bad metaphor

Thinking Girl tagged me. I will try to answer these questions, though I’m awful at answering things like these. Must I really pick one book for each? I am hopelessly noncommittal.

1. One book that changed your life?

I’m tempted to say something fun like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or Everybody Poops, but to be honest, three books would answer this category, and those three are the books of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, I am a NERD. I gobbled these up in middle school and immersed myself in the world of Tolkien, reading all the offshoots and prequels I could find. I think I really was inspired to write, or at least conceptualize a fictional world, by these books. No, I never learned Elvish, and no, I never wrote any fanfiction. There’s plenty of hot hobbit action out there already

2. One book you have read more than once?

Okay, practically every book I like I read more than once. I am crazy like that. I read like an ADHD person uses TiVo: when I get so absorbed into a story, I want to know what happens to the characters, dammit! So I read really fast, almost skimming, until I find out whether or not the characters are safe / happy / get their comeuppance. Then after finishing the book, either relieved or pissed off, I flip back to the beginning and read it again, more slowly. I know this is terrible practice, but it’s also very helpful when cramming for exams (I didn’t really read read most of my plays in Shakespeare class until after the fact, for instance).

So short answer is: see my reading list.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

A book on how to get off a desert island!

More seriously: probably The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. I will never get sick of reading that.

4. One book that made you laugh?

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. Read it in high school, and everybody I’ve recommended the book to was surprised by my recommendation. “Really? I thought that book was supposed to be very tragic and sad!” Yes, it is a moving story, but it is set apart from other “gee, war sucks” novels in that it is viciously funny. I can’t think of a single scene in another book that made me laugh harder than the one with Orr and the Italian prostitute very early in the novel, or the interrogation of the poor Anabaptist Henry-Fonda-look-alike. The crazy, surrealist humor made me empathize pretty strongly with the characters by the end of the novel.

5. One book that made you cry?

I have a bitch-heart composed of dry ice, and as such, don’t cry at hardly anything. I’m more likely to cry laughing at inappropriate moments (funerals, accidents, awkward lecturers, grim war novels, what have you).

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. Okay. When I was about twelve and in the full throes of middle-school-angst, I bought all these stupid teen-dying-of-terminal-illness books. You know the type: Lurlene McDaniel’s income is based on young, pretty death. One of the death books that pulled me in was called It Happened to Nancy, an “autobiographical” collection of journal entries by a girl who contracts AIDS through a date rape. The story, in retrospect, smacked of slick, mechanical fakeness, and silly out-of-touch adult ideas of what teenage girls really think about, but man did I ever eat that shit up. I cried, cause it was SO NOT FAIR.

6. One book you wish had been written?

A book for the illiterate!

7. One book you wish had never been written?

Oh, man. Talk about opening a can of worms. Maybe Atlas Shrugged. It continually tops book lists, and it’s basically a flat, boring shill for Rand’s lame philosophy. Though, true to the unabashedly capitalist sentiment of the novel, I guess it’s good for winning scholarships.

8. One book you are currently reading?

Last night I cracked open a coffee table collection of “humorous” stories from the New Yorker. I usually like reading the articles on their website, and I wanted a better idea of how to write comedic stories, so I bought it. Turns out that maybe one out of every twenty are mildly amusing, and the rest are either 1) only funny if you’re a New Yorker or 2) clunky, insufferably erudite. Ha ha, this is from an obscure Shakespeare play re-set in modern-day Manhattan! So funny it doesn’t need a joke!

Some of them are actually funny – mostly stories by Woody Allen (same neurotic Jewish old man as ever), Garrisson Keillor and James Thurber. Otherwise, I’ll probably just stick to reading the website occasionally from now on.

9. One (multiple) book(s) you have been meaning to read?

Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber. The boy loved it and lent it to me, and now it’s sitting beside me at work as I type this list (I’ll get to it eventually!). As I Lay Dying, by Faulkner (seems like everyone’s read this but me. I suck at having been an English major). Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, which has been recommended to me about eight times. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, by Yiyun Li.

