My favorite story from Tina May Hall's award-winning collection is this one, available at the Collagist. In it, a woman discovers a dead squirrel stuck in her wall; her boyfriend, meanwhile, leaves for a trip. What follows is an attempt to rid the house of the squirrel, whose decomposition is stinking up the house. Or really, what follows is the discovery of a secret and the putting away of a few others. The squirrel becomes a metaphor for many of the events in the story itself--and a fitting introduction to a collection titled The Physics of Imaginary Objects, for it is about the implications for our lives of these objects we can only imagine. Read the story here at the Collagist.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
On "The Physics of Imaginary Objects" by Tina May Hall ***
Tina May Hall is an amazing wordsmith, of that this collection leaves no doubts. Each sentence is a gem--so much so that I often felt I was reading poetry rather than fiction. And that may be one of the reasons I felt something missing some of the time--that attention to plot.
But on a sheer sentence level, I loved much of what is here. Take, for example, the second story in the collection, "Erratum: Insert 'R' for Transgressors." The story is built around a few key lines that are repeated over and over with minor variations. It is beautiful to listen to in one's head, and I'm sure beautiful to hear read aloud, and it leads to a kind of climax as a good poem often does--but for me, it did not seem an epiphany in the sense that one would often glean from a story. It was more like we climb this mountain of words with the author and then, at the end, stare down at the beautiful valley below.
The stories are mostly very short, in keeping with their generally poetic nature. Some of them sparkle with neat ideas. I thought the pieces on a woman who stores a finger she has cut off in a jar, on a woman who falls in love with a television meteorologist, and on a town with a huge sinkhole in its center to be entertaining on this level.
My favorite pieces, however, probably fall into much more traditional fare. The lead story, "Visitations," is magnificent, as is the novella that ends the collection, "All the Day's Sad Stories," which appeared earlier as a Caketrain chapbook. That latter story recounts a tale of a young couple trying to get pregnant and of a set of mysterious written X's that keep showing up around their property. It is a mystery of an unusual sort, and it is also a story that relishes in declarative sentences. This style, maintained throughout the collection, works well for Hall, reminding me, with her penchant for the poetic both of Blake Butler and of Kate Braverman.
A word also on the design--I love the small trim size and the choice of typeface for this collection. I felt like I was reading a short handbook on the subject denoted in the title of the collection.
But on a sheer sentence level, I loved much of what is here. Take, for example, the second story in the collection, "Erratum: Insert 'R' for Transgressors." The story is built around a few key lines that are repeated over and over with minor variations. It is beautiful to listen to in one's head, and I'm sure beautiful to hear read aloud, and it leads to a kind of climax as a good poem often does--but for me, it did not seem an epiphany in the sense that one would often glean from a story. It was more like we climb this mountain of words with the author and then, at the end, stare down at the beautiful valley below.
The stories are mostly very short, in keeping with their generally poetic nature. Some of them sparkle with neat ideas. I thought the pieces on a woman who stores a finger she has cut off in a jar, on a woman who falls in love with a television meteorologist, and on a town with a huge sinkhole in its center to be entertaining on this level.
My favorite pieces, however, probably fall into much more traditional fare. The lead story, "Visitations," is magnificent, as is the novella that ends the collection, "All the Day's Sad Stories," which appeared earlier as a Caketrain chapbook. That latter story recounts a tale of a young couple trying to get pregnant and of a set of mysterious written X's that keep showing up around their property. It is a mystery of an unusual sort, and it is also a story that relishes in declarative sentences. This style, maintained throughout the collection, works well for Hall, reminding me, with her penchant for the poetic both of Blake Butler and of Kate Braverman.
A word also on the design--I love the small trim size and the choice of typeface for this collection. I felt like I was reading a short handbook on the subject denoted in the title of the collection.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
On "Baby's Breath" by Jason Kapcala (7370 words) ***
The film Out of Sight, a seemingly commercial vehicle for George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, starts, as I recall, with a scene of Clooney throwing his tie on the ground as he leaves an office building. It seems to have little to do with what comes after, except . . . an hour or so later, we see that scene again, and the meaning becomes clear. We were watching the future, and we didn't even know it. Such is the genius of Steven Soderberg.
Jason Kapcala's story uses a similar technique. That moment, in prose, takes on the aura of a memory, something vaguely familiar, and it works well here, because the story is about a summer job right after high school, before heading off to college. For me, this time in my life was one of great hope and longing, and of endless disappointment. The narrator here, working at a nursery (for plants, not babies!), goes through some of the same emotions, largely caused by one coworker. All the characters in this piece seem spot on. A good read is to be had, here, at Summerset Review.
Jason Kapcala's story uses a similar technique. That moment, in prose, takes on the aura of a memory, something vaguely familiar, and it works well here, because the story is about a summer job right after high school, before heading off to college. For me, this time in my life was one of great hope and longing, and of endless disappointment. The narrator here, working at a nursery (for plants, not babies!), goes through some of the same emotions, largely caused by one coworker. All the characters in this piece seem spot on. A good read is to be had, here, at Summerset Review.
On "Time's Arrow" by Martin Amis ****
I read about this book a few months ago and thought, I need to read that. It is, admittedly, built largely around a gimmick, and it was the gimmick that appealed to me. But Amis makes the gimmick work. The gimmick is this: the novel is told in reverse. By reverse, I do not mean that we get scenes in reverse order, as in the film Momento. Rather, take the story "Benjamin Button" but place the whole thing into reverse order rather than just the title character. Everyone is getting younger. History is going backward.
