Now-Titled Post

The past few weeks have been eventful. Finals, over. I moved into a house, started my summer job, quit it, and quite recently went to a party from which I'm still trying to recover. Three cups of yerba mate while sitting in bed reading didn't do it. Coffee next. I may be waking up all day.

We don't have internet at the house. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it enforce a different lifestyle than the one to which I've grown accustomed. I don't waste as much time looking at dumb things, going to digg, playing, God forbid, flash games--but I'm used to being plugged in. My social life is also inhibited, but the compensatory effect of having one's own place more than makes up for it. If anything, it might improve the blog; I'm thinking of drafting things at home, correcting them, then bringing them to the library to post [edit: yeah right]. That would be easier than just sitting here, trying to think of sentences like I'm doing right now.

Two novels: Murakami's After Dark and The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. I recommend both. In After Dark, Murakami works out of his usual POV. The protagonist (if there is one) isn't another variant on Toru Okada (which I guess was true for Kafka by the Shore as well, so maybe this marks a new trend). I didn't mind the similarities between characters in his earlier novels, but I think he handles the new territory well. I also found After Dark to be a lot more thematically coherent than his other books, though I'm a different reader than I was last year. Maybe being an English major has made me even better at seeing connections where there are none. Oh well: After Dark seems to be an extended meditation on the borders of the self, and on one's ever-renegotiated position within the various networks of power and influence that shape society. Darkness is the condition in which borders become permeable, in which we can grow closer to others or drift away, suffused with nothingness.

This idea of identity, its mutability and dependence on/ existence within others (reminiscent of Hofstadter's view in Le ton beau de Marot and, I hear, I am a Strange Loop) is also present in The Echo Maker, in which neurological disorders are portrayed as explicit manifestations of processes and structures that are already present in normal consciousness. I wonder if Powers's book might be a little longer than it needs to be, and I still haven't fully grasped the significance of his ecological theme (or maybe I have, and forgotten), but I still think it's worth the time. And the cover art is great.

I need to eat lunch now. I'll come back to this later and fix typos. If anyone wants to hang out while I'm still unemployed, please let me know. On the other hand, if you know anywhere that's hiring, feel free to pass that along as well.

[edited 5/29/08; title added, some adverbs eliminated, other changes]

Interview

Tonight I had a hankering to look up two authors whose names have been knocking around in my head lately: Richard Powers and Claire Messud. Amazon has been insistent in recommending both to me, and a few weeks ago by someone whose opinion I respect also pointed me to Powers. Some searching on Bookslut for reviews led me to this wonderful interview with him. His take on the relationship between science and literature has convinced me to pick up The Echo Maker as soon as possible (6-12 months?).

Bookslut also had a tepid review of Messud's The Hunters, in keeping with the mixed notices on Amazon. I haven't given up the idea of checking her out, but it's on the back burner for now.

While listening to Kid A, windows open, one shoe off

Spring's in full swing and summer's just around the corner. This bit of digital space has remained static as of late (admittedly it's not my first priority), but perhaps the ensuing relent of academic obligations will offer me both (1) thoughts worth sharing and (2) the time to share them. I suppose it's presumptuous of me to deign whether or not my own thoughts are worth sharing... and yet, we do demand a kind of quality control from any purveyor of information. If my judgments about my own thoughts are not taken to be the universal standard by which they are measured (and I am advocating no such thing), they are at least a useful tool for limiting the flow of information. See, was that digression even necessary? I leave it in as an example.

To continue--I have to say that the prospect of this summer, the idea of it, is tremendously exciting. I would say more exciting than anything in recent memory, but there was that trip last year. I'll be moving into a house (a house!) in a few weeks, with such an abundance of light and warmth as you wouldn't believe. Lots of places to read. My plans for the coming months are similar to the plans I make for every amorphous, as-yet-unfilled space of time that has ever loomed over or shimmered just out of reach of the present; cook more, read more, write more. A programme rarely carried out to completion, though I now have the consolation (?) that cooking will no longer be quite optional. This aspirational troika is matched by three other related but more specific targets: bake more, play more chess, get outside. Is this too much for one person to handle? Will my quest for self-actualization lead inevitably to disappointment? Tune in next month to find out! (Anyone looking for a baking/ chessing/ biking partner, etc, feel at liberty to contact me. I also know of a burgeoning summer book-club that promises to mix exclusivity with Greensboro-hipster aspirations. Scintillating! Inquire for details.)

