Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac

"The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different. I don't think AmericanHaikus (short three-line poems intended to becompletely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again...bursting to pop. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella."

Jack Kerouac

(partial Haiku, Jack Kerouac)

Early morning yellow flowers,

thinking about

the drunkards of Mexico.

No telegram today

only more leaves fell.

Nightfall,boy smashing dandelions

with a stick.

Holding up my

purring cat to the moon

I sighed.

Friday Buzz - History + Fiction

I was visiting my local indie bookstore the other day, and standing before the rack of recently released paperback fiction, I noticed an inordinate number of titles related to historical personages. Here is a sampling of such--mind you, a sampling:

Dreamlife of Sukhanov
Memoirs of Helen of Troy
Anxious Pleasures (A Life After Kafka)
The Mercuy Visions of Louis Daguerre
I, Mona Lisa
Rasputin's Daughter
Secret Memoirs of Jackie Kennedy Onassis
Great Lady: The Notorious Gorgeous Life of Emma Lady Hamilton

Okay, I can accept some of this as a wave in the cyclic nature of publishing trends; after successes like The Other Boleyn Girl or The Dante Club, naturally publishers chase after more of the same and glut the market.

But why is the reading public hungering for fictional accounts of people who really lived? (Honestly, I don't get it. To me, the facts are infinitely more interesting. How could any author improve on the story of Marie Antoinette, for example? Wouldn't you rather know about the real Jackie O. versus some stranger's made-up account of her? And why would readers buy into a contemporary writer's interpretation of the memoirs of a famous historical personage?)

This is saying something about our society and culture, though I'm not quite sure what. I simply don't have enough pieces of the puzzle. To me, there is some sort of intersecting between the fictionalized personage trend and the recent spat of "dramatized" memoirs. Real life crossing over with fiction, that sort of thing. For some reason, we are not prone to distinguishing between "fact" and "fiction," "truth" and "theory": We are willing, maybe even eager, to blur the lines. Why?

On another tangent, could the fictionalizing of historical person's memoirs be a reaction to our own (recent) lack of tangible, permanent records of our days and thoughts and history? Think about it: We soon will have no more letters or lengthy correspondence and few written diaries to document the processes, personal musings, daily accounts of our great thinkers. No more Samuel Pepys or Viriginia Woolf diaries. No more letters between Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. (Yeah, I can just imagine how helpful Blackberry messages will be: RUwriting? :) )

Just some random, rambling thoughts. Something about this nags at me, though: Somehow, it's telling us something we must pay attention to. That's the feeling I get.

I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on the subject.

Thoughts for Thursday - Thinks & Links

"I usually steal a line from Yeats and it goes, 'Read what gives you pleasure, write what you must.' I think that’s pretty good advice. Read, read, read, and then explore your obsessions because I think that’s where the energy comes from. Especially when you want to do a novel because to sustain yourself through a longish project you really have to be, not just committed, but you have to be really interested in it. There’s nothing worse than starting something and then getting bored with it when you’re halfway through. "

- Vikram Chandra advises fledgling writers, in a long, unpretentious interview with Tony DuShane at Bookslut.

(Beryl Bainbridge, meanwhile, reprises the old 'write what you know' principle: "I don't think you should ever try to make things up. We all lead such strange lives that there is no need to. Use your own experiences and then twist it a bit.") (all of the above via Prufrock's Page)

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"Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing." Richard North Patterson (via Sarah's Writing Journal)


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International Women's Day Pioneering Women Writers Quiz (Cool, but not that easy.)

Salon's take on Oprah and The Secret (Shh, here's The Secret: Keep envisioning Oprah's show cancelled!)

Big thoughts: Evolution and religion (Could GW's God who told him to go to war be merely an evolutional byproduct?)

Bookaholic Step 4: Making an inventory

As an admitted Bookaholic, I decided to take a little inventory and post a few titles that are currently awaiting my attention on my TBR shelves. Maybe surveying the gluttony, like standing nude before a full-length mirror after a two-month couch vacation, will shame me into submission. Maybe I'm hoping I'll be able to skip back to Step 2 and believe that the Greater Power of Eyestrain will restore me to sanity.

Or maybe it will merely whet my appetite for more...

I keep finding that one book leads to another which of course begs me to investigate yet another that naturally refers to several others...I'm like a damned hunting hound on the scent of a pack of foxes.

But, just in case you're secretly wondering "which does LK have that I don't?" or "I could use a book on how to make time for writing myself," here are some of the good, the bad and the ugly from my current TBR list:

The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant / Hester by Margaret Oliphant. Naturally, you can't read a writer's autobiography without reading some of her work. What intrigues me about Margaret Oliphant is that she suffered much but still wrote, against all odds. Born in 1828, she truly was burdened in the manner of 19th century women: nursing sick relatives, bearing six children (and losing 3 in infancy), being widowed and supporting her family with her incredibly prolific writing. The novel Hester is about an older woman who risks her own personal fortune to lead her family's banking business to safety. Will I ever get to these two books?

Twenty-eight artists and two saints by Joan Acocella. Somewhere I ran across this title and thought it would be a great addition to my Essays Month. I don't know, there's something maddeningly cool about portraits of Bob Fosse, Dorothy Parker and Mary Magdalene residing in the pages of the same book.

The Other House and The Outcry by Henry James. What can I say? NYRB had a sale. Two books by James that I'd never heard of. One a comedy of manners, one depicting uncontrollable passions lying beneath the veneer of civilized life. Tell me, truly: what would you have done?

The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist: A Book for Writers, Teachers, Publishers, and Anyone Else Devoted to Fiction by Thomas McCormack. This guy's the CEO of St. Martin's Press. I want to write, teach and publish. Not necessarily in that order. What else is a Kitten to do to avoid writing, teaching and publishing -- but buy a book about those endeavors? To further aid in my paralysis and guilt, I have A Writer's Time: Making Time to Write (a tip of the hat to Kate from Kate's Book Blog, who always posts tantalizing quotes from tantalizing tomes).

This is just a tip of the bookish iceberg, my friends. I pass along these titles to you in hopes that you might find a gem or two to pick up yourself in time...Now, off I go to enroll in an Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course.

New TBR: American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever

Oh, dearest God in heaven, another book for the TBR pile:

Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as "The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden," and "Little Women." Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile and vulnerable geniuses, Cheever's dynamic narrative reminds us that, while these literary heroes now seem secure of their spots in the canon, they were once considered avant-garde, bohemian types, at odds with the establishment.

I have no willpower, I must have it!

You know, I figured out why I've been so compulsive about book buying the past few months (and I mean a true bookaholic, like when you get into debt from book buying binges or get a hangover from too much reading over the weekends): I am avoiding writing.

Yes, just when you thought all forms of writer's block have been discovered and cataloged, yours truly comes up with another, potentially lethal (at least in the bank account) form.

In other news, if you live in the Bay Area, by all means see the Berkeley Repertory Theater's production of To the Lighthouse. It's a top-notch production and amazingly true to Woolf's novel.

Upon seeing it, I immediately rushed home to reread my copy. And I've started Julia Briggs' Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life (amazing) and found in a used bookstore a text called Virginia Woolf and the Real World.

I think I need to start a 12-step program just for bookaholics. Step one: Admit you are powerless over the power of the written word!

Thoughts for Thursday - March Essays

Yeah, it's World Book Day, whatever the hell that is: I'm sure you'll find other bloggers celebrating away, shredding pages of old books into confetti and urging readers into bookstores with little tin horns.

Not here. (Oh, no, I'm not against the World or Books or even Days. I am just being cranky, pure and simple, about invented celebrations.)

Today is March 1, and that ushers in my Month of Essays. And do I have some beauties!

The London Scene: Six Essays by Virginia Woolf (doubles as a travel guide, too!)

First and the Last by Isaiah Berlin (includes his final essay, My Intellectual Path)

Why Do I Love These People: Understanding, Surviving and Creating Your Own Family by Po Bronson (as I rarely mention my family, you must get an inkling of why this book appeals)

Hundred White Daffodils by Jane Kenyon (I've been inspired by all of the Kenyon poetry bloggers posted in the past year, plus she discusses her battles with depression)

... among essays I intend to read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joan Didion and whoever else strikes my fancy.

AND I am expecting delivery this month of a new book of essays on Sylvia Plath.

