Star Light, Star Bright...

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. Moneyball, Michael Lewis
32. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
33. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
34. The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
35. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
36. Orlando, Virgina Woolf
37. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
38. Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
39. Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto
40. Hardboiled Hard Luck, Banana Yoshimoto
41. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
42. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
43. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, Robert Dallek
44. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
45. Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut
46. Stardust, Neil Gaiman

Stardust has been made into a movie which'll be released soon. It's an excellent book; Gaiman is one of (if not the, though of course any such proclamation comes down to personal taste) best living fantasy writers. American Gods and Anansi Boys are ok, but I don't think they're as strong as the more "childlike" stories: the Sandman comics with which he made his name and the novels of his which I've read this year.

Auditions here have been starting to pick up. Since returning from Europe I worked a couple on my own, but in the last week I've gotten 3 from my agent; two commercials and one movie. Nothing spectacular, but it's something - now all I need to do is get cast in one of them. Silence so far leads me to believe that I probably didn't get any of them, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Next week I'll be starting a class at the Professional Actors Lab. It's been some time since I've been in a classroom setting and had someone picking my acting apart. Kinda nervous, but confident; based off of what I saw when I audited a class there, I think technique-wise I'm a bit ahead of most people who go. This is a good thing, but also a bad thing, as it might mean I'll have more habits to fight against.

Canadians = Phone 'Tards?

Since moving back, I have received, on average, 1 wrong number call per week. I do not seem to recall such a rate of calls in New York.

This morning, at 10 am, my phone buzzes with a text. I pick it up and read:

"Did u sleep well princess?"

It's from a number I don't have saved in my contacts, a 647 number (the newest GTA area code, which I think was added due to the explosion of cell phone numbers, Toronto getting its one after New York, which has 646 and which kind of confused me when I first saw the text because I thought it might have been someone in New York texting me. Anyways). I consider my options; hell, maybe it IS someone I know, someone who has a predilection for calling me Princess (which, I suppose, is not completely out of the realm of possibility). So I text back:

"Who is this?"

As of yet, I have received no response. I hope the anonymous sender is sufficiently chastised, and will, in the future, double check the number to which he is sending his sexy texts. Either that or LOSE SOME WEIGHT SO YOUR FAT FAT FINGERS DON'T HIT THE WRONG BUTTONS.

I'm not really angry about it, I just thought the caps looked kinda funny. Oh, yes, and happy day-after-Canada-Day. Hooray Canada!

Forgot One

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. Moneyball, Michael Lewis
32. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
33. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
34. The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
35. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
36. Orlando, Virgina Woolf
37. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
38. Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
39. Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto
40. Hardboiled Hard Luck, Banana Yoshimoto
41. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
42. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
43. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, Robert Dallek
44. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
45. Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut

I Hate These People

This is why you don't buy shit that has Mao's face or slogans, or Che's, or Stalin's. If you are not a card-carrying Communist who's willing to back up the rhetoric with real, violent dissent (in which case I probably don't want to know you, because you're scary), realize that people who come to power (and believe the only way to effective change is) through violent change have violent histories, histories which are not really all that far back in the past and which people feel very strongly about. Even putting the Peruvian Maoists aside, Mao is not the kinda dude you wanna put on a shirt. It's literally like putting Hitler or Stalin (though Mao might have killed more than both of those men through his policies) on your shirt and being all, "Hey, it's ok, it's ironic!"

No, it's not. And you're a terrible person. Every time you put that shirt on, a puppy gets its ears crushed by an automatic rice picking machine.

I say this as an individual who owns a shirt which has a sickle and hammer on it (which gets some interesting reactions from Asians and Eastern Europeans), but at least my shirt doesn't have a quote from Stalin saying, "Who needs Bolsheviks?" or something along those lines.

Bickety Bam

So, yeah...been a while. First things first, an updated booklist:

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. Moneyball, Michael Lewis
32. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
33. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
34. The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
35. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
36. Orlando, Virgina Woolf
37. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
38. Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
39. Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto
40. Hardboiled Hard Luck, Banana Yoshimoto
41. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
42. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
43. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, Robert Dallek

The JFK book I'll be done soon. Next up is Harry Potter (once it comes out), then I have some Vonnegut I wanna read and then possibly some Shakespeare?

You, You, You...Not You

So I ran "auditions" yesterday; it's in quotes because all of one person showed up. I must admit, out of all the things I thought might happen, such a complete lack of interest from the students was not one.

Thinking back to when my friends produced a play which I performed in, the summer after my first year of university, a few differences jump out. First, I was a year removed from high school; perhaps university students have a bit more free time? Certainly, the impression I got from the head of the drama department at my high school (aside from her being kind of a ball-busting bitch, but that's neither here nor there) was that kids's schedules these days are packed. I wonder if they were that full when I was in high school, and I've simply forgotten what it was like.

Second, the vast majority of those cast in that production had a personal relationship with the people directing and producing. I'm not saying that we were all the best of friends, simply that we were mostly known to each other, if not directly then by being friends of friends. I think this personal connection was vital in securing the cast, and is probably where I went wrong here. I might have been able to generate more of a connection with the kids had I been able to come in and chat with them. One of my friends suggested doing so a couple of times. My fault for not listening to his advice. It might not have changed anything, but it might have.

In terms of the production, I'm not totally sure what this means. The girl I saw today was decent. In need of some good, basic acting classes to make her aware of her physicality (as all actors are at some point or another) in order to more effectively channel it, but I can certainly respect her willingness to show up. It's been somewhat of a surprise, how little I've been able to squeeze out of my high school; I suppose it shouldn't be, as they have no reason to be bending backwards to help me. I've got this girl, who I could work with, but I don't have anything else.

As it is, I see a couple options: try to cast kids when I get back (probably not going to turn out any better than now, since they'll be just starting exams then and will most likely have set summer plans by that time), try to cast alumni, hold a more open call or push this project to a further date. The first probably isn't going to work, for the bracketed reasons. The second and third would work, but they lead to a question: if I'm not constrained by high school-age actors, why am I doing Skin? Why not go back to my first choice, This Is Our Youth, or another script which excites me more? The difficulty then is that I lose the built-in audience of school friends and family, but the head of the drama department pretty much dumped on my estimations of that interest, so I'm not 100% sure I'm really losing all that much there. The last option is fine, but it still begs the question: why Skin, and not another piece?

I leave for Europe tomorrow (well, tonight); I suppose I'll have plenty of time to mull this over.

Again With the Yellow

Your Inner Color is Yellow

Your Personality: Life's too short not to have fun. Your bright energy brings joy and laughter to those around you. You in Love: A total flirt, you need a lot of freedom to play. But you'll be loyal to that one person who makes you feel safe. Your Career: You love variety in a job, and you probably won't stick with one career. You would make a great professor, writer, or actor.

What's Your Inner Color?

Just Another Manic Monday

So, 10 e-mails (6 from me) and 14 days after getting in touch with the head of the drama department at my school, auditions will be happening on Monday, May 30th. How's that for cutting it close? Hopefully people will reply; it would suck if no-one was interested.

