I am back from sunny Portland and several things have happened:
1) I turned 30.
2) I finally went to Guapo comics.
3) I ate Guamanian food at a food cart.
4) After too many years, I got to visit Retown and meet her main man.
5) I visited an American houseboat. I saw a bat!
6) I rediscovered the redeye rash.
7) I saw Brooklyn in pre-9AM. It was horrible with industrious movement.

More soon.

in and out of my brain

There has been talk in my twitter feed about inspiration, so I thought I'd share some of my recent inspirations with you. I tend to accrete viewpoints and styles in large bursts, usually because of travel or several days alone, and therefore outside of the motions of the everyday. Some influences (Studs Terkel, Marianne Faithfull, sailors' attire) are longstanding, others last a month, a year, and usually lead me to other, better thoughts.

Inspiring now:
Radiolab
Maximus Clarke interviews William Gibson on Maude Newton
The Dear Sugar column on The Rumpus, #25 on
Final Girl, especially her reviews
Nature Illustrated: Flowers, Plants, and Trees, 1550-1900 in the NYPL's Digital Gallery

image from NYPL

I don't understand what is taking so long. I mean, I have several pens and ideas and yet that perfect, emotionally punchful piece just hasn't leapt from my fingers onto the edit pile. It's Sunday and everything. The weekend was over hours ago and the hard work is supposed to be done.

I find it hard to go from living to writing so I just end up doing something in between. I think it's called twitter.

When I was a young woman, my idol was Studs Terkel. When I read Working for the first time my mind just blew up out of my head. Not because of any of the stories really, but because I found out that someone's job was to wander around with a tape recorder and listen to people. (Or at least that's how I imagined it.) Later I read Underground by Haruki Murakami, as well as several other books of oral history, loving them all. Sure you wonder about editing and transcription with those books, but I can suspend my disbelief to extract the magic in those stories. Committing to listen to an unedited recording has even more rewards. Luckily I get to do that in one of my classes this semester.

Speaking of class, I will be in one when this free event is going on, but you should go and tell me all about it:
“What is Oral History?”
Ronald J. Grele, is the former director of the Oral History Research Office. He is author of Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History as well as numerous articles on the theory and method of oral history. He is a past president of the Oral History Association, and was a founding member of the Executive Council of the International Association of Oral History. He writes and lectures widely on oral history and the nature of historical consciousness. Grele will talk about the theoretical origins of oral history as a field and practice. Mary Marshall Clark, current director of OHRO, will comment on recent developments in oral history theory and practice.

Sept. 16, 4:10 – 6:00pm
RSVP at site. Not sure if it's required, but that's a good bet.

well, that was wet

We attempted Brooklyn Book Fest. I got to see my once-a-year bud Goodloe Byron and chat with Alexander at the South End Press table. I would have loved to have spoken with Gavin Grant, but instead just bought Small Beer Press books, which is perhaps just as good for him. Those books are Hound (I'm not sure my Mom will let me borrow the copy I gifted her), Meeks and two more copies of Mothers and Other Monsters for loaning (my frothing review here).

I stopped in on one panel, "Is Beauty Painful?," with Jenny Hollowell, Peter Hedges, and Matthew Sharpe. I was in it for Sharpe, but missed his reading, of course. Then a soda machine's fan went on rendering the Q&A inaudible. I wasn't able to find his new book in all that mist.

No Colson Whitehead, no Jilian Tamaki, no Jennifer Egan. And wet books everywhere. Blah.

night moves

Right now I am working on a zine for SPX. As far as I know it will contain no comics, but maybe that will change. I have several ideas in various stages of completion, none of which I am too happy with. Mostly this is about unhappiness. The problem is not only that SPX is so close, it’s that I don’t want to write this stuff. I don’t want to put myself anywhere near the still-howling chasm of my grief. This past week has already held too many snot storms and lingering illnesses.

Still, I am forcing myself to carry on with the work and complaining only to you, my internet.

How do you deal with writing things that are personally hazardous?

***

Being sickie sick sick has made me crave giant books. I ventured to Unnameable with B to feed my fever and picked up The Scar by China Mielville and Lorrie Moore’s The Gate at the Stairs. Browsing was shockingly unpleasant so we left shortly after purchase, but there were so many things I wanted to look at. Sigh. The Scar is the escapist treat I expected, with fewer frantic world-building tics than Perdido Street Station and the Iron Council and more talk of pirate libraries. The prim but observant main character’s perspective is great, especially for one in such a dulled state as I.

Today we found a family of wolverines in the hall closet. I thought I had heard noises for some time but always dismissed them as house settling or wind shenanigans. Then there was the scat. I saw a few bone-filled piles in corners and ignored them, seeing instead dust bunnies and stray charcoal. A few times I thought I smelled expressed anal glands.