Not sure I'll make it through the entire list, but that's what I like about essays: You can dip and delve into them, one by one, versus having to devour volumes whole, as novels require.

Rules for writing

This is from BikeProf, who is a credible source because he actually finished a book draft!

The Hobgoblin's Rules for Writing

Write every day. At the worst, your typing will improve to the point that you can write more quickly than ever before. More to the point, though, writing every day will help in two ways: 1) you will nurture the sense that you are making progress; and 2) you will eventually generate a large stack of pages.

Do not revise. I cannot state this strongly enough. Do not look at what you have written until you have finished a draft. Trying to revise in the middle of things will send you to that circle of hell where you are paralyzed and cannot write a second sentence until the first is so perfectly written, so immaculately phrased, that writing all over the world will instantly become meaningless and superfluous in comparison.

Have fun. You are all big readers; you love to read. So writing is the production of joy. The production of joy should have some element of joy in it, or you're just not doing it right.

Daydream. For me, writing was nothing more than imagining an entertaining scene, seeing it play out in my head, and then describing what I saw. Daydreaming is fun and does not seem like work, and soon, writing a little every day did not seem like work either.

Don't think about your audience. This goes against something I usually teach my freshmen composition students, and, to a certain extent, it is not advice to be followed closely. However, when writing fiction, if you think about every reaction of the readers, and if you worry how your mom will react to the character who swears, then you will wrap yourself up in a sheet of neurosis so completely that you will not be able to write at all.

Write truthfully. Genres don't matter. Labels are for bookstores and not authors. If you really want to write erotic sword and sorcery fantasy novels, then write the best, most truthful erotic sword and sorcery fantasy you can.

Write who you are. This goes along with writing truthfully, but is more personal. You have a voice, so use it. Don't try to write in a voice that will not work for you. Those who try to be Hemingway ventriloquists usually end up sounding more stupid than Hemingway-esque, after all.

Trilby by George du Maurier

This is a book of its time and place, fin-de-siecle Europe. What interested me most about this book was the fact that it was the sensation of its time, selling more than 200,000 in Britain and America, spawning a successful play and leaving a permanent mark on the English language by popularizing two terms that endure today: "Svengali" and the "Trilby hat".

What was it about this book that caused such a fuss?

Not the prose, certainly. Syntax is awkward, prose purple, and characters are of the Victorian stripe -- described in sentimental superlatives such as "most ravishing," "transparent as crystal," or "most unclean." There are numerous references to fashion, literature and other cultural phenomena of the day. (I won't get into the anti-Semitism displayed here, but it is unpleasant. And it helps to speak French, as there are lots and lots of untranslated passages in that language.) Here's a taste (one of the better passages, I think, capturing some of the wit that occasionally bubbles up), an elaboration of the narrator's musings about literature:

Feydeau, or Flaubert, let us say -- or for those who don't know French and cultivate an innocent mind, Miss Austen (for to be dead and buried is almost as good to be French and immoral!) -- and Sebasitan Bach, and Sandro Botticelli -- that all the arts should be represented.

I'll agree in part with the introduction to the Penguin Classics version, authored by Daniel Pick, that says: Trilby"seems to occupy several key crossroads of its time. It hesitates between elitism and egalitarianism; amateurism and professionalism; between enthusiasm and horror of the marketplace in general and the merchandizing of talents in particular..." I think, too, what he's getting at in a polite way is that the writing is very uneven; some passages are fine and ironic, while others are confusing rather than merely ambiguous.

I would speculate that Trilby hit a chord with people who were still coming to terms with Darwin's new theories on evolution and survival of the fittest, mysticism versus scientific fact, industrialization and dehumanization. Hence, the character of Svengali, who mesmerized his protege to the point of total control, literally mesmerized the reading public as a kind of elaborate conceit of these issues.

Svengali is in fact the most memorable character in the book -- and he takes up suprisingly little real estate within the pages! For me, the novel fell flat when old Svengali wasn't up to his tricks; everyone else was so "noble," "brave," "naive," or otherwise brimming over in Victorian virtues that I welcomed a character with some less than sterling qualities -- especially one who was so successful at something that is portrayed as unethical at best, evil at worst. He's more human because he's complex. Maybe that's why the term has still stuck around.

I wish I could stomach reading this again to try to hit on the nuanaces Daniel Pick outlines in the introduction. But this is a rather obscure, outdated novel. I'd say it's worth the read for anyone interested in late-Victorian literature. But I don't think I can read it again.

Monday mish-mash

There's so much reading-related activity happening lately at Planet Kitten, I thought I'd just do one of those catchall posts.

1. Finished Trilby. An odd book, surely, dated and very late-Victorian in tone and topic. But I'm very glad I stumbled upon it and managed to read it. (A long analytical post to come, I promise. I need to digest it a bit.) I'm thrilled that I managed to finish 3 books during my Month of Romance Reads!

2. Memoirs of a Muse by Laura Vapynar. About halfway through this one, and I am really enjoying it. I think the subject matter (a girl obsessed with Dostoevsky and his muse, who aspires to be a muse herself) is compelling to me, and the author's prose is clean and sure. A future post on this, absolutely. With any luck, I will finish in time to add a fourth romantic read for February (and all that in a short month!). I don't recall how or where I heard about this book, but if it came from a fellow blogger, many thanks.

3. Book-buying binges. Well, I've maxed my credit cards on Amazon.com and the QPB site, and my new bookshelves already are bulging at the seams. Check out my (partial!) TBR list on Library Thing, if you don't believe me. And what did I do this weekend? I stopped by a sidewalk sale on my way home from the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park and, for $2, picked up: Alias Grace and Bluebeard's Egg (short stories) by Margaret Atwood and If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz. Isn't it fortunate that I happened across the two Atwood books, just after finishing Cat's Eye -- and being determined to read more of her? I am planning to delve into the short stories during my evening bus commute. But, with all of these books waiting impatiently for me, covers closed and silent and begging to be exposed to light and sight, I am so overwhelmed, I don't know where to start! There are too too many good books in the world for one poor little reader.

Lucky for me, the monthly list of reading seems to help me focus. And, so far, feels doable and satisfying. I'm gearing up for essay reading in March -- a nice change of pace from novels, with room built in for whatever else strikes my fancy.

How are your reading adventures going lately?

Friday Buzz - War & P has Tolstoy rolling in grave

Oh, for God’s sake: Just when you thought publishing couldn’t get any sillier with the scrotum controversy and crasser with O.J. Simpson and Judith Regan, HarperCollins decides to trim down War & Peace and add a happy ending.

All in the name of reaching the “masses:”

A spokesman for HarperCollins predicted it would have mass appeal. "The new version is of course aimed at students of Tolstoy," she said. "But we are sure it will also prove fascinating to the general reader."

Bullsh*t. They don’t give a damn about reaching students or otherwise enriching the minds of “the general reader,” as the spokesperson so condescendingly puts it.

And how about this for advertising-cum-propaganda?

HarperCollins…describes the novel's brevity as "something to celebrate" while in Russia, the book is already being marketed as "half as long and twice as interesting" — despite the new book still running to a challenging 1,000 pages.

Any schools, any readers who allow HarperCollins to make one dime off this stunt are worse than fools. They are contributing further to our cultural demise. Maybe they'll PhotoShop Tolsty's photo, too, to make his looks more appealing to the masses. Give him a nose job and haircut and get rid of some of those wrinkles.

Hey, folks, it’s just another new frontier in the Land of Commodification. Why not ruin a piece of literature to make more money? Religion, wildlife -- hell, people sell their own psyches for a buck. Go out and make it a great day!!!

Other (happier) news

Call for papers for “Celebrating the Golden Age of Science Fiction.”


Sign up for Paul Cohelo’s newsletter, “Warrior of the Light Online.”

Thoughts for Thursday - A request for help and a poem

Hi, everyone! I am here to ask for help: I have decided to make a transition from the corporate world to teaching. I know a lot of you out there are teachers, and I thought you might have some advice, sources or other sagacious insights to impart.

Here's my situation: I've got an MFA in Creative Writing. I've taught a copyediting class at a prestigious adult education facility. I've gotten a number of stories published, won some awards -- but nothing earthshaking.

I'd like to teach at the college level, but I am concerned that a PhD is almost a requisite (unless one has a published book).

Any and all information about how to make the transition would be much appreciated.

