An Unlikely Pairing: The Lost Generation & The 4th of July

Lately I've been on a Lost Generation reading spree.  It started with The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald with a student book club and giving them some introductory information about the era and then I happened to read The Paris Wife, which is a semi-fictional story narrated from the perspective of Hadley Richardson, the first wife of Ernest Hemingway.  Afterwards, I was fascinated by not only their relationship, but the ex-pat community in Paris, so I went on to read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which was a memoir of his time in Paris which he wrote not long before he died and published posthumously.  I was so entrenched in the era that I decided I wanted to read Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, which was on my summer reading list, right away.  Then of course I re-watched Midnight in Paris and noticed all the inconsistencies (though I still love it).

Just like Woody Allen's Gil Pender, it is easy to get caught up in the romance of the ex-pat community in Paris--the incredible art, literature, salons.  Though it is impossible for me to not say that what this reading spree brought up in my thought life the most was how glad I am to be a woman today.  The culture of multiple mistresses and people openly accepting it, coupled with double standards for women and hypocritical expectations for wives in light of it all was truly grotesque.  Zelda Fitzgerald's own artistic life was stunted by Scott having her publish under his name or forbidding her to pursue dance or publish her writing work at all, saying that he had claim to the ideas within it.

The concept that struck me the most while reading, though, was that of memory, which I've written about quite a bit over the years.  It's the great invention of the mind in Rodman Philbrick's Young Adult Freak the Mighty. In Evening, by Susan Minot, it colors the narrator's entire existence.  In Man Walks into A Room, Nicole Krauss's main character loses his memory of all things relational.  In The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai talks about some parts of our narrative are lost and some are purposely forgotten.

I am trying to decide where it fits for Hemingway.  Early in The Paris Wife, he takes Hadley on a trip to where he recovered from being injured in World War 1.  In his mind, the field was still desecrated with loss of life and the town where he was taken care of was pristine and quaint--but neither was the case when he arrived:

"When Ernest found the slope where he'd been wounded, it was green and unscarred and completely lovely.  Nothing felt honest.  Thousands of men had died here jut a few years earlier, Ernest himself had bled here, shot full of shrapnel, and yet everything was clean and shiny, as if the land itself had forgotten everything," (103).

"For the whole visit, Ernest wrestled with memory.  Everything had changed and grown dingy in the four years since he'd been here," (102).  

I suppose it is one of those mysteries of being human--how we can long so deeply for times that are past, even if those times were accompanied by struggle.  Perhaps in our minds, they remind us that we made it through, or perhaps the struggle has been slightly erased so that we don't remember that part anymore.  Hemingway himself describes it in A Moveable Feast: "There are many sorts of hunger.  In the spring there are more. But that's gone now. Memory is hunger," (57).  

Elk Lake, 2011.  I only wish I had a
picture of the American flag boxers
my best friend and I *sewed ourselves*
for 4th of July 1996. 

Today, for me, memory is hunger.  On some levels the memories I've been escaping to this morning seem insignificant--but it happens every 4th of July that I am in New York City--a city I love with all my heart.  All I want right now is to be watching my hometown's parade, wearing my running clothes from the annual 5K, thinking about swimming in somebody's pool and going up to the high school for fireworks later.  Or, sitting at a simple lake house, eating off the grill, and watching a homemade fireworks display planned by friends I've known since the mid nineties.  I keep finding myself wanting to justify my nostalgic longing for these simple memories or the audacity I have for writing them in connection to Hemingway--but I'm not going to, because it's what is true for me today (which is interesting, because the quotes I wanted to write about in this post have been sitting in my blog drafts for a month)

What I do think is worth considering, though, is when you begin to appreciate what is past.  Hemingway did not write of nostalgia until the end of his life.  A Moveable Feast, his memoir of his early years in Paris, was published after he took his own life and carries a tone much different from his earlier work.  In a painful-to-read confession he states that he wishes he had died before falling in love with anyone else.  I'm not sure that I believe him, completely.  Hadley asks him in The Paris Wife, not long after the visit to the town where he was shot and recovered: "When does it mean something? When everyone finally gets smashed to bits?" (145).  I think that is a fair read of Hemingway--and a terrifying way to live, but it pulls together my thoughts.  When he was with Hadley, he could only think of what might be next. The present didn't take on any value until it was long gone.

