Ana Castillo’s Loverboys

Ana Castillo’s short story collection Loverboys is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It’s so smooth, it feels like someone is talking to me and in doing so enchanting me instead of me actively reading. I feel like I’m in a dream while reading it to the point that I sometimes lose sense of the  longer stories’ plots because I am so engrossed in the characters and how vivid they feel.

One of the things I love about Castillo’s writing is her descriptions of food, which always make me ravenous. Loverboys makes me hungrier than any of her other books aside from The Guardians. I also am enthralled by its lesbian love stories because they are so matter-of-fact, which is refreshing. The narrators in all of the stories grab love where they can find it, realizing how precious it is, and do not let its loss crush them, instead moving on to find it somewhere else. It is a hopeful book. It both makes me want to write about it professionally and send it to all of my good friends, a combination that I do not often experience.

An Odd Typewriter

Yesterday I was at one of my favorite non-bookstore stores in Salt Lake City, the vintage shop Unhinged, when I came across a nifty green typewriter.

Where is the 1?

Upon taking a closer look, I discovered that, though it was completely intact, it didn’t have a 1. I have never seen a qwerty keyboard without all ten numerals on it before. (Incidentally, “qwerty” is one of 23 words with a q and no u that are legal in Scrabble, as is its plural, “qwertys.”)

This post is really just an excuse to use the word “qwerty.”

I suppose that the makers of the typewriter thought they were being efficient by saving space in their exclusion of a 1, since the sans serif “I” seems to match the font of the other numbers.

The “I” does double duty.

However, this would really mess up one’s typing technique. Instead of hitting the 1 in its usual place, one must hit an uppercase “I” instead. I bet that this model resulted in an abnormally high rate of typing errors, frustrating secretaries and students everywhere. But because I could just appreciate the typewriter as an object instead of having to use it, discovering its oddity made my night.

Books Acquired Recently

Castillo, Ana. Loverboys. New York: Norton, 1996.

—. My Father Was a Toltec and Selected Poems 1973-1988. 1995. New York: Anchor, 2004.

Ana Castillo is an author that I really enjoy, especially her novel The Guardians, which I’ve taught several times. She is the writer-in-residence this semester at my college, so I thought I would get more familiar with her work as I also have the opportunity to get to know her as a colleague. I haven’t read her poetry before, and Loverboys, a short story collection, sounds really fascinating because it involves some same-sex love stories. I look forward to reading both.

Genet, Jean. Prisoner of Love. Trans. Barbara Bray. 1989. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1992.

I enjoy Genet’s novels and I am also fascinated by the history of the Black Panther Party, so I decided to buy this book, which is about Genet’s experiences with the Panthers and with Palestinian refugees, both of whose causes he advocated.

All three bought on amazon.com.

The U.S. Wins a Thriller Against Canada

If you weren’t watching the Olympic Women’s Soccer semifinal between the U.S. and Canada this afternoon, you suck. It was one of the most thrilling, well-played soccer matches I have seen in my twenty-plus years as a fan. Both teams played their guts out, with the U.S. scoring the winning goal in the 123rd minute to win 4-3. The U.S. came back from three one-goal deficits with two goals from Megan Rapinoe, a penalty kick from Abby Wambach, and the last-minute header by Alex Morgan. With the exception of Rapinoe’s first goal, a corner kick straight into the goal which Canada woefully misplayed, all of the goals were superbly taken (even Wambach’s penalty kick, which barely beat the Canadian ‘keeper to the left post). It was the kind of game that you hate to see either team lose, but at the same time it did not deserve to go to the farce of penalty kicks. I will be rooting for the Canadians to beat the French in the bronze medal match, and I hope the U.S. can gain revenge against Japan for their loss in the 2011 World Cup final in the gold medal match.

Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters Remix

Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters Remix is a fantastic printed object that deserves space in the canon of American postmodern fiction. It is the 1999 version of Invisible Monsters in its original intended form, which asks the reader to jump back and forth throughout the volume, kind of like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book from the 1980s. For instance, the end of the introduction instructs the reader to “jump to Chapter Forty-one,” where the novel begins. The end of that chapter directs the reader to another chapter, eventually culminating in the final chapter near the middle of the volume, which is marked “The End” in place of further direction.

