Something not related to laziness, for a change

When I was in high school I was a massive fan of the Beat writers.  A friend of mine loaned me a copy of On the Road when I was a junior and I just totally devoured it.  When people tell me how much they hate this book (and they often tell me they hate this book when they hear about my long-standing love for it along with the fact that I had a cat named Jack Kerouac) I typically ask them when they read it.  Because you have to read a book like this at the right time in your life.  You probably shouldn’t read it if you’re older than 22 (unless you’re a very young spirited person).  You just aren’t likely to have patience for it.  In all honesty, it’s not very well written, I can see that now.  Or not consistently well written anyhow.  Parts of it shine through with so much beauty that you (and by you I mean me) will want to cry.  But mostly, it’s uneven and sort of boring.  It’s not groundbreaking anymore, it’s been copied and imitated and reimagined a million times over.  Unless you’re looking at it with relation to its historical context it’s not really worth reading it as an adult.

However, if you’re a naive 16-year-old living in a small town with dreams of going just about anywhere else it’s a perfect book.  It’s a head long dash into the unknown and it proves just how easy it can be to get out.  Even if you aren’t willing to steal a car to do it.  Despite the dismal beautiful ending, it still invokes a yearning that few other books I’ve read are able to express. 

But I wasn’t planning to write about Kerouac today.  Instead I want to talk about how the one (Kerouac) lead me to another.  In my last year at university I signed up for a course titled Zen and American Culture in American Literature (arguably the best course name ever).  This was an 8 week summer course and the description directly referenced the writing of Kerouac and Ginsberg ( I have a story about him too, but I’ll save it for later).  Despite being a short class we covered a lot of ground.  From Ezra Pound’s (there was a character (and by character I mean an issue laden creep regardless of talent)) Cantos to Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish with tons of other’s in between and after.  Our final day of class was spent looking at Rothko slides and listening to Miles Davis, but that’s not the point either.

This is the point.  We spent a lot of time talking about William Carlos Williams as well, seeing as he was a major influence on the authors and poets who followed him, and even acted as a mentor to Ginsberg, among others.  I knew about Williams before this (I was 75% of my way through an English degree after all) but my main knowledge of him had to do with that red wheelbarrow, a poem i frankly did not get at the time, but then we read This is Just to Say and I got it.  I got it like you wouldn’t believe. 

The simplicity of his words, the frankness of his poetry is heartbreaking and beautiful.  After reading the selected poems for this course I began my own exploration of the man’s work and I often come back to it.  The Widow’s Lament in Springtime has remained of my favourite pieces of writing in the world.  I’ve been thinking about it today, in fact, which has led me to look up Williams again and realise how much of his work I haven’t read.  It’s funny to think that someone I consider to be a favourite also represents such a hole in my books read list.  It’s time to remedy that (which happily gives me an excellent excuse to avoid cleaning my house!).

Literary Crime

I’m not a person who makes a habit of thievery.  I am a well-known snoop and gossip, I have a hard time keeping secrets (although I have learned how to make myself forget things in order to do better at this).  When I drive, I enjoy speeding, but I rarely drive so this doesn’t matter much.  I tell weird little lies for no reason (once I told a stranger at a dance club that I married Jeremy for the Visa, he looked at me with disgust and total belief).

But theft I am not much for.  I don’t watch pirated movies (1. because movies should be viewed on the big screen and not all shaky like on the computer and 2. because it’s stealing) and I don’t steal cable (Dana stole the cable in Chicago, not me). 

In 1994 though, I did something kind of horrible.  I stole a copy of Catcher in the Rye from my high school library.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  Like it should be set free, you know?  So I slipped it into my bag and walked out with it.

Then I loaned it to my friend Shannon, who loaned it to another friend, who lost it.  Karma I guess.  Or maybe it was still trying to get free. 

I had to buy two more copies before I got one to stick.   I can’t, for the life of me remember what happened to copy 2.  Probably I loaned it to a boy.  You ask for trouble when you loan boys books.  You also ask for trouble when you steal from the library in a silly moment of teenage rebellion.

So yesterday the news broke that JD Salinger died at 91 years old.  It made me think of stealing that book and the thrill it gave me to just walk out with it.  And the thrill it gave me to find it twice more when I wanted to read it over the years.  I’m glad he lived a long and good life on his own terms, but I’m still a little sad that he’s gone.  It sort of makes me want to steal another copy of the book, I won’t though, I’ll just want to.

