Favorite Books: Part Two

Here's Part Two. I got a poem or two finished while I was on vacation in Florida and I'm almost finished with this second short story (by that I mean the second short story I have finished since graduating college...not that I had solid endings to any of those but I digress). It looks like it's going to be around 30 pages double-spaced. I'll try and post an excerpt when i get it finished.

NEON VERNACULAR: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Yusef Komunyakaa

THE MUSIC THAT HURTS

Put away those insipid spoons.

The frontal lobe horn section went home hours ago.

The trap drum has been kicked

down the fire escape,

& the tenor’s ballad amputated.

Inspiration packed her bags.

Her caftan recurs in the foggy doorway

like brain damage; the soft piano solo of her walk

evaporates; memory looses her exquisite tongue,

looking for “green silk stocking with gold seams”

on a nail over the bathroom mirror.

Tonight I sleep with Silence,

my impossible white wife.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Brother, brother, what are you saying? I mean, you have blood on your hands!” Dunya cried in despair.

“The blood that’s on everyones hands,” he caught her up, almost in a frenzy now, “that flows and has always flowed through the world like a waterfall, that is poured like champagne and for the sake of which men are crowned in the Capitol and then called called the benefiters of mankind!”

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE by Peter Weiss

...man has given a false importance to death

any animal, plant, or man who dies

adds to Nature’s compost heap.

because the manure without which

nothing could grow, nothing could be created.

Death is simply part of the process.

Every death, even the cruellest death,

drowns in the total indifference of Nature.

Nature herself would watch unmoved

if we destroyed the entire human race.

SATURDAY by Ian McEwan

Who could ever reckon up the damage done to love and friendship and all hopes of happiness by a surfeit or depletion of this or that neurotransmitter? And who will ever find a morality, an ethics down among the enzymes and amino acids when the general taste is for looking in the other direction?

THE INFERNO by Dante Alighieri

Their sighs, lamentations and loud wailings
resounded through the starless air,
so that at first it made me weep;
Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
words of pain, tones of anger,
voices shrill and faint, and beating hands,
all went to make a tumult that will whirl
forever through that turbid, timeless air,
like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.

REDWALL by Brian Jacques

Matthias gasped with shock as a giant horse galloped past, its mane streaming out, eyes rolling in panic. It was towing a hay cart which bounced wildly from side to side. Matthias could see rats among the hay, but these were no ordinary rats. They were huge, ragged rodents, bigger than any he had ever seen. Their heavy tattooed arms waved a variety of weapons - pikes, knives, spears and long rusty cutlasses. Standing boldly on the  back-board of the hay cart was the biggest, fiercest, most evil-looking rat that ever slunk out of a nightmare! In one claw he grasped a long pole with a ferret’s head spiked to it, while in the other was his thick, enormous tail which he cracked like a whip. Laughing madly and yelling strange curses, he swayed to and fro skillfully as horse and wagon clattered off down the road into the night. As suddenly as they had come, they were gone!

HAMLET by William Shakespeare

'Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood

And do such bitter business as the bitter day

Would quake to look on.

TWELFTH NIGHT by William Shakespeare

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

KING LEAR by William Shakespeare

When we are born we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.

OTHELLO by William Shakespeare

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, 

Is the immediate jewel of their souls: 

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; 

But he that filches from me my good name 

Robs me of that which not enriches him 

And makes me poor indeed.

ANGELA’S ASHES by Frank McCourt

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk.

MAUS: A SURVIVOR’S TALE by Art Spiegelman

BELOVED by Toni Morrison

Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite?

THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of travelers abandoned in the road years ago. Boxes and bags. Everything melted and black. Old plastic suitcases curled shapeless in the heat. Here and there the imprint of things wrested out of the tar by scavengers. A mile on and they began to come upon the dead. Figures half-mired in the blacktop, clutching themselves, mouths howling. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Take my hand, he said, I don’t think you should see this.

