March 2013
5 posts
Real Love
Delorean
Forgot about this song/kind of forgot about this band. What a euphoric song.
Eventually
I will post with greater frequency, on a more diverse range of topics. As of now, if I’m not reading and writing and studying for school, I’m reading authors with whom I’m already familiar and know that I love — it helps provide an effective respite from school. Not too adventurous, I know, but I need it.
“He heard her in the entryway. Mol, Molly, oh boy. When they were first married they used to fight. Say the most insane things. Afterward, sometimes there would be tears. Tears in bed? And then they would – Molly pressing her hot wet face against his hot wet face. They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever –”
—George Saunders, “Tenth of December.”
February 2013
2 posts
Play
Play
January 2013
6 posts
Escape from Spiderhead
My initial compulsion would be to group this among my favorite Saunders stories, but some temporal distance, reflection, and re-reading will solidify this. “Spiderhead” is certainly impressive from a technical perspective. Here’s the narrator, Jeff, describes the effects of an experimental drug while the drug begins coursing through his veins:
He added some Verbaluce™ to the drip, and soon I was feeling the same things but saying them better. The garden still looked nice. It was like the bushes were so tight-seeming and the sun made everything stand out? It was like any moment you expected some Victorians to wander in with their cups of tea. It was as if the garden had become a sort of embodiment of the domestic dreams forever intrinsic to human consciousness. It was as if I could suddenly discern, in this contemporary vignette, the ancient corollary through which Plato and some of his contemporaries might have strolled; to wit, I was sensing the eternal in the ephemeral.
Similar explosions of verbal acuity occur as Jeff participates in (and bears witness to) other experiments throughout the story. The effect is striking every time, whether it’s employed to comedic or devastating effect.
Of course, clever compositional devices are only amusing for a short time unless they’re deployed in a compelling framework, which is thankfully the case with “Spiderhead.” The profound empathy with which Saunders writes is what initially earned him my admiration, and this trait is on display in this story (and the others in Tenth of December). The author gradually unveils details about Jeff’s troubled past while detailing his (unbelievably traumatic) present experience, and the denouement is nearly as affecting as that of “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz.” I can’t recommend this story enough.
You can pick up Tenth of December Here.
“Aside from all the formal invention and satirical energy of Saunders’s fiction, the main thing about it, which tends not to get its due, is how much it makes you feel. I’ve loved Saunders’s work for years and spent a lot of hours with him over the past few months trying to understand how he’s able to do what he does, but it has been a real struggle to find an accurate way to express my emotional response to his stories. One thing is that you read them and you feel known, if that makes any sense. Or, possibly even woollier, you feel as if he understands humanity in a way that no one else quite does, and you’re comforted by it.”
—This is why I love Saunders’ writing so much.
From Joel Lovell’s George Saunders profile in the New York Times.
From Joel Lovell’s George Saunders profile in the New York Times.
December 2012
1 post
“When Walter B., one evening, explained to Beatrice that he “needed time,” Beatrice pulled the last bite of fish from Walter B.’s mouth and shook it at him. She wished he had said instead that he needed a timbrel, and off they would have gone together to the spectacle where the timbrelist often played. But Walter B. did not need a timbrel. Walter B. “needed time.” So Beatrice wrapped what was left of the fish in a red wool cloth and set out to find him some. It was cold outside. If I was time, wondered Beatrice, where would I be? She watched the humans in the distance breathe into the grass. If I was time, wondered Beatrice, how would I remind myself of where I was? She held the last bite of fish up to her mouth for warmth. It began to feel heavy in her hands. She wished he had said instead that he needed a timbrel. She wished she was for Walter B. the time he needed. But she was not. She unwrapped the last bite of fish and studied it. It reminded her of a world inside of which Walter B. was mostly gone. She rubbed her arms with it. She buried her face in it. It began to grow around her like a soft, white house. It grew, and it grew, until at last Beatrice was inside. She slowly walked through its rooms. In the first room, a pile of shovels. In the second, a pitcher of milk. When she stepped inside the third, Walter B. and the timbrelist were helping each other on with their coats. “If you were time,” called out Walter B., “where would you be?” Before Beatrice could answer, Walter B. saluted her, took the timbrelist by the hand, and left her alone in the soft, white house. Beatrice sat on the floor. Much later she would drink from the pitcher of milk. She would lean against the pile of shovels. But for now all Beatrice could do was sit on the floor. She would sit on the floor of the soft, white house until she grew hungry again for Walter B.’s last bite of fish.”