Amis describes actions moving in reverse. Dialogue is given, line by line, in reverse. "You're welcome," she said, extending her hands. "Thank you," he said, giving her the box. She put the box in a bag. "This is for you," she said. "No, really, I didn't do anything," he told her. Apparently she took his modesty literally, for she rescinded her offering.
Amis makes the dialogue and the descriptions work, describing them as if going forward even as they move backward. Somehow, even though the conversations are in reverse, they end up making a kind of odd sense, and the actions take on that odd kind of sense as well. In fact, Amis makes it work so well that after reading, I'd inevitably find my mind working in reverse. In a story by another writer I read soon after, in which a character was pregnant, I kept expecting her to become less and less pregnant--no, no, I had to keep reminding myself, that's now how things work: she becomes more pregnant.
What Amis is doing is tracking a man's life as it works backward toward horror and toward innocence. By working back, he gives a whole other perspective to life and to regret. Seizing the day is made all the more impressive when things work away from a breakup toward a romance's start. A character shows up abruptly and disappears gradually, becoming colder with time. As a doctor, the main character mainly helps people get sicker, except when he doesn't, when--in the story's central story-ending events--he helps people rise up from the dead. In this manner, the story becomes one of redemption, taking back evil acts from the past, making evil good.
It's an effective and moving strategy in Amis's adept hands. I loved this book. Alas, because we start at the end and move to the start, it's sole disadvantage was that I knew all that was coming. It was, in essence, predictable. But then again, it may have been predictable in part because of the writer who first brought it to my attention and who mentioned exactly what happens. In that sense, I'm slightly uncertain as to whether the lack of surprise was inherent in the manner of telling or in the manner by which I came to know the story.
Amis describes actions moving in reverse. Dialogue is given, line by line, in reverse. "You're welcome," she said, extending her hands. "Thank you," he said, giving her the box. She put the box in a bag. "This is for you," she said. "No, really, I didn't do anything," he told her. Apparently she took his modesty literally, for she rescinded her offering.
Amis makes the dialogue and the descriptions work, describing them as if going forward even as they move backward. Somehow, even though the conversations are in reverse, they end up making a kind of odd sense, and the actions take on that odd kind of sense as well. In fact, Amis makes it work so well that after reading, I'd inevitably find my mind working in reverse. In a story by another writer I read soon after, in which a character was pregnant, I kept expecting her to become less and less pregnant--no, no, I had to keep reminding myself, that's now how things work: she becomes more pregnant.
What Amis is doing is tracking a man's life as it works backward toward horror and toward innocence. By working back, he gives a whole other perspective to life and to regret. Seizing the day is made all the more impressive when things work away from a breakup toward a romance's start. A character shows up abruptly and disappears gradually, becoming colder with time. As a doctor, the main character mainly helps people get sicker, except when he doesn't, when--in the story's central story-ending events--he helps people rise up from the dead. In this manner, the story becomes one of redemption, taking back evil acts from the past, making evil good.
It's an effective and moving strategy in Amis's adept hands. I loved this book. Alas, because we start at the end and move to the start, it's sole disadvantage was that I knew all that was coming. It was, in essence, predictable. But then again, it may have been predictable in part because of the writer who first brought it to my attention and who mentioned exactly what happens. In that sense, I'm slightly uncertain as to whether the lack of surprise was inherent in the manner of telling or in the manner by which I came to know the story.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
On "The Temple" by H. P. Lovecraft (5388 words) *****
This is the first time I've every read Lovecraft. Now I know why Paul Bowles and other fans find him so appealing. This story at least is a mix of fantasy and madness, which makes it all the more entertaining and hard to pin down.
On a long cruise in the Atlantic, a seaman finds refuge on the deck of a submarine--only to be drowned. Or so that's the theory. In his possession is a magnificent piece of ivory that one of the crewmen takes possession of. Over the coming weeks, the crew goes mad, claiming it's a curse of the ivory piece. Our narrator, however, always a cool and rational one dismisses all warnings, recognizing these cautions as just what they are--mutterings of a crew too long at sea, too long alone, separated from others. Or are they? With such an ultrarational narrator, Lovecraft plays on this border with madness for full effect. Read the story here at Innsmouth Free Press.
On a long cruise in the Atlantic, a seaman finds refuge on the deck of a submarine--only to be drowned. Or so that's the theory. In his possession is a magnificent piece of ivory that one of the crewmen takes possession of. Over the coming weeks, the crew goes mad, claiming it's a curse of the ivory piece. Our narrator, however, always a cool and rational one dismisses all warnings, recognizing these cautions as just what they are--mutterings of a crew too long at sea, too long alone, separated from others. Or are they? With such an ultrarational narrator, Lovecraft plays on this border with madness for full effect. Read the story here at Innsmouth Free Press.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
On "Pool" by Corey Campbell (2702 words) ***
There's something haunting about Corey Campbell's "Pool." It's one of those stories in which not much seems to be happening but which also seems somehow to stick one's skin, sliding over you like water, so that it's not so easy to get off. The piece centers on a young woman named Darla who is fairly new in a relationship with Jon, a man who is good enough for now but who she has no intentions of sticking with. Trevor and Mandy are friends, married, and even younger than Darla. There's an obvious metaphor here regarding "taking the plunge." Darla doesn't want to swim, doesn't want to go in the pool, but it appears that she lives her entire life that way--never willing to totally commit or to dare. Until . . . Read the story here at Anderbo.
On "The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature" by Brian J. Frost ***
Figuring I'd follow up Basil Copper's history of werewolves with a literary history of them, I picked up Frost's tome. Frost's book, written nearly three decades later, adds the seventies, eighties, and nineties to the mix of literary works under discussion. Still, it wasn't quite what I was hoping for.
