Lazy Reading

I hate when someone takes my or another writer's fiction at face value and reaches the conclusion:

HE IS EXACTLY LIKE THAT.

Who are we to decide anyone is like anything?

It is safe to say if someone is writing about it then yes, they've probably thought about it and I think that's about all you could ever discern without additional information from the writer.

Which may or may not even be true, if you really want to know.

Names

I'm going through a rough patch with my reading, these days. Seems like the books I've read since The End of Mr. Y take these great premises and bury them underneath other things that I don't care about. A sleight of hand where they lure you in with one thing and the next thing you know you're the proud owner of a three humped camel and a future stake in the Brooklyn Bridge. Or they just mail in the ending. A mediocre ending can totally destroy everything else that happened before it.

Up until recently, I'd never been the type to abandon a book, no matter how bad and I've read some crap, mind you. A Confederacy of Dunces, though... I couldn't separate the prose from what came off as a never ending fart joke, Pulitzer winning fart joke, mind you. Had to set that one down and the odds of picking it up again are about as likely as Patricia Highsmith cranking out another Ripley book. (Famous last words)

So I decided to bring in the big guns and go for an open and shut case. The Glass Key came to mind because whether or not Hammett's plots make sense have nothing to do with the enjoyability of his prose. Supposedly the book inspired my FAVORITE MOVIE EVER, Miller's Crossing, and I've been dying to read it since finding that out. I read the first few pages at a bookstore and was hooked instantly but I'd already blown my wad on other things on that particular visit. I was also in a bit of a crash crunch after spending my savings on a new motherboard and cpu (YAY for new computer shininess!) so that was another wrinkle.

My next option, and just to be clear, I have a bunch of self-imposed restraints that prohibit me from basically reading things by the same authors over and over. I want to write well and I think part of writing well comes from reading well. I don't believe that limiting myself to a handful of writers that I adore will accomplish that, considering the plethora of voices that are out there. You just never know when you'll discover your new favorite writer if you don't go out and look for them.

So my next option became Anna Karenina, a highly regarded novel that you may have heard of.
It was selected as the best novel ever written by one group of authors and it's considered one of the best to come out of the 19th century. I dug the book up from my library, where it sat on a stack of Dostoevsky works: Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and House of the Dead, flipped it open and proceeded to read the foreword which is something I never do. Stupid lit scholars never bother to tell you there may be spoilers in the foreword.

After reading how Tolstoy came to the decision to write the book, I was hooked. I brought it downstairs to my desk, put my feet up, skimmed the rest of the foreword and got to a part, right before the prose that said: "Besides being more direct than earlier translations and closer to current speech, it has the great advantage of simplifying the Russian names, so that the reader is no longer confused by all the -evnas and -oviches an can give his full attention to the story as Tolstoy wanted us to do."

I didn't even have to read the next part to know it was coming but the main character's name Karenina is a patronymic: daughter of Karenin, I believe. Someone more familiar with Russian feel free to correct me. The translation uses a simplified naming convention that effectively breaks the title of the novel.

Um... what?

Because I don't speak Russian and will probably never learn it, I like to hope that when I'm reading something translated they're adhering to the rules as much as possible. To me, simplifying an established naming convention doesn't do that. It makes me think of Ellis Island immigrants giving their names to the Yankee gatekeepers, uncultured and unfamiliar with anything un-American, if they couldn't pronounce it they changed it to "to make it easier."

Pardon me for not believing names should be easy.

This isn't an original thought (its' touched on in Percival Everett's Glyph at least) but if you think about it your name is as inherited from your parents as much as your nose or any other genetic condition. In most cases, parents have decided what they're going to call you before they've even seen you, when you're nothing but a dream to them. In the case of my name, I share it with my Father and many members of my extended family. I don't know if this makes me more sensitive because of that, but I think you have to give the proper respect to what a name represents. Most of us do not choose them, they are given to us by people that have been on the planet longer than us.

But it's just fiction right?

Well yes, artistic vision aside, you could say that about any piece of art and that would end the argument.

But I think that art is much more important that and if Tolstoy had chosen to call his characters something easy, something non-Russian, then that's what he would have done. He didn't do that though.

It took me awhile to understand Russian names, and how a single character could have like 6 different names (if you include all the nicknames etc.) but it's really not that hard to piece together if you pay attention. Plus, I like the conversational familiarity provided by people fluidly switching from one affective name to another. It gives me the "This is how they really talk" over there feeling. It would be a big turnoff for me to pick up a book with a different time and setting than my own that sounded just like people talk here and now. Isn't the goal of most fiction to transport you to another time and place?