Buzzy! My Man!

So it turn’s out Buzzy wasn’t a ginner. 

Nor was his day so busy. 

In fact the book is actually titled The Day Busy Buzzy Stopped Being Busy and it only took a few days of creative searching on google to figure that out. 

 

 

But I was right about the goldfish bowl and the very dangerous chair standing. 

Oh Buzzy, when will you learn?

More romance, yo

A new book has been covered at 365 Days of Heaving Bosoms.

Coming soon, a pirate book.

Avast.

Hey, Jack Kerouac

So yesterday I read this album review and then this morning I used Spotify to listen to the actual album by Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard.  It should surprise no one who knows me that I liked it for a variety of reasons. 

1. Songs based on a Kerouac novel?  Yes, please!
2. Folksy countryish songs based on a Kerouac novel?  With a cherry on top!
3. Folksy countryish songs sung by Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard based on a Kerouac novel? And some chocolate sauce.

This kind of beeswax is right up my alley.  Then I started hunting through my bookshelf for my copy of Big Sur (a much more productive way to spend my morning hour than editing a short story for a contest, obviously) and realised that I couldn’t find it because I don’t own a copy of Big Sur, horrors!  I was thinking of Dharma Bums and oh look right there, it is my beloved copy of On the Road! So On the Road came off the shelf and I started thinking about my history as a fan of Jack Kerouac and that book in particular.

Back in 1994 my friend J loaned me his copy of On the Road.  J would also go on to loan me a copy of The Basketball Diaries, make me the best birthday card ever in the history of the world, and introduce me to such bands as Nation of Ulysses, Cub, Tsunami, Pavement, Scrawl, and Bikini Kill.  J asked me to be the co-editor of the high school paper with him after knowing me for a grand total of two days (“It’s not hard, you just have to yell at people and make them do stuff.” Little did he know he was describing my future in to world of work for the rest of my life).  J was my prom date.  J was my friend.  J opened up my world and much of that started with the simple act of handing me a battered copy of On the Road. 

I fell in love with that book from the first dizzying paragraph.  I gave it back and bought my own copy.  I underlined and highlighted the important and beautiful bits.  I was enraptured.  I was, maybe, something of a cliche’.

Jeremy has actually asked me, after trying to read the book himself, what it was about On the Road that made me love it so very much.  Let me try to explain.  Imagine you are a young kid, about 16, who has grown up in the same small town your whole life.  Imagine you’ve traveled a little bit around the country, seen some cows, had your picture taken in front of the occasional Paul Bunyan statue, but really your life has centered around one house, one town, one place.  Then you read this book about people who have dropped everything and just driven off to have these mad adventures.  They aren’t just staring out at the lake and thinking about the adventures just over the horizon, they are full on tackling those adventures. And sure that was 50 years ago, but still!  Still!  It’s possible, it can be done and seen and lived.

And that, dear reader(s), is hope.  So I kept my book with me, I loaned it to a boy once and then berated him on the community college radio station and brought a girl he hated to his house party in order to get it back, I took it to Detroit, and Las Vegas (2 road trips, one following route 66), and then Chicago, and now London.  The pages are limp, the spine is cracked, there are dog ears that would make any librarian weep.  I still love it.  I love the exuberance in the prose.  I love the pace, I love the myth, I love the whole stupid thing.  I’m reading it again this week and just having it in my bag feels like a homecoming of sorts.  I’m looking forward to falling in love with new parts and finding exasperation in others.  I know it will make me homesick and make my fingers itch for car keys and open roads.  It’s okay.  It’s worth it.

And of course it will also make me miss the greatest cat in the world, the great sissified monster, Jean Louis Kerouac, he of the fluffy black fur, the 22 pound girth and the tiniest meow in the world.  He was not a smart cat or a tough cat, but he was an awesome cat and I miss him all the time.  I think he lives in Portland, Oregon now, so at least he’s kept moving.  Just like the original Jack he was something of a mama’s boy.  I don’t know how he felt about Buddhism though.

In case you were wondering

I’ve just put up my first review on 365 Days of Heaving Bosoms

Check it out, let me know what you think.

 

Please and thank you.

A few days late, many dollars short

So Jim Carroll died. 