It's exhaustive, to be sure. There may be a few works he fails to mention, but this is essentially plus two hundred pages of titles and plot summaries. Call it an annotated bibliography in text form, and that's essentially what you'd have. That's not necessarily bad, and Frost is better, I think, at plot summaries than Copper. He knows where to stop, not to get so full into the plot that your eyes glaze over, unlike Copper who at times rehearses every tiny details. In this sense, the writing seems more lively in Frost's book.
But what I guess I was wanting, and will still have to find somewhere else if I return to the werewolf theme (which is unlikely in the near future), is more analysis. Why are some people interested in these creatures, and what does that say about humanity? Not much of that is here.
The closest Frost gets to that is in the opening chapter, which discusses where the myth comes from. He rehearses some of the same details as in the more interesting sections of Copper's book, but in a more abbreviated and scholarly tone, which in the case of this more historical material makes it less interesting than Copper's text. We learn that the werewolf has some antecedents among the ancients and that werewolves were a fear among people in the Middle Ages, who assumed they were witches (the idea that a werewolf had fur on the underside of human skin is repeated--unfortunate for those who were tested, for the innocent were dead, and the guilty, well, no one seemed to ever have fur under the skin). And we learn a bit about true werewolves, or rather, ideas of werewolves in contemporary time: people who think they are wolves, psychological problems, eaters of flesh, and so on.
Next, Frost turns his attention to studies of werewolves, where some other useful information might been gleaned and where, if I were motivated to review the chapter more closely, I might find the literary and cultural analysis I was wishing for. Then follow chapters on novels and stories over the various periods, especially from the Victorian era on, and he finally closes with a chapter on anthologies of werewolf stories. If you can't get enough werewolf reading, Frost's would be a good place to start. You'll probably find enough to last a lifetime or at least a decade.
It's exhaustive, to be sure. There may be a few works he fails to mention, but this is essentially plus two hundred pages of titles and plot summaries. Call it an annotated bibliography in text form, and that's essentially what you'd have. That's not necessarily bad, and Frost is better, I think, at plot summaries than Copper. He knows where to stop, not to get so full into the plot that your eyes glaze over, unlike Copper who at times rehearses every tiny details. In this sense, the writing seems more lively in Frost's book.
But what I guess I was wanting, and will still have to find somewhere else if I return to the werewolf theme (which is unlikely in the near future), is more analysis. Why are some people interested in these creatures, and what does that say about humanity? Not much of that is here.
The closest Frost gets to that is in the opening chapter, which discusses where the myth comes from. He rehearses some of the same details as in the more interesting sections of Copper's book, but in a more abbreviated and scholarly tone, which in the case of this more historical material makes it less interesting than Copper's text. We learn that the werewolf has some antecedents among the ancients and that werewolves were a fear among people in the Middle Ages, who assumed they were witches (the idea that a werewolf had fur on the underside of human skin is repeated--unfortunate for those who were tested, for the innocent were dead, and the guilty, well, no one seemed to ever have fur under the skin). And we learn a bit about true werewolves, or rather, ideas of werewolves in contemporary time: people who think they are wolves, psychological problems, eaters of flesh, and so on.
Next, Frost turns his attention to studies of werewolves, where some other useful information might been gleaned and where, if I were motivated to review the chapter more closely, I might find the literary and cultural analysis I was wishing for. Then follow chapters on novels and stories over the various periods, especially from the Victorian era on, and he finally closes with a chapter on anthologies of werewolf stories. If you can't get enough werewolf reading, Frost's would be a good place to start. You'll probably find enough to last a lifetime or at least a decade.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
On "The Most Girl Part of You" by Amy Hempel (3185 words) *****
Here's another story from the master, one who only puts out a couple of stories a year it seems. I'm reminded a bit of a tale about Paul Bowles versus his wife Jane Bowles. Paul wrote quickly, edited quickly, churned stuff out. He wrote some fabulous stuff; he also wrote some pretty lame stuff. Jane agonized over every word, but her one novel--Two Serious Ladies--is a masterpiece in every way, rivaling the best that Paul ever came up with.
If Hemphill is part of the latter camp, I could believe it, but I can also believe that such agony gives us lines like "May I challenge you to a dance?" Fantastic.
Here, in this story from her collection At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, a young gal with a close guy friend (one might even say she has a crush, the way she claims everything about Jack is "big") watches as her friend tries to come to terms with the death, the suicide, of his sick mother. Life for Jack seems to be going on about the same as usual, but it's not usual, and we know it and so does she, down deep. The two continue to hang out, but Jack is hurting--and hiding it. And yet, the story is one of a Phoenix, one about what rises from the ashes. Read the story here at the Collagist.
If Hemphill is part of the latter camp, I could believe it, but I can also believe that such agony gives us lines like "May I challenge you to a dance?" Fantastic.
Here, in this story from her collection At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, a young gal with a close guy friend (one might even say she has a crush, the way she claims everything about Jack is "big") watches as her friend tries to come to terms with the death, the suicide, of his sick mother. Life for Jack seems to be going on about the same as usual, but it's not usual, and we know it and so does she, down deep. The two continue to hang out, but Jack is hurting--and hiding it. And yet, the story is one of a Phoenix, one about what rises from the ashes. Read the story here at the Collagist.
Monday, June 27, 2011
On "The Scar" by Cathy Barber, "From Don't Leave Me Scarlett Johansson" by Thomas Patrick Levy, and "Half-hearted Apology" by Nicole Koroch
I find Barber's "Scar" to be a powerful poem in part because of what it hints at. Like many a good short story, it leads us down a path of history and drops us off just before things are about to turn, or at least may turn. That we don't know--but that we suspect--the final ending is the scary part. Read the poem here at Marco Polo.
