additions are requested in the comments section! I’d love suggestions for a 2010 reading list…

Mr. Baldwin

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

The Inferno by Dante

Morvagine by Blaise Cendrars

Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

Candide by Voltaire

The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Black Boy by Richard Wright

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? by Edward Albee

Bowl of Cherries by Milliard Kauffman

The Whapshot Chronicle by John Cheever (as well as many of his shorter works)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

The Iliad by Homer

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Twits by Roald Dahl

Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Peanuts by Charles Schultz

Mr. Abbey

more:

Bluebeard/Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

His Dark Materials Series by Phillip Pullman

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’brien

White Noise by Don Delillo

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Watchmen by Alan Moore

More..?

My next tribute during NanoWriMo goes to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most of his novels, in my opinion, are mediocre, with the exception of The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is, indeed, great. In fact, it’s fanfuckingtastic (that’s a highly intellectual literary term). I read it for the first time as a sophomore in high school and now have had the pleasure of teaching it to my students numerous times over the course of my career.

Each of the writers to whom I’ve written a tribute has changed my life, and Fitzgerald is no exception. Fitzgerald’s language in The Great Gatsby belongs somewhere on a higher plane in the heavens. His imagery is gorgeous and his ability to convey emotions is like nothing I have ever read. The title character is both in love and in love with the idea of being in love, and he also has an “incorruptible dream” to which he remains faithful until the end. Fitzgerald fully conveys the intensity of these abstract emotions, both elusive and difficult to capture, with language that literally takes my breath away. In describing Gatsby’s pursuit of his dream, Nick, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, says that “Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees–he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.” The purity–and even naivetè–of Gatsby’s dream waves like a white flag–though he refuses to ever wave the white flag–amongst the dank wasteland of 1920’s materialism that surrounds him. Fitzgerald conveys this beautifully with the white, silver, and gold imagery that engulfs Gatsby. Nick, too, describes a summer night when “[t]he wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life,” capturing exactly the peace and magic in the air that floats Gatsby’s dream.

What I also find remarkable about The Great Gatsby is its timelessness; although it takes place in the 1920’s, the corruption and materialism are just as rampant today. However, it is the theme of hope that runs through this novel that anyone can identify with, even if one cannot connect with the characters. In the end, Nick desribes how “Gatsby believed in . . . the orgastic 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 . . . So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The idea that there is always tomorrow is something we can all hold onto, and it is this final message that makes me love The Great Gatsby even more.

Cheers, F. Scott Fitzgerald. You sure did like your alcohol.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of The Great Gatsby Tony Tanner identifies what he sees as a central insight of Fitzgerald’s work:

“namely, that the American Dream – whatever one takes that phrase to mean – is not an index of aspiration but a function of deprivation.”

What Tanner has in mind when he makes this statement is the way  certain dreams or goals cease to exist at the moment of attainment.  What once had the power to inspire awe, longing or wonder, once tangible, becomes too solidly anchored in the realm of fact to be a useful form of reverie.  I think that Tanner’s right when he makes this observation of Fitzgerald’s work; Gatsby’s dreams quickly fade and break just when he finally achieves them.  At the same time, I don’t think that the American Dream is always or only a function of deprivation.

I’m not going to try to define the American Dream here.  Over the past 6 years or more I’ve written well in excess of 80,000 words doing just that.  That would make a very long and very boring post.  Trust me,  I’ve had to read it all.  When I started the research that led to all that writing and for much of the time I was actually trying to define the Dream I was firmly convinced that as a construct and a promise the American Dream was dead.  At its worst I thought it paid lip service to certain ideals and possibilities as a means of ignoring a much harsher set of economic and social realities.  This made me both angry and sad.  Too many people were buying into a false advertisement.

Overtime my thinking changed.  I’d say it became more mature even though I resisted it at every step along the way.  It is definitely the case that the American Dream is a vaguely defined promise of possibilities that don’t actually exist for most people in the United States in any greater measure than they do for people in Canada or France or any other country.  Too often the American Dream is synonymous with great material wealth, a trend that has long been a problem and that Americans have themselves to blame for.  Despite the last election it really isn’t the case that every child who wants to can grown up to be president.   Fine.  What I’ve had to admit is that none of this means the American Dream is worthless, that it is completely dead and should be discarded.

At its potential best I think the American Dream is best understood not as a noun, but as a verb.  It’s a process of constantly measuring the reality of what is against the possibilities of what could be and taking action to move towards those possibilities.  As such it’s not a finish line that can be crossed or a destination that can be reached.  The minute it becomes such a line or destination the American Dream goes into terminal decline with death ensured by success.  Fitzgerald recognised this at some level and Gatsby had to live and die it.

So what does all this mean?  Well, as I’ve suggested already the American Dream as commonly understood ignores the fantastic potentials it might have as a process.  As a constant assessment of reality against some set of ideals  the American Dream has as many possible permutations as there are individual Dreamers.  Some of those dreams may be beautiful and fantastic  while some may be ugly and cruel.  Gatsby, for example, uses very questionable means to pursue a rather beautiful dream.  Maybe he could have remained great if he’d never seen Daisy again.  Also, though it’s called American this Dream is by no means the exclusive property of Americans.  It never has been at either its best or its worst.

It took me a long time to admit that there was still some vision of the American Dream capable of inspiring me, capable of being some force for good still existent in the world and, frankly, it was easier when I was convinced the Dream was dead.  Why was it easier?  Mainly because it meant I didn’t have any real personal investment in anidealised vision of the American Dream beyond my anger that false, materialistic promises were still being peddled like snake oil.  Now I have some hope to accompany that anger.  There’s also a large measure of sadness and pain in the mix as well because more often than not, even the most sincere expressions and pursuits of the American Dream see it as a goal to be achieved a prize to be won rather than an ongoing straining toward a receding horizon of a future ideal.

