Tom, Tom, You Got It All Wrong

T.S. Eliot can kiss my ass. I know he's dead, but still. Let's get this straight: April is not the cruelest month. November is the cruelest month. November could beat up April and steal its lunch money ten times out of ten.

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Work has been more demanding lately: Lesson plans to create and serve up, homework to grade, special projects to evaluate, tests to inflict -- all that good stuff. Then what did I do? I got the bright idea that we needed a writing center for the students here at the university, so now I'm in the midst of a pilot program that was slated to end on November 30. Then what did I do? I got the bright idea that we should extend the program until December 7. So far we've had a great response from the students and it looks as if the writing center is on its way to becoming a reality. All good news of course, but just between you and me, this work nonsense has a way of tearing one's bloghouse down room by room.

Aren't people who waste valuable blog space whining about their busy-ness annoying? I don't mean to be tiresome. Actually, some great news came out of November: I'll be a member of the English Language and Literature Department next year. It will involve a bit more responsibility, but one of the play-pretties they dangled in front of me was a chance to teach Children's Literature. I'm excited but a little nervous because I've never taught a literature class before. I probably should try to make Peter Sieruta my newest and bestest friend.

As you can imagine, my reading stats were nearly flat this month. Only 6 books, and one was a movie novelization:

1. The Women - T.C. Boyle. I was prepared to dislike this book because of its stupid cover, but to my surprise, I enjoyed Boyle's take on Frank Lloyd Wright and his relationships with three different mistresses as seen through the eyes (in hilarious footnotes) of an older Japanese architect who, as a young man was an acolyte of "Writeo-San". Robust and highly entertaining. I have a feeling that if I read Loving Frank now, I wouldn't find it quite so interesting.

2. Embroideries - Marjane Satrapi. Over a samovar of hot tea, Marjane's grandmother, mother and other female relatives and friends comiserate about love and relationships and express their disdain for the antiquated notions about women still present in Iranian society. Embroideries isn't as dramatic of a story as Persepolis, but Satrapi's graphic style is as compelling as ever.

3. Beloved - Toni Morrison. My Cracked Spinz book group read this one and it's also a pick from my Pulitzer shelf. I loved Morrison's use of language and her slightly chaotic arrangement of the the story's strange and horrifying elements. Faulkner Guy is all lit up because Beloved and Morrison remind him of William Faulkner.

4. Letter From Peking - Pearl S. Buck. Not one of Buck's best. I would say she phoned this one in, but it was one of those phones with two tin cans and a piece of string. There were a couple of errors with characters' ages that were irritating.

5. Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh. We read this one for BOOKLEAVES and of course it's a re-re-re-re-read. This time, I was struck by just how rich Harriet's parents are. A cook, a nanny and a cleaning woman. Wow. I also thought about how this novel takes place during the same time as Mad Men. We weren't sure of the time frame at first because we were a little thrown off by the use of bottles of ink in Harriet's classroom, but one of the kids makes a reference to Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare which puts it around 1961-63. I tried to date it by the movie Mr. Waldenstein and Ole Golly take Harriet to, but there's no such movie. Ha! Good one, Louise Fitzhugh. Then there's Harriet. I still love her so much it hurts.

6. Dead Poets Society - N.H. Kleinbaum and Tom Schulman. This is a book/movie event for my Intermediate Conversation class. The style is pretty bad, but I made all those irritating synonyms for "said" and the unrelenting torrent of adverbs work for me as vocbulary practice. The storyline frustrates me more and more every time I encounter it (Mr. Keating seems curiously flat) but my students seemed to respond well as evidenced in one assignment in which they wrote letters to the character of their choice.

Library Loot: A Nice Browse Through the Stacks

I've been having trouble sleeping. Stupid insomnia. If only I could teach classes in the middle of the night! After dragging myself through my nine o'clock class on Tuesday, I had a break until 3 o'clock. Plenty of time to walk home and have a nice nap... or visit my library. Bed or books? The decision wasn't that difficult. The library was closer.

1. Letter From Peking - Pearl S. Buck. A 1957 novel about a couple who has been brutally separated by the Communist revolution. The husband is a Chinese-American professor and he chose to remain behind in China. Probably not a good move. She's American and in the United States with their teenaged son who is feeling conflicted about being 25% Chinese. I lovehate and hatelove the cover of this edition. Sketches of Chinese scenery bathed in a red background and Betty from Mad Men in the foreground. Her lipstick matches China. The checkout bar code covers the letter (presumably from Peking) that she's holding.

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Here's a shot of the back cover. Is that taupe? Whatever it is, it's not her color. She looks sort of zombie-ish or possibly ready to hurl all over the title object.

2. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler. I don't even know what this 1880s novel (Hi, Tuffi!) is about, but it's always there by itself at the tail end of all that fiction by Pearl Buck. It's kind of funny -- Buck was insanely prolific and Butler wrote just this novel. Strange bedfellows.

3. Passionate Uncertainty: Inside The American Jesuits - Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi. I know almost nothing about Catholicism, but I'm under the impression that the Jesuits are a heady combination of tough-guy and intellectual. Throw in the fact that this 2002 study is about American Jesuits and that can't help but make for powerful, intriguing reading.

4. Adventures with the Buddha - Jeffery Paine. This is an anthology of writings by nine Westerners who have travelled to Asia over the past century to become better acquainted with Buddhism. I recognized one of the authors, Janwillem van de Wetering, whose 1973 book The Empty Mirror was a refreshing read. Based on the variety of people and experiences in these pages, this volume looks like fun.