Levy's poems are musings from a lover--or a fan--and they're spectacularly poetical, full of odd turns of phrase and metaphor, unexpected dabblings in linguistic dexterity. Levy asks Johansson not to leave him, but my question is, is she listening? Because if she isn't, she needs to be. Read the prose poem here at Diagram.
Koroch's apology pulled me in just with its title, and the poem is pretty much what the title says. As you can imagine, it's kind of funny--and kind of sad. I hope to avoid building friendships like this one. Read the poem here at Ramshackle Review.
Levy's poems are musings from a lover--or a fan--and they're spectacularly poetical, full of odd turns of phrase and metaphor, unexpected dabblings in linguistic dexterity. Levy asks Johansson not to leave him, but my question is, is she listening? Because if she isn't, she needs to be. Read the prose poem here at Diagram.
Koroch's apology pulled me in just with its title, and the poem is pretty much what the title says. As you can imagine, it's kind of funny--and kind of sad. I hope to avoid building friendships like this one. Read the poem here at Ramshackle Review.
Friday, June 24, 2011
On "If Poems Were Children" by Margaret Sullivan, "Unfinished Letter to Death" by Connie Voisine, and "A Conversation about Momentum" by Cami Park
Sullivan's very short poem is a simple metaphor carried to its logical conclusion, and as such, it is gorgeous. I've sometimes wished for less of a desire to write if only to have more time for other things in life. And yet, the opposite--the inability to write, EVER--is probably a more discouraging prospect. Read the poem here at Failbetter.
Voisine's piece falls into the "unfinished" category of writing, but what makes it so ingenious, coy, original, and darkly funny is that it does not just remain unfinished in one piece. It is a collection of unfinished phrases, begging to to be filled in, just as a life cut short often is. Read the poem here at Pool Poetry.
Park's short poem discusses exactly what the title says--all the ways in which most things move toward another thing, whether we wish it to or not. The interesting part here is in what Park chooses to discuss. Read it here at Ward Six.
Voisine's piece falls into the "unfinished" category of writing, but what makes it so ingenious, coy, original, and darkly funny is that it does not just remain unfinished in one piece. It is a collection of unfinished phrases, begging to to be filled in, just as a life cut short often is. Read the poem here at Pool Poetry.
Park's short poem discusses exactly what the title says--all the ways in which most things move toward another thing, whether we wish it to or not. The interesting part here is in what Park chooses to discuss. Read it here at Ward Six.
On "The Werewolf" by Basil Copper ***
Written in the 1970s, this basic introduction to all things werewolf--or at least, the history of the werewolf in legend, fact, and art--seems best to me in its second section, on fact. Werewolves--and vampires and elves and fairies and trolls and all things horrific and fantastic--have not held much interest for me, except in theory. And Copper's book seems to have confirmed that. The legends regarding the werewolf are moderately interesting, while the books and movies about the werewolf sound dreadful (as in dreadfully bad).
I would likely have been drawn a bit more to those other portions of the book, however, if Copper had spent more time analyzing and hypothesizing one what our fascination with the werewolf actually means. Instead, he tends mostly to focus on plot summaries of the best novels and stories and on giving his opinion with regard to how good or bad the works are. Given my lack of interest in the plots, I didn't find these sections terribly compelling.
The section on fact, however, was interesting precisely because Copper did spend some time hypothesizing, drawing parallels between legend and real life. In this section, various theories are espoused with regard to how people in the Middle Ages, for example, could have burned so many werewolves in the various witch hunts that occurred.
One theory is that the legend may have some roots in an obscure disease, a type of pophyria that makes people allergic to the sun. Such people break out into lesions in the light. Their teeth take on a yellowish hue, the urine is red, and for obvious reasons they prefer to come out at night, after sundown. Given their tortured appearance and their preference for the dark, such people might have been seen as witches.
Other diseases, of course, can be psychological, involving people who only think they are wolves--but who then act accordingly.
Copper also delves into stories regarding people raised by wolves. Such people--and there have been something like a hundred over the past few centuries--take on wolfish habits and are incable of learning to speak (going back to theories of language acquisition). Instead, they often walk on all fours and communicate in grunts. Discovered among the wolves, they have long matted hair, long nails, and sharpened teeth. The stories of such people really make one wonder about the extent to which we as humans are different from animals. If raised as a wolf, we are nothing but one, at base, is there any difference? I tend to think we have a spirit of sorts that allows for reason, a gift not inherent (at least not to the same extent) in animals, but what of these people raised among the animals?
But the most fascinating anecdote in the book, for me, is a long account of a man-eating wolf that held Lozere, France, in trepidation for several years beginning around 1764. Over the course of the next two years, the wolf would kill sixty people and injure many more. The wolf liked to prey most of women and children left alone, but it did a few times try to attack groups of children and even a group of men, learning quickly that such attempts were unwise. Villagers got together to hunt the wolf down without success. Louis XV got involved, sending in soldiers at various points, to no avail, and offering a bounty. The man who would eventually kill the beast, a local, would unfortunately not be able to claim the bounty, as the animal would be too greatly decomposed by the time it reached Paris to stand as evidence of his triumph. This, to me, seemed the most horrifying of the stories Copper recounted, something on the level of Jaws or a tale of a serial killer. Now this would make interesting literature or film!
