I don't know how crisp this picture is going to come out, but anyway, the UW needs its book back. As soon as I finish Persepolis, I'm going to start AND FINISH this for real.:) 

I got this as a birthday gift from one of my friends at work, Mike. Actually I got the first one as my original birthday gift, but when he found out I'd already read it, he wonderfully went back to the bookstore and got me the second. I've got about 70 pages left.:) 

I can't believe it took me almost a month to read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. There were so many days spaced between each time that I picked up this book that in any other situation, I probably would have put it down in favor of another novel, in other words, given up. But, I made a pact with myself to read all of these books on both lists, regardless of how long it took. As, Keren says, it's all about the journey. My life this past month, excusably, has also been pretty much a shitstorm. I'd like to know what happened to my karma, I usually live a relatively decent life towards others, I bumble through life pretty simplistically...maybe, though, this is making up for the first year and a half in Seattle that was relatively drama free. Anyway, what a messy few weeks. A fabulous birthday with my love and my friends led to Keren's mirror getting sideswiped, less than a week later my car getting backed into by a garbage truck, an AMAZING Heart concert to a man harassing me and Keren on the bus(we were just holding hands, he stuck his middle finger up at us and yelled "Fucking Dykes!", this was after a crackhead approached us from out of nowhere while we were waiting for the bus). Then, my cats scratched Keren's face bad enough that we went to the emergency room, and the tetanus shot Keren received gave her a not so low grade fever for a few days. It's been eventful. What do I always say Kate? I attract catastrophe.:) So, all that to say, Gilead has taken a back burner to an afghan I've had to work on, and spending time with my girl. Though, I must say, I wasn't SOOOOO excited to read it that I couldn't put it down.:) I ended up really liking it by the end, a story of fathers and sons and true love, and living life simply not dramatic. It's about a very old preacher who is writing essentially a journal cum 247 page letter to his young son about his life, his best friend's family, and his present. I can't really describe too well how it made me feel, except that John Ames has a very pragmatic yet loving view of God and makes one think about how different believing in God is from believing in a religion. I normally love books that make me think about God and public outlook of her, but, the prose at times was slow...I need to read a truly blow-away book, I guess, one that sweeps me off my feet. It's been a while. I've definitely had a run lately of books where I say "This won the prize?" I'm sure especially with some of the novels I've got to come(Findley's The Wars comes to mind), I'll be saying it many times over. But, Robinson wrote some great prose too(I really do want to read Housekeeping now), and I have a few quotes that I liked(I save all these quotes to help me remember the novels when this whole project is done)..."But I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp. [new paragraph] Thank God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was better than no company. You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human, which I devoutly hope you will never have(Robinson 39). Also, John Ames writes to his son, "I realize that there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. Boughton and I have talked about that, too It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and the loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any (ibid 66). In regards to looking for proof of God, "I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment (ibid 179). And lastly, I loved this bit! "Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us (ibid 197). Bah...this book had so much that I was looking forward to, an insomniac preacher who is writing a long journal-like stream of consciousness(and we all know I'm serious when I say I was looking forward to this! I'm NOT JOKING!:), and overall it was pretty decent, though a bit slow...perhaps it could be my fault though, for letting the book become more of a coffee table element than food for my brain. But now I can say I'm happily, spiritually full...well at least for now.:) Pulitzers-18, GG's-20.

Keren is encouraging me to read this as well...I've heard it's misery from cover to cover, but I'm almost 200 pages in and so far it's a sad, though great read. Thanks love! 

I'm so so so tired. I can't believe that I'm this tired. I'm sitting in my work clothes still, almost an hour after I got home, I have a Harry Potter movie on my television, I'm hungry, but my body feels like lead, I don't want to move it. I've needed to document my most recent read: Kathy Dobie's The Only Girl in the Car, but I haven't had the time or energy this week to do it justice, and though I feel compelled to do it now, I'm not sure that even at this moment I'm going to be a fine reviewer of this novel. I'm filled with loneliness, longing, I miss my girl. I miss her arms, I miss her smile, I miss her comforting words. And my eyelids are drooping(possibly due to low blood sugar, must remedy that soon). However, this work deserves my words as much as any other that I've read since I started this blog, it would be unfair to not write a bit, especially when there is a fair amount to say. Keren lent me this book, because, I believe, the protagonist reminded her of my sister. Well, the young Kathy Dobie reminded me not only of Jill, but also of myself, and of all young girls who are all too aware that they are different in some way. Kathy grows up in an all too normal and seemingly happy Catholic family outside of New Haven, CT. It is when she is an early teen that her desire to stand out(possibly?) and her desire for boys starts to lead her down a path for which a much older and wiser narrator hints that she might not be ready. A secret life of late-night rides in cars with boys who drink beer and feel her up, hidden from even her closest Catholic school girlfriends, culminates one night in the horrible gang rape of the 14-year-old Kathy. It is an experience that ruins her, socially(she is pursued constantly and called "slut" by any and everybody, including the boys who did it to her, hiding probably behind their own shame), mentally and it is apparent that it haunts her all the rest of her days. What a horrible mess. It leaves one to wonder. What happened? What drove her to find and create relationships with boys(men even) who would only use her for sexual exploitation in which she herself admits to having shared no pleasure? Her family seemed to be functional, seemed to be loving...why? Many people asked me the same of my sister when all the tragedy slapped the family unit in the face, dragged it through the mud and left it so battered we all wondered if as a unit we would ever speak again. I know that I felt like the cheese in the Farmer in the Dell song, I stood alone, in my rage, in my grief. But, after reading Kathy Dobie's memoir(and this has crossed my mind before), I can only imagine what my sister felt like in her self-imposed isolation with a manchild who abused her both mentally and physically. My sister seems to have recovered fairly well from the terrible relationship and the physical scars that he left her with(HPV, permanent head damage), she is in a stable, healthy relationship with a man she loves, she's doing well in school, working hard at internships to further her future career. However, not too long ago, she did confess to me of her dreams of killing her ex-boyfriend if he were ever to come near her again(he threatened her and stalked her for quite a while after they broke up, he definitely saw her as a meal ticket, and when she left...), I think, like Kathy Dobie's past, it is one that my sister will never leave behind. The main difference though, with the story of Ms. Dobie and my sister, is that Kathy seemed to be very alone, her family was not involved in her situation, probably did not know what pushed her into her long-term depression and complete personality turnaround. My family fought it all out down and dirty, in the therapist's office, in the bedroom, out in public, all except for me. I removed myself as completely as I could, continuing with my own life, making virtually no contact with my family for monthes as I evaluated my own sexuality and struggled with myself. My immediate family is a strange combination of silent sufferers(my father and I) and in-your-face sufferers(my mother and sister), though my father and I, when we get pissed...it's almost worse because we've held it in for so long. Since I came out(which was after much of the drama with my sister), I've gotten better about confrontation and not holding back, but I guess I service my own frustrations with the pen and the computer keyboard rather than shouting like my mother and sister. One of Keren's teachers compared Kathy Dobie's memoir to Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, though, and that was something that didn't sit well with me. First of all, Salinger's novel is just that, a novel...though based in fact, it is pure fiction. J.D. Salinger also wrote about a boy and his coming of age, which though it shares some very superficial similarities(same locale, adolescents in angst, imposing some form of self-alienation), I think that a boy's coming of age and a girl's cannot be compared in several ways. A girl has sex with many boys and she is forever A SLUT. A boy has sex with many girls, he's a "player". Society embraces and encourages masculine characteristics in MALES, discourages it in girls. The only types of people who might have it as hard as the marginalized straight girl are the feminine gay boy and the overly masculine(beyond tomboy)young lesbian, though the gay boy might have it worse because they tend to be abused by the king of patriarchal society: the athletic white male, since they(the gay boy) are the epitome of what the "king" is not. Anyway...I think I'm becoming delirious with hunger and fatigue. Quotes, quotes, quotes. Kathy Dobie is an amazing writer, and the prose was such a breeze in comparison to Edward P. Jones'...The first quote I found very interesting: "It was tricky figuring out the best way to be a girl. Love and loathing were aimed at her in equal strengths" (Dobie 85). The last two quotes came at the very end. The first reminded me of my own high school experience: "They owned the senior lounge, they'd come into their inheritance. The rest of us were looking ahead. The future was ours--it always belongs to those who are unhappy in the present" (ibid 217). And the last quote is the quote of a quote, which reminded me of myself and my dreams and desires. "There is a quote that hangs on my computer--I no longer know where I got it, or who it's from, but it reads: 'No interesting project can be embarked on without fear. I shall be scared to death half the time'" (ibid 225). I know I felt that way the first time I moved away from home(to Montreal!), the day I decided to pursue a relationship with a woman for the first time, and of course moving to Seattle...but, look where it got me! Dammit...I need food, enough with the ramblings already...