It's actually going to be interesting to go through the audition process from the other side of the desk. I've provided some sides for the kids, but have no idea what their cold(ish) reading skills will be like; the teacher mentioned that she's tried to emphasize the validity of the audition process in her time at the school, but that doesn't mean she teaches audition skills, just that she encourages everyone to come and try out. I'm going with a couple thoughts in mind: an idea of what I want to see and a couple different notes to give to auditioners to see how they handle direction and what adjustments they're able to make on the fly. Other than that I'm really trying to be as open as possible, not even thinking about what the characters look like. I have no idea what sort of talent or committment levels I'm about to encounter, and I'm trying not to get my expectations too high in terms of the former. Luckily, the play (being completely honest) is somewhat mediocre, being written for young audiences/performers, and not too demanding.

Loose Ends

A week to go before I leave for Europe, and things are not where they need to be.

Over a week ago (at her request) I sent the current head of drama at my old high school an audition flyer with sides, asking her to get back to me with a more specific date and time. Since then I've been waiting...and waiting...and waiting.

Around the same time I had asked a friend who had registered a business when he helped produce a couple plays if I could use that business's info; the theatre I'm hoping to use charges first time renters a reservation fee which is several hundred dollars higher than if you've rented previously. This fee is credited towards your eventual rental bill, but anything which reduces up-front costs is a good thing. Since then I've been waiting for him to dig it up and send me the info, along with any information he might still have about donors. He mentioned the majority of their funding along those lines came from personal donations, which is something I'll probably be doing as well; if I can get $100 from 20 people (or some variation thereof like $50 from 40), that'll pretty much cover my rehearsal costs.

The school's going through a lot of construction, so I won't be able to use any space there for rehearsals. I've identified a couple alternatives which are actually better (read: cheaper), so that's fine, but lacking the business number I'm unable to actually go ahead and reserve anything. This has placed me in this state of perpetual waiting, which sucks.

The auditions are what's really worrying me, though. I can take care of reserving space out of the country; what I can't do is see these kids, and the lack of reply to this point worries me. I mean, I understand she's a teacher and all, but shit. How long does it really take to figure this stuff out?

But Wait, I'm...

So, the media frenzy begins.

There's been an odd number of stories about Koreans expressing their extreme sorrow and apologies.

I mean, it's fine and all - certainly I'm not suggesting that it's stupid for those people to express their condolences - but there's something about it that's a little odd.

It's the obsession that Koreans have with the fact that the shooter himself was Korean ("Along with profound grief for the victims and concern for Cho's family, many expressed fear that his actions would tar the entire Korean American community -- which has long been associated with such values as hard work, education and family unity."). I don't think there's any added shame because of the shared nationality. Remember all the stories after 9/11 about Sikhs and other non-Muslim Arab or Pakistani people getting harassed? Bigots aren't too finicky. Say the shooter was Chinese, and some people were harassing a Korean. Are they gonna stop when the guy goes, "Wait, wait, I'm a Korean!" Conversely, given this situation, if some Chinese or Japanese person is getting bothered, I hardly think the fact that they're not Korean is going to help. Asians all look the same to Westerners, after all, right?.

Second, as details begin to emerge, it's clear that this is a very weak case for pro-gun control people. Cho bought his guns early this year; the .22 on February 9th and the 9 mm a month later, on March 16th (per this article). And while advisors and students are all coming out of the woodwork to say what a creepy guy he was (as they always do, after such an event), he had no background, no history of violent acts, nothing that would have raised any sort of flag. Aside from a complete ban on handgun purchases, I cannot think of any gun registration law which might have prevented this. And even given a ban, it's possible that he might have been able to acquire two or more handguns illegally. In fact, from what I know of gun enthusiasts, that's part of the argument which they use to justify the purchases of guns for security; criminals will acquire them illegally, so citizens should be able to purchase them legally for their own defense.

Lost in the shuffle of this is the news that the Supreme Court upheld a 2003 legislative ban on partial-birth abortions. I'm not gonna get all crazy (as I'm sure both abortion-rights and anti-abortion activists are) about how this is the beginning of the end of legalized abortion in the US, but it's certainly a situation that people should keep aware of.

Everyone Hates Toronto?

An amusing/interesting editorial over here, in response to a documentary released this week about the virulent hatred the rest of Canada bears for Toronto and its denizens.

It's amusing because anyone who's spent time in any of the true metropolises of the world has somewhat of the same perspective on Toronto that Torontonians have on the rest of Canada. Toronto's a nice city, don't get me wrong, but compared to New York, London or Tokyo it remains somewhat quaint and provincial.

It gets interesting near the end, when the writer mentions:

Post-colonial studies teaches us that citizens of colonies (or, in Canada's case, former colonies) suffer from a psychological condition that causes them to constantly perceive themselves as being outside the centre, as living on the margins.

In the 20th century, it's interesting to note that a number of the more infuential Western cultural critics have been Canadian. Marshall McLuhan, Naomi Klein and John Ralston Saul are all fairly well known in those circles. In some ways, I think you can count comedians as cultural critics as well; most stand up comedy these days depends on some aspect of a common culture. Canada, of course, also seems to produce an inordinately large number of talented comedians. At the time, I found it odd that Canada could produce such a disproportinate amount of such critics, and tried to fumble my way towards a reason. Tying it to the colonial experience was something I hadn't considered, and yet it seems to make a fair bit of sense.

The dominant news story today is, of course, the shootings at Virginia Tech. When more details start coming out, I wonder what, if any, ramifications there will be politically. At this point it's silly to make any inflammatory statements about policy (not that that'll stop any news media outlets, I'm sure), but you would think that at some point, Americans might stop and ask how many such killings they will tolerate before legislating some sort of effective gun control, even if it's just a knee-jerk reaction to such horrific violence.

Of course, I suppose another way of looking at it is that the death toll in Virginia is like any given day of the week in Baghdad. But that's a whole other kettle of fish, and, to be fair, things do seem to have settled down some since Petaeus was put in charge.

Hmmm

I could have sworn I'd done this one, but I don't see it in my labelled drawer, so:

You Are Expressionism

Moody, emotional, and even a bit angsty... you certainly know how to express your emotions. At times, you tend to lack perspective on your life, probably as a result of looking inward too much. This introspection does give you a flair for the dramatic. And it's even maybe made you cultivate some artistic talents! You have a true artist's temperament... which is a blessing and a curse.

What Art Movement Are You?

I'm Super

You Are the Super Ego

While some people may think first and act later... you often don't act at all. You'd rather be safe than sorry, and you take ethics pretty seriously. Like everyone, you have some pretty crazy desires. But unlike everyone, you restrain yourself. You have high standards for your own behavior. And you happily exceed them.

Are You Id, Ego, or Superego?

Nepotism Rules?

Had a good conversation with a high school friend of mine who I'd lost touch with.

Couple more details about my show: it looks like the performance space I'd been hoping to use is booked. I mentioned this today, and my friend suggested another space in Oakville which might even be better for my purposes, the studio theater at the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts.

Part of the reason why I'd originally chosen the space at my high school was the hope that I might be able to get some sort of a discount on renting it. Interestingly enough, it turns out that my high school drama teacher is the Vice Chair of the board at the Oakville Centre.

I have connections! Who knew.

Mr. Darcy, I Presume?

There are some people who are extremely comfortable talking to complete strangers, people who can sit and chat and instantly put others at ease.

