In the coming days, I'll blog about what I read in Cuba. For now, a list:

Jon Stewart, Naked Pictures of Famous People
P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves!
Stephen Platten (ed.), Ink and Spirit
David Eddings, The Belgariad (Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician's Gambit, Castle of Wizardry, Enchanter's Endgame)
Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain (Vol. 1 of the Journals)

Mark Edmundson, Why Read?

Edmundson works through a variety of ideas, but this text celebrates two central ideas: a work of literature is true, insofar as it represents life as it is--an ongoing, present tense "is"--and that literature helps us construct what he calls our "final narratives", or helps us establish for ourselves what is important and how we should live our lives. In short, he takes Matthew Arnold and Marcel Proust, and slams them together with Richard Rorty as he tries to convince the reader of his case.

Arnold's position, that literature may have to come to replace religion as a guide to life, seems less likely now with literature's relative obscurity in the place of popular culture, and has certainly fallen into disrepute in the academic world. Edmundson argues that it needs to be revitalised: that it's easy to apply readily forgotten theory to texts, and it's easy to research the texts, but what's difficult and most worth doing is to engage with the text itself and to ask what the texts ask of us, how they ask us to grow. This process is Emersonian, and Edmundson quotes him as saying "The life of man... is a self-evolving circle, which from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end." Edmundson expands upon this idea by quoting Proust's adage that "Reading... is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it, but does not constitute it," and suggests that it is this life of the spirit that is absent in classrooms. He suggests that that absence may well be why we have fewer and fewer students of humanities in universities these days, as this idea of literature as a touchstone falls further out of favour.

He laments students seeking entertainment instead of education, though he is sharply critical of an academy structured to provide just that. What a literary education does is to wake people out of the slumber induced by the opiate that is popular culture: reading, he tries to convince us, is a powerful force that does more than entertain (and herein lies the distinction between Faulkner and Stephen King), but provokes growth and challenge. Proust comes up again as Edmundson tries to say that a lasting work of literature is one that offers deep, meaningful opportunities for this type of engagement:

It seems to me that they would not be my readers but readers of their own selves, my book being merely a sort of magnifying glass like those which the optician used to offer his customers--it would be my book but with it I would furnish them the means of reading what lays inside themselves. So that I would not ask them to praise me or to censure me, but simply to tell me whether 'it really is like that.' I should ask whether the words that they read within themselves are the same as those which I have written."

This idea of Proust's begins the conversation with the question, does this text live? The most compelling comment that Edmundson shares with us comes from Lionel Trilling.

Describing his initiation into modern literature, into Kafka, Joyce, Proust, and their contemporaries, Lionel Trilling writes: "Some of these books at first rejected me; I bored them. But as I grew older and they knew me better, they came to have more sympathy with me, and to understand my hidden meanings. Their nature is such that our relationship has become very intimate."

Do the texts we read live? If they don't, what fault is it of ours? Edmundson wants this long essay to make us ask ourselves that question, and to take reading seriously.

So there's a summary of the book. Here's what I think.
I take reading seriously.
You have only to take the briefest of glances at how I spend my free time, my money, my thought--this very blog--to see that. This book of Edmundson reads like an argument for the existence of God: it's convincing only insofar as the person hearing the proof already believes. Why Read? hectors, dares, challenges, and never really becomes persuasive, as it would need to if it wants to affect non-readers.

I look to literature as I look to religion, as ideas that I need to examine to determine how to live my life aright. I'm not convinced, though, that we should sell the study of literature as being the modern day vision of a seminary. I think that the study of literature is something that should be shared among those who care deeply about books, and that that's something that we pass on to others we encounter almost like a particularly benevolent virus. Let's take reading seriously because we enjoy stories, and let's leave books like Why Read? on the shelf, taken down only to offer us points to debate.

Bishop John Shelby Spong, Living in Sin: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality, 1988.

