Paul Celan

You were my death:

you I could hold

when all fell away from me.

from Fadensonnen, 1968

Paul Celan Selected Poems, Translated and Introduced by Michael Hamburger (Penguin, 1996)

My Purchase of the Month

I ventured into Norwich today to find some reading material that I'd been craving (despite the fact that I have a ton to read already and told myself at the beginning of the semester that I was not allowed to buy any more books until I read the ones I already have...oh well), and found what I was looking for at Borders. I came across this ENORMOUS volume of short stories by John Updike, compiled by the author himself. I also found a copy of his novel, Rabbit, Run (Penguin) which was part of a 3-for-2 deal at Borders, so, naturally I had to find two other books bearing the same sticker so that my money would not go to waste. I decided on a collection of stories by Raymond Carver entitled, will you please be quiet, please? (Vintage) and The Collected Dorothy Parker (Penguin) by, of course Dorothy Parker. As I've ventured cautiously away from writing that first novel that will win me international glory and fame and have tiptoed towards writing more short stories to see if I can actually finish some of my writing, I've been reading more short stories than I ever have in my life. I've even considered the possibility that I never tend to finish writing stories because, until recently, I never really finished reading stories. I'll let you know how this experiment goes. 

I've read three of the Updike stories so far, and, to my merriment, I'm hooked. 

-ZMG

Yet another good New York Times Article

I like to pretend I'm at home with a copy of the Sunday New York Times on Sundays here in England by reading a few articles on the Times website. Today I came across this one, about a program at the 92nd St. Y through which New York City public high school students get to sit down to dinner and discussions with various contemporary authors. First of all, I began wishing I was a New York City public high school student. What a fantastic opportunity! And what a fantastic idea on the part of the Y. It's wonderful that the writers donate (I'm not positive they actually donate, perhaps they get paid for this...) their time to, as the article states, showing young aspiring writers that not all authors are dead. 

I wanted to bring attention to one quote from one of the students, however. One student said she was looking forward to reading some of Junot Díaz's stories because like Mr. Díaz, she is from the Dominican Republic and has spent time there and has, "felt what he felt", and, "seen what he saw." She says that, "With other authors, you're not always a participant, you can't always relate." 

I've always wondered just how important it is to be able to relate to authors and their experiences. If an appreciation for literature had its roots in a reader's ability to relate to the author, the author's experiences and the subject matter within the book or poem or essay or whatever it may be, I feel there would only be a small percentage of literature that an individual could appreciate, or "participate" in. This is, in no way, an assault on the young lady that made that point in the article, because I have heard people say the same thing to some effect before. In fact, I've probably said it several times myself. But when I think about it, I don't think a reader should have to be able to relate to an author. If this were the case, would anyone like the Harry Potter series? If this were the case, I don't think I could have enjoyed The Human Stain, American Pastoral, even The Great Gatsby. I can't relate to those stories at all. I believe whether or not a reader can relate to a story depends on the author's ability to allow the reader to relate. The writing should be accessible enough, vivid enough that anyone can appreciate it, no matter who the author may be. Thoughts?

-ZMG

John Updike

In light of the passing of this esteemed author:

A great article about the life and writing of John Updike

I've never read any of his work, but after reading this article, I plan on doing so. 

-ZMG

Some Food (or...Words...) for Thought

I was reading excerpts from Charles Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life for my Literature and Visual Culture class last night, and I came across the following quote:

"But genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will - a childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood's capacities and a power of analysis which enables it to order the mass of raw material which it has involuntarily accumulated."

For Baudelaire, curiosity is the key - that curiosity that only a child has - the wonderment of everything new around you, no matter what it is.

-ZMG

Edinburgh, Reading and the Beginning of a New Semester

[Post published 1/14/09]

After returning from a five day trip to Scotland with Emma, I have been thrown - no, gently shovel-passed - back into the world of English academics. Monday was our first day of classes, but the one class that I had was canceled so that we could pick up necessary books and begin reading. I'm taking three classes this semester at UEA, as opposed to two last semester. More on that later.

Edinburgh is a gorgeous city. It's ancient castle sits atop a hill in the middle of the city, overlooking the surrounding expanse of developed land. The city is made up of two main sections, the Old Town and the New Town. The Old Town is mostly medieval (I believe) and the New Town, interestingly, was mostly constructed in the 1700s, thus by American standards...there is nothing new in Edinburgh. The New Town is laid out much like modern cities today are - with streets that create grids when looked at from a birds-eye view. The Old Town has the small, winding cobblestone streets that I have become so fond of here in both the United Kingdom and the European continent. 

