Mildred D. Taylor's Let the Circle be unbroken

Mildred D. Taylor’s Let the Circle be Unbroken
Begin: 04/25/07
End: 04/29/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten
Reason: Unread.
Gene: Fiction. Children’s Literature. .
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1981
Fog Index: 6.8/92% are harder.
Flesch Index: 78.27/94% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.1/92% are harder.
Complex Words: 6%/92% has more.
Number: First.
Synopsis: This is the sequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. It follows after that summer of that previous novel. Cassie is still the narrator and in this book, she has to content with the trial of T.J., the arrival of a cousin and Stacey running off to look for work.
Thoughts: I really enjoyed this novel. It did not find it quite as amazing as Roll of Thunder but it was still really impressive and I am more than willing to read more about the Logan Family. It had some really good quotes but I failed to note where they were so I now have no idea.

I don’t know what it is about African-American literature that draws me so but it is definitely worth some time to try and discover.

I guess I don’t have much to say other than that!

Mark Edmundson's Why Read?

Mark Edmundson’s Why Read
Begin: 04/19/07
End: 04/26/07
Quality: Nine out of Ten
Reason: Random
Gene: Non-Fiction. Literary Criticism.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2004
Fog Index: 13.6/45% are harder.
Flesch Index: 51.7/52% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 10.9/45% are harder.
Complex Words: 14%/53% has more.
Number: First.
Synopsis: This book was basically just Edmundson’s (NEH/Daniels Family Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Virginia) talking about the problems currently with a liberal arts education and then getting into his ideas of the purpose and aim of the liberal arts education and well, why we should read.

Why Read:

Well, there is a lot to write about here, to reflect on and to tease out of the text. The book starts off with a very dim assessment of the university system and a critique of certain aspects of out culture. Edmundson believes that universities are geared more towards these days and that most of the students are taken in by “the culture of cool”. He goes on to lay quite a bit of blame on the way that Universities compete for students. He believes this has made universities advocate for “more comfortable, less challenging environments, places where almost no one failed, everything was enjoyable, and everyone was nice”

He talks quite a bit of students today and also of television. “TV is a tranquilizing medium, a soporific, inducing in its devotees a light narcosis. It reduces anxiety, steadies and quiets the nerves. But it also deadens.” (11)

His seeming answer to all of these things was a better liberal arts education. He believes that central to the true education in the humanities were the activity of discovering oneself as one is in great writing and that literature allows glimpses of the self that could be, a self and a world, for that matter, that you can begin creating.

He talks about the idea of a Final Narrative. This seems to coincide with a worldview or an ideology, the ideas, principles and commitments which argument, logic and analysis are unlikely to change. He sees literature (and a liberal arts education) as a way for students to develop their final narratives, a way of growing and developing. He uses this Emerson quote as a explanation of how he sees human development. “The life of man, is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes of all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end.” (29)

He talked briefly about Ironists. Those human beings who are aware that anything they know and believe in is subject to change and be replaced by another idea. Those who hold even their most fervent beliefs with doubt and speculation.

He believes it is extremely important to encounter works with various beliefs and put them through what he calls, “imagined experience”. He believes that students can find their highest mode of being through encounters with what he likes to call, “the best of what has been known and thought.” AKA Literature.
“For the simple reason that for many people, the truth-the circle, the vision of experience- that they’ve encountered through socialization is inadequate. It doesn’t put them into a satisfying relation to experience.” (52)

A literary critic makes a author or book’s implicit wisdom explicit.

Edmundson wants literature to be seen as a sort of secular holy writ, a means for shaping ourselves. Or as he says, “Literature is, I believe, our best goad toward new beginnings, our best chance for what we might call secular rebirth…the fact remains that in literature there abide major hopes for human renovation.” (3)

That’s All I have for now. I am going to give you a shitload of quotes. I will be back sometime in the next month to talk about what I feel about literature but that will take a while.

