Another article in the latest New Criterion that Miss Edith enjoyed very much because it made her feel warm inside was Anthony Daniels’ thing about how Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is totally fucking overrated.
When did you first read On the Road? Almost certainly you were in high school, and it was one of the few books you read that wasn’t actually required for homework. Anyone who’s read this book, as far as I can tell, read it like that. I know I did. And I remember that there was a passage that made a big impression on my little 14 year old mind – something, I think, about Terry’s first appearance in the book – but the truth is I can’t remember a thing about it now. And the last time that I tried to remember it was – this I remember clearly – when I was nineteen and traveling on a Vermont Transit bus, trying to make conversation with a young man who was traveling to his job teaching at a boarding school in Putney. He was reading On the Road, and because we were the only two people on the bus under the age of 40, we tried to chat with each other. And we did chat, fairly happily, until we both got off the bus in Brattleboro and went our separate ways. I think his name was Chet. But see, this is my point – I remember Chet and that Vermont Transit trip a hell of a lot better than I remember On the Road, which is supposed to be so important to me since I am, after all, supposed to be one of these artsy types.
I remember that I sort of enjoyed On the Road when I first read it. I liked at least the first 75 or so pages. I then went and made the mistake of buying several other Kerouac books – Dr. Sax, I’m pretty sure, and The Dharma Bums, and, oh yes, I remember buying Pic; and I never made it through any of them. I was certainly an ambitious reader in those days but the truth was that my eyes were bigger than my stomach more often than not. I found Kerouac painfully boring. I gave up on him and have never looked back.
One of the funny observations I’ve made through years and years as a bookseller is that I can generally tell whether or not people are going to annoy me horribly based on the books they like. I know that a guy who likes Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, and Jack Kerouac a little too much is a guy who, well, let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t want to be romantically involved with this guy. I’m not saying he’s guaranteed to be an asshole. I just mean that our temperaments would not mesh well. I was glad to read Mr. Daniels’s article. It made me feel like maybe I haven’t been crazy all these years. I mean, sure, Capote said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing,” but that in itself isn’t enough of a critique to really take seriously (genius though it is, in its way). Daniels’s essay was, like Mr. Epstein’s, writing that made me nod my head in agreement. It made me feel like I was not alone in my frustration with this hero worship – because that’s what it is. Hero worship. And I don’t think Kerouac is worth worshipping.
As you were, readers.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Some Thoughts on Literature and Literary Theory: Joseph Epstein's, which are quite lucid, and Miss Edith's, which are less so.
The latest issue of The New Criterion hit the stands – or, at least, reached our humble home – recently and, as is my wont, I nicked it from Notarius’s bag as soon as I noticed it. I read faster than he does and so feel fairly ok with taking periodicals from his bag to read; often, I’ve digested whatever is in there that I want to read before he’s even noticed the thing isn’t in his bag anymore.
Now, some issues of The New Criterion entertain me no end, and others leave me incredibly uninterested. I borrowed from the library that book of collected essays from the rag that came out some months back – Counterpoints, I believe it was called – convinced that it would be worth it for me to lug the heavy thing home; surely out of all those pages there’d be at least three pieces I’d love to pieces?
No. I was bored shitless within, oh, five essays. That is to say, I tried to read five different articles, wasn’t interested in any of them, and glanced through the rest of the book concluding that this was a mission to abort. I feel bad about this, but there it is. The truth is, Miss Edith is not a brainiac. She does not read to be enlightened or to have new doors opened. She reads to be entertained, and that means the article has to be about something that’s already somewhat relevant to her existence.
Fortunately, the new issue of the magazine met me on this, and there are at least two articles I sincerely enjoyed and which even left me sort of shooting my fist into the air crying “Gabba Gabba Hey!” to Joseph Epstein and Anthony Daniels.
The Epstein piece, ‘ “The Literary Life” at 25,’ is a sort of recap of what’s been going on in the lit’ry world for the last 25 years, and to hear him tell it, the truth would be: Not as much as you would hope, because writers have gotten “workshopped” into vapidity and opt for gimmickry whenever possible. This is certainly my position, and I cringe at the use of the word “workshop” when used as a verb, to boot.