I would likely have been drawn a bit more to those other portions of the book, however, if Copper had spent more time analyzing and hypothesizing one what our fascination with the werewolf actually means. Instead, he tends mostly to focus on plot summaries of the best novels and stories and on giving his opinion with regard to how good or bad the works are. Given my lack of interest in the plots, I didn't find these sections terribly compelling.
The section on fact, however, was interesting precisely because Copper did spend some time hypothesizing, drawing parallels between legend and real life. In this section, various theories are espoused with regard to how people in the Middle Ages, for example, could have burned so many werewolves in the various witch hunts that occurred.
One theory is that the legend may have some roots in an obscure disease, a type of pophyria that makes people allergic to the sun. Such people break out into lesions in the light. Their teeth take on a yellowish hue, the urine is red, and for obvious reasons they prefer to come out at night, after sundown. Given their tortured appearance and their preference for the dark, such people might have been seen as witches.
Other diseases, of course, can be psychological, involving people who only think they are wolves--but who then act accordingly.
Copper also delves into stories regarding people raised by wolves. Such people--and there have been something like a hundred over the past few centuries--take on wolfish habits and are incable of learning to speak (going back to theories of language acquisition). Instead, they often walk on all fours and communicate in grunts. Discovered among the wolves, they have long matted hair, long nails, and sharpened teeth. The stories of such people really make one wonder about the extent to which we as humans are different from animals. If raised as a wolf, we are nothing but one, at base, is there any difference? I tend to think we have a spirit of sorts that allows for reason, a gift not inherent (at least not to the same extent) in animals, but what of these people raised among the animals?
But the most fascinating anecdote in the book, for me, is a long account of a man-eating wolf that held Lozere, France, in trepidation for several years beginning around 1764. Over the course of the next two years, the wolf would kill sixty people and injure many more. The wolf liked to prey most of women and children left alone, but it did a few times try to attack groups of children and even a group of men, learning quickly that such attempts were unwise. Villagers got together to hunt the wolf down without success. Louis XV got involved, sending in soldiers at various points, to no avail, and offering a bounty. The man who would eventually kill the beast, a local, would unfortunately not be able to claim the bounty, as the animal would be too greatly decomposed by the time it reached Paris to stand as evidence of his triumph. This, to me, seemed the most horrifying of the stories Copper recounted, something on the level of Jaws or a tale of a serial killer. Now this would make interesting literature or film!
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
On "Bedsheets and Typewriter Keys" by Karissa Morton, "New York Postcard Sonnet #85" by Philip Dacey, and "Vocation" by Sandra Beasley ****
Morton's poem is full of metaphor, the main one of which is in the title itself. To think of the body as a typewriter, quite lovely really. Type your words on me. Be nice. Read here at Writers' Bloc.
A sonnet I particularly like is one that gives short TV Guide-like synopses of Shakespeare plays. Dacey's is one that captures overheard parts of conversations, lines that are intriguing passages into possible stories all by themselves. Oh, to find sonnet material as interesting as this. Read it here at Serving House Journal.
Sandra Beasley's "Vocation" explores the subject of what people do for a living, reworking the tired phrases that we have come to associate with work to create something new and exciting and, well, funny. And if Freud is right, we laugh because somehow an uncomfortable truth is revealed. Her other poem, "Story" starts with an interesting quote and takes off from there. Read the poems here at Swink.
A sonnet I particularly like is one that gives short TV Guide-like synopses of Shakespeare plays. Dacey's is one that captures overheard parts of conversations, lines that are intriguing passages into possible stories all by themselves. Oh, to find sonnet material as interesting as this. Read it here at Serving House Journal.
Sandra Beasley's "Vocation" explores the subject of what people do for a living, reworking the tired phrases that we have come to associate with work to create something new and exciting and, well, funny. And if Freud is right, we laugh because somehow an uncomfortable truth is revealed. Her other poem, "Story" starts with an interesting quote and takes off from there. Read the poems here at Swink.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
On "The Kiss" by Priscilla A. Kipp (531 words) ***
I've had plenty of opportunities to feel neglected. Someone new comes into a friend's life, and suddenly you don't hear from him or her for a while (it's particularly unnerving when it's a person you had some romantic interest in who didn't feel the same way--"I sure liked being friends with her but now I can't even be that"). Not being a parent, I've never had the opportunity to feel neglected by my own offspring. I imagine in a way that it's even worse. I mean, after all those sacrifices and a whole chunk of one's life spent together, and now the kid is an adult with people of his or her own that he or she loves. But there's also something joyous in it also, seeing your son or daughter become his or her own person. This is the ground that this bittersweet (mostly sort of sad) story covers. A woman, at the airport, meeting her son, along with the girlfriend, who her son seems more excited to see. Read the story here at Night Train.
On "Breaking the Maya Code" by Michael Coe **
This book would have come much earlier on the psycholinguists list if I'd been able to get a copy. It's been on constant loan from the library since I started the list. It forges a rather odd ending to the list, for the material is really about deciphering an ancient script, a language, something that would have fit in more with the history of reading sections of the list.
The language that is being deciphered is ancient Maya. Coe's book is an account of how it happened and why it took so long. As an entertaining read, it was a bit on the slow and name-dropping side for me; as history, it focuses mostly on the academicians involved and not so much on the history that is gleaned after the code is cracked. I was thinking the book might be like Richard Rhodes's "Making of the Atom Bomb," but I didn't find myself as invested in the discoveries that were awaiting the archaeologists, linguists, and art historians who finally put the pieces together as I was in the physicists who somehow managed to break apart an atom for the first time.