“They are the questions that should lie at the core of a liberal arts education. Who am I? What might I become? What is this world in which I find myself? How might I be changed for the better? We ought to value great writing preeminently because it enjoins us to ask and helps us to answer these questions, and others like them” (5)

His seeming thesis was as follows….“The function of a liberal arts education is to use major works of art and intellect to influence one’s Final narrative, one’s outermost circle of commitments. A liberal education uses books to rejuvenate, reaffirm, replenish, revise, overwhelm, replace, in some cases (alas) even help begin to generate the web of words that we’re defined by….A larguage, Wittgenestein thought, is a way of life. A new language…is potentially a new way to live.” 31-32

The idea of the Final Narrative seems to coincide with worldview or ideology.
It involves the “ultimate set of terms that we use to confer value on experience. It’s where our principles are manifest. When someone talks feelingly about the Ten Commandments, or the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, or the innate goodness of human beings, or about all human history being the history of class conflict, then, in all likelihood, she has revealed something close to the core of her being. She’s touched on her ultimate terms of commitment, the point beyond which argument and analysis are unlikely to go, at least very quickly.” (25)

Or as Rorty explains it….“All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise of our friends and contemplate for our enemies, our long term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes. They are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives.” (25-26)


Rorty finds that certain people are “always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change, always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves.”

Ironists hold even their most fervent commitments with doubt. They are aware that anything they know is subject to change, to replace by other ideas.


“What Proust is describing is an act of self-discovery on the part of the reader. Immersing herself in Proust, the reader may encounter aspects of herself that, while they have perhaps been in existence for a long time, have remained unnamed, undescribed, and therefore in a certain sense unknown. One might say that the reader learns the language of herself; or that she is humanely enhanced, enlarging the previously constricting circle that made up the border of what she’s been. One might also say, using another idiom, one that has largely passed out of circulation, that her consciousness has been expanded.” (4)

“the fact remains that in literature there abide major hopes for human renovation.” (3)

He sees a couple of things in those who choose to study the liberal arts. “The person who stands on the edge, between regression and progress, past and future, is the one who has made herself ripe for literary education.” (83)


The best literature tends to be a layered experience.” (41)
“But at least they compelled the students to see intellectual work as a confrontation between two people, read and author, where the stakes mattered.” (9)


He finds that taking a deep delight in a book or author is a little like falling in love, but if you want to adapt his or her vision to one’s own life than more than necessary, a critical scrunity is needed.

He finds that literary beauty is the effective interfusion of feeling and thoughts.

The teacher begins the secular dialogue with faith by offering the hypothesis that there is no one human truth about the good life but that there are many human truths, many viable paths.

In a liberal arts education, history is the necessary and profound, rejoined to the liberal arts education.

The test of a book lies in its power to map or transform a life.





“People die miserably every day for lack of what is found in despisted poems-in literary artwork, in other words, that society at large denigrates. My own life, and the lives of others I’ve know offer testimony fdor what Williams has to say. Reading woke me up. It took me from a world of harsh limits unto expanded possibility. Without poetry, without literature and art, I (and I believe many others, too) could well have died miserably. It was this belief in great writing that, thirty years ago, made me become a teacher.” (1)


“So he who would lead a Christ like is he who is perfectly and abosultly himself.” (Oscar Wilde)


“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” (14)

“The most consequential poems offer something that is new-or,one might say ‘truth’, that makes significant life possible. Without such truth, one is in danger of miserable death, the kind of death that can come from living without meaning, without intensity, focus or design.” (2)

W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil
Begin: 04/20/07
End: 04/24/07
Quality: Six out of Ten
Reason: Book Club.
Genre: Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1925
Fog Index: 8.6/82% are harder.
Flesch Index: 74.6/89% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.3/84% are harder.
Complex Words: 8%/86% have more.
Number: First.
Synopsis: Kitty Fane is the wife of a bacteriologist in Hong Kong. She is not only bored by her husband, she despises him a little. The story opens on her and her lover, Charlie Townsend. Her husband takes her to a cholera ridden city in mainland China. And it is their where she discover quite a lot about not only herself, but also her husband and her lover.
Thoughts:

I have a couple of things that I would like to get across from this novel.