In other words, despite the exemplary lesson Fitzgerald provides with Gatsby too many American Dreamers  want his big car, hydro-plane and mansion so they can finally get the girl.  Too few want to be the yearning Gatsby that Nick first sees deep in his painful reverie of a certain green light as he stands alone in the dark on his lawn:

he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone – he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.  Involuntarily, I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.  When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Corrupt and fallible as he may be there is something pure about Gatsby’s dream.  Without him and those like him we are left, like Nick, alone in the dark.

The symbols I will be using are Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s billboard, the color yellow, the green light, and the phone calls. I think that each of these parts have a different importance but one seems to connect to another as the book goes on-like how T. J. Eckleburg’s billboard has spectacles that look into the lies of the people living around it. And how the phone calls show how secretive Gatsby and Nick are it shows how they have lives away from what shows. Then the green light is just a very large part of the book and it shows longing in Gatsby and a side unknown to anyone.

My reaction to the book as a whole would defiantly be surprise after Gatsby died I guess I expected everything to kind of fall apart but I didn’t except Daisy to leave Gatsby and go back to Tom and just forget about him. Also how no one came to Gatsby’s funeral, only his father and the owl’s eye showed up. It really surprised that Gatsby never really had any friends although he had a lot of parties. I felt sorry for Nick who had to go through so much- loosing his friend having to plan the arrangements of his funeral. Although this book was very sad I liked it and I believed it had a lot of meaning.

My grandfather always told me not to wear my heart on my sleeve, for friendships are fleeting and gossamer, delicate pretty little things like wax that run their courses. Hopefully, you find at least one friend that you are willing to die for, and you suck that udder for all it’s worth – this becomes marriage. The rest are all – simply wicks that must burn out.

I might be taking my borrowed candle analogy a little too long; but, whenever we try to mesh ourselves with one another, ergo to form friendships; we sacrifice a little ‘wax’ – a little chunk of ourselves we loan to each and every relationship like an investment. Sometimes, we get our wax back, and sometimes, we just get scarred.

Where is this coming from, you may ask?
The long gone crush of my past; the girl that stood for everything I had and couldn’t keep – the girl that epitomized my failures – that girl walked up to me today. My god, what an awesome strut that was – she was a girl when I left her, and now, I swear to god, she is a fully fleshed out woman.
She said “Hi” awkwardly, I returned the response with the same air in which it was delivered. She made sure I was okay, I did likewise. By then, we were both absolutely sure that our friendship had run its course, but this was a fleeting gesture of humanity. It was nice, it didn’t fucking make my day, but it was gorgeously humane of both of us. The depths of the human heart are infinitely undefinable. The awkwardness reminded me that it wasn’t just me that was scarred, it was the both of us. We were both wounded, because our wick burned out far too soon and our hands were dripping with wax that wasn’t our own.

I digress.

I started reading one of Scott Fitzgerald’s works called Tender is the Night. It drips upper class angst, and it’s pretty brilliant. Scottie has always been one of the more introspective writers I’ve read; I’m on page 7, I’ll write a proper review once I’m done.  I’ve read both This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby – I loved both immensely. The Great Gatsby however, was grand – it’s like reading something that has no apparent flaws – and knowing that you’re feeling everything Scott wants you to feel. It plays you like an organ, and the prose is so, so stylish and quotable. This Side of Paradise was a coming-of-age story, which I could relate to; failed escapades in love, the incessant search for status and wealth, and it is overall a small character story which is why I liked it much more than the the theatric Gatsby. It’s about discovering oneself, and weeding out what’s stopping you from getting what you want, and what’s actually YOU, and not the shit you’ve learned through the influence of the countless people you’ve grazed. In the case of protagonist Amory Blaine – it was his selfishness which by the end of This Side of Paradise, he came to vindicate and accept; if not love!

Tomorrow I have an all-day event at the local Church, some school function. Seems like I can probably get a couple of kicks out of it! Ha-ha!

In all seriousness though, I think it’s going to be a great way to spend a Friday, and a great bonding experience with the rest of the graduating class. Hopefully.

I keep finding this handful of people that seem to care about me no matter how much of an idiot I make of myself – and mind you these are not my family, or the long due friends, and I find myself rather surprised by their behaviour,if not entertained! And overjoyed at the vast expanse of humanity I seem to keep stumbling upon lately.

Track of the Day!

Great Scottish Indie-Rock band named after a medieval sex toy . . . I present to you, Arab Strap!

They form this genre called Slowcore, Sadcore, but it’s all Undefined Indie to me. I haven’t heard that much of them, but they have a badarse finale album called The Last Romance which I’m going to review later this month.

Arab Strap – The Shy Retirer

]]> http://outspokenomphaloskeptic.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/old-favourites/ Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:22:09 +0000 MDS http://outspokenomphaloskeptic.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/old-favourites/

Over the weekend I mentioned that I was rereading A Tale of Two Cities.  I haven’t been able to spend as much time with the novel as I like, but I am thoroughly enjoying looking at it in my spare moments.  It may be my least favourite of all the novels Dickens wrote, but it’s still fantastic.  As it turns out my self-indulgent return to this novel was just the first instance of something of a trend in my intellectual and imaginative life at the moment; I seem to be spending a great deal of time with some of my favourite texts.  It’s great.

In addition to stealing a few minutes every day to read A Tale, since Monday I’ve also been tuning in to an adaptation of Our Mutual Friend on BBC Radio 4.  I was sceptical of the first episode, but the second won me round.  That meant this morning I had to fight the urge to listen to the 3rd installment at the end of Woman’s Hour.  Instead I’ll tune in when it’s repeated this evening or have a listen on the iplayer.  The small chunks of Dickens I’ve been reading and listening to have been enjoyable but they’ve also whetted my appetite for more of his prose and plotting making me miss the days when I could spend unbroken hours with my nose buried in one of his novels and legitimately call it research.