When Miss Edith was a young thing in college, studying literature, the thing to do wasn’t to study the fiction per se, but rather to study something they called literary theory. I thought it was utter bullshit and a waste of time. College, however, felt differently, and insisted I study this shit. I remember that I weighed various options and decided that the efficient thing to do would be to take a lit theory course (which my advisor said I had to take, or else) over the summer, thus lessening the number of weeks I’d have to be miserable studying the shit. To this end, I enrolled in a Yale summer program, where I studied literary theory under one of the great men of the field, I guess. I sat in a classroom with Yale students – a charming lot, I can assure you – not one of whom had ever read Jane Eyre, it turned out. If I dug up my diaries from that summer I bet I could come up with a complete list of basic stuff that, I was shocked to discover, these overachievers had never read, even though most of them were about to be juniors or seniors in college. It was amazing to me. Apparently Yale was crushing these kids to be little theorybots and had decided that it just wasn’t important to’ve read anything like, say, a novel.
The professor was singularly unimpressed by me even though I had read the novels he referred to in passing; in addition, I knew already who Foucault and Derrida were (and could spell their names correctly). This didn't earn me any brownie points, though; I think he could tell I was not one of his flock. He actually called a meeting with me one day late in the summer session and asked me exactly why I was taking this course. I explained that I had been asked to take a course in theory even though it wasn’t exactly relevant to what I would be working on. He asked what I would be working on. I explained it to him; he flinched oh-so-politely, and gave me a gentleman’s C for my grade. It was, all things considered, rather nice of him; had I failed, I would have been sort of screwed. But the truth was, really, I saw no value in what he was teaching, and I never did in years to come, either. I’m somewhat vindicated, then, by Mr. Epstein’s article: “…theory in academic literary criticism seems to be playing itself out by the sheer force of its deep inner uselessness.” Hallelujah!
Mr. Epstein has various complaints and I don’t really want to discuss them point by point here. I just wanted to express my gratitude to him for elucidating thoughts that I myself have had in the back of my head for a long time now that I haven’t been able to express very well: the dissatisfaction with so many books published today, the basic emptiness of so many of the works of fiction that are popular, relatively speaking (not Danielle Steel popular, but Michael Chabon popular) today. Mr. Epstein discusses the lack of moral backbone supporting the world-view of so many of the literary novels we see today and, reading this, it suddenly struck me that perhaps this was part of why I loved Cheryl Mendelson’s Morningside Heights so much. Because it was, yes, set in a milieu I can enjoy reading about, and it was a novel of manners, but also, at the end of the day, it was a morality tale. It was about good triumphing over evil, or, at least, the bad and annoying and sleazy (personified, yes, by a lawyer). People I know either love or hate this novel, if they’ve ever looked at it, and I can accept that. I don’t care. I love it, and shall continue to re-read it and enjoy it. I only wondered, as I finished Mr. Epstein’s article, if he had read Ms. Mendelson’s book, and, if so, what did he make of it?
Now, some issues of The New Criterion entertain me no end, and others leave me incredibly uninterested. I borrowed from the library that book of collected essays from the rag that came out some months back – Counterpoints, I believe it was called – convinced that it would be worth it for me to lug the heavy thing home; surely out of all those pages there’d be at least three pieces I’d love to pieces?
No. I was bored shitless within, oh, five essays. That is to say, I tried to read five different articles, wasn’t interested in any of them, and glanced through the rest of the book concluding that this was a mission to abort. I feel bad about this, but there it is. The truth is, Miss Edith is not a brainiac. She does not read to be enlightened or to have new doors opened. She reads to be entertained, and that means the article has to be about something that’s already somewhat relevant to her existence.
Fortunately, the new issue of the magazine met me on this, and there are at least two articles I sincerely enjoyed and which even left me sort of shooting my fist into the air crying “Gabba Gabba Hey!” to Joseph Epstein and Anthony Daniels.
The Epstein piece, ‘ “The Literary Life” at 25,’ is a sort of recap of what’s been going on in the lit’ry world for the last 25 years, and to hear him tell it, the truth would be: Not as much as you would hope, because writers have gotten “workshopped” into vapidity and opt for gimmickry whenever possible. This is certainly my position, and I cringe at the use of the word “workshop” when used as a verb, to boot.