[I was hungry last night. Really hungry. I started flipping through Paul Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and I almost gnawed through the pages, I almost threw it or myself across the room. The bread looked so GOOD. No, it didn't just look good. That implies culinary desire, carnal desire, simple appetite. It looked beautiful. That bread looked beautiful. I want to bake, NOW.]

It has begun to rain.

Blogger is lonely

If you live where I do, so I decided to link to some people on LiveJournal. I don't like LiveJournal but its quite popular here, so, well, compromises.

Incidentally, The Satanic Verses is a very good book.

Re: Memory

[To be edited at a later date. I didn't want to wait until posting.]

This is a response to Susie's two posts on memory. I want to share my thoughts on the subject as well as reply to some of the things she said. I'm making a post instead of a comment because I feel like this might get lengthy.

I wish I had my Nabokov quotes ready, but my library is in Newton.

I suppose the main question that Susie raises is "Why do people suffer from unwanted memories?" I'm sure that one could spend a large portion of one's life tracking down the various answers to this, given by a parade of authorities in various fields. The psychoanalysts would be the most vocal group, insisting that the involuntary return to unpleasant memories is indeed a symptom of your mind's desire to confront or correct something about itself, to find, if not wisdom, peace. The religious would probably agree that some kind of confrontation leading to peace is the purpose, though they might claim God's intervention, rather than the inner dynamics of the mind, as the motivating factor. An artist might maintain that painful memories are meant to be turned into art, a humanist that they keep us in touch with our humanity, but an elephant, I am almost sure, would assert that memory simply is. And, at the risk of being boring, so would I.

I take a scientific perspective of things. It's a good way to keep oneself honest, even if the conclusions are unpleasant. I don't believe that a reason (in the teleological sense) exists for anything in nature--memory included--except perhaps to be for its own sake. And I don't think that counts. I'm not against people creating reasons, finding meaning in what is given, but I think it's dangerous not to recognize the provisional quality these. I feel compensated for this existential state of affairs, or divine silence, by the endless mystery and beauty in the world. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that I don't believe in any reason for nature; I don't deny the possibility of one, but I don't think that we, as we currently exist, are capable of grasping it.

Which is all a lot of preface to my saying that I think memory is just a product of natural selection, bequeathed to our ancestors to help them deal with life in the jungle, possessed to a lesser degree by other living creatures, and ultimately ill-suited, in a manner of speaking, to war and other modern miracles. That is to say, I don't believe that the mind "is not completely controlled by chemicals and electrical impulses." It is, and this is why we have problems.

Nothing. Just the breeze cooling her face as she rushed toward water. And then sopping the chamomile away with pump water and rags, her mind fixed on getting every last bit of sap off--on her carelessness in taking a shortcut across the field just to save a half mile, and not noticing how high the weeds had grown until the itching was all the way to her knees. Then something. The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before here eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her--remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that. (1)

Susie says that "Some are able to repress their memories, but in the end often have psychological problems because of them." This leads to her next paragraph in which she asks why the mind doesn't deal with harmful memories in the same way that the body deals with states of imbalance or harm. It's a good question. I know a little bit about repression (my mom is a psychologist), but I haven't studied it in depth. From what I've heard, repression most typically occurs when someone suffers trauma or abuse at a very young age. This is also when alternate personalities may be created to deal with such situations. Of course, one hears about older people repressing experiences as well. I wonder how often that actually occurs... it's a popular device in movies, but it doesn't seem like it actually occurs that often. And what's the difference between repressing something and simply forgetting something unpleasant? I could be wrong about this, but I do think that Susie is right in implying that repression is a relatively rare occurrence. One reason for this might be that it defeats memory's purpose (in a biological, not teleological, sense). If memory evolved to help us survive, it's greatest utility would be in recalling times when our immediate survival was threatened. These are also likely to be our worst memories. This isn't to say that other kinds of memories aren't more painful--but our brain may be incapable of distinguishing one kind of negativity from the other. To it, pain may equal threat, which may equal something important to remember.