Still, I don’t really have anything to complain about because at the end of next week I get to spend three hours discussing The Great Gatsby with a bright bunch of undergraduate students.  I’m always reluctant to call this one of my favourite books, in large part because 3 out of every 5 American high school juniors seem to do precisely that, but I do love it.  I’ve read it at least 30 times, I’ve had the opportunity to teach it on a variety of courses and I’ve researched and written about it as well.  It never gets old and as many insights as Fitzgerald’s book has led me to, I always discover some aspect of it which strikes me in a new and unexpected way every time I read it.

That’s not to say my relationship with the book has always been an easy one.  When I first read it in high school I fancied myself something of a future novelist.  Faced with the clarity and elegance of Fitzgerald’s prose I despaired of ever being able to write anything half as good.  I also found many of my peers’ reactions to the book incredibly frustrating.  Most of them insisted on interpreting it according to the same, unquestioned binary framework they’d always viewed the world through.  The poignant ambiguities of Gatsby and his love for Daisy and what that had to do with America and the American Dream were all things they were completely insensible to.  I’ve always had a tendency to take books very seriously and very personally and it was an isolating experience to feel so strongly and find that most of the people around me reacted to it in exactly the same way I looked at my chemistry book.  It was just another text full of information to process, file away and use on some exam.

I did find a few people who wanted to have earnest, if relatively uniformed discussions about the book at the time and since then I’ve found a large number of colleagues, friends and students since who love the text as much as I do and bring some impressive intellectual tools to bear on it.  As a result I can’t wait to spend some time rereading it and I’m already plotting how, precisely, I want to teach it.  In the past I’ve done things like pass baseballs around the class to get discussions started.  For two years in a row I wore a pink shirt with ostentatious cuff-links to my Gatsby seminar.  In both cases some of my more observant students approached me afterwards to nervously enquire if I’d done so on purpose.  The fact that I had caused them some bemusement although I think it may have made them nervous for other reasons.  Whatever happens this year I’m looking forward to it.

Little Red Riding-Hood meets Master Wolf

As if all this wasn’t enough I also obtained an illustrated copy of some of my favourite stories yesterday.  I didn’t know this edition existed until I wandered in the bookshop with a book token someone had kindly given me for my birthday and then I had to have it.  It’s a translation of The Complete Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault originally published in 1697.  What’s especially fantastic about this new edition from Oxford University Press is that it also contains the illustrations made by Gustave Doré in the 19th century.  Doré’s images are incredibly evocative and provide an ideal accompaniment to tales that are often more ambiguous, even menacing than the Disneyfied versions that have become so ubiquitous.

Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding-Hood provides a great example of what I’m talking about.  Essentially it is the same story the so many of us are know.  Girl meets wolf in woods who runs ahead to Grandma’s house.  Wolf impersonates girl and eats Grandma.  Wolf impersonates Grandma.  Scene with conversation about ears etc occurs ending with girl being devoured.  Perrault’s version isn’t very long, but it is certainly darker in its warning about the kinds of dangers that can await pretty, unwary females in the world.  Not only is it made clear that Little  Red Riding-Hood undresses before joining the Wolf disguised as the grandmother in bed, but the moral of the tale, presented in verse, makes the metaphoric and symbolic suggestions of the wolf and that undressing explicit:

Young children, as this tale will show,

And mainly pretty girls with charm,

Do wrong and often come to harm

In letting those they do not know

Stay talking to them when they meet.

And if they don’t do as they ought,

It’s no surprise that some are caught

By wolves who take them off to eat.

I call them wolves, but you will find

That some are not the savage kind,

Not howling, ravening or raging;

Their manners seem, instead, engaging,

They’re softly spoken and discreet.

Young ladies whom they talk to on the street

They follow to their homes and through the hall,

And upstairs to their rooms; when they’re there

They’re not as friendly as they might appear;

These are the most dangerous wolves of all.

Careful all you pretty young ladies, this verse says, talking to those apparently nice men could land you in a heap of unwanted sexual trouble.

Obviously there’s a problematic element to this express, if not explicit, moral.  Some might be inclined to argue

The proper atmosphere is essential

that it says that attractive young women only have themselves to blame if they get followed home and raped by some man.  I don’t think that was the message that Perrault was trying to convey, but I am willing to admit that these tales are, in many cases, not exactly politically correct.  I also suspect that some of their more questionable elements are what make them vital and vibrant.  These aren’t just happy, inconsequential tales occurring in an ultimately sanitized long ago and far away.

I haven’t started reading through my new copy of Perrault’s tales yet although I did spend some time paging through the illustrations.  I may wait until a particularly stormy Sunday afternoon or evening to do so.  Ideally I’d like to be able to sit down in front of a nice fire with the book and maybe even read some of them aloud to my wife.  She hasn’t read the stories as far as she knows, but I suspect she’ll know them when she hears them and even discover that, as a child, she did in fact encounter them.  Until then I have plenty of long-time favourite books to make my way through.  Actually they feel more like companions and I’m really looking forward to reintroducing my wife to one of them who, I suspect, will turn out to be a mutual friend.

I’ve studied more than sufficient for Maths P2 Tomorrow, I’m sure that I’ll do fine.

English is on my priority list now since the Paper 2 (Literature) exam takes place on Thursday.

I’ve been looking through online-reviews and analyzes and have decided to compile a list of resources that will be useful for Poetry, Gatsby and Othello.

