The Bell Jar

For recent travels I acquired some books on tape to pass the time, as reading and/or watching movies on a bus/plane/car makes me nauseous. The library has a very limited selection of audiobooks, rarely anything new or exciting, so I had to choose among the classics. I was a lady traveling with E.M. Forster and Jane Austen for awhile, and quite enjoyed the company of the other lady characters. But on my most recent trip I fell upon Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which somehow I’ve never read despite its fame. I don’t really even know her poetry much. So I figured now was as good a time as any to get acquainted.

But this lady traveler was unfortunately terribly disappointed. It sucks. It is unbelievably dated–a great book should be timeless, and this one isn’t. It is unbelievably cliched, though it’s possible that many of the cliches I know are derived from this book rather than repeated within it, I’m not sure. It is also unbelievably racist! From the very start, she describes herself, lacking a summer tan, as “yellow as a Chinaman.” And her well-tanned friend, “like a Negress.” And a Peruvian man, “like an Indian.” Cliche, lazy, AND racist, all at once.

And finally, overall, it just isn’t written very well. It’s almost all exposition, there is no work to be done by the reader. And much of it is simply mundane description, mundane metaphor. Something was “soft as pillows.” Wow, now that’s an imagination for ya. This is a poet?

The narrator’s attitudes and the author’s oblivousness remind me a lot of what I dislike about Sofia Coppola.

Quote

from Room With A View:

“My father has that effect on nearly every one,” he informed her. “He will try to be kind.”

“I hope we all try,” said she, smiling nervously.

“Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or frightened.”

“How silly of them!” said Lucy, though in her heart she sympathized; “I think that a kind action done tactfully–”

“Tact!”

He threw up his head in disdain. Apparently she had given the wrong answer.

No Wonder I�m A Good Writer

-

From this NYT op-ed about the plagiarizing Harvard chick-lit novelist:

Ms. Viswanathan is a bookish girl who might have had more success at
fiction if she didn’t bear the burden of the overachiever.
Overachievers don’t generally become writers because the skill set is
so different. As I tell my writing students, if you want to be
a writer work on the finer points of gossip, eavesdropping and
voyeurism; basically the pastimes of the underachiever, ways to while
away the hours.

Bad Sex

-

These are really so bad it’s painful: Guardian Bad Sex in Fiction Awards.
I cringed when reading them, but not just because they’re bad–I was
cringing with embarassment for the writers. I couldn’t read them all I
was so embarassed for them. Where the fuck were these people’s editors?

And I agree with Duff that this is a gem:

“Oh, Lord,” he cried out. “I’m a-comin’!”She could not answer.
It is the one drawback of fellatio as conscientious as hers that it
eliminates the chance for small talk and poetry alike.

No Wonder I’m A Good Writer

From this NYT op-ed about the plagiarizing Harvard chick-lit novelist:

Ms. Viswanathan is a bookish girl who might have had more success at
fiction if she didn’t bear the burden of the overachiever.
Overachievers don’t generally become writers because the skill set is
so different. As I tell my writing students, if you want to be
a writer work on the finer points of gossip, eavesdropping and
voyeurism; basically the pastimes of the underachiever, ways to while
away the hours.

Bad Sex

These are really so bad it’s painful: Guardian Bad Sex in Fiction Awards.
I cringed when reading them, but not just because they’re bad–I was
cringing with embarassment for the writers. I couldn’t read them all I
was so embarassed for them. Where the fuck were these people’s editors?

And I agree with Duff that this is a gem:

“Oh, Lord,” he cried out. “I’m a-comin’!”

She could not answer.
It is the one drawback of fellatio as conscientious as hers that it
eliminates the chance for small talk and poetry alike.

Murakami @ MIT

Did anyone actually get in to the Murakami talk at MIT last night? Everyone I’m talking to had the same experience as we did–they showed up very early to get seats and it was already packed full, one person said they were kicked out because people without seats were booted, no standing room/sitting on stairs allowed. Who are all these people who showed up hours early for this thing? Some busload of Murakami fans from another dimension?

Here’s some photos of the crowd, before the police showed up to kick out everyone without a seat: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaxxon/50240922/in/photostream/ I actually see someone I know in that photo, the fucker.

And an account of the talk here: http://umkumar.blogspot.com/2005/10/haruki-murakama-reads-at-mit.html

UPDATE: An inside source tells me the police turned away 1300 people. The room held a bit over 500.

