BURNINGBIRD
a node at the edge  


August 16, 2002
ConnectingPaper Gold

No links in this posting. To those who are mentioned, apologies. But sometimes links just disrupt.

I've not been reading books lately, I've been devouring them. I'm making a trip to the library every other day and they're starting to know me by name. It's so nice to have access to such a terrific library system.

I'm in a strong mood to spend the next 3 or 4 days curled up with a book. You know the type of mood I'm talking about. I hope we get some nice thunderstorms, with lots of rain and wind. From my bedroom on the second floor I can watch the storms roll in, hear the rain on the roof, see the lightening. The only thing left to complete the picture is my books.

Thanks to Ben, Karl, Denise, and Leesa for book suggestions (and Dorothea's admittance to being "the woman with the ocular equivalent of a tin ear", which I thought was a hoot). I'm now going to add to my reading list "VOX", "Leaves of Grass", "Geek Love", "Good in Bed", and I downloaded a PDF version of "Baby Head". I have a feeling when I show up at the library with this list of books tomorrow, I might raise an eyebrow or two. It is an eclectic assortment.

Two of the books I'm reading/finishing are Whitney Otto's "A Collection of Beauties at the Height of their Popularity" and Agee and Evan's "Let Us now Praise Famous men". Both books are very interesting, though I prefer the Agee and Evan's book. By far.

Otto's book focuses almost entirely on character in its portrayal of several women in the hedonistic age of the 80's in San Francisco. The common thread tying the women together, and quite loosely, is that each character goes to the same 'tea' room, and is captured in a modern day "pillow book", or diary, kept by one of the women. However, Otto skips from person to person as casually as one would brush up against a person in a bar, first focusing on Coco, then on Jelly, and so on. You're never quite on any one person long enough to like them or dislike them.

Of one of the characters, Elodie, Otto wrote:

    It seemed safe to love something so abstract because her life did not seem to offer her a way to have anything, and so she spent her life not learning to let go but training herself not to want.

In the book the endless parties, relationships, and drugs swirl around in a kaleidoscope of pieces and fragments, highlighted against the emptiness of the women's lives. This book is not an easy read, but is skillful in its characterization.

If "A Collection of Beauties" is about character, "Let Us now Praise Famous Men", is pure imagery, one of the most visually compelling books I've read in some time.

In the chapter titled "Near a Church", Agee talks about he and Evans finding a perfect church. As they look for an entrance into the church, a young black couple walks past. Agree writes:

    They were young, soberly boyant of body, and strong, the man not quite thin, the girl not quite plump, and I remember their mild and sober faces, hers softly wide and sensitive to love and to pleasure; and his resourceful and intelligent without intellect and without guile, and their extreme dignity, which was effortless, unvalued, and undefended in them as the assumption of superiority which suffuses a rich and social adolescent boy; and I was taking pleasure also in the competence and rhythm of their walking in the sun, which was incapable of being less than a muted dancing, and in the beauty of the sunlight of their clothes, which were strange upon them in the middle of the week.

This section doesn't even capture the richness of the rest of the chapter, but there was no way I could include anything else without including the entire chapter, each sentence so dependent on the one before and the one following.

Reading "Let us Now Praise Famous Men", I can see why Jonathon and Jeff Ward decided to turn to writing rather than photography--there are certain things a camera just cannot capture.

I can recommend both books, Agee and Evan's strongly, and Otto's carefully.

Now, on to more books. And since discussion recently is about getting paid to weblog, you can 'pay' me by adding more book recommendations to the comments. With these and a library card, I'm a rich woman.


Posted by Bb at August 16, 2002 12:01 AM




Comments

Two of the very few printed-on-paper books I have here in Korea (with no libraries, almost no bookstores that sell books in English, and those that do charging an arm and a leg, which just isn't compatible with my limited cash resources and voracious reading habit, I am forced to read e-books, of which I have thousands) are absolute gold for their re-read value. I keep picking them up and feeling the doors in my brain open each time I do so : Godel, Escher and Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter) and Voltaire's Bastards : The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (John Ralston Saul).

Slightly obvious choices, certainly, but their incredibly broad range and pellucid depths make them worth their weight in brain tissue when you're as peripatetic as I. I carried Saul's book in my backpack, around the world with me, *twice*.

Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken on August 16, 2002 01:40 AM

Oh, and any of Bukowski's stuff, prose or poetry. I never outgrew him, as many seem to.

Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken on August 16, 2002 03:55 AM

Bb, what's the significance of picture of the lizard lighting it's own fart?

Posted by: gary on August 16, 2002 06:35 AM

Anything by Chomsky or Parenti, but it's definitely not light reading ;) Faster (James Gleick) is also a great book. Nickeled and Dimed (Barbara Ehrenreich), The Professor and the Madman (Simon Winchester), and The Way We Talk Now (Geoffrey Nunnberg) are all worth the time as well, and all available in the County Library here in STL ;)

I'm making my first venture into the new City library on Hampton this weekend, I shall report back on my impressions.

Posted by: rev on August 16, 2002 08:08 AM

i LOVE how out of context my earlier comment is.

Posted by: gary on August 16, 2002 09:21 AM

I am currently reading (courtesy of the Oakland Library) "Strange Creations" by Donna Kossy, subtitled "Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes". This a fairly slim volume at just over 200 pgs. but nonetheless comprehensive. I am about midway through at the moment and the material covered has ranged from amusing (humans created as pets for intelligent dinosaurs) to alarming (any of the racial supremacy notions).

Also reading Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert" - a lucid and, again, comprehnsive study of water issues in the American West.

My poetry needs, as I have recently blogged about, are currently being met by Robinson Jeffers and I cannot reccommend his work strongly enough.

Posted by: Richard on August 16, 2002 02:44 PM

If you want good non-fiction, try the books listed at http://mediagora.com/sources.html

On the Fiction side, authors I recommend are Connie Willis, Evelyn Waugh, and terry Pratchett. It also sounds thta you'd like Paul Auster

Posted by: Kevin on August 16, 2002 03:01 PM

If you enjoy travel, and Italy especially, Tim Parks has written some really wonderful books about being English and living in Italy. Italian Neighbors is the first, and An Italian Education is the second. He's a wonderful prose writer. :)

Posted by: Leesa on August 16, 2002 03:27 PM

On another note, I read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men in freshman year, undergrad. It was paired with photographs from Walker Evans and Dorthea Parks, both who photographed for the TVA or a similar organization. You might look up those two, as the photos really bring to life the subjects in the books.

Posted by: Leesa on August 16, 2002 03:46 PM

lighting lizard farts?

Posted by: gary on August 16, 2002 04:13 PM


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