However, this chapter sequence only covers the chapters from the original novel. There are around ten (I’m too lazy to go back and count!) new chapters interspersed throughout the book, some that extend the story of the novel and some that describe its original composition and how the idea for the Remix came about. If one has not been paying attention to which chapters have been read, it is easy to miss these new chapters. But the introduction suggests marking each read page with an X, which is what I did, and then I went through the book looking to check if there were any unread pages, thus discovering the new chapters. There are three sequences of new chapters that loop back on themselves, so the reader could begin with any of the chapters in the sequence and still encounter all of the chapters (e.g., I began the first sequence with chapter three because it was the first unread chapter that I discovered, and the last chapter I read in the sequence directed me back to chapter three, so even if I had begun with a different chapter in the sequence I still would have gotten to all of its chapters).

Two of the new sequences involve pages that are printed backwards so that the reader must use a mirror to read them.

Pages 16-17 of Invisible Monsters Remix.
A close-up of page 16 of Invisible Monsters Remix.

 

Palahniuk acknowledges that readers “older, than, say, twenty-two” will hate this gimmick (104), but I love it! I appreciate books that try to stretch the limit of what a physical book can be, which is why I like the Remix so much. It combines elements of previous postmodern texts such as B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Even if one is not a fan of Palahniuk, the Remix is worth reading because of how it tries to break through the novel’s conventional generic form.

Book Acquired Recently: Fifty Shades of Grey

James, E L. Fifty Shades of Grey. 2011. New York: Vintage, 2012.

I bought this book because a student of mine wants to write an essay about it and its popularity. I have heard that it is written horribly and would not read it on my own, but will do so for professional reasons. I feel a bit embarrassed about publicly admitting that I own it because of its alleged lack of quality (not because of its subject matter).

However, I do find the popularity of the novel in the U.S. quite a fascinating phenomenon. To have a piece of erotica, let alone one in which bondage apparently plays a major role, become a bestseller in our ridiculously prudish culture is noteworthy. For this reason, I am interested in seeing just how non-vanilla Fifty Shades of Grey actually is. Does its popularity portend a wave of people admitting that they have a kinky side instead of the usual horrified reaction to the idea that some people enjoy dominating or being dominated by others? Probably not, and if the book is as badly written as everyone says it is, it does not say much about the general reading public’s standards (if you want to read a well-written bondage novel by a woman from a female character’s perspective, Molly Weatherfield’s Carrie’s Story is an excellent place to start), but I would like to think that maybe Fifty Shades‘s popularity contains some morsel of a move toward more liberated sexual attitudes.

Bought on amazon.com.

Books Acquired Recently

Delany, Samuel R. The Einstein Intersection. New York: Ace, 1967.

I bought this and Anne Sexton’s book for $1.00 each at Savers Thrift Store in Salt Lake City, whose book section was recommended to me by a student. I already have the current Wesleyan University Press edition of this novel, but I collect different printings of Delany’s work because he is my favorite author and because the older paperbacks are often quite aesthetically pleasing. This one’s spine is slanted a little, but is otherwise in good shape. I got very excited when I found it on the shelf.

Himes, Chester. If He Hollers Let Him Go. 1945. Cambridge: Da Capo, 2002.

Himes is a twentieth-century African American novelist who is largely ignored by critics because he wrote mostly mysteries, though he wanted to be a “serious” writer. Due to his marginal canonicity I never encountered him in school, and am thus trying to fill a gap in my knowledge by acquiring and reading this book.

Bought on amazon.com. It is a boring new paperback, which is why it does not get a photograph. The vintage copies that amazon had listed were just as expensive as the one I bought, so I decided to buy it new in order to have the current edition just in case I like it so much that I decide to teach it sometime.

Sexton, Anne. Transformations. Illus. Barbara Swan. Boston: Houghton, 1971.