Anyway, long story short, I need a better translation of Anna Karenina for one and for two I decided to punt and I'm reading Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch because I know I'll enjoy it. Then I'll head back to the bookstore when this holiday madness dies down to grab Middlemarch and see what this Eliot chick is all about.

Us realists need to stick together and so forth.

Technology

Douglas Coupland was on APM's Marketplace discussing his new novel Generation A, a book that takes place in a future without bees.

In the interview, Coupland talks about the early theory of hive collapse being linked to possible cell phone use. Luckily (or so we think) that hasn't turned out to be the case. I say luckily because I agree with him; if the choice came down to saving bees or using rollover minutes I think, given some time, governments would collaborate to design a nice thoughtful memorial to the species.

Sorry honeybee, #speciesfail.

Not that I endorse this line of thinking but let's be realistic people. How many of y'all would give up your handheld wireless internet access to save a species that most folks consider a nuisance?

Now I'm not the type of person that keeps the phone attached to my ear and most of the time I don't even answer it when it rings unless I'm expecting a call (secret's out!) so it wouldn't be a problem for me to do that, but don't think I'm approaching this from a holier than thou position.

I have a commercial grade espresso machine installed in my house. One of the drawbacks (as if there could be drawbacks to having espresso or boiling water whenever you want it, lol) is the unit has a drain that over time gets clogged with coffee residue, the super fine granules that manage to sneak through the portafilter or come out of the brew valve at the end of the shot.

Basically, it requires regular maintenance to keep rancid water from overflowing onto my (wife's) counter top.

There are a couple of ways to do this. One involves disassembling the line and running a wire hanger snake to push the (now) living coffee clog out.

The other way involves filling the little drain box with drain cleaner and waiting.... waiting.... waiting.... until the cleaner eats through the clog. Then I pour a little more in, wait again, flush with hot water, voila.

If you have to guess which method I prefer I'll give you a hint: I don't like taking things apart unless there is absolutely no choice e.g. Asteroid headed toward the Greater Seattle Area = No choice.

Paola wanted to try an enzymatic drain cleaner so we did and it was a disaster. We picked a powdered kind that needed to be mixed in a gigantic volume in order to be effective. This posed a huge problem because the physical limits of the drain would never allow for anything close to that volume to occupy it. This meant me spending three days nursing the cleaner into the drain box and waiting.... waiting.... waiting... for nothing and cleaning off the counter top to start over.

Finally at the end of the third day, I disassembled the drain to find that the coffee clog was gone but now there was a pasty globule of cleaner that I had to clean out to make the drain operable.

At this point, I just wanted a homemade double tall latte so I did the only thing that made sense: Went to QFC and bought the old industrial stuff. I explained all this to Paola, when she woke up and she concurred. As much as I want to SAVE THE PLANET I can't tolerate having drains back up into my home.

For me, indoor plumbing is the thing I wouldn't give up and by that I mean all the peripherals that are assumed to come with it, like a free flowing drain, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

If it would have taken a mix of napalm and DDT to get that thing open again I don't think I would've hesitated, so sorry other species.

What do other species care anyway? The only thing that stops most of them from eating us is the part where we can't fit into their mouths.

So what is the one technology you couldn't give up, no matter the circumstance?

Envy

I've been trying to organize an Algonquin Round Table style elitist lit group where we would gather at certain snooty establishments, sip the finest cognac out of gilded snifters, discuss and more importantly deride the current state of literature. Except for the good stuff which (of course) would all be written by us. That would be universally praised, ad nauseum and so forth.

I would be the Edna Ferber of the group, obviously. So far no takers. I'm serious about it too. Most days I want to suck the creativity from other writers' brains and set it in a jar for my own personal use at a later date. This would be a convenient way to surreptitiously accomplish the task, like herding sheep. Not that I'm generally surreptitious but supposing I were I certainly wouldn't be advertising it, if ya know what I mean.

I'm kidding...

?

She reminds me

...of how the wind blows.
The wind is never concerned with obstacles.
The wind never asks if it’s helping or hindering.
The wind never waits to move.
It sees a place it wants to go and it goes there without begging the question.

Like her: Un-embraceable.

The wind embraces you and your arms flail to grab that which it cannot.

Halfway There

To where you ask? Like I'm supposed to know. I'm just the guy putting the words on the page. 40,180 of 'em to be somewhat precise.



After close to a year of beard wringing, alcohol induced typistry I hit the halfway point of my book. Wordcount wise I'm shooting for 80,000ish. These things are constantly evolving so who knows what the final will be. We have a plot, we have characters doing stuff, we have words on multiple pages, some of which by mere circumstance are actual sentences.

