Recently Read and Reading

1. "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts (Australian becomes armed robber to support heroin habit, is sent to jail for 20 years, escapes after 10, ends up in Bombay (Mumbai) where he opens a free medical clinic for the slum dwellers, and then ends up in the Bombay mafia, and that's only me halfway through the book.) - Page turner in the extreme. Loving it despite far too much purple prose. Turns out I'm not alone: Wikipedia claims that both Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp expressed interest in buying the book's rights to make it into a movie.

2. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving - finished it because Ai loved it and we usually have the same taste. Also, considered one of his best, and I had remembered really enjoying a few older Irving novels I read, and the movie version of "The Cider House Rules". Didn't love "Owen". Wasn't blown away by it. Not much more to say. I feel like I missed something. Also, and this might well be the main problem, it never went where I wanted it to go.


3. "Tokyo Fiancee" by Amelie Nothombe - Nothombe has style, and that's what I loved here, that and her accurate take on Japanese culture. Her ego and humor and depth of thinking is enough to get you through the book, but by the end I was tired of the writer's ego. (Still, I'd pick up another of her, like, 17 novels, or something ridiculous - Nothombe's only forty-something.)


4. "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" by Michael Chabon - This was Michael Chabon's first novel. I read this because I loved the movie of his second book "Wonder Boys," I thought "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" was great fun, and because though I didn't enjoy his last, "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" (sorry Dan) I hoped since "Mysteries" was Chabon's first novel it would have more heart and a little less clever. I couldn't even finish "Yiddish Policeman" because it was so clever, the whole thing just seemed like one big wink, a joke, a really great trick - but I'm not into 500 pages of clever. I need heart with my brain and I was hoping that going back to Chabon's first book I might find that. No such luck. Wicked talent for writing, great sentences, original, impressive, and an ideas guy extraordinaire - so inventive - but like the "Yiddish Policeman," I didn't buy into almost any of what was happening in "Mysteries". It was like, instead of being transported to Oz, I couldn't stop/help seeing the man behind the curtain.


[Desert Island #5, coming this week, is much heart and the masterful ability to cut down, to severly cut down on clever, to the point where it seems simple]

Writerly Quote of the Month

"Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."
-Sidonie Gabrielle



[pictured: Ernest Hemingway]

PROSE POEM

At Sea

Fire up that lamp, boy.
Good. Now look out the porthole and tell me what you see.
See, sir? It’s night. I see nothin but water.
You see water. Yes, boy. But tell me. How’s the water? How does she feel?
She . . . she feels calm, quiet.
She lulls us now, don’t she? But will she stay that way forever?
I dare think not, sir.
What’ll happen then, pray tell?
Soon enough will come a storm.
And she’ll get angry?
Aye, I think so, sir.
You know, son. Why though?
Why, sir?
Don’t think! Answer.
She’ll get angry because she has to.
Good. But why?
To sooth her soul.
Does the sea have a soul?
I think it does.
Then it does. Tell me, must all souls rage?
Aye, sir. I figure some nights they must.
Why must they?
I don’t know, sir.
Try.
Fear, sir?
Fear?
Fear of Death.
You think the sea is afraid of dyin?
No sir.
Why then does she rage so?
I don’t know, sir.
But you must.
Sir?
Why?
To settle my fear.
Are you afraid of the sea, sir?
Yes, boy. I fear it, I love it.
And it would help you, to know why?
Just tonight. I need an answer tonight.
But sir, what if I don’t have one? What then?
Imagine one. Please.
You want a fable.
A story, yes.
Shall I put out the lamp first?
Do.

Dusk at Terroni, Ahhh Summer

Blue sky, nothin but blue sky

Word Play

Wordy nerdy kid goes to Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), finds painting he likes, describes what he sees.

Jack Chambers' "401 Towards London No. 1" (1968-69)
A single truck travels down an otherwise empty highway in broad daylight. There are no other vehicles in either direction. The open road - is that already so dated? To think a road could be that open, that optimistic. The truck is small relative to the length of highway, a clean, four lane freeway, gently winding off into the distance. The highway, as it was then, a brief break, just a couple thin strips of grey between gently rolling fields of yellowing green extending out east and west. The expansive green fields themselves are dwarfed by a sky so big you see that the earth is small and that people don't even much matter, a sky that had earlier that day been all blue but that is now being slowly taken over by big fluffy white clouds.

You think, this is Canada.

Tomorrow: Camp Charleston Part III

Hammock View of the Atlanta hotel pool area in Bangkok, Thailand, fan room $15, A/C room $18

Why this free little advertisement for the Atlanta? Cause I love the hotel. Cause it's fucking freezing in Canada. And because a boy can dream, can't he?