First of all, I have to say, that I really took a great disliking to Kitty Fane when I first picked this book up. This very well may have something to do with the large joint that I had smoked before starting on this book. I am not really sure. I just know that especially in that first scene, I wanted to take Ms. Fane across my knee. She was so shallow and self-absorbed and narcissistic.

My distaste for Kitty was also tempered and fueled by the sense of my own connection with her. I have a modest fear of becoming a shallow, self-absorbed and narcissistic faggot. It is something which I try to guard against and so I think when I come across characters which openly hold those characteristics, it irritates me.

I really wish that Maugham had spent more time on Walter. The novel is solely focused on Kitty, but I found Walter to be interesting. I also (and this probably seems odd since I just compared myself to Kitty) found myself connecting to Walter quite a bit. I feel, in some ways, that I am that hyper intelligent and sensitive man who doesn’t really know what to do socially and has little to no ambition.

I found the Kitty’s character arc in this story very interesting. She starts out as just a love starved shallow women but through a number of episodes becomes really quite the person of character. We find her at the end of the story, talking to her father, wanting a better fate for her daughter, wanting her daughter to really be a person of substance and independent. She goes from Kitty the social climber, in the beginning, to Kitty the ardent feminist in the end.

Okay. I think that is all I have to say for the moment. I have a few other thoughts but they are still floating half-formed behind my medulla oblongata and I don’t really feel like fishing them out at the moment.

Here are some quotes.

“You really are the most vain and fatuous ass that it’s ever been my bad luck to run across,” she said. (232)

“Freedom! That was the thought that sung in her heart so that even though the furniture was so dim, it was irrescent like the mist over a river where the morning sun fell upon it. Freedom! Not only freedom from a bond that irked, and a companionship which depressed her; freedom, not only from the death which had threatened, but freedom from the love that had degraded her; freedom from all spiritual ties, the freedom of a disembodied spirit, and with freedom, courage, and a valiant unconcern for whatever was to come.” (210)

“Don’t you know that I’m a human being, unhappy and alone, and I want comfort and sympathy and encouragement; oh , can’t you turn a minute away from God and give me a little compassion; not the Christian compassion that you have for all suffering things, but just human compassion for me?” (204)

“I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possibly to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.” (196)

“Let me be frank just this once, Father. I’ve been foolish and wicked and hateful. I’ve been terribly punished. I’m determined to save my daughter from all that. I want her to be fearless and frank. I want her to be a person, independent of others because she is possessed of herself, and I want her to take life like a free man and make a better job of it than I have.” (245)


Sonnet the title was taken from....


"Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,-behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it-he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher, found it not."
--Percy Bysshe Shelley


Walter refers to this on his death bed. Goldsmith's Elegy

Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say
That still a godly race he ran,
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad,
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wondering neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,
That showed the rogues they lied:
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.

Susan Glaspell's The Verge

Susan Glaspell's The Verge
Begin: 04/19/07
End: 04/19/07
Quality: Seven out of Ten
Reason: Modern Drama
Genre: Drama. American Literature. Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1921
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words: N/A
Number: Never.
Synopsis: Well, it's really all about Claire. She is a woman who is trying to create a new type of plant and the play focus on the reasons Claire is doing this and how that effects the people in her life.
Thoughts:

I have to say that although I really did like this play, that while I felt strangely connected to some of the angst/melancholia that Claire was going through, I did find myself a little confused by the whole thing. Too much symbolism perhaps? Claire says at one point, “There’s something underneath-an open way-down below the way that words can go” And I think that sums up the play for me in many ways. It’s like I got this play on a visceral level that makes it hard to explain not only my connection to it but also what I saw going on and revealed in the aforementioned play. It’s like its accessible only by my unconscious self and much of what I perceived and felt about it is still inexpressible at the moment. Perhaps, it must marinate in my mind for a little while longer. I do feel that this is one of those plays which will lurk in my head for a good long time, peeping out at me at inopportune times.