As promised, here's a poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins:


The Candle Indoors

SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—

Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault:
You there are master, do your own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

2 books to change your life

Okay, now that it's all over, I can confess: The last few weeks have been pretty horrendous. I will spare you the details.

I will say, however, that if you are -- or even if you don't think you are -- in the market for some life-changing books, here are my latest picks:

1) Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berman

Depressing? Yes. Disturbing? Indeed. Why read it? We all must face reality in order to change it, that's why. This book lays out how and why America is going wrong (and includes some very interesting titles as source references, which I plan to cite in a future post). I am sure the jingoistic Horatio-Alger types among Americans will snort derisively at such tales of woe -- as then turn off their TV, plug in their cell phones and jump in their SUVs for a two-hour straight-highway commute. This book is not for the feint of heart; everyone, even the most aware souls among us, will find themselves faced with the fact that we've been sucked, in spite of our best efforts, into the consumer culture. If we can take the medicine, we might be ready to begin the cure.

2) What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson

This one has been around a while, I grant you. And it's not a self-help book, true enough. It kind of defies any easy literary category, which I find strangely endearing. What I like about this book is that Bronson doesn't present any easy solutions or sure-fire steps to solve your career or add meaning to work. Call me idiosyncratic, but I find his un-pander-y approach rather refreshing. I find the stories interesting and thought-provoking, and I find comfort in the fact that others are grasping with the same soul-searching as I am. It makes me feel less alone.

Love in Excess by Eliza Haywood

Romance to the nth degree is what you get with this novel.

What initially intrigued me is that this book was as popular in its time as another tome you may have heard of: Robinson Crusoe. And its author was a woman -- possibly the author of the first novel in the English language.

Why, then, I wondered, had I not heard of Eliza Haywood or this novel?

The explanation may lie in the book's major theme: society's disapproval of women who declare their love for men. From this book through Pride & Prejudice and on through The Thorn Birds, women protagonists have been punished for actively pursuing men. The prose, while not altogether overtly sexual, is sexually charged enough (termed "amatory," e.g., a bit more elevated than a bodice-ripper or romance but not quite literary fiction) which must have been quite scandalous at the time. (I can't help but wonder who its main readers were: women or men? Were women made to feel shamed for reading it?) Could a book centered around women with sexual desires have fallen out of favor with the arrival of the Victorian Age?

Another reason why this book may not be as well known as Robinson Crusoe is that the characters are archetypal. This is a plot-heavy book, with a case to make about desire. Character development takes a back seat.

The hero of the book actually is a mimbo (male bimbo), Count d'Elmont. This guy would put Brad Pitt to shame; apparently, no woman could resist his charms. The book's plot centers around all of the women who fall for him (lust or love or a combination thereof). And there are quite a few of 'em.

The book is truly well-crafted. I won't spoil the fun for potential readers, but trust me: You'll need a GPS to navigate the numerous plot lines! Despite the lack of rounded characters, I enjoyed this novel immensely.

Another novel of Haywood's, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, is considered to have heralded an important change in the 18 century English novel, focusing on marriage versus courtship. (Chalk one up for another TBR!)

Ultimately, however, Eliza Haywood may be much more tantalizing than her own characters.

Apparently, she was quite prolific, supporting herself and her two children (there is no record of a husband, interestingly) through writing and acting, translating and publishing. (How busy must she have been!) Her writing drew fire from some of the heavies of her day: Pope and Swift, among others. Beyond that, not many details are known about Haywood's life ... we can only hope some enterprising biographer will choose to go excavating and dig up some dirt. She seems to have been quite the enterprising, energetic woman.

Thoughts for Thursday - Robert Frost

Here's an excerpt from The Notebooks of Robert Frost (ran across this on a web site -- sounds like a great book, but dig the price tag! Ouch.):

Adventurous is not experimental. Experiment belongs to the laboratory. Adventure to life. Much of recent art has been merely experimental. It tries poetry with first one element then another omitted. It leaves out the head. Then it is too emotional. It leaves out the heart. Then it is too intellectual. It leaves out the feet. Then it is free verse. Adventure ends in the poorhouse. Experiment in the madhouse.

Surely, this could apply to prose as well as poetry.

But what is Frost getting at here? I agree that "experimental" prose and poetry that I've read strikes me as contrived, overly conscious and overanalytical. Head games.

However, maybe a little experimentation is in order to pave the way to a true adventure.

I am not a huge fan of experimental fiction; I like a little story with my reading, thank you very much. But I also feel I need to be more open to it, to take what it gives in terms of pushing the boundaries so the heart can follow the head into the next enlightenment.

What do you think about so-called "experimental" work? What types of experimental fiction have you read, that you would recommend to one who does not prefer to be working in the laboratory?

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

Current Romantic Reads

Persuasion, Jane Austen

Love in Excess, Eliza Haywood

Trilby, George duMaurier

A book for the unread

A book about how to talk about books you've never read? (Written by a man who is a judge for The Booker Prize? Ah, you are saying, it's all becoming clear how Black Swan Green made the Booker Prize longlist...)

This book is a bestseller in airports where, presumably, busy travellers must frantically find conversation starters before arriving at their next destination. ("Whatcha know about Proust, dude? Wasn't that Madeleine gal a real hoot?")

But a book about talking about books you've never read? I thought that's what Cliff's Notes were all about.

The Friday Buzz: Horror will thrill in '07

Could it be a shock to anyone that The UK Independent hails horror writing as "one of the coolest literary trends of 2007?"

Horror even has a subgenre to replace chick lit: Called Para Porn (catchy, in a perverted sort of way), these "paranormal romances" are being marketed by publishers such as Piatkus, Headline, Orion and Time Warner. (Might any of you horror-savvy readers out there give me a few titles in this genre?)

Why the surge in horror/fantasy/sci-fi? LitLove has been exploring the topic -- with great subtlety and perception, as usual. The Indpendent speculates that "what meaning 21st-century readers are seeking in the new horror is disputed:"

(Publisher) Gollancz's (editor) Jo Fletcher is convinced that the prevailing culture of fear created by the "war on terror" and rising crime has helped create a market for books in which fear is contained, even though unknown "others" haunt the page. "When things are going well in the world people are less interested in horror," she claims. "When times are dark, then horror becomes more popular."

Gee, what insight. Good to know we have erudite editors manning the helm of the next literary trend.

Anyway, here are some upcoming titles for those who like their lit dark and mysterious:
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (Stephen King's son) (Gollancz, March)
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall (Canongate, March)
Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert (Bantam, April)

Thoughts for Thursday: The reading confluence

I had a weird, wonderful confluence between writing & reading, a strange happenstance of disparate books coming together, that broke through a sort of block I'd been having in my fiction writing. Hard to explain, but I'll try:

Three of my current and completely random reads underwent this synergistic explosion in my brain: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (which I just finished), Trilby by George du Maurier (found on a dollar cart last week) and Hester by Margaret Oliphant (found in search for Victorian novels).

Cat's Eye and Trilby both have sight and vision as a major motif. Du Maurier, as it happens, lost vision in one eye, which terrified him, and led him to address vision in his novel.

Cat's Eye and Hester are both "realism novels," meaning the stories may not "go anywhere," and that is part of their structure. This gave me a "duh" moment (the pessimist's equivalent of Oprah's "ah-ha" moment), when I "got" what Atwood was going after with Cat's Eye: the messiness, false starts, unraveling endings and dead-ends of real life versus the tight plot and progressive narrative of a traditional novel. (Can't wait to read Hester and see how it compares to Cat's Eye...)

The Atwood insight in turn gave surge to a virtual wave of ideas, motifs, symbols etc. that I envisioned for my own fiction. As a bonus, a particular "voice" I want to achieve popped into my head....a moment of clarity.

A good feeling to see how all of my reading is "paying off," in terms of how it is acting in my subconscious. (Geez, if only I could & would actually write.)

Oh, I don't feel I have come anywhere close to explaining the complete surprise of the book-to-book dynamics and how amazingly satisfying the feeling when all the divergent streams brooked together.

But, somehow, I have a feeling many of you writers & readers out there know exactly what I'm talking about.

Let's hear it for the powers of Austen!

If you've been following the comments of my previous post, you must have seen the love affair most of us have with Jane Austen.

I dare say a reader cannot be unhappy with a Jane Austen novel; how many other authors can make that claim?

