2014 book party: ending the year on a more organized note

I am finally organizing my nonfiction.  This is much more intense than organizing fiction because I can't just put it all in alphabetical order by author.  I have to group things and then try to guess how my future self will search for them.  Where should the research books on pain go?  Next to the comedy books, of course.   

Philosophy - science - history - literature - aesthetics OR aesthetics-philosophy - science - history - literature?  (Actually aesthetics - philosophy - literature - history - science, in case you're curious.)   

Unread theology/philosophy next to general unread nonfiction?  Or should the read theology / philosophy go next to that?  Organized by last name?  Can't remember author names of some books.  Do those by title and mix in with authors I know.   

Separate narrative from essays / general nonfiction?   

All the poetry and books on writing go to the closet bookshelf in the library; they're hanging out with all the graphic novels and anime, so they're obviously having a good time.   

Why do I have two copies of Basic Theology?  

 Why on earth do I still have two racquetball books, and should they be moved to be with the comedy books at this point?   

And there is only one row tall enough for the big art books, so that throws everything off unless I remember what SIZE the book is.   

It's a really fun way to end a year, for sure: rediscovering the books I have yet to read and the ones I read and liked enough to keep.  And trying desperately to exert enough self control to finish organizing before settling down to drool over the Pre-Raphaelite art book or a beloved new Christmas book that is whispering my name . . .

Happy New Year a bit early.  I'll likely be asleep when the main event happens. : )

Are You My Mother? by the creator of the Bechdel test

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel:  I was curious about this one because I'd read Fun Home and wanted to know what an analysis between the author and her living mother would be like.  I have to admit that there wasn't much for me to identify with in this mother-daughter relationship.  I found myself engrossed because a friend of mine has a particularly fraught relationship with her mother, and I kept sensing echoes in this book.  I also like memoirs that stretch over a longer time period when history is an important element.  Seeing history through the lens of a person's life can be rewarding, especially when the memoir is a graphic novel because you really can see it. 

There were a lot of threads running through this book: literature, lesbian history, psychology, romantic relationships, memory,  family history, gender, the writing life, etc.  I loved how frequently her mother, literary analyst that she is, brought up the problems of focusing a piece of literature when there are too many pieces to it.  Overall, I feel the author did a decent job of tying the threads together.  I read it in one day, so my still mostly scattered mental state wouldn't make the story feel artificially fragmented, and I think that was beneficial.  Nothing blindsided me or tossed me out of the narrative, although at times the fragmented chronology (anchored to names, which are one of my weaknesses) did get the best of me.

It's a very different book from Fun Home, a very different relationship with a very different person.  (And I think that someone I once studied with made a brief appearance in it, which was really wild, to say the least.)  I do wonder if the order of reading would affect someone's opinion on which of the two books they think is "better."  Both of them were interesting, educational, and touching, so I consider reading them both to be a win for me.  (I would suggest that you at least take a look at the physical hardcover because I loved the symbolism on that one more than the paperback.)

What I've been reading lately

The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock: In this volume, DJ sort of dates this guy, and that ends badly.  Mostly she keeps dealing with her screwed up, silent family, as they deal with a real crisis or two.  I love this narrator's voice and the way she comes to realize things about herself and the people around her and starts to act on them in small but powerful ways.

Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation: So what does a book series do after it resolves what you thought was going to be its main conflict?  Well, I'll have to find out in the next volume because this was the volume where some big showdowns happened, and it gets pretty brutal.  There are a lot of reversals in this book as characters and motivations are twisted and shown to be not exactly what you were led to believe.  Lots of emotional tension and some great book-related information, as per usual.

Newton's Cannon by J. Gregory Keyes: Ben Franklin + Alchemy = pretty entertaining. Unless you're London.  At least he's really sorry.

Margaux with an X, Now Playing: Stoner and Spaz II, and Deadvilleby Ron Koertge: The endings are never cheaply happy.  Each protagonist is so unique.  All the books are united by their common excellence.  Not perfect, mind you, but great.  I am impressed by his ability to make convincing characters who so easily move the plot along while narrating in first person.  I need to study this; if done right, the books just seem to hum along even if there's not really much action.  I am also impressed by his ability to create realistic adult characters, use interesting family groups/dynamics, and seamlessly include characters with various kinds of disabilities.  Well done!

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: This book is always an interesting read (especially if you're me and forget everything between readings).  Ponder once again these clear examples, this lack of theological buzzwords, the thought-provoking ideas grounded firmly in a time past.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson: If you are easily offended, this one is not for you; the language is frequently R-rated, as is the content (sometimes more "R" for ralph-inducing).  As the Bloggess, Jenny Lawson tells stories about her screwed up life.  And it is screwed up. 