When Miss Edith was a young thing in college, studying literature, the thing to do wasn’t to study the fiction per se, but rather to study something they called literary theory. I thought it was utter bullshit and a waste of time. College, however, felt differently, and insisted I study this shit. I remember that I weighed various options and decided that the efficient thing to do would be to take a lit theory course (which my advisor said I had to take, or else) over the summer, thus lessening the number of weeks I’d have to be miserable studying the shit. To this end, I enrolled in a Yale summer program, where I studied literary theory under one of the great men of the field, I guess. I sat in a classroom with Yale students – a charming lot, I can assure you – not one of whom had ever read Jane Eyre, it turned out. If I dug up my diaries from that summer I bet I could come up with a complete list of basic stuff that, I was shocked to discover, these overachievers had never read, even though most of them were about to be juniors or seniors in college. It was amazing to me. Apparently Yale was crushing these kids to be little theorybots and had decided that it just wasn’t important to’ve read anything like, say, a novel.
The professor was singularly unimpressed by me even though I had read the novels he referred to in passing; in addition, I knew already who Foucault and Derrida were (and could spell their names correctly). This didn't earn me any brownie points, though; I think he could tell I was not one of his flock. He actually called a meeting with me one day late in the summer session and asked me exactly why I was taking this course. I explained that I had been asked to take a course in theory even though it wasn’t exactly relevant to what I would be working on. He asked what I would be working on. I explained it to him; he flinched oh-so-politely, and gave me a gentleman’s C for my grade. It was, all things considered, rather nice of him; had I failed, I would have been sort of screwed. But the truth was, really, I saw no value in what he was teaching, and I never did in years to come, either. I’m somewhat vindicated, then, by Mr. Epstein’s article: “…theory in academic literary criticism seems to be playing itself out by the sheer force of its deep inner uselessness.” Hallelujah!
Mr. Epstein has various complaints and I don’t really want to discuss them point by point here. I just wanted to express my gratitude to him for elucidating thoughts that I myself have had in the back of my head for a long time now that I haven’t been able to express very well: the dissatisfaction with so many books published today, the basic emptiness of so many of the works of fiction that are popular, relatively speaking (not Danielle Steel popular, but Michael Chabon popular) today. Mr. Epstein discusses the lack of moral backbone supporting the world-view of so many of the literary novels we see today and, reading this, it suddenly struck me that perhaps this was part of why I loved Cheryl Mendelson’s Morningside Heights so much. Because it was, yes, set in a milieu I can enjoy reading about, and it was a novel of manners, but also, at the end of the day, it was a morality tale. It was about good triumphing over evil, or, at least, the bad and annoying and sleazy (personified, yes, by a lawyer). People I know either love or hate this novel, if they’ve ever looked at it, and I can accept that. I don’t care. I love it, and shall continue to re-read it and enjoy it. I only wondered, as I finished Mr. Epstein’s article, if he had read Ms. Mendelson’s book, and, if so, what did he make of it?
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Shopping: for pasta, canned tomatoes, and true love... Miss Edith Gets Sentimental...
In the mid-1990s, maybe it was more like the late 1990s, on into the early 2000s, my dear college pal G. and I emailed each other at least ten times a day. We were in our twenties, mostly unattached in romantic terms, and we had a lot of time on our hands. I worked something like 20 hours a week, and G. worked at home writing children’s books. She was in Mississippi, and then Virginia, and I was in Connecticut, but we were in touch so frequently that no aspect of the other’s life was unknown to us. It was sort of insane, I suppose, but that’s what it’s like to be a girl in your twenties, I think; there’s one girlfriend who you tell absolutely everything, and she is your lifeline. That is, if you’re lucky, that’s how it is. We complained to each other about everything, but we also amused the hell out of each other.
G. comes from a huge family in Pennsylvania and her parents owned a restaurant; she grew up cooking because of this, mostly Italian food. I come from a small family in Connecticut by way of Manhattan and my parents were not especially interested in cooking, to put it mildly. But when I was in my twenties, I had no money – I mean, no money – because I preferred to work this crazy job instead of getting a proper salary at a normal job. And because I was often without a romantic attachment – one of my rules about romantic attachments was that they should either be skilled cooks or able to pay for restaurant meals all the time – eventually I had to teach myself how to cook. G. was very good company in this regard. As the mother of a young child, she was good at advising on time-saving, effort-saving tricks in the kitchen. As a single mother supporting her family on basically nothing, she was in the same boat as I was (well, worse off, really, but she lived in places where the cost of living was much lower), so we could compare notes on cost-saving cooking enterprises ad nauseam, and we did.
