Mark Twain's Autobiography Hits Shelves After 100 Years ... ?

 So, Mark Twain's autobiography will be published mid-November. The clever chap banned its publishing until 100 years after his death. Genius. Am I excited? Oh, yes.

And yet ... I'm a little bummed. My papa (my favorite grandparent and the smartest person I've ever known) was a Mark Twain know-it-all. A bit of interesting trivia: he was also a very accomplished Mark Twain impersonator. I know - I've got super-cool relatives. So with the publication of the autobiography, I really miss my pop and wish he were here to read it. But I'll read it in his honor and think of him the whole way through.

Is There a "Number One" Writer Today?

I found this article semi-interesting, especially in a day and age where we seem stretched for solidly authentic writers, those who could ascend to the pantheon of literary greats. Who is Number One? I know a lot of us have debated this around the keg water cooler. I tell you this with the utmost conviction - tis Martin Amis!

And I'm glad to see his name mentioned. Because he is seriously brilliant. If you're unsure, just do as I did: Read Money by Amis and then immediately after, read Water for Elephants. You won't even be able to read Water for Elephants. You will read the first paragraph and then set the book on fire and then you'll search the pubs of London for Martin Amis and kiss his satirical feet. Okay, I didn't go to London, but I would kiss his feet if ever they were placed before me.

Now I haven't read every contemporary writer out there - come to think of it, I haven't read many - but I've noticed that literature has evolved into this monster of easy, immediate satisfaction. Contemporary novels are easy to read, easy to access, and easy to forget. They are easily made into movies that easily make a huge profit and are easily forgotten. Nothing of value stays. Contemporary fiction is like a Twitter feed: something meaningless yet slightly entertaining is delivered to the masses and then it disappears with the next twenty bits of meaningless entertainment.

But Martin Amis hails from the class of writers exclusively focused on delivering art. And by art, I mean creations that add value to life. He is of Saul Bellow, of Philip Roth, and of Vladimir Nabokov. He believes in the art of the written word and has dedicated his career to mastering it. Amis's writing doesn't revolve around his plot, but his plot revolves around his writing. And that's what literature should be. I don't want to read the Jodi Pecoults, the Nicholas Sparks, and the Stephenie Meyers. The stories are entertaining, yes. The writing? I need a little more entertainment in that department. They read like high school essays, like user manuals with adjectives piled on top of adjectives. The grammar is correct, the message clear and understandable, but nothing takes a risk. Not one thing is ballsy.

Even the writers a few steps above Stephenie Meyer - Jonathan Franzen, Sara Gruen maybe - they're good writers .... in theory. Sentences are structured well; they're clear and concise. But they don't have balls. I realize that Sara Gruen is a gal, but writing needs to take a risk. You can't follow a formula, you can't be safe and great. Martin Amis never plays it safe. And he gets flack for it. Even his own father (Kingsley Amis, a renowned British author) accused Martin of "breaking the rules, buggering about with the reader, drawing attention to himself." The younger Amis is an exhibitionist, his obscenely large vocabulary on 24-hour display. It can be a bit offensive for those who don't have a great sense of humor. But finish one of his novels, and you'll realize that there wasn't one cliche in the whole book. And if there was - have no fear! - it was written with brazen irony. I love Martin Amis, because he's a scientist. He experiments, he challenges himself and his readers, yet he knows the rules. Amis knows the confines of his discipline and he knows how to navigate them, to disrupt them without destroying them. He shakes things up a bit. Martin Amis is Number One, because he's been a student of great writing his whole life and continues to be even into his literal and metaphorical professorship. He consumes it. He emanates it. He believes in great writing, challenges it, and delivers it.

This is my ode to Martin Amis, my only idol. If you have not read anything of his, I recommend that (some of you) do. He's not for everyone. Here's a checklist:

1. You like a challenging read.
2. You enjoy an ironic, slightly perverse sense of humor.
3. You long to bask in the glory of immaculate writing.

If all of the above apply to you, then go buy a Martin Amis novel from Amazon for God's sake! Okay, not for God's sake, but your own, for mine, for the future of creative writing! Go forth and spring life unto the earth!

So Weird

I was just plotting my next poem - the theme to center around The London Blitz - and what is the first article on New York Times' Books section of their website?

Oh, just a book review about WWII poetry, particularly that of air bombing .... It's a creepy sign. I love those.

UPDATE: If this isn't creepy enough, check out what happened last night (for clarification, last night is the same day I wrote the above, so it's über creepy, okay?):

At the recommendation of the pictured book, I started reading a little TS Eliot (he's a big player in WWII poetry, so I figured, Inspiration, eh?). Then I moseyed around, played with the kid, put him to sleep, then started my "Mad Men" night cap (like I do every night), but something eerily coincidental happens, something out of the ordinary: I get another sign. The character, Kinsey, is lying on his back reciting:

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

You know what that's from? No? "The Hollow Men" by TS Eliot. The end.