People who think they grew up with quirky parents will be put in their places by this book.  There are baby racoons in jams, lessons in couch etiquette, more than you really wanted to think about cow artificial insemination, dead babies, saint-worthy husbands, feeling stabby, and more neuroses than you can shake a roadkill puppet at.  You will find that you really love your job (unless you work in HR).  You will be grossed out and offended for sure.  You might also laugh hard enough to have an asthma attack.  More than once.

Best served in small doses, this one nonetheless adds up surprisingly well into something akin to a memoir.  However, you really need to know what you're getting into when you read this, or you will be disappointed.  It's not Shakespeare, and it's not trying to be.  If you read it like a blog (a little bit every so often), you'll probably end up with a better opinion of it than if you try to read it like a normal memoir or novel.  If it starts getting tedious, stop reading and come back to it later when you need a really weird pick me up.

Regret vs. Common Sense vs. Expectations vs. Peace

And then there's this simple question from the doctor:

"You've been in pain from this for 5-and-a-half years, and this is the first time a doctor is seeing it? "

Well, yes.  Funny how that happened.  I fell and landed on my back and then saw doctors for that and then had physical therapy.  At physical therapy, they improved my back, and my hip started hurting.  The PT folks said to come back if the hip didn't improve on its own.  When it still hurt a few years later and I had a better job, I went to PT for it without seeing a doctor.  It makes sense.  But five and a half years?  Is my sense of pain and my way of dealing with it so screwed up that I would let this thing happen to me when I would not let it happen to another?

The regrets start again. 

What if
I had gone
right when it
started hurting
or at least earlier
than 5 years? 
Could I have prevented something?  Lessened
some damage?  Did my lack
cause this more serious hurt?
Could this regret have been prevented?

Common sense intrudes. 

And when
would you have found
time for this?  And money? 
And energy?  You did not
have these things.  Let go.  Learn.  Move on. 
Stop hurting yourself more
over the hurt you may
or may not
have done yourself. 
Be at peace.
Live now. 
Go.

I try to convince myself not to expect the worst.

Maybe it's not torn cartilage or arthritis.  Maybe it is something to do with the natural structure and inflammation, and it can be fixed.  Maybe the flying pigs can fix it after they stop this sick feeling in my stomach which may be more related to allergies than stressing out about imaginary potential hip surgery it will be hard for me to afford.  Or not so imaginary tests involving needles in my hip and how debilitated I was from needles in my wrist.

Be at peace, dagnabbit.  Why won't you listen? 

Worrying won't help.  God is with you.  
You'll be fine no matter what happens.

Clutch towel. Don't panic.

Breathe in.  Breathe out. 

Hindsight is 20/20, and I want to punch it in the face

Once upon a time, I fell on the ice on a sidewalk.  It was next to a part of a building that was for rent, and the owners didn't want to pay to have the parking lot lights on.  It was a cartoon fall, one second walking cautiously, the next hitting my back and head on the sidewalk and looking up at my feet in a, "How did those get up there?" sort of way.  From the ground I could see that the whole untreated sidewalk was a single sheet of ice.  (Isn't that always how it works.) 

Emergency room, nothing broken, physical therapy, trouble getting the bones and muscles to realign correctly.  Pain increasing in the hip.  No money for more PT.  No time.  No energy.   

I decided not to sue.  I was in pain from several injuries, working full time, attending school part time, fighting with the Federal Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, increasingly bad insomnia from the pain and nerve activity, and the resulting really poor judgment. 

Today the doctor said scary words like cartilage tear and flattening and overhang and arthritis and tests and injecting dye into the hip.  Now that I'm contemplating an MRI (not very well covered by my insurance) and (please God no) possibly surgery and recovery (also not well-covered) and my third story apartment and the huge layoff my company will be having next month, I want to go back and force myself to sue the building owners for negligence.  Now that I have a better job and have graduated from school and given up on OWCP, I could probably handle it.  Back then, I just couldn't, even though I should have.  I simply didn't have the energy or time to do the thing I should have.

Retrospect sucks.  Like a bog.

Why writing memoir is hard

I really admire people who can pull off a successful memoir (success = skillful execution) because I don't know how they do it.  I am long-winded by nature (I think in multi-volume, epic plots and can't do much with short stories to save my life).  It is extremely difficult for me to figure out how to take, say, a 450 page spiritual autobiography and turn it into a svelte 200 page memoir. 

How do you know when to start?  How do you know what to cut? And most importantly, how do you know when to end it?

". . . You're searching, Joe,
For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings--there are no such things.
There are only middles."

-"In the Home Stretch" 

by Robert Frost

 

I read that and blessed dear departed Mr. Frost again.  He was amazing.  He puts things in words I've been wanting to say but can't until I stumble across a new (to me) poem.  Did he ever write a memoir?

