The Plot Against America

Roth does this thing in The Plot Against America where instead of building up to a major dramatic climax where everything hits the fan at once and turns into holy-shit-chaos like in American Pastoral, he rather casually introduces startling little facts and effects upfront and explains them later which results in tiny little chaos slaps in the face.  Something along the lines of "I snuck out of my house to become an orphan and everything really turned out fine and I don't even remember getting kicked by that horse and why I'm now hooked up to a tube"...which then goes on to explain how he came upon a horse and why it decided to kick him in the head.  In better words, of course.  The overall story though, is a what-if-Lindy-had-been-president-instead-of-FDR fictionalized history told through the accounts of Philip Roth as a young boy in New Jersey.  This means that America grows to be an anti-semitic nation led by a supposed supporter of Hitler.  I've never really read/seen anything about America's involvement with WWII prior to Pearl Harbor, so this was an interesting place to start.

I'm really impressed by the way Philip Roth can complexly think things through and write in such a detailed manner pertaining to various characters, and how things affect one another.  I'm a simpleton so I'm unable to conceptualize one person's actions and motives and how they will build into a bunch of other events and thus my stories are flatter than this rich faux history that Roth has created.  It's believable, exciting, and personal, and you get the sense that you're actually learning something about history even though it's not what really happened (although, you can get a quick taste of the learning bit of real events from the postscript).  As I've mentioned before, I've often found that Jewish writers are exceptional at capturing emotion beautifully (whether it's Nazi-related or not), and by using his own family as the centerpiece of the story, Roth has written a sort of upside-down fairy tale of his own life that is relatable.

All this WWII reading led me to other movies and online reading and now I'm kind of paranoid, though I'm not sure of what.  Also, I didn't know Henry Ford was such an anti-semite.  What an asshole.

Going to Boston next weeeeeeek!  Dear god, let someone freaking hire me soon because this job hunt thing is really getting expensive.

I'm glad Kafka let this one go

I have so far found for myself that Franz Kafla's writing doesn't suit me.  He is rather melancholy and depressing, which you would think would be right up my alley, but he does it in such a queer way that is impersonal and difficult to relate to.  

The Trial is an unfinished novel, so that probably accounts for all of the loose ends in this story (such as the female neighbor that K. stalks for a chapter or so and then immediately forgets).  The topic of this novel is an accused man who is "arrested" for no apparent cause.  Naturally, you would assume that with that sort of "problem", the point of the plot would be to reveal what the accused had done.  On the contrary, no one (not even the reader) cares at all why this might be, and on top of that, the entirety of the 10 chapters are so nonsensical with no apparent motive to bring purpose to anything that occurs on a single one of the pages that make them up.

K. does seem to be weirdly and abruptly sexual with random women who he just happens to meet as strangers though, so maybe he was arrested for being a man slut.  Whatever the case, I'm not much interested in investigating any further than not at all.

For my next book, I'm going back to an author I could relate to a little better. 

Orange you glad...

I remember an author recommending Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson a few months back on NPR while I was driving home from work.  Oddly, I only remembered this after picking up the book and looking at the cover as I was about to start reading it, even after personally picking it out at the used bookstore myself.  Funny how my memory can change from one sensory form to another, as the physical word "oranges" made me recall what I had heard (however delayed it may have been).

I think the author who was talking about it on the radio said it changed her life.  She had found it at a garage sale as a young person and was drawn to its openness about religion and sexuality through the voice of another juvenile.  Unfortunately, my poor memory fails to really recollect any insightful commentary or who the speaker even was, but I can attest to the fact that she was very fond of this work, as am I.  Even as (somewhat of) an adult -- but maybe moreso as one -- I appreciate the simple, uncomplicated views that children have in the face of corrupted adults.  In this case, corruption comes from religion.

In regards to its subject matter, this book surely seems ahead of its time.  It could have been written today with Winterson's openness about homosexuality.  She tends to get a little bit too artful (and off topic at times), I think, with her metaphors and fantasies, but she is successful in her use of humor and sincerity.

I'm surprised at the number of spelling/grammatical errors in this book.  I always hate when this happens, because I want to break out a red pen and play the role of editor.  I don't even really understand how a published novel can get away with so many blunders.  I would blame it on the fact that this book was originally published in '85 when they no doubt did not have spell check, but then there is The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok that was just published a few years ago, that has even more mistakes than this one.  Shame on you, editors.

