inthelouvre.org

Random Things in My House, Part I

I would like to invite you to put on some overly dramatic instrumental Christmas music as you scroll down to view all these photographs of things in my house. You know, to set the mood.

If, after viewing this exceedingly interesting post, you would like to see anything specific added to this plethora of photographs, please do comment with your ideas. I would be happy to take pictures of my feet or my bath soap, if you desire to know what they look like. (In other words, I’m taking requests.)

Annie Dillard - The Writing Life

My experience with NaNoWriMo this year reminded me of high school and, oddly enough, reading The Writing Life reminded me of NaNoWriMo. It’s not mutual, however; this book only reminded me of high school in the sense that I could imagine being required to read and analyze it on a high school level. Maybe it’s because Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood are both reading list titles here (though I was never required to read them), but I still found myself picking out phrases here and there that in my brain sounded like the clanking and clinking of doing dishes. Those were the sort of wincing noises I hear now while reading phrases and excerpts that “discussion” questions would have been based on. (They were never really discussion questions, were they? You could answer them quite simply in 2-3 sentences and being that they had right or wrong answers, there wasn’t much to discuss once someone got them right.)

NaNoWriMo reminded me of high school primarily because of this excerpt on pages 70-71:

Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hansun and Turgenev as models. Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E. M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust. By contrast, if you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, “Nobody’s.” In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of materials they used. The work’s possibilities excited them; the field’s complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.

It’s not that I don’t think anyone at NaNoWriMo is a real writer; it’s more that the majority of the people I conversed with during my time at the forums weren’t. This was their first foray into writing and they believed themselves to be absolutely brilliant. Had they read anything in the past year? No, just magazine articles on pop celebrities. It’s the idea that people only write to wear “the hat,” to take the role, to call themselves “an author” after they’ve spit out a load of filler material to make a certain word count. It’s that people think writing a novel within a month is enough, that they’ll get published immediately even sometimes without editing. Falling in love with the first draft never gets anyone anywhere. Most final drafts only slightly resemble first drafts. That’s how it should be, but the “twenty-one-year-old poet” who likes “Nobody’s” poetry ruined the whole experience for me.

That’s not to say that I discourage people from writing for the first time, nor do I discourage anyone from striving to make a great work of writing even if it’s their first time. This is why I’ve fallen in love with NaNoWriMo: because even if you have no experience with it, the community strives to encourage you to reach your goal. Some people might get high-hatted believing only in their brilliance and their certain success, but the world outside of NaNoWriMo is full of people who think they’re more important than they are.

It’s one of those “double-edged swords” that people talk about, like the argument that Oprah’s book club is awful in the mind of a reader of literature, because no one would have read One Hundred Years of Solitude were it not for her choice. However, at the same time, it’s so wonderful that the book is getting exposure, that it’s being read, because (supposedly) it’s a wonderful book! It’s the people who have that Tshirt that says “I listen to bands that don’t exist yet.” People who, for some reason, feel that these things are personally theirs and belong to their group; they are threatened when “outsiders”* take interest in their things. *”Outsiders” being housewives, new writers, younger generations, whatever. It’s not something that is easily explained away. I don’t know why people do this. I don’t know why “I knew about them before you did” is such an important statement to make. I don’t know why it bothers me that people who complete a NaNoWriMo novel then feel like they can walk around calling themselves authors, saying that their brilliant work is going to get published immediately because it embodies perfection. And I can’t say whether it bugs me more that they haven’t read a book for pleasure in their life, or that they are trying to take something that I’ve worked very hard for.

USA Today’s review on the back of this book says that “You want to copy out what it says, tape it to your typewriter, fix it with a heavy magnet to your fridge. Her words give courage.” It is that courage that makes this book remind me of NaNoWriMo. The positives. I’ve moved away from the loop of wondering why something I seek to encourage bothers me. Pages 78-79:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: “Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”

This should be the slogan over at Nanowrimo.org. Everyone should have this in mind when they write. NaNoWriMo is about getting the words out, letting the ideas hit the paper (or screen, as it were), about pushing yourself to write that masterpiece you’ve been putting off because of “lack of time” or “slim motivation.” Annie Dillard encourages the same thing. Make a schedule and get it all out. You’ll have to breathe, you’ll have to eat and sleep and maybe take walks, but when you’re not doing those things, let the words go.