10. Now tag five people.

Here’s where I suck at memes! I don’t like tagging people because I don’t want to dictate what their next posts are going to be. It’s awfully bossy for my hippie sensibilities (no, thinking girl, I’m not upset at being tagged myself!). So I’ll just go ahead and tag Megan, Hannah, Gienna, seadragon, and Imbrium, and it’s totally up to you to participate

Just finished Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I’d been meaning to read it ever since I saw him speak last semester, but haven’t gotten around to it till now. It’s a fast read and only took me two days, but it’s fantastic. Not too long ago, my roomie brought up a question his professor asked in class: “what book have you read that you would write?” The prof. said Light in August by Faulkner, a novel amazing and rich in its complexity, but not one that I could really see myself writing (Faulkner’s style, though I love it, is daunting at times. Also I’m none too sure about Faulkner’s awareness of biology and hormones, what with Lena walking all the way across Alabama, barefoot and pregnant, with nary a frown. A minor quibble to an otherwise great novel).

I didn’t have my own answer until reading Haroun – it’s got precisely the right mix of whimsy, smartness, and social allegory. Rushdie said the best children’s novels are written for specific children, a la Lewis Carroll for Alice Liddell, and Rushdie wrote Haroun for his own son. The writer, in the attempt to appeal to a specific child and capture his/her attention, ends up creating something genuinely engaging and unique (Disney movies, which have lately operated on the ‘lowest common denominator’ idea, should take a cue from this). Hopefully that doesn’t mean I have to pop out a baby before I can write my ideal novel. Maybe I can borrow one. Any takers?

Now I’m currently reading another novel that centers on a relationship between a man and a child: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov! Hehe, well, it’s a little different in tone from the other book. I just started it tonight and was a bit offput by the seemingly flowery language at first, but now it’s hard to put down. The pathos of the character is really compelling; also, Nabokov works some clever word plays in the story that I find entertaining (e.g. what he calls the taxi-driver, for those of you who’ve read it).

I guess I’m supposed to be writing a story every day over break, but I honestly think I should be reading more. A lot of my creative writing peers seem to be more well-read (the ones who are actually competitive, that is, not the dorks who haven’t figured out how to properly use quotation marks in dialogue yet). My literary knowledge is just like my knowledge of music, and anything else: bizarrely spotty and mostly self-taught through sources like the Internet and friends. I know of some obscure works/bands but am unfamiliar with obvious canonical ones. For instance, I named my philodendron after Robert Plant (hurr!), but for some reason didn’t associate Jimmy Page with Led Zeppelin (I thought he was just a solo artist until some music nerd gave me a good lashing). Even more sadly, I didn’t know who Ezra Pound was until like a year ago (how embarrassing is that for an English major? ).

So for now I’m just going to read as many “should read” things as I can, and do writing exercises for the rest of break. That way, when I do eventually get off my bum and write, it should be totally gold and Nobel Prize worthy. Then I can publish my honors thesis and make millions of dollars to buy more books (and yarn!).

* edit – I sure abuse the parentheses while blogging. I don’t do this in my fiction, honest!

Just got back from seeing Salman Rushdie give a lecture at the Lied Center. I haven’t read any of his novels, only one or two of his short stories a long time ago. All I knew was that he had written something called the “Satanic Verses,” and that this really pissed off the Ayatollah of Iran so much that he’d issued a fatwa calling for Salman’s head on a platter (Salman al’orange, smoked Salman, oh ho ho I am so witty). I didn’t really know what to expect going in, and almost didn’t go because I have a lot of studying and catch-up reading to do for my classes (hence, why I am blogging now, heh).

On our way in, we walked past the Phelps clan wielding their usual flamboyantly homophobic signs. They’re getting to be a fixture these days. I’ll know if the PR for an event sucks if the Phelpses don’t show up. A huge crowd of people were standing around the doors in the front of the auditorium, waiting to be let in. We weaved through the crowd and walked around the side, to a less crowded entrance, and subsequently were able to get really good seats.