Shout Out to Ben Sullivan

I received my alumni magazine the other day. Hoorah! ..... Actually, I was not anticipating anything cool and unusual to be published between its covers. There was a familiar-looking guy on the cover - long hair, plaid shirt, faded jeans - but every guy at Texas State looks like that, so I paid no mind. Then I flipped open the mag ... lo and behold (by the way, why can you never use lo by itself?) the man on the cover was a peer of mine, Ben Sullivan (Sully). Is it weird that I'm writing about him and hardly know him? I don't think so. I just want to take a few minutes out of my day to pay him some respect.

Sully and I took a poetry seminar together my last semester. He is a fantastic poet, and I always thought he would "make it." Some way, some how, he just has a gift. Here's the link to the article: http://www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/ben-sullivan.html.

Here's a run-down:

Sully was assigned a research paper in his class about baseball and American culture, and he chose to write about Lou Gehrig. What was supposed to be a research paper turned into a story about Lou Gehrig's life/battle with ALS. What's unique is that Sully's mother died from the disease when he was eighteen, and he intertwined his firsthand experience with ALS into the biography of Lou Gehrig.

Now, I never knew any of this in our workshop together. All I knew from his poetry was that his mother was sick ... and I couldn't even be sure of that since not all poetry is biographical. The poetry that seems biographical usually is, though. I spoke maybe ten words to him total. But I always admired him. I think it's very cool to see a peer writer get recognized. The workshop environment is just very intimate, and even if you never hang at the bars with your classmates, or whatever it is you do to be best buds, you know them in a way that their family could never. When you write, and not just write, but open yourself for criticism from fellow writers, you really bare everything, you open some of the darkest, most vulnerable corners of your life. You write about things you could never tell the people closest to you. So in a way, I feel very connected to Sully, even though I didn't immediately recognize him on the cover of the magazine.

Anyway, his poems were so well-written that I kept them ... you know, just in case. I feel a sense of pride, really. Read the article, it's very interesting. And I'm including one of his poems without his permission. Hey, at least he gets credit. And I got his back in a court of law. But I want to give him some more publicity because I have mad respect for him and we went through workshop together and I'm totally proud of him as if I were his sister.

Untitled by Ben Sullivan

A mother and two sons make Alabama
with soccer games and Chinese food
sometimes fight with lots of church.

Then sick came into her, to what was
ours, to what we owned, and stayed.
Step father for a mother and two sons.

A lingering drunk with a leather belt
pulled tight, welting fresh skin, taught a
stupid mother with stupid sons blisters,

picked a stick and beat Alabama bloody
and sent a crying mother to freezing Massachusetts
And two stupid sons to scorching Texas

Where they fry their egg rolls in rancid milk
And feed pinches of soccer to the pigeons
While their churches whisper thumbtacks and shoelaces.

Then what was ours was no longer ours but hers
And hers alone. Her and Massachusetts and the sick.
It ate her legs, then arms, then throat, then the rest.

Texas smiles her crooked yellow teeth
And serves warm guacamole as a show of good faith.
Two stupid sons scrub their hands at the kitchen sink.

I'd love to include more - I have three more - but that's pushing it. So I bid you adieu. Congrats, Sully!

*Chuckle Chuckle Chuckle*

See this link for even more chuckles (Better Book Titles): http://betterbooktitles.com/page/1

Ulysses

The Dictionary

The Sun Also Rises

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

I wrote this critique last semester of college. I'm sort of proud of it and so was my professor. Score! So, in keeping with my literary blog, am posting the following:

Critiquing, much less reading Ariel is a chore. It is a dying woman's elegy, a world where critics could never exist or matter. Ariel acts as a lens into Plath's only retreat from unhappiness. Though the poems are filled with a desire for death, they are full of energy and life. it is overwhelming to anybody familiar with Plath's life to experience this vivacity she has for her art.

Beyond the succulence of the personal content included in these poems, their construction is nearly flawless. One of the difficulties critics have had regarding Ariel is the tendency to focus on the content and the effectiveness of Plath's use of her personal life. Because the biographical information is so important to the reading and the legend of Ariel, people have difficulty looking beyond it. But after doing so, the book becomes a true portfolio of poetic genius. Sylvia Plath used the energy of words like nobody else:

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Considering her personal life, the energy in her poems is magnificent. It's as if Plath put all of her vivacity into writing and therefore had none left for her own life. She gathers so much momentum through the use of not only word choice, but line formatting, which are especially apparent in "Paralytic":

My God the iron lung

That loves me, pumps
My two
Dust bags in and out,
Will not

Let me relapse
While the day outside glides by ticker tape

After reading this, I feel suffocated and anguished, which was no doubt intended. The real pinnacle in this passage is the last line. The length reflects the world around her; it "glides."

