Books Acquired Recently

Gundy, Jeff. Songs From an Empty Cage: Poetry, Mystery, Anabaptism, and Peace. Telford: Cascadia, 2013.

Jeff Gundy is one of my favorite poets, and he is also a friend of mine, so I buy anything he publishes. But I am especially excited about this book, which investigates the intersection between poetry and the transcendent. Gundy is one of the few active theorists in the small field of Mennonite literature, and to have him publish a new book of theory is a major event.

Spark, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver’s Seat, The Only Problem. New York: Everyman’s, 2004.

I was recently reading Patricia Waugh’s Metafiction, which discusses several of Spark’s novels in an engaging enough way that I decided I needed to read some of Spark’s work. I was happy to discover that Everyman’s Library has a volume of her fiction. I find the volumes in this series aesthetically delightful, especially their ribbon bookmarks. Note that, as I discuss in my post from 12 September 2013, because the title of the volume consists of titles of books, only the commas within the volume’s title get italicized.

Timms, Rachel, and Laurence Hayes. Whatever You Want: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Novel. New York: Regan, 2003.

I recently read about the phenomenon of adult (and yes, this term does have a double meaning in the present instance) Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. I enjoyed this type of book as a boy, and as someone who studies formal developments in fiction I am eager to see what kind of reading experience Timms and Hayes’s book offers.

All three books were purchased on amazon.com.

Thinking About The Mezzanine and Participating in Capitalism

I was re-reading Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine this afternoon because I am teaching it in my American Literature After 1945 class tomorrow, and I was struck by a passage that I hadn’t thought about much before (which is the beautiful thing about the novel: basically every paragraph is thought-provoking if it hits one in the proper frame of mind, thus making the book eminently re-readable because different passages will stand out at different times of one’s life). The narrator describes mailing a batch of varied correspondence and his subsequent feeling of importance:

“I became aware of the power of all these individual, simultaneously pending transactions: all over the city, and at selected sites in other states, events were being set in motion on my behalf, services were being performed, simply because I had requested them and in some cases paid or agreed to pay later for them” (21-22).

While not all of the correspondence that the narrator sends is financial in nature (e.g., he mails a letter to his grandparents), what struck me is that part of why capitalism survives is that it parcels out bits of fun to everyone when we buy things, even during seemingly small transactions. I suppose this is simply another way of saying that commodity fetishes exist, but nevertheless, it is necessary to note that we support the system just as much when we make a few small, aesthetically-pleasing purchases as when we buy a house because society teaches us that such a purchase is necessary to be considered “successful.” I happened to run several small capitalistic errands today, acquiring a variety of goods: a tank of gas, a snow shovel, a wine decanter (my favorite purchase), some trail mix, and a cup of coffee at a locally-owned coffeehouse. I had the same subtle, pleasing sense of accomplishment as the narrator does, which highlighted just how deep into the system I am.

Books Acquired Recently

Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. 1994. New York: Vintage, 1995.

Bornstein, Kate, and S. Bear Bergman, eds. Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. Berkeley: Seal, 2010.

I’ve read bits and pieces of Bornstein’s work over the years and enjoyed it, and a colleague recently told me that she uses Bornstein’s work in her writing classes with great success, so I finally decided to buy and read some substantial chunks of her work. I am especially excited to read Gender Outlaw, but also thought that it would be helpful to read the more recent collection of essays on Bornstein’s original themes.

Lachman, Becca J.R. The Apple Speaks. Telford: DreamSeeker, 2012.

I bought this book now in order to get to amazon.com’s $25.00 free shipping threshold (happily, Bornstein’s books were quite inexpensive), but it has been on my “to buy” list for a while after a friend recommended it. I love Mennonite poetry, and am excited to read a newer voice in the field. The collection has poems with Anabaptist-influenced titles such as “An Anabaptist Learns Tai Chi,” “Talking Poetry With an Amish Bishop,” and “Reading Plath at a National Mennonite Convention” that whet my appetite for the rest of the book. Sadly, the cover is ugly and unappealing, and this has often been a weakness with Cascadia Publishing House’s (the parent company of DreamSeeker Books) books, along with terrible proofreading. But their content is always good.