Incredibly, her entire canon consists of seven books (six published during her lifetime). Her sister, regrettably and with little foresight, burned most of Jane's correspondence, and a diary or journal has never been found.

Just for fun, I decided to get a little dialogue going over the Powers of Austen. Below are her titles. Which one is your favorite and why? Which haven't you read? Are you not as in love with Austen as most readers -- why? How has Jane influenced your reading or writing? Let's get plain about Jane!

As for me, I have yet to read 3 of her novels: Northanger Abbey (the 2007 RIP Challenge, I vow!), Mansfield Park and Lady Susan. I admit, I love, love, love Pride & Prejudice. The dialogue simply sparkles; it is witty, subtle, intelligent. How Jane could be gently sardonic (sometimes, not so gentle) without tipping into cynicism is one of those unfathomable mysteries of genius. Characters and plot sing. And her voice: Utterly original, still fresh today. Second to P&P? It's a tough call ... perhaps Sense & Sensibility. I love the relationship of the two Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, and the plot is vintage Austen.

What are your thoughts on Jane Austen?

Emma
Lady Susan
Mansfield Park
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility

Atwood, Austen and a month of romance

Okay, so this is the 3rd revision on this post. (I'm forming an "L" with my forefinger and thumb and holding it against my forehead.)

Along with Atwood’s essays on writing, I finished Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. I enjoyed the book, but did not love it. I feel bad saying that. I feel like a jughead saying that. I don't feel particularly literate.

Don't get me wrong: The prose is exquisite. Every paragraph is a jewel, every chapter a collection. But at the end, a pattern didn’t emerge, a story wasn’t told. I was left with a handful of jewels.

The title refers to a certain kind of marble, an unordinary type, a prize that needs to be won:

The cat’s eyes are my favorites. If I win a new one I wait until I’m by myself, then take it out and examine it, turning it over and over in the light. The cat’s eyes really are like eyes, but not the eyes of cats. They’re the eyes of something that isn’t known but exists anyway; like the green eye of the radio; like the eyes of aliens from a distant planet. My favorite one is blue. I put it into my red plastic purse to keep it safe. I risk my other cat’s eyes to be shot at, but not this one.

Secrets – what is seen but not acknowledged, known but not discussed – seem to me to be at the heart of the novel; this paragraph, addressing an illegal abortion, emerged as the most sinister and deadly in a series of secrets observed or experienced by the narrator:

But what she’s done has set her apart. It belongs to the submerged landscape of the things that are never said, which lies beneath ordinary speech like hills under water. Everyone my age knows about it. Nobody discusses it. Rumors are down there, kitchen tables, money exchanged in secret; evil old women, illegal doctors, disgrace and butchery. Down there is terror.

Cat's Eye also, finally, refers to self-portrait painted by the narrator. This is just one of many references to sight and seeing -- and Shakespeare's three witches and colors and symbols and metaphors galore. Heaps of 'em. A glut.

I think I am tired, tired in a profound and ground-down sort of way. Must*recover*soon.

I’m glad I read Cat's Eye; I want to read more Atwood. But it was difficult to live with the peculiarly deadened tone and postmodern plotless plot for 461 pages.

Time to ditch heavy reading! In California, spring is in the air. Yellow daisies are blooming, some California poppies are already spreading their bright orange petals, and around twilight, a certain tree in Berkeley smells like gardenias dancing with honeysuckle. A little romance is in order.

So it was with a sort of stepping-off-the-treadmill relief that I turned to Jane Austen for my first book in a precious month of romantic reads. I initially selected Mansfield Park, but, as the introduction claimed it to be the “least popular” of Austen’s books, I immediately scuttled that in favor of Persuasion, which I finished over the weekend (along with half of a biography, Jane Austen by Claire Tomalin). These books, along with a bar of expensive chocolate and the studious ignoring of SuperBowl MXCMVI, initiated the lovefest in proper fashion.

I picked up a Victorian Oxford Classic on a bookstore dollar cart – can’t remember the title or author, but I do recall the words “violin,” “Victorian Paris,” and “affair” in the descriptor text. I think I’m in love already.

Friday Buzz - Habitual Reader web site

Here is yet another way the Internet is changing the face of books and publishing. Check out Habitual Reader, a site from Komenar Publishing.

As a marketing tool, it’s inexpensive, interactive – a good way to start buzz about your line. But one potential pitfall is that readers find the reviews and comments limiting and too actuated from self-interest.

Looks like Habitual Reader sidesteps the issue by allowing readers to review any books – including those not in Komenar’s line.

My question is: Will the site allow critical reviews of any books, particularly its own? Will the owners censor (without readers knowing what is censored and why)?

All will be revealed in time. For now, I will visit this site now and again to see how it’s faring.

Thanks to Lisa at Breaking the Fourth Wall for tipping me off on this one.

Thoughts for Thursday - Celebrate Molly

Columnist Molly Ivins died yesterday. I think Paul Harral, vice president and editorial director of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has it right when he says: "It's a great loss to American journalism because she's such a strong voice; she stirred strong likes and dislikes in readers."

Here is a sample of Ms. Ivins' magic. This essay still is pertinent, and to me, ends on a good message for further reflection. Thank you, Molly!

Mourning in America
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate
11.04.04 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Now, you know you cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is otherwise.

Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.

The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.

And at least Democrats won't have to clean up after him until it is real clear to everyone who made the mess.

In some circles, that will be seen as sour grapes. But in Texas, we've been losing elections to the demagogic triad of God, gays and guns long enough to be pretty cynical about how it works out.

I'm sure millions of Americans voted for George W. under the honest impression that he stands for moral values -- family, patriotism, faith in God. I'm sure it's the Democrats' fault that such a silly ruse is allowed to stand. What Bush actually does stand for is nicely summed up by a rather common news story that got stuck on the business pages lately.

In September, Merck & Co., the huge drug manufacturer, pulled Vioxx off the market. Vioxx was a popular pain-killing, anti-arthritis drug, but Merck said it was putting patients' safety first. A new study from the Federal Drug Administration showed high doses of Vioxx triple the risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death.

From there, the story bifurcates -- it takes two directions. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa revealed that the FDA had tried to silence the author of the study, Dr. David Graham, associate director of science in the Office of Drug Safety. Grassley said the FDA first sat on Graham's study and that then he was "ostracized" and "subjected to veiled threats and intimidation."

The Wall Street Journal followed the other fork, finding internal memos from Merck showing that company officials may have been aware of the dangers of Vioxx as long ago as 1996, including a memo apparently instructing its sales reps to "dodge" the question when doctors asked about the cardiac record of Vioxx.

In short, we have a toothless regulatory agency in the pocket of the industry it is supposed to patrol. We have an administration-wide contempt for science and plain facts. And the allegation against the folks at Merck is that they were making such enormous profits on a drug that killed people that when they knew or suspected it was killing people, they kept right on selling it. When the information that Merck had known for a long time about Vioxx and heart attacks became public, the company's stock fell by 9.6 percent.

That's the system George W. Bush stands for: where a corporation can knowingly kill people for profit and, when it finally comes out, everyone knows the penalties will be so light the company doesn't even lose a tenth of its worth. Hey, just a little bump in the road.

We sure don't want any of that terrible, burdensome government regulation to control that kind of behavior, do we? We sure don't want an FDA that listens to its own scientists and acts promptly, do we? We sure don't want anyone to sue these monster corporations, do we? I bet if it were possible to compare the odds of an American getting killed by a negligent regulatory agency and rapacious corporate behavior versus an American getting killed by a terrorist, it would turn out we need to be a lot more scared of rank greed and its enablers than we do of terrorists. And that's not counting what the corps. (pronounced corpse) steal and mess up.
So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately, now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country -- join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and offer to volunteer, find a politician you like at the local level and start helping him or her to move up.

Think about how you can lend a hand to the amazing myriad efforts that will promptly break out to help the country recover from what it has done to itself. Now is the time. Don't mourn, organize.

New Author Month - Quote from Atwood

It's the end of January, but I'm not quite finished with Cat's Eye and Negotiating with the Dead. Enjoying them immensely, however, and should finish up over the weekend. February -- and romance -- is at hand!

Until then, I thought I'd share a quote from Atwood's writing essays in Negotiating with the Dead:

What is the relationship between the two entities we lump under one name, that of "the writer"? The particular writer. By two, I mean the person who exists when no writing is going forward -- the one who walks the dog, eats bran for regularity, takes the car in to be washed, and so forth -- and that other, more shadowy and altogether more equivocal personage who shares the same body, and who, when no one is looking, takes it over and uses it to commit the actual writing.