I can't remember if I looked at this book before, or not. Reading it, it seems to me to be far from controversial, far from overly challening. In fact, seventeen or so years after it was published, it almost reflects the status quo--or will, as soon as we start blessing same-sex marriages in the Anglican church. In short, while it reflects on an argument, and was at the time of its publication quite challenging, the book is more saddening than anything else--saddening that, as a church, we've made so little progress in almost twenty years.

Spong zips along through a history of marriage in the church, carefully goes through the biblical arguments about sexuality (and goes through the two major approaches to sexuality), and then makes three proposals: institute "betrothal", or a recognition of a meaningful relationship between two people that occurs prior to marriage but that can include a sexual component; allow the blessing of same-sex unions; and recognise that post-married people still are sexual beings, and that we shouldn't limit their options, either.

Throughout the book, he stays within one view that he's always maintained: sex can exist in both good and bad forms in human life, and that it's the church's job to celebrate what is good and work against that which is destructive and dangerous. It's not a riveting book; nowadays, just reading the Statement of Koinonia covers the basic outlines of his argument. It does, however, provide a decent introduction to a subject that still seems to have far too much of the church's attention.

Tom Clancy, The Teeth of the Tiger, 2003.

This book is weak. It's not a good Clancy, nowhere near Red Storm Rising or Without Remorse or Debt of Honor: instead of careful thought and analysis, he indulges in fantasies of killing terrorists swiftly, without mercy or real justice.

Unwilling or unable to come up with plausible new characters, Clancy spins off Jack Ryan's son & Jack Jr.'s two cousins, coming up with characters that aren't even as plausible as cardboard caricatures. The story meanders, focuses in far too much detail at the wrong times, never becomes particularly gripping. In short, it was a waste of money even though bought on remainder. Avoid this book like the plague: it will bore you, and possibly rot your brain.

Stephen Marche, Raymond and Hannah, 2005.

Hannah and Raymond meet at a party, and go home together for a one-night stand. It becomes a week-long fling, deep and serious, and tearful at its supposed conclusion, when Hannah heads to Israel to study Torah at an egalitarian yeshiva. Raymond is stuck in Toronto, working on his Ph.D. in Literature on Robert Burton. The affair continues, love at quite the distance, and the relationship is jeopardized by a number of the things that can happen in a long-distance relationship.

Jim Bartley, the Globe & Mail's "First Fiction" reviewer, wrote about Raymond and Hannah:

"I don't think I've ever had better vicarious sex -- certainly not in an English Canadian novel. This is sex as voracity, fuelled by the birth of volcanic, insatiable love. Marche describes almost no specifics, yet burns up the pages with need and joy. Shame is banished. The id rules. The spirit revels." (15/01/05, D11)

Bartley is exactly right: the prose captures the intensity of the relationship, the tremendous physicality of it, and then, for the nine-month absence, the mental anguish of separation. Marche is now on my Keats List: the man describes so much, so well, and keeps the reader engaged in the story.

Where I quibble with Bartley is in his attack on the odd feature of the book. Each short section has a marginal note. His problem with this is that the notes sometimes feel unneccessary and are somtimes vital to understanding the section to which the note is attached. I found it charming: the device, far from being frustrating, is wonderful for two reasons. It slows down the reading. It also asks the reader to consider whether they'd frame the section the same way the author depicts it: it's a way of adding weight, or colouring, or shadow to a section: it can set a tone of the prosaic, or suggest that what is happening is in someway transcendental. The notes are signposts, and they're neat. They remind me of the brief descriptions in most English translations of the Bible, explaining or offering a title for the next section: and in this way, they mimic the two things being studied by the main characters: Hannah's Torah, Raymond's Anatomy of Melancholy.

There's a great musing of Raymond's, describing what Universities are, that I'll end this blog:

Raymond considers the broader context of the university

The most obvious feature of the university, when considered within an urban context, is that it is the location of the books. Only slightly less obvious is the fact that the social function of the university is to provide people just ending adolescence with a place for open-ended sexual intercourse. The libraries of a university awe all private book collections. Similarly, the sexual life of the university, both in quantity and intensity of focus, puts to shame the sexual lives that surround it. Books and sex: the university concentrates what mature men and women dip into only when time and occasion permit.