My slim volume is weathered now with crumpled pages after being shoved into my bag along my travels earlier this week (damn you Spirit Airlines, with your horribly sneaky tactics).  Somehow, that feels right.  Jeanette's made-up heroine Winnet was traveling with me.  She was looking for a city with "only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it".  I am trying to dare as much as I can.

A life completely her own

Well, the impending doom that I had forecasted in the last post came quicker than expected, placing me now at the end of my first week of unemployment.  It was no surprise though, and therefore failed to jar me in any way.  Coincidentally, along with my finishing up The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, I will be spending some hours in the Big Apple working toward a new career.  Hopefully good things will come from that, but as Auster describes in "The Locked Room" (the second of the three stories), "In general, lives seem to veer abruptly from one thing to another, to jostle and bump, to squirm."  I'd rather less squirming and more veering, after almost three years of risen hopes and inevitable letdowns.  Anyway, to get on with the book...

What a strange book, with layers that go deeper than I can explain in any fathomable way -- especially since I haven't yet been able to wrap my mind around it myself.  The New York Trilogy is composed of three "installments".  I went into it thinking that each would be its own short story but found that the three parts are mysteriously interwoven in very subtle ways that very effectively haunt the reader (at least, me) into discomfort.

The third part, "The Locked Room", is the climax of the unsettling feeling that builds throughout the book.  It is self-conscious of itself as a whole (while the previous two parts simply reveal strange and questionable connections to each other) -- book existentialism! -- but it does this through such delicate hints that one is continuously left questioning these connections.  One of the things I am talking about here of course (*spoiler*), is Auster's "retelling of anecdotes" and stories throughout the entire novel.  I've never read a fictional book that does this, and I found it very interesting.  To place your own original writing alongside quotations and ideas from other authors seems a little bit courageous as well as inspiring...at least to me.  It gives a glimpse into the author's (or I suppose, character's) interests, and that to me further adds depth and stimulates the already numerous things going on in your head while you read this book.

The collection as a whole is a mental labyrinth.  Although the characters in all three stories ultimately find freedom from their struggles and paranoia, the reader is not allowed the same privilege, but rather left to puzzle over what the connections really were, and how best to interpret them. I suppose this mental struggle is a small reflection of the billions of personal fights we must overcome these days (especially as young people)...just like Sophie; "Sophie was just twenty-six years old.  She was too young to live through someone else, too intelligent not to want a life that was completely her own".  Voice of a generation (lol).  Overall though, I can confidently say that The New York Trilogy is a much more accomplished and powerful work than I found Moon Palace to be.  We'll have to see how the rest of his books on the list compare.

Echos of Eco

Finally, I've finished Foucault's Pendulum after having been reminded a couple of times that it's been a while since I've written anything.  I'M A SLOW READER APPARENTLY, OKAY??  Just kidding.  Thank you for checking up on me to make sure I'm still on task and kicking.  It's appreciated. 

Anyway, I have a feeling this story ended in a similar nostalgic fashion that Queen Loana did, but I may also be making that up completely since I don't really remember but rather just had this slight déja vu feeling as it was happening.  The text ends in "It is so beautiful" after a bunch of melancholy closing-word type things have been said.  Finality is always beautiful, isn't it...as is sadness.  At least in art.  Too bad it doesn't really work that way to the one experiencing it, in real life.  Otherwise so much would seem beautiful and glittering to me rather than extremely mundane and useless.  Although, I guess they are actually starting to glitter now with Christmas on its way.

Anywhoooo, now that I've thoroughly S.A.D'ed you out, some more thoughts, tracking backwards:

I am nosy and a snoop, and therefore savor being inside other people's minds and hearts.  Eco gives me only glimpses of that, hiding between lengths of obscure ideology.  For example:

"'All emanates from God, in the contraction of simsum.  The problem is to bring about tikkun, the restoration of Adam Qadmon.  Then we will rebuild everything in the balanced structure of the parzufim, the faces -- or, rather, forms -- that will take the place of the Sefirot..."

(seriously, what??)

vs.

"Because at the time I felt the need.  I had just given up drinking.  Relationship between the liver and the heart.  A new love is a good reason for going back to drink.  Somebody to go to a bar with.  Feel good with."

Perhaps the sparseness of these moments gives it more value.