Let me try and give some of the thoughts that I can muster up in the next few minutes before I start on all the stupid reports that I must do for my jobby job.

Claire is more than unhappy by her current circumstances. Claire is pushed down and broken.
She is a woman of vast intellect and talent and she has very little outlets for that. She is expected to be the wife and mother above all else. This has disturbed her severely. She so wants to break free. She very much reminded me of that Nina Simone song, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”. And she is very much treated, in the first act especially, like the beloved eccentric pet. It reminded me a bit of Ibsen’s Doll House and how Helmer treated Nora. Neither her husband nor her lover nor her romantic love seems to know what to do with her.


The use of plants was, I believe, a symbol for Claire's creativity. Glaspell was possibly speaking of her own struggles with living in a society which devalued women while having this enormous talent and intellect.


Nor am I really sure what else to talk about.

Anyway. Here are some quotes that I found to be very relevant.


"You think I can't smash anything? You think life can't break up, and go outside what it was? Because you've gone dead in the form in which you found yourself, you think that's all there is to the whole adventure? And that is called sanity. And made a virtue-to lock one in. You never worked with things that grow! Thing that take a sporting chance-go mad-that sanity mayn't lock them in-from life untouched-from life-that waits." (231)

Dick: Anyway, I think he might have some idea that we can't very well reach each other.
Harry: Damn nonsense. What have we got intelligence for?
Dick: To let each other alone, I suppose. Only we haven't enough to do it.
Harry: Don't tell me I'm getting nerves. But the way some of you people talk is enough to make even an aviator jumpy. Can't reach each other! Then we're fools. if I'm here and you're there, why can't we reach each other?
Dick: Because I am I and you are you.
(233)

Claire: No; I'm going on. They have been shocked out of what they were-into something they were not; they've broken from the forms in which they found themselves. They are alien. Outside. That's it, outside; if you-know what I mean.
...
Claire: Out there-lies all that's not been touched-lies life that waits. Back here-the old pattern, done again, again and again. So long done it doesn't even know itself for a pattern-in immensity. But this-has invaded. Crept a little way into-what wasn't. Strange lines in life unused. And when you make a pattern new you know a pattern's made with life. And then you know that anything may be-if only you know how to reach it." (238)

Adelaide: Come, come, now-let's not juggle words.
Claire: How dare you say that to me, Adelaide. You who are such a liar and thief and whore with words!
...
Claire: I respect words.
Adelaide: Well, you'll please respect me enough not to dare use certain words to me!
Claire: Yes, I do dare. I;m tired of what you do-you and all of you. Life-experience-values-calm-sensitive worlds which raise their heads as indications. And you pull them up-to decorate your stagnant little minds-and think that makes you- And because you have pulled that word from that life that grew if you won't let one who's honest and aware and troubled, try to reach through to-to what she doesn't know is there"
(242)
“My love you’re going away-
Let me tell you how it is with me;
I want to touch you you-somehow touch you once
Before I die-
Let me tell you how it is with me.
I do not want to work,
I want to be;
Do not want to make a rose or make a poem-
Want to lie upon the earth and know.
Stop doing that!-words going into patterns;
They do it sometimes when I let come what’s there
Thoughts take pattern-then the pattern is the thing
But let me tell you how it is with me
All that I do or say-it is what it comes from
A drop lifted from the sea
I want to lie upon the earth and know
But-scratch a little dirt and make a flower;
Scratch a bit of brain-something like a poem
Stop doing that. Help me stop doing that!” Claire-245

Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

Begin: 04/15/07
End: 04/18/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten
Reason: Newbry.
Genre: Children's Literature. Fiction. African-American Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1976.
Fog Index: 7.0/ 91% are harder.
Flesch Index: 76.9/92% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.3/91% are harder.
Complex Words: 6%/91% have more.
Number: Twice?
Synopsis: This is the story of a black family living in deppression-era Mississipi and struggling with poverty and racism. The narrator, nine year old cassie logan, comes to discover a lot about the world she lives in during the course of this story, which takes place over about a year.
Thoughts:

Brilliant. I forget exactly how much I fucking loved this story. It's almost painful how poigant and moving it is. How much you grow to love and adore these characters. Cassie, Little Man, Big Ma, Papa, Mama, Mr. Morrison (who i always imagine as somehow related to Toni Morrison for some reason.)