After we sat down, Paul*, my roommate who we were saving a seat for, sat down and looked around nervously. “Man, we’re really close,” he said, tugging at his shirt collar. “Are we sure we really want to be sitting so close to a guy who has five million dollars on his head?” I laughed and said we’d probably be okay, and then I made the mistake of asking, so, have there been actual incidents beyond threats with this guy? He then rattled off a list of people surrounding Rushdie killed by his fanaticist opponents: 2 Italian translators, 1 Japanese translator (stabbed to death), 1 Norwegian publisher, and numerous publishers and bookstores that publish and carry his works have been the target of bombings. Then I was a little less happy about having a fourth row seat, and started to eye this guy in front of us who brought a backpack in, tossed it on his seat and left to go to the bathroom. Then someone pointed out that there were a lot of empty seats towards the front, whereas all the back ones were filled. Thereafter for awhile I kept jumping whenever I heard someone’s cell phone ring or random microphone feedback, which might sound like bombs ticking if you have genetic paranoia like I do.

We did not get blown up, however, which was good because Rushdie gave a hilarious and entertaining lecture. I wondered for awhile why so many people wanted to kill such an engaging and witty guy. Then he started making more and more digs at things such as intelligent design, the Da Vinci Code, and even sneaked in a little jab at Bush. It was all very funny, but I could definitely see how he could really needle people with no senses of humor.

He talked about a lot of things, in true storyteller fashion, but the predominant thread through the night was the role of the writer. Most importantly, the role that the writer has to play in history. That increasingly, in modern times, and especially in poorer, less well-off countries, the line between history and private life is nonexistent. So a Jane Austen in her day could write about a bunch of silly parties in which military officers merely serve the function of looking pretty, while on the continent at the same time, the Napoleonic wars are raging. But a Rushdie can’t write about his characters in a universe totally divorced from the India-Pakistan conflict, from the pantheon of 500 million Indian gods that play a great role in people’s lives. The personal really does become the political.

As in Rushdie’s case. He talked about the aftermath of the “Satanic Verses,” and how a lot of the people that were so vehemently opposed to the book hadn’t actually read it, nor any of Rushdie’s other works, for that matter. He talked about a meeting a Muslim guy who heaped lavish praise upon Rushdie. Prodded by his girlfriend, the fan reluctantly confessed that he had attended one of the early protest rallies in London against the “Satanic Verses.” But since then, he’d actually read the book and “didn’t see what all that fuss was about.” Rushdie’s response? “You asshole, you were the fuss!”

The anti-religious tone of the night did make me somewhat uncomfortable. The first person to ask a question was a representative of SOMA, the Society for Open-minded Atheists and Agnostics. Now, whenever I see a club or organization label themselves “open-minded,” that makes me think of the people that start off a sentence with, “I’m not a racist, but…”- meaning that in most cases, these organizations are the opposite of open-minded. SOMA seems to like to smear religious groups, in the newspaper and at their events, and seem about as dogmatic as groups like Campus Crusade for Christ. I don’t have a faith affiliation, thank you, but neither do I want to shit on people that do.

Anyhow, she asked him about the problem of religious fanaticism vs. rationalism in the world, and how to fix it. Sweet, an extremist binary. That’s totally open-minded. Anyhow, Rushdie isn’t terribly favorable towards religion, but I don’t really blame him – he does have pretty good personal reasons, such as a whole sect of fanatics wanting to explode him to death and all. I cringe whenever people take their reaction against Christian fundamentalism, and apply it to everyone that is religious. I was guilty of that at one point, when I was fifteen and it was cool to be anti-establishmentarian and stuff. Since then, my views have become more complicated, just like everything else.

I guess I can’t entirely blame the SOMA people, though they do seem like a bunch of pompous philosophy majors sometimes. It’s much easier to see the world in binaries. You can’t incorporate all the shades of grey into neat little multiple choice questions.

Back to Rushdie, at some point – when I’m finished with catching up on the reading that I’m supposed to be doing, and kicking ass on the tests that are currently ass-kicking me, I want to read “Haroun and the Sea of Stories.” I’ve always been a big fan of children’s books that are meant for adults. Much better than adults’ books written at the mental level of children (i.e., the Da Vinci Code).

*Physics boy. Hereafter I’m going to refer to people by made-up names, because the labels are getting kind of silly.