Poetry Resources: All Poems are Listed

• Sonnet 104 – Analysis
• Ozymandias – Analysis
• An Irish airman foresees his death – Analysis | Essay
• Preludes – Analysis
• Mushrooms – Review Analysis | Analysis
• Walking Away- Analysis | Essay
• Refugee Mother and Child – Analysis | Essay
• Sunstrike – Analysis
• Decomposition – Analysis | Q&A
• You Cannot Know The Fears I Have – Analysis
• City Johannesburg  – Analysis | Essay
• Love Poem for My Country – Analysis
• To Autumn – Analysis
• I Thank You God for This Most Amazing – Analysis | Review Analysis
• If You Don’t Stay Bitter for Too Long – Analysis

Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Resources

• Wikipedia Article – Quick Read.
• Analysis by Frederick C Millet – Detailed.
• Literary Department of Homework Online – Comprehensive.

Othello

Othello Resources

• Wikipedia Article – Quick Read.
• Absolute Shakespeare.com – EXTREMELY Detailed and Comprehensive!
  
• Othello Overview and Analysis – Quite Good Too.

Although this list is compiled from a limited number of sources, I think they’ll be very helpful if you do not already have notes and study guides. The Wikipedia articles are very good for night before reading.

Good luck Matrics of 2009!

Love,
Allen

I just finished reading A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates by Blake Baily (who has also recently written a bio of John Cheever).  Lacking enough time to pleasure read, I had to renew it from the library twice so for about three months I carried this hefty 650 + page book to and from work, hauling it out to read on transit. In the age of e-readers and soft covers, let me tell you, a hard back, very thick book elicits stares. Not that I noticed them really, Mr. Yates‘ life was so engrossing that a couple of times I almost missed my subway/bus stops.

As a self-confessed literary snob, and reader of what I consider fine literature, I’m feeling a bit sheepish that I only discovered Yates last year, because of the pending film treatment of Revolutionary Road. He was writing in my adult lifetime therefore I could have bought his books and helped, at least in a small way, to contribute to his livelihood. That’s probably a ridiculous thought but it does occur to me that a man who is more well-known posthumously as one of the greatest contemporary American writers could have used at least one more reader while he was alive.

Yates did possess a tragic honesty, in his writing and in his life. He lived in ways people couldn’t understand, perhaps not even himself. He wrote about things people didn’t necessarily want to see in the world and recognize in themselves. It occurred to me while reading about his efforts to get those wonderfully crafted stories published in various magazines (esp. his heartbreak over the elusive New Yorker), that the era of reaching career pinnacles is somewhat behind us. The struggle for an agent, publisher, good review, film contract – these are dying goals in an age when you can publish your own blog, thoughts in 140 characters, and books to sell on consignment in stores. Hell, we might not be needing bookstore soon. So reading this biography was in so many ways a look back into an increasing lost time of the great struggle for lasting art.

Yates was one of those creatives who really couldn’t fully see his own talent – all the while using it – and his stories were often rejected because his characters seemed “bleak,” the atmosphere “dismal.” In actual fact, he was writing about human foibles and realities that are largely inarticulated, even still. Some criticized the fact that he mined the same field – that of his chaotic childhood, father-less (for all intents and purposes) and mother-ful (always there but terrifically selfish). I just think autobiography is  what most artists circle back to. His writing was so much more than a mere account of wrongs done to him. He nailed human intention vs. behaviour – for better or worse. I can’t think of anyone I’ve read who does it better.

Now I’m back to reading (in some cases re-reading) his novels and stories, which are all the richer by knowing what influenced and affected him. Like many artists, he was his own worst enemy, procrastinating writing by poor living habits, and sadly because of  his post-war ill health, made worse by his  alcoholism. Although I have yet to write my first novel, and have only published one short story, I can certainly relate to the difficulty of having to hold down a responsible “day job”  that leaves no free time, physically or mentally, for writing. I fully relate to his frustration with the “PR dodge” an anathema to any kind of creative writing. In true form, he came up with the perfect phrase to encapsulate the rally of many writers between paying the rent and contributing artistically.

Obviously anyone who admires the work of this master should read this book. After I exhaust the far two few books in Yates’ library I plan to go back to the book and author that drove his writing ambition, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby Thought I’ve read it numerous times, this time around I want to try to see it through the keen and sensitive writerly eyes of Richard Yates.

I would have to defiantly be Gatsby I mean come on. Anyone who doesn’t want to be living the high life is crazy. Haha. But seriously if I could have a personal driver, own a large estate, and have tons of parties I defiantly would. When Jordan tells Nick about how Gatsby only moved to West Egg to be across the bay from Daisy I thought it was really cute that he still cared for her. Also when Nick is at Gatsby’s party and everyone is having a great time. Gatsby seems like the nicest person in the world. Gatsby has shown tha he is a great friend to Nick but I am wondering if he is just doing that to get close to Daisy but who knows. So Gatsby would be my first choise but there are many ups and downs to all the characters.

So far I am beginning to like this book. This book is really becoming harder for me to put down. There are some parts in the book were the author seems to go on and on about things that I don’t find very interesting, but in other parts like when Jordan and Nick are at the party I find it amusing when they find the drunk man in the library. Or when they meet up with Jay Gatsby himself and Nick doesn’t even know it. Some other parts I found interesting were when Gatsby asks Nick to have Daisy over for dinner. What is going to happen? Will Daisy remember Gatsby? How will Nick react to their reunion? How will Tom react? Will he be mad, or understanding? Also I am interested to see more of Gatsby’s past unfold I wonder if he will reveal more of himself to Nick as time goes on. This book is becoming more exciting and I am definitely ready to read more.

So far The Great Gatsby is easier to understand than the grapes of wrath. I feel that this book is more modernized even though it took place before The Grapes of Wrath. My favorite character would probably have to be Daisy I think she is a very strong women who has been through a lot. Her husband is cheating on her, she is taking care of a 2/3-year-old, and yet she is holding strong. I am excited to see what happens when she meets Gatsby. My least favorite character right now would probably be Tom, who to me, is really taking advantage of his wife by going to New York and living in an apartment with his girlfriend. I am excited to see what will happen if Tom finds out about Daisy and Gatsby’s meeting. Also what will Nicks reaction be to the meeting. This book is really catching my attention.