This year I started talking with my students about the idea of being present where you are, whether it is in a class discussion, a book club, or with their friends.  I suppose that is what I wish the men of the Lost Generation understood (hoping that it wasn't that restlessness that produced their drive and in turn art), and on a much smaller level, what I need to remember as I go over to the Brooklyn Bridge Park to celebrate Independence Day with dear friends later.  It is in view of the Statue of  Liberty, after all.

an aside, after my initial posting: I want to think later today about the implications of these American writers who chose to do so much of their writing elsewhere.  Looking at the title of this post, one might infer that my writing about it was a little more academic.  But alas.  It is a holiday, after all.

On packing an apartment & Fahrenheit 451

I started a new graduate program and although I am doing one class at a time, it has, as I feared it might, taken a toll on my reading-and-writing-for-pleasure life.  The good news is my current class is called Literature for Older Children, so the books I'm reading and the thinking I'm doing aligns quite nicely with my passion for literacy.  But it also means I have a stack of 4 books I've finished that I want to write about.  I chose today's book based on the other current time-stealer of my life: moving.  

My new lease a few blocks away starts next Saturday, so I spent last night packing and ended up with 20 boxes of books.  I admire when people move here with a suitcase or two, and part of me craves the simplicity of space that accompanies such a move.  But I remember when I moved to New York almost ten years ago now and felt  I needed to bring my books with me so that I would remember who I was in this brand new city. And through 5--almost 6--apartments I have packed and unpacked and added to the stacks.  Handling every book I own last night was an incredible experience in reflection because I began to see my story in the conglomeration of texts: my elementary reading self in my mid eighties copies of The Wizard of Oz and Number the Stars, the eight Virginia Woolfs I read in half a semester and how I was never the same again, the striking poetry contained in the prose of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy that cultivated the kind of book I love to read as an adult.  

In keeping with my New Years resolution to read book I already own, I finished Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury a few weeks ago and it reignited (see what I did there?) my passion for not just reading as much as I can, but for getting as many books in front of my students as possible.  Reading in 2013 the futuristic book Bradbury wrote the book in 1950 was fascinating (and reminded me of reading Super Sad True Love Story a few years back) because though his portrayal of futuristic technological and political powers were close enough to feel incredibly eerie.  

Montag, the main character, is a fireman--and in his time that means they start fires to burn books rather than put fires out.  Books cause people to think and to question--they disrupt ones mental "peace"--so the government has decided to do away with them.  Montag begins to feel restless and decides to quietly figure out what it is about books that makes them so dangerous.  

He is asked by a closet former reader: "How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?" 

Montag replies: "I don't know.  We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy.  Something's missing.  I looked around.  The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years.  So I thought books might help." 

"It's not the books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books...Take it where you can find it, in old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself.  Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget.  There is nothing magical in them at all.  The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us." 

Yes. And so upon reading this book I was re-reminded to keep my eyes open for the mysteries and to ask questions.  I was re-reminded that if my life feels off-kilter, chances are I'm forgetting to dwell in the details that make life rich and instead choosing to occupy myself with errands and to-do lists.  Packing up my own books reminded me of the stories that enrich my story and grew my desire to share this with the 100 students I see everyday: that they might question the world and seek beauty and desire understanding.  And I can't do that unless I am living in such a way myself.   

The Great Gatsby and how the city seen from the Queensboro Bridge changed everything

Every year I have students join a book club with me (I've written about World War Two and Harry Potter) and this year I added The Great Gatsby to the list of choices for students who are ready to jump into some more classic, adult literature.  I studied The Great Gatsby in high school, college and graduate school, but those lenses into the story don't seem to quite fit for 8th grade.  Luckily I still have time to think about that, but I also got stuck figuring out how to write about it here: this is not a book review or a literary essay blog, so I went back to my roots and thought about how the story speaks into life at this moment, and at this moment I am thinking about the city.  My city.  New York.

Most New Yorkers with a literary slant in their lives know all the classic lines about where we live, and Fitzgerald's description is one of the best: "The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and all the beauty in the world," (73).

This is the New York I like to think about the most: the one that still feels magical 9 years later, the one that offers up perfect autumn dinners eaten at the counter and walks into bookstores on the corner and cafe tables on the sidewalk and life swirling around.  The one that has perfect theaters for rainy Sunday matinees that follow a long brunch at a South African restaurant.

And yet. There is also "...a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air," (27).