So, we ask ourselves, how did this happen? What was our failing? Did we leave the door open to a pregnant interloper when carrying too many groceries? Did I forget to put away a fresh kill? Are they eating the paper towels? So many ways to blame ourselves for the impossibly inevitable.

Of course it is the season for coming in. Nesting is hard to resist even for the undesirable.

Let’s not forget that.

so sick

Readers, I am sick. A legion of clap-infected hustlers have taken up in the back of my throat, my chest rattles in the effort to shake loose brownish mucous and yes, I have a fever. Antibiotics taken for an unrelated illness are adding that perfect touch of GI insanity to the proceedings as well. A full evening of Beautiful Katamari and the couch, as well as ministrations from the lovely B have left me feeling a bit better, but I still plan on spending most of today in bed. Having finished my reread of the delightful Momento Mori during the sleepless night, I am looking for a new book to read.

In more exciting news, here is Raina Telgemeier's poster for SPX 2010:



Preparations have begun for the trip and I can't wait to be there. I never thought I'd say that about Bethesda, MD, but there you go.

Right now I am reading three books: Momento Mori by Muriel Spark (reread), I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita and Amulet by Roberto Bolaño. The only one gaining any traction right now is Spark's. I guess it's all this rain.

***

Maud Newton's wonderful essay "On grief--and dying without finishing your book."

When your spouse’s parent dies, grieving is complicated. There is the grief you feel for yourself, for the loss of a person you (if you’re lucky) loved, and there is the grief you feel at seeing the person closest to you dealing with a nearly unfathomable loss. At times the sorrow is literally almost suffocating. These are clichés, but they are also realities, as is the fact that the passing of someone important to you causes you to think about the way you’re spending your own life.

I wish I could write as eloquently on this subject. But reading good writing always helps and since I've decided to work on this zine, I need all the help I can get.

***

Have we talked about doing a project? Well, now is the time.

China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh

I’ve avoided writing about this book until now for reasons unknown to me, and now, after it has been renewed six times from the library, I think it is time to give it back so someone else can have a chance to read it.

In China Mountain Zhang, China has won the cold war and Chinese communism has spread the globe. In the 22nd century, the U.S. has had only a few generations since the bloody American Liberation War. Our titular main character Zhang was born to two revolutionaries in the aftermath. Though he is ethnically only half-Chinese, his parents have him genetically altered to look fully so, both as a tribute to what they believed and with hope of Zhang having a better life in a Chinese-run world. Even his name, that of a now-disgraced hero, reeks of the optimism of his parents. Despite this, he works as a construction tech in NYC—a dead end job—and spends his time off watching kite races, drinking and being unhappily gay in a society that does not tolerate homosexuality. In China, the land of opportunity, gayness is even more forbidden, but despite this, it is Zhang's hope to go there someday and do, well do something better than being a tech.

Wow, perhaps I hate writing plot summary so much is because I am so bad at it.

Our man China Mountain Zhang does get to go to China, after some plot twists that only strain credulity a bit. His end is a little too sweet for me. It feels like McHugh loved her creation so much that she didn’t want to see him permanently hurt. Even with the rosy sunset ending, I loved this book.

Two things really stuck out for me. In the China part of the book, Zhang meets a guy he is attracted to. He ignores it because, hey, who wants to get sent to jail? Then the guy begins speaking in a code that Zhang recognizes from pick ups in NYC and can’t believe his ears. The dated cheesiness of the exchange (like the 80s channeling the 1910s) worked in its favor because it got me thinking about the languages we create to survive in oppressive societies and how the internet is making that less possible and less needed at the same time.

Another was the mostly untold story of Zhang’s parents and other minor characters in the book. Those that help “reform” the U.S. in an effort called Cleansing Winds are now considered embarrassments and those that haven’t been killed or sent to camps keep quiet about their part. This has always been a compelling issue for me in the history of and literature about Communism and it was interesting to see it explored in this McHugh’s world.

*Despite the giant gun-looking thing, there is no interstellar combat in China Mountain Zhang. It's an ice melter!

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey

It's dreary here in Brooklyn, and if I hadn’t already, it would be a perfect day to read Cheerful Weather for the Wedding. Perfect because it is set on a galing day in England, which reminds one how much worse it could be, and because it is a brisk little book filled with ridiculous characters that one is free to vigorously dislike.