Anyway, that quote explains the reason why it's so hard for me to write a good, succinct, complete memoir.  I don't feel like things ever end/stop in my life, and I'm not at the place yet where I can see enough of the bigger picture to see how to craft a stopping point that I am comfortable with (comfortable = no "if I leave that out, it feels dishonest" moments).  

 

I'm not sure where things begin, either, but that's a lesser concern because I feel like it's the ending I need to stick first.  All my other questions can be answered and addressed if only I know where the end is.  

 

Maybe this is some subtle form of procrastination, but I don't think so because anything that generates hundreds of pages is obviously not afraid to get work produced.  

 

Maybe this is why it's easier to write an autobiography when you are old (or have it written for you after you are dead).  Death is an ending it's hard to argue with.  However, I don't think it would solve the problem of knowing when to begin if you wanted a short work.  :)  Sigh.

Content to be in the middles, 

Tmia

Some thoughts on "The Ecstasy of Influence"

When I first stumbled across Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy of Influence" in Harper's Magazine a few years ago, it felt like a revelation. Before I read it, I thought I was alone.  After reading Lethem's brilliant "plagiarism," I knew that I was part of a great collection of insatiably curious minds addicted to learning and information and baffled by modern copyright laws and the ways they try to box and contain the human mind and creativity. 

We have read so many books and stories that they influence us in ways we aren't cognizant of.  Instead of being afraid of being called out for lying unintentionally when "quoting" these influences unaware, Lethem advises thinking and talking about plagiarism, influence, and copyright the way it is evolving in our society.  Maybe we're not the ones who need to change, he suggests.  It seems like a stunning collection of original ideas, but it turns out he got these ideas from other people.  (Be sure to check out his end notes.)

Ever since junior high, I have been extremely concerned about plagiarism because it seemed like one of writing's deadly sins.  I was a good girl; I did not want to be a sinner.  In college, I evolved a complex documentation process involving notecards and notes that allowed me to write 10 full academic papers in ten weeks for one class.  I was always a stickler for documentation when writing academic papers.  I had to be.  It knew it would be easy to plagiarize unintentionally, so I was vigilant.

Towards the end of college, I started taking creative nonfiction (CNF) classes (personal essay and the like) and discovered CNF's insidious charms.  (Writing well about what I think about things is legitimate!  I don't have to have sources at all!)   This elation was short-lived because in the course of these classes, I learned that it was easier for me (and somehow more challenging) to relax my Type-A controlling of information and just think on the page.  But I wanted to be a college composition teacher, and I would have to get a research degree to do so.  I resisted the siren song . . .

Then I discovered you can teach with an MFA (a terminal degree that's more about practicing the craft than researching).  A titanic battle erupted.  It would be lovely to be called Dr. X, but what a silly reason to spend more money.  Was I capable of the rigor and organization that it would take to write a dissertation?  Probably, but just thinking of the number of trees I would need to kill for that many notecards was daunting.  And, let's be honest, did I want to squash myself like that now that I'd felt the freedom and relief of creative writing?  Not really.  Not now that I had been seduced . . .  The MFA it was.

Another reason I steered away from academic research writing was because of those scandals about plagiarism when nonfiction writers didn't cite sources correctly.  I felt bad because sometimes it seemed like they didn't do it on purpose, but they were labeled as evil thieves anyway.  I wished the news people would be a little less gleeful about it.  The writers read so many sources to create those academic tomes; how could they possibly keep straight what was original thought?  I sure couldn't, not with what I'd come to know about how my brain works best. 

I'm an omnivorous reader, a generalist and a synthesizer, an unconscious collector of knowledge and phrases, and I'm also a writer.  This is a dangerous combination because  I never know when I will write something I read somewhere 10 years ago without even knowing it. I'd hate to have my integrity called into question just because I haven't been carefully documenting every source I've encountered since I began reading at age 3.

Should I have to?  Do we need to know and acknowledge all our sources when we live in a society of document, idea, and information overflow?  Is it possible to?

Once, on a dare from a high school history teacher, I wrote a term paper made up entirely of quotes (okay, and about 7 sentences of connecting tissue).  Sometimes, I feel like that's what I do when I write an essay, only I don't have the sources and notes available for citation.  Where do our ideas come from?  They must come from somewhere, but that doesn't mean we remember where.  Should we have to?  Is it really dishonest to have a bad memory?  Isn't the idea what matters?  Isn't the discussion what's valuable?  Must we create out of nothing or risk being called immoral?

In graduate school, one of the first things a professor told us is that all writers are thieves and pirates.  If we love to read, we can't help but be so.  Something has to happen to all those bits we learn and love that float around in our brains interacting with each other.

While you may not agree with the conclusions of Lethem's piece, that's not the point.  The point is starting discussions and considering things you haven't thought about before about how our brains work and work best.  It's a bonus that he did so in a rather brilliant and entertaining way.

If you haven't already read the article, please take some time to do so. What do you think?