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE by Stephen Crane

He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity.

Favorite Books: Part One

A lot has been happening in my personal life of late. I said in the first post of this blog that I'd try to keep my personal life to a minimum here - this is supposed to be showcase for my writing and artwork, not Facebook - but I feel like I ought to explain a few of the wrenches that have been tossed into my productivity. For one, I'm in the middle of moving. Since my parents' divorce about a year and a half ago, my Dad has moved out and found his own apartment. Our house went up for sale. We had to do several renovations, keep the house spotless in case a realtor wanted to show the property (in which case we'd have to leave for an hour), haggle over price, and when it finally did sell, try to find a decent apartment or townhouse and move in in a two-week window. 

Fortunately, we did find something close-by for less than the monthly mortgage payment, and managed to get everything in before the house was signed over to the new owners. With a house's worth of belongings now in a little townhouse, it feels like my Mom and I are living in a episode of "Hoarders." We can barely find anything, especially in the kitchen, but at least we're not loosing things between two houses and having to drive several blocks over to grab a tube of toothpaste or a plate. 

Money is as tight as ever. I'm down to one job. I quit Home Depot, but that's a whole 'nother blog post. The college loan bills keep coming. I can't seem to find anything I'm qualified for. I've tried looking for human resources work, secretarial work, even government jobs, but nothing is happening. I'm having trouble sleeping.

I gotta find a way to sell some of this artwork taking up space in the new townhouse, but every gallery is every 1) not interested, 2) doesn't respond, or 3) is booked until 2013. I wonder if Etsy.com is a viable option or whether it's another eBay?

Right now I have several unfinished writing projects:

(1) completed short story that needs heavy editing

(1) short story, two-thirds of the way done that needs an ending not as loose as the last story

(5-6) half-finished poems and a dozen fragments of poems

(2) mediocre ideas for short stories

(40) pages of an abandoned novel

(0) pages of an outline for a half-baked novel on an apartment of college grads trying to weather the Recession.

More updates on these later.

In lieu of some decent content, I've decided to post some excerpts of my favorite books (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, and graphic novels are all included) since I don't know if I could articulate a list of what I consider to be "good literature." I considered explaining what I thought made each book great and how it influenced me, but decided to let them speak for themselves. 

Side note: I'm also thinking of posting a list of what I think are the most overrated books ever written, but this may get me shot by a lunatic. *cough Catcher in the Rye*

HERE'S PART ONE:

MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides

I could sense the happiness of couples holding first babies and the fortitude of Catholics accepting their ninth. I could feel one young mother’s disappointment at the reappearance of her husband’s weak chin on the face of her newborn daughter, and a new father’s terror as he calculated the tuition of triplets. On the floors above Delivery, in flowerless rooms, women lay recovering from hysterectomies and mastectomies. Teenage girls burst with ovarian cysts nodded out on morphine. It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffering, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts.

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 

I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

WIT: A PLAY by Margaret Edson

This is my play's last scene “Here... Heavens appoint my pilgrimage's last mile And my race Idly, yet quickly run Hath this last pace My span's last inch My minute's last point And gluttonous death Will instantly unjoint my body and soul" John Donne... I've always particularly liked that poem. In the abstract. Now I find the image of my minute's last point, a little too, shall we say... pointed. 

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O’Brien

They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.

WATCHMEN by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore

  

GRENDEL by John Gardner

I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.

THE HOBBIT by J.R.R. Tolkien

The yells and yammering, croaking, jibbering and jabbering; howls, growls and curses; shrieking and skriking, that followed were beyond description. Several hundred wild cats and wolves being roasted slowly alive together would not have compared with it.

LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding

“Maybe there is a beast....maybe it's only us.”