This collection includes Sexton’s famous poems about fairytales. I love these poems, and they are usually a hit with students. I will appreciate the opportunity to read them in their original context rather than in an anthology. I haven’t read much poetry this summer, but am excited to get back on the wagon.

 

The Best YouTube Sing-Along Ever

This is a video of Swedish Olympic handball star Isabelle Gullden (driving) and some other woman singing along (well, sort of–maybe “riffing on” is a better term) to Jason Derulo’s “Whatcha Say” in the car, and it is hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bemIK39WmLA

The video raises so many questions (perhaps all of which would be answered if I knew Swedish):

1. This is obviously premeditated. Whose idea was it? Is it some sort of weird marketing gimmick?

2. Why this song?

3. Who is the other woman, and shouldn’t she be driving her famous Olympian friend around instead of vice versa?

4. What does the hand motion that the women make every time they sing the chorus signify in Sweden? If it’s the same thing it signifies in the U.S., an additional question arises (pun intended!): Why are these women so dirty? (not that I have a problem with it)

5. Not a question, but an observation: the way Gullden is torn between totally rocking out like her friend and being a responsible  driver cracks me up! If this video is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Books Acquired Recently

Palahniuk, Chuck. Invisible Monsters Remix. New York: Norton, 2012.

I am teaching the first edition (1999) of this novel in my Introduction to Literature course this coming semester, which gave me an excuse to buy the Remix (it is essential research!), a version of the novel in its original form along with commentary by Palahniuk. Invisible Monsters is a fun book—I couldn’t put it down the first time I read it—and I am looking forward to experiencing it in a different incarnation.

Steinbeck, John. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. 1976. New York: Penguin, 2008.

I have been looking for a copy of this book for around fifteen years in used bookstores. Steinbeck is an excellent storyteller and one of my favorite writers to read for fun, thus I’ve always thought that his retelling of the Arthurian legend would be worth reading. I did not realize that Penguin had reissued it, but discovered a new copy of the book (along with Palahniuk’s) when browsing in Dolly’s Bookstore in Park City, Utah, which I visited for the first time yesterday. I continue to be very impressed with the number of high-quality bookstores in Utah. It has the best bookstore scene I’ve ever encountered outside of New York City.

Thoughts on Yogurt

Yogurt fascinates me. I don’t like eating it because it is just too weird, a bizarre amalgamation of other dairy products: part liquid like milk, part flowing solid like ice cream, part fermentation like cheese. But I really enjoy watching other people eat it because I get to observe someone interacting with the above odd qualities, which are visually fascinating. There is something comforting about the way a metal spoon clicks on a plastic yogurt container as one is scraping up the last few bites. It entrances me.

The epitome of the satisfying nature of this yogurt voyeurism is present in a scene from Stranger Than Fiction, where Dustin Hoffman’s character (who is always eating—one of my favorite running gags ever) is finishing his yogurt and gets a drop on his lip, which he quickly scoops off with his finger and sucks into his mouth. It is so viscerally physical and uninhibited as to be sublime.

(Incidentally, the portrayal of Hoffman’s character, an English professor, drives me nuts! He claims he is swamped that semester because he is teaching four classes as well as directing several dissertations [three, I think]. It is clear from this statement that the movie’s writer has no clue how academia works. First off, no legitimate Ph.D.-granting institution [i.e., real universities, not counting online for-profit “universities” such as the University of Phoenix] would have professors teaching four courses per semester. Secondly, someone with as large of an office as Hoffman has [completely lined with bookshelves!] who has taught the highly-specialized courses that he mentions teaching would be a full professor teaching two courses maximum, with at least one if not both being graduate seminars. This misrepresentation of academia is a problem in television and film in general, with Ross Geller on Friends being perhaps the most egregious example. Good Will Hunting is one of the rare examples which gets it mostly right.)

Avocado is another food which I love to watch people eat because of its texture. I used to hate it, but then I watched a housemate make a batch of guacamole, and it looked so good that I was compelled to try it. Avocado is now one of my favorite foods; I’m having some for lunch today.