I am not sure what it is about African American Literature that has such an appeal to me. Is it the same thing which draws me to African American music? Perhaps. Something to be looked into.

The story flows quite quickly. It's almost a three hundred page book but you get so connected to the characters and so concerned about what is going to happen that it just flies by and then you long for more.

Their is just something so powerful about this close knit family doing anything they can to not only hang unto their land and their dignity but also to try and improve things for their neighbors and friends.

I am at a loss to talk about it right now. I am not sure why so I am going to leave off here. (I guess my literature degree really is good for nothing)

"You see that fig tree over yonder, Cassie? Them other trees all around...that oak and walnut, they're a lot bigger and they take up more room and give so much shade they almost overshadow that little ole fig. But that fig's got roots that run deep, and it belongs in that yard as much as that oak and walnut. It keeps on blooming, bearing good fruit year after year, knowing all the time it'll never get as big as them other trees. Just keeps on growing and doing what it gotta do. It don't give up. It give up, it'll die. There's a lesson to be learned from that little tree, Cassie girl,'cause we're like it. We keep doing what we gotta, and we don't give up. We can't"
(206)

Dante Alighieri's Paradiso

Dante Alighieri's Paradiso
Begin: 04/09/07
End: 04/18/07
Quality: Seven Out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Classics. Epic Poetry. Italian Literature.
Original Language: Italian.
Date of Publication: 1314.
Fog Index: 11.5/63% are harder.
Flesch Index: 64.4/73% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 8.8/66% are harder.
Complex Words: 10%/71% have more complex words.
Number: Once?
Synopsis: Beatrice gives Dante a tour of the Heavens.
Thoughts:

I never really have a problem with getting through the Inferno. Purgatory is a little tougher but I can do it but Paradiso is always insanely tough for me to complete. I like hearing the stories of the sinners but paradiso is just chocked full of far too much medieval theology and cosmology and it makes it extremely tough for me to get through as a result.

I am not even sure what to make of it. I really understood the set-up of hell and purgatory but getting my mind around ptomleic astronomy was extremely difficult. The spheres of the heavens were just not as simple to imagine as the circle of hell or the terraces of purgatory. And Dante and Beatrice just kept on talking some much damn theology.

I still gave it a seven because it is one of the classics of western literature but maybe next time I will stop reading as soon as Dante get's to the top of purgatory cause I just can't make it into paradiso.

People of Paper by Salvador
Begin: 04/09/07
End: 04/13/07
Quality: Nine Out of Ten.
Reason:. Book Club
Genre: Magical Realism. Metafiction. Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2006.
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words: N/A
Number: Never.
Synopsis: I am not quite sure how I would be able to explain this story, to somehow create a nice and little synopsis of this rather complicated and interconnected work. The main protagonist in this story seems to be centered on Fernando de la Fe and his daughter, Merced. They move from Mexico to California. Once ensconced in El Monte, de la Fe gathers the local carnation picker gang to wage war on Saturn. That is the main story but it is a lot more complicated than that. A score of characters gets involved as well as the author himself becoming a main participant in the drama.


Thoughts: Hot Damn! This was a great fucking book. It was a little slow in the beginning but it picked up and got me so totally engrossed in it. The richness of the prose, the implicit sadness weaving it’s way throughout the story, the characters who become so real, who become like old friends. This was a great fucking book.

I just want to touch on a few things.

The style of the novel was so powerful. It was amazing to me that Plascencia was able to successfully blending magical realism with metafiction and still have such a odd features to the text of the story itself and still make it work.