I’ve been getting into these types of books recently. Often by forgotten women novelists, they provide a weird kind of escapism where I can revel in the details while indulging some misanthropy. Cheerful Weather was a gift from Amanda Well-Tailored. For precisely four B train rides into Manhattan, I was chuckling at the door of a freezing manor house instead of a stinky MTA car. Thanks, AWT!

The novella takes place on the titular wedding day of Dolly Thatcham and Owen, eight years apart. Dolly is getting wasted upstairs as the preparations go on around her, and her frequent nips from the rum bottle hidden in her voluminous dress lead inspire a kind of puttering melancholy that is fun to read about, especially if you’ve ever succumbed to such a mood yourself. The Thatcham home is filled with various family members being ridiculous, including my favorite character, chapped and puffy younger sister Kitty: “ ‘How are your lectures going?’ asked Kitty of Joseph, a kind of desperate intenseness in her voice and face. This was her style of the moment with the male sex.”

Leave the bizarre intro by Frances Partridge for after. Wouldn’t want Bloomsbury gossip and unhappy personal details to overshadow the story, would we?

The Salon by Nick Bertozzi

Last week, before work I went to the MoMA with Amanda Well-Tailored. Besides the awesomeness of doing anything in person with AWT, I was struck by how weirdly the wander through mimicked my reading of last night--Nick Bertozzi’s The Salon.

The Salon focuses on the French Modernist art movement and the expats than ran in it. Bertozzi gives each a distinct (and funny) personality and look. I especially like Gertrude Stein’s balls-out Mama Bear and her sniveling brother, Leo, and the bottomless bravado pit of Bertozzi’s Picasso. The writing is such that the story works as a historically-glossed superhero story or a meditation on creation, greed and desire. It is both, and compelled me to consider picking up some bios on these previously uninteresting art idols.

The group not only makes and collects art, but also parties together and have found a drug that allows one to enter paintings—a seductive idea for this group. Unfortunately they are not the only ones drinking the blue stuff; an artist-murderer is pulling the heads off of Modernists and leaving their bodies with a tell-tale splash of blue. The mystery is a fun way to navigate the salons and backstreets of Paris. The art feels fluid and alive, perfectly conveying the vibrant world of paintings, in and out.

Though I had heard great things about the book from several outlets, but after reading the dismal Stuffed! last year, and seeing Bertozzi’s merely adequate art, I was a bit skeptical. I am so glad my library had a copy so I could try it. I am looking forward to checking out more work that he’s written and drawn.

*In additional The Salon news: the sad story of how Free Comic Book Day + Picasso's penis equaled big trouble for retailer Gordon Lee.

blast!

SPX 2010 and the Brooklyn Book Fest are on the same day!

Don't make me choose.

Which are you going to?

Last night's visit by the prog lady began with spaghetti limone dinner a la Little Frankies, moved on to a salon-style haircut (I strive for the very best!), and ended with a walk to Unnameable Books for a post-10 pm visit. Oh Unnameable Books, please get a website, or a blog or a twitter feed.

The place was mostly ours and all told we spent about an hour looking around and digesting all that starch. I picked up Jenny Diski's book Rainforest after trying in vain to remember where I heard her name before. Turns out that it was from this great essay on rape and Polanski. Rainforest is really good so far.

The prog lady picked up The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, a book about a man who never leaves his bathroom--perfect subject matter for the coming cold months. (Read some here. And look at that cover--what a beauty!)

We discussed Philly's gone-but-not-forgotten Big Jar Books and how much we missed it. Neither of us have been to the new store yet. She used to work there and I was a frequent, and then less frequent, shopper. I loved combing their shelves for Philip K. Dick books. In the edgiest years, it was one of the few places I could go with my mother and enjoy myself. One time I met a Frenchman outside and he bought me some Camus. Luckily he was a good kisser. How many times did I stop in to use the tiny toilet in the back and leave with a book that opened my mind?

No, really, guess.

Last night M and I went for a ramble around Brooklyn stopping for beers and books along the way. We stopped in Fort Greene's Greenlight, and though buying new books strains the budget, I bought a copy of Dylan Horrocks' Hicksville, which has been collected and reprinted by Drawn & Quarterly. I forgot that I had a frequent buyer account with them, as I am not a frequent buyer, but it was nice to add another lump to my sum. So many other books caught my eye, but alas, though I can't seem to stop myself from buying a book in an indie bookstore, there is a limit.

We decided to walk down Vanderbilt to tempt ourselves further with a trip into Unnameable Books, probably my fave bookstore in Brooklyn. One of my favorite things about it is that it is open until 11pm most days. We scanned and scanned and I got into a conversation with some fellow Muriel Spark enthusiasts. I picked up a copy of Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel, some SF for my weekend trip. I've read his Small Beer Press short story offering and several collections he's edited and am curious to read a longer work, and "time-hopping con artists" sounded like a good place to start.