G. and I spent hours and hours emailing each other about what we were cooking, what we were thinking about cooking, and what we would never cook because we thought it was stupid. We fantasized about sushi meals we couldn’t afford and we discussed the numerous ways to gussy up boxed macaroni and cheese so that we could eat it with a relatively clear conscience. Among the many ways we compared notes in this vein was that we would painstakingly copy out for each other the receipts from our shopping trips. I mean that every single time we went and bought groceries – even if it was just picking up milk and a can of tomatoes – we’d email each other to say what we’d bought. We had an elaborate system involving asterisks and other symbols to indicate when an item had been bought with a coupon or was on special at the store. We’d discuss total dollars spent, what money had been saved, what had been a splurge, and why some things were justified splurges (artichoke hearts: a necessary luxury) and others were just insane splurges but necessary at the moment in order to maintain morale (smoked oysters – which were stocked up on in a big way if they went on sale, which they hardly ever did, believe me).
I was reminded of these emails, which I wish I’d printed out and saved (though I’d’ve had to have been crazy to do this; the amount of paper involved could never have been amortized no matter how many coupons I clipped), when I was in the library and noticed a new book on the shelf. Entitled Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found, I knew right away that even though it was a big heavy book I had to take it home and read it straight through.
Apparently the author of this book, Bill Keaggy, has been documenting for some years the grocery lists he has found or that people have sent to him. He has a website, www.grocerylists.org, which I haven’t looked at yet but I gather that it is sort of the pure, expanded version of this book. The book is either a totally moronic waste of time or a delightfully funny waste of time, depending on one’s perspective. Notarius, when he saw me curling up with it on our wonderful upholstered couch this evening, practically scowled with disgust when I showed him what I was reading. This is not a book for the high-minded, let’s say. On the other hand, when he heard me belly-laughing at what I saw, which I did several times, he clearly softened a bit: the book has to have some value if it can make me laugh out loud like that.
I know there’s little justice in this world, and that books seldom receive the level of attention they deserve (i.e., the books that everyone’s talking about are almost always crap and little gems like this fall by the wayside – but I must add that 99% of the books out there are crap, even that so-called literary fiction that I’m supposed to take so seriously but refuse to on moral grounds). But if I were still a book buyer for a bookstore, I would make sure to have this book in stock: there would be a stack of five of them, prominently displayed. I would sneak it into people’s hands, and say, “I know this is silly. I know. And I know you’ll think less of me for recommending this book. But really – look at it. This thing is hilarious.”
It may not hit in hardcover, but if I had my druthers, this book would be a successful book come Christmastime, if not in 2007 then at least in the future, when there will be (I hope) a paperback edition priced in the neighborhood of $14.95. Though to be honest this hardcover is only $19.99, which isn’t so bad. Look for it. Laugh. Buy it for the person who was your best friend in the whole wide world when you were 28. I’m assuming you’re still close. G. and I are….
G. comes from a huge family in Pennsylvania and her parents owned a restaurant; she grew up cooking because of this, mostly Italian food. I come from a small family in Connecticut by way of Manhattan and my parents were not especially interested in cooking, to put it mildly. But when I was in my twenties, I had no money – I mean, no money – because I preferred to work this crazy job instead of getting a proper salary at a normal job. And because I was often without a romantic attachment – one of my rules about romantic attachments was that they should either be skilled cooks or able to pay for restaurant meals all the time – eventually I had to teach myself how to cook. G. was very good company in this regard. As the mother of a young child, she was good at advising on time-saving, effort-saving tricks in the kitchen. As a single mother supporting her family on basically nothing, she was in the same boat as I was (well, worse off, really, but she lived in places where the cost of living was much lower), so we could compare notes on cost-saving cooking enterprises ad nauseam, and we did.