Coe starts off well enough with his first chapter, which explains some of the basics about different writing systems and about language systems, much of which was covered in other books on my list. Still, this was the most interesting part of the book to me. Maya, it was assumed, was ideographic. That is, each symbol stood for a word--much as some think of Chinese or of Egyptian hieroglyphics. But Coe points out that, while such languages may have started as ideographic on some level, they are really logographic. Logographic languages, if I understand correctly, work with symbols for combining ideas, along with some phonetic and syllabic symbols. Purely syllabic languages have a symbol for each morpheme, and phonetic languages have symbols for each phoneme.
At one point, ancient Egyptian was thought to be ideographic as well, but in fact a scholar named Champollion was able to prove in the nineteenth century that the symbols in the writing actually had a function similar to those in Chinese. Hence, for example, an "eye" symbol wasn't necessarily an eye, but perhaps the sound "eye" or the syllable "ide" or the concept of "high" (I'm making these up--if only to note the point). Mayan, it turns out, works on a similar principle. But whereas Champollion took two years to crack the code, Mayan scholars would take over one hundred. Why?
Champollion had better resources: he had the Rosetta stone and some careful preserved artifacts to review. Mayan scholars didn't.
But in fact, they did. One writer from the early Spanish conquest had written out the Mayan syllabary. Scholars, however, assumed he couldn't possibly have been telling things as they actually were. And here, I suppose, is the interesting part of Coe's story--the crux of the tragedy. Mayan wasn't decoded, it turns out, not because materials weren't present but, first, because of preconceptual prejudices and, second, because of academic egos.
An ancient non-Western "barbarian" culture couldn't possibly have had real writing, some great thinkers assumed. Others thought Native Americans prone to mystical thought--not likely to actually bother writing down events around them. Further, the signs themselves--folks assumed--must be ideographic. And so it goes, working with such assumptions, those trying to decipher were blinded by their own preconceptions.
But even worse, they were blinded by each other. One scholar in particular comes off quite badly. So important was it to be right about his own interpretations that when the true answers--that the script in fact had phonetic and syllabic components mixed into it--were exposed he mocked them. And by reputation, his use of mockery transferred to virtually all others in the field. And such competition, Coe points out, continues up to the writing of his book, wherein archaeologists, angry at dollars being given to linguists, downplay the need to "read" what the inscriptions actually say. Each academic is so concerned with his or her own field and reputation that the work of others is run down, and progress on the subject of the Maya is stunted.
Coe's, then, is a book about closed-minded thinking and academic ego, something that unfortunately is all too familiar many in university settings, as well as to many in the political arena. Truth doesn't matter as much as being "right"--even if one is wrong.
The language that is being deciphered is ancient Maya. Coe's book is an account of how it happened and why it took so long. As an entertaining read, it was a bit on the slow and name-dropping side for me; as history, it focuses mostly on the academicians involved and not so much on the history that is gleaned after the code is cracked. I was thinking the book might be like Richard Rhodes's "Making of the Atom Bomb," but I didn't find myself as invested in the discoveries that were awaiting the archaeologists, linguists, and art historians who finally put the pieces together as I was in the physicists who somehow managed to break apart an atom for the first time.
Coe starts off well enough with his first chapter, which explains some of the basics about different writing systems and about language systems, much of which was covered in other books on my list. Still, this was the most interesting part of the book to me. Maya, it was assumed, was ideographic. That is, each symbol stood for a word--much as some think of Chinese or of Egyptian hieroglyphics. But Coe points out that, while such languages may have started as ideographic on some level, they are really logographic. Logographic languages, if I understand correctly, work with symbols for combining ideas, along with some phonetic and syllabic symbols. Purely syllabic languages have a symbol for each morpheme, and phonetic languages have symbols for each phoneme.
At one point, ancient Egyptian was thought to be ideographic as well, but in fact a scholar named Champollion was able to prove in the nineteenth century that the symbols in the writing actually had a function similar to those in Chinese. Hence, for example, an "eye" symbol wasn't necessarily an eye, but perhaps the sound "eye" or the syllable "ide" or the concept of "high" (I'm making these up--if only to note the point). Mayan, it turns out, works on a similar principle. But whereas Champollion took two years to crack the code, Mayan scholars would take over one hundred. Why?
Champollion had better resources: he had the Rosetta stone and some careful preserved artifacts to review. Mayan scholars didn't.
But in fact, they did. One writer from the early Spanish conquest had written out the Mayan syllabary. Scholars, however, assumed he couldn't possibly have been telling things as they actually were. And here, I suppose, is the interesting part of Coe's story--the crux of the tragedy. Mayan wasn't decoded, it turns out, not because materials weren't present but, first, because of preconceptual prejudices and, second, because of academic egos.
An ancient non-Western "barbarian" culture couldn't possibly have had real writing, some great thinkers assumed. Others thought Native Americans prone to mystical thought--not likely to actually bother writing down events around them. Further, the signs themselves--folks assumed--must be ideographic. And so it goes, working with such assumptions, those trying to decipher were blinded by their own preconceptions.
But even worse, they were blinded by each other. One scholar in particular comes off quite badly. So important was it to be right about his own interpretations that when the true answers--that the script in fact had phonetic and syllabic components mixed into it--were exposed he mocked them. And by reputation, his use of mockery transferred to virtually all others in the field. And such competition, Coe points out, continues up to the writing of his book, wherein archaeologists, angry at dollars being given to linguists, downplay the need to "read" what the inscriptions actually say. Each academic is so concerned with his or her own field and reputation that the work of others is run down, and progress on the subject of the Maya is stunted.