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

THE LUCIFER EFFECT: UNDERSTANDING HOW GOOD PEOPLE TURN EVIL by Philip Zimbardo

The genocide and atrocities committed in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Burundi, and recently in Sudan’s Darfur region also provide strong evidence of people surrendering their humanity and compassion to social power and abstract ideologies of conquest and national security. Any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us - under the right or wrong situational circumstances. That knowledge does no excuse evil: rather, it democratizes it, sharing its blame among ordinary actors rather than declaring it the province only of deviants and despots - of Them but not Us.

THE CRUCIBLE by Arthur Miller

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

"Day One" by Doug McClellan Burn the clothes you wore that day. Save the ashes. Bring them to the square where we are fashioning a monument of ashes. Winds will rise, soften the heroic shapes, the paper faces around the square will become eyeless, the sideshow will depart to a muffle of drums, leaving only hollow sounds of wind-- and wind being wind, the ashes will follow it, leaving a swept field of countless jagged stones. Newspaper and oil on canvas.

A Showing at Last!

I don't know if you remember the twelve shadowboxes I posted a while ago, but I finally found a place for them. It wasn't easy. I tried several galleries and coffee shops around the town. Many required a monthly membership fee (there was no way I could do a one-time showing), wouldn't have any space for a while (the airport), or didn't respond at all. But I did manage to find this cool little place called Domino in Manitou Springs. It's a tiny place but I like the neighborhood and a lot of the art showing. The shadowboxes should be up the first Friday of October, but if you're in the area you should definitely check this place out.

http://www.domino80904.com/

On a personal note, I havn't posted a new blog in an ages because I've been working two jobs. One is still the framing store and then I've picked up a seasonal job as a cashier at Home Depot. Luckily, the two are really close...like...to the point where I could walk from one to the other in five minutes. The framing job is still my favorite: it's in my field, the work is pretty laid back but usually interesting, I get to see artwork people bring in, and I like the people working there. 

Home Depot is just really stressful. The store is enormous and there are so many things to remember. I'm only a cashier, but I'm the first person people see when they come in so I get a lot of angry people returning things (which I'm not authorized to do; I have to send them elsewhere) or asking my advice on what weed killer or screws to use. Most of the customers are decent people, but I've had a few try to steal things by hiding them in other products, give me hell because their card is declined, or bitch about prices and lay down their entire political and economic theory on me. That's a whole 'nother blog, though.

I'm still writing and cranking out some art, just not at the pace I'd like to be. I dunno when my next post will be but I'll try and keep you up to date. 

Gods

So after sending out submission after submission to various literary magazines, I finally got accepted to one. The Blue Earth Review (published by Minnesota State University) is going to publish a photo called "Gods" in their upcoming ninth volume. I took the photo while visiting New York City last summer. Many photos have been taken of the iconic "Atlas" sculpture in front of the Rockefeller Center, but I had no idea that it was right across from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

It was such a great contrast - a Greek diety vs. Christianity, art deco vs. gothic, and (judging by the cover of Atlas Shrugged) a symbol of individualism and capitalism vs. an institution of charity and community - I had to get a shot. I didn't notice when I took it, but if Atlas put his legs together more, it would almost look like a reverse crucifix.

The Hammer
by Carl Sandburg

I have seen
The old gods go
And the new gods come.

Day by day
And year by year
The idols fall
And the idols rise.

Today
I worship the hammer

Endzone

Finally a new painting. This one took me a few months, but I'm generally pleased with how it turned out. It's an improvement on an earlier painting I did in college called "No 'I' in 'Team'." The local high school was having its homecoming parade with cheerleaders riding a fire truck and the entire football team riding along in military trucks of some kind. Seeing that really cemented the link between sports and the military for me. Luckily, I had a camera on me and snapped a few photos, but it's kind of hard to tell in the painting exactly what's going in. It should be clearer here.