There are few books on this earth that I can actually say I hated. Hate is such a strong word, so is loathe...I don't even know if there are any books that I hated, for usually I can find some redeeming quality in anything I read, whether I appreciate it for its contribution to Western literature or if in the ending it somehow gives me my money's worth...In the case of The Portrait of a Lady for example(Kate, don't laugh), I disliked the book strongly(note the absence of the four letter h-word) for the first 400 pages! Then, the last 100 pages were MARVELOUS! Overall since the book only cost me something ridiculous like 12.5 cents, it was worth it, though not highly recommended. I think that's how I feel about Edward P. Jones' The Known World. Jones' novel received very high praise and I looked forward to reading it, not only because it won the Pulitzer in 2004, but because of its intriguing subject matter: Henry Townsend, the central character in the work, is a black man who was freed from slavery by his parents(two people who were also freed from the binds of that "peculiar institution"), but who chooses to buy a plantation and in turn(much to his parents' disapproval)own slaves himself. This affords him certain freedoms but also not at the same time, he looks like the people he owns, if he leaves the local area, he could be mistaken for being someone's property...What allows someone to own his own kind? How can one rationalize perpetrating an institution which is responsible for destroying the minds and bodies of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children when he has first-hand bourne witness to its atrocities? Jones' work does not set forth to answer those questions even though he raises them quite well, but that is all right, since I'm not sure that there is any specific answer to those questions. What Jones' novel does very well is it gives an entire picture of slavery and how it affects everyone from the local Native American who himself "owns" his own wife, to the sheriff who must keep the peace and keep track of runaway slaves, to the children of a plantation owner and his black mistress, to the slaves of Henry Townsend, to all the other peripheral characters: slave traders, townspeople...It is apparent that one of Jones' major influences is Faulkner(one of the other reasons why I was so excited to read the book), since in giving the reader a complete picture of slavery the author creates his own county(like Faulkner did for ALL of his novels except his county was in Mississippi), Manchester County, in Virginia, which is where the overwhelming majority of the story's action takes place. The one thing that I found very difficult about the book was the prose. It was stodgy and slow-going. I wasn't drawn into the work through the author's words at all. I only kept reading the book because I realized its importance in the American canon, because I need to to complete my project, and because I thought it might expose me towards something of which I could not have been exposed otherwise. Oh yes, and because I also have a really hard time shelving a book after I started it no matter how boring I find it(hence the fact that I actually FINISHED Portrait). This book is not for someone that wants a fast read or one that is even easy to follow. Characters are moving in and out all the time...but, I guess it's a more realistic picture of everyday life, people are connected to each other in the most interesting and bizarre ways, paths cross and years later links become apparent. Edward Jones reminds the reader that everyone has their own stories but the stories are all one. I think I bitched and moaned the entire time I read this book because I just didn't feel attached to any characters and the prose was not my style, but I have to be fair. The novel discussed a lot of skeletons in the big scary closet the American history books call slavery, via characters interactions with their masters, the law...One of the worst things is that Henry Townsend's dad(Henry Townsend himself dies at the very beginning of the novel, reminding me of one of my favorite Faulkner novels, As I Lay Dying, because in that book the matriarch of a family dies and then the rest of the book is how the family goes to shit, and in Jones' novel, Henry Townsend, slave and plantation owner dies and then his plantation goes to shit), a man who has been free for decades, is travelling one night, with his "free papers," and the local law enforcement, out to cause some trouble, decides to deny him his right to pass on a public road and one of the deputies eats his free papers(no I'm not kidding) and then proceeds to sell him back into slavery because even though Augustus(Henry's dad) protests, he has no legal documents anymore to prove his standing. What happens to Augustus and his wife after that is just sickening. As well, Moses the black overseer to Henry's land, ends up having a sexual relationship with Henry's wife(who is black as well), gets an idea into his head that he can become the new master of the plantation and all hell breaks loose. Lots of characters raise personal thoughts about how Henry's situation is different because of the colour of his skin and there are many characters in the work who could either "pass" if they want to, or through being the children of plantation owners and being educated, have certain rights afforded to them that other blacks may not, painting a slightly different picture of slavery than the one that is handed to us in our public school books. Jones also has a well-rounded character base, one of the characters may or may not be homosexual, there are various other people who have sexual perversions, people of all races and mental health status are included and allowed to give their voice to this patchwork quilt of slavery. What is interesting is at the end, Calvin, brother to Caldonia(Henry Townsend's widow), writes a letter to his sister, condemning himself and his role in the awful institution of slavery: he as a black man did not really enforce nor work to destroy slavery, he more or less just sat by and profited from its benefits. I wonder if he is harsher on himself because of the color of his skin or in spite of it? So, despite being sometimes hard to follow(my adult ADHD definitely kicked in a lot), it did have its redeeming factors, it made me think. And I was even able to pull some quotes that I liked...When Robbins, Henry's former master and future advisor in all things plantation related gives him advice at the beginning of Henry's career as an owner, he says "'Don't settle for just a house and some land, boy. Take hold of it all. There are white men out there, Henry, who ain't got nothin. You might as well step in and take what they ain't takin. Why not? God is in his heaven and he don't care most of the time. The trick of life is to know when God does care and do all you need to do behind his back'" (Jones 140). Interesting, very interesting. There is also this quote that is from one slave to another, towards the end of the work: "'Lord, I wish we could get some better days,' Celeste said to Stamford. 'I'm tired a this mess of a weather. I really am. I wish the Lord would reach down in that big bag a days of his and pull us out some good-weather days that would last and last. Some nice and plump days layin over there in the corner right next to day fore yesterday. God could give us some nice days, Stamford, if he had a mind to. He could even lend em to us. By now he should know we a people that take care a things and we'd hand em back just the way he give em to us'" (Jones 352). I can't fault a book for its prose if it makes me think. Actually, I feel like I should praise it even more than a book I love(though I probably wouldn't go that far...) because despite its inability to keep me focused, I still took a bunch away from it. Thanks to this book project too, I'm sure I'll have much more of that to come. Pulitzers-17, GG's-20.

Mmm...I'm not always happy when I REALLY WANT to like a book, but I'm just not feeling it...however, I'm plodding along...Pulitzer winner in 2004. 

Towelhead. Camel jockey. Sand nigger. These are the big 3: what Alicia Erian's 13-year old protagonist Jasira is called by her classmates and her neighbors, in the novel Towelhead. This, quite unfortunately, is far from the worst thing that happens to her in the course of the novel, however. Jasira, born to an Irish mother and a Lebanese father, has until the start of the novel lived with her mother in Syracuse, New York. Jasira is a typical 13-year old girl who is concerned about her appearance, who wants to be pretty. She also must face to an extent a desire to conform to the "American" style of beauty, since because of her mixed blood she clearly looks "Arab." Jasira is sent to live with her strict Lebanese dad because her mom's boyfriend is caught shaving Jasira's pubic hair. Okay, let's stop right here and talk about this, because from the root of this possibly stems the entire rest of the book. Jasira's thoughts over her personal appearance lead her to ask her mother if she can shave herself, her mother denies her that, and doesn't even want to embark in any kind of sexual conversation at all. Barry, her mother's boyfriend, takes the matter into his own hands and to Jasira's relief helps her out. Though, what does this say about a grown man if he wants to shave his girlfriend's 13-year old daughter's crotch? Jasira likes the attention from this man(she's only seen her father once a summer for the most part since she was a kid), he's caring towards her, and gentle, something it is somewhat apparent that possibly even her mother isn't giving her...Though her sexuality is clearly budding at this point, it is arguable how responsible she is in this situation. She's looking for someone to show affection to her, and she's confused by the kind of responses she's gotten so far. This will continue throughout the rest of the novel. Anyway, Jasira's mother sees her as a temptation for her boyfriend, so she sends Jasira to live with her dad. The burden of fault is placed on Jasira's shoulders! What the hell? This book is like Lolita from Dolores' point of view. We all wondered what the subject of lust in Nabokov's novel was really thinking the whole time she was involved with Humbert Humbert, now perhaps we have an idea...So, Jasira moves to live with her father in Houston, TX. She begins to babysit for the 10-year old son of the army reservist next door, and discovers his stack of Playboys. She looks at the pretty women, and begins to, unwittingly, but later very knowingly, masturbate. She especially desires one particular picture of a woman in a golf cart, because of her beauty and how her smile makes Jasira feels. When the boy's father discovers what is going on, he gets angry and forbids her to look at the magazines, but later, he anonymously leaves a "gift" on Jasira's stoop. It is the magazine with the picture that Jasira likes so much. Oh my God, there is so much to talk about with this book. Is Jasira looking for a mother figure that she has never successfully had, is that why she obsesses over the women in Playboy? Is she gay? Is she trying to emulate these women so that she can get attention from men? I could go on. The army reservist begins to develop a highly inappropriate relationship with Jasira, she falls in love with him(or his attentions rather) and he sexually abuses her, which she knows is wrong but which makes her "love" him more. This is combined with her father who is not warm at all, and even beats her when he is angry with her(enough so at one point she can't go to school...the army guy comes over and threatens to beat up Jasira's dad if he hurts her again, ironic since he's also sexually violating her at the same time). While all this is going on, Jasira meets a black boy her own age at school named Thomas, with whom she also initiates in a sexual relationship, unbeknownst to her parents who have not wanted her to have any contact with the boy at all since it will "ruin her reputation". By the way this book is filled with extremely graphic sex talk...Thomas also wants to shave Jasira, and they also engage in different sexual positions. But, he does care for her, in a 13-year old boy kind of way. The saving grace in this whole book is Melina, the other next door neighbor, a pregnant newlywed. She is the mother figure it appears that Jasira has never had and desperately needs, and eventually when things get so bad at her dad's Jasira moves in with Melina and her husband. Melina is a safe haven, where Jasira can just be, and Melina also comes to Jasira's defense in times of crisis. But, Jasira is holding onto so much inside, even Melina has no idea...at the end, when the truth all comes spilling out, and the neighbor is arrested, everyone realizes how much they are at fault, and especially her parents realize that by being so strict and straightlaced and unwilling to talk about sex or even feelings freely, their daughter was thrust into a mess of confusion, looking for love and caring through the only way she saw possible in the patriarchal porn magazines of our era: sex. Wow. This book is very sad, don't get me wrong. But, Alicia Erian does an amazing job at confronting social constructions of sex, using a 13-year old girl as a vehicle. Erian reminds us how impressionable we are at a young age, and how social standards can influence how we view the world and our place in it. Ironically(or not so ironically I guess), Erian's work has been published in Playboy and Penthouse. Is she doing a bit of her own commentary on the industry that has accepted her writing? Can Jasira be viewed as a sex object at that young age? Does she view herself as a sex object or is she just looking for love and to be loved? I don't really think that Jasira is sexy, as the males who desire her sometimes think of her, but just a lost little girl needing to grow up properly and be loved normally. I finished this book almost a week ago, and I'm still digesting. Sigh.