I don't think I'm one of those people.

It is highly possible that this is a skill, something that can be learned through practice, repetition and personal reinforcement; certainly pick-up artists believe it is. It is also possible that there are some people who cannot learn it, or who will always be somewhat lacking, due to personal deficiency (for lack of a better term).

It's sort of funny that I posted a few entries ago about projecting our own personalities onto literary characters; the identification with characters in novels which personalizes them, which gives them an emotional and mental resonance in our own lives. Anyone who's ever read a book or watched a movie and thought, "I'm just like that person!" knows what I'm talking about. Because one of the things that struck me about Mr. Darcy when I first read Pride and Prejudice was his ill manner in the company of strangers, something which I (unfortunately) think I share.

It makes me uncomfortable to sit and chat with people I don't know; it makes me uncomfortable and nervous, and I'm prone to saying inappropriate things because of this (or just sitting silently), which leads to bad first impressions, which tend to be rather difficult to overcome. Maybe I just need to do suck it up and it more often, to push myself outside of my comfort zone, but doing so is - well - uncomfortable. Maybe I should just accept the fact (like Darcy) that I'm probably never going to be great in situations with complete strangers, and ask my friends to do likewise. Maybe I should get over myself.

Yeah...yeah.

Also, don't ask why this is posted at this time.

The Producer

Things are happening.

A few weeks ago, after I'd expressed an interest in producing but also my extreme ignorance as to what producing entailed, a friend of mine passed along the contact info of a classmate we'd had in high school, a guy who'd gone on to do a bit of theatre producing in Toronto. I sat down with him soon after and we had a decent chat, getting generally caught up and talking about this and that. In the end, it came down to, "Do it," with a couple caveats based on his experience; for example, his friend (the creative part of the team, my former classmate being the business, organized part) was careful to select productions with a built-in audience, such as Rocky Horror.

I spent some time mulling it over and decided that I would, indeed, do it. I knew what I wanted to do; the same material I would want to be performing, if it was being produced. But fear and doubt set in. After all, I didn't (still don't) know what the fuck I'm doing.

The compromise: using personal contacts. I got in touch with my high school drama teacher, told her I was thinking about producing a play and would love to give either current or graduating students opportunities. She loved the idea, but not so much the script I had in mind (This is Our Youth, which has many, many naughty words in it, because that's the way kids talk, which is part of what makes the script so strong). Instead, she suggested Skin, which is written with younger actors and audiences in mind, and deals (in quite the fortuitous circumstance) with race and racism.

So, one Complete Idiot's Guide and a couple more e-mails to various parties later, I'm looking at something that might actually happen, that I will make happen. It's still embryonic; I haven't secured the rights yet, because I want to see the black box space at my school before I decide whether to put it on there or in the 150-seat recital hall (which I doubt we could consistently fill), and the size of the venue apparently helps determine the royalties you'll have to pay, and I have no idea where the hell I'm going to get the money or how much I'm going to need. But things are moving.

And I'm scared shitless.

Still Nerdy

I've been puzzling over a recurrent theme in Underworld since I read it; at the time I tried to communicate it to a friend but it was pretty rough.

It concerns trash; a number of the characters in Underworld are involved in trash disposal, and Delillo writes about it on numerous occasions. I think what he's aiming for is an effect similar to The Human Stain, a meditation on the aftereffects of people's lives, the "trash" they leave scattered in their wake as they pursue this path, then that path, loving, hating and being indifferent towards those who come into their lives. And just as we don't think about the physical trash we throw away - the packaging around an iPod, the jar that peanut butter comes in, the plastic wrap around a cd or dvd - individuals are frequently ignorant of the effects they can have on people around them, both positive and negative.

It's not necessarily born out of any kind of malice or altruism (though it certainly can be); for the most part, it comes from a basic disconnect between individuals. People act in certain ways; they say things, they don't say things, they say things in certain ways, with certain inflections, and to their mind they are sending messages to those they interact with. But because others aren't privy to the specific way in which that person sees and interpret things, their actions (or inactions) are mistaken or missed completely.

Say you've had a fight with a friend or a loved one. Some time has passed, and you feel bad about what you've said or done to them, and want to apologize. Most people are too proud to come out and say, "I'm sorry," so they'll act in a manner which physicalizes these feelings. But the other person might not necessarily realize this, and they react accordingly. You, thinking that your overtures of apology have not only been refused, but explicitly rejected, become upset because of this, and the seeds of a deeper discontent are sown; not through any deliberate attempt but because of a simple disconnect.

This is the trash of human life: the sidelong glances, the unsaid words, all the insignificant details which mean so little to us and yet define us to other people, are the only things they have to judge and know us by.

Nerd Alert!

Some literary thoughts that have been pinballing through my head.

I had a conversation with a friend a bit ago about change in Pride and Prejudice. And I'm not all that sure that there's much of it. I mean, I think part of the point of the novel is the extent to which people's true natures are misinterpreted, due to prejudices held by other characters (see how it all ties in with the title there? Spiffy!).

Really, I guess it's a question of what constitutes change in a person. Fundamentally, I think people don't change. What they can change are their opinions, but their basic natures remain the same. In terms of Pride and Prejudice, Darcy remains the same proud, moral person throughout. He likes Elizabeth from the start; even though he only refers to her as "tolerable" at the dance, in the subsequent scenes it's clear that he, in fact, finds her attractive. What seals the deal is her personality; her wit, her intellect, her lack of artifice. More than anything, it is this last point; Darcy is not the sort of character to be attracted by the typical female schemes - anything smacking of such sentiments would actually repel him, I think.

Conversely, for Elizabeth, what brings about the change in her opinion of Darcy is the fact that while he and his actions are mistaken, he remains steadfast and true to his own moral principles. Again, it seems unlikely to me that any man whose beliefs were easily mutable would appeal to her; she requires an equal, a man of forbearance and intellect to match hers. It is because their fundamental natures are so similar that they are both so suited and so antagonistic towards one another.

You Can't Handle the...Nevermind

An interesting article over here about (what else) Iraq; interesting because it makes a couple points which politicians tend to gloss over.

Bush's supporters are big on rhetoric about staying until the mission's accomplished. But what does that mean, really? "'The time scale to succeed is years,' said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary, while 'the time scale for tolerance here is 12 months for Democrats and 18 months for Republicans.'"

Fundamentally, the biggest problem with the administration's approach to Iraq was that they believed that Iraq's dictatorship could be toppled and replaced with a democratic government in the space of a year or so, perhaps 2 at the most. They had to sell the war to the American people (and, to a lesser extent, the global populace) in the first place, so the rhetoric all centered around Saddam and how he was so dangerous that he had to be removed. Just as in the Plame case, what's most frustrating is that had the administration been honest, it might have been excusable. People make mistakes, and many things that have happened in Iraq could not have been easily predicted. But now you're looking at a 5 to 10 year process just to work the cycle of violence out, and politicians continue to suggest that America can simply send more troops to calm Baghdad down for the summer, and all the other problems - the underlying ones which drive the violence - will magically work themselves out in that time.