But honestly, sports and the military are disturbingly similar:
1. They're both geared toward young men and are the source of many of the games boys play as kids.
2. They're both socially acceptable outlets of aggression that channel violence toward a threatening "other" (a rival team vs. foreigners).
3. Both require uniforms, physical conditioning, and training that breaks down the individual identity and replaces it with the team mentality.
4. Both nurture a tribal sense of pride and belonging (sports fans vs. patriotism).
5. Both are enormous businesses with huge marketing and recruitment campaigns on high schools and colleges.
6. Both are cultural rites of passage into adulthood.

Now don't get me wrong. Sports and the military aren't necessary bad. Sports can help build confidence and teach teamwork and in events such as the Olympics, entire countries can come together and try to set aside political and cultural differences to play a few games. In a perfect world, armies and warfare wouldn't be needed, but until we get there, militaries are sadly necessary in this world.

But you can't deny that much of the behavior and culture these two create mirror one another. They're engrained into our culture and have a huge hand in molding what kind of people we are.

The title is borrowed from a Don DeLillo novel which also explores these themes.

Wow, check this out!

I've heard about the craft of bookbinding, but this is insane!

http://www.jacquelinerushlee.com/images/BookSculpture.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/03/03/134229879/destroy-your-books

http://www.flickr.com/photos/briandettmer/

http://www.englandgallery.com/artist_group.php?mainId=32&media=Constructions%20%26%20mixed%20media

Menagerie Series

While doing some renovation, I had to pick out some paint cards at the local Home Depot. Once I painted the bathroom, I still had the card left over so I took out an exact-o knife and carved out a koi fish. I wondered if I could do an animal for each color and maybe put them in shadow boxes. So here's the finished results. 12 handmade shadow boxes (because the cheapest I could find that were the right size ran $20) with various animals of various colors and string, cut paper, cardboard, and acrylic paint to add a background. Now I just have to figure out a way to attach glass to the front and sell them.

 

 

 

 

The Storytelling Graph

I’ve heard a lot about character-driven novels vs. plot-driven novels, character-driven novels being the more literary, and reflective examinations of humanity and plot-driven novels focusing more on events. I general they’re easier and a little more fun to read. Authors usually develop one over the other depending upon what genre they’re writing or what literary movement they’re from. I don’t mean a writer always develops one at the expense of the other. For example, science fiction usually demands more from the plot than the characters. A few authors strike a good balance between the two and I think these authors are among the best.

Both of these are important components of storytelling, even if I believe character is a little more important than plot in most cases. A story can take feature survival on the high seas, sacrifice on a desert battlefield, or the break-down of a relationship in a seedy hotel, but if I’m not invested in the characters, I won’t care when something happens to them. The characters don’t necessarily have to be sympathetic or even likable, but they have to have dimension. I have to feel their anger when they are cheated, their sorrow when they lose, their sense of triumph when they overcome. On the other hand, some novels (particularly from early Modernism) focus almost exclusively on the characters and let the plot take a back seat. This can work sometimes but the characters better be pretty damn interesting. A story isn’t much of a story without conflict.

Since I’m a pretty visual person in how I solve problems, I tried charting out a graph plotting famous authors between “character” and “plot” but decided to add a third component to make it more interesting: style - which would include voice, the organization of the novel, and diction. Many authors are known for their style whether it’s the sharp punctuating words of Norman Mailer, the free association and play on words of the Beats, or Victor Hugo’s dense sentences with word counts surpassing the hundreds, but for some writers, the style outweighs the substance. There are some novels seem solely about the impressive, poetic language but when I finish a chapter, I have no idea what actually happened to the main character or whoever that is (I’m looking at you, Thomas Pynchon). Style is certainly something to be proud of, even encouraged, but an author cannot let it overtake his writing or the plot and character will be completely eclipsed.

This graph is a work in progress. It contains only authors I’ve read (some not in quite a while), but if you see an author that should be on here or if you Baldwin is in the wrong place, please feel free to make suggestions.

Look! I made one for film, too! I know the director shares credit with the actors, producers, and especially the writers of the screenplay, but surely you can see some trends with the movies certain directors take on and how they choose to make them.