31. Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books are a powerful antidote for loneliness, for the moral purposelessness of the leisure class. It’s our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don’t read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn’t some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. It’s hard to make this case, though, if all we do is squabble with each other and lament our obscurity.
turns out that one of the five key steps to inciting a revolution involves falling in love.
i ♥ penguin’s “great ideas” series, which includes george orwell’s why i write & william hazlitt’s on the pleasure of hating. on the occasion of the 100th (and final) volume, the guardian chats with the series editor about their beautiful covers and his ten faves.
review, author interview, & excerpt of gary shteyngart’s super sad true love story—which features this killer opening: “Dearest Diary, Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die.”
i see you driving ’round town with the girl i love and i’m like, “fuck you!” (ooo, ooo, oooo!)
Portland is supposed to have a substantial literary scene, and I believe it with small presses and literary journals like Hawthorne Books, Tin House, Glimmer Train, Poetry Northwest, Portland Review, and others. But there’s nothing like a book and literary festival to excite the writers in a city enough to get them to come out and be social with each other. Wordstock, Portland’s annual book and literary festival, goes from October 7th to the 10th and includes a book fair, of course, as well as workshops and events such as the Text Ball hosted by the Independent Press Resource Center (maybe one of my favorite Portland finds). This year Wordstock will be graced by our very own Christopher Howell, which is very exciting. The list of authors is long and includes favorites such as Anthony Doerr, Aimee Bender, Kevin Sampsell, Steve Almond, Richard Robbins, and Michele Glazer. The book fair is only $10 for both days (or $7 for one), and workshops are $35 (with deals for signing up for more than one). Dylan and I will be at the book fair for sure and are looking into volunteering so we can get more time at the festival sans dinero. So…if any of you were looking for a reason to visit one of the coolest cities in the country (if not THE coolest), now you’ve got a good one.
the other day at html giant, there was a discussion of “intelligent fatties” (i.e., those giant works of literature, both in reputation & size, that happen to be as easy to carry around as my 65 lb. dog—who doesn’t enjoy being picked up). the blogger wanted to know if anyone secretly read those ginormous books because it made them feel smarter than people who didn’t. or, at least, if that was part of the reason. given that i’m currently on my second attempt at infinite jest (and that i’ve, on occasion, claimed to love—with a capital L—both underworld and moby-dick), this struck me as an entirely fair question.
Over crepes and coffee this weekend, my mom and step-dad told me stories about unidentified clients who were on two-year waiting lists for shelters and eight-year waiting lists for Section 8 housing. Information like that is so disturbing it’s difficult to face.
Generally when people need a shelter, they need it right away. It isn’t like you calculate, “I think I’ll lose my job in two years and my house along with it. I’ll get on the waiting list for this bedbug infested shelter today so I can spend a few weeks there in 2012.” Similarly, you don’t want to believe that you are going to be destitute and in need of heavily regulated subsidized housing eight years down the line. It seems we have three ways in which we can respond to the horrible and horrifying: dismiss the information with a simple, “That’s too bad,” absorb the information and allow it to saturate our pores with gloom, or transform it into satire. Read more »
Despite the outcry earlier this year about the uselessness of Twitter after the Library of Congress announced it would be archiving every tweet, Twitter is still around and kicking, and users are finding new uses for it almost every day. Want to use it to find a job? Forbes will tell you how. Want to join a book club? Picador has one for you. Want to find new books to hopefully replace those your child is obsessed with so that you can read a new bedtime story for once? Well, you’ll have to talk to Susan Orlean for that one.
Last week New Yorker author Susan Orlean turned to Twitter in search of books to replace her son’s cherished “Magic Treehouse” books, asking her 65,000+ followers to suggest books for her five-and-a-half-year old using the hashtag #booksthatchangekidsworlds. She then posted a few hundred of these suggestions in an article on the New Yorker website. Not all the books on there are age appropriate, or readily inspire the image of a mother-son pair curled up in bed enjoying a quick story (I don’t know about you but the dictionary was never on my bedtime reading list). Still, looking through the titles brought me back a bit to my own childhood. Frog and Toad, anyone? Or perhaps The Boxcar Children. There’s a copy of The Little Prince on my bookshelf right now.
I’ve stolen few things in my life. One of them is a book called Stand-Up Comedy: The Book by Judy Carter. I discovered it on a shelf in Victrola, an idyllic coffee shop on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. It is one of those shelves that holds board games and books to help entertain the patrons who forgot their laptops, mole skins, GRE study guides, or novels. One day, I reached up and pulled down the comedy book. I passed the “funny test” and couldn’t resist. I slid the book into my bag.
I ended up giving the book to my friend, Fat, because he’s funny and I thought he should become a stand-up comedian. Five years later, he hasn’t yet, but he still might. I missed the book, though, so I bought myself a copy. Therefore, the hot copy is not in my possession. If you want to find it, I’ll give you Fat’s address.
It’s embarrassing to be seen with this book. I hide it in my sketch book. Maybe I’ll cover it with a brown paper bag. The book is unattractive, and it’s a ridiculous notion that a 36-year-old-failure-at-so-many-things would fancy herself a standup comedian. Yet, Judy Carter makes it seem possible. She offers step-by-step instructions for creating your own routine. She prompts you to list your negative personality traits, things you hate, worry about, and fear, and shows how each of these things really can be funny. Here are some examples for negative personality traits:
“I have low self-esteem. When we were in bed together, I would fantasize that I was someone else.” —Richard Lewis (Carter 25)
“I had to move to New York for health reasons. I’m extremely paranoid and New York is the only place my fears are justified.” –Anita Wise (Carter 25) Read more »
82-year-old Merwin lives in Hawaii, but now he'll be making trips to D.C.
I know I just posted, but I wanted to share this news with everyone. W.S. Merwin is probably in my top ten list of favorite poets, so to see that he’s going to be our new poet laureate is pretty exciting.
I thought I’d run out of things to write about this week. (I’m moving after all, and putting all my books in boxes makes me sad and unable to function properly in society.) So I googled “Poetry in America” in a half-ass, smart-ass attempt to come up with something to blog about, and low and behold, what did I find but the Poetry Foundation‘s 113-page report called, what else, “Poetry in America: Review of the Findings.” And it’s fascinating. Here’s a look at what the study did:
Poetry in America is the first national, in-depth survey of people’s attitudes toward and experiences with poetry. The survey was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago on behalf of The Poetry Foundation. The survey investigated people’s leisure time pursuits and general reading habits, their early and more recent experiences with poetry, their perceptions of poets and poetry readers, their favorite poems, and their experiences with coming across poetry in unexpected places. The survey sample includes more than 1,000 adult readers with varying levels of interest in poetry. Respondents included adults who currently read or listen to poetry, those who have read poetry in the past but no longer do so, and those who have never read poetry.
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