It’s uninspiring to me to read books detailing a “writer’s life.” Usually they involve agents, publishers, problems with copyeditors and book cover designers. I find it uninteresting because it doesn’t apply to my life. Annie Dillard’s Writing Life, however, doesn’t include much if any of that. It’s about what keeps her going, what things have inspired her, what are the frustrations and distractions that all writers face. It’s inspiring to me because there is a whole chapter dedicated to watching an airplane pilot spin circles in the air and finding the beauty in the lines that he creates; there is nothing about the life of an already published author. It’s universal.

I would like to acquire two copies of this book so I can snip passages from the pages and stick them around my apartment. I might end up with the whole book on my walls.

Bookworms Carnival

Hello to all three of my regular readers, and to those of you who found your way here via the Bookworms Carnival page. I wanted to make this post before I totally forgot. Let me take you to the future: I’ll be hosting Edition 10 of the Bookworms Carnival in April ‘08 with the theme of Latin American literature/authors. If you’re confused, you can visit the Wikipedia article on Latin American literature for suggestions and explanations.

I can blame my interest in this category of literature on my time earning a Bachelor’s degree. I was required to take a “non-American” folklore class as well as a “non-American” history class and I somehow ended up taking Latin American folklore as well as Latin American history. I found that I enjoyed the required reading so much that several of the books became my favorites, and several of the authors intrigued me enough to branch out and read others by them. Examples (just two, but I will expand later when I have more time):

• Mario Vargas Llosa - The Feast of the Goat. This is a favorite and a book which I recommend freely whenever someone says, “I don’t know what I like, what do you recommend?” I’ve gone on to collect his books though I’ve only read a few more and I’m currently engrossed in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.
• Tomas Eloy Martinez - Santa Evita. I haven’t read anything else by this author, but I found this book to be so amazing and confusing that I decided to read it two more times before I would even think about discussing it in class. It also sparked a 12-page research paper about the mythology surrounding Evita — and this was in my history class.

What has made you interested in this specific writing? What differences do you find between Latin American authors and North American ones (or British ones, or Australian ones, or ones from wherever you reside)? And how about other-nationality authors who write about Latin America? What would you consider your favorite Latin American literature? What do you dislike about it?

I’m not just looking for book reviews, a tip you’ll find on most carnival pages, though I would really like to see some thoughts on Latin American literature and authors. I’d like to know why you liked something or why you disliked something. I’d love to include posts on why you picked up that certain book and what drew you so far into it that you couldn’t put it down.

It matters little to me when your post was written. Whether you were inspired to read a Latin American author for the first time when you stumbled upon the Bookworms Carnival page, or you’ve been reading Jorge Luis Borges’s work for so long that you can recite the first ten lines of all his short stories, I’d like to see posts from past and present that illustrate your personal understanding of Latin American literature.

So here’s the information you’ll need to send submissions and all that good stuff. If you’re really excited about this idea RIGHT NOW, you can always make your way over to the Bookworms Carnival page to see which one is currently featured. I’ll be taking submissions from now until the deadline, so start your engines.

Bookworms Carnival - Edition 10
Host: Michelle
Deadline for submission: April 13
Theme: Latin American literature/authors
To submit a post, email: admin at inthelouvre dot org

I’ll confirm receipt of all submissions and in April I’ll bother you with another email letting you know that the Carnival is completed. I look forward to reading your posts!

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Rarely do I read a book that consantly makes me stop to think. There was so much in this book to think about, and I don’t mean by trying to figure out the mysteries on my own before they were revealed in the story.

It would be wrong to start with “this book is about a girl who,” because it is about several girls; in fact, it is about five girls: Two ghosts, twins, and an “amputee,” as she calls herself. She works in an antiquarian bookstore. Margaret is a biographer and shortly after writing an article on two brothers receives a letter from a well-known and well-liked author, Vida Winter, who wishes that Margaret should write her biography. The truth. The truth from someone who has made up her past in so many different ways, but who now wishes to let it all free. She finds herself piecing together not only the story of a ghost and twins, but between herself and her own ghost.

Such truths were translated in the words of this book unconnected to the events in Vida Winter’s life. Those were the instances where I had to stop and think. I couldn’t continue reading, because they held close to me, pulling at my sleeve, begging me to stop and think about what I had just read. In some cases, they were elaborate plotlines coming together, but I started to think about geneaology, and how we are all just “subplots” in our own lives. The beginning doesn’t start with our births, though we often times think of the world in that way; it starts with those before us - mothers, grandmothers, ancestors from times long since passed who started a trade which we now continue today. It doesn’t matter the common thread, only that there is one, and that every family is a book. I am merely a chapter.