Our first day there, Emma and I took a three-hour walking tour of the city. It was a good tour, providing us with a brief history of the city of Edinburgh. We saw St. Gile's Cathedral (which isn't actually a cathedral as it doesn't have a bishop), the Writer's Museum, the school that inspired Hogwarts in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, and also the small café where she began writing the books that made her wealthier than the Queen and many other small gems the city had to offer. Our tour guide also told us several stories related to the different sights we saw to accompany their histories. After the tour we visited the Writer's Museum, which highlights the lives and careers of Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. We climbed Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano that provides a gorgeous view of the entire city. We spent five hours exploring Edinburgh Castle and the exhibitions within its walls, most of which pertained to Edinburgh's military history. We visited Hollyrood Palace, where the Queen stays when she visits Scotland in the summer. We spent a tremendous amount of time walking up and down what's known as the Royal Mile, a mile-long street with the castle at one end and Hollyrood Palace and Scottish Parliament at the other. 

Me in front of Hollyrood Palace

Edinburgh Castle

This was not Emma's first time in Edinburgh. The first time she had gone with another friend of ours who is studying in Norwich with us named Julieta. Julieta knew of a program called Couch Surfers which is a community of people who allow travelers to stay in their apartments or houses for free. Emma and I stayed with the man, a forty-something year old part-time tour guide named George who she and Julieta had stayed with the first time they were there. George was an incredibly nice guy, and very willing to suggest places to go and things to see while we were there. He even made dinner for us one night (we did the dishes)! 

I'm very happy to have been able to spend a few days in Scotland, and we lucked out with the weather, as the first two full days we were there it was relatively mild and sunny. We got some rain and cold our second two days there, but overall I was pleased that I wasn't freezing and soaked the whole time. 

Here are my pictures from the week:

Edinburgh 1

Edinburgh 2

Edinburgh 3

As Emma had a paper to work on while we were in Scotland, I brought a book that I started reading at home, The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem, which I highly recommend. Unfortunately, I finished that book the night we arrived in Scotland, so the next day I bought The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I had read The Great Gatsby in 10th grade, but didn't remember much of it, so I decided to reread it. Like his short stories, I loved it and gobbled it up. Then I started The Human Stain. This novel was not as slow and difficult to get through as Roth's American Pastoral was, but it was just as captivating and just as tragic. Again I experienced the same feeling I had while reading American Pastoral. I felt so strongly for the characters involved that it felt as if they were close friends of mine, and again it was because of Roth's incredible ability to delve into the depths of the histories and personalities of his characters. 

My contemporary writing professor last semester, Dr. Stephen Benson, called to my attention the fact that Roth didn't gain much recognition until later in life (he was 65 when he received the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1998). Reading his novels, I can't help but feel - for better or for worse - that it is not Roth's narrators that are telling the stories, but Roth himself. Paragraph after paragraph is filled with what appear to me to be Roth's thoughts on humans, love, life, death and anything else you can imagine. It seems to me that his novels are outpourings of meticulous and relentless meditations on issues that humans deal with throughout their lives. They say, "This is what I think. I've had 60 years to experience everything I write about and think about it until I go numb, and now I know how I feel about it. And I want you to know what I think." There's no arrogance about it, only honesty - honesty that at times can be quite brutal. I highly suggest - no, I demand that anyone with an interest in literature and a good book read either The Human Stain or American Pastoral. 

I finished The Human Stain today (Wednesday, January 14th), and I think it is safe to say that I have not read this much this consistently for my own enjoyment since I was eight- or nine-years-old and reading the Hardy Boys series (of which I probably read about 50 books). 

On another note, I've had one class thus far, and it was yesterday. My schedule this semester is as follows:

Monday: Literature and Visual Culture at the Fin de Siecle; 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Tuesday: Poetry in Dark Times: Holderlin, Rilke, Celan; 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.

Thursday: The Holocaust; Lecture, 1 p.m. - 2 p.m.; Seminar, 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.; Extra lecture (to view movies, or other course-related activities) 5 p.m. - 7 p.m.