—
Sabrina Orah Mark, “Walter B. Needs Some Time.”
I know very little about poetry. While I was a lost, confused creative writing major at Florida State University, I completed an introductory poetry course, at which time I realized that I was neither good at writing poetry, nor was I readily receptive to a lot of it. I love prose, specifically ornate, embellished prose, but for whatever reason, most of the poetry with which I was introduced during that course left me indifferent.
All this to say that my friend Michael Shea introduced me to this poem (click the link to read the other two in the series), and I was floored. It’s so surreal, evocative, and affecting.
November 2012
8 posts
Pissed Jeans, "Bathroom Laughter"
Can’t wait for this album.
“Forget the curved circle, for whom distance means the sheer size of what it holds inside. Build a road. Make a line. Go as far west as the limit of the country lets you — Bodega Bay, not Whittier, California — and make a line; and let the wake of the line’s movement be the distance between where it starts and what it sees; and keep making that line, west, farther and farther; and the earth’s circle will clutch that line, keep it near to what it holds, like someone greedy with a prailine; and the giant curve that informs straight lines will bring you around, in time, to the distant eastern point of the country behind you, that dim master bedroom on the dim far eastern shore of the Atlantic; and the circle you have made is quiet and huge, and everything the world holds is inside: the bedroom: a toppled trophy has punched a shivered star through the glass of its case, a swirling traffic-flickered carpet and massed wooden fixtures smelling of oil sop and the breath of the ill.”
—
Excerpt from “Lyndon,” by David Foster Wallace
Found in Girl With Curious Hair
Another goosebump-eliciting passage from DFW, and an excellent demonstration of a literary device for which I don’t know the name. A similar technique is employed in “Good Old Neon.” The author abruptly abandons an established perspective (in both cases, that of a first person narrator) for some sort of omniscient second person point of view through which a really profound message is (almost literally) breathtakingly conveyed. The seeming difference between this and “Neon” is that the latter involves DFW desperately interjecting himself ashimself into the work, but the identity of the narrator here feels sort of nebulous.
Perhaps somebody more well-informed than myself could help explain this. Regardless, this was a great piece.
Listen
The majority of my friends love this album just as much as I do—it has affected our way of speaking to each other in the way that massive pop culture sometimes can. Not just yoloing hard, but like peppering our conversations with “girl don’t tempt me,” and “UMSO PROUD OF U,” and and “having a hard time adjusting 2 fame,” and “do you love this shit/are you high right now/do you ever get nervous” like they are inside jokes. We have all listened to it enough that we can do that. Take Care was there for us. Love trouble, break-ups, lonely nights. I don’t mind its obvious imperfections because it has become part of my life. And maybe your life too. It’s ours now.
Take care.
,___,
[O.o]
/)__)
-“—”-ovoxo
I still remember initially listening to “Marvin’s Room” late at night while driving around suburban Chicago during Summer 2011 [~*pOsT-gRad MaLaiSe*~]. I was struck by the humanity of this artist, whom I’d only recently began to perceive as more than an arrogant, self-absorbed former teen star. It was “Successful” from So Far Gone that initially won me over, but Take Care, Drake’s excellent sophomore album, has remained a consistently rewarding listening presence since its release last November. The author re-blogged here articulates thoughts very similar to my own, so instead of continuing with my rambling, you should just read her post.
My Dreams Have Withered and Died- Angel Olsen/Marissa Nadler
Marissa Nadler & Angel Olsen, “My Dreams Have Withered and Died [Richard and Linda Thompson cover]”
An old favorite collaborating with a recent favorite. The prospect of an EP from these two is really exciting.