I also love the way that sadness weaved its way in and out of the story. You could almost taste the texture of the sadness. It was unbelievably rich.

Anyway. I’m tired. I want to talk more about this work, but I’m just beat so here are a few quotes. I also copied some definitions of the genres of magical realism and metafiction down at the bottom.

“Confirming the theory that equilibrium is always upset by wax and first love.” (44)

Merced de Papel never came to believe in the permanence of love. To her the idea of a romance enduring even a season was a baffling absurdity. “It’s something that burns and disappears into ash.” This is what she said as she swept the floor, pushing the flakes of newsprint into the dustpan.
Any combustion, regardless of its intensity, must ultimately extinguish. Some fires last only for the strike of the flint, while others burn for millions of years before the day of their supernova arrives, leaving only embers and cold debris. And so love need not burn forever, just long enough for paper to smolder. (168)

Ten years later, Charles sold her to a railcar zoo but kept her litter. While sleeping and dreaming of jungle theme parks and safari hats, the three cubs mauled his feet and arms. He survived, and it was he who told me that it is not elephants that never forget, but those we betray. Those we hurt. Species that pass down their memories through generations, transferring their bitterness and resentment to their kin, never able to forgive, their arms always cocked with lettuce in hand. Unable to excuse a change of address or wardrobe. Telling their children and grandchildren that I am their sellout whore. (214)

Magical Realism. : Magic realism (or magical realism) is an artistic genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting.
Metafiction: It is the term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality

Matthew Rettenmund's Boy Culture

Matthew Rettenmund’s Boy Culture
Begin: 04/04/07
End: 04/08/07
Quality: Five Out of Ten.
Reason:. Random.
Genre: Confessional. Fiction. Queer Theory.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1995.
Fog Index: 9.4/74% are harder.
Flesch Index: 65.5/76% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 7.7/72% are harder.
Complex Words: 9%/75% have more complex words.
Number: Never.

First, I have a confession about this book. I totally bought it because Jesse Archer is going to be in the movie version and I am a little into him right now.
He’s half my crush and half my idol right now. Hey! I’m allowed to be a crazy girl sometimes too!

I really loved this book in the beginning. I mean, I was eating it up. I really connected to the character of X. His viewpoint was startling close to mine.
Cynical, funny, witty, perceptive. It’s what I feel that I am. I was a little concerned that I have such a deep connection with whores and strippers. The story progressed and I felt less and less of that connection as his character developed and grew.

It was a realistic arc for his character but I was still disappointed. I felt that it started out fresh and honest and enlivening to me but ended up like every other prostitute story. I didn’t want Pretty Women with some fags thrown in!

I also had an aversion to the sex scenes. I read a lot of erotica, a lot. I live for it.
The sex though wasn’t that hot to me. I had a hard time believing some of it. I mean full anal at 13? Come on now? My willing suspension of disbelief isn’t that strong. Or maybe that does happen and I just missed out. I really don’t know.

And can I just mention how disgusting and vile barebacking is to my mind? Can we completly disregard the looming health crisis on the last three, count them, three decades. I realize it's just a story and it got across a level of trust but fuck that! Wrap it up, mother fuckers!!!

The sex index in the back is pretty funny.

It was also extremely quotable. Hence the page and half of quotes I culled from it. Enjoy. I’m on to People with Paper.

“In that moment of utter surrender to adulation, to desiring perfect, vicarious, romantic deification, I understood what it is to be a gay man. It’s all about intensity.” (17)

“Sex is really so unattractive. It’s all so ugly, I can hardly discuss it.” (19)

“I felt for him, and I thought that to make him feel better, I should feel him up. He’d feel much better very soon, and younger and less useless….if only for an hour or so. But isn’t that always the way? What do you think sleeping around is all about anyway?” (27)

“Lust works in mysterious ways...Attraction is chance.” (30)

“Actually, “manhood” is a pretty canny term. I still call it a dick or a dick or a prick, but “manhood” comes much closer to conveying the complex array of emotions that find their gathering point in the penis, and that compel such foolhardy souls as I to worship that member in a way that embarrasses us in our more rational, guarded moments.” (33)