This is going to have to be quick, and a postscript to the posting that I made last night...I have to be in the shower soon, and get ready for work, but my mind has been chewing on the Crosbie book(sometimes, or often rather, I just can't let go)and I need to expostulate here for a moment...I read the last few pages again, where Madonna is in the Playboy mansion with Hefner(weird I know) and she discovers a few pages of a manuscript, entitled Dorothy L'Amour which reads "His voice was familiar, yet strange to me. Come with me, he said, and I lifted my hand. Dying, I saw him rush before me in the clear blue water, I heard the strings begin, the movement of the sea"...(Crosbie181-2) Madonna asks him what he is writing, and he "wrests the pages from her hands. We are writing about someone you do not know, someone we consider to be the embodiment of beauty and cardinal virtue" (ibid 182). The novel approaches its end by reading "Hefner stands frozen, clutching the manuscript to his chest. We have come this far, Dorothy, he says, as the pages begin to slide to the floor.[paragraph break] We have come this far and it is not over. It isn't over until the fat lady sings, and as you know, we do not allow her on the premises.[paragraph break] Tucking a roll of Viagra into his breast pocket, he opens the door and sails forward, toward the sound of music that has always imprecated him to feel love" (ibid 182). So, now I'm convinced that Crosbie wrote this as if Hefner wrote the whole thing. Why? This is what I'm pondering/digesting. Most fairy tales were written by men(think of the Grimm brothers, Hans Christian Anderson, etc.), and men when they write about women tend to fantasize, embellish, make them wispy faery-like creatures that are hard to pin down, sometimes weak, subject to their ever-changing emotions(stereotype, anyone?), not strong at all...they are almost always "rescued" by a charming prince or doomed because of a tragic flaw. Crosbie's(or Hefner's, depending on how you look at it) Stratten is a bit more complicated than that...she is a bit like Snow White with a dash of the Witch, Sleeping Beauty with the cold-heartedness of Maleficent...but she does posess her tragic flaw, her beauty...and is that what leads to her death? I don't know. She also appears, through much of this novel to be just lost, mentally, struggling with herself, her place, who she is...If Hefner is indeed supposed to be the narrator, writing Dorothy's memoirs for her, filling it with detail that he couldn't possibly know, is he making her into that weak woman figure that is so prevalent in fairy tale, or he trying to make her more human, all the while subconsiously, because of the society in which he lives and functions(and in which he is highly successful), sliding her into a patriarchal ideal? There were many times throughout the book where I found some of Dorothy's "idols" a little weird, given her age and upbringing(she was only 20 when she died, in 1980)...she had a rather intense obsession with Frank Sinatra(a contemporary of Hefner's and frequent guest at the Playboy mansion), and was extremely(and I mean EXTREMELY)well-read, referencing Proust and other rather uppity literati...I just thought, as I was reading that this was Crosbie, a Ph.D in English Lit., inserting her own authorial voice, but it could have been Hefner slipping his own ideas into Dorothy's "thoughts."Or, is this me, thinking that perhaps a Playboy bunny couldn't be quoting Goethe in her sleep, and what does that say about my assumptions that are perhaps socially constructed(and not even appropriate or correct), that one cannot be undeniably beautiful and undeniably brilliant at the same time? I mean, come on, I listen to the Stones and read the classics, a walking paradox...yet, I do not possess the radiance that Stratten is said to have beamed onto the world. I'm really trying to wrap my head around all of this, which is great because I LOVE books that make me think...Why did/does Crosbie write with a male voice, when she is a devoted feminist? I love the fact that she didn't let the reader know until the very end that the narrator was Hefner the entire time, for it makes you wonder, how do men really see women? On what pedestal do they place them? If this woman hadn't been a centerfold, and had just been normal sans celebrity, how would she have been viewed differently? Was Hefner trying to save her reputation? And, how can Lynn Crosbie possibly think as Hugh Hefner would, would he even write something like that? A man who practices something like a modern version of keeping concubines catering to the whims of a patriarchal society in which women are empowered by baring their parts to men? Is Crosbie trying to make Hefner into a sympathetic figure who "really understands" his "bunnies"? Or a pathetic old man trying to hero-worship the women whose stardom he has had a hand in creating, only to inadvertently foster feelings in them of self-loathing and depression? Dorothy was not the first centerfold to die tragically, or to slip mentally, and Hefner talks about ones that preceeded her, but it is her memoir that he writes. Perhaps it is his guilt taking over, and he is realizing a conscience however briefly about his role in the oppression of women in America over the past however many years...It's certainly a bit brief, since he still tucks "a roll of Viagra into his breast pocket" and continues on with his day...Need to shower, work and mull...

This is the next selection for the 3D book club...I've been lagging on getting started on it with the whole car getting stolen thing, but since people keep asking, I shan't put it off any longer.  