Coe's, then, is a book about closed-minded thinking and academic ego, something that unfortunately is all too familiar many in university settings, as well as to many in the political arena. Truth doesn't matter as much as being "right"--even if one is wrong.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
On "They Rolled On" by Pete Pazmino (356 words) ***
Here's a piece that's like a poem. Great prose is often made of repeated phrases or words, and that's the technique Pete Pazmino uses here to describe an evening among young people, students, in a car. I was never a cruiser, and yet a story like this reminds me of youth--perhaps because in the act of driving and watching we feel like there's a world out there waiting for us, full of all kinds of opportunity. Certainly, that's how I felt when younger. Then you get to be twenty-one and get comfortable with bars and all the opportunity seems to be a myth. But it's nice while it lasts. Read the story here at Monkey Bicycle.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
On "The Big Hoo-Ha" by Maren Michel (6519 words) ****
Maren Michel's story carried me through to its wallop of an ending. Here is a tale of people aged together so much so that they understand one another's odd grievances and don't much care--or at least Bill doesn't seem to care. Certainly, one gets the feeling that his wife is a bit bossy and a whole lot neurotic, but there's a charm here that Bill sees as few others probably do. Given his chance for freedom, he looks back like Lot's wife. Read the story here at Adirondack Review.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
On "Bounce" by Jeanie Chung (2127 words) ***
The same folks who make basketballs make baseballs: Spalding. That's just something that hit me as I read this story. Imagine, making balls for a living. Some company out there specializes in balls.
A ball is important, however, as Chung points out in this story. It's what boys--and girls--think about. For me, it was never the basketball--too big, too meaty--but the baseball, which fit so perfectly into one's hand; or the tennis ball, only slightly smaller and with so much bounce; or the golf ball, a miniature one could admire for its form. But it's easy to see where the love of the basketball would arise. On television, players perform tricks. You can do these yourself. You can practice yourself. You can practice almost anywhere.
I played basketball in a church league for a couple of years. It was nothing I had wanted to do, but it was the difference between the kids having only one team on which the bench never played and two teams on which most people got to be starters. I did it for the team, you might say. I wasn't good, and I didn't dream of being a star. I was never good at any sport, and basketball, with its emphasis on speed and height, made me even less interested.
But Chung's story is about a kid with natural form. And in that, the story is embued with a kind of energy and enthusiasm for what playing the game can be like, especially in the way that Chung forges her sentences--short and choppy phrases--the pick, the pass--punctuated by the occasional smooth and long clause that breaks away like a player on the court. Read the story here at Stymie.
A ball is important, however, as Chung points out in this story. It's what boys--and girls--think about. For me, it was never the basketball--too big, too meaty--but the baseball, which fit so perfectly into one's hand; or the tennis ball, only slightly smaller and with so much bounce; or the golf ball, a miniature one could admire for its form. But it's easy to see where the love of the basketball would arise. On television, players perform tricks. You can do these yourself. You can practice yourself. You can practice almost anywhere.
I played basketball in a church league for a couple of years. It was nothing I had wanted to do, but it was the difference between the kids having only one team on which the bench never played and two teams on which most people got to be starters. I did it for the team, you might say. I wasn't good, and I didn't dream of being a star. I was never good at any sport, and basketball, with its emphasis on speed and height, made me even less interested.
But Chung's story is about a kid with natural form. And in that, the story is embued with a kind of energy and enthusiasm for what playing the game can be like, especially in the way that Chung forges her sentences--short and choppy phrases--the pick, the pass--punctuated by the occasional smooth and long clause that breaks away like a player on the court. Read the story here at Stymie.
Monday, June 6, 2011
On "Cyclicismus" by Kevin O'Cuinn (403 words) ***
There's something kind of chilling about this funny little story. That's a pun, sort of. We're talking folks without a home here, migrants, probably runaways. We're also talking a story with some beautiful language--and a beautiful man (or at least a man beautifully written about, who can't cross his legs). So much description here is working. That's why you need to go here, to Spork, and read it.
On "How to Speak Dog" by Stanley Coren ****
So do animals speak languages? When you ask people who are animal lovers, the answer seems to be yes. Coren makes the case that dogs have a language in this book. Now, it's not like a human language. He calls it a simple language (akin to a very small child's), as much dependent on gesture and body language as on sound. He makes this case because animals manage to communicate meaningful things to each other, because they can talk about things not in the current setting (e.g., calling the pack together), because they have a rudimentary grammar (a growl followed by a bark may have a different meaning than a bark followed by a growl, and certain gestures never accompany certain kinds of sounds). Granted, you're not going to get a dog to talk about philosophy, but then, Coren says, you won't get most people to talk about that either: more than two-thirds of what we say has to do with social interaction, which is what a dog's speech is confined to.
But these are the conclusions of Coren's book. Most of the book is not devoted to arguing these points but rather to delineating for us humans just what dogs are saying when they put a hand on our knee or bark at a cat. And in this Coren has some absolutely fascinating subject matter. Individual chapters go into the meaning of different sounds, scents, and of various sets of gestures--with the tail, the ears, the eyes, the face, and the body. Much of dog speech has to do with establishing who's boss and who is going to follow, and as Coren points out, is primarily about heading off a fight rather than getting involved in one. Hence, if a dog looks away, it is taking a subordinate role as opposed to one who continues to stare.