This is the New York that I also think about.  I can be literal and think about the insane amount of trash that we proffer to the sidewalks or the hours lost waiting on a train that has been rerouted for the weekend.  I can calculate the money I have spent in rent over the years or figure out how many pounds of groceries I have carried over x amount of miles.  I weigh these things often these days. Or, more heavily, I can think about the students who walk into city schools coming from families who don't value education and don't see their own worth and a system that doesn't know how to help.  I can think about the men and women who sleep on the streets and the paralyzing feeling of not being able to help as I walk by with my smart phone in hand.

I dream a lot about a little house with a fire place on a little piece of land, where life could be quiet and where I could see the sunset every day.  And that may happen still.  But.  Living in a place filled with both beauty and ashes has changed the way I read the world around me--and I don't think I could ever be the same, or shake the feeling that no matter how cozy my life is, whether that is reading my book while homemade tomato sauce is simmering on my stove in my studio apartment or some future multi-room home in my future, there are ashes scattered around me--and that I should never stop looking for ways to help beauty and life to grow among and out of them.

War and letters and stories.

I had a rough start with For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.  As his is typical style, it was written in a matter of fact, moment by moment description, in this case mostly from the voice of Robert Jordan, an American fighting with the revolutionary guerillas in the Spanish Civil War.  But, Hemingway accomplished his goal and while reading it I felt like I was there with him, moment by moment, which is probably also the reason why I never made it past 3-5 pages when reading it before bed and why it took multiple in-flight reading swathes of time and my break from school to finish.

About two thirds of the way through, Jordan spends time reading the letters found in the pockets of a dead opposing cavalryman, which spurs on one of the longest inner conversations that the reader hears in the story. The entire account is fascinating, and is Jordan thinking about who and why he has killed.  Here are a few excerpts:

"You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself," (302)...

"How many of those you have killed have been real fascists? Very few. But they are all the enemy to whose force we are opposing force," (304).

"Listen, he told himself. You better cut this out.  This is very bad for you and your work," (304).

I would argue, and actually don't think it's that controversial of a theory, that the reading of his dead enemy's letters were what brought on his mental struggle with the death that accompanies war.  What I find interesting about this, though, is that it comes back to the core of my own beliefs: once you know someone's personal story, even the bits of daily minutia detailed in letters Jordan read, it is near impossible to view them in the same way.

I struggle with war because whenever I read about it.  I am constantly thinking about the lives of the lost--on either side--and generally it is the daily minutia that destroys me.  The first time I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., it was the displays of the personal effects those sent to concentration camps gave up: the piles of brushes and razors, the pile of shoes.

This is what creates empathy in literature and I why I plead with people to read...and write.  To me, reading is the great metaphor for understanding humanity and a reminder for me to remember that everyone in front of me has a story--whether it's a student who is driving me crazy, the driver who is honking at me to walk faster through a crosswalk, a stranger I pass on a run.

The interesting part of this excerpt from the book, though, is that Jordan says that thinking in this vein is very bad for his work--which is true.  To fight for his cause in this context, personalizing the enemy would lead to failure.  He talks himself through the fact that he must do what he is doing to create a better world for the future: and yet, there are people fighting on the other side who believe the same thing, whether it is war on a national level or between two people.  And sometimes, looking back, there is a clear, right side.  Sometimes there isn't.

I wonder a lot about the fact that throughout history, it has come down to fighting to achieve freedom. I wonder a lot about what this says about us as people.  I wonder about what would create a world (or nation or state or city or home) without violence.  I don't think it's possible to live without conflict, but I wonder what it would take to teach us to handle it differently. Over the next week or so, I'm going to be writing about it as many of my recent reads have been about war, both fiction and non fiction, adult and young adult.   I have no answers and it only gets more complicated, but reading and writing is the only way for me to work through it all.

Reading Year in Review and Top Ten Books of 2011.

My blog is about to celebrate its 5th anniversary next month.  I wrote my first post on January 6th, 2007, partly to slow down and think about what I was reading again and partly in an effort to get more comfortable with sharing my writing in a "public" space (I would like to thank my 4 loyal readers at this time: Mom, Dad, Alison Covey, Kendra Bloom).  Every year when I'm home for Christmas I read every post I wrote over the year and choose the top ten best books I've read.