Breathless. After reading Lynn Crosbie's Dorothy L'Amour, that is what I am: simply breathless. I had to lie on the couch for a few minutes and just be, as I let the final words of the narrator wash over me like ice-cold waves, refreshing, reverberating. When I began the book, I knew it would be so...I fell in love with her poetry my last year at McGill, in Professor Lecker's Canadian Long Poem class...We read Queen Rat, Crosbie's new and selected poetry. She is in-your-face, gritty, bloody, harsh with descriptives but also starkly beautiful. I had dreamed of finding someone who wrote like that, publishing someone like that, being the person who was published who could write like that, and there she was staring back at me page after page. I even used her to formulate a thesis surrounding cannibalistic nature in her work, but my professor, a balding short man who hated all Americans and everything they stood for, though he admired my comments and thought processeses up to that point, ripped my paper to shreds in front of the entire seminar...brutally in fact such that other classmates(including a girl on which I had a crush)took to my defense. Anyway, I found out at that time that she had published one novel, Paul's Case, as well as several books of poetry. I searched for that novel far and wide, it had been out-of-print for a bit, especially due to its graphic and controversial subject matter. That is why I loved Crosbie so much, she wasn't afraid to push the envelope and all its contents, however dirty and revolting into your lap, laughing the whole time at your somewhat frightened/perturbed expression(or at least I imagine this so). So, doing my normal search on Amazon for stuff that I might like to read, I discovered about 6 monthes ago, that she had written another novel, called Dorothy L'Amour, it being a novel written in journal/first-person stream of consciousness style about the Canadian playmate Dorothy Stratten. It seemed like a much easier novel to come by...Well, I went digging...Every time I was in Canada I went looking for it, in used bookstores, in new bookstores, Book Warehouse, everywhere...I also went looking for her poetry, but I really really wanted to see how she wrote a novel. I even got a free Gwendolyn MacEwen book out of a long-winded discussion surrounding MacEwen(another one of my favorite poets)and Crosbie that I had with two lovely older gentlemen at a hole-in-the-wall used bookstore in the old part of Vancouver. I had absolutely no luck: it seemed like this enigma, this Holy Grail of novels that I felt that I was perhaps not worthy to find...I could have ordered it off Amazon, potentially, but I wanted to find it, to know that someone stocked it, to believe that someone else wanted to sell her to the world of readers...Well, it was all I talked about, I guess...I obsess over books that I can't find or have readily(earlier this year all my friends had to listen to me rant about not being able to find The Devil Wears Prada for at least a good few weeks)...Well, Keren, while we were in bed one night, asked me about Crosbie's novel, what the name was, etc. I didn't think anything of it, and I may have actually apologized for boring her with my praise of this feminist, but not so well-known, Canadian author. A few weeks later, a package was waiting at my mailbox when I got home from work...It was from a small bookstore in North Dakota...I was on the phone with Keren, and said, "I didn't order any books!" To which she replied "Maybe you did it in your sleep!" I responded back by saying, "If that's the case, I have really big fucking problems now!" After I got off the phone with her, I opened it up, and there was the book, my Grail. What a gift. I've thanked her everyday since I began it, and now that I've turned the final page and closed the cover, I thank you once more my love. Sheer brilliance, cover to cover. I wish I could write like that, I hope upon hope that someday I can. So heart-wrenching, so thought-provoking, so true. I don't necessarily think this book is for everyone, Crosbie has a different style (think Faulkner gone pop culture mixed with Sylvia Plath), but her prose, just like her poetry is just very real. It documents Stratten's life, from a young teen all the way to her tragic death at the hands of her estranged husband(all of the fact is true, common knowledge, so it's not like I'm blowing the ending or anything). Stratten is a sometime poet herself, and her thoughts and writing are lyrical in their disjointedness(this is possible with Crosbie, believe me). Oh! It's not like there's a really gripping plot, it's a memoir told through thought and memory, but wow...What is interesting, though is that all along, you believe it is Dorothy writing the memoir, though the last few pages were told from Hugh Hefner's point of view, trailing off, leading me to believe that perhaps(only perhaps, for that would seriously colour my reading of the novel very differently, and for Crosbie a proclaimed feminist to pull a twist like that? Huh!) he is the narrator/writer instead...This is when I wish other people read the books that I did, instead of going "Oh! That's interesting..." like most people tend to do, so I could discuss instead of pasting this drivel on the internet. But Crosbie is not everyone's cup of tea, think Jasmine: seductive and deep, with a dash of absinthe and a hint of crimson blood. I drew in every word of her prose, like it was oxygen, necessary to my living, but there are some quotes that I absolutely adored(as per usual)..."On a morning in August, I am awake at dawn, reading. I am looking for ways to better remember my childhood, my life until now. I watch the sun rise, its beauty diminished by contemplation. The sky is roseate, apricot, ice blue: a pasque flower, strewn with purplish bells. It is a chromatic phenomenon, emptied of meaning, confined by the conventions of sensation and form.[paragraph break] I think of how well writers evoke and situate their lives, each splinter and pang, the corresponding pastorals: locking themselves away with boxes of madeleines, becoming enormous with recollection" (Crosbie 21). In the next quote, Stratten is talking to Hefner: "We are sitting at the edge of the pool, wrapped in striped beach towels. I tell him that my memories are as isolated as little villages in glass globes. [paragraph break] When I write, I tell him, everyone's voices merge together in my memory, like iron filaments to a magnet" (Crosbie 43). And here too, talking to Hef again: "I still feel something for him, I told Hefner when he asked.[paragraph break] That is merely what remains of dead love, he said. How it clamours to be heard, predicating angrily, I made you. The cells and skin we discard periodically, that allow us to become someone new" (ibid 149). Finally, one of the last things Dorothy thinks about before she dies, when she's on the way to visiting the man who will soon kill her: "I think about failure. Those who have failed utterly, emanating a furious regret that is as palpable as pleasure, or success. [paragraph break] Shifting into neutral, I know that I emanate neither. Still, others gravitate to what I represent, measuring or breaking themselves against me" (ibid 161-2). Crosbie gives a Playboy playmate a charged, screamingly intellectual, full of woe retrospective on the world, the world which views her as an object, as filmy as the negligees that she poses in...Both Crosbie and Stratten are not just another pretty face, rather voices to be reckoned with. If one could reach an orgasm of the mind(and it is possible, I believe) here, I did.:)

Lynn Crosbie is one of my favorite poets, an in-your-face confessional modern Canadian poet, and her stuff is super hard to find, especially novels(of which she has two published). Keren found this for me on Amazon from some small bookstore in the Dakotas. Thank you, ma chere. It's next in the queue... 

There are some novels that I read that make me want to go grab my journal and write and write and write like there's no hour from now, like there's no job that I have to be at, like there's no tomorrow. There are other novels that I read that put fear into me, make me quake with astonishment, make me wonder if I can ever write like that particular author, if I can ever be "good." Robert Olen Butler's collection of short stories is a work that falls, for me, into the latter category. Butler's collection won the Pulitzer prize in 1993 and marks my return, however brief, to the list project...It took me forever to get through this book, but not because the stories weren't amazing, I just had a real mell of a hess(as Mrs. Schermer would say) of a past few weeks, with(sigh!) not any time at all to read...The beginning of Keren's trip home to see her folks I was determined to read as much as possible, missing her was rather rough and left this icky feeling in the pit of my stomach, enough so, that I determined to be the "ostrich" that I am noted for, and wished to stick my head in the endless sand of the written word...I was somewhat successful and then that real world application, my job, kicked into high gear and I faced a weekend that rivalled the holiday season...After that nightmare, I found out my car had been stolen. When I finally resolved within myself to be happy that I was rid of that piece of crap, the police found it! I've been dealing with mechanics, car insurance, etc. ever since. And, for a woman who can't handle planet Earth all that well, it's been at the very least mildly stressful and antagonistic. So, that made it so that a book that would normally have only taken me a few days to read, took me instead almost two weeks...argh. But, the stories were incredible. All of the stories are written from the point of view of men and women living in New Orleans or an area encompassing the real or fictional(my US map was stolen with my car so I haven't really looked)town of Versailles, LA., all of whom are Vietnamese, almost all of whom, if not all, are immigrants due to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Books like this are hard to read for me and at once wondrous. I will never ever be able to understand what these people went through, what their culture is like, what even the American veterans dream/nightmare about and have as a part of their waking hell. I grew up a white upper-middle class girl in the middle of nowhere Vermont, my father was number one pick for draft the year they decided to stop doing it. The only real connection I have with Vietnam(and it's patchy at best) is through a woman I once loved very very much, who came to this country when she was 4 monthes old after the end of the war. I talked to her quite a bit about her background, what her parents and siblings were like, but it is an experience from which I am extremely far removed. So, this book is wondrous, because it gives me a glimpse into a world of which I know nothing, and of course that is one of the main reasons why I devour books of all kinds. All the stories had their strong points and it was an overall well-put together collection, even better in its roundedness I found than the two Munro story collections I read. "Fairy Tale" tells of a Vietnamese immigrant woman who works in New Orleans as an "exotic dancer"(my words not hers) and prostitute, and finds an unlikely Prince Charming in a soft spoken, shy, sometime client. In "Crickets" a Vietnamese man tries to relate to his rapidly becoming-American son, by telling him a story and involving him in the reenactment of said story from his childhood in his faraway country, it is sadly to no avail. "Mid-Autumn" is told from the point of view of a mother who is about to give birth to a child who is the son/daughter of a GI, telling him/her of her very first love back in Vietnam. There are so many stories, beautiful in the description of a country I have only seen in the movies, of a contrast in the description of the new world of these Vietnamese and the old. These are a people who are trying to find their place in a society that is as divided over the outcome of their country's struggle as they are. They left Vietnam for a better life, and in many ways of course it is, but they also have to adjust, and like all of us, carry around figurative suitcases of memory. There were a few quotes that I absolutely loved, very tiny ones(well at least for me), though the prose itself is so stunning that it flows like water, each story a tributary into an ocean of words...The first quote is from the story "Fairy Tale" when the narrator says: "I like the way fairy tales start in America. When I learn English for real, I buy books for children and I read, "Once upon a time." I recognize this word "upon" from some GI who buys me Saigon teas and spends some time with me and he is a cowboy from the great state of Texas. He tells me he gets up on the back of a bull and he rides it. I tell him he is joking with Miss Noi(that's my Vietnam name), but he says no, he really gets up on a bull. I make him explain that "up on" so I know I am hearing right. I want to know for true so I can tell this story to all my friends so that they understand, no lie, waht this man who stays with me can do. After that, a few years later, I come to America and I read some fairy tales to help me learn more English and I see this word and I ask a man n the place I work on Bourbon Street in New Orleans if this is the same. Up on and upon. He is a nice man who comes late in the evening to clean up after the men who see the show. He says this is a good question and he thinks about it and he says that yes, they are the same. I think this is very nice, how you get up on the back of time and ride and you don't know where it will go or how it will try to throw you off" (Butler 45). The second quote is from "Mid-Autumn": "The Chinese gave us the celebration because one of their early emperors loved poetry and he wrote many poems himself. Since all poets are full of silver threads that rise inside them as the moon grows large, the emperor yearned to go to the moon" (Butler 98). The last quote is from one of the first stories, "The Trip Back." "I am just a businessman, not a poet. It is the poet who is supposed to see things so clearly and to remember. Perhaps it is only the poet who can die well" (ibid 29). All I know is that I don't always see things very clearly at all, and I guess I am a sometime poet. Actually my brain is often a jumble of thoughts that are expressed in enigmas of word play. Perhaps I will die well. Here's to hoping. But what I do know, is it will be a long time before Butler's stories die in my memory of books that will never cease to inspire me, as a reader and one who appreciates all facets of culture and as an aspiring writer. Wow. GG's-20, Pulitzers-16.