There are, to my mind, two major reasons why sectarian violence continues. The first stems from political discontent. I don't think extremists from either sect are convinced that democratic forms of power sharing are acceptable; I don't think they view the level of compromise required by most democracies to be possible or desirable. I don't know how you convince these people that it can work; religious extremists are not known for their flexibility of doctrine.

The second stems from the American presence in Iraq, and is driven mainly by foreign fighters, or largely influenced by them. As long as American troops are seen as occupiers in Iraq, as long as America continues to support Israel, as long as America maintains garrisons in Saudi Arabia there will always be those who use these facts as rhetoric to drum up support among the disaffected and disenfranchised. America is there, and America is vulnerable; not only militarily but politically, because toppling an American-supported government is the closest terrorrists will ever come to toppling America itself.

But instead of coming right out and telling us this is what is required, the administration stonewalls. They say we can't withdraw now, but don't even attempt to say how long they think victory might take. How can voters make rational decisions when the only plan given is, "Trust us"? What about the troops, those troops which politicians are always so quick to say they support, who are having tours extended, being called up more frequently, and having home time cut to shorter and shorter lengths? Don't they deserve to be told the truth?

Across the board, this administration has responded, no. The American people are not strong enough to handle the truth; indeed, they don't want to be told the truth. In terms of domestic politics, Bush's true legacy is not Iraq, it's the reclaiming of executive privilege which he and his staff have overseen. From his use of recess appointments to signing statements to the numerous confrontations with Congress over testimony from presidential staff and advisors, the Bush administration has pushed presidential power to levels that are probably pre-Watergate. And while they may be content today with their guy in the White House, they might do well to remember that once power is established, it is exponentially more difficult to get rid of it; and some day, the person in the White House might disagree with them.

pol·i·tics

Returning to the dispute over Iraq funding.

The rhetoric over "pork" spending being added to the Iraq funding bill is both interesting and pointless. It's interesting because it shows how people will suspend their prejudices when things are in their favor or according to their own desires. It's pointless because it's nothing new. To wit: this story, noting that, "...such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began, sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers with bipartisan aplomb."

For those who missed it, there was also a story a few days ago in the Times about a visit which John McCain and some other members of Congress paid to a Baghdad market, which led to McCain's comments that the liberal press was painting an unfairly poor picture of Iraq. In reply, rebuttals from the Washington Post and New York Times.

The thing is, McCain is correct to a degree. I'm sure there are many great things going on; in the worst situations it seems there are always acts of random, altruistic goodness (which get turned into Hollywood movies so we can all feel good about ourselves, but that's another post topic), and I'm sure progress might be being made outside and even within Baghdad, in terms of building infrastructure and whatnot. But it is somewhat difficult to ignore people dying and continuing to die in acts of premeditated terror. Wasn't the insurgency in its "death throes" a few years ago? Wasn't Al-Zarqawi the head of the serpent, and wouldn't the rest fall into disarray without him? Consider this, from the Times article: "'Every time the government announces anything — that the electricity is good or the water supply is good — the insurgents come to attack it immediately,' said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety."

You cannot win a fight against an insurgent or guerilla force with a purely military operation. There has to be a political element, because you have to win hearts and minds. And the point when the Americans could have done so in Iraq is, in my opinion, long past. Throwing more troops at it might create the security to rebuild, but how long can America maintain those troop levels? 2 months? 6? A year? 5 years? Infrastructure (power, water, sewage plants and the like) can only be built so quickly, and what of the political processes? Yeah, wow, they voted. People are so happy! They have a democracy! There's no reason for anyone to kill anyone else anymore!

It is somewhat horrible to say, but if the US wanted to rebuild Iraq as they did Japan and Germany after the Second World War, they actually should have done more damage during the invasion. Only out of such physical, emotional and mental devastation will a people accept such widespread changes forced upon them by another. And even then, given the sectarian divisions which didn't (I don't think) exist in 1950s Germany and Japan, the rebuilding process in Iraq still might have failed.

Spring, When a Young Man's Mind Turns to...Politics?

So Dubya's all upset; it's kind of funny how this Washington Post article makes him sound like a petulant child: "He strode alone into the Rose Garden and complained that 'it has now been 57 days' since he asked Congress for more money for the Iraq war and still has not gotten it."

It's an interesting question; clearly, the legislative branches are well within their explicit, Constitutional powers over appropriations and funding. But there's a conflict in this instance with the President's position as Commander in Chief. You can't fight much of a war without money, so is Congress interfering with that perogative? Aren't generals always constrained by circumstances? If the administration doesn't get the money they want with their current situation, doesn't it behoove them to either work with Congress and convince them to give the money or scale back their plans so they're in line with the money they do get? Say, for example, they get half of the money they say they need for their current plans, and then they go ahead with those plans anyways, sending soldiers without enough armor (gee, where have I heard that before?), equipment and whatnot. Whose fault is it, then, if casualties which might have been prevented by full funding occur? Is it the fault of Congress for not providing the funds? Or the fault of the administration for sending soldiers out, knowing they lacked the proper protection? Who benefits from a political situation where both sides are like kids in a staring contest? Bush himself mentions, "'The Congress is exercising its legitimate authority as it sees fit right now,' Bush answered. 'I just disagree with their decisions.'" (quoted from this story) Isn't that a democracy? Man, it's too bad those Founding Fathers didn't think that maybe the legislative and executive branches might have disagreements from time to time. No other president's ever had to deal with a combative Congress, right?

There was a story a little while ago about a family who had lost relatives in both Iraq and Vietnam (as I'm sure many military-oriented families have), where a person was quoted as saying their relative had died in vain in Vietnam, and they didn't want that to happen again in Iraq. What is interesting is the notion that the death in Vietnam was for nothing. Why is it perceived that way? Is it because America pulled out of a situation which (to my admittedly uninformed view) was untenable, one which they arguably should not have been in in the first place? Or is it because America didn't "win"? Or did they? How's Vietnam doing these days, anyways? Those damn Commies won, right?

Right?

Hobgoblins, Politicians and Pomposity, Oh My!

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul simply has nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow things in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. - 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' - Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I've heard/read the above quotations before (though the passage is usually distilled to the first and last sentences), and they're fine and all, but there is a troubling aspect to them as well.

Emerson is not saying people should change their opinions willy-nilly, depending on whatever they might be feeling at any given moment. He is not inveighing against consistent thought on the whole, but against a small-minded consistency for the sake of being consistent, for fear of not being able to explain yourself when others say, "But on such-and-such a date you said this." Consider modern politicians and their endless dances to avoid being caught in such a situation in the first place, and their awkward responses when they cannot ("I voted against it before I voted for it!"...what a schmoo). There is nothing wrong with examined consistency, just as there is nothing wrong with examined, honest variance (perhaps I should say there should be nothing wrong with it, since wide swaths of the population seem to feel otherwise. Not that that was the only reason for Kerry's loss). It is the underlying motivation which accounts for an individual's greatness, or lack thereof. One can easily picture people changing their beliefs every day, according to the prevailing currents of thought around them, and then quoting Emerson to justify themselves. Such actions are the consequence of mental laziness, of minds seeking justification for their own weakness, cloaking themselves in arrogance and pompousness. I mean, who the hell would quote Emerson today?