Usually, it takes me many hours to reread my blog posts for the year. As I read, I take notes and end up with a list at least 20 contenders for the coveted top ten.  I have to do some serious thinking and rereading of posts to decide which books had the biggest impact on my thought life--and then spend some serious time laughing about the nerdy ways I spend my time.  This year was not so difficult.  Sadly, I don't think I can attribute that to any increased coolness to my life, but I do think I have a few answers/self justifications for the reasons why this year I had only 23 posts (2008 holds the all-time high of 97):

• The spring was filled with YA books that enriched my teaching life and a side project I'm working on, but weren't necessarily significant enough for me to subject my loyal readers (see above) to. 

•  The summer, normally the two months that I read the highest number of books, was filled with Infinite Jest, a book that I felt I needed to finish before I posted anything about it.  (Then, the fall happened and I still have 5 additional posts about Infinite Jest sitting in my drafts.) 

• This fall, I got caught up reading books for and with my students. Many of my Saturday mornings, normally my drink-a-hot-beverage-and-write-about-my-reading time, were filled with training for my half marathon.  Also, my book club choice was For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, which is not a read-before-you-fall-asleep kind of book: I would make it literally 3 pages and fall asleep. I'm finally about to finish it, which I owe to traveling 3 out of the last 5 weekends on U.S. Airways, who does not offer in-flight television.  

All that to say, it is interesting to look back on a year through the lens of reading. I am nerdily excited for what 2012 will bring in my reading life...and the reflections that accompany good books.  As for the Top Ten, I have to credit Margaret, who is the sole other member of my book club, because six of our choices made the top ten list this year. So, in no particular order:

The Hours by Michael Cunningham/Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (rereads)
These books have to be paired together and were two of the most thought provoking reads of the year.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
This book received an insane amount of press when it was published last year.  Overall, especially because my book club read read The Corrections first, I throughly enjoyed getting inside the mind of Franzen.

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteygart
Not especially well written, but it definitely was the instigator of many great conversations and some science-fiction/technology induced nightmares.

Beloved by Toni Morrison
I think this was the most historically significant, jarring book that I read this year, and combined with its lyrical prose, it left me speechless.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Short. Beautiful. Inspiring.

Bossypants by Tina Fey
The most enjoyable book of the year.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Harder than my book club's run with the Russians a few years ago and encompassing almost all of my summer, this book was well worth it.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years  by Donald Miller (reread)
This book was a non-fiction, good reminder of all things I love about story and life.

The Summer Book by Tove Janssen(reread)
This book has become one of my yearly rereads and I've written about it a few times.  I spend the quiet, early summer mornings I have at my parents' house on their screened in porch reading just a chapter or two a day so that I can savor and soak in it during my entire visit.  This year it was my respite from Infinite Jest, to make sure that reading was not only speaking into the my academically-minded side of my brain, but also my soul.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I read the first book of this series as soon as it came out, on recommendation of our Teachers College professional developer.  I never finished the series because I felt like I knew enough to talk about it with kids and had so many other books to read.  However, after the Epic-Literary-Reread book club on Harry Potter with my students last year, I thought that it would be cool to do the same thing with The Hunger Games this year.  I read these books in about a week and was amazed to see all of the entry points for young readers to have uber literary conversations. I have also been amazed at how many of my adult friends have been reading the series and are eager to discuss. A post-movie discussion party is in the works.

Cheers to reading and a 2012 filled with more writing about it!

The Pain of Beloved.

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"Anything dead coming back to life hurts," (42).

"Can't nothing heal without pain, you know," (92).

These quotes stayed with me throughout reading Beloved by Toni Morrison because at its core, it is a book about existential hurt, impossible choices and living with their ghosts and yet, it is about moving forward--and the story itself feels like a way to let the hauntings go.

I finished the book weeks ago and am still  thinking about what a powerful, important, disturbing read it was.  The plot centers around a former slave named Sethe who escapes to Cincinnati where her children are already living, giving birth to her fourth child along the way.  Less than a year after her and her childrens' escape , she is in the backyard of the house she shares with her mother in law and sees a man from the plantation where she spent her life ready to call upon the Fugitive Slave Act.  Sethe chooses to gather her four children and attempts to kill them, rather than allowing them to be brought back into slavery.  Three of the four are spared.  The bulk of the story is set over a decade later when her house is haunted by the child's ghost.  Two people arrive: Paul D, a man who was also a slave on the plantation with Sethe, with whom she begins a relationship.  For a time, he is able to scare the ghost away, but then a girl arrives who Sethe and her daughter Denver believe to be the incarnated ghost, which completely rocks and changes Sethe, forcing her to face her past decisions. The book is about the spiral of Sethe wrestling with her demons and the definition of love, of finding and losing herself.