Well, I'm going back to the lists, for a change of pace, and to keep on top of the goal...Next up is Robert Olen Butler's collection of short stories here...winner of the Pulitzer in 1993. I've heard nothing but good things, and it's also a subject matter of which I know very little, the Vietnamese...just because you date a Vietnamese girl does not an expert make.:) 

I can remember the exact time when I was introduced to Toni Morrison...it was AP English, my senior(grade 12) year. That class was exceptionally amazing for me, right around then my Faulkner cherry was popped as well, and everyone knows how much I admire Faulkner.:) The class read Morrison's Beloved, a work I've read at least 2 times since, which is incredible for me, given my "there's too many books on the planet I want to read, so it's rare I'll read a novel more than once" rule. Beloved has to be my favorite Morrison novel, perhaps because it is so close to my heart since it was my first, and also since it is rich with food and religious imagery, both of which are wrapped up together so heartily...I can remember reading Beloved, and at first being like "What the fuck?" and then like a lightbulb turning on, I saw. Like Faulkner, I find that Toni Morrison is a master of language and displaying its inadequacies in describing basic human emotions. I don't read Toni Morrison, I feel her. Her descriptions of scenery, of weather, of us, makes me want to write, and be a damn good writer. There are many authors that make me feel this way, including Faulkner, Winterson, even Atwood, definitely Allende, but Morrison's female and American voice is so unique. And the topics she conquers...I wrote a paper in college comparing Beloved and Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, discussing the idea of death or even murder as it were, as liberation and demonstrative of love. It was risky, and nearly got me in trouble, but also got me the highest grade in the class on a final paper. As a I am a writer, both critically and creatively, of somewhat unconventional topics at times, I find Morrison to be a downright inspiration. I've also read Song of Solomon and Jazz, in which one of the protagonists kills his lover because he can't stand living with so much love crushing his soul...interesting, eh? Many people, men especially that I discovered via my lit program, don't care for Toni Morrison very much and are surprised when I rave about her...One man told me once that he can't stand reading her because he feels awash with an overwhelming sense of guilt every time he reads her, like she's making him feel guilty because he's white. I don't know...I don't get that from her, but perhaps I'm just looking for different things when I read. Anyway...I just finished The Bluest Eye today, Morrison's first published novel. It was different then I expected, at least from the description on the back of the book. I was expecting, given the description, a straightforward narrative, told from a young girl's point of view, describing in great detail an overwhelming wish/desire to be beautiful, to be rid of a chronically sexually abusive father, possibly I was expecting something slightly more stylistically similar to The Color Purple. This would not have been surprising, given the fact that it was Morrison's first novel, I thought perhaps her disjointed narrative voice(one of her writing qualities that I adore) was something that developed over her later novels; but here it was in all of its glory. What an amazing first novel. One sees a very sad child, who just wants desperately to be beautiful, because that is what she thinks she needs to be loved, through the eyes of two young girls equally confused at the world and what it holds for them both as black children and as human beings. You also see this child and the world around her through the eyes of her parents, including the father who will eventually impregnate her, and a few outsiders of the town, not to mention the child's own thoughts. What I got out of the book was a sense of confusion and disappointment...not on behalf of myself, but on behalf of the characters in the work. There is confusion regarding the world in which they(the characters) live, and disappointment when faced with the bleakness of their life situation when the confusion is clarified. We all cart around a lot of personal/mental baggage...some of us have it in an easy backpack, some of us need our own U-Haul(you know, the 2-bedroom+ kind). I was expecting a much more brutal rape scene, but what came finally towards the end was not brutal, just as sad as I expected it to be. Morrison makes the dad into a person too, with his own awful upbringing, lack of love and sense of familial belonging, that he is no monster, just mentally lost. This book reminded me quite a bit of Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The Bluest Eye, like Heart, is not just about one person, it is about a human experience, the desire to love, to be loved, to belong. The sense of belonging is different for a black person, I think, and is probably something I will never ever be able to fully relate to, but I can make an effort through reading Morrison. Morrison writes beyond that, though, it's not just about being black, it's still ultimately, I think, about being human. The final page just blew me away: "She however, stepped over into madness, a madness which protected her from us simply because it bored us in the end. [paragraph break] Oh, some of us 'loved' her. The Maginot Line. And Cholly loved her. I'm sure he did. He, at any rate, was the one who loved her enough to touch her, envelop her, give something of himself to her. But his touch was fatal, and the something he gave her filled the matrix of her agony with death. Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye. [double paragraph break] And now when I see her searching the garbage--for what? The thing we assassinated? I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim has no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late" (Morrison 206). Wow, wow wow. This is why I read and read and read. For words, statements, paragraphs like this. Ironically enough, Morrison is hard on her own novel in the afterword, self-critical if you will, and also contextualizes it in terms of the time. But, she also acknowleges how much it was dismissed at the initial publication...It, like all of Morrison's oeuvre, should not be dismissed at all.

It was between this and Robert Olen Butler's collection of short stories about the Vietnamese post-war...I have Keren's copy, plus a book that she just got me, which was also a possibility...reading either would make me feel close to you now that you're so far away, my love, but I guess I'll dive into the Morrison first, since this one actually touched your hands for a while...or perhaps because I do just like Toni Morrison's writing a lot? Sigh. 

I don't know what it is about me...I have a fondness/curiosity towards literature about sexual perversions...I've read and loved Lolita, countless erotic anthologies, much of the Marquis de Sade's work(you know you've got sexual perversion down when they make your last name into an adjective depicting brutally violent sexual behavior), The Story of O, and now Edith Templeton's Gordon. As mentioned on the back of the book, there is a relationship to O, and her story, though on a slightly different level. Both women, Louisa(the protagonist in Gordon) and O are educated women who have had some sort of career...O is in fashion, Louisa served in the military. Both could see their self-worth in all that they've accomplished and through themselves, both enjoy being sexual slaves, however, to men. Okay, this is what I find really hard to wrap my head around. Both women, in their own ways, claim to almost be empowered by these relationships in which they are often taken against their will. O even undergoes severe bodily modification(rings hang from her labia, amongst other things...sorry for the graphic detail folks, but imagine reading pages about it) to prove that she is a slave to her master. Now, both subjugations are definitely psychological, though I would hasten to argue that O's slavery is definitely to the fullest definition...she is given/sold to other men because her master, Rene wants her to be used by them, she is his gift to guests/friends. Louisa is used only by Gordon, who uses humiliation both in the bedroom and in public locations to show his dominance over her, and she like O, openly mentions to the reader how much she enjoys this behavior, and when he ignores her completely, she is terribly upset. Here's where I take issue. So, you would rather be raped, or endlessly violated, than feel unwanted? Or rather, abuse is a sign of love? Perhaps this is a strong, truncated interpretation of the stories, but I'm not sure I see any kind of empowerment here. Though, Louisa, through her talks with Gordon pre and post the somewhat bizarre sexual encounters, awakens parts of her past which she hadn't addressed for many years, clearing up some psychological demons...Hmmm...perhaps it wasn't all bad. However, at the end, we discover that Gordon killed himself after he ended the relationship with Louisa and subsequently got married, to give that one last hurrah. It is implied that it was because Louisa was too good of a match for him, she enjoyed the abuse so much and took so much that it became too much for him...Huh. The human desire to be dominated is an interesting conundrum. I cannot say that I do not enjoy being dominated at some points in my life and in the bedroom, however, I do enjoy a bit of role reversal and being a somewhat assertive if not slightly aggressive lover myself. Everything carries tenderness with me, though, I am assertive but ardent. I want to make you cry with exhausted pleasure, not because I've beaten the living crap out of you, obviously. But, on the other hand, all of us, at some point or another, have been in relationships which were at the very least psychologically destructive on some level. Now, I'm all for handcuffs, and even some of the other more S&M things(whatever gets your rocks off, and I'll try anything once), but when your lover "rapes" you on more than one occasion, and you actually sort of like it(or that's implied), then first of all, can you call it rape? Second of all, don't you think there might be something else that you need to address? I don't know, I'm just sayin'. What I do really like about both Gordon and O is that both women have an unadulterated voice: they say exactly what they are thinking to the reader, in all its graphic detail(Louisa is much more well-educated and colours her narration with quotes from Goethe and other German poets and writers). Women writers, especially, have only been that graphic in the past 30 years I would hasten to say, and even then, the detail exposed in these books is not common. Open frank discussion about sex is extremely feminist(I think, I could be wrong), and highly refreshing especially since even I have a hard time doing it, and I write about sex A LOT. I would also say that along the same lines, embracing your sexuality and preference therein is also very forward given the times in which both books were published(mid last century I would say), and I applaud the writers for their voice and subject matter. What I am not sure about is how the protagonists go through with their sexual awakening, and how it is through subjugation by men. That is what I find inherently problematic. But, as Dennis Miller says, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. One quote I loved from Gordon, is one from the psychiatrist himself(for that is what Louisa's lover is, a psychiatrist, which makes his domination and mind games all the more dangerous, I think). He says, "'You think life is like passing an exam. You get a good mark. Or a bad mark. And that's the end of it. But it isn't. You are your own examiner and it always goes on. It never stops'" (Templeton 52). I guess I like reading these books because I like to see what other people have to say about something so human, sex. And sex, whether you have a lot of it, none at all, in weird positions, with people of the same or opposite sex, is a part of all of our stories, however much we want to admit it. We're all here because of sex, we all dream of it on some level, and long for that basic of human needs. How we go about it just varies. I try not to pass judgement on others' sex lives, for I do not need them passing judgement on mine. Somethings just aren't for me. But, if they work for you, more power to you, I guess. Oh well. Fiction Junkie is still on vacation from the lists...