To be passionate, to be honest, to be sincere and empathetic; these are the things which Emerson asks of us. Yet how many of us, through misguided vanity, believe we are that which we are not?

Projecting Into the Past

I've been rereading Pride and Prejudice, and (aside from it increasing my dissatisfaction with the 2005 film adaptation) thinking about a bit of literary critique in the introduction to the edition of Wuthering Heights I read, which identified Heathcliff as the perfect "other": a man whose past and motives are unknown, an individual upon whom others are free to project whatever they wish.

Before the advent of the modern novel (in general terms, the publication of Woolf, Proust and Joyce), the concept of the interior life of a character was less emphasized. External events and actions were the focus, from which readers were left to infer interior motive. In some ways, one wonders how much current enjoyment of classic texts owes to this fact, to the fact that modern readers are free (within reason, as dictated by the actions of the characters) to project whatever motivations they desire onto the protagonists. Modern novels which attempt to expose the precise inner workings of a character can be no less timeless or brilliant, but require a far more thorough understanding of the era and society which they are products of before one can begin to understand their characters.

For example, Elizabeth Bennet. A modern reading might identify her as a strong, independent woman: a modern heroine, unwilling to settle for a materially comfortable yet spiritually and intellectually dissatisfying marriage. Yet is that not modern, Western thought projecting its own morality into the past? She is an individual, yet it is only Western thought which prizes the individual above the collective, emotion over rationality; only in Western art is romantic love deified. Is it right of Elizabeth to be so contemptuous of Mr. Collins (admittedly, this is difficult to argue against), and subsequently, of Charlotte for accepting him (this is far less so)? And yet, whether or not it is right, it is true, and it is consistent with her character and the novel as a whole. As with philosophy, when reading fiction one must always distinguish between what the writer believes should be and is. And even if her actions weren't completely rational, the cardinal rule which one must always remember is that people are not consistent. People will frequently say one thing and act in a different manner; only in art do we demand purity of thought and deed before accepting a character as "believable," when reality and experience teach us otherwise.

Show Me the Money

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson
31. Moneyball, Michael Lewis

Moneyball is a study of an attempt to analyze baseball, and baseball players, on a statistical basis, in order to deal with the realities of a league in which teams with $40 million payrolls are asked to compete with teams with $160 million payrolls. It is as much about the opportunities afforded by inefficiencies in markets as it is about baseball itself, which probably explains the book's appeal to people outside of baseball. This makes it a doubly whammy of nerdiness (baseball statistics + economic analysis = holy crap zzzzzzzzz), but that's ok by me.

Rage Against...Something

I recently watched the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which was kind of awful.

I had been warned that Mr. Darcy was somewhat...lacking in intestinal fortitude, which he certainly was. What's unfortunate is that interpreting him in that manner throws the whole story off. As it is, much of the book is compressed to fit it into the 2 hour time frame of the movie, so it's hard enough to comprehend why Elizabeth would love him. Granted, there are his actions to benefit her sisters, but Elizabeth's character is such (and again, this is only briefly established in the movie) that such actions, while laudable, would not be enough to win her love.

Of course, it's been a while since I read the book, which is why I went out and picked it up today. Maybe I'm wrong. I just kept waiting for a spark of something from Darcy other than sad, longing stares. Why would anyone feel any sort of attraction towards a mopey bastard? It's ludicrous.

It probably didn't help that I also recently watched When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary about New Orleans and Katrina, which is very well done and fills you with large amounts of inarticulate rage and sorrow. There are no words to communicate the disgust that such a thing could happen in the United States, but what is perhaps more worrying is the fact that it and its repercussions have been lost in the shuffle of Iraq. Where are the demands for change, for oversight, for some acknowledgement of failures and a transparent creation of plans for future emergencies? Is there even a fucking plan for the next time? Because, make no mistake, there will be a next time.

I was reminded, as I was watching it, of the night Dubya won re-election, when I turned to my friend sitting with me and said, "You know, it's horrible to say this, but you almost wish something terrible would happen to the US again, so they could really see what kind of person they re-elected."

People saw, but did they care?

Is This A Racial Thing?

Your Psyche is Yellow

You have a ton of energy - both physical and mental endurance. You are rational and logical, and you can help almost anyone think clearly. Optimistic and bright, you also have a secret side that's a little darker. When you are too yellow: You will do anything to get your way, and no one will be the wiser When you don't have enough yellow: you lack confidence, drive, and humor

What Color Is Your Psyche?

Heights Which Wuther

For various reasons, I've started re-reading Wuthering Heights. The first time I read it, I found myself focusing on Heathcliff's situation, though in retrospect that may have been because his dominates the latter half of it. I'm currently about halfway through it, and have come to realize that my initial impression of the flawed nature of Heathcliff's love might owe more to Catherine and her perception of it.

The true realization is this: Catherine's love is not a mature love. It is, in fact, a child's perception of love. This is not to say that it is good or bad, nor pure or calculating - perhaps more on that later. All I mean is that she envisions and conceives of love in the same way that younger people do. She says that "Whatever souls are made of, [Heathcliff's] and mine are the same," (81) - the sort of oneness which people experiencing love for the first time seek, not realizing that such closeness is ultimately confining and destructive. She displays a child-like assumption of primacy: "I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me" (122), and, in an interesting touch by Bronte, the form her ghost takes is not that of her at the end of her life, but her as a child, begging to be let back into the home where she lived with Heathcliff.

It is childlike to love in this manner because it's how you perceive love before dealing with failed relationships; it's the way you love before reality forces you to deal with people who don't love you, who fall out of love with you, before people tell you they've fallen out of love with you. Perhaps, then, this form of love is truer, is better, is more real. It's certainly simpler, and perhaps less satisfying in some ways, but moreso in others.

This being said, my enjoyment of Wuthering Heights is no less than it was the first time around. For while the love shared by Catherine and Heathcliff may or may not not be desirable, it is true. Would that we could all say such a thing.

Turn and Face the Strange

A common presumption runs through the e-mails that whatever the problem, Future Me will have more courage, more power to act.

Lifted from an interesting article over here that lets you archive and send an e-mail to your future self.

I recently flipped through Moneyball, which attempts to examine the system behind Billy Beane's operation of the Oakland A's (baseball, for those of you who are sportily ignorant), and one of Beane's driving tenets is that people don't change. This is why certain statistical categories are better predictors of major league success than others; because the trends that a person establishes over their college career will continue in later life. Of course, in his case he's talking about their tendencies as baseball hitters, not trying to make some sort of grand statement about life.

I also stayed up way too late watching Unforgiven a few nights ago, a movie in which Clint Eastwood spends the first half repeating, "I ain't like that no more," but he is; indeed, it is all he is, as suggested by the very title of the movie - it doesn't matter what he goes on to do with his life, his past and his past identity will always a part of him. Externally he's changed, but the core remains, waiting to be called upon.

I'm sure there are all sorts of literary sources which point towards the possibility of change and redemption, but if we're being honest, what makes those stories attractive is the idea that someone can change, that people can identify and rectify their faults, which somehow makes up for any horrible things they might have done in the past, right? Perhaps the reason why people find those stories so attractive is because they identify our own fears about the actual impossibility of change and subsequent redemption, and assuage them with a fluffy little fairy tale about how anything is possible.