Speaking of going to bars with people, I guilted some old coworkers into spending time with me a few weeks ago.  It was nice to go out, and to be social.  Same with Thanksgiving, having had the opportunity to see friends that I truly value. Feelin' good with people, reminding me that they exist.

I think it's time for me to read a slim volume.  Eco's brief chapters saved me any strenuous work, but I think I need something quick and (hopefully) breezy for the next book. I feel this impending doom creeping up on me but it could be exciting...I need some forced change in my life, I think.  I've also had this intense pain in my lower back lately that will just not go away.  I'm aging rapidly, or the whole of me is giving up, either way.  Better read as many books as I can before whatever it is that I feel in my gut eats me up. 

Art and Theory

It's pretty windy here in the Windy City.  Probably thanks to Good 'Ole Sandy but it's much more anticlimactic here in the Midwest.  No end-of-the-world-esque rising tides and puddles for me, boohoo.

To fill the void that the lack of extreme weather on my mundane life imposes, I have continued reading like a diligent student...or ant...or whatever other persevering animal there is out there.  Maybe the dung beetle.  That seems diligent.

The point is, I'm currently reading Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.  It's a pretty large text, as I suppose most of his novels are.  In high school I read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (I won't lie, I was attracted to the graphics because I am superficial and enjoy judging books by their cover and treats that are snuck inside).  I wonder if the person who writes the synopses/book jackets for Eco's books is the same for them all...I feel like they do not accurately depict Eco's language.  From these two experiences, I have to say the plot, though technically accurately described, seemed much more exciting and action-packed than in reality.  I was all pumped up to read this book, imagining a cultured/intellectual version of the Da Vinci Code but it seems to have one-upped me and surpassed my level of worldly knowledge.  The jacket writer is a marketing genius, I tell you.

There is a lack of fluidity in both of these books for me that I can't actually pinpoint.  The language isn't inaccurate...it's just...stiff because it is so information-heavy (yes, haha, that sentence was incredibly janky, but I am not an award-winning writer so sue me).  I realized it's probably the fault of translations, to which I think he really needs to get better translators, but then I found that's NOT the case, and that Eco writes in English, so now I'm just having to come to terms with the fact that I am just not educated enough.  Who are his fans?  Scholars?  His plots are very intriguing, but it's the way that he delivers that I can't quite keep up with, without any knowledge of the referenced content.  If I were willing to do additional, heavy research while I read along on this already page-heavy block of pages, perhaps I'd be able to grasp it better (but alas I am much too lazy for that).

Eco writes in English but it reads like a foreign language (and often REMAINS in untranslated foreign phrases).  He's playful and smart, but hard to touch.  I have felt detached in both books, but I can't quite put my finger on why.  It's like sitting listening to a philosopher or scientist speak to you without their expecting any sort of response.  It's more an observation than engagement.

Not to say I'm not enjoying it enough, because I am...but I still feel like I'm just a visitor in these conversations about Templars and Rosy Crosses.  I'm currently a little over 1/3 through, so we'll see how I feel at the end.

On the other hand, a book I'm NOT feeling left behind in, is The 2-Hour Job Search: Using Technology to Get the Right Job by Steve Dalton.  This, unlike Eco's, is a very straightforward book.  I actually find it quite engaging, unlike most books like this.  That either means I'm sinking down to self-help level, or I'm just that obsessed with job hunting.  I think it's both.  It's basically an addiction now.  Anyway, read this, if you're interested!  It's fun!  And you get to pretend that you're on The Bachelor!






And to end this lengthy post...

More art!  Teehee.  Charcoal and acrylic, folks.  I sprayed them with hairspray (ghetto) to keep the charcoal down and it basically blasted bits of charcoal dust everywhere because I am unprofessional and dumb.  But, what can you do, I still like them (you can see another painting in the back though, that is not so good and in turn saddens me).  I think I'll make more when I get the materials (I only have one more of those canvas panels...but maybe I will buy a bunch and draw myself a legion of dreamed up friends.

Stalk me a little

Huzzah! I have a portfolio website now! It was a pain to make because of unforeseen setbacks that could only happen to an unfortunate soul such as myself but it's up and running now so YAAAAY.

Tell your kids, tell your wife, tell anyone who's going to get me an awesome writing job: www.minamifurukawa.com

That's probably not as exciting to you as it is to me so here are some sketchbook pics to hold your interest.