First Full Day in Aspen

How I spent my Christmas Vacation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not too shabby, eh?

Greetings from Aspen!

 This is by far the most cheerful airport I’ve ever been in. And look!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kindle and I have been reunited!! I even bought a book that’s not supposed to be available in the US till April!

 

Happy vacation reading, y’all.

You can all breathe easy.

My very own, brand new, just in time for me to go to China kindle has arrived!

 

 

 

 

<–It looks like that.

 

 

 

 

 

In other news, I have my reading list for my seventh grade English classes this fall. The four major books we’ll be reading are:

1) A Christmas Carol (play version- not sure which one)

2) The Endless Steppe, by Esther Rudomin Hautzig

3) The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth George Speare (who wrote The Witch of Blackbird Pond- one of my favorite tween books)

4) Okay for Now, by Gary D. Schmidt

plus  a bunch of short stories and poems of the week. We’re going to do National Novel Writing Month. Perhaps I’ll even jump in.

Oh, and S prazdnikom to everyone celebrating Ss. Peter and Paul today! Cheeseburgers will ensue.

Seven on Saturday- Bookish Thoughts

1. I’m writing to you from Brooklyn, NY, where my lovely sister and her family reside.

2. I made it here WITHOUT my kindle (still broken, folks), or an electronic device of any kind. This is a warmup for next Saturday’s fourteen hour flight to Beijing. Although I plan on ordering a new one before I go, I want to be able to entertain myself without staring at a screen for the entire trip.

3. The main reason I was able to endure the four hour ride- heck, I even enjoyed it- was because of this:

Pretty, right?

Rhett and Scarlett got me through, no problem. Plus, that book is a beast. It may even tide me over till Tuesday, when I’ll get on the bus back. Nothing like a beloved classic. The racism is more apparent in this re-read, but the story is as absorbing as ever.

4. Oh, yeah, going to China next Saturday. Packing? What? My reading list currently includes Game of Thrones 1-3 and nothing else. Help? I would like to take the plays I’m going to direct and books I’m going to teach as well. Better decide on those soon.

5. Which reminds me, I may or may not have decided to direct 1984 for the high school this fall. I’m hoping to get a copy of the script while I’m here. SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK WELCOME.

6. I’m also considering which Shakespearean comedy I want to hack into a forty minute festival piece. Probably Twelfth Night. Again, feedback!!

And finally…

7. I still haven’t written my piece about it, butSophie Scholl and the White Rose was one of the best books, if not the best book, I’ve read this year. Buy it, borrow it, but add it to your summer reading list.

Have a great weekend!

Like Clockwork

After leaving my cell phone in a restaurant over the weekend, I decided to take Monday to embrace being off the grid. I slept a necessary but embarrassing  number of hours, then curled up in Barnes and Noble with a pile of teen novels. What did I read instead?

**spoilers!**

A Clockwork Orange is divided into three parts of 7 chapters each (more on that later). It’s the story of a man’s destructive youthful follies, forced state rehabilitation, and what happens next. It’s highly graphic – Stanley Kubric directed the movie for a reason. The argot (“nadsat”) the book is written in makes it a challenging read for most people, but if you speak a decent amount of Russian, as I do, it’s not difficult to get into it. In fact, the language serves to enhance the removed, brutal quality of the narration. Minus the language, it’s a pretty straight forward dystopian tale.

First off, this is not a book I can recommend to anyone in good conscience. Many disgustingly bad things happen to the protagonist, his droogs, and a number of side characters. That said, I kind of liked it. Not the first part, in which the bulk of said disgustingly bad things occur at the behest of protagonist Alex. No, it’s parts 2 and 3 that really caught my attention. The rest of the book (perhaps all of the book?) is about the struggle between free will and the will of the state- or rather, individual evil versus institutionalize evil. Alex is brainwashed in a particularly sadistic manner, then released on to the streets. Now completely averse to violence, he can’t defend himself from the many people he’s wronged in the past- or anyone else who might choose to harm him. Eventually he’s “cured” of his aversion by the same government who brainwashed him in the first place for political reasons.

Now, if we left Alex there, as the original American publication did, the story would be a fable. Kubric’s movie was based on that same fable, and he famously referred to the original last chapter as “trash”. Burgess, the author, disagreed. In the introduction to the full (1983?) American edition, he claimed that the book was incomplete without the last chapter. The controversial final entry shows an Alex growing slowly bored with his life of destruction and gradually realizing that being an adult, being a human being, means creation rather than destruction. (Orthodox reference- to be fully human is to be in the image of God, who is the Creator.) He expresses a desire to find a wife, have  child, while stating fatalistically that there is no way to break the cycle of senseless violence. In fact, he appears to believe that having a child will perpetuate it instead (perpetuation of sin? original sin?).

Burgess claims that the character growth in this chapter gives the story the complexity required of a novel. He also claims that he structured the novel to have 21 chapters- 21 being the age of maturity, as determined by the state. So without the 21st chapter, we leave Alex in a state of perpetual immaturity (in addition to remaining pure evil).

I personally value the novel format over the better known fable. Preferring the idea that no human is pure evil, and that people exist in a constant state of flux, I found the denouement necessary to a truthful novel. I also disagree with the criticism that it’s untrue to the character we met in the first 20 chapters. Even with the state deprogramming, is it not possible that the violent films Alex was forced to watch for endless hours may have had some impact on his character? Having experienced some of the extremes of earthly, sensual pleasures, might he not now desire more?