I know, I'm going out on a limb here, but it's been a while since I've written anything.

As a random aside, I feel pretty confident saying that Clint Eastwood gives the best reading of the word, "Yeah," in the history of cinema.

The Big Chill

Been feeling kinda blah the last few days, which is why there's been a dearth of entries. Perhaps it's SAD? Whatever it is, it sucks.

I was out with a friend today, and the conversation turned very briefly to Pan's Labyrinth, which she mentioned she found disappointing because the fantastic elements were all make believe. I mentioned that her interpretation was more indicative of her own beliefs, as opposed to the intent of the film. I don't think she bought it. Still, she's the one stuck with a boring life view, so I suppose that's her loss.

Deep Thoughts

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
30. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I was reading through Siddhartha I actually found myself wanting something a little more serious. I suppose Emerson fits that bill; I'm sure in a week or so I'll be wanting something silly and fluffy instead.

Emerson is apparently referred to as a "transcendentalist" (whatever the hell that means); a champion of the sort of individualism which has come to be associated with the American spirit, which was then taken to its extreme by Ayn Rand and others.

One of the interesting things about Buddhism is that on the surface, it seems like a communal religion: love for all your fellow beings, for the plants and the rocks and the waves and all that hippy jazz. But when you find out more about it, you find that it reaches that level of community through a similar sort of individualism to that espoused by Emerson; that is, every thing, every creature, has their own potential, has something of the Buddha within them, and that's why you love them, because they are all Buddhas, all of them seeking their path. Obviously, Emerson doesn't quite put it that way, but the intent is similar. I read a passage recently talking about how everything is becoming, everything is evolving, even rocks; that perhaps copper is simply metal on its way to becoming something else, and when it's done being copper (though it may take millions or billions of years), it'll turn into silver, or gold, or whatever the next step on its path is.

I mean, it's a nice thought, and it would be wonderful if it were true, but it seems to me that there are many people who are not seeking at all, or who don't even know there's something they should be seeking, or are seeking the wrong thing. And what can you do? You cannot walk their path for them, you can't even make them see what they're missing. Life is difficult, and life is unfair. That is the way of things. I suppose that's why religions were created in the first place; though, of course, actual divine inspiration is entirely possible, and maybe when I die I'll show up and whatever god it happens to be will be all, "Ha-ha, don't you look fuckin stupid now."

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King
29. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

So, it turns out that the 4 short stories in Different Seasons were written several years apart, The Body being the first one, which is interesting because it's (to my mind) the best, and the most personal of the 4.

It's also interesting that the 2 movie adaptations I've seen (haven't seen Apt Pupil) are very accurate to the stories (from what I remember of them; it's been quite a while since I've seen them both). Well, maybe it's not that interesting. Maybe it's just kinda neat? A little neat? Not really neat and I'm a loser?

Green!

You Are Emerald Green

Deep and mysterious, it often seems like no one truly gets you. Inside, you are very emotional and moody - though you don't let it show. People usually have a strong reaction to you... profound love or deep hate. But you can even get those who hate you to come around. There's something naturally harmonious about you.

What Color Green Are You?

Huzzah

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
28. Different Seasons, Stephen King

Finished the RFK book. Quite the abrupt end, but I suppose it was quite an abrupt end for him, as well.

Different Seasons is a collection of short stories, 3 of which have been made into movies: "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption", "Apt Pupil", "The Body" (Stand By Me), and the fourth I've never heard of: "The Breathing Method". I've been trying to track down "The Body" for quite some time, and finally managed to find it in this book in a cute little used book store. Each story corresponds to a season, and it's interesting that "The Body" is fall; the beginning of the end of innocence, I suppose.

Minority Casting

I have an audition on Wednesday, for a touring show in BC (British Columbia) from April to June. It's been quite a while since I auditioned for anything, and they're also expecting a bit of movement, so I'm not really sure how it's going to go.

What gives me pause, though, is the fact that the play is based on a Native American legend - the legend of Raven stealing the sun, moon and stars, and I'm auditioning for Raven.

I mean, that's fine and all (the myth is neat, and I've always had an affinity for trickster gods, from Raven to the Monkey King to Loki to Anansi - come to think of it, isn't it neat how the motif of the trickster god is repeated so often, all across the world? I wonder what, if any, similarities exist between the various cultures which believed in trickster gods), but it is, to my mind, mildly (to say the least) insulting to cast anything other than a Native American in that sort of role. From a production perspective, I'm sure it's many times more difficult to find a young Native American actor than any other visible minority, simply because they have it so much worse than any other minority in North America, and grinding, institutionalized poverty tends to create more disaffected substance abusers than actor-types. But then, wouldn't that make it all the more important to find them?

It's silly, but it's important to me. Since minorities are given so few chances to share their stories with others, it makes it all the more important that those stories are presented properly. Granted, I'm closer to Native American-looking than someone descended from European stock, but still, there's something about it that makes me vaguely uneasy.

If This Is Groundhog Day, Where's Bill Murray?

Later that month Tom Wicker asked him on Face the Nation whether, in light of the administration claim that the "great threat from Asian communism" made victory essential for the security of the United States, it did not follow that "perhaps we ought to do as much as needs to be done?" The United States, Kennedy replied, had originally gone into South Vietnam in order to permit the South Vietnamese to decide their own future. Plainly the South Vietnamese did not like the future held out by the Saigon regime. So we had moved on to the national security argument.

"Now we're saying we're going to fight there so that we don't have to fight in Thailand, so that we don't have to fight on the west coast of the United States, so that they won't move across the Rockies...Maybe [the people of South Vietnam] don't want it, but we want it, so we're going in there and we're killing South Vietnamese, we're killing children, we're killing women, we're killing innocent people...because [the Communists are] 12,000 miles away and they might get to be 11,000 miles away."

Quoted from the RFK book I'm reading, p. 824.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to make comparisons between any two geopolitical situations, but isn't it somewhat odd that you could change a couple nouns and arrive at a statement that one could imagine a senator saying today?

Bridge to What-the-Fuck?

Just got in from Bridge to Terabithia. Honestly, it is possibly one of the most disturbing films (and thus, books) I've ever seen marketed to children. I'm probably going to check out the book at some time, just to know exactly how it's dealt with there, but...damn. There is certainly a niche there, but as a mass marketed tale? I honestly don't know.

About halfway through, I found myself thinking that all those kids in the movie (or perhaps just the chosen one or two) will soon become the next generation of Lindsay Lohans and Hilary Duffs. I found that quite sad.

Zooey Deschanel is also in it (though somewhat of a superfluous, cardboard character; I wouldn't be surprised to find that she doesn't exist in the book), and, as someone pointed out to me recently, she's really quite pretty. Or cute. Or hot. Or whatever you want to call it.

Oh Yes

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman
26. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
27. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen

Still slogging my way through RFK.

I think one of the most interesting aspects of reading biography are the reminders that people are not monolithic. People are not always of one mind, and this may seem obvious if one assumes that to mean that people's thoughts and opinions change throughout their lives, but what I really mean is that it is possible to be of multiple opinions simultaneously. It is, indeed, possible to both love and hate someone or to be in favor of two things which seem diametrically opposed (anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, perhaps).

