Recently in literature Category

This is from my new favorite book. Nobody sue me.

"Julie and Faye walk past a stucco house the color of Pepto-Bismol. A VW bus is backing out of the driveway. It sings the high sad song of the Volkswagen-in-Reverse. Faye wipes her forehead with her arm. She feels moist and sticky. She feels like something hot in a plastic bag."

It's in a story by David Foster Wallace called "Little Expressionless Animals." There is like deeper stuff than that in the story but this kind of stuff is why I like reading, the nice turns of phrase. The literal part. I mean I like other stuff about reading too but this stuff is like candy, instant-gratification stuff. Oh yeah my new favorite book is um it has a really long name the Paris Review Book of Heartbreak Madness Sex etcetera. I got it at the mall in Walnut Creek.

You know what is pretty good for breakfast? Leftover cornbread in milk.

Last week I watched "Bride and Prejudice," the new Indian musical adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." It was SO GOOD! Indian musicals are great because they are all about being lush and showy and melodramatic, so you can't even fault them for cheesiness because it's what makes it good. Also, it is really cool how Indian movies take inspiration from Western influences. I know imperialism sucks and everything, but I think it's really interesting to see how Indian culture takes things like American music and language and adopts them and makes them its own, interpreting these influences in specifically Indian ways. It's as if by incorporating Western influences into an Indian cultural context and sensibility, instead of just trying to be like England or the U.S. in all ways, India manages to maintain a strong, independent cultural identity. The U.S. co-opts "exotic" Indian culture, but India co-opts American stuff too. I think it's really important to acknowledge the communication and exchange between cultures and not just simplify it into a colonizer/victim equation.

As "Bride and Prejudice" includes both Indian and Western influences in its execution, the film also addresses issues of imperialism directly: In Austen's novel, the culture clash between Elizabeth and Darcy is mostly a matter of class, but the movie's Elizabeth (Lalita) and Darcy (Darcy) are Indian and U.S. American, respectively. Darcy is interested in investing in India in the form of swanky hotels for Westerners, and Lalita, well aware of national politics, thinks that's bullshit. Overall, though, the movie seems to be commenting on the existence of complicated social issues without taking a preachy stand on them, and, like the original novel, strikes a good balance between entertainment and social awareness.

Hey you guys. I got a job as a copy editor. I'm going to work for the Vanguard, the Portland State newspaper. Do you even realize what this means?

1. I get to correct people's grammar and get PAID.
2. I don't have to work at the mall anymore.
3. There is no dress code.
4. I get to work in the sub-basement. It's extra underground, which is neat.
5. I get to keep the same schedule every single week.
6. I will be slightly less screwed when I'm looking for a real job after I graduate.
7. My boss commutes by bike from Milwaukee.
8. I will officially be more conservative than somebody. (The university also has a more liberal paper, the Rearguard, and a more conservative one, the Portland Spectator.)
9. I am "getting involved" in campus life. Or whatever.
10. I have something non-disappointing to tell my grandparents.

Yeah. I'm really excited.

I keep changing my mind about whether or not to publish this entry. I published it, then I unpublished it when I decided it was too whiny and embarrassing, then I read Krystal's post from the 22nd and changed my mind again. For now I'm leaving it up, so if you hate self-pitying crap just don't read it.

In Born Into This, the biographical film about Charles Bukowski, he talks about how every morning he would get up and write all day, then go to work at the post office. Charles Bukowski was a real writer. I like the idea of getting up every morning and writing. That's the first sign that I'm not a real writer. I like the idea of it.

It's been pointed out that any time you spend thinking about how you like the idea of being something, or how cool it's going to be when you succeed, makes it that much less likely that you are actually going to become that thing or succeed. The people who succeed don't think about the idea of succeeding. They only think about what they're doing that they're succeeding at, because they have to do it, they're compelled to do it and they can't think about anything else. I'm not one of those people. I like the idea of being a writer. I like thinking about living in an apartment crammed with books, sitting at my desk in a nest of empty soda pop cans madly typing away at my next masterpiece. I like the idea of being respected in a small circle of intelligent peers. I like the idea of being published in cool magazines and going to parties where it's OK to talk about things like the nature of language or the merits of Victorian authors and people don't just think you're trying to be impressive, or if you are it's OK because everyone's trying to impress eachother and everyone has a fighting chance. I spend alot of time thinking about the fabulous writing career and accompanying lifestyle that await me.

What I don't do is lay down any background work to actually get myself there. I don't wake up every morning and write. I don't develop my style, or think about the structure and concepts of what I'm working on. I don't plan larger projects. I don't subscribe to the magazines I respect, or schedule informational interviews so I can try to get internships there. I'm pretty sure that one day I'm going to just get a phonecall out of the blue from an editor I've never introduced myself to, offering me a lucrative sum to write a weekly column on whatever I feel like. Syndicated. This is why I'm not a real writer, and this is why at 24 I'm not out of college yet but my career is already over.

I've been requested to include here my write-up of the Gilbert & Sullivan satire of Oscar Wilde. It's extremely brisk and unedited, so if anyone wants to lift it for their own class it probably isn't worth it. Those who attend PSU and hate writing real papers should take classes from Prof. Holloway, because he lets you turn in stuff like this and get credit for it. You can read the original work in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Edition, Volume 2. BTW Wilde was very flattered by Gilbert's portrait and didn't get mad.

"If You're Anxious for to Shine in the High Aesthetic Line" by W.S. Gilbert is a very funny mockery of Oscar Wilde’s and his associates’ aestheticism. Besides being funny, it also helps the reader gain more of an understanding of what the aesthetes were like (or perceived to be like), the ways people reacted to them, and their place in society.

Although many of those who favored aestheticism were undoubtedly, for lack of a better word, earnest, the movement also seemed to be prone to pretentiousness, which this piece highlights well with lines like, “In short, my medievalism’s affectation, / Born of a morbid love of admiration!” Since it was by definition a very attractive and alluring genre, it’s easy to imagine throngs of young literature appreciators, and the original aesthetes themselves, emulating aestheticism not solely because they were fond of its ideas, but more because it made them seem cool.

The other side of this of course is that people fell for it. Gilbert sums up quite well the instant credibility often given to people who seem to consider themselves smart and serious, even if they’re unintelligible: “If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, / Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!” Gilbert is basically the one shouting that the emperor wears no clothes. The way he pokes fun a people who take themselves really seriously is brilliant because rather than trying to cut Wilde down by outsmarting him, he accomplishes it by outdumbing him. Even if the ideas behind aestheticism really do hold water, it still doesn’t matter if nobody else understands them. Oscar Wilde is also a good choice for mockery because he himself constantly mocked other people in his work, so when he becomes the object of Gilbert’s satire he gets to have a taste of his own medicine.

The structure of the verse and the rhyme structure is well set up for the stage, to the point that when reading it one can imagine how it would sound as a musical number in the theater. It holds up well over time because pretentious artists still exist in modern variations, and are still received by others in a similarly nonplussed fashion.

Walter Pater was one of the original proponents of the Victorian epicurean way of thinking, which is basically that life is short and you might as well enjoy yourself. Pater said that much more elegantly though, as painstakingly crafting his prose was one way he chose to savor his brief moment of consciousness. Thank you, Walter Pater, for reminding me why I study English.