As a reader, I couldn't discern if the ghost-girl was literal or figurative--and at different moments I think could be either.  So I've been thinking about the questions Beloved poses in terms of healing: on both a personal and corporate level.  It is much too heavy of a story to simply say that it ends with hope--it is a beautiful mess of a narrative that left me a wreck while reading it.

Sethe's turmoil through Morrison's writing feels weighty enough to be corporate.  It is not just her story, it is the story of the psychological effects of slavery.  On this level, I felt as though I had no place to judge Sethe for her choices--and how she chose to define the love she had for her children.  Sethe writhes with her choice and it is impossible as a reader not to do so right along with her.  It feels an impossible situation, where I can't decide if the healing of an entire nation after such an abomination on humanity or the healing of a single heart engulfed it it feels more difficult.

This is when I come back to the quotes I cited at the beginning, that came in the first third of the story and were spoken to Paul D, but shaped what I began to see as the purpose of the whole book: that Sethe had to wrestle with the pain and had to feel it deeply.  There was no way to move forward without it.  Paul D says to Sethe toward at the end, when Sethe is still is the ashes of her life: "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody.  We need some kind of tomorrow."  This seems so simple and almost trite, but only out of context.  The poetry and pain of this story--individual pain of the characters and the pain of looking at our history of a nation-- echo for anyone who has felt the complicated brokenness of tragedy and the reluctance to even try to heal. What Morrison leaves the reader with is the idea that there is still life.  There is still life.

"There is a gulf between people that one must respect."

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My book club recently read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, published in 1925 paired with The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, which is based on both Mrs. Dalloway and Virginia Woolf and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

Both of these were rereads for me--I read Mrs. Dalloway for a British Literature class and later took a class on Virginia Woolf in college where we read 8 of her books in 8 weeks.  That being said, sometimes reading old notes in the margins can be painful.  My naive,  21 year old English-major self seems amateurish.  Rereading Mrs. Dalloway was a lesson in how reading experiences change with life experience--and how amazing rereading can be.

This time around, what stood out to me the most was the idea that misunderstanding often comes from drawing conclusions about someone without knowing their true inner life. The reader finds that each of the characters is unsatisfied with life and filled with a sense of both guilt for feeling that way and longing to create a different kind of life.

I read this book as a story of what we see in others and what they see in us--and the fact that most of the time--when we are living in our own heads and not honestly communicating, we get it all wrong.  Whether people become ideas as we either project onto them what we want to see or we fall into the danger of considering what other people want to see in us, thus presenting a false self to the world.  Obviously, relational chaos ensues.

For example, Peter, who depite all efforts, is still in love with Clarissa thinks: "And, after all, she had married Dalloway, and lived with him in perfect happiness all these years" (155) and yet she is haunted for much of the book that she made the wrong choice in marrying her husband.  Her presentation of self is confusing because she flirts with Peter because she doesn't know how not to, but spends her time remembering her mostly chaste relationship with her friend Sally and finds herself imagining what her life might have been if she chose differently.

Peter thinks he has it for a moment when of Clarissa he says: "So transparent in some ways, so inscrutable in others..." (77).  His idea is correct, but he completely misinterprets what he sees as transparent. Clarissa says of Peter: "He made her see herself; exaggerate. It was idiotic," (168).  Clarissa is aware of this dance of self presentation and yet cannot step away.  She says--and I think understands--that "there is a gulf between people that one must respect," (120)--that one can never truly understand another.   Peter understands it, too: "It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels...but he could not bring himself to say he loved her, not in so many words," (116, 118).

The bottom line is that this book made me think so much about relationships and honesty--no one in this story really knew what the other was actually thinking--and no one wanted to tell anyone what they were truly thinking about, which creates an atmosphere of superficial conversation and relationships.  Perhaps there is a certain safety in keeping such thoughts to oneself? I think the regret that the characters show reveal to the reader that it is better to live honestly in the present with themselves and others, but with exposure comes vulnerability. This is a trade off the characters weren't willing to accept.  It was more comfortable to live with the gulf than attempt to close it.  I'm left thinking about the kinds of gulfs that exist, what causes them and which ones are worth crossing.

My ideas don't fit into a single blog post.