Is this rational? Perhaps not. Is this human? Most certainly.

What is perhaps most striking about great individuals is the particular way in which these combating impulses coalesce, which particular ones come to dominate at which points in their lives. One of the recurring threads of the RFK book (reflecting Schlesinger's point of view, from what I know of his work) is that individuals can make a difference, can identify issues and effect real, positive change. It is, perhaps, the most romantic notion of the book; a vestige of that time when all the problems of society seemed solvable.

I keep asking myself if I believe in that and I'm really not sure. Some days I do and some days I don't. Maybe I'm just making excuses for myself. Because if you do believe that's true, then you're left with the obvious question: what are you doing to make things better?

We live in a society (assuming whoever reads this comes from the developed world) where all but the very lowest members remain within the top 10% of the world's population, in terms of privilege, opportunity and well-being. I personally come from an even smaller substratum, in or about the top 10% of that 10%. And often I cannot escape the feeling that I am wasting it, sitting around and waiting for something to fall into my lap.

The List

Just got finished watching The Prestige, which I had wanted to catch in theaters but never did for want of a buddy or the testicular fortitude to go watch it alone, a block which I managed to break through before leaving New York.

Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

It is, I suppose, somewhat presumptuous to have a "list" of people you really, really, really, really, REALLY want to work with. Well, call me presumptuous, because Chris Nolan is one of those people.

I love that his movies are challenging, I love that they're intellectual, I love that they're great stories, I love that he is passionate about his work and it shows, particularly in The Prestige, where magic is a obvious metaphor for the movie making process. Indeed, the mind-numbingly large number of people who create movies (you know, all those Oscars that nobody pays attention to, because the people who win them tend to be extremely untelegenic and have little or no stage presence, which is why they work behind the scenes in the first place) are the modern-day inheritors of the magician's mantle. Everyone knows that there's no magic, that the Victorian era is gone, that there's a man behind the curtain and blah-di-de-blah-blah-blah (that's a technical term, for those of you not in "the biz"). But there is magic in the minutes and hours when you can make those things live again, where people will forget reality and believe in something you show them, and follow you wherever you are able to take them.

It is not, in the final analysis, a great movie. But it is a good one, and an interesting one, which is more than I can say for the vast majority of Hollywood releases nowadays.

Some Things'll Never...

I was recently informed of two things: that I dote on the women I become attached to, and that I'm far less entertaining when I'm sappy.

The person who said the former went on to say that it made me "safe," as far as women were concerned; that it was neither good, nor bad in and of itself; that it simply was.

Personally, I find that thought repulsive, all the more so because it's true.

One of the things in Sandman that speaks to me is the theme of change that runs through it, a theme which necessarily is found in any good story that spans several years in its telling. Morpheus changes throughout the series (indeed, throughout his "lifetime", as the series depicts him at many different points in his existence), but in the end is forced (or, perhaps, chooses) to face his limitations. And so, tiring of the struggle, he moves on.

I do not know if it is possible for people to change.

That reeks of such self-indulgence. "People can't change, so why bother trying?" I don't mean it to that extreme; as I've said in this space before, just because there might not be the possibility of wholesale change or amelioration, it does not follow that we should not strive to be better than we are.

In some ways, I suppose I do not want to change; perhaps that is the true problem. I've never wanted to be the cloying, annoying person draped all over a significant other in public, but when I care for someone I see nothing wrong with letting them know. I love fiercely and I love passionately, and I don't think those are bad things. They are somewhat nonsensical (I shudder at the use of adverbs, and hear acting teachers saying, "Show me 'fiercely,' you silly bastard."), but not categorically bad.

Still, it seems to be undesireable to project so much onto someone else, both for one's own identity and because it's unfair (not to mention annoying) to that person. I'm sure in my case it comes from my own specific circumstances and background; I could spend all sorts of time wallowing in a pathetic Psych 101 exploration of my neuroses.

I think I'll avoid that. For now.

Suffice to say I am aware of this shortcoming in myself, and am seeking a middle ground.

The End?

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr
21. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
22. The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
23. The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
24. The Sandman: World's End, Neil Gaiman
25. The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman

There. Now I've read every Neil Gaiman-written Sandman story. There are the Death stories (which I might pick up at some time), and there's another Sandman-titled book which I also might pick up eventually, I suppose.

Who am I kidding, I'll probably end up getting them before the week is over.

Unfinished Lives

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
19. The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
20. Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

There's 5 other Sandman books which I haven't picked up yet, but which I'm sure I will sometime over the next month.

It's really an incredible achievement, though one wonders if it might have been better or worse with a more consistent art crew. Sandman is the only major comic from this period that I can think of with a rotating cast of artists; many of the others were both written and drawn by the same individual (Maus, Love and Rockets, Cerebus, Sin City), and while Alan Moore worked with different artists, his stand-alone works (Watchmen and V for Vendetta) are drawn by the same artist from beginning to end. I suppose, though, that as Sandman concerns itself with the Lord of Dreams, and dreams are always in flux, the rotating cast of artists could be taken as another commentary on the world that Gaiman created.

I mean, I'm sure he just happened to use different artists for each storyline, but it's possible that he might have thought it out a bit more explicitly like that.

The RFK book I'm really looking forward to. Early on, Schlesinger (who actually passed away a day or two ago) makes the point that what is so poignant about RFK's death is that he was still in the process of becoming, a process which he had been going through his whole life. There are glimmers of the man he was at the time and whom he was becoming, perhaps most famously in the Indianapolis speech (and if you don't know what I'm taking about, I demand that you watch the linked video, and promise you will not regret it), but we will never know whether or not he would have faltered in the years to come, what mistakes he might have made and how he might have responded to them. In some ways, perhaps he was too good, too earnest, too honest of a man to live; the perfect symbol of an era which started with such promise and somehow, some way, lost its focus, as its leaders dropped by the wayside, one by one.

Whiteout

The snow sheets down,
Blanketing the world in pristine white,
Harsh in its purity.
People enter bathed in it,
Baptized by the cold and the snow, melting in their hair.

In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti.

Objects disappear, devolve
Into piles of pure white,
One lump
Indistininguishable
From another. The snow
Penetrates, it
Procreates,
Multiplying in nooks and crannies,
Covering all the hidden secrets of the world
In mute acceptance.
Turn your back for a moment and what you seek is
Gone,
Has vanished into a sea
Of white that numbs your hands as you dig,
Dig,
Dig, searching for your buried treasure.

And yet
In the cold
There is warmth,
There is a core of heat as old as the earth;
A cold heat that soaks into your bones,
That saps the strength and energizes,
That rebuilds and remakes you
In its own image
As it destroys what you once were.
And it is white

(so white)

All around, pressing down,
Penetrating
And pure, filling your vision and mind with
Ancient vistas,
Snowswept plains from the dawn of time
When gods were dreams.

It is a white of corrections, of
Failed impulses, of
Restarts and rewinds and redos,
Echoes of memories painted over and written over,
Forgotten
But still there,
Underneath it all.