But what eludes us is the co-incidence of books and sex. Why is the site for the concentration (or disposal) the same? Is it that sex and books are the substance oif youth and must be, then, simultaneously contained?

Jerk off, read a chapter, go to sleep. Night after night. (109)

Nick Hornby, Polysyllabic Spree, 2004.

This collection of articles appeared in Believer magazine from September 2003 to November 2004. Hornby starts each piece with two lists: books bought that month, and books read.. He then goes on to talk about why he bought what he did, why he read what he did (and why he didn't read), and what he thought about books that month.

In short, the pieces aren't really reviews, although they sort of are--and so I needed to read the articles just because of the similarities to this very blog. All of his essays are breezy, chatty, and light: they take reading seriously, as an absolutely essential part of life, but he never takes reading too seriously. Reading is essential to Hornby's life, but never becomes snobbish about any notion of canon.

I enjoyed reading his reactions to various books. I loved watching how one book led to another and how one blurb on the back of a book could lead to the next. These articles are far more fun as a description of a reader than they are of the books mentioned within the pieces. Pick it up: it's a quick read, and if you're one of those people who can't stop reading, then you'll love this book.

One short example of the way Hornby writes about books:

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. "The Magic Flute" v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. "The Last Supper" v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. ...And every now and again you'd get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I'm still backing literature 29 times out of 30.

David Sedaris, Holidays on Ice, 1997.

I have said much about this writer's work. There isn't a lot to say about this collection of Christmas stories, other than to know that it includes his earliest work for NPR: the "Santaland Diaries." Sedaris details his time spent as an elf at Santaland, in Macy's department store, and what he sees and overhears. The stories are funny, and one can see why they caused such excitement, but I prefer the drier and more self-mocking stories of the later collections.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1887.

I recently acquired the Annotated Sherlock Holmes, and have begun making my way through the stories I enjoyed so much when I was younger. The four novels, though, are not in the first two volumes of the ASH: they'll appear in the third volume, due to be published around November. I wanted to reread A Study in Scarlet, though, because it sets the tenor for the stories.

The story is as I remember it: fun, light, entertaining. It sets up Holmes as the ultimate observer, able to acquire even the minutest detail and then--the important bit--able to correlate all of the pieces in his mind, thereby assembling a completed jigsaw puzzle that lays out every nuance of the truth.

Despite the Holmesian ideal that has haunted me all my life--I first read this story when I was very young--this story is feather-light, indeed. A murder, the word "Rache" (German for revenge) written in blood on the wall, another dead man, more dead people, evil Mormons, revenge, fair maidens, adopted daughters, long-lost fiancés, etc. All in all, this story is a trite little puzzle that wraps up neatly. It's not a story worth thinking about too closely, in its silliness, but it's one to come back to and to re-enjoy, de temps en temps.

Nick Hornby, Songbook, 2003.

Hornby's collection of essays about pop music--31 songs and 5 albums--is a good example of what it means to take pop music (at least as a broadly inclusive term) seriously.

Hornby discounts the idea that memorable songs are indelibly associated with specific memories, moments, or feelings; rather, he argues that good songs are in some way catchy and arrest the hearer in some way, be it for melodic, lyrical, or some other reason. As he puts it, "I wanted mostly to write about what it was in these songs that made me love them, not what I brought to the songs" (5-6). The book is, in one respect, and extended polemic that demands that pop be taken seriously:

That's the things that puzzles me about those who feel that contemporary pop (and I use the word to encompas soul, reggae, country, rock--anything and everything that might be regarded as trashy) is beneath them, or behind them, or beyond them--some preposition denoting distance, anyway: Does this mean that you never hear, or at least never enjoy, new songs, that everything you whistle or hum was written yeards, decades, centuries ago? Do you really deny yourself the pleasure of mastering a tune (a pleasure, incidentally, that your generation is perhaps the first in the history of mankind to forgo) because you are afraid it might make you look as if you don't know who Harold Bloom is? Wow. I'll bet you're fun at parties. (16)