I’ve dressed up as something I’ve wanted to be for the last few years. Yesterday (Halloween), I was a flapper, the quintessential good time girl of the 1920s (think Betty Boop, as one friend told me).

I’m fascinated by the flapper’s image: their sleek and straight dresses, their jewelry, their flirty bobs, their sophisticated joie de vivre, their red lips puffing on a cigarette while holding a martini glass. Of course, Halloween was the only time I could dress up as a flapper without getting strange looks from people.

Three years ago, I purchased a flapper headpiece and a feather boa from Party City, but wasn’t able to buy a flapper dress at that time because, well, they ran out of them. I got a flapper dress from Target, but when I tried it on at a friend’s house (where the Halloween party) was held, it didn’t fit. I figured better bring my dark angel costume in case the flapper dress didn’t fit. And the flapper dress didn’t fit. The two years since then, I didn’t dress up for Halloween because I didn’t go to any Halloween parties. I didn’t want to be all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Halloween 2009 was the day when I finally got the chance to hark back in time to the Jazz Age. I donned a little black dress I’ve had for years – which is good, so that I wouldn’t have to blow $30 on a flapper costume I’d wear once. Plus, I’m recycling and trying to be green. I picked up a pair of bejeweled sheer black gloves, a string of fake pearls and some fake cigarettes from Party City. I’m saddened that Party City didn’t have cigarette holders when I was there. Completing the flapper look with the headpiece and boa I’ve had for a few years, I was itching to listen to jazz and do the Charleston.

I really toted that fake cigarette at my daughter’s Halloween party at her karate school. It was fun too look like I was smoking, but to actually smoke of course wouldn’t be so fun. Even if I wanted to smoke real cigarettes, I couldn’t do it; the fear of cancer in various types, bad odor and premature aging would forever haunt me.

Last year, I read a book called “Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern” by Joshua Zeitz. I heard about flappers as good time girls before reading that book. However, from reading the book, I didn’t realize flappers had a huge cultural impact on American history. I learned that among the many ways flappers liberated women, they were the ones who did away with the constrictive corsets. There’s also a section in there on Coco Chanel, who had such a huge impact on flapper fashion and women’s fashion in general; she created the Little Black Dress.

Of course, the Jazz Age couldn’t have been the Jazz Age without F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of “The Great Gatsby.” Zeitz covers Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda throughout the book. Even Zelda was a cultural impact on the Jazz Age: she too was a flapper. Now “The Great Gastby” is included in my forever growing list of books I want to read.

1. .THE GREAT GATSBY.

2. .CLEVER RINGS. Designed by Kiel Mead.

3. .CLASSY BLONDES.

4. .DREE HEMINGWAY. Literary offspring.

5. .THIS PHOTO. AND FAKE COUPLE. AND SHOW.

6. .EPIC MOVIE CREDIT SONGS. When the action ends and the credits roll. That song says so much.

American Beauty: “Because” covered by Elliott Smith

Lost in Translation: “Just Like Honey” by the Jesus and Mary Chain

Children of Men: ” Bring On The Lucie” by John Lennon

Romeo + Juliet: “Exit Music (For A Film)” by Radiohead [written specifically for the purpose]

7. .TRADING HALLOWEEN CANDY.

8. .ADORABLE EXES.

9. .THIS LOFT.

10. .BABY ANIMALS THAT GET TO GROW UP. Read this.

I will now enjoy my vegan Thai food tonight that much more.

Have a beautiful day.

Peace,

Sources: weheartit.com, kielmead.com, imdb.com, hippiefroufrou.blogspot.com

Late last month I found myself in Newport, RI, to be a spectator for the sailing competition. As we drove past one mansion after another on the elegant Bellevue Avenue or as we walked Newport’s treasured Cliffwalk (the next two images below), above the rocky coast, history and the present moments seemed to merge.

Here was the playground of the richest people on the planet more than one hundred years ago. Yes, those were the days.

The names of these magnificent mansions, like The Breakers (above), Belcourt Castle (next two below),

…Rough Point, and Rosecliff may conjure images of elegant soirées, grand ballrooms, and sit-down, black-tie dinners for nearly 200 people. Here is a 2nd picture of The Breakers.

For most of us, me included, events on this grand scale are nearly unimaginable. Yet, to the people that lived in these homes before they were given outright, or sold to the Preservation Society of Newport for mere pennies on the dollars, they were ’summer cottages’.

Just to give you an idea, The Breakers was built for Cornelius Vanderbilt II. You may have heard of this family. They owned a huge international shipping company before forming the New York Central Railroad.

This opulent summer shack, consisting of 70 rooms, was only half the size of their home in Manhattan, at 1, West 57th Street. The Breakers will take your breath away, but the city home was destroyed by fire many decades ago.

Doris Duke inherited Rough Point (above) when she was only 13 years old. Her father, James Buchanan Duke, amassed a fortune beyond belief by founding The American Tobacco Company, which later became The British Tobacco Company, which later became the parent company of Brown & Williamson, the manufacturer of such American cigarette brands as Kool, Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, and Tareyton.

Here are a couple of images of a pair of the ‘lesser’ homes. First is The Elms. This might be a side-door. And following that is a longer shot so you can see all of it.

Next is the Ochre Court (below) which is now a part of Regina Salve College. Just think of the how much the electric bill might be.

Rosecliff (above) was modeled after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat of French kings at Versailles. This stunning mansion was commissioned by Theresa Fair Oelrichs, the heir to the Nevada Comstock silver lode, one of the richest silver finds in history.

Rosecliff is now preserved through the generosity of its last private owners, Mr And Mrs J Edgar Monroe, of New Orleans. They gave the house, its furnishings, and an endowment to the Preservation Society in 1971.