Books Acquired Recently

Deer Cloud, Susan. The Last Ceremony. Kanona: FootHills, 2007.

I bought this book today after Deer Cloud’s poetry reading at Utica College. It is always fascinating to hear poets read their work, and it is especially delightful when they read it well and when it is actually worth reading, which was the case in this instance. Deer Cloud had several of her books available for purchase at the reading, and I bought The Last Ceremony because it includes my favorite poem from the reading, “Marlon Brando Dies at 80,” a love poem to Brando that is motivated by both his activism on behalf of Native Americans and his sexiness. This poem and other samples of Deer Cloud’s work are available here. The book itself is a beautiful object, hand-bound with black thread and soothing lavender end sheets. It is worth its $16.00 price as an aesthetic artifact alone even before one considers the fine poetry contained therein.

Zacharias, Robert. Rewriting the Break Event: Mennonites and Migration in Canadian Literature. Winnipeg: U of Manitoba P, 2013.

I bought this book primarily because Zacharias is a friend of mine, though of course Mennonite literature is one of my scholarly interests, too. It’s nice to have the two converge! I am especially excited to read the chapter on Rudy Wiebe’s The Blue Mountains of China, a favorite novel of mine since I first read it in 2001.

Bought on amazon.com.

Book Acquired Recently: Shirley Hershey Showalter’s Blush

Showalter, Shirley Hershey. Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World. Harrisonburg: Herald, 2013.

Showalter was the president of my alma mater, Goshen College, when I was a student there, and we have since become friends, in part because we are both interested in Mennonite literature. Her new memoir, Blush, is sure to be an important addition to this field. It is the story of Showalter’s Mennonite girlhood in the 1950s and 1960s. This was a fascinating time in the Mennonite community because the world made it increasingly more difficult for Mennonites to remain sectarian because of temptations such as higher education and various mass movements for justice (especially the Civil Rights movement).

Although Blush is published by Herald Press, the official publisher of Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada, the book anticipates a more-than-Mennonite audience via its glossary (if you don’t know what “the world” that I mentioned in the previous paragraph is, Blush‘s glossary will tell you!), which is wise considering the current memoir craze. Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, a bestseller in 2009, has already carved out a Mennonite niche in this craze (here is Showalter’s notorious review of Janzen’s book); it will be interesting to see whether non-Mennonites remain interested enough to buy Showalter’s book. Bill Moyers blurbed it, which is impressive, and should certainly help the book get some play in bookstores. I look forward to reading it!

Does Facebook Make Us Unhappy?

This fascinating New Yorker article by Maria Konnikova surveys a number of recent studies about how Facebook affects users’ mood. Most of the studies argue that surfing Facebook tends to worsen our mood because it is a passive activity that often leads to jealousy regarding others’ lives. We are happy during the brief moments when we are writing and posting a status update, but the rest of our time on the site dissipates this pleasure. In other words, our time on Facebook often embodies the old bumper sticker that reads “Every time one of my friends succeeds, a little part of me dies.” How people use Facebook is so subjective that it is impossible to make conclusive statements about how it affects users, but the act of interrogating how it affects us is nevertheless an essential one. Konnikova’s article certainly makes me question how much time I spend on the site (generally between half an hour and an hour per day), and is worthwhile reading for anyone else who finds her- or himself making Facebook a central part of the day.

Books Acquired Recently

Doyle, Arthur Conan. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. 1888 and 1890. Mineola: Dover, 2003.

Frederic, Harold. The Damnation of Theron Ware. 1896. Mineola: Dover, 2012.

I just recently heard of Harold Frederic (Utica College’s student literary society is named after him), who was from my new town of Utica, New York, and is buried less than a mile from my apartment. His major novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware, takes place in Utica, so I decided to buy it (and hopefully read it in the next week or two) as a part of my continuing investigations of the area. If I enjoy it there is a good chance I will include it in my American Literature After 1865 course next semester.

I have also been meaning to buy A Study in Scarlet for a while because it takes place in my just-now former state of Utah. I look forward to seeing how a British author depicts the bizarre realities of pre-statehood “Deseret.”