Although considering that the mind is the most complex object in the known universe, that's probably an oversimplification at best.

Susie asks if memory can be controlled. It doesn't seem that it can. When things remind us of other things, our immediate experience is linked to a memory in a totally involuntary fashion. Memories float up out of the depths and settle in our consciousness for no apparent reason. We can, of course, also harness memory to our own purposes--we can try to remember something--but there is no guarantee that it will succeed. Memory is like a mostly obedient pet that does what we tell it to, but nonetheless has a will of its own. It is capable of disobeying. Where does this will come from? I can only say that it arises from the complex interplay of neurons whose functioning remains hidden from us. In this, they are like dreams. To pretend I know any more would be dishonest.

Although we began by discussing memory's problematic aspects, I could not do with leaving it there. For me, memory is too wrapped up with beauty not to pluck at some of the ties between them. And this is where I miss Nabokov. He wrote and spoke profoundly on the subject of memory, as did Proust. And we owe Kundera for naming (but not discovering) the concept of poetic memory:

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.

Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory. (2)

Anyone who has ever had a beautiful experience will immediately recognize what Kundera is speaking about. There are memories that seem qualitatively different from the mass of our recollections. I once read something about the poet's task being to capture the multitude of simultaneous sensations in a single moment and transmute them into a single object of beauty. I don't know how true this is as a statement about poetry in general, but it seems to me to apply equally well as a description of the kind of microcosm that our poetic memory allows us to enter . Nabokov (always Nabokov) spoke of the way that memory changes over time--not deceiving, but like a jewel becoming ever more polished. I am convinced that Nabokov had capacity for poetic memory that far exceeded the average, and that this, more than anything else, is what made him the author he is. Whether this was a quirk of his memory itself, or a certain orientation of the rest of his mind toward it, I can't guess.

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.(3)

I know that memory can be troubling. Even in a perfect present, it renders the past inescapable. But it is also what gives our experience texture (how thin the world would be if we couldn't latch on to some object in front of us and drift on a chain of associations away from the here and now). I think that the key to happiness lies in developing the ability to perceive the beauty of the moment and to retain that beauty, not just as a souvenir, but as something grows inside of us. Memory is alive. I said earlier that I regard its malfunctioning as an accident of our neurology. For all I know, its poetic qualities are also accidental. But in both the beauty and the suffering that it invokes, memory adds a depth to our existence that allows us to hope that we may one day, in some way, rise above the contingencies of mind and matter. God may be silent, but the past speaks in shouts and whispers--who can say where it will lead if we listen?

----------
(1) Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage, 2004. pp. 6-7
(2) Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. ???
(3) Nabokov, Vladimir. Who knows from where, I had to look it up. This is the end of my memory.

Annotations

I've been thinking about annotating my books recently. For as long as I can remember, I've had an intense desire to keep them pristine. Even though I know that this is not what engaged readers do, the compulsion to preserve their pages tends to override all rational argument. I've made attempts here and there to mark up particularly challenging reads--abusing House of Leaves with a highlighter, jotting definitions in the margins of Le mythe de Sisyphe... yet I was unable to sustain these exercises, and they were ultimately unsatisfying.

Part of the problem came from the fact that I knew I was doing something out of the ordinary, that there was no way I would maintain it as a habit with other books. But a larger portion came as a consequence of the fact that I had no set system of annotating. Whenever I found myself with the wrong implement, underlining stood in for highlighting or vice-versa. This thwarted any attempt to use the two to denote different things, and it made the pages extremely ugly. Nor could I decide, for written notes, whether to use pen or pencil. And finally, what convention was I to use to mark an important passage as opposed to one I didn't fully understand? I went through underlining, highlighting, bracketing, squiggly lining, lines in the margins, and occasionally circling, producing no coherent system and making an even larger mess of my pages. This was, of course, the reason I wanted to avoid marking in my books in the first place.