As I mentioned earlier, my class on Monday was canceled, but I had Poetry in Dark Times yesterday, and it was a fantastic class. As the poets in the title of the class all wrote in German, we will be dealing with the issues that arise because of differing translations. We close read (analyzed text using only the text, and not going outside of it to do research or thinking too much about context) several translations of a poem by Holderlin, and it was fascinating and sparked my excitement for the course. 

Tomorrow, the Dickinson Humanities group will take a trip to London and stay the night to hear the US Ambassador to the UK give a talk called "Reflections on the US-UK Relationship," hear a talk called "Britain's Place in the World" by Martin Williamson at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and CEO of Barclays Bank Thomas Kalaris give a talk at the Barclays Headquarters called "The British Finance Industry, Global Markets, and the Credit Crunch." While I do have to miss class to attend this trip, I think it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (maybe...) to hear these three men speak on important issues facing the UK and the US today. We will return to Norwich Friday evening. 

I have a paper due for my Dickinson class, Humanities 310, next Wednesday, and a proposal for a final project due the following Monday, which I will reveal to the virtual world when my plan becomes solidified. As I said, we've been gently shovel-passed back into the academic world. I'm looking into doing some traveling in the next few weeks, and will keep everyone updated on that as well.

I hope all is well with everyone at home, in Africa, Canada, Mexico, wherever! Until next time!

-ZMG

A Literary Dilemma

I've been reading some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories in a collection put together by Matthew J. Bruccoli (1989). I haven't read any Fitzgerald since 10th grade when we read The Great Gatsby with Mr. Sternstein, which I unfortunately don't really remember (everyone says it's great though, and I vaguely remember liking it. Add it to the reading list!). I love Fitzgerald's writing: it's poetic and catchy, his dialogue and his exposition flow smoothly and he paints fantastic pictures of the upper class just before the Great Depression. Perhaps I have a somewhat romanticized vision of this time period--the jazz, the dress--everything seems perfect to me, but Fitzgerald seems to portray it just as I would imagine it. But there's a big, not-so-subtle issue that I struggle with in his writing: the blatant racism. In his story The Offshore Pirate, I came across a passage I loved: "'You see,' said Carlyle softly, 'this is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding--it's got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl'" (81). A wonderful description of beauty and a beautiful piece of writing. But throughout the story, there is repeated use of derogatory terms to describe black people, and it is quite clear that Fitzgerald did not have the highest opinion of black people. I have a few choices in this situation. I can:

1. Dismiss his racism as a product of contemporary society and not hold him at fault;
2. Put down the book and boycott all of Fitzgerald's writing;
3. Form my own opinions about the type of person Fitzgerald was and read his writing for the sheer value of his words, sentences and ideas.

As you may have guessed, I chose No. 3 and continued reading. I definitely don't appreciate Fitzgerald's prejudices and certainly don't agree with them, but his writing is too significant to the literary world to be ignored. Furthermore, if we were to just put down books we didn't like because the author was racist, would anyone read Huckleberry Finn? Of course, there is much debate on whether or not Twain's masterpiece is actually racist, but that's an issue for another time. Plus, I've found that Fitzgerald's writing has even influenced some of my recent writing. And his stories are fantastic. 

So, I keep reading. I keep in mind that perhaps Mr. Fitzgerald is not the kind of person I would have liked to be friends with, but he sure can write a damn good story. Take everything with a grain of salt.

Thoughts?

-ZMG

NaNoWriMo

Last night, I registered for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is simple: write a 50,000-word (roughly 175 pages) novel between November 1 and November 30. Editing and clarity will go out the window in a frantic rush to be one of the elite few that had enough time to write 50,000 words that will probably be completely jumbled and incoherent. Will I do it? Stay tuned and I'll keep you updated. For more information or to register if you're interested in participating, visit www.nanowrimo.org. 

Oh, and Happy Halloween! =)

-ZMG

For anyone looking for a worthwhile read...

I believe I started reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral in high school, but couldn't get through it. It's a rather dense book with multiple complex layers, by no means a quick-and-easy read. However I returned to it this summer and finished a couple weeks ago. I have never been affected so deeply by a book in my life. Roth is a masterful writer, and if you can manage to stick with his prose through the slow sections, you may realize that every word of those sections was absolutely necessary. It is truly powerful and moving, and I suggest anyone with some time (but seriously, who has any time? No one does, so everyone should read it...figure that logic out) find a copy and read it. 

So, once again: American Pastoral by Philip Roth. By far my favorite book of all time...so far. Read it.

-ZMG