“Coming isn’t the decisive factor in what you find pleasurable.” (37)

“Anal sex is so abstract. It’s not at all like any novice would ever be able to imagine it. It’s not necessarily messy or bloody (please!), and more than anything, it doesn’t have to hurt one bit. If there is a single part of your being that resents the intrustion, it will hurt proportionally. If you are completely physically and mentally and emotionally prepared, it’s blissfully proportionately. It’s a delicious severance from yourself, a deliverance from that feeling of abdominal guardedness. The tightness goes away (though hopefully not completely) and you are left basking in utterly defenseless relaxation. What could be sexier? Sex isn’t about intensity of physical stimulation, but about degree of abandon. The extent to which you can let yourself go.” (44)

“’You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
“Why not? Whoever made up that rule was born bitter” (121)

“I don’t understand why guys are so willing to fuck around. It seems to devalue your body to pass it around so freely, you know. I mean, I have a lot of sex, but none of it unless I’m being paid for it.” (125)

“Everyone lies, but you only lie about certain things to certain people. You don’t lie about everything to a person. Unless, of course, it’s a person of no consequence.” (161)

Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio

Begin: 04/01/07
End: 04/06/07
Quality: Nine Out of Ten.
Reason:. Reading Plan.
Genre: Classics. Epic Poetry. Italian Literature
Original Language: Italian.
Date of Publication: 1314.
Fog Index: 11.5/63% are harder.
Flesch Index: 64.4/73% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 8.8/66% are harder.
Complex Words: 10%/71% have more complex words.
Number: Once?

I always have an easier time getting through the Inferno than the other two sections of the Divine Comedy. It does help that because of my previous readings, I have a good sense of the structure of the three areas and pre-knowledge.

As when I was reading the Inferno, I was constantly amazed at how Dante seems to have two idols, Christianity and the Roman Republic. Cato guards the approach to Purgatory. (This, by the way, is a giant mountain directly opposite of Jerusalem and the only land on the southern hemisphere) Why are so many pagans stuck in Limbo, including Virgil, when Cato seems to have taken up a post of authority? Why does Cato get off so easy when Brutus is in Satan’s mouth?

Again, medieval theology is so depressing. The terraces of Purgatory, I guess, are a little better than Hell since you have a chance to get out to paradise but still. You have your eyelids sewed shut? What kind of sick masochist thinks that shit up?

I have to say though that I was happy that some of my fellow faggots got to be in purgatory. I was a little worried that we were all stuck in Seventh Circle of Hell, but I guess if you suck dick and love jesus, you get stuck in the seventh terrace of purgatory. Well, that’s a relief! If I start loving Jesus, I’m set!!

I was thinking that when Dante and Beatrice met, it was going to be glorious and loving, ect. Wow. She tore him a new one, huh?

Anyway. Here’s some quotes.

“The world indeed has been stripped utterly/of every virtue; as you said to me, /it cloaks-and is cloaked by-perversity.” (58-59/Canto XVI)

“Brother,/the world is blind, and you come from the world,/You living one continue to assign/to heaven every cause, as if it were/the necessary source of every motion./If this were so, then your free will would be/destroyed, and there would be no equity/in joy for doing good, in grief for evil./The heavens set your appetites in motion-/not all your appetites, but even if/that were the case, you have received both light/on good and evil, and free will, which though/it struggle in its first wars with the heavens,/then conquers all,if it has been well nurtured./On greater power and a better nature/you, who are free, depend; that Force engenders/the mind in you, outside the heavens’ sway./Thus, if the present world has gone astray/in you is the cause, in your it’s to be sought;” (65-83. Canto XVI)

o humankind, born for the upward flight,Why are you drive back by wind so slighy?” (95-96, Canto XII)

John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World

John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World


Begin: 04/03/07
End: 04/03/07
Quality: Two Out of Ten.
Reason:. Modern Drama
Genre: Drama. Irish Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1907
Fog Index: 7.6/88% are harder.
Flesch Index: 77.8/93% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.4/84% are harder.
Complex Words: 3%/98% have more complex words.
Number: Never.