Toy Store Balloon

Here’s an excerpt from the book The Secrets of Mariko, a book about Japanese culture that I’m reading for a class. The chapter is about Japanese schools and the breakneck pace that even elementary students are expected to maintain, “It is a tight regime that does not encourage personal dreams, experimentation, individual variety, or idealism.” Here the writer describes a scene in an elementary school that gave me an awwwww moment:

Moving quickly, she read the rest of the story to the class herself…Sensei was not wasting a minute, and now she called individual students to the front blackboard to write kanji they had learned in the story. Soon a girl was chalking out the kanji for the word “designate,” written with seventeen strokes. …Arithmetic was next. Problem: 215 people have to blow up 2,580 balloons. How many balloons for each?
      “I saw a great balloon at the toy store,” a boy offered from the back of the class. Sensei ignored him, not breaking her pace.

Ouch

bleedingmay swenson

stop bleeding   said the knife.i would if i   could said the cut.stop bleeding   you make me messy with this blood.i'm sorry said   the cut.stop or i will   sink in farther said the knife.don't said the    cut.the knife did   not say it couldn't help it but it sank in farther.if only you   didn't bleed said the knife i wouldn't have to do this.i know said   the cut i bleed too easily i hate that i can'thelp it i   wish i were a knife like you and didn't have to bleed.meanwhile  stop bleeding will you said the knife.yes you   are a mess and sinking in farther said the cut i willhave to   stop.have you   stopped by now said the knife.i've almost   stopped i think.why must you  bleed in the first place said the knife.for the reason   maybe that you must do what you must do said the cut.i can't stand    bleeding said the knife and sank in farther.i hate it too   said the cut i know it isn't you it's meyou're lucky to  be a knife you ought to be glad about that.too many cuts   around said the knife they're messy i don't knowhow they stand   themselves.they don't said   the cut.you're bleeding   again.no i've stopped   said the cut.  see you're coming out now theblood is drying   it will rub off you'll be shiny again and clean.if only cuts     wouldn't bleed so much said the knife coming out a little.but then knives      might become dull said the cut.aren't you bleeding     a little said the knife.i hope not said the    cut.i feel you are just     a little.maybe just a little      but i can stop now.i feel a little       wetness still said the knife sinking ina little but then      coming out a little.just a little maybe    just enough said the cut.that's enough now     stop now do you feel better now said the knife.i feel i have to       bleed to feel i think said the cut.i don't i don't have    to feel said the knife drying now becoming shiny.

via orange

Blue

For
many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can
be seen, the color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything
far away. The color of that distance is the color of solitude and of
desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are
not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not at
the horizon but in the distance between you and the mountains.
“Longing,” says the poet Robert Hass, “because desire is full of
endless distances.” We treat desire as a problem to be solved, though I
wonder whether with a slight adjustment of perspective it could be
cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to
the human condition as blue is to distance. Something of desire will
only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition, just as the mountains
cease to be blue when you arrive among them, and the blue instead tints
the next beyond. Somewhere in this is the mystery of why tragedies are
more beautiful than comedies and why we take pleasure in the sadness of
certain songs and stories. Something is always far away.

Rebecca Solnit, in Harper’s, June 2005

Literary Quote of the Day

From the book I’m reading:

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
     Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
               
               –T.S.
Eliot, The Four Quartets

It’s so nice to read for pleasure, with no guilt, now that the semester is over.

Kinky the Detective/Gender Psychologist

I am reading another of Kinky Friedman’s silly detective novels and
thought I’d share a bit more of his two-bit cowboy wisdom about the
sexes. In the following passage he is trying to detect (because he’s a
private detective, you know) who is the cause of the incessant honking
outside his shitty apartment in NYC:

“How
do I know it’s a woman behind the wheel? Because a man hits the horn in
a threatening, rhythmic, staccato fashion, like a native of the Congo
beating on his bongo. A similarly hightly agitato woman takes a quite
different approach. She leans on the horn with her whole neurotic,
love-scarred life.”

Kinky’s Mysteries

As Kinky Friedman is running for governor in my future home state, I decided to check out some of his mystery novels. They are hilarious. And full of twisted two-bit cowboy philosophy. I have been laughing like an idiot on the subway every morning while reading Spanking Watson. So far it is a tale of a man, his cat, and a troupe of dancing lesbians. I have yet to hit on the mystery. But here is an excerpt about the relationship between man and cat:

The cat looked back at me with a brief glance of disdain. Like all cats, she was essentially a humorless, constipated prig at heart, if indeed cats had hearts. Like all people, I was essentially perverse, pugnacious, paranoid, covered in the grime of humanity, and always and forever standing in the way of myself and my heart, if indeed people had hearts.

I would change “people” to “men”, of course.

Excerpt from “Grace” by Paula Fox

…he wrote three letters to the New
York Times. …His third letter was about a term, “street smart”, used
by a writer to describe a novel’s heroine. “This is a superficially
snappy but meaningless cliche that trivializes reality,” he wrote. “On
the street, the truth is that people stumble about in confusion and
dismay even when they are making fortunes selling illegal drugs. People
are smart for only a few minutes at a time.”

This is a great, great short story in Best American 2004.