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The bilingual self-checkout machine was being hostile to me today (no friendly computerized female voice, red flashing light, "Restricted" on the screen) because I was a little bit late with my previous haul. Last year, I meekly put the books I wanted back on the shelf and left, chastened. This year, I snorted derisively at the machine and silently handed my loot to the student desk clerk and he swiftly overrode the veto. Take that, BSCM! Nobody --no machine, anyway -- tells Bybee to eff off in two languages when she's operating on about three hours of sleep! Actually, everything worked out for the best. I must have made the student worker nervous, because instead of being due back in early December, I don't have to return this stack until late April! Library Loot, indeed!

All About Alcott

It's a little late in the year, but I simply cannot resist this challenge. Louisa May Alcott -- my fellow Sagittarian -- wouldn't want me to, either.

Wish me luck and pass the blancmange.

Reader's Block-tober

I can't help but be a little disappointed -- only six books for October. With huge amounts of classroom prep and a conference to attend this month, I ran into a little bit of reader's block. I had counted on the Readathon to bring up my numbers and make the rest of my journey to 100+ books a cakewalk, but it just didn't happen. (Well, the Readathon happened, but I didn't.)

It's not all gloomy news, though -- I made some progress on a couple of challenges. Here's what got read:

1. The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer. An enormously satisfying war novel. I discussed it a little more here. I'm hoping to find out more about the alleged movie remake.

2. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane. The book and the movie!

3. The Lost City of Z - David Grann. I thought the Arctic explorers were tough guys, but they had nothing on Percy Fawcett, a middle-aged former army officer who carved a career out of exploring the Amazon repeated times for the Royal Geographic Society. Fawcett seemed to have a freakishly strong constitution, since he survived countless brushes with death in hostile (man and nature) conditions and he was possessed with an iron will. He was also simply obsessed.

In 1925, Fawcett embarked on a quest to find an ancient and highly-developed civilization that he staunchly believed had existed in the jungles of Brazil. He took along his son Jack and Jack's best friend, Raleigh Rimmell. The trio was never seen again, although many tried to locate them for decades.
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Nearly 80 years after Fawcett's disappearance, reporter David Grann decided to investigate. Meticulous research, crisp reporting and mesmerizing writing by Grann coupled with dozens of captivating photos from the past and present make this book worthy of every bit of praise it has received since its publication last year.

4. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon - Crystal Zevon. I'm really disappointed in this oral biography/memoir of singer-songwriter Warren Zevon. Whether his songs were goofy, sardonic, cutting, edgy, tender or just plain good storytelling wedded to the perfect pop hook, Zevon was startlingly and unfailingly brilliant at his craft. I expected the same level of perfection with the story of his life.

Instead, fans have been presented with a chronologically-arranged volume of anecdotes from people who were in (and out) of his life. Many of the names are familiar -- Jackson Browne, for example -- but many are not, which makes things a little confusing. A list explaining who they are and how they fit in finally appears, but as an appendix. Hardly any of them have a talent for the good anecdote.

Crystal Zevon (Warren's former wife and lifelong friend) has thrown everything, including frequent glimpses into Zevon's diaries. Again, there's no sense of discernment. Unfortunately, Zevon's private writings reflect almost zero of his genius for writing and the dullness is painfully repeated by multiple entries. Since Crystal Zevon was close to Warren, the book suffers from over-subjectivity and has a claustrophobic quality at times.

Zevon had a dark side and he could be a nasty and mean SOB even after he stopped drinking. I've never objected to seeing any of my literary, cinematic or musical heroes and heroines portrayed with warts galore, but let it be done by a biographer (such as A. Scott Berg or Blake Bailey) whose talents in this area are equal to Zevon's talent in songwriting. A little distance and objectivity would greatly benefit the story of this enigmatic performer.

5. True Grit - Charles Portis. I gulped this 1968 novel down in a couple of sittings. With the coolness and steeliness of purpose that a Harry Callahan or a Paul Kersey might exhibit, 14-year-old Mattie Ross engages the services of one Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn to help her track down Tom Chaney, the hired hand who killed her father. The incident is recounted by Mattie 50 years later. She's a powerful, quirky and often unintentionally funny narrator. When it comes to voice, Portis has all the goods.

In this edition, there's a very entertaining afterword by Donna Tartt, who also read the audiobook. I'm squeamish at worst and uncertain at best when it comes to the spoken book but I'd tramp through the pattiest of cow pastures in cowboy boots a size too small to get my ears next to this one.

6. The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald: Thirty-Five Years Later - Sheilah Graham. A lovely mixture of literary and Hollywood gossip, although it irritated me that Sheilah kept having to remind her readers how irresistible she was to men, from her short-lived engagement to the Marquis of Donegall at the beginning of the book to her almost-seduction at the hands of Gary Cooper near the end of the book. It's nice that she and Scottie (Scott and Zelda's daughter) remained friends. Fitzgerald aficionados will probably feel as if they've seen much of the same ground covered before.

Oh Yes

I was searching through some old emails for my son's address written in Hangul, and found this message that he sent me last summer:

I heard of a quote by a Korean patriot, Ahn Jung-Gun.

He said, "Not reading a book, even for a day, makes me sick."

I though you would like it.

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According to Ahn Jung-Gun's Wikipedia page, Ahn also wrote: "Unless reading everyday, thorns grow in the mouth."

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Although my own response to a nonreading day is a moderate case of crankiness, I completely understand his sentiments.