Burgess professed his overall dissatisfaction with Clockwork. He openly states in the introduction (in the book, not my now smashed kindle edition) that he considers his other works superior, and (most interestingly) if most people misunderstand the novel and film as a glorification of sex and violence, he should not have written it to begin with. (Hmm…) Here Burgess unwittingly parallels Clockwork‘s analysis of censorship and state sponsored values. Should the book exist if people will misunderstand it? Should the author have the right to “take back” his work after it’s been published- perhaps refuse future publishing rights?

Certainly the few clips I’ve watched of the film on youtube.com were disturbing- but not half as disturbing as the reactions of viewers in the comments section. Glorification of violence is alive and well in that sector.

(By the way, I don’t plan to ever watch the film in its entirety. As a matter of personal preference, and for the sake of my spiritual life, I try not to watch films with excessive violence. In action movies with clearly fake explosions and extended chases, I get bored fast. With more realistically filmed -and sometimes not so realistically filmed- sequences, I get really upset. For the sake of comparison (and a little bit of morbid fascination- I watched the trailer, the intro, and parts of a few key sequences online. So take the following with that in mind.)

Another question- film making quality aside, can a story or concept be better for you, be better understood in book form than film? Burgess pointed out that many people preferred the film because the book’s narration was so difficult to comprehend. I found that the fascinating rhythm of the text was half the reward. For those of you that have seen it, does the film lose that rhythm? I also didn’t love the constant focus (literal and metaphoric) on Alex and the droogs- in the book they were one gang of many, while in the film it seemed as if they were THE gang. Lost some of the meaning and some of the significance of Alex being singled out at the end.

I don’t think I’ve been this intellectually excited about a book since The Woman in Black, another horrorshow I couldn’t recommend to anyone in good conscience.  Perhaps it’s the half-great literature, half-completely appalling aspect that makes it so fascinating.

I’m afraid I can’t leave you with any fabulous conclusions- just fragments and questions. At least it’s in the spirit of the novel.

Six on Saturday

1. I was in Minnesota this past week, introducing Bill Cosby at a conference, in front of four thousand people. Of the many random things I’ve done in my life, this is one of the randomest. (Most random?) I think it was a success. Even if it wasn’t, they cared way more about Cosby than me, so I fulfilled the chief requirements of speaking audibly and not passing out onstage.

2. MY KINDLE IS DEAD. IT WAS FINE LAST NIGHT. NOW IT IS NOT. I FOUND THIS OUT ON THE SUBWAY WITH NOTHING ELSE TO READ. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

3. This meant, of course, that I needed to stop and buy a new book. So I did.  Tragic, huh? (FYI- I usually post images of the edition I’m reading, but Amazon didn’t have one.) While buying at an awesome bookstore, the lovely book seller told me that this was one of his favorites. While searching, I realized just how many books they didn’t have that I’m looking for…

4. Including The Pillars of the Earth, The Wise Man’s Fear, and Outlander. I’m on a fantasy kick (or at least want to be). I also hoped to find A Clockwork Orange, which I was about 30% through when Kindle kicked the bucket. I’m still on my quest to find a used/cheap copy of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of The Brothers Karamazov.  I searched Minneapolis high and low, but the Midwest proved as barren as the greater Boston area.

5. My 30 before 30 list contains few SFF books, but it’s been zipping along. If you check the updated page, you’ll see that I’ve already finished Wuthering Heights and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I’m in the middle of a few others. In fact, I may be zipping along a little too fast. I do have to stretch this out until 2016. Suggestions for slowing down (book recommendations!) welcome.

6. I need plays to read that would be appropriate for high school or middle school productions. Your thoughts?

Happy Saturday, y’all.

Kindling

My birthday was on Monday. I managed to extend the celebration over three days, and on the first my mother bought me a kindle. Go mom!

I’ve never been a huge fan of e-readers. I value books as objects, not just delivery methods for narratives. Sense memory is more important than you think. I find that Kindle’s changed the way I read. I can’t open to a random page, can’t flip back and forth quickly to check details, skimming is much less productive.

I also wonder if limiting stories (or ideas) to a fast changing screen somehow short-changes the authors- such data can be erased, moved, copied… a book  is not so quickly destroyed.

And of course, there’s always the fear of censorship. It’s much easier for… someone… to change words on a screen than words on aprinted page. (Excuse me while I put on my tinfoil hat.)

The above not withstanding, I’m more than a little obsessed with my e-reader. It’ s MUCH easier to carry around than the two or three (or five) books I usually have stuffed in my bag in case I change my mind or my mood. If I’m still unsatisfied, the wireless allows me to download a new book immediately. Not to mention the fact that I currently have 570 books loaded on to it. (My birthday, friends, was not that long ago. )Are you really telling me you wouldn’t like to have a portable library?

On the other hand, is it good or healthy for me to have so much freedom? Kindle doesn’t make me to stick to anything.

Well, the proof’s in the pudding. (I’ve always wanted to say that!) I’ve got a trip to Philadelphia coming up over Presidents’ Day weekend- we’ll see how Kindle and I get along once the honeymoon’s over and we spend some serious quality time together. Maybe I’ll even use the free menaion or prayer book I downloaded. Kindle and I will keep you posted.

Currently reading: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book : A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

Just finished: Cleaving by Julie Powell

Still working on: Courage to Pray, Met. Anthony Bloom & Georges LeFebrvre