As an aside, note that for Doyle’s book the name of the volume itself is “A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four,” therefore according to MLA formatting only the “and” is italicized because the volume’s title should be italicized, but of course in italicized titles that include book titles (i.e., in this case, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four) the normally italicized titles must receive another form of emphasis since the entire title of the volume is already theoretically italicized. I understand the logic of this, but it just looks weird. I would much prefer if the “and” were the only word not italicized. I am all for MLA style’s attention to detail, but certain elements of it drive me up a wall.

As a second aside, Dover books are fantastic. I often assign them in my classes when I can because they are so inexpensive. Most people are familiar with Dover as a result of their editions of classic literary works, but they publish a wide-ranging list, including several significant chess books such as Frank Brady’s Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy and Hans Kmoch’s Pawn Power in Chess. The protagonist in Nicholson Baker’s novel The Fermata is in the process of writing a history of Dover as his M.A. thesis, and I’ve always wished I could read it. Baker himself would be the perfect person to write such a history because of his love of print culture, and especially print culture ephemera.

I’ve been reading David Foster Wallace’s essays for the past week-and-a-half, which is why this post is so footnote-y.

The New Header Photograph

I decided to update the header photograph of my blog to celebrate my recent transition to Utica, New York. I never feel truly at home in a new place until all of my books are displayed on their shelves, so the new photograph symbolizes my new identity as a Utican. Also, the previous header photograph depicted a shelf from my poetry bookcase, and I felt it was time to go back to paying homage to my first love, fiction.

I chose a photograph of my P-R shelf because it includes representative texts from my favorite subject areas. There is Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, one of my favorite African American novels; Alice Randall’s incisive parody of Gone With the Wind, The Wind Done Gone; and a Latino text, Tomás Rivera’s The Earth Did Not Devour Them. There are several queer texts, including John Rechy’s City of Night and Pauline Réage’s Story of O. There is a germinal feminist novel, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Voyeur and two of Thomas Pynchon’s novels represent postmodern fiction while in close proximity with books by one of England’s first novelists, Samuel Richardson. Works by two of my favorite authors from the past, Chaim Potok and Philip Roth, are also present. This shelf would make a lovely autumn reading list for anyone.

Books Acquired Recently

Ayala, César J., and Rafael Bernabe. Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2007.

I have been wanting to learn more about Puerto Rico’s history for a while as a way to help me better understand my Puerto Rican roots. This book looks like it does a good job covering the different facets of Puerto Rico’s perplexing relationship with the United States.

Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse. 1968. New York: Anchor, 1988.

I’ve been thinking about buying this book for years, and found it for a good price. Barth isn’t my favorite postmodern fiction writer, but he’s an essential voice in the field, and Lost in the Funhouse is his masterpiece.

Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London: Routledge, 1984.

I am hoping to teach a course on postmodern fiction in the near future, and Waugh’s book is one of the important early critical examinations of the genre. Postmodern fiction rarely gets taught these days (virtually all of it I’ve read–and I’ve read a lot–has been on my own rather than in classes), but I think it has something valuable to say even though many people view it as a gimmicky phase.

All three books were bought on amazon.com.

Beginning a Journal

I hate the genre of apologetic blog posts, but alas, one of my own is necessary, so…

As is evident from my list of recent posts, I have not been blogging much lately. It’s been a spotty summer of writing because of my preparation for, move to, and now performing of my new job at Utica College. My time at Utica has been quite enjoyable thus far, and I hope that as I continue to settle into the new semester I will feel a bit less exhausted and have more energy for writing.

There is also another potential impetus for my blogging. For the first time, I am having my writing students keep a journal. I’ve asked them to handwrite it rather than blogging or typing on a tablet because I think that it is much easier to simply jot notes informally when handwriting, whereas typing inevitably reminds one of typing a formal assignment. I have committed myself to keeping a journal along with my students, and am optimistic that some of what I write there will end up here in one form or another. I’ve attempted to keep paper journals a number of times before (the last was during my first year of graduate school) and failed rather quickly each time. This time I will be forced to keep it up for at least a semester, and maybe the habit will stick.