I now, however, acknowledge that something needs to be done. The revelation came to me a couple days ago when I began reading excerpts of Kant's Critique of Judgment. For me, the difficulty of this text necessitates the marking of key passages and the insertion of comments in the margins. With this resolution to annotate has come an equal resolve to discover an ideal system of annotation--and here we come to the intent of this post. I have developed a few conventions, but I'd like to hear anything that you find useful while annotating. Thus far, I:

1. Use a single vertical line in the outer margin, as close as possible to the body of the text, to mark a significant sentence or passage. Sometimes I add little bracket ends, pointing into the text, to the top and bottom of the line, but this is not strictly necessary. Taken by itself, this denotes that I simply think a passage is important. Written notes may clarify that this is something I disagree with or do not understand, etc., or they may contain an attempt to summarize the passage in my own words.

2. Try to write marginalia at a 45-degree angle, striking a balance between length and ease of access.

3. Underline short passages that seem tremendously important. To be honest, I've only done this a couple times, and I'm not sure that I should continue. The appeal of tactic 1 is that it doesn't disfigure the body of the text and it saves graphite/ ink. What must be decided is whether or not there truly exists such passages whose notability so supersedes that of other important passages that they require their own notation.

I have rejected the highlighter as an appropriate means for dealing with the text, and while I think that I fine-tipped pen (rollerball, or something similar) would be ideal, I am at this point using a pencil. I don't want to commit to ink until my technique is perfected.

It's worth noting that annotating fiction will likely require an added set of conventions. Fiction almost always invites multiple interpretations, and uses a larger repertoire of devices than nonfiction or philosophy to present its material. Hence, I invite you to share your ideas about annotating fiction as well as annotating in general, if you have any.

This may be, by far, the dorkiest post that Blogger has ever known.

[2/16/08 - edited, finally, for style and clarity]

"I am authentic / I'm authenticity..."

Was just discussing music of the 90s with a friend. I wonder what images of the 90s people will retain fifty years from now. I hope it's not the same set of associations that we, having so recently moved on, retain from various decade-in-review lists, the sort that haunt the back sections of high school yearbooks and popular news publications. The worst are those in quiz format under the heading "you know you were a child of the 90s if...", all tracing their lineage back to the half-baked, half-digested body of factoids that will find their way into VH1 specials for years to come. This is not my 90s, but what is? I wonder if it will become harder to produce meaningful history as long as corporate media dominates the cultural landscape.

An apology is in order to anyone who has sent me emails/ Facebook messages/ or blog comments over the past week+. I still haven't had enough time to produce proper replies, but it will happen today or tomorrow. On the reading list for this weekend is Richard III, some Kant, and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. I dropped Sociolinguistics because I didn't want to be in it anymore. That makes this the first semester during which I'm enjoying -all- my classes. No more linguistics major but more time next year to take whatever I want = profit?

Finally, in keeping with my unattenuated loathing of corporate news, I'd like to point you to An Extensive History of Terrible CNN.com Headlines. Laugh or cry, as long as it helps you get through the day.

Student responses to Nabokov's Pale Fire

Recently I reread Nabokov's Pale Fire for my contemporary novel class. Students were required to post responses to the novel on an online discussion board. Nabokov is my favorite author, so I was more than a little excited to read what my classmates had to say. I thought that some of the responses were particularly interesting, and I've decided to share excerpts of them here.

"Overall, this book was very difficult for me. I kept losing interest in the story because Kinbote’s commentary on the poem was completely wrong in my opinion. I felt frustrated at him for never being able to explain the poem as I saw it. I was quite surprised though in the very end (pg. 296) when Kinbote said he saw no mention of his beloved Zembla, which caught me off guard because he still interpreted the whole poem to be talking about his country."

"First of all, I don't like flashbacks. Never have. I like for my plots to move forward with as little time spent looking in the rear view mirror as possible. I read Disgrace in practically one sitting because I NEEDED to know what was going to happen next. In Pale Fire, there was no urgency. Nobody seemed to be in any immediate danger as evidenced by the fact that the protagonist was writing annotations. If there is a less suspenseful way to spend your time, I haven't heard it. [...] The other thing that I could not really get into was the whole Zembla storyline."