This is my next choice...it's supposed to be one part Story of O, one part Jane Austen...hmmm.... 

There's an Indigo Girls song that I love, called The Girl with the Weight of the World In Her Hands...Emily sings it, I believe. The girl in the song carries so much of the world's troubles in her soul, in her eyes...Anyway, Jeanette Winterson's book Weight reminds me a great deal of that song. Winterson's novel, the second in the Canongate series that I talked about when I read Atwood's novel, is about Atlas and his punishment to bear the world, his temporary relief when Heracles comes to ask him for a favor(to pick three golden apples from his own orchard), and his eventual return to the task he must eternally endure. This story is an elongated metaphor; not only does Atlas have to carry a literally heavy world, but he also is privy to all of the world's troubles, secrets, desires. He is a lonely man, overloaded with the figurative world, but he takes it as best he can. When Heracles comes to relieve him, the task for Heracles is a challenge to his manhood, he thinks it's only going to be physically difficult, he doesn't realize that the mental burden is just as difficult if not worse. He tricks Atlas into taking the world back and then runs off to continue his playboy antics. What is also interesting, is the author herself inserts her own voice, and a bit of her own history in the narrative, drawing parallels between her life and that of Atlas...reminding us that we can't leave behind any of our pasts, and like Atlas, we carry our own worlds, past, present and future, around on our backs, waiting for someone or something to relieve us of it. I don't know how that can happen, to have someone relieve you of your own cross that you must bear...perhaps a lover can ease it, share in it...but ultimately, I believe, death is possibly, bleakly the only liberator. I have loved Winterson's style of writing and her voice for a long time, her work is so diverse...I even grab at articles that she writes for such publications as The New Yorker. What she has to say about living in a world as a marginalized person, whether as a girl growing up lesbian, Noah building an ark(a man with a dream, I guess), princesses living communally as lesbians, or breaking the expected structures in narrative voice by depicting a relationship in which you don't know whether the narrator is a boy or girl(he/she has a relationship with a woman who is married), or Atlas carrying the Earth on his shoulders, Winterson expresses such wisdom, sometimes humor and just damn good writing. Oh, there were so many many quotes that I loved. At the beginning, Atlas says "I can hear the world beginning. Time plays itself back for me. I can here the ferns uncurling from their tight rest. I can hear pools bubbling up with life. I realise I am carrying not only this world, but all possible worlds. I am carrying the world in time as well as in space. I am carrying the world's mistakes and its glories. I am carrying its potential as well as what has so far been realised.[paragraph break] As the dinosaurs crawl through my hair and volcanic eruptions pock my face, I find I am become a part of what I must bear. There is no longer Atlas and the world, there is only the World Atlas. Travel me and I am continents. I am the journey you must make" (Winterson 25). A little bitty line that made me laugh..."Even a goddess is still a woman" (Winterson 31). At one point Hera is talking to Heracles about himself...she says "'Then I will speak plainly, like a man. No hero can be destroyed by the world. His reward is to destroy himself. Not what you meet on the way, but what you are, will destroy you, Heracles'" (ibid 41). Atlas and Heracles have one of their many philosophical discussions. Heracles says he's not free. Atlas responds by saying "'There is no such thing as freedom. Freedom is a country that does not exist.' [paragraph break] 'It's home,' said Heracles. 'If home is where you want to be'" (ibid 51). Still more of course. "It is fit that a man should do his best and grapple with the world. It is meet that he should accept the challenge of his destiny. What happens when the sun reaches the highest point in the day? Is it failure for morning to become afternoon, or afternoon to turn into peaceful evening and star-bright night" (ibid 71)? And then Winterson "speaks" in her own voice..."The ancients believed in Fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of the past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behaviour. The burden is intolerable" (ibid 99). And my final quote is also from her own voice..."That's why I write fiction--so that I can keep telling the story. I return to problems I can't solve, not because I'm an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see. Always a new beginning, a different end" (ibid 137). The idea of rewriting myth is exactly that, a "new beginning, a different end." It also reminds me of how much we create our own personal myths, our stories being told and re-told in either our own voice or those of whom we have come in contact. We are at once our own storytellers, our own stories, and the subjects or peripherals in others'. If the world is a tapestry, we are all its threads. Mmmm...Fiction Junkie is still on vacation from the lists...

This is the book I'm going to read next, so that I can give my lovely Keren all the UW books back before the term ends. It's Jeanette Winterson's take on the Atlas/Heracles myth. 

Sheesh...Well, this is going to be a combination blog(Hi there Mr. Chinese food guy, I'd like one Kung Pao chicken with combination white and brown rice please!)...I just finished Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad a few minutes ago, and finished Dennis Miller's Ranting Again last Friday but as yet have not had the time to write about it...Two extremely different books, with opposing styles...First I'll talk about Miller's book...Hehehehehe...He always makes me laugh. One of the things that I did like about the book was that all of the "articles" or essays if you will, were directly taken from his monologues at the start of his HBO shows, the really funny parts where he just rambles on and on and finishes by saying "Well, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong." It's written pretty much exactly how he speaks. However, this was also annoying...He uses "okay" a lot and starts sentences off with "You know," and of course every essay starts off by saying "Now I don't want to get off on a rant here..." but, of course, it goes with the title of the book I guess. Anyway, he has some extremely insightful and witty things to say about American politics, feminism, OJ Simpson and the human race in general(though he does use Pavarotti as a whipping post a little much)...I just loved his outlook on movies(made Chris read it while I was up in Canada, by the end we were both pissing ourselves laughing and I'd already read the essay at least once and was still laughing) and abortion and fashion...but he had a few quotes I really loved. "Remember, xenophobia doesn't benefit anybody unless you're playing high-stakes Scrabble"(Miller 22). And my favorite, which Kate will laugh at since we spent a year at least being Family Feud ADDICTS(I LOVE LOVE LOVE game shows): "Your family are the people who cut you the most slack and give you the most chances. I mean, when Richard Dawson says 'Name something you find in a refrigerator' and you say 'a dictionary' and the rest of America is screaming 'You moron' at their TV sets, who's clapping and saying 'Good answer! Good answer!'? Your family, that's who" (ibid 18). I've always loved Dennis Miller and been one of his biggest champions, even when he did start pulling all that right-wing nonsense, I still believe his humorous intellect is unsurpassed...If he was a chick, wow...But now I should move on to the chick, that ever prolific Atwood...What is somewhat dismaying to me(though not entirely surprising I guess), is that as I peer over my personal writings: my poetry especially, I find a lot of similarities to Margaret Atwood's work, I guess making her a somewhat subconscious inspiration. When I was first really getting exposed to her in Canada, I felt like she was being shoved down my throat, and that especially in the states she's recognized as the great Canadian voice...this is quite disheartening as since embarking on my book project and also having been exposed to wonderful Canadian writers over the past several years, I've found many amazing Canadian voices, all uniquely gifted in their own personal and national expressions. I must admit, though, that as I've read more of Atwood(and not just all of her poetry, some short prose and several novels)I've really come to respect her work and her themes not only in terms of what she writes about but also how she views her role as the writer...Murder in the Dark is a great collection of short prose and prose poetry in which she explores the notion of poet as murderer, reader as victim( I shouldn't be dismayed that I subconsiously emulate her, I suppose). But, I'm digressing. I just finished The Penelopiad, the first in a myth series that has been started by Canongate books, in which modern authors rewrite classic myths...many authors I greatly admire have been set up for the challenge. The Penelopiad documents the story of The Odyssey from Penelope's point of view, giving it a distinctly feminine voice...this is combined with a "Greek chorus" of 12 maids who give narration of their own, not only commenting on the story as told by Penelope but also dictating their own lives in which they are subjugated first as slaves in Odysseus' house, then subsequently as the rape victims of Penelope's persistant suitors and then finally their brutal slaughter at the hands of the man who could have, if circumstances perhaps had been better, been their protector. Leave it to Atwood to bluntly show the shitty turns that women's lives take at the hands of men. It's not a terrifically long book, especially in light of some of Atwood's novels, and I also found it to be extremely straightforward, which is also, I feel, unlike Atwood, especially the more recent novels...but a writer can change their style given subject matter I suppose. However, in true Atwoodian fashion, her character's voices give way to biting social commentary that is point on...This quote, from the beginning of the book, just struck me. "The teaching of crafts to girls has fallen out of fashion now, I understand, but luckily it had not in my day. It's always an advantage to have something to do with your hands. That way, if someone makes an inappropriate remark, you can pretend you haven't heard it. Then you don't have to answer" (Atwood 8). The maidens themselves are full of the comments that only Atwood could provide, and tell a much more violent story than their protagonist does, almost leaving Penelope in the wings of the theatre when she is supposed to, at least in this arena, be taking centre stage...but the mix of narrative voice makes this book so much greater than its lack of length may deceive. Mmmm...I'm looking forward to the Winterson version of Atlas, which I'm reading next...Fiction junkie is still on GG/Pulitzer vacation...