Isn't that true? Oh, by the way: I received another piece of fan mail from someone who read several of my short stories. Very nice. Fan mail makes both my entities feel more like "writers".

Letter meme

This is a meme from BookGirl. She gave me the letter “H,” and then I post 10 things I like that begin with that letter. Here’s my take:

“Hello.” This greeting is almost always a positive. Same with “hugs,” “happiness” and “hope.”

Hummingbirds. My favorite bird. They’re like feathered hearts, flying around.

Hammett and Hellman. Writing mentors. Long-time lovers. Independent lives. My idea of a match made in heaven.

Hemingway. Forget his novels (except for The Sun Also Rises) and forget his macho shtick. His short stories and By-Lines (journalism) are marvelous.

Habeas corpus. It was nice while it lasted.

Hot fudge sundaes. Anyone who doesn’t like a hot fudge sundae probably hates puppies and butterflies, too.

Billie Holiday. One of the best vocalists, ever. If you don’t believe me, listen to “God Bless the Child.”

Halloween. Speaking of holidays, this is a fun one. I love reading gothic novels and ghost stories, watching spooky movies, eating candy and breathing in the crisp autumn air. The holiday you can't take seriously. Halloween rocks!

Hiking. My favorite “back to nature” activity.

Humor. Can’t have enough sense of it. Can't get enough of it.

Want to do this meme? Leave me a comment below and I’ll pick a letter for you.

The Friday Buzz - Booksurge

Announcing a new tradition at The Literate Kitten! The Friday Buzz will examine one literary area – schools, fiction, genres, authors, booksellers, publishing, whatever – to report latest news and emerging trends.

Today, I’m taking a look at Amazon.com’s “books-on-demand” service, Booksurge. Have you seen this? According to the site, with Booksurge, “you can build a market for your books, create sales and control your books' trajectory while keeping your options wide open.”

Authors also, for $399, can buy a "personally crafted review" written by "New York Times bestselling author, Ellen Tanner Marsh." (Slate, of course, rips into this idea.)

The question isn’t, for me, whether or not Booksurge is a good idea. Like it or not, Amazon and the Internet are changing the face of publishing, and services like Booksurge are here to stay. With indie booksellers going down in the face of retail Goliaths and uber corporations swallowing publishers whole, the chances of becoming a published author slim down each day; why not give authors another venue to send their work into the world? And if a writer wants to shell out bucks for a “personally crafted” review (versus an objective one), well, caveat emptor.

To me, as both writer and reader, the issue is quality. Will Booksurge and similar self-publishing ventures disseminate valuable work that otherwise would not see the light of day? Surely, at some point, another Celestine Prophecy phenomenon will occur, making headlines for a new cause celebre and causing all sorts of speculation about the wonders and evils of self-publishing. But that’s simply pop-culture trendiness.

The real hallmark of quality is this: Will Booksurge lead a modern version of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses to rise above the drek to propagate new ideas that could lead to worldwide reform?

That’s the true power of the written word. And that would make Booksurge an agent of change, not just another pretty marketing tool.

Thoughts for Thursday - Magical thinking

Why can't I finish Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking? I have two copies: one I bought myself and one I got for Christmas. Yet, twice I've started it and twice have failed to complete, though I have managed to get about 3/4 of the way through.

I love Joan Didion. And the subject matter is compelling. I have to admit the inadmissable: I think I get bogged down in the morbidity of it. Maybe I don't truly understand because I have not suffered the loss of an intimate through death. All my family members, close friends and relatives are still living. (That hasn't applied to other novels and books, so why this one?) All these psychobabbly reasons surface in my brain: I'm disassociating to protect my psyche, I'm unempathic, I'm ADD...

And, most of all, I wonder why I am so bothered that I haven't been able to embrace this particular book.

Just makes me wonder why some works appeal and others, even ones we really WANT to like, don't penetrate through to the soul.

Love of reading e-newsletter

Hi, folks, I don't know where I found this, but it's pretty cool. Free book raffles!

http://loveofreading.com/subscribe.htm

Apropos of nothing

This is how you really know you are mortal:

1. You wake up to find a patch of stinging rough skin on your right eyelid, a phenomenon you have never experienced before and which gives you a clear idea of how at least one eye will look if you make it to 80.

2. You have to look up the spelling of "apropos," a word you could spell in your 30s with your hands tied behind your back and in a drunken stupor.

3. You discover you enjoy something like Sudoku.

4. Your friends discover they enjoy knitting.

5. You discover you can enjoy something like Sudoku only when you work with a pencil.

6. You schedule more doctor's appointments in a single month than you have in the previous decade of your life, appointments where the doctors sigh and shake their heads and prescribe either Vitamin E, back-strengthening exercises or stool softeners.

My Uncle Napoleon

A funny farce that keeps numerous balls in air until the absolute end, My Uncle Napoleon is recommended reading for anyone interested in 1) what makes for good satire 2) how to illustrate character through dialogue 3) a slice of Iranian history.

I am, much to my regret and fear, Eurocentric in my knowledge of history, which I am attempting to remedy by focusing on Middle Eastern fiction. So, I started the novel with no knowledge of contemporary Iran.

My Uncle Napoleon (written in the 70s) takes place in 1940s Tehran. One of the plotlines involves Dear Uncle Napoleon, a petty tyrannical family patriarch who propagates his fantasies of having fought the British and at the same time fosters paranoia about the British returning to seek revenge against him. He imagines British spies and plots all around him (even a lowly shoeshine boy becomes a British agent in his mind), and both he and his family members use these fantasies to further their own ends, either by propping up Dear Uncle’s ego or deflating it.

What I didn’t know when I began reading the novel was that, under the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, Britain and Russia agreed to divide Iran into spheres of influence. Essentially, these two powers would benefit from Iran’s natural resources while shunting Iranian’s own citizens to the sidelines. When Britain and Russia became allies during WW2, they naturally turned their attention to Iran. Thus, Uncle Napoleon’s fears, while transmuted into paranoiac fantasies, have a basis in reality.

A second plotline follows the love of a 13-year-old boy for his young cousin. The book is carefully structured; the author brings back the love affair whenever family fortunes are to take a turn, and the love affair not only reflects the hopes of the larger Iranian community, but also provides a positive and pure counterbalance to Uncle Napoleon’s negative influence.

To me, the book satirizes a hyper-masculine society, where conquest (military and romantic alike) is a dominant factor. I don’t want to spoil the denouement, but I will say that the two plotlines (and many subplots) are satisfactorily resolved at the end of the book.

While the characters are very clearly drawn (with astonishing use of dialogue), they don’t deepen or develop over the course of the book. (And female characters are marginalized.) I wonder if the lack of character development is not so much a fault of the author but a restriction of the satire genre. I can’t think of many successful and biting satires that have really strong character development; satires tend, by their nature, to deal with the archetype. (Jane Austen does some witty satire on her society, but I would say satire tends to be secondary to Austen, not central.)

I would be interested in others’ thoughts on satire and character development, with any suggestions on works that might do both well.

Finally finished a book

Hallelujah, I finished My Uncle Napoleon! Feels like a true accomplishment -- there is something to be said for sticking out a book, even when your short attention span is just dying to move on to the next thing. And I'm finally onto Atwood's Cat's Eye, which is fabulous -- many thanks to my fellow bloggers who recommended it.

More later ...

Thoughts for Thursday - Anna Akhmatova

Memory of Sun

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
Grass grows yellower.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakes
Hover, hover.

Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.

Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk's torn off.
Maybe it's better I did not become
Your wife.

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is it? -- Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night.

Anna Akhmatova

Memoir, autobiography, fact fiction: What's the diff?

I ran across this article, which raises some interesting literary questions.

How do we differentiate between:

Memoir
Autobiography
Autobiographical fiction
Roman a clef
Nonfiction novels

…and do we need to?

Frankly, I don’t care which genre a work falls into, but it is vitally important to me to have a work presented in a “truthful” light, in terms of the relationship between the author and the content. This ties in with the concept of plagiarism: When authors present their work as one genre when it really is another, they are being fraudulent.