"The commentary, which was supposed to, I thought, break down and explain certain parts of the actual poem did the exact opposite for me; it only confused me more."

"Kinbote sexuality is certainly a major theme. His descriptions of Shade seem romantic in nature. "

"I understand the significance of what Nabakov is doing by writing commentary about a poem written by his best friend, Shade. After all Nabakov and Shade shared many stories about Zembla and the kings together, which Nabakov beleives to be highly influential in Shade's poetry. However I think the poems would have been more effective without the commentary. Shade's commentary is extremely drawn out, and flat out boring, which takes away from elements of the poem when I try to revert back to it."

"Was Shade a love interest of Charles?"

"I felt that the commentary did not meet the intended goal of helping to explain the poem, but rather took me to a world of falsehoods, a world of imaginary kingdoms and characters. While that sounds enjoyable, I did not find it so. [...] I hope that the other novels that we read this semester will not lead into a world unlike what is initially presented."

"It was truly a great book."

"Kinbote's not even very likeable; he stalks Shade while he's trying to write, doing anything he can to get a look at Shade's unfinished poem. I don't know how Shade put up with him. I hardly could."

"Kinbote didn't respect the poem nor Nabokov enough to give a commentary that would allow readers, for centuries, to appreciate the complexity of the written word, while still giving it simplicity and understanding. The poem's nine-hundred-ninety-nine line poem may be twenty pages, at most, but the commentary is somewhere between two-fifty and three hundred, yet says nothing as sincere and worthwhile as the nine-hundred-ninety-nine."

"Confused and frustrated while reading Pale Fire, I had to latch on to what little clarity I found. A passage of clarity for me was the passage about line 493: “she took her poor young life.” The explanation on the ‘proper’ modes of suicide and the consequences of attempting (and accomplishing) one’s goal of ending one’s life was strangely clear and poignant. It merges you with God, yet in many religious circles, it is the ultimate unforgivable sin. It’s ultimately a bit frightening when you find yourself re-reading this passage and convincing yourself that yes, it’s all true. You have felt this way and if it’s going to happen to anyone, they should read the “guidelines” that this book provides."

Objects (5/6)

This object I've decided not to photograph. It's book that was given to me under special circumstances; out of everything I own, I value it the most. I deem it more than a piece of media because of the various memories I associate with it, the unlikelihood of my ever finding a similar edition, and its content. Unlike many of the other objects I've listed, the book's value does not lie in its immediate aesthetic or functional appeal (though I do like having it near), but in the fact that it symbolizes a certain set of values and purposes that I find integral to my identity. These things would remain even if the book were gone, but I feel that locating them materially can be a positive thing--of course, one must prepare oneself for loss, accidental or inevitable, but this extends to all things.

Sorry for not posting

Classes started with a b-a-n-g bang, or if not a bang, a reasonably percussive pop. Reading done for various classes after week I: Titus Andronicus, Pale Fire, Aristotle's Poetics and two chapters of the Politics, various parts of Saussure (for the second time), various things in French, various things on tea, and cetera. I'll finish the Objects, I will. I'll do one right now. This blog isn't dead, it's just breathing funny.

Revenant

My first full day back in Greensboro for the spring semester. Classes start next monday. I had to spend most of the day going to required meetings, but I did have enough time to unpack. I also put a photo of myself on my Blogger profile in the hope that people who stumble here will admire my lush beard, my piercing eyes, and be properly motivated to make this a regular read. This plan is surely foolproof.

In the lull between classes and break, I've decided to slip in a book that is neither required reading for the curricula devised by my professors nor for the one I have imposed upon myself. It is Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson, and it is pure enjoyment. I'm a little less than halfway through. The speculative aspect is not particularly original, but that's hard to do. It is pulled off well, however, and the prose is some of the best I've read in science-fiction. I feel like Wilson's knack for description would take him far in literary fiction.

I do plan on finishing the Object posts. I have the photos ready for the next one, so its just a matter of typing it up.