Okay, so they say that every girl has a bit of a Daddy complex...Dennis Miller reminds me of my dad...perhaps because my dad loves him so. I find Dennis Miller uproariously funny and I must admit that I have a small crush on him...smart and witty and just look at that face! I'm reading this collection of rants and raves while plowing through the Atwood, and I also was reading it while reading the O'Neill...Hey, I've been needing something lighthearted.:) 

Now reading...I have this and the Winterson novel The Weight which start off a new myth series by Canongate books in which established authors reinvent old myths...Chinua Achebe and AS Byatt(yay!) are amongst the others that have books due...I can't wait!!! 

Okay, so I made a deal with Keren, and my end of the bargain involved me going to bed as soon as I could after I got off the phone with her...unfortunately, I'm a creature of habit(and insomnia), so without pills, I'm fucked. I just took them, though, so I should be induced to sleep soon. But, as for the habit part, I've gotten used to the blog thang...documenting all the books I read complete with quotes and contextual basis in my life, so I can't stop now...Today(Thursday morning) I finished Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill. I've never watched anything by him before(or read for that matter)...He's the author of The Iceman Cometh amongst others. Wow. It was pretty sad. It reminded me of my family in a lot of ways, which makes me relate...My mother's parents were heavy drinkers(I didn't know that liquor could be delivered to your house like milk until I visited them and was old enough to answer the door and realize what was going on) and my father's mother's mother was severely mentally ill(enough to be institutionalized for much of her adult life) so both facets of a family life I am quite familiar with. So, in a nutshell, this play is about a family of four, and the mother is addicted to morphine, because when she was having mental issues, a hack doctor prescribed it for her. She is overly dependent on her family because she is lonely as hell, but that makes her feel like a burden, so she uses...The father of the family is an actor, who is also a cheapskate, and a heavy drinker, though at times in the play it is argued that he drinks because he has to deal with the mother, and the shortcomings of his boys, Edmund and Jamie. Jamie is the father's namesake and an actor as well, but he spends all of his money on booze and women...Edmund, it is discovered early on, is creative, a poet of sorts and a big reader, but also deathly ill of consumption...The mother, Mary, cannot deal with that very well, so she needs to use her drugs as an escape, but by returning to her artificial solace, her family's unhappiness grows, and consequently they drink more...It's a vicious circle that whirls and whirls around. The love in the family unit is evident, but their state of miserable reigns. There are of course, as per usual, some quotes that I loved...Mary says "'The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us'"(O'Neill 87). And, a few from Edmund, the poet: "'Don't look at me as if I'd gone nutty. I'm talking sense. Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it? It's the three Gorgons in one. You look in their faces and turn to stone. Or it's Pan. You see him and you die--that is, inside you--and have to go on living as a ghost'" (O'Neill 131). He also quotes a prose poem by Baudelaire that I had forgotten about(I love Baudelaire, but haven't been a French poetry junkie for a while) "'Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually. Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken'" (ibid 132). And, my last quote is also from Edmund, though slightly morbid(I apologize) it is lovely..."'It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death(ibid 154)'"! Mmmm...I have always loved plays. Seeing them of course, I LOVE the stage and everything about it. Though, next to of course reading novels and poetry, reading plays is one of my favorite things. For me reading a play is like reading a "Choose your own adventure" novel. You get guidelines from the writer, for stage directions and how a character should act and obviously what they say, but you can be your own director when you read a play, you're in charge. You can decide what they look like, how they dress, what the stage looks like, and even how you want to have them carry out their lines...It's so open-ended. This play was good and nutritional too! But, I still have a weakness for Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee and Tom Stoppard...geez what I need to do is find some female playwrights. I'm not an O'Neill fan from just this play, but I'm open to what else he's written. I'd also like to see some of his stuff performed. That would be very cool. The play's the thing, right? Junkie is still on vacation from the lists...And is also rapidly growing sleepy...Who hoo!

Okay...I just finished Carrie. I'm tired and I'm sad...this book is not terrifying; my Stephen King cherry has been popped, but not fearfully...It makes me want to cry, not because I'm frightened, but because it makes me realize yet again, that life is brutal, especially brutal to those who deserve it the least. The people in Carrie who become her victims are scared of her, and they have every right to be, but only with the clear knowledge of what they've done to her to create the monster that is hell-bent on destroying them. The reader is aware of this, but King's characters ironically seem not to realize how their even their ignorance of Carrie White and her horrible life made for a hopelessly bleak situation that could only end badly. I read King's introduction that was attached to the "new" release of the novel(the intro was written 1999); he based Carrie White on two girls that he knew growing up who were different...in a socially apparent way. It's about the what ifs? The what if all of us who are marginalized in the world, the sometime freaks, were able to exact our revenge. Carrie is not about an anomaly, a monster, a freak, it's about all of us who are terrorized by a society that doesn't agree with us or want to acknowledge our existence. It should be seen as a novel of warning...which perhaps is why it is banned now...Littleton, Co. and other small towns in the U.S. having seen what happens when people who are mercilessly teased and tormented take matters into their own hands. Perhaps we should look at what we should do to fix the way we talk to people and treat them. Thumper's mom had it right: "If you don't have anything nice to say..." And don't say you're sorry, for anything mean or cruel you've ever said to anyone. As one of the characters in Carrie says, "Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions" (King 138). But I'm ranting, and I haven't even been to book club yet. I need to take my sleeping pills, read a morbidly depressing play, and go to sleep...I have a date with Kim and my yoga mat tomorrow, before I throw in my two cents about a girl from whom I can't say I don't identify with...The junkie is on vacation from the lists, with a one-way ticket to free reading...

After Carrie, I think I'm going to read this...I've been feeling a tad morose lately(perhaps it comes from being extremely overworked),and I've been wanting to read a play for a long time...This one I've lugged around with me for several years...published post-humously by O'Neill's widow, it's supposed to be terribly depressing, but a good work of literature. Mmmm...The "wee" vacation has begun, however non-uplifting it may be. 

I have to finish the rest of this book for book club, which is meeting tomorrow at 1:30. It shouldn't take me too long, and hopefully I won't be at work that late so I'll get it done right when I get home from work...I've seen the movie, so I know what happens anyway, well sort of... 

Okay, so, as Sophia would say in the Golden Girls, "Picture this..." A few years ago, I would say about four summers ago, Chai, my first girlfriend, and I decided to go to Northhampton, MA, the location of her alma mater, Smith, to spend some time together. I remember lots of images from that trip, me in my hot little Ralph Lauren dress, Chai with her camera taking pictures of me sitting on the dock putting my feet in the disgusting water of the pond(cause I could), finding the mental institution where Susanna Kaysen, James Taylor and Sylvia Plath had been, also the same place where they supposedly filmed The Cider House Rules(great book AND movie). I remember loving her, and feeling so comfortable in that space, because she was. She was unafraid to be seen in the company of another woman who at night was her lover, because Smith is so lesbian-friendly, and it was a nice feeling to have her be okay with us...for once. Sigh. I also remember visiting the house where Margaret Mitchell stayed while going to Smith, and there was this little museum with an exhibit about Virginia Woolf...I have said before and will say again...I think I like the "idea" of Virginia Woolf, but I've read three of her books, and have decided that I'm not crazy about her work. However, when I was there looking at the exhibit, I discovered a book of hers that I had never heard about before(and NO! I didn't buy it!), called Flush...it's a biography of the Brownings(Robert and Elizabeth Barrett, both excellent poets) from their dog's point of view. I remember thinking about what a cool idea that was to me, also pretty wacky(fitting for Woolf), but it would be something I would read, despite my ambivalence towards Virginia Woolf...everyone who I've met who goes on and on about her, I'm like "Have you actually read her stuff? I mean, Faulkner's pretty tough, but Woolf, geez..." Unless you're a total book freak like me, I'm not sure I'll believe you if you say you like her...but that's just me. Okay, enough about Woolf, let me get back to the subject at hand. A little under 50 years after Virginia Woolf wrote Flush Leon Rooke did something very similar(perhaps he read Woolf's "bio" of the Brownings, which would surprise me, since most men don't read Virginia Woolf unless under duress...wow look at me! I'm really snippy today)...Rooke wrote a book called Shakespeare's Dog, which is all about Shakespeare from his dog Hooker's point of view. It won the GG in 1983. Let me say right here: Canadians give prizes to strange and unique books...Marian Engel's Bear won in 1976 and that's about a woman who has a sexual awakening by having a bear eat her out, amongst other things...Weird, yet interesting, especially from a feminist(which sometimes I put that hat on, however briefly) point of view. Shakespeare's Dog is also weird but interesting...I don't think I've ever read a "literary" novel told so wholeheartedly from a dog's point of view...and it's a neat take on Shakespeare, too, especially since I know little of his biographical history(only what was spoonfed to us in school). Hooker is loyal to and loves his master, who is always scribbling, or fucking his wife "The Hathaway," who most of the time just beats Hooker and frustrates him, the children are strange creatures to him, whom he usually just observes in an off-hand way...There are others of Shakespeare's family living in the house, and they are in the peripheral, as well as other dogs on the land that Hooker has daily dealings with. He is a very insightful dog, full of memory(about Shakespeare and his own young life), and views the world in a unique way. He is unreliable as a narrator, just like many humans, for we discover that he embellishes or lies(depending on how you look at it), but even human narrators in novels are almost always flawed. He does spend a couple pages at least on his bodily functions...two pages are where he gets sick, smells his own vomit and decides that it's actually pretty good eating...yuck. Now this book is not just full of his observances, it also has dialogue; Shakespeare makes some great comments, like "'You underestimate the clankings of history,' Will told me. 'There's much to be said for looting the past'" (Rooke 144). But, one of the best quotes in the book comes from Hooker's thoughts: "Aye, indeed. I'd think, for what worth was a scribbler if his weight was not put in with the long march of impugned humanity? Soul endured the ravages of fate; soul was immortal. Soul gets by by hook and crook, by quill and by quiver; it seeks out all manner of things, showing its plume in flower bed or grass or animal or even a limestone field. It will enter anything except hedgehog. Hedgehog will fight its own shadow, thus keeping soul out. Maybe. I'm not hard by my rule, and the hedgehog to his credit would affirm nay--and nay again--to this. The Avon's fish has soul, though we eat them anyhow. But eating's not the test. The soul's plume lays the grandeur over all of life, which is why the witch Moll Braxton, even with her deadly sins, should be spared the mob's high flames. Though she cackles with her sisters around their pot, she influences no injury over you and me. The stars, I'm willing to think, might be another matter. What's stelliferous is beyond dog's howl, though up there is something ever pushing and turning it. For howl never climbs so high as dog would have it go, and many's the time I've heard it crackle and give out and plunge like a sob into the green sea. 'And does the plague have soul?' I'd sometimes ask of myself. To which I'd reply that it was a stinking maggoty world in some regard, but that the true war was one with time. If the Spaniards didn't blow us all up with their cannonballs and Rome didn't tilt over with stored gold and England didn't kill us with its queenly farts, then mercy would out and the soul's plume endure. Thus spake Hooker, mad as a sea captain, pushing the eternal wheel of dog's lore" (Rooke 36-37). Whew. What brilliance, from man's best friend. And this rant, ironically enough, is right after Shakespeare says "'Your lesson's stern, but I've learnt it. I'm a redeemed scholar, thanks to dog'" (Rooke 36). Well, so am I. It's amazing how things come full circle. That summer when I went to Smith, I bought two things, souvenirs you might say...One was a pack of cloves, that I guiltily smoked because Chai kept telling me it was okay, she didn't mind...I felt like a 16 year old again...and a Tori Amos cd that was a bootleg of a live recording of a concert of hers at the Orpheum in Vancouver(it has a great cover of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" which is a song that reminds me of one ex in particular and all my exes all at once), and of course I have the memories of the desire to read a biography of famous writers from a dog's point of view(amongst other memories of course)...As I enter my third summer in Seattle, Chai is coming to work here for 10 weeks, I still have a pack of cloves somewhere in my house(though not that one...I think it got smoked forever ago), next week I'm going to Vancouver for a few days to actually see a show at the Orpheum(not Tori Amos, though, Natalie McMaster, the great Cape Breton fiddlist), and I just finished a book about a writer from his dog's point of view, that may or may not have been inspired by Virginia Woolf...hmm. Well, off to work, argh...GG's 20. Who Hoo! Pulitzers-15.