Two of Plath's most effective tools are unarguably rhyme and repetition. These both have become a little passe in recent years - about the past two hundred - but the best poems use rhyme and repetition provocatively. The rhyme isn't cliche; it's ironic and unsettling. See this excerpt from "Daddy":

There's a stake in your fat, black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

The end rhyme is of the nursery order, and the contrast between the rhyme and the content is almost too much to handle. It is wonderfully appealing, the idea of schoolyard songs about "Daddy," the "bastard." And "you" is repeated in three consecutive lines. One of the most important rules for rhyming is not to repeat words, be innovative. but Plath is obstinate, and she knows how to break the rules with ease. She doesn't just call "Daddy" "you bastard;" he is "you," "you," "you," "you" "bastard." The repetition is mischievous; it reveals a sardonic anger, not self-loathing. It speeds up the poem, invigorates it. Plath's voice is always victorious, which gives Ariel a mammoth serving of irony. Plath saw victory in death, in suicide. It's a completely unfathomable thought, but she uses it to the greatest, most perturbing effect and catapults her work to a monument of poetic fierceness.

Plath also energizes her collection by flipping the mood like a light switch. Most poets have a difficult time changing moods and themes from one poem to the next in a collection of novel-size. Plath not only changes from poem to poem, but even stanza to stanza, even line to line. Ariel is so fun to read because it is manic:

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

She wants to let the bees out, but they appall her, they fascinate her. "The Arrival of the Bee Box" is a whirlwind of temptation. The whole of Ariel tends to mirror this poem, and it garners as many feelings from us as the bee box does from Plath.

Ariel does contain a lot of sad content, but Plath contrasts it with overpowering energy throughout. She even lends her vigor to a few elated poems like "Letter in November," so there is plenty of variety within the book. Ariel stands as such a great piece, because the poems are not mundane. With the book filled with musings on death, it could have easily been uninteresting, but instead it serves as a shocking and completely memorable collection of one of the greatest poet's last works.

Wedding Bed(s)?

Ohmigod, what is it with me and blogging?My last post was on May 21. Nice. I never was very committed to anything.

Anyhoo, this post shan't be about books. Go ahead. Wipe the sweat from your brow. Although. I did finish 2666 by Roberto Bolano ... Okay. You caught me. I got through half of 2666 by Roberto Bolano. And I will not recommend it to you, even though I'm a big fan of cruel and unusual punishment. I am not, however, a fan of self-mutilation, and that's what you would do if you read that novel. Moving on. I saw a very cool article in the New York Times today. And by very cool, I mean something that brings me closer and closer to normalcy. Check it out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/fashion/25FamilyMatters.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&ref=style&adxnnlx=1280862077-ch3zhEP8/QB8PsiCBVzAlw

For those of you who don't have the energy to click and read - even though I'm sure all of you are very proactive people - here's a run-down: it is common, so "they" say, for married couples to have separate beds - Nay! - separate bedrooms. This proves that I am not a cold-hearted, unromantic shrew.

In my fantasy marriage - which I daydream about all the time, let me tell you - I will have my own room. And apparently, this is fairly common. Do you think this is weird? I don't. I hated sharing a bedroom with my sister, so why would I love sharing a bedroom with my fantasy husband? I know, I know. I will undoubtedly paste myself to his glittering pecs of steel, but I still don't want to share a room. We can rendezvous from time to time - maybe hour to hour in our twenties, day to day in our thirties, even year to year in our sixties. I'm all for some lovin'. Having separate rooms will bring that extra zest - not that my fantasy marriage would ever need zest - to our lives. We can pretend we aren't even married: "My place or yours?" Isn't that cool? I think it most definitely is.

And I can stay up late and watch The Notebook whenever I want (I know your intruder-alert signal is buzzing but most girls like doing this so I figured I'd use it as an example, ahem), he can stay up late and watch Sports Center whenever he wants (really enjoying that solo room right now), I can talk in my sleep to Johnny Depp without his ego shriveling up, he can snore as loud as his nose pleases, and I can sleep at a cool (and room temperature) seventy-five degrees Farenheit since his big, fat - and highly flammable - log of an arm isn't hurled over me at an incredibly uncomfortable ninety-six degrees. Pshew.

So, my fantasy house for my fantasy family will have two master bedrooms.

On a separate and much more somber note, my friend Bailey is moving to ... Pennsylvania? What's a girl to do? Read, I guess. Until next time - which, hopefully won't be too long from now - see ya later.