don’t kill the story!

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A quote from E.L. Doctorow’s introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2000:

“…it is a fiction in which society is surmised as the darkness around the narrative circle of light. In other words, the scale of the short story predisposes it to the isolation of the self. And the author’s awareness of loneliness is a literary dignity he grants his characters in spite of their circumstances…”

Oh my god. I would yawn if I weren’t completely paralyzed from boredom.

YES, I am about to rant.

I LOVE books. I LOVE short stories. I LOVE stories. Reading, hearing, creating STORIES.

I even went to school for a frighteningly long time and got a DEGREE in stories.

Well, that’s what I wanted to get my degree in. I ended up getting my degree in literature.

Which is not the same thing. But it was the closest I could get.

Do I think that Doctorow knows what he’s talking about? Certainly! It can be useful to dissect and label the pieces of stories, as you would a frog.

But the appreciation of frogs or stories is not dependent on such dissection! There is a more holistic way to approach stories.

This is one of my major frustrations with formal education regarding literature. I understand the lure of charts and diagrams and answer books.

But they are doomed to being incomplete and therefore false.

For what the codification and dissection have to offer, I appreciate them. But for what they exclude, I loathe them.

Mr. Doctorow, and all literature professors, don’t kill the story to examine it. It lives in the reading. At least let the readers read it before you tell them what they have to see in it.

The Best American Non-Required Reading 2002

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Sometimes, it’s hard to make it through a whole novel. But you really want the satisfaction of reading a good story.

Short stories really scratch that itch.

When I’m busy, and I really want to escape into a story, I often read compilations or anthologies.

I found this one, The Best American Non-Required Reading from 2002. David Eggers edited it, and I had been interested in reading more of his stuff. Although I’ve been attracted to him through articles and other things, I still haven’t read his main works, such as the magazine McSweeney’s. Well, at least I admit it.

It was a wicked little collection. David Sedaris was included, although I can’t say his story was the best one. I loved Rodney Rothman’s story of crashing the corporate world without actually working there. Supreme.

McKenzie’s “Stop That Girl” was engaging. It was a very female story, lots of interesting women in it.

But “Higher Education” by Gary Smith was my favorite. It will stay with me. So wholesome it could have done just as easily in a Reader’s Digest, it was needed in this young, hip, cynical compilation.

I’m young enough to be the same kind of cynical Eggers is aiming for. And I also get cynical of my own cynicism. I love that this story ends it, and shows that yes, one person can make a difference and be as real and true to himself as humanly possible.

Really real

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I don’t watch reality tv too often. It just doesn’t interest me. I’m mildly annoyed by it, but not to the level that others I have heard.

I always thought, How real can this be? These people are walking around, trying to act normal while they have huge camera crews following their every move.

That’s got to be distracting. I mean, how do you ‘act’ natural? kind of an oxymoron.

Well, today I understand better than I ever have how annoying those cameras can be.

My favorite coffeeshop, the Psychobabble on Vermont has it’s open mike night sundays. I’ve been going. It’s a very cool, laid-back, accepting kind of environment. I like it.

A couple of weeks ago, a cute newcomer came, her name was Jett. She sang a few songs to her guitar, and she wasn’t half bad. She was nervous, and young, so she seemed endearing.

Well, as it happens, Jett came back tonight. Jett is a member of a sorority. And guess what else? Jett is on that show, “Sorority Life.”

My open mike night was completely invaded. They were redoing everything, re-miking, re-lighting, wandering around with release forms. I was trying to be a good sport, I let them use my face.

But the camera guy was SO intrusive. He wandered around everywhere…On the stage, behind the performers, everything.

I like Jett, and I welcome her to join the lineup, but I really wish that the fake little enactment scenes and camera crew could have not screwed up my stomping ground.

Middlemarch by George Elliot

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I finally finished this book. I think it took me upwards of 6 months. It’s long. And it’s not really that fast-moving.

I did care about the characters though.

But the real reason I persevered is because my Victorian lit teacher said that Middlemarch is Elliot’s quintessential book. I had read Mill On the Floss in his class and truly enjoyed it. He said he would have liked to have us read Middlemarch, but it was too long to read for the class. We were already reading a lot of other books.

When I finished Middlemarch, I really wished that I had read in it a class. It seems to me that there was a lot going on, and that I would have been better able to understand it if I’d had some people to talk it out with.

I especially thought that the ladies in the book were interesting archetypes. This was not a book about one female heroine. Or even one male hero. There were a lot of stories of different people who chose to live their lives in different ways.

Dorothea is the most interesting character. But Mary Garth is very sympathetic, and Rosamond had promise. Celia, Dorothea’s sister, could have gone either way. She ended up being a little too good a fit for the mold of society. That made her much less interesting.

But she had no desire to be interesting.

Well, in the absence of a class discussion, I looked up some websites to see what others had to say. Here is one website’s list of major themes.

But the specific treatment of the women on the book was lacking.

Too bad. I guess nothing really takes the place of free discussion.

I think, right now, that I liked Mill on the Floss much better. But maybe Middlemarch will grow on me with time.

kinda like french fried twinkies

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I have been admiring the new IHOP stuffed french toast from their TV commercials. They sounded yummy to me.

So when we were in the middle of Saturday’s downpout, me and Chris decided comfort food was in order. IHOP popped to mind.

We looked over the menu carefully, but they weren’t listed. We did, however, find out that the International House of Pancakes is a California company, started here. That made me like them slightly better.

I do try to maintain a snobbish avoidance of chain restaurants, but the fact that it is a local chain is slightly better.