To take a recent example: James Frey and his Million Little Pieces was presented by him (and his publisher) as fact; we now know he took wholesale liberties with the truth. Thus, the book cannot be called a memoir. And it is a fraudulent presentation to the readership. His story, with his sad little embellishments (come on, did anyone really believe a dentist would administer root canal treatment with no sedation? Really!) would not have been as compelling if presented as fiction. But I do think his story without the pathetic dramatization would have been just fine as a memoir.

The lines are fine, but they are lines nevertheless. We need to differentiate between memoir (a particularized focus on memories, feelings and recollections) and autobiography (recalling one’s own life and times), between a roman a clef (telling the tale the way the author would have liked it to have gone) and autobiographical fiction (a novel based on the life of the author). Readers and writers need to be able to make the distinction between “fact” and “remembered fact”, “fiction” and “fictionalized biography.” Maybe some books straddle the line (is The Bell Jar autobiographical fiction, roman a clef, or both?), but even these books should be measured against some sort of literary parameters.

For some reason (perhaps the high premium we place on entertainment?), we are a society that tolerates the stretching of truth, misinformation, straw-man arguments, and plain old flying in the face of scientific fact – particularly in the guises of verbal arguments. Maybe we simply don’t have the critical faculty to be able to separate wheat from chaff. The James Frey affair, among other recent literary brouhahas, makes me think we still hold the printed word to a higher standard than we accept from our politicians or corporate executives. I think that’s a good sign. It’s a starting place, anyway.

More on My Uncle Napoleon

I feel behind in everything lately. Think I am going through another mid-life crisis. Does anyone have any recommended reading (no Gail Sheehy, please!) to remedy such matters? I know men go out and buy motorcycles and have affairs with young women...what are women supposed to do?

Anyway, despite the machinations of aging, I am making progress on My Uncle Napoleon -- only a hundred more pages to go! According to the Kirkus Review, the book is about an "extended family, living within and around a walled enclave in Tehran in the early 1940s---and specifically of said family's domination by its Dear Uncle Napoleon (the portentous rubric by which its fussbudget megalomaniac despot is addressed) as observed and recorded by Uncle's unnamed nephew, whose idealistic love for his beautiful cousin Layli forms one of the two major plotlines here. The other is Uncle's paranoid conviction that all evil flows from his country's ill-advised friendliness with foreign nations, especially Great Britain (the story is set at a time when England and Russia separately schemed to control Iran's oil resources, and preferential trade status was granted the hated British by an impoverished national treasury)."

It is an interesting book, which I first found very humorous and now slightly less so. It is a marvel of plot and dialogue...here is just a sample of a scene to give you an idea, with more to come when I finish:

Mash Qasem had picked the ladder up from its place before Dear Uncle's order was given. Those present didn't for a moment take their eyes off the form of Dustali Khan, which was shaking on the roof like a nocturnal phantom. Mash Qasem leaned the ladder against the wall, and went up it a few rungs to help Dustali Khan come down.

A few moments later Dustali Khan put his feet on the ground and fainted in Mash Qasem's arms.

They more or less dragged him over to the carpets and laid him down. Everyone started discussing what had happened and offering opinions as to what it meant.

Dear Uncle Napoleon kept lightly slapping him on the face with the palm of his hand and asking,

"Dustali Khan, what is it? What happened?"

But Dustali Khan, with his dishevelled hair, in his shirt and white, mud-stained longjohns, lay there motionless, with only his lips trembling. We were all gathered in a circle around him.
Mash Qasem, who was massaging Dustali Khan's feet, said, "It's like a snake's bit him some place."

Dear Uncle threw an angry look at him, "You're talking rubbish again!"

"Well sir, why should I lie? There was a man in our town who . . ."

"The hell with you and the man in your town. Will you let me see what's happened?" And then
once again he gently slapped Dustali across the face.

Dustali Khan opened his eyes. Suddenly he seemed to come back to himself and looked from one side to the other. With a nervous movement he clasped both hands to his groin and shouted,

"Cut . . . it's been cut . . ."

"Who's cut? What's been cut?"

Dustali Khan didn't answer Dear Uncle's question but in the same terrified voice repeated, "Cut . . . she wanted to cut it . . . with a knife . . . with a kitchen knife . . . she was going to cut . . ."

"Who cut? Who wanted to cut?"

"Aziz . . . that rotten bitch Aziz . . . my wife . . . that witch of a woman . . . that unnatural bitch of a murderer . . ."

Asadollah Mirza, who had pricked up his ears, came forward, holding back his laughter with some difficulty. "Moment . . . moment . . . wait . . . wait, let me see . . . God forbid, Mrs. Aziz al-Saltaneh didn't want to cut off your . . ."

"Yes, yes . . . that witch, if I'd jumped a moment later she'd have cut it off."
Asadollah Mirza burst out with a loud guffaw of laughter and said, "Right from the bottom?"

As everyone laughed Dear Uncle Napoleon suddenly remembered that there were women and children present. He stood up and, stretching out his arms wide on each side and so making a curtain with his cloak between Dustali Khan and the children, he shouted, "Women and children over there!"

Now, in my view, that is a funny and well-handled scene in dialogue. In a few short paragraphs, even the casual reader glimpses the various characters: feckless Dustali Khan, imperious Uncle Napoleon, naive Mash Qasem, sophisticated Asadollah Mirza and the shrewish wife, Aziz al-Saltaneh. The author keeps this up throughout the novel, scene after scene, thickening the plot as he goes along. However, about 3/4 of the way in, I find that the scenes are starting to be more repetitive, versus enlightening or deepening, and therefore less engaging.

There are also some cultural differences that affect my reading; for example, Dustali Khan is the apparent father of his stepdaughter's future child, a fact that is treated satirically in the novel and which doesn't seem terribly funny to me, in any shape or form. I hope to write more about this aspect, but I do want to finish the novel and also think through specifics. So, onward!

Plagiarism: It's a lot of hard work

Here's an interesting (if flawed) article from Slate on plagiarism. The article by Meghan O'Rourke quotes from a new study on the phenomenon, The Little Book of Plagiarism by law professor and Judge Richard A. Posner.

O'Rourke seems to conclude from Posner and other sources that the reason we (Americans versus anyone else, who presumably either don't care or care for different reasons about plagiarism) have issues with copycats is their compromised work ethic:

The cribbed student essay—which Posner views as a particularly insidious form of plagiarism, committed by approximately one-third of high-school and college students—isn't an academic crime because a C student has tried to pass himself as a Matthew Arnold in the making. It's an academic crime because the student who buys his thesis from a paper mill has shirked the labor that his fellow students actually perform.

Um, no, sorry: It bugs me that anyone, C student or Honor Roll star, would try to pass himself off as a Matthew Arnold in the making. Yes, the fact that the plagiarizer hasn't done the work is certainly partly why I consider it unethical, but what about the fact that the person is trying to portray a thought or idea as his own when, in fact, it is not?

The argument that shirking is more of an issue than fraud seems to me to say more about how our workaholic society is shaping our ethics than about authors who copy other author's sentences. Are we really so impoverished of ideas that we believe original thinking is an impossibility, and that plagiarism is inevitable (therefore, crediting someone else for their work becomes more key than the fact that the idea is ripped off)? Do we so worship blood and sweat that we value the measurement of these sacred liquids we pour into an activity versus the quality or originality of the work itself? Maybe Ian McEwan spent a lot of time finding the exact sentences he copied in Atonement: Shouldn't that count?

And, are the ubiquitous "we" really obsessed with the act of plagiarism itself, or are we just pissed off about the fact that we got duped?

What are you optimistic about and why?

I like this: What are you optimistic about and why?


And I think this is interesting; may have to check out his book.

GARY MARCUS
Psychologist, New York University; Author, The Birth of the Mind
Metacognition For Kids

We can use the discoveries of cognitive science to improve the quality of education in the US and abroad. To do this, however, we need to radically rethink how our schools work. Going back to the Industrial Revolution, the main emphasis as been on memorization, force-feeding our children with bite-sized morsels that are easily memorize—and quickly forgotten. (Recall the words of Dickens' stern schoolmaster Mr. Gradgrind, "Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts... Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.") I am not sure it ever served a purpose for children to memorize the capitals of all 50 states (as I failed to do in junior high school), but in the age of Google, continued emphasis on memorization is surely largely a waste of time.