Looks like I'm running out of excuses to finish the dern thing.

If you're writing fiction or considering to do so, I want to recommend Self Editing For Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King. I picked it up because I'm slowly working into the editor's mindset for when I have to go back and reread this monster from scratch.

Ugh.

Usually after I finish something I can't bear to look at it. Don't know why. Maybe it's the closeness to the project and emotional immediacy. I find it hard to not become attached to whatever I'm working on but it never feels right when it's fresh. Not until I set it aside and look at it a couple of months later. Then I can edit without prejudice.

I'm thinking this will be wrapped up early next year if things continue as they have.

Unique Perspective

The conversation always works out better in my head. When it comes to executing what I imagine to be a witty remark, the words decide to take a detour at the last minute and instead of saying what I want to say I end up saying something like what I wanted to say.

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." -Mark Twain

See the dilemma? With mere mortals this isn't an issue, well not that it shouldn't be but I can shrug off the disproving stare of a fellow steerage class yokel without a thought. Just as I'd imagine they're likely to forget the words no sooner than they've left my mouth and collided with their ear. I think most people aren't really listening to 80% of what I say anyway and that's fine since I don't talk to most people.

There are writers that I like, writers that I love and writers that make me wring me hands in despair, tear at my beard and wail things like: "I will never be able to write like that!!!" Luckily, most of the last group are dead so I don't have to face the stomach turning experience of meeting them in public.

I'll pause so you can fix your hyperbole detector.

It's not jealousy, I don't think so anyway. Writing fiction to me, is a way to document your world view, a method of transforming your interior dialogue into something tangible. Taking an idea and giving it your own distinct voice. To be jealous of the way someone else perceives the world is a little insane don't ya think? Even with 6 Billion people covering the planet it's plain to see that differing degrees of perception are limited.

This is why I can read novels written hundreds of years ago set in places nowhere close to mine and relate to the characters and principles within. This is why music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart etc. stands the test of time. Why Rodin's The Thinker isn't going to ever stop being a great piece of art. This is why the story of Romeo and Juliet has been retold a million times with a million different variations and will never stop being told until Forbidden Love is driven out of humanity's conscience.

The external shininess of the human experience might change but if you rip away all the I-Phones, interwebs, cable television and the like, have our hopes and dreams really changed that much from the days of people drawing pictures on the walls of caves? Isn't happiness forever the goal, no matter the definition of happiness to the person?

Occasionally I'll read a phrase, sentence, story, whatever and be reduced to a trembling wreck because someone will express an idea that I've been turning over an over in my head more or less since I could walk.

Then the beard tearing, hand wringing and self flagellation begins until I'm so numb with pain I can't remember what it was that upset me. Recently it's this line by Scarlett Thomas from The End of Mr Y.

"'Fact' is a word. Science itself is just a collection of words. I'm guessing that truth exists beyond language, and what we call 'reality.' It must do; well, if it exists at all, that is."

I'm in a constant crusade in this belief, that there really aren't any absolute truths contained within the human experience. We haven't reached a point where we're able to quantify them and even the ones that we assert as absolute we have no way of knowing where the truth actually lies.

Why? Because we're the ones coming up with the methods of discerning this truth and people, to a large extent are incomparably flawed. Why wouldn't our methods be as well?

Don't take it personal, humanity but you are and it's no jab either, it's just something you need to learn to accept.

When it comes to ideas, personal philosophy, innovation and the like, I'm of the opinion that there's only a finite amount of the stuff out there more or less recycled and reinterpreted since antiquity.

This isn't a negative by any means. Understanding that you may have reinvented a rounder wheel shouldn't come with stigma because of the lack of uniqueness attached to the idea. The only thing that matters in the end is whether or not the idea works and has validity outside of the "creator".

I propose that people need to take a step back from themselves and instead of worrying about their own creativity and how special they are, look at the world around you and see how you relate to it and it to you.

Instead of saying someone has a stupid idea because you don't believe it, try to understand why that person came to this conclusion and rationally explain your position. It can be done.

Lastly, before you condemn an idea at least have an actual understanding of why you are condemning it. Maybe I'm wrong for thinking this but I do believe just about every idea has merit. It may not to me but if it does to someone out there than who am I to question it on that scale?

All I can do is a agree or disagree with it and move on. I don't feel I'm in a position to tell people how to think about things, just as I don't want anyone ever telling me how to think.

That doesn't mean that I won't tell people that they should think. By all means think, all the time, NEVER STOP and if we reach different conclusions let's hash it out and maybe we'll both come away from it a little more learned even if our positions stay exactly the same.