Now reading...I'm afraid that soon I'm going to owe the library all the money I've been saving up to buy my first born(wink wink)! But fortunately, it's the last book I have from SPL. Now I just have 5 from UW! Crap! This one won the GG in 1983. 

Okay, this week, or even the past little while, has been nightmarishly busy...So, I've slowed down reading a little bit. But at 3:30 this morning I finished the second book of Alice Munro short stories to win the GG, A Progress of Love. But before I get to that, I have to talk about some other things and get some stuff off my chest. I HATE BOOK SNOBS. For some bizarre reason, I've encountered more than one in the last few monthes. People who are all, oh, that book isn't literary enough, or some crap like that. I mean, FUCK OFF! I have come to the realization that I am NOT a book snob, thankfully...my choices and loves are quite a variety and I am pretty non-discriminate. So, Gina and I started a book club back in February. It was kind of half-ass, since it was me and Gina only, we read Martel's Life of Pi and went out to talk about it. Gina and I thought it would be cool to read a book together and talk about it, but when it came down to it(both of us are former lit majors)we were so out of practice with book discussions, that it was sort of embarrassing...But, it was still fun. So, we decided to do it again, but I got slammed with all of my interlibrary loan requests and couldn't pick up a new book that wasn't already coming from the library. When it came time to pick a new book, I thought we should pick something highly controversial, to be interesting. I went on the ALA website and printed out the top 100 most challenged books in the past 15 years. Carrie was on the list. So, Gina and I decided to read that; I have never read Stephen King and always wanted to. Well, what I'm upset about is this. We invited a few more people to join the club, one being this university student Becca, who works as a hostess/front desk person at work. She was supposed to come to the first meeting yesterday, but bailed. I ran into her at a party last night, and razzed her a little. She told me that she couldn't come because her cousin was in town at the last minute, but also, she just didn't feel the book was "literary" enough, and that she wasn't into discussing it. I felt like she was belittling my and Gina's choice! She was like, "Well, if you were discussing Life of Pi like you had before, then I would be way more into it. But this, well, I mean it's Stephen King!" Then she went on to say that there was only one real theme she felt that could be discussed, which was the religious aspect and asked me what we actually DID talk about, like there was nothing else that could be talked about. OOOOH. I was not thrilled. Yes, I agree, Stephen King is no Toni Morrison, or Michael Ondaatje or even A.S. Byatt, but he DOES have his place in American literature, and is worth reading just to make sure that one has a wide acceptance of what EVERYONE is reading. Ugh. Book snobs suck. I'm glad to be a book DEMOCRAT.
So, other than that, I was dragging on books this week because Chris came to visit on Monday and Tuesday and we watched 9 movies in 2 days(in the theatres). I'm not only a bookaholic, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE going to the movies. I think it's just stories as a whole that mesmerize me. We saw a lot of really great stuff: Lucky Number Slevin, Kinky Boots, Notorious Bettie Page, On a Clear Day, Brick, American Dreamz, Thank You for Smoking and 16 Blocks. Only one movie sucked, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. OMG it was two hours of my life I WILL NEVER GET BACK. It was Tommy Lee Jones directorial debut, and a major bllllleeeeeecccchhhh in my opinion. It was so boring and the characters so bismally depressing that I wanted to kill myself...just so I would have something to do! But, the others were all good in so many different ways, that it was all in all very enjoyable. My favorites were Kinky Boots, Bettie Page and Thank You for Smoking, and they tie because they were all so unique in their wonderfulness. Thank You for Smoking was ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS in a totally inappropriate way. Two quotes that I loved from that film were "You want an easy job? Go work for the Red Cross!" and "Michael Jordan plays basketball, Charles Manson kills people, I talk. Everyone has a talent." Anywho...I wish I didn't have to work and that everyday I could just read books and go to the movies. Then I would be in HEAVEN.
Okay, back to the task at hand. The Progress of Love. Okay, so before I just liked Alice Munro. now I think she's fabulous. Progress was a better short story collection in my opinion than Dance of the Happy Shades, but Dance was her first collection so I've got to cut her some slack...:) I loved every story in this collection, they were all so finely wrought, her stories are just so...interesting. I also encountered a story that had homosexual characters ("A Queer Streak" but it's not called that wholly because of the characters I think), which I hadn't seen in her writing before. "Circle of Prayer" was funny(strange, that is) because in it, some of the characters at a funeral sing a song that I was taught by my mother: "Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine..." which is a song I have never heard anyone else sing. I know my mother didn't make it up, but it still struck me, because if I sing it, people have no idea where I'm coming from. I don't think I have a favorite story here, all of them were good. And, like the title implicates, they all have to deal with love, and how it unfolds or unravels, between actual lovers, family members, etc; she covers all the boundaries of love. The great thing about Munro is that her characters are all so unique. So, one of a kind characters deal with love in one of a kind ways, with every page full of little surprises. Mmm...great work. There were two quotes in here, very small, that I particularly enjoyed, tiny gems. "Fifty years too late to ask, Sam thinks. And even at the time he was too amazed Edgar became a person he didn't know Callie drew back, into her sorry female state The moment of happiness he shared with them remained in his mind, but he never knew what to make of it. Do such moments really mean, as they seem to, that we have a life of happiness with which we only occasionally, knowingly, intersect? Do they shed such light before and after that all that has happened to us in our lives--or that we've made happen--can be dismissed" (Munro 160)? This one from "Circle of Prayer" was also rather poignant. "She stood outside her own happiness in a tide of sadness. And the opposite thing happened the morning Dan left. Then she stood outside her own happiness in a tide of what seemed unreasonably like love But it was the same thing, really, when you got outside. What are those times that stand out, clear patches in your life--what do they have to do with it? They aren't exactly promises. Breathing spaces. Is that all" (Munro 273)? Sigh...I have one more Alice Munro collection to read to fulfill her requirement on the list. It will probably be a while before I get to it however, since I am sitting on a ton of other GG winners, AND I plan on taking a break from the lists in a bit anyway, to read some stuff I made Keren borrow for me from UW and clear out my shelves of some things that have been sitting for years, waiting patiently to be read. I am looking forward to reading her again, though; I now definitely have a greater appreciation for the short story. I have one more book from SPL that is just as overdue as the Munro(which I'm returning today mind you!) and then a wee vacation. Heh. GG's-19, Pulitzers-15.