Five decades of cognitive science have taught us that humans are not particularly good memorizers—but also that we as a species have bigger fish to fry. Hamlet famously marveled that humans were "noble in reason", "infinite in faculty", but experimental psychologists like Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky have shown that humans are actually often poor reasoners, easily fooled. The average person tends to have a shaky grasp on logic, to believe a lot of what he (or she) hears unreflectively, and to be overly confident in his (or her) own beliefs. We tend to be easily fooled by vivid examples, and to notice data that support our theories—whilst forgetting about or ignoring data that go against our theories. Yet I cannot recall a single high school class on informal arguments, how to spot fallacies, or how to interpret statistics; it wasn't until college that anybody explained to me the relation between causation and correlation. In the age of the internet, our problem is not that children can't find information, but that they can't evaluate it.

What children of today need is not so much a large stock of readily Googleable information as a mental toolkit for parsing what they hear and read. As the old saying goes, it is better to teach a man how to fish than to simply give him fish; the current curriculum largely gives children fish, without teaching them a thing about how to fish for themselves.

How to teach children to fish for themselves? I would start with a course in what cognitive scientists call metacognition, knowing about knowing, call it The Human Mind: A User's Guide, aimed at say, seventh-graders.. Instead of emphasizing facts, I'd expose students to the architecture of the mind, what it does well, and what it doesn't. And most important, how to cope with its limitations, to consider evidence in a more balanced way, to be sensitive to biases in our reasoning, and to make choices in ways that better suit our own long-term goals. Nobody ever taught me about these things in middle school (or even high school), but there's no reason why they couldn't be taught; in time, I expect they will.

New Author Month - Margaret Atwood

Yes, it's official: I am biting off more than I can chew, eat and digest, book-wise. But I'm trying to challenge myself. I am making very slow progress on My Uncle Napoleon, being only a third through the 500-page book. And I just started an Anne Boleyn bio that is incredibly interesting. AND I signed up for a course on two Faulkner novels, which (if enrollment goes through and course isn't canceled) starts tomorrow night.

With all of that, I still intend to stick to my plan as January being New Author Month. I could take the easy way out and use My Uncle Napoleon's author, Iraj Pezeshkzad, as my "new author." But the goal wasn't just to read an author I hadn't read before; I wanted to read a prominent author I feel as a Literate Kitten (read: Educated and Sophisticated Reader) I should read. Thanks to several blogger recommendations, I decided to go with Margaret Atwood and her novel Cat's Eye. As part of my dedicated reading to my chosen "New Author," I hope to explore some essays and critique of her work.

Okay, I haven't started it yet, but it's only the first week of January. As long as I start it in January, it will count.

First, though, must finish My Uncle Napolean. This is quite a fun romp, with lots of characters and drama and satire. The novel kicks off with the unnamed narrator, a 13-year-old boy living in Iran, falling madly in love with the young daughter of the strict and pompous family patriarch -- Dear Uncle Napolean, so-called because of his excessive admiration of France's military leader. Not many affairs, puppy-love or otherwise, are attested to so eloquently:

One hot summer day, to be precise on Friday the thirteenth of August, at about a quarter to three in the afternoon, I fell in love. The bitterness and longing I've been through since have often made me wonder whether if it had been the twelfth of the fourteenth of August things would have turned out differently.

How could I put down a novel that starts with THAT?

More as I near the finish line...

Seen reading

Seen reading on 1/4/07, 5:45 p.m. (PST), E bus (San Francisco to Caldecott Lane)

Daniel Mason, A Far Country
Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence
Elmore Leonard, When the Women Come Out to Dance (Stories)

Thoughts for Thursday - less-than-articulate musings

Upon being catapulted unceremoniously into 2007, I’ve reflected on my past year of reading and litblogging, both of which have been illuminating in unexpected ways.

For one thing, I have a greater understanding of my reading tastes and patterns. I love nonfiction and enjoy it in great mouthfuls, like eating popcorn. Fiction, however, is like eating a seven-course, gourmet meal: I need to savor each morsel. Unlike nonfiction, which I pick up and put down whenever I feel like reading, I prefer to read fiction when there is no distraction. Hence, I read fiction at a much slower pace than nonfiction and need to set time aside for my fiction reading, if I want to make any progress in it. Maybe this isn’t a new and brilliant insight, for me or anyone else, but there’s something to be said for making an assumption a fact.

The other thing I’ve learned is that I tend to use archaic words, such as “hence” and “alas” and “hail” in my blog entries. Maybe this penchant for antiquated punch words derives from my preoccupation with all things Tudor.

And why do I use exclamation points, especially in my comments to other blog posts? I would never allow effusive punctuation to creep into my professional or fiction writing.

Only one question remains: Will I curtail these bad grammatical habits in 2007? Dunno! Heretofore, this seemed unlikely. Thence, looks like it may continue.

Months of reading for 2007

All hail to you, dear Bloggers, as we head into a brand new year of books, books, books!

This year I am trying to avoid the approach of "chasing my tail" with books -- you know the drill: hearing about a new book and immediately setting off the read it while simultaneously dropping or halfheartedly finishing a current book. Or (worse, in my view) starting too many projects (such as my goal to read through Proust, read Middle Eastern fiction and join in some blog reading challenges or groups, read new genres) and neglecting some or all.

Hence, I am planning my year of reading by month. The goal is to structure reading yet allow room for flexbility while covering coveted reading goals (such as reading the classics or essays). That is a mouthful, but I hope you get my drift. I'll report my progress, such as it may be, as the year progresses.

Here is the outline I've developed:

January – New Author Month
February – Romance is in the Air
March – Exploring Essays
April – Read a Classic Month
May – New in the Stacks
June – Summer Solstice Reading Month
July – Neglected Books Month
August – Dog Days of Nonfiction
September – RIP Challenge
October – RIP Challenge
November – Pick a Genre, Any Genre
December – Winter Solstice Short Story Month

In addition to the above, I intend to continue with the Proust Project and my Middle Eastern Fiction reading, plus add in any other books that I can fit in or which tickle my fancy. I'll report on my "New Author Month" this week.

Until then, here's to Happy Booking & Blogging in the New Year!

Well, it's 2007

I've been felled by a nasty cold, which left me voiceless from the day after Christmas until now. And I still sound like a cross between Demi Moore and a geriatric parrot. So much for getting caught up during my vacation.

And now I'm behind in the blogworld. Alas.

At least the damned holidays are over.

I think the New Year was rung in at some point, was it not? Wishing peace, health and prosperity in 2007 for all.

Reading while traveling

It's that time of the year: Time for the annual holiday torture rituals, games like "Name that drug the nephew is on," "Who can make LK cry at Christmas dinner," and "Guess who owes the IRS!" Okay, I exaggerate (after all, I am a writer of fiction.) Still, when traveling in the dead of winter to St. Louis, it is vital to select books that make one feel as if one is traveling anywhere else but St. Louis in the dead of winter. This year I chose one nonfiction and one fiction, and they're both lifesavers. Jonathan Harr's A Lost Painting details the finding of a long-lost masterpiece by Caravaggio. While not as intense as A Civil Action (Harr's first nonfiction book), A Lost Painting is engrossing and takes you to such romantic places as Rome, London and Dublin. This book got me through a cancelled flight and a long delay in Phoenix. My second book is two novels by Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate. I just started the first novel, which begins: There is a photo in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea table at Alconleigh. Perfect escapism, Aunt Sadie, her six children and me, round the tea table at Alconleigh. In case I don't get back to the blog before the holidays, a merry one to you, your family and friends!

Thoughts for Thursday - more great picks from 2006

Although Swann's Way blew the competition away for the Best Read of '06, other favorites do come to mind. How do I determine a favorite? Easy. If I can still remember the title, without looking at my list for prompting, then it managed to retain its hold in my subconscious despite the strain and stress of everyday life -- that's a good read.

Here are my other picks for 2006:

FICTION
1. Never Let Me Go. Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favorite contemporary authors, simply on the basis of the two books I've read. I loved Remains of the Day, loved this book. The prose and stories of these two novels couldn't be more different, but they both are so excellent, I am simply going to add one of his other novels to my 2007 reading list.

2. Turn of the Screw. I was frustrated by his ambiguous prose, but this one wouldn't let go of my psyche. Oh, Henry, what have you done to me!