A Place Called Vertigo

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo
18. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman

So Underworld was good, perhaps brilliant in the last 20-30 pages. One wonders if brief flashes of brilliance are worth 800 some-odd pages of ok to good writing, though in some ways those 800 pages are necessary; buildup and backstory and such. There are a couple of ideas I'm still trying to fully assimilate, which I tried to explain to someone yesterday and failed, I think, to convey effectively. Well, it's one idea, really, that permeates the book and makes it somewhat similar to The Human Stain, in that it's about trash, the detritus of life, though there's more of a physical element to it in Underworld. Like I said, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.

So, What's It About?

"Well, I didn't buy the object for the glory and drama attached to it. It's not about Thomson hitting the homer. It's about Branca making the pitch. It's all about losing."

"Bad luck," Glassic said, spearing a potato on my plate.

"It's about the mystery of bad luck, the mystery of loss. I don't know. I keep saying I don't know and I don't. But it's the only thing in my life that I absolutely had to own."

People have asked me what Underworld is about, and I find myself somewhat at a loss. To be sure, there are characters, and they interact, but I think the book aspires to something greater.

In some ways, this is irritating. Invariably, when an author sets out to write a "great book," said book reeks of their intent; it's a little embarassing, the authorial desperation. Still, there are certain things that can only be accomplished when character and plot take a back seat to themes and ideas. Whether these things are really merited or whether they're the equivalent of literary masturbation is an entirely different discussion.

I find it interesting that the three books on the list which I have read all deal with loss, are focused on people who have lost, rather than won; the dark side of the American Dream, if you will. And it's not loss in the prettied-up, Hollywood sense; redemption is rare and pyrrhic.

Perhaps this is natural, perhaps all art is inherently concerned with the notion of being outside; outside convention, outside the mainstream, the dark mirror for society. And yet, perhaps it only seems natural because we choose to conceive of art in that fashion, because we are drawn to the archetype of the lone, tortured artist plying his or her trade in an effort to reach out, to communicate, to connect somehow to this monolithic culture which they are unable to touch as an individual, which they can only affect and be affected by through their art. Perhaps much of this comes from artists themselves, so desperate to justify their own existence that they assume postures and personas to lend their art that air of gravitas, which makes it necessary and important.

The saddest thing is that the only true justification for art comes from within; people (and I don't think you need to or should consider yourself an artist by trade to create something) should create whatever they feel the urge to. If they want to write, write, if they want to sing, sing, and so forth. I'm not saying everything anyone creates is good, nor that this is the only reason anyone should have for making any kind of art; simply that this is the only justification that is, in the end, necessary. Whether what you create is any good, whether other people will enjoy it, feel enlightened or touched by it, is a whole other story.

Snow

Snow is falling all around him, like fairies floating earthward in the service of some ancient god of rime and frost. "Hello," he says, as one settles on his nose, but she does not respond, she melts in silence. He takes a drag and hears the fluttering of wings in his chest, in time with the fluttering all around him. In the snowdrifts he sees her face, in the snow-heightened silence he hears her voice, and he smiles as fairies drift towards him, bestowing gentle kisses that he saves for her.

Old Town

We walked that day,
Past cathedral bells and cobbled streets,
Down by the river of dreams.

We sat on a stone bench
In a pool of yellow light,
And in between our hands
I could feel our dreams
Coming through,
Coming real.

We were dancing,
Though we never left that bench,
In glances and smiles,
To that ancient reel
That every lover hears
Anew.

Milkshakes and cotton candy
Leaving sugary trails on our faces;
Wispy clouds,
The lightest touch,
A whisper of skin on skin.

I still taste
Your kisses.

A Snowy Day at the Bus Stop

Perfume on the breeze
Sweet and cloying
Kills the senses,
Overpowering.

Butterflies flutter by,
Frozen in a moment
Behind a thin membrane,
Glittering with the light of dewdrops and coffee cups.
Doors open and shut
As the snow falls
And buses go by;
A neverending story
Of arrivals and departures,
Orpheus forever leading Eurydice,
Afraid to look behind him
But unable to stop himself.

Silent stops,
Empty receptacles
Where neighbors stand alone,
Refusing to acknowledge each other's presences
For fear or connecting,
Of being sent
Back to Tartarus,
Swept away on Lethe's currents,
A forgotten shade.
"Know me," they say,
"Remember me."
These ghosts,
These echoes,
Forever peering from glassed-in shelters,
Waiting for their buses to arrive,
Marking their lives by the 5:02.

Notebook

Creamy paper under my hands;
An empty slate,
Waiting to be filled,
Waiting for me to cover you with my spidery script.

A blank page,
A challenge.
Satisfying warmth
In my hands;
Her hair,
Pressed against my cheek.

The pages start to fill,
And I run my hands over the bumps
Left behind by my pen:
A hungry braille
Defining her
Yet leaving her as strange to me
As she ever was.
This mystery.
This love?

Writings from the past
Leave their marks on the pages to come;
A forewarning,
A premonition
Waiting to be raised
By a rubbing.
The future,
In ridges and canyons,
Waiting for us to discover them
Together.

Crosswords

Diamonds glitter in the light
As her hand moves across the page
Filling in the blanks of her life:
One across,
Five down.
Chin in hand, the clues fly by,
Answering themselves,
Ticked off the list,
One
By one
As the world passes her by.

She pauses,
At a loss,
Frozen in a moment;
Searching for the right word,
The one that will fit
And solve the puzzle before her.

Do You Believe In Magic?

Saw Pan's Labyrinth tonight.

It was beautiful. Beautiful and terrifying, as many great works are.

I like to believe that there's magic in the world. And I don't necessarily mean spells and crazy ceremonies involving cool chalk drawings and baby's blood. The magic I like to believe in is far more prosaic, but all the more potent because of its ordinariness, its everydayness.

It is in the eyes of someone who loves you, in the way they touch you, in the shared glances and connections made and missed every day, between every person, in the daring to believe, to imagine, to aspire to whatever your heart desires.

There is magic there.

And it is frightening; of course it is, because there's no-one to catch you, no guarantees. Few can help you, and even fewer will understand you. There is only you and what you will dare, what you will risk, what and who you will turn your back on.

Imagination is painful because you must pay a price to hang onto it, and to follow it. Along your way there will be people who will delight in telling you how silly, how unrealistic, how childlike you are. There will be people, and they will be legion, who will tell you to put aside those things, to grow up. And many people do, and many people will. Perhaps they can be happy with that.

I hope I will never know.

Isn't It Ironic

Don'tcha think?

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed. Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

More

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman
16. The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
17. Underworld, Don Delillo

There are another 6 parts to Sandman which I'll probably be picking up and reading before I manage to finish Underworld, which was one of the books named in this list. Sandman is just so good that, having started its story arcs, I want to know all of it.

Exit Light, Enter Night

1. The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
2. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
3. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
4. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
5. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
6. Middlemarch, George Eliot
7. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse
8. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
9. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
10. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
11. Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen
12. The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
13. The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
14. The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
15. The Sandman: The Doll's House, Neil Gaiman

Perhaps it is cheating to be listing graphic novels on a booklist, but when the stories are as good as the ones I read (and The Sandman, for anyone who has not read it, falls into the category of so-good-it's-depressing-because-I-could-never-write-anything-even-remotely-as-good), I think a little license is allowed. I didn't include The Watchmen or V for Vendetta on last year's list, but this is a new year and I feel generous.