G. and I spent hours and hours emailing each other about what we were cooking, what we were thinking about cooking, and what we would never cook because we thought it was stupid. We fantasized about sushi meals we couldn’t afford and we discussed the numerous ways to gussy up boxed macaroni and cheese so that we could eat it with a relatively clear conscience. Among the many ways we compared notes in this vein was that we would painstakingly copy out for each other the receipts from our shopping trips. I mean that every single time we went and bought groceries – even if it was just picking up milk and a can of tomatoes – we’d email each other to say what we’d bought. We had an elaborate system involving asterisks and other symbols to indicate when an item had been bought with a coupon or was on special at the store. We’d discuss total dollars spent, what money had been saved, what had been a splurge, and why some things were justified splurges (artichoke hearts: a necessary luxury) and others were just insane splurges but necessary at the moment in order to maintain morale (smoked oysters – which were stocked up on in a big way if they went on sale, which they hardly ever did, believe me).
I was reminded of these emails, which I wish I’d printed out and saved (though I’d’ve had to have been crazy to do this; the amount of paper involved could never have been amortized no matter how many coupons I clipped), when I was in the library and noticed a new book on the shelf. Entitled Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found, I knew right away that even though it was a big heavy book I had to take it home and read it straight through.
Apparently the author of this book, Bill Keaggy, has been documenting for some years the grocery lists he has found or that people have sent to him. He has a website, www.grocerylists.org, which I haven’t looked at yet but I gather that it is sort of the pure, expanded version of this book. The book is either a totally moronic waste of time or a delightfully funny waste of time, depending on one’s perspective. Notarius, when he saw me curling up with it on our wonderful upholstered couch this evening, practically scowled with disgust when I showed him what I was reading. This is not a book for the high-minded, let’s say. On the other hand, when he heard me belly-laughing at what I saw, which I did several times, he clearly softened a bit: the book has to have some value if it can make me laugh out loud like that.
I know there’s little justice in this world, and that books seldom receive the level of attention they deserve (i.e., the books that everyone’s talking about are almost always crap and little gems like this fall by the wayside – but I must add that 99% of the books out there are crap, even that so-called literary fiction that I’m supposed to take so seriously but refuse to on moral grounds). But if I were still a book buyer for a bookstore, I would make sure to have this book in stock: there would be a stack of five of them, prominently displayed. I would sneak it into people’s hands, and say, “I know this is silly. I know. And I know you’ll think less of me for recommending this book. But really – look at it. This thing is hilarious.”
It may not hit in hardcover, but if I had my druthers, this book would be a successful book come Christmastime, if not in 2007 then at least in the future, when there will be (I hope) a paperback edition priced in the neighborhood of $14.95. Though to be honest this hardcover is only $19.99, which isn’t so bad. Look for it. Laugh. Buy it for the person who was your best friend in the whole wide world when you were 28. I’m assuming you’re still close. G. and I are….
Monday, September 03, 2007
Miss Edith Gets Distracted. Easily.
The Wall Street Journal is a rag I enjoy for several reasons, none of them particularly honorable or having to do with their true function. So I never tell anyone to reading anything in there that’s actually important, and I admit this with little shame.
Last week, however, I was compelled to contact someone I work with to bring to their attention an article about corporate blogs. (Please don’t ask why I was moved to address this subject. It’s not pretty.) Interestingly, in the course of emailing the article to said co-worker, I stumbled on a little piece that the WSJ had about a sort of comic distraction that one could peruse online. Being a sucker for these kinds of things, I went straight to it, and now I’m going to share the joy with you, in case you don’t already know about it. It helps to find cats amusing, but frankly, it’s not really about animals per se. It’s just a certain kind of humor that, if you’re in the right mood, is really fucking funny.
www.icanhascheezburger.com.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Last week, however, I was compelled to contact someone I work with to bring to their attention an article about corporate blogs. (Please don’t ask why I was moved to address this subject. It’s not pretty.) Interestingly, in the course of emailing the article to said co-worker, I stumbled on a little piece that the WSJ had about a sort of comic distraction that one could peruse online. Being a sucker for these kinds of things, I went straight to it, and now I’m going to share the joy with you, in case you don’t already know about it. It helps to find cats amusing, but frankly, it’s not really about animals per se. It’s just a certain kind of humor that, if you’re in the right mood, is really fucking funny.
www.icanhascheezburger.com.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
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