All of this can lead to an existential downward spiral to a life in the what-might-have-been and filled with permanent discontent.  Each of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway told themselves stories to cope with the lives they chose not to live--which is interestingly exactly what Cunningham picked up on and addressed in The Hours, thoughts forthcoming.

"I was half in love with her by the time we sat down."

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{image from Books Rule}

One of the books I most recommend to my male students is King Dork by Frank Portman.  The main character creates a new band weekly, less for the music, more for the opportunity to pick a new name and design new cover art.  He mockingly points out that his English teachers are all in love with The Catcher in the Rye, ironically calling out phonies just as Holden would.  It's been fun to see kids who have read Catcher go on to read King Dork catch those idiosyncracies and then to have King Dork readers realize they are missing out and walk over to the "classics" basket in my classroom library.

All that to say, here is a round up of some thoughts on Salinger.  I'm sure he would despise all that has been written up (hence, see the Onion link), but.  I'm not going to lie, it only took a second for me to be half in love with Salinger when my sophomore honors English teacher told us he was going to risk it and read a book with us that is banned in schools across the country.  If you know me, it's no surprise that I was not quite apt to subversion in high school, so this small act seemed pretty exciting to me.   Of course, when I reread Catcher a few years ago, reading the notes my sixteen year old self left was hilariously amazing. If you know me now, you're probably saying, "Kristen, of course your dangerous living would involve books." I know, I know.

Anyway, my recommendation (if you don't have 30 papers to grade...curses) is to read your freezing day away at The New Yorker, which has compiled a list of many of Salinger's stories from back issues. Or, check out some of these links, which were the most relevant/amusing/best to me (in that order).  And, you're welcome, here is a link list of my past thoughts on Salinger. 

Holden Caulfield and YA Literature

The Onion

Dave Eggers on Salinger

Absentia.

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Halfway through The Age of Innocence, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Edith Wharton that chronicles the life of Newland Archer and New York's upper class in the 1870s, I had categorized it solely with the other texts I have read and watched recently that revolve in one way or another around infidelity, which I have no patience for. It does, but among other things, like the shallow social society of old New York. But no matter. Inconsequential of the ending (which was a huge surprise to me), it addresses two of my biggest frustrations.

One, believing that the beauty and adventure is meant for someone else in a different place or time or circumstances:

"...we could sail at the end of April. I know I could arrange it at the office."
She smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he perceived that to dream of it sufficed her. It was like hearing him read aloud out of his poetry books the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in real life.
"Oh, do go on, Newland; I do love your descriptions."
"But why should they be only descriptions? Why shouldn't we make them real?"

The beginning of winter weather is the best time, for me, to remember that a stagnant life is not really life at all. Admittedly, it is ridiculously easy for me to declare the weather as the number one justification for reading a book by my window and not venturing out. Ever. Well, until April, at least. The tea kettle is 30 yards away; what more could I need? But. I read passages like those and everything in me wants to scream at May to jump in the boat before it's too late.

Two, living in the safety of a life prescribed. Newland's society is filled with hypocrisy and nonsensical tradition. He senses this and understands its ridiculousness, yet very much struggles to live outside of it--of course, at a certain point in the book comes the complex moral struggle of duty and passion (a common theme is this year's texts, as I've noted) becomes the forefront of the plot:

"You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring--that's all."

I don't understand why people--and these stupid fictional characters (!)--don't choose the poetry and adventure *before* they have made commitments. Apparently, that is not the kind of drama that readers/viewers are looking for--not in 1920 when this book was published, and clearly not now. Curses. Anyway. Wharton describes what happens when one ultimately chooses the safe and the prescribed over all else:

"Outside it, in the scenes of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent minded man goes on bumping into furniture in his own room. Absent--that was what he was."

Without the search for truth and beauty, poetry and adventure, one's reality fades into the imaginary--and the life one is living becomes increasingly incapable of sustaining life that is truly Life--for it is now only a shadow.

Absentia is a heartbreaking existence.

Disciplined Reading: A good idea? or, O Brothers, thou art elusive.

My days of being an English major were amazing: it was my job to read, to write about my reading, to talk about my reading...essentially my perfect life. The incredible thing that I see in my 1999-2003 self, though, was ability to be a disciplined reader. I had 3-4 classes at a time, each with 8-16 novels to read in a semester. I was also addicted to my planner in those days and may have had to take a sabbatical for wearing a watch (this is pre-cell phone, people). I made reading plans in advance so I could write more than one draft of my papers and check everything off my list. However, this is beginning to sound sick, even to me. My last two sentences were rising action, you'd know that eventually all that planning and discipline would eventually blow up in my face. I would still say that the word moderation would describe many aspects of my life, but the thought of creating lists of things that I "should" do every day feels more like a prison and less like a way to success.