This has implications for how we as humans deal with dogs as well. Coren has some cool anecdotes, the most memorable to me being one in which a dog would continually come and sit on the couch next to a woman when her husband was gone. The dog would put his heavy head on the woman's lap along with a paw. He seemed to want constant affection, but he was heavy and hot and tiresome. She'd move over to make room for him, but he'd move again to be on her. Coren pointed out that in fact the dog was not looking for affection. It was claiming that it was the boss, demonstrating that it ruled the house when the woman's husband was gone. In another case of misunderstanding, a dog would continually wet the floor when a man came home, though it didn't wet the floor otherwise. Obviously, the dog was being disrespectful and hateful--or so it might seem. In fact, in dog language, it was trying to show its submissiveness to the man, as in I'm so like a little puppy around you that I can't even control my bowels, so don't beat me up.
An interesting discussion regards the gesture of pointing, which dogs do differently than humans. Dogs tend to look at the pointer when we use our hands rather than at the thing that is being pointed at. In dog speak, the way to point is with one's body, by turning one's head, just as a dog would point with other dogs. Coren believes this has, in part, to do with dogs less satisfactory eyesight.
Later chapters explore some tidbits on dogs and scent (they have something like four to five times the number of scent receptors that humans do, which explains why they can distinguish scents so much better than we can, making up for shortages in sight), on differing dialects among dogs, of dogs and cats, and of attempts to teach dogs human language. The dogs and cats section shows how cats in fact have their own gestural language that, in many ways, differs from dogs. Hence, this can lead to conflict, especially when the dog or cat has not grown up in a mixed home. Take, for example, rolling over to expose the belly. In a dog, this is a move showing submission; in a cat, this is an attack pose.
The chapter on dogs learning human language focuses mostly on apes, since that's where most research has actually been done. Primates, as the author points out, hold a lot more promise in this regard because of their greater dexterity with regard to hands. However, in the 1960s, Elisabeth Mann Borgese did try to train her dog Arli to use a keyboard to type out requests and demands, starting first with words and then moving to individual letters. Eventually, he learned to count to four and to type the words dog, cat, arlie, bird, ball, and bone. But was it really language? There is a humorous passage regarding submission of his poetry to a literary journal, which compared his work to e e cummings and encouraged Arli to continue in his pursuits.
But these are the conclusions of Coren's book. Most of the book is not devoted to arguing these points but rather to delineating for us humans just what dogs are saying when they put a hand on our knee or bark at a cat. And in this Coren has some absolutely fascinating subject matter. Individual chapters go into the meaning of different sounds, scents, and of various sets of gestures--with the tail, the ears, the eyes, the face, and the body. Much of dog speech has to do with establishing who's boss and who is going to follow, and as Coren points out, is primarily about heading off a fight rather than getting involved in one. Hence, if a dog looks away, it is taking a subordinate role as opposed to one who continues to stare.
This has implications for how we as humans deal with dogs as well. Coren has some cool anecdotes, the most memorable to me being one in which a dog would continually come and sit on the couch next to a woman when her husband was gone. The dog would put his heavy head on the woman's lap along with a paw. He seemed to want constant affection, but he was heavy and hot and tiresome. She'd move over to make room for him, but he'd move again to be on her. Coren pointed out that in fact the dog was not looking for affection. It was claiming that it was the boss, demonstrating that it ruled the house when the woman's husband was gone. In another case of misunderstanding, a dog would continually wet the floor when a man came home, though it didn't wet the floor otherwise. Obviously, the dog was being disrespectful and hateful--or so it might seem. In fact, in dog language, it was trying to show its submissiveness to the man, as in I'm so like a little puppy around you that I can't even control my bowels, so don't beat me up.
An interesting discussion regards the gesture of pointing, which dogs do differently than humans. Dogs tend to look at the pointer when we use our hands rather than at the thing that is being pointed at. In dog speak, the way to point is with one's body, by turning one's head, just as a dog would point with other dogs. Coren believes this has, in part, to do with dogs less satisfactory eyesight.
Later chapters explore some tidbits on dogs and scent (they have something like four to five times the number of scent receptors that humans do, which explains why they can distinguish scents so much better than we can, making up for shortages in sight), on differing dialects among dogs, of dogs and cats, and of attempts to teach dogs human language. The dogs and cats section shows how cats in fact have their own gestural language that, in many ways, differs from dogs. Hence, this can lead to conflict, especially when the dog or cat has not grown up in a mixed home. Take, for example, rolling over to expose the belly. In a dog, this is a move showing submission; in a cat, this is an attack pose.
The chapter on dogs learning human language focuses mostly on apes, since that's where most research has actually been done. Primates, as the author points out, hold a lot more promise in this regard because of their greater dexterity with regard to hands. However, in the 1960s, Elisabeth Mann Borgese did try to train her dog Arli to use a keyboard to type out requests and demands, starting first with words and then moving to individual letters. Eventually, he learned to count to four and to type the words dog, cat, arlie, bird, ball, and bone. But was it really language? There is a humorous passage regarding submission of his poetry to a literary journal, which compared his work to e e cummings and encouraged Arli to continue in his pursuits.
Friday, June 3, 2011
On "Love of Life" by Jack London (8219 words) ****
In a story that rivals "To Build a Fire" in subject matter but which stretches on much longer, London recounts the possible last days of a man injured in a fall in the snow. A burden now that he has a swollen ankle, his companion deserts him, and we get the benefits of the adventure story to follow--where to find food, how to make shoes from blankets and clothing, how to fend off hungry wolves waiting for you to die. The story is exquisite in detail, and one can't help but cheer the man on to the very end and hope, somehow, that he makes it back. Stories of extreme conditions would seem like easy pickings for great reading, but it's easy to overdo the hysteria. What I think makes this London story work is that he focuses so much on the external, and that external then begins to stand for the internal state of the man. It's a great read, reminiscent of films like Touching the Void, another great winter survivalist tale. Read the story here.
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