If you can’t get to Newport, then you might want to check out Rosecliff in the movies. Scenes from several films have been shot on location at Rosecliff, including High Society and The Great Gatsby.

Or we can dream about voluptuous women with their own kind of opulence, the kind of ‘trophy’ women that no doubt had the good fortune to find themselves in Newport, Rhode Island, for a July 4th weekend on the arms of various captains of industry, robber barons, or other assorted millionaires, and the hangers-on that hobnobbed with the real life Vanderbilts and Dukes, or their fictional counterparts like Jay Gatsby.

Song writer Cole Porter penned these memorable lyrics for a duet in High Society between Frank Sinatra & Celeste Holm called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Who wants to be a millionaire? I don’t.

Have flashy flunkeys everywhere? I don’t.

Who wants the bother of a country estate? A country estate is something I’d hate!

Who wants to wallow in champagne? I don’t.

Who wants a supersonic plane? I don’t.

Who wants a marble swimming pool too? I don’t.

And I don’t `cause all I want is you.

You and I will never experience waking up at The Breakers on the 4th of July, or dancing under the stars at Rosecliff or Rough Point. We won’t be donning our tennis whites before breakfasting, or meeting for cocktails on the verandah of one of these fabulous mansions overlooking the ocean, but we can dream about that kind of life.

So for inspiration, or to pad out your dreams, until you do become a millionaire, you may visit my website free of charge anytime you like. There are no tour guides whatsoever, and our doors are always open.

from the author of The Believers

Paperback: 182 pages

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2007

ISBN-13: 978-1555974732

Trade Paperback: 6.9 x 5 x 0.6 inches

Available, click here from amazon.com

     The master short-story writer, Charles Baxter, provides a complex read on something  poet Marianne Moore once expressed this way, “The power of the visible, is in the invisible.” Here Baxter examines stories “with a magnifying glass, looking for the secret panel, the hidden stairway, the lovingly concealed dungeon and the ghost moaning from beneath the floor.”

     He shares his conclusions about staging scenes. In real life, he says, good families (i.e. normal, boring ones) don’t have them, but these are the building blocks of drama. And that’s the point. We want to see things played out on the page or on the screen that for one reason or another we are hesitant about in our everyday exchanges. To capture that contradictory process great stories, “don’t depend so much on what the characters say they want as what they actually want but can’t own up to.” The author has us reconsider classics from Ahab’s obsession in Moby Dick to a rather profound observation about the power of fantasy in The Great Gatsby. Then of course there is John Cheever’s “The Simmer,” Franz Kafka, and Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog.” But what of the dark night of the soul lit by Dostoyevsky, the world’s foremost “psychologist of rage?” That comes later under “Staging a Desire.”

     In terms of dynamics between characters—in these scenes genteel people so fear—Baxter uses one of my favorite examples, Frost’s “Home Burial.” In describing the camera shots of Citizen Kane Orson Welles once said he wanted each character to have his or her own unique angle so that even if a viewer didn’t know the plot the viewer would be able to understand the story. We’re always looking up at Kane (Welles even built a trapdoor on the set to get the camera at a very low angle) and looking down at Susan Alexander, the singer who is his less-than-talented protégé. Remember the camera shot that comes down through the skylight of a nightclub where she’s performing? Well, here we have the same thing, but it’s even better because the man and woman in the Frost poem change position as the emotional advantage swings from one to the other. The man begins at the foot of the stairs and rises to eventually tower over her, however they are both upstaged by an unknown presence outside, which they glance at through the window.           

     We can observe these things in life or in examples of contemporary writers, such as Richard Bausch and Edward Jones. Baxter, the writer, is ever the teacher: “Dialogue, instead of bringing people together, instead tends to define their differences and then cast those differences in stone.” This is a book like Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, forty years ago, that turns things on their head. One important point I learned is what Baxter calls a “fallacy of dialogue today,” that all characters are, in fact listening to what is said. In reality there is an inattentiveness, not only in the best works of Eugene O’Neil, Tony Kushner and Lorrie Moore, but in our society outside of plays and books. The same is true about facial expression, though I have to admit he loses me a bit with this. It may be , as a student of Baxter’s claims, no one is interested in faces anymore (this is the age of texting and twittering, after all), but isn’t this something we seek (or should seek) for exactly that reason. To compensate for the lack of it in our lives? We watch close-ups of faces on big screens, stare at tabloid pages featuring paparazzi-stolen glimpses at celebrities. We even buy books, such as this one, to better see the Other. The strong must see the weak, if we are to count ourselves civilized. The healthy, the sick; the rich, the impoverished. Good literature helps us do that, and books like this one by Charles Baxter, help us understand why and how.    

φ φ φ φ φ (five roses out of five)                      -  John Lehman

The Great Gatsby

________________________

Jesus said in the book of Luke that the things that this world honors are detestable before God.

So whether this be honoring the things of this world I know not. Only that food is essential to survive, that this world is filled with amazing sights and natural wonders, that weather is more agreeable in some places than in others, that in different cultures of the world have a certain preference in garb, and that at times it cost more, sometimes less, to live in different parts of the world. Cape Town, South Africa has been no exception to that.

Food

Gatsby’s – Large, fresh bread roll. Chips (thick fries) – not bad, filling. Sauce… very different. And nothing is as spicy here as california. So the chili sauce is nice for everyone. Meat. Choose carefully is all i have to say. I got a chicken and mayo once… I wanted to vomit. Although I had another with the same meat choice and it was very spicy and it was not bad at all. They just didn’t use as much mayo which was such a relief. And be warned – the mayonnaise here is sweet.