Plotline: Okay. This one is pretty weird. A man named Christy enters this small Irish town and tells a group of people that he killed his father. This makes his something of a town hero with a number of the women wanting to marry him. His father wanders into town a few days later and


his lie is discovered. He then attempts to murder his father to regain the love and respect of the town and more importantly, Pegeen. The town people though bind him up and prepare to hang him for murdering his father. His father stumbles unto this scene and rescues him. Pegeen them laments..."Oh my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western World."


Thoughts:

I really did not like this play. It was weird and stupid and I could really give a shit about the characters. I don't even know what to say about this play. Err. I want the last fucking two hours back!!

Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author

Begin: 04/01/07

End: 04/02/07

Quality: Ten Out of Ten.

Reason:. Modern Drama

Genre: Drama. Italian Literature

Original Language: Italian.

Date of Publication: 1922

Fog Index: 9.3/75% are harder.

Flesch Index: 71.7/85% are harder.

Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.7/78% are harder.

Complex Words: 9%/73% have more complex words.

Number: Once?

Storyline: A theater group is doing dress rehearsal of Pirandello’s “Mixing it up” when they are interrupted by a group of characters in search of their author. The characters, a ragtag family, then proceed to explain their story to the very confused theater manager and theater group.

Wow. Damn good. This fucking Modern Drama anthology continues to blow me away. I might have to take a gander at this book on a regular basis. The sheer richness of some of these plays is unbelievably. And the dialogue here. The sheer absurdity of the play. I loved it.

I just love the fact that Pirandello plays with so many concepts in this play. Reality, creativity, the connection between art and reality, truth, illusion. It’s all here in this play.

A couple things to talk about in this one.

First of all, I simply loved the absolute absurdity in the play. The idea that a group of characters would invade a theater looking for their author is brilliant. I mean brilliant. How did Pirandello come up with that idea? And not only did they invade the theater, they are not docile but combative and bombastic. The “real people” in this play completely fade into the background except perhaps the manager and even he is a pale shade in comparison with the characters.

The philosophy in this play is ever present, which I certainly enjoyed. The father is a veritable walking bombastic sophist. He is constantly spouting things. He is probably the central character in this play and drives the action with his constant soap box. The play is really just about the Father, the step-daughter and the manager. Everyone else fades into the background.

I also loved the fact that reality is viewed not as something solid and substantial but something completely impartial and based on the individual. (Isn’t that Heisenberg’s law or something like that) We have that scene where the father and the step-daughter are talking about when they first met up at the brothel of sorts. (Step-Daughter:“Almost in time!” Father: “No, in time, in time!”)
Okay; I guess that’s it for now. Very good play. Read it. Love it! Oh, and lot’s of quotes. It’s one of those plays where I want to underline everything,

“Oh, sir, you know well that life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible since they are true.” Father, Act I.

“In the sense, that is, that the author who created us alive no longer wished, or was no longer able, materially to put us into a work of art. And this was a real crime, sir; because he who has had the lock to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die. And to live for ever, it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders. Who was Sancho Panza? WQho was Don Abbondio? Yet they live eternally because- live germs as they were- they had the fortune to find a fecundating matrix, a fantasy which could raise and nourish them: make them live for ever!.” Father, Act I.

“But you don’t see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do. Look here! This woman (indicating the mother) takes all my pity for her as a specially ferocious form of cruelty.” (Father, Act I.

“For each one of us has his own reality to be respected before God, even when it is harmful to one’s very self.” (Father, Act I)

“Excuse me, all of you! Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you- if you don’t mind my saying so?” Father, Act II)

“Louder? Louder? What are you talking about? These aren’t matters which can be shouted at the top of one’s voice. If I have spoken them out loud, it was to shame him and have my revenge. But for Madame, it’s quite a different matter.” (Step-Daughter, Act II)