So. My latest confession is that I am currently a book club failure! My book club (well, partnership, as there are only two of us) bravely decided to follow up Anna Karenina with The Brothers Karamazov. We were pumped about Russian literature! We wanted to broaden our horizons!

However, all I found myself doing was avoiding that brick of a book. First I told myself that I needed extended periods of time to read it: Brothers was not a book one could pick up for 20 minutes before falling asleep. So I started a different book for night time reading. Then I told myself that it's good for my brain to play solitaire on my ipod on the subway. It helps prevent Alzheimers. I swore I'd read it on the planes to and from California, (and I did for one of my 6 legs) but I had tv on my ipod and sleeping to do. I promised myself on the bus ride to DC I would read...but seriously, have you ever tried to be productive around 30 13 year olds?

Clearly, it's not looking good. There's a chance that I have read Persepolis, Before You Know Kindness, Tales of Beedle the Bard and I Was Told There'd Be Cake (more to come on these) all while trying to read Brothers.

But I'm going to try to change my ways. I've already abandoned a book this school year! I've decided maybe it would be good to practice a little discipline, to make a reading plan, to check off my boxes! I'll keep you posted.

On Faith and "East of Eden"

Liza Hamilton: immigrated with her husband to the Salinas Valley of California from Ireland, bore a huge family, the epitome of the “no nonsense” woman. She pursues her life with militant regularity: cooking, cleaning, reading her Bible.

Samuel Hamilton: a thinker. Cheerful. An animated storyteller with a listening ear. Samuel laughs loudly and feels the life in his bones deeply. The only regularity in Samuel is that neither his land or his brilliant, patented ideas are fruitful.

When one of their daughters dies, each one reacts in a completely different way. To Liza, death is a part of life. She feels no true attachment to anything on earth. Though naturally sad, she continues her life the way she always had: people still must eat, and they still make messes. Samuel is completely wrecked. He has no idea how to handle or comprehend the loss. From this time on, he is a little less himself. Though an old man, he starts to “seem” old. He laughs only for others’ sake.

At my book club, we were discussing our initial hatred of Eliza and how cold her laughless, practical life seemed to us. But at the end of the conversation, it turned to admiration and a declaration of her amazing strength, in light of her daughter’s death. My friend asked, “well, isn’t that what great faith is? Not having any attachment to this world?” We all slowly nodded our heads. Walking down the street afterward, though, I couldn’t get Eliza as the model for great faith out of my head. All I want is faith that runs deep, but I want nothing to do with her passionless life!

In “Mere Christianity” C.S. Lewis wrote: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” This concept changed my life. The deep longings that I feel to be—quite literally—a part of the beauty I find in front of me or to draw the depth out of some piece of music or to live inside a great story I’ve read show me that I am longing for things unattainable in this world. I learned I am not longing for the travel or the sunset or trees—not the thing itself, but for eternity: all its beauty and fullness and depth that are completely satisfying. This alone completely reordered my life. So, yes, Liza. Heaven is home.

Why, then, am I so drawn to Samuel? I think it’s because he exemplifies what Jesus meant when he said “Thy Kingdom come.” Samuel brings Life (with a capital “L,” my dear Springboro ladies) into his corner of the world. Samuel draws out the laughter. He draws people into the story. People walk away different. Samuel listens. He calls people out to be better versions of themselves. Yes, hope in eternity. But listen. It on the wind here.

I want faith that incorporates both of the Hamiltons.
I want to place my hope in heaven. I don’t want to be completely wrecked when the world breaks my heart.

But at the same time I believe that the story of redemption starts here.

I want to be a part of that.

I want to see more of the Kingdom in my corner of the world.

I Heart Atticus.

There are certain books that everybody probably "read" in school (as tragic as the idea of "reading" in quotations is to me) that they need to take a second look at as adults. Today I am plugging "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee for the following reasons:

1. It is the most beautiful rendition of growing up...especially if you were the kind of kid who sought high adventure in the creek by your house or made up stories to make life more interesting.

2. Published in 1960 and taking place in the 1930s, its treatment of civil rights and justice is poetic.

3. Atticus Finch is my hero and maybe he should be yours, too.