Chris would prefer to eat at the same three chain restaurants every day of his life. Fortunately, our relationship is more than just what we eat.

We asked Maricela, our waitress about the stuffed french toast. Apparently, there is a separate flyer-type dealy that explains your stuffed toast options.

There is the regular option, and then the Big option which has two extra pieces of fatty meat. The Super option included a total of six pieces of various fatty meat.

I thought two pieces was enough, so I got the regular. Cause I was mostly interested in the toast, anyway.

Well, the toast was like two pieces of bread sealed on all the edges. You might think it would be difficult to seal two pieces of bread. It is. IHOP’s solution was to deep fry it shut.

They must have deep-fried it, and then warmed in up again on a grill, because one side had an extra browning on one side.

Well, they had fruit and whip cream on the top. THe filling seemed to be cream cheese with a lot of powdered sugar mixed in. Mine did not have a lot of filling, which is probably good, because it was very sweet. Since there wasn’t too much, it tasted pretty good.

It reminded CHris immediately of the State Fair’s deep-fried twinkies. We hadn’t actually tried the deep-fried twinkies, but we could imagine.

It was good. ALthough the grease sat on my tummy the rest of the day. I’m glad I didn’t opt for the 6 pieces of fatty meat.

They Might Be Giants

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“Blue canary in the alley by the light switch
Who watches over you!
make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
I’m the only bee in your bonnet”

I LOVE that song. If I have to say why, we are not on the same page. TMBG’s Flood is a album where I can say, “Set phasers on repeat, Spock!”

But most of the other TMBG albums are like that. I saw them play live at the Warfield in San Francisco. The concert was so much fun! Fun! Fun!

It was interesting to compare notes afterwards with the guys at the record store I worked at during that time…The week before, the boys had gone to see Marilyn Manson at the Warfield. Apparently, the highlight of that concert was when all the people in the balcony began spitting towards the stage. The boys in the pit got a rain of saliva, even though most of it hit the band. Apparently the band just rubbed it in, making it part of their act.

Not my Warfield experience. MY band did not encourage that sort of thing. We were all in the pit bouncing up and down and bobbing our heads to our favorite songs. Everyone there was congratulating each other on their mutual love of nerd rock and by extension, nerds.

Yay for nerds and yay for They Might Be Giants!

I am excited to read the TMBG and David Eggers are on tour together. How interesting would that kind of show be? Pretty darn, I think.

Anybody going to be checking it out?

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The Vagina Monologues

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It’s Woman’s history month, but even if it weren’t, this is a good show to watch.

I didn’t see the live version, that would have required forethought and effort.

I just happened to see teh DVD at the library when I was browsing for things to entertain me.

I loved it. I just hope my neighbors didn’t hear me yelling out responses to the TV. I was loud.

I absolutely LOVE hearing women talk about what is. So often, we will skip straight to what should be. But that leaves out a good appreciation and assessment of what is going on right now.

It was so sweet to hear the older ladies talk about their vaginas. The way we think about women, older women, and sexuality, you get the impression that they just seal over at a certain age. Of course, that’s silly. I plan on being an old ladies someday, and it’s nice to know that my vagina will still be there.

The whole things makes me want to ask more and different questions of the people I know.

“everybody move to the back of the bus…”

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I heard this song on the radio once, and I could not get it out of my head.

It is a truly amazing song; it makes me start to move all the different parts of my body to the earthy beats.

MMM!

I only wish I had more body parts.

So I found out what the song WAS:

“Rosa Parks” from Aquemini

It’s by far the best song on the album. There are others I kind of like, but this one really grabs me by the scruff of the neck and makes me want to dance in ways I haven’t thought of yet.

There can be only two…

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Green and Red.

These are the traditional jello colors. And jello, strange food that it is, is surprisingly traditional. American as apple pie. Or green jello.

There is a rumor, though I couldn’t find a website for it, that green jello conduct brainwaves.

What does this mean?

I first encountered jello as an abstraction when I visited North Dakota. That’s jello country. My youngest brother was attending the university there, and he had a lot of anthropological observations.

“There are only two acceptable colors for jello: Green and Red.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But there’s more! Jello can be either a side dish, as in ‘salad’, or a dessert.”
“How do you tell when it’s which?”
“When it’s dessert, it has whipped cream on top.”

The reason I bring this up, is that I’ve been rediscovering the joys of jello in my own life. I use whip cream on it, so it must be desert.

I like orange.

And yellow jello. This same brother, when he was in the hospital getting his tonsils out, was offered jello.
“Yellow jello?” he asked the nurse hopefully.
“No, we only have green or red jello.”

He turned them down. If it wasn’t yellow, he didn’t want jello.

I have some yellow jello waiting to be made. But as I was at the grocery store, I thought I ought to give green and red a chance. Maybe they were popular because of innate qualities, not merely blind tradition.

Green jello is simple. It’s lime.

But red jello could be many flavors. Cherry. Strawberry. Raspberry.

And there was a new one. Cranberry.

I thought I would try it.

It wasn’t as good as I hoped. Not tart enough.

Just thought I’d let you know.

In The Beginning…

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(This is Cross-Posted)

Everybody knows Mark Twain, but he has written more stories than most people are aware of.

I was gifted with The Diary of Adam and The Diary of Eve for an anniversary present some time ago.

They are wickedly funny. The oldest arguments between man and wife had very early beginnings. I recommend couples reading them aloud to one another. It’s fun to compare the different perspectives on the same events, too.

Check it out.