In 1997 I saw him perform both spoken word and his music at the Magic Stick in Detroit.  He told a story about meeting William Burroughs and how his father once met the famous gangster, Dutch Schultz, and his fear that Burroughs would call him out based on his description of Schultz’s desk by saying something like (and imagine Jim Carroll doing a really good William Burroughs impersonation as you read this), ‘You dumb bastard, Dutch Schultz had a cherry desk not walnut!’

Mike Watt opened the show doing some of his solo work.  He was drunk. Very, very drunk.

In 1998 I finally condescended to watch the movie version of The Basketball Diaries.  it was better than I expected although I still believes that the ending is total crap.

In 1995 I bought my copy of the book, the only edition I could find at the bookstore in Port Huron was the one with Leonardo DiCaprio looking like a teen pin-up on the cover.  I stole some construction paper from my mom’s craft supplies and made a book cover that I glued on.  There was one passage about writing and how it was like starting with an empty room and the words were the building blocks and the paint and the furniture.  I can’t find it right now, but i still remember reading it at 18 and thinking, ‘Yes.’

In 1997 I brought my construction paper covered copy of the book with me to the show.  On the back I had written, ‘I just want to be pure.’ At the end of the show, people rushed up to say hello and or get autographs, and I looked down at my mutilated copy of the book and decided just to put it back in my bag and leave it.  I should have gone up to the front of the room and at least shaken his hand and said thanks.  I regret not doing that.

And, of course, in 2009, I am sad that he has passed but glad that he lived longer than many probably expected.  And glad that I bought that book, even with its stupid cover and glad that I got to see him perform even once at a smelly pool hall in Detroit.

Pop music

I am not typically a fan of autotune.  I do not typically enjoy songs sung by robots (songs ABOUT robots are, of course, something else entirely) but I really like the song Supernova by Kanye West and Mr Hudson.  I love that it deals with class issues as well as love, I love that Mr Hudson looks sort of like Sick Boy from Trainspotting.  I love how earnest it is, for some reason really earnest love songs, regardless of lyrical quality always seem to make me very happy. I love Kanye West (actually a good autotune rule of thumb is that if it involves Kanye I’m okay with it.  If it involves The Black Eyed Peas I am not okay with it.  I also love that Mr Hudson’s band is called The Library.  I think that’s nice, more bands should have bookish names. Here is a youtube link.  Hopefully it will work.  If not I will fix it when I get home.

In other news Gird Your Loins and 365 Days of Heaving Bosoms are tied for the lead in the poll below.  I’m leaning towards 365 Days of Heaving Bosoms as it would be the easiest to adapt for other genres but am willing to be convinced otherwise if you feel strongly about any of the other names on offer.  I know at least one person is a big fan of Tumescence (buut then what girl isn’t? Hi yo!)

Genre project

So I want to do it.  I want to take a year and devote it to reading the much maligned genre of Romance.  The next year may be devoted to another genre and then the next to another and so and so forth if the interest continues to hold me.

So help me out by participating in the poll below:

Maybes

There was another maybe sighting of Oliver on Saturday on the other side of the allotments near our house.  We went over to investigate and discovered a black and white cat with a blue collar who was not Oliver at all.  It was hard to keep the dejection from coming through as we thanked the very nice man who had tried so hard to help us out.  But our thanks were sincere, if tinged with sadness, and I imagine (as a cat owner himself) that he understood.

Other than that, there’s still been no sign of Oliver anywhere.  We’ve put his litter box outside in the hopes that the smell of himself might bring him back.  We’ve set some dry food in the window sill as well.  Both have remained untouched. Hopefully this week he will find his way back.

In other Maybe news I am thinking of starting a new blog project.  The idea is sort of cribbed from the AV Club, and really any number of blogs, where they have a few series running right now, like My Year of Flops and Nashville or Bust, where the authour spends a year devoting his or her time to watching movies that failed commercially or listening to country western music.

There’s a woman out there right now who’s wearing the same dress every day (with different accessories).

What I was thinking of doing was devoting a year of my life to genre literature.  This could be a multi-year project with many genres covered.  Romance, Mystery, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Noir, etc.  My initial plan (and by plan disjointed thoughts I was thinking as I tried to fall asleep last night) was to start with romance novels as for the last couple years they have been my go to books whenever I start to feel stressed out.  I like to think I could examine these books with an awesome mix of humour, critical thinking and, you know, fun.

If I were to do something like this would you, dear reader(s), follow me on my epic genre reading journey?  Would you care?  What would be a good name for this project?  Has someone else already done it?  Does that even matter?