***

The recent New York Magazine article on indie bookstores by Joe Keohane is a good read.

***

A few days ago I was supposed to meet Zane in Tribeca. In an unbelievable turn of events I was early, couldn't find the place we were meeting and wandered smack into an event at The Mysterious Bookshop by Akashic books promoting the newest entry in their ...Noir series, Indian Country Noir. The speakers got me excited for the series--none of the other titles have gotten me excited before. I guess I am just over unrelenting bleakness for now.

***

On Twitter I follow @BookCourt because I like great things. BC an amazing bookstore in Carroll Gardens that not only hosted much-missed-from-the-blogosphere buddy Amy Shearn's reading for her novel but also has ample seating and a cool staff. Their twitting by staff members is inspired:

#bookstorebingo "I dropped off my book several months ago. Wait, which bookstore is this?"

You know who I love? David Byrne.

Red Hot Chili Peppers? Really? Okay.

***

The moral of this post? Buy some freaking books already!

Cast In Doubt by Lynne Tillman

Right now I am reading Absence Makes the Heart, a short story collection by Lynne Tillman. It’s really great so far and brings into perspective what I find compelling about Tillman’s work: She crawls inside of fictional people and seems to channel her first person characters. You forget that you are reading the work of an author. The main characters of the books I’ve read so far are experts of some kind, which shapes the kind of self-talk done by the characters.

In Cast In Doubt the protagonist is a seventy-something American expat named Horace living in a small town in Greece. He becomes obsessed with a young American woman, Ruth, who rents a rotting house across from him. He ruminates on his interactions with her, obsessed with his obsession, weaving in and out of memories of his past and observations of his present. He is also writing a book about his ancestors that is just not getting done, whereas ideas for his moneymaking project, a detective series, just keep popping up. I like Horace best when he is being catty about others in clever ways, just like a good elder-gay should.

Horace’s voice is strong and his history is rock solid—when he laments the repressed yet sexually charged forties you do too, even if it is with a little eye roll for the psychic indulgences of a privileged old man. And when the story gets turned about a bit there is shock and questions. Mostly Cast In Doubt made me want to drink gallons of the cold white wine so sensually described by Horace.

I liked the book, but feel a tepidness towards it, most likely because I cared less for Horace than I did for American Genius’s skin-obsessed inmate.

*No picture because I returned this ages ago. No library jail for me!

One, two, three things

Sarah Oleksyk is talking about artist envy, intimidation and inspiration over at her blog. Because she is such a great artist and writer I was initially surprised that she finds herself at the bottom of the self-work-hate hole, that embarrassing secret all creative people have. & Eryn Loeb is a thought provoking, smart and funny writer. The fact that she no longer writes the Girl, Interrupting column at bookslut sucks, but she is doing regular blogging at her own site. & In the face of the categories I've devised for my sidebar it can be difficult to decide where to put blogs that have excellent writing but don't have discrete topics. So, often instead of deciding where to put something, I just forget that the blog exists for several months, or, in the case of mimi smartypants, several years.

Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner

What if a story about a Victorian lady dropped all that does-he-love-her jibber jabber and took our rulebound heroine from walking her grounds, recreating her own childhood, to her children (“They had sloping shoulders, both of them.”) and their blistering, raving deaths from small pox to gay Paris, literally and matter-of-factly.Well, then that book would be this:



Precisely written and a bit autobiographical (according to the introduction by Warner’s biographer Claire Harman), Summer Will Show is a political novel, a love story and actually quite funny. The main character, Sophia Willoughby, after finding out that her decorative but none too useful husband Frederick has hooked up with a wild woman in Paris, must then decide how she is going to live the rest of her life. Will she take to books or embroidery or maybe hump around a bit herself? In the end she decides to go to France to confront Frederick and ends up in the infuriating situation of having to reconcile with someone much less interesting than Minna, the woman he left her for.

So, Sophia falls in love.

Some of the Parisian parts drag a bit with Sophia’s observations of Minna’s revolution-obsessed life, but it is well worth the trip. Between this and the even more fun Lolly Willows, I can’t wait to read some more Warner.

An aside: Though it was written well after Queen Victoria left the throne, there are some exoticizing/straight-up racist thoughts thunk by Sophia about Minna and others are interesting with respect to how bigotry sounds today.

Six

Some things I did today:

1) Wrote about leggings and big rigs
2) Had several dreams about phone calls that never happened
3) Saw this:


4) Planted a second round of basil and fennel seeds
5) Forgot several things several times
6) Practiced my cursing

What about you?