Curry and Ruthies – thick tortilla like naan (indian bread) but it’s fried (I think,) very lightly fried, very very tasty. Then there’s meat in curry sauce. And this tomator onion salsa (they call it salad) that is amazingly tangy and sweet and goes with this dish perfectly. Anyone who comes here should have one of those.

Briani – A traditional Capetonian dish; the south african version of mole – no chocolate or peanuts or even chile. but there is lots of anise… to be honest… it was too many different spices for me to like it. And I’ve never really liked anise! So it was alright… I just didn’t like it.

Candy Selection – Cadbury is what you think of when you think of the most disgusting chocolate eggs with some sort of white goo inside of them. Well, I haven’t seen a Cadbury Egg® here. But what I have seen is their full chocolate bars. The chocolate here will blow your mind. It’s quality is so high even in the lower markets that I wonder why I would ever pay over a dollar fifty for a bar of chocolate again. One time I spent $4 on one bar… and one of these dollar cadbury bars blows it out of the water. Really makes you think why we pay so much for stuff that isn’t that good. And that goes for everything.

This is their personal message candy. They make it really easy to say “sweet” things here.

I sent an "I miss you" one of these to Loreena.

Turkish Delight.This is back flash to the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I still haven’t tried it. And they told me i would have to acquire a taste for it.

Sweets – This is a term which they use often for candy. There’s an amazing quality and variety of simple, little candies that you can just suck on here. There are smoothies which come in a variety of fruit flavors and are way tasty. And then there are a bunch of caramels of different variations that though you wouldn’t think they were good… are very good indeed. Cadbury makes a good caramel which they call eclairs.

Variety is large.

Mexican Food – Praise God that He put a few, good Mexican woman on this side of the world to cook up those home made mexican dishes I remember and actually bring me great comfort. Like this chicken and cabbage soup that Sister Loretta made reminded me of exactly what it was like to eat from my mother’s kitchen. And this week I had the joy of eating Fajitas. WITH HOME MADE FLOUR TORTILLAS from the kitchen of Sister Monique Portillo! Truly one of the only things I miss from North America.

Destinations

All of which I hear are great! (Note: I haven’t actually visited any of the places I mention besides the ghetto)

For instance, they have the “Two Oceans” Aquarium which captures the complex life forms that make up the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s amazing to think that i’m sitting on a continent, and only a few hundred kilometers away from the Indian Ocean. I’ve thought about making trip though I’m not sure how that would work out. And it’s only like R100 to go. Which translates to about $13 to go to the aquarium.

There is also Camp’s Bay! It’s like one big, huge Lover’s Point but it’s still cold here.

And then there’s Table Mountain! I get to wake up to it every day. I see it from behind! The climb is supposed to be amazing. It’s basically a full days hike! Ryan Doyle would love this. You can also just take a cable car up there and it’s not that expensive. It ends up being about $8.

Cape Town is really pretty nice. It’s like (I’ve said this before) the California of South Africa. Really. The people here are so laid back compared to what I hear about the pace of life in other places. Per Capita the murders are more… but the crime is less – at least those that are caught doing robberies or drugs or something of that nature. On the other hand… Johannesburg is like the New York everyone used to be afraid of. And from what it sounds like… it’s much worse; but like I said, “sounds like”.

You might also want to take a gander/walk into the ghettos here.

The ghettos here are not ghettos at all in the traditional sense. They used to be segregative in purpose, but the people forced to go there just decided to stay. They are literally these fields filled with shacks. Shacks and shacks and shacks. Run down. Ugly. Very distinct looking buildings. Places where the poverty that we see in the U.S. just does not compare with what it is here.

Not only that but it’s actually scary in these places. I’ve heard stories of people (especially uncircumcised children) that get kidnapped and killed so that their bones can be used for witchcraft and fortune telling sort of stuff. It’s very real here. It’s the side of town that a city never really advertises.

They don’t really like to advertise how corrupt government is. O sure, they make great policies and such… but they don’t really care about the drug problem. At least in the U.S. the drug problem persists in system that publicly deposes and promotes abstinence from drugs. And AIDS is a real problem here too! It’s kind of funny that they have large murals telling everyone to abstain from sexual activity but at the same time you can walk into a public restroom and see an empty banister that’s supposed to be filled with free condoms!

Okay… sorry. I’ll get back to what I was saying.

Not a bad place to visit or live at all. It would be easy to stay here. I haven’t done any of the things that sound extra excited. I have been privileged to see only those places which are pertinent to me. I do want to see those places… I suppose in good time.

Fashion

There’s not really much to say here. It actually looks a lot like those people that you consider hikers or that like to eat only organic food. In the states they tend to be white folk who enjoy shopping at Trader Joe’s and also REI. Really. That’s what it looks like here. Crocs are abundant. Long sleeves are abundant. Plain colors are abundant. Darker, more drab colors. Then again… I don’t really look at it all that much. And of course there is more traditional African garb. The kind you see on television. Head wraps and all. Right down to people carrying stuff on their head.

But then again… most of them look like they look at the same magazines we look at in the U.S. It’s the same. There’s nothing vastly different from the U.S. …actually, more like they look at the U.S. for everyday fashion. A page right out of the American book.

It’s like this place is caught right in the middle of the modern and an older era.

Weather.

California with the chance of extreme. In the last I don’t know how many years it’s gotten up to about 104ºF like once.

This description is really only good for those who live in the more mild parts of California.

There’s really not much to say about it. It’s beautiful. O! and the sun really cuts through here… so be careful. I mean you can’t stand in it too long without feeling like you are being burned with a match or slowly roasted with a magnifying glass.

I had the privilege of seeing this almost everyday. This particular evening was just perfect for lighting. From where I live, the sun sets behind the mountain… everyday. This is something that fills me with awe and sometimes even comfort.

This is "Table Mountain" From behind

___________________________

G.A.N.G.