I sometimes like to look at the discussion questions in the back of the book, if there are any. I’m disappointed. They are fine, I suppose, but what I really wanted to think about is that all children mythologize their birth. It is a theme that runs through the novel - one of many - but which struck me as the most interesting. Vida Winter says:

I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers at the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the beginning from the shape of later events. How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy tales appropriated by a mind hungry for story. The fantasies of an imaginative little girl anxious to explain herself the inexplicable. Whatever story I may have discovered on the frontier of forgetting, I do not pretend to myself that it is the truth. (Page 357)

It has made me wonder not only how others mythologize their birth, but how I have in the past. How do I do it now? I’ve heard stories from my family about how I acted when I was younger, but do I create inner fairy tales to go along with these thoughts of my entrance to this world? And for that matter, what kinds of fairy tales do the characters in my stories create for themselves? Or have I created fairy tales for them, things that couldn’t possibly be true but which I’ve decided to write in because they won’t remember it anyway? An interesting concept that provokes much thought.

Aside from this, I’ve been recommending this book since Page 20. It’s very well-written and well-received and it somehow instantly became a favorite. No, not “somehow;” it’s easy to explain that away. The girl works in a bookshop, just as I do, and she finds the same comforts in books as I do (although her tastes lie in 19th century women’s literature, whereas I prefer modern classics). From the beginning, this book felt like home, and at the end, it left a serene uneasiness. I find that books that leave oxymoronic feelings are the most satisfying books to read.

I will read this again to find the connections and see what really happened now that I know the truth. But I think I will need to think about it for quite some time before I can do that.

50,000 Words and a Meme

I’m slowly crawling out of hiding now. I’ve finished my 50,000 words in a novel venture, though the story isn’t completely done yet. I’ve only one or two more days of writing to complete it, but I think I deserve a day off tomorrow. I’m very proud of myself! I will be self-publishing the unedited version on Lulu sometime in December, so if you’re interested, well, just let me know. ;P

While I was in recluse, I was tagged by Hev in a “Seven Things” meme. I rather like these sorts of things, but unfortunately not enough people read my blog for me to tag anyone specifically. I’ll have to just leave it up to the first seven people who read this post, and since you don’t know if you’re one of the first seven, you’d better do the meme just to be safe.

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names and link to them.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.

1. Before I found my rightful place among bookstore employees, I really wanted to make a career from researching similar threads of folklore in different cultures. I was primarily interested in Japanese and Latin American folktales.
2. Sometimes at night when I’m laying in bed thinking about my day, I will narrate the events as if I was in a book.
3. Once, when I was much younger and things like this were played regularly on the radio, I tried to convince my mom I should be allowed to purchase a Tool CD because I told her the song “Sober” was about fairy tales.
4. I let the air dry my hair after a shower. I really dislike hair dryers.
5. My favorite ice cream flavor is Haagen Daas vanilla. Plain.
6. My pillowcases have glow-in-the-dark constellations on them.
7. I am sewing my own curtains and decorating my apartment in themes as I see fit. The living room/kitchen is going to be autumn while the bedroom will be winter. When all is said and done, I’ll post pictures.

Speaking of my DIY home decoration, things are going pretty well on that front. For Christmas, my mother will be gifting us a ceiling fan/lamp for the bedroom, and I think between the two of us we can scrounge up some money to but the ceiling lamp for the living room. Oh, to have light! It will be such a wonderful day when I can walk home and turn on the light switch, instead of bending over the couch with an awkward twist to find the “on” button to a lamp which doesn’t even light up the whole room. The bedroom has a small desk lamp on the nightstand which isn’t conducive to productively reading at night.

We have a new bookshelf and are about to get screws for another one, and I am confident that by this time next year none of our books will be in stacks on the floor!

I have really enjoyed every aspect of creating a home for Richard and I. I love that my ideas don’t go unnoticed or underappreciated; he is always commenting positively on new things. I can’t wait until I have a larger space to deal with.

Until the next episode, I leave you with this question: What is your favorite part of home decoration? The curtains? The furniture? Pictures or paint?

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