3. Big Sur and The Dharma Bums. Kerouac deserves a two-for-one. His exuberance just crashes forth from the pages.

NONFICTION
1. Marching into Sunlight. Maraniss takes two unrelated events -- the start of the Vietnam War protests in the States and a turning-point battle in 'Nam -- that happened on the same day, and produces some new insights on this war. (And more reasons why no one should be listening to Dick Cheney.)

2. The February House. I'm a sucker for tales of literary cliques, groups or cabals, and the group in The February House ranks as one of the quirkier bunches. Fun read.

3. Man's Search for Meaning. There's a reason why classics never go out of style.

Ask not for whom The Bell Jar tolls

As several people expressed interest in Sylvia Plath's work, and as I've read just about everything she's written or that's been written about her, I thought I'd share some suggestions for further reading.

First off, I should explain that I'm not a huge fan of her prose, which admittedly doesn't amount to much: The Bell Jar and her collection of short fiction, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Unfortunately, she wasn't able (in my opinion) to push her prose to the levels reached in her other work. If you really want to experience Plath, you must read her poems and journals. Fortunately, for someone who died at 30, Plath left a fairly extensive legacy of these.

Readers who have only experienced The Bell Jar really should consider beginning with the work that established Plath's reputation: Collected Poems. Original editions of her posthumous collection, Ariel, simply are too narrow; for one thing, Ted Hughes, the husband from whom she was separated at the time of her death and executor of her estate, rearranged the order and selection of poems that Plath had left. (A restored facsimile of the original Ariel was issued recently.) But the Collected Poems show the depth and breadth of her poetry. In addition to her famous poems, Daddy, Ariel and Lady Lazarus, readers can find gems such as Morning Song (one of my favorites) or Words.

While you're dipping into Plath's poetry, you might also read The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Surely, these are among the best literary artifacts around, ranking with Virginia Woolf's diaries in the quality of prose. It is here that you will recognize the voice that was finally achieved in her Ariel poetry and that sadly is missing in most of her prose.

Finally, there is the canon of Plath-related material that may or may not give you more insight into her life and work. You can search Amazon.com and choose any of the better known biographies: Rough Magic, Method and Madness, Bitter Fame (which has what I feel is unwarranted controversy surrounding it). Here also are three of my recommendations:

1. Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. Part of the Plath allure undoubtedly lies in her literary and romantic partnership with the famous English poet. Birthday Letters not only shows a more "confessional" side to this notoriously unconfessional poet, but it also sheds some light on their relationship. Released just before his death in 1997, this collection addresses his experiences with Plath. To me, it's fascinating about what he doesn't say; this is a man who doesn't leave his fingerprints on anything, even a marriage.

2. The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm. With all of the controversy surrounding Plath's varied biographies (Hughes and his sister Olwyn fought bitterly to control any information concerning Plath, particularly anything involving her relationship with Hughes), Malcolm authored this interesting biography which, while discussing Plath, also examines the role and authenticy of biographies. Even Hughes apparently admired this book.

3. The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath by Jo Gill. This excellent academic examination of all Plath's work is for the serious Plath reader.

Next stop, Pooterville!

Warning: A full-tilt pooter post ahead, with lists and random ramblings and personal opinions from someone who doesn't get paid to give them. (If you haven't been keeping up with the pooter debate, well, you'll just have to trust me on this one.)

1. Worst of 2006: I have a theory about crappy books, novels or otherwise. Bad books are like bad relationships: You get out as soon as decently possible and never look back. How long you stick with an untenable situation is an individual preference; me, I tend not to hang around more than 30 pages (with a book; I've been known to last fewer than 30 hours with a bad relationship).

But this year was different. For various (and somewhat unsavory reasons) I actually read a bad book, cover to cover. So, now I have a Worst of 2006 to contribute. And the loser is: The Mephisto Club by---Whoever it is Authoress I Shan't Read Again.

To put it in Paid-Book-Reviewer parlance, what a piece of drek. Cardboard characters, unconvincing romance (with a priest, no less. Hasn't Tess Whose-It ever heard of The Thorn Birds?), over-the-top gratuitous violence and a rather morbid fascination with autopsy detail. (I think the author is a slicer-dicer in "real life," but I am feeling pretty uncharitably disposed toward this author who obviously has signed a multi-book deal along the way.)

I hated it. There, an uneducated, unsubstantiated, full-on personal Pooter opinion.

2. The Best of 2006. Swann's Way, of course. I can't rave on about Proust enough, but I can say I have cleaned off a shelf for him on my newly purchased bookcase (and considering how valuable bookshelf real estate is in MY apartment, that's saying a lot). I can't wait to continue with the Proust Project. And I hope I have something less Pooterish to contribute about him in the future. For now, RAH!

3. Never Cry Wolf: The Good Weekend Read. What with Christmas and 10-hour work days and multiple appliance disasters, I haven't been able to concentrate on really good fiction. So, this weekend I spent time cleaning my bookshelves (including purchasing two new ones from Craig's List). I now have an official TBR shelf. And I gave my books a good shot with Windex and a paper towel (works wonders on most books, save the really old ones) and then packed them into shelves with books of similar topic. I felt like a matron who had scrubbed up her scruffy little orphans and tucked them into a nice, clean bed. One of the glories of cleaning bookshelves is discovering hidden treasure. I found something I must have picked up from a 4-for$1 cart, Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf. What a great read! Mowat spins his tale about wolf observation in the Canadian wildnerness with a gentle sense of humor. Really enjoyable. (Mowat also wrote one of my favorite bios, about Dian Fossey, called Woman in the Mist.)

I leave you with one last thought: Pooters Rule!

Thoughts for Thursday - Sylvia Plath

I confess: I am one of those obssessive Sylvia Plath people. I wouldn't call myself a "fan." You really can't be a fan of a suicide, can you? I am drawn by her surprising, stunning use of language and haunted by her legend -- cut off at the height of her powers, made famous by the slight volume of poems. She's sort of like the Titanic of literature.

Besides, depressives can't help but admire brilliant depressives. Somewhere in the primal recesses of the brain stem, you applaud them at having beat the system by producing something that will outlast even themselves.

So, for those who are similarly obssessed, a note on the publication of two new books:

The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath , Anita Helle, editor

Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love, by Yehuda Koren and Eliat Negev

Holy bad parenting, Batman!

Can you believe this?

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A fed-up mother had her 12-year-old son arrested for allegedly rummaging through his great-grandmother's things and playing with his Christmas present early.

The mother called police Sunday after learning her son had disobeyed orders and repeatedly taken a Game Boy from its hiding place at his great-grandmother's house next door and played it. He was arrested on petty larceny charges, taken to the police station in handcuffs and held until his mother picked him up after church.

If you possibly can bear reading more, find the rest of the story here.

Um, there are so many things wrong with this, my mind is literally stuttering. All I can say is:
We're all doomed.

More holiday gift giving ideas

Don't you love the holidays? The perfect excuse to give such fun, goofy presents to family and friends (or yourself). Here are some stocking stuffer ideas for the literary in your life.

Jane Austen Action Figure. Just the thing for a writer's desk, to inspire prosody and whatnot. Of course, there's also the Bronte mousepad. Surely, those three stern faces exhorting you to write could get those fingers flying over your keyboard!

These Little Women gift cards are great.

The Disappearing Civil Liberties Mug. Pour in a hot beverage and watch your civil liberties disappear! For the environmentalist, consider the Global Warming mug.

Inspire your child with a Shakespeare infant bodysuit or a Bauedelaire hoodie.

If you really want to blow a literary geek's mind, buy one of these. Crass commercialism at its best!

And here are two awesome holiday ideas I purloined from BookGirl:

Great Author pot belly figure (the Shakespeare figure is my personal fave).

"I read Banned Books bracelet." What a way to accessorize.

A literary anecdote

This weekend at a Berkeley cafe, I met a man who had met Jack Kerouac. (I think he overheard me talking about my recent reading of The Dharma Bums.) He said he met Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady in Big Sur around '61 or '62, and he was surprised at how "physical" Kerouac was, "like a lumberjack."

He also said he Kerouac and Cassady punched and hugged each other a lot, so he thought there was a "homoerotic" relationship between them (what can I say? He's a psychiatrist.). He also mentioned that he knew Gary Snyder. He said Snyder used to collect seashells in his hat as a way to pick up women. I still can't figure out how he used seashells in his hat as a pickup line, but apparently, it worked.

Gotta love Berkeley!