Now I have thought myself as no longer in the “GANG” for a long time now. It has a lot to do with the mindset I have that “I’m too old for that”. I feel much older than I really am, and it’s very hard for me to connect with young people because I have no clue what’s really going on in the world. However, I have realized that it’s me who is Now. I was just never a in a high school mindset I guess. I just wanted to be normal since i could remember I guess. But I am the Now. The now generation. I just wanted to say that because this week we had just about 200 people (adults and young people) to our first G.A.N.G. service. That’s explosive.

This picture shows the hours labor that went into making the hall look like a G.A.N.G. service. It was quite a nice night.

GANG service set up.

]]> http://ahappyaccident.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/f-scott-fitzgerald-on-beginning-over-again/ Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:48:46 +0000 Emily http://ahappyaccident.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/f-scott-fitzgerald-on-beginning-over-again/

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 original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
~ from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

It’s not summer, but today I am starting my first new job in nearly five years, so I can’t help but think of this passage and how much I look forward to settling in. I have thought of this passage many times since reading it for the first time in high school: college, my first job, grad school, moving to a new city and then back, marriage, divorce, buying my home, etc. I seem to start over, over and over again. And establishing yourself in that new place or situation — becoming familiar enough that you can guide others or yourself through it — puts you further down the path toward the next new beginning.

I knew I’d be disappointed in The Professional by Robert B. Parker. Right up front, I’m going to say it: I love Parker’s Spenser novels. I devour every one that comes out like a kid ransacking his Halloween candy. But in recent years, the candy has gone stale. In 1974, Parker made the detective genre relevant again with The Godwulf Manuscript. The singularly named protagonist has worked his way through nearly four decades, and I’m now older than Spenser was in his first appearance.

Yikes. The trouble is that Parker’s work has become thinner than tissue paper, especially in his last several offerings. While Parker has a strong handle on Spenser, sidekick Hawk, and our hero’s love interest, Susan Silverman, the plots rarely hold up to strong scrutiny. I can find mindless entertainment on TV — I hold Parker to a different standard. After all, he wrote two truly great novels: All Our Yesterdays, a multi-generational story that shows how the sins of the father (or grandfather) often fall upon the son (or grandson); and Love and Glory, an homage to The Great Gatsby. The latter is good enough that I pull it down from the bookcase every couple of years for a re-read.

But back to his latest and not-so-greatest. The Professional is the same bit of light fluff Parker’s been putting out by the bucketload the last several years. The dialogue is still sharp, the characters witty and insightful. The only problem is that they’re imparting the same talking points they’ve been chewing over for the last decade or so. You have to go all the way back to 1997’s Small Vices to find a really good Spenser novel. The closest he’s come in recent years has been Hundred Dollar Baby (2006), and even that one fell flat in most places. I give it high marks for its resolution — even though the emotional turmoil that most people would have felt at the rather sad ending hasn’t been discussed since.

And that’s the key thing wrong with the Spenser novels these days. Spenser is a character set in stone. Come what may, he doesn’t change. In the earlier books — the best ones — he grows as a person with each and every outing. His fundamental nature didn’t change, but each novel brought forth a more nuanced character. I’m not sure when that stopped, but it’s to the detriment of the character, to the books, and to Parker’s legion of fans. The Professional may be the worst Spenser yet — not enough to turn me off the series, but a definite downturn in quality. If a first-time novelist had submitted this for publication, it would have been summarily dismissed, which is what the prospective reader should do.

Artie Cohen systerdotter Billy får permission från hemmet för svårt störda ungdomar. Föräldrarna åker till London och det blir Artie som får ta hand om fjortonåringen. En rad vidriga våldsbrott mot barn sker i New York de här dagarna, någon vill bli av med Billy, och London skakas av 7 juli-attentaten som spär på den amerikanska ångesten över 11 september. Det är tätt och välskrivet och spännande. Artie har sina ryska kompisar med gangstern Tolja i spetsen, Tolja som läser Pusjkin och Tolstoj och talar fem språk. Brorsonen Billy läser The Great Gatsby, så jag lägger till det i min samling.
Detta är tredje efter den här och den här.

Every year the American Library Association hosts the Banned Books Week. This took place last week, and while books can no longer be banned, there are still challenges to this decision. So for today, I thought I would go through my bookshelf and make note of all the “banned” books I own.

There are of course, many more. And you can visit their website if you want to know more about banned books.

Do you have any on your bookshelf?

Do yourself a favor and read a book you should’ve in high school or college but didn’t. Or you did read back then but all the joy was sucked out of it because it was required of you.

I recently realized, while perusing a “classics” section at a very large book store chain, that for some reason I had missed a lot of the classic novels and plays I felt that at some point I should have read growing up. I immediately felt secretly embarrassed, recalling times they’d come up in conversation and I had nothing to add. I read several books at a time, so how did I miss such cultural and artistic life requirements?

I started with Lolita and I honestly can’t put it down. I read it slowly because Nabokov is a very blink-and-you’ll-miss it sort of author. He weaves a tapestry of descriptions you have to pay close attention to so that you understand his full meaning, as well as constantly implies in beautiful, observant, flowery prose all the important action, rather than just coming right out and saying it. I’ve never experiened such simultaneous disgust for and fascination with a fictional character, especially he who is supposed to be the mistaken “hero” of the book, if that is the intent. At the very least, the main protagonist. Nabokov’s writing is so excellent that it manages to transcend unsavory subject matter and keep you enthralled.

Next up: The Great Gatsby, Amor en los Tiempos de Colera (Love in the Time of Cholera), maybe a few Jane Austen’s I haven’t yet read, Anna Karenina, or Catch 22. It is with some shame that I admit I haven’t read these books.  But the point is that this won’t always be the case.

Get started yourself. You’ll enjoy it way more than you did in school, and it’ll give you something to do while waiting in line at the store or on rainy April days.