He goes on to talk about how much he's enjoying being driven "potty" by "I'm Like a Bird" by Nelly Furtado. While I can't say I've ever been a fan, I remember donning and having a whole bunch of friends and students going about singing that for months on end, seemingly ceaselessly. Horny acknowledges that he'll eventually "solve" the song, and that it "will seem thin and stale soon enough," which means that it is "disposable" in one sense, but what's interesting in his argument is that he asks why disposability "makes any difference to anyone's perceptions of the value of pop music" (17). He argues that the disposability might be "a sign of pop music's maturity, a recognition of its own limitations, rather than the converse" (17-18). (There's also a funny moment where he writes "That's what gets me: The very people who are snotty about the disposability of pop will go over and over again to see Lady Bracknell say "A handbag?" in a funny voice. They don't think that argument's exhausted itself?" [17]) Going through all these songs, showing what attracted him to them is the single best argument in his arsenal in the war to convince people to take pop seriously.

Because our tastes in music are so different, there were only one or two songs that I would have included in my own discussion. His chapter on Aimee Mann's "I've Had It" and Ani DiFranco's "You Had Time" is one of my favourites, but I don't think it's because I like the two songs so much; it's because he's so good about "You Had Time":

"You Had Time" sets itself a further handicap: it begins with more than two minutes of apparently hopeful and occasionally discordant piano noodling.... DiFranco's song is nothing if not ambitions, because what it does--or at any rate, what it pretends to do--is describe the genesis of its own creation: it shows its workings in a way that would delight any math teacher. When it kicks off, the noodling sounds impressionistic, like a snatch of sound track for an arty but emotional film... But it cheers up a little when DiFranco makes out that she's suddenly hit upon the gorgeous little riff that gives the song its spine. She's not quite there yet, because she hasn't found anything to do with her left hand, so there's a little bit more messing about; and then, as if by magic (although of course we know that it's merely the magic of hard work and talent) she works out a counterpoint, and she's there. Indeed, she celebrates the birth of the song by shoving the piano out of the way and playing the song proper on acoustic guitar--the two instruments are fused together with a deliberate improbable seamlessness on the recording, as if she wants us to see this as a metaphor for the creative process, rather than as the process itself. It's a sweet idea, a fan's dream of how music is created; I'd love to be a musician precisely because a part of me believes that this is exactly how songs are born, just as some people who are not writers believe that we are entirely dependent on the appearance of a muse. (46-47)

Hornby goes on to talk about the song proper and its peculiar attractiveness that astonishes him by not being "anticlimactic" after the song's introduction, but this description of the beginning of the song is so spot-on in terms of its close-reading of the song and depiction of just how it works that I wish I could write music criticism like this--if, perhaps, with a little more variety in sentence structure. (The man uses more colons and semi-colons than I do, and more clauses than a lawyer hell-bent on obfuscating fourteen different meanings, so I may just like the collection because I have a bad habit of writing like that, too.)

At any rate, this is a nice little collection that I wouldn't buy--maybe if more of the analysis was like this chapter, and maybe if more of the music was music that I cared about I might acquire it, but as is, it was a nice one to take out from the library. I am looking forward to reading Hornby's collection of essays about books, Polysyllabic Spree: I think I may bite the bullet and buy that one.

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day, 2000.

As I've already talked at length about two other similar books, here and here, I'm just going to quote a short section from this book.

     "Let me get this straight," one student said. "You're telling me that if I say something out loud, it's me saying it, but if I write the exact same thing on a paper, it's somebody else, right?"
     "Yes," I said, "And we're calling that fiction."
     The student pulled out his notebook, wrote something down, and handed me a sheet of paper that read, "That's the stupidest fucking thing I ever heard in my life."
     They were a smart group. (93)

I like reading Sedaris's stuff.