5 posts tagged “literature”

I just finished Jack Kerouac's On the Road, which is one of the books on my massive list. This year the classic is celebrating its 50th anniversary of its first printing. I don't think I liked the book, to be honest, but it has made me think a bit, not because it was a particularly intellectual novel (I don't think it was at all) but more because I'm pondering all the reasons why it was such an influential novel in general.

Basically, the gist of the story, if you haven't read it, is that a guy named Sal (who was basically Jack--it's a mostly autobiographical novel with the names changed) has a friend that he admires a great deal, Dean Moriarty, who is a bit crazy and inspires Sal to take spontaneous road trips all over America and even down into Mexico. I'll let you check out the Wikipedia summary if you want more plot details, but essentially it's a lot of running all over the place, boozing it up, hitting on chicks (and then abandoning those same girls), stealing cars, listening to jazz and trying to figure out where the next few $ to buy more booze and to get to the next city are going to come from.

The book was probably heavily censored-- barely any drugs figure into the book which seems unlikely if it is mostly autobiographical. Plus I imagine much of the sexuality was toned down as well. Viking is apparently thinking of releasing an uncensored version of the book at some point, which I would probably pick up to compare. I'm not sure I would like the book any more or less even with the extra details though.

The book is a signpost for the Beat Generation. Wikipedia describes members of the Beat Generation as:

...new bohemian ecstatic epicureans, who often engaged in spontaneous creativity. The style of their work may seem chaotic, but the chaos was purposeful; it highlighted the primacy of such Beat Generation essentials as spontaneity, open emotion, visceral engagement in often gritty worldly experiences. The Beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.

On The Road fits the bill, of course, both in how it was created (written in three weeks on one long roll of paper, no margins, single spaced, no paragraphs) and in the content of the story, which is chaotic, rebellious, carefree and in my opinion, very selfish.

At the time, I imagine it was a monumental novel in the sense that it completely defied the reigning moralistic majority in America in the early 50s. This was no Leave It to Beaver -- it was the polar opposite, which was strange and shocking to me when I considered what I thought of the 50s (or even further back, in 1947 when the story supposedly took place).

Dean Moriarty, based on the real life friend of Kerouac, Neal Cassady, is both hero and pathetic fool. He throws away his money, women/wives and children whenever a whim or an itch gets into his head. I think that in many ways, my frustration and anger at this character is because I'm a woman and this is REALLY a man's man book. It's all about hanging out with the guys, finding a fun time, living life in the moment and forgoing all responsibility to anyone if it gets in the way of having that experience. It's probably also hitting a chord with me because my brother-in-law is playing the drunken asshole fool and throwing away his family at the moment--not nearly so drastically as Dean did, but the effect, I imagine, is the same on my sister as it would have been for his two wives and the kids he fathered along the way.

Overall though, boredom started to set in about 30 pages into the book. The story is circular--one crazy trip after another. It's all the same sort of thing, the boozing, the car stealing, the womanizing, just in different places all over the country. And yes, I get it...it was the poetry of living in the moment. But the moments didn't seem very appealing to me. It was dirty, grimy, sad and I couldn't find any joy in the book although over and over Sal seemed to revel in the various little joys of the people he met and admired. In the end, Sal came to a similar revelation, but it took so long to get there that I just didn't care. I found myself scanning a lot of the last half of the book and wishing that I had read it in college so I could have had better perspective from my professors and peers.

I find that I'm more interested in the lives and the influence of the Beat writers than I am overly intrigued by their writing. I'm not a Ginsberg fan (who had the role of Carlo Marx in the book) or Bukowski and while I liked Naked Lunch I think that was more because it was Cronenberg who did the movie, not because I would like Burrough's book (which the movie is only partially based upon). I just don't find the whole pack of sex and drug induced writings to be generally appealing to me. They rely so much on shock value that I find myself uninterested and unimpressed. But the lives those people led and the influence that they have had on overall culture and politics is highly intriguing to me. I find that I want to read the books not because of their own merit but because they may give me a greater understanding of what came as a result of those writings.

I also have to wonder, what sort of impact did the Beat Generation have on things like manners, the idea of keeping families intact, freedom of sexuality (the love 'em and leave 'em attitude becoming more acceptable), etc. I'm not someone who is terribly keen on the institution or the corporation but at the same time, that era was the breaking apart of some things that I wish our society still had. Little things mostly--that guys would take off their damn hats in restaurants, more courting on the dating scene (which IMHO doesn't cut into gender equality or have to cut down on sex--it's more about courtesy and thoughtfulness), families eating at the dinner table instead of in front of the TV, and the like. Hmm. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Coppola bought the movie rights to On the Road 39 years ago and for the last few years there have been reports that he's finally started making the film. A 2001 account mentioned that Brad Pitt had been cast as Sal but a 2005 article I found said that Billy Crudup had been cast with Colin Farrell as Moriarty. But since then? Nothing, nada.  I suspect that it has once again fallen by the wayside, which is a bummer. I think I might find more affinity with the story if I could see it on screen.

At some point though, I should take a trip up to Lowell, where he was born, and check out his grave site. I want to collect visits to author birthplaces, houses and grave sites and he's just so darn close that I don't really have an excuses. And if I ever manage to become a runner, I suppose I'll have to run the 5k too...

But mostly, about the book itself, I would tend to agree with Truman Capote, who, on commenting on Kerouac's method of free-flowing writing, said, "That's not writing, it's typing."  It was too rambling, too seemingly stream-of-consciousness (even if he was working from notes he took over the previous seven years). I just couldn't see it as a serious or a good novel, but in the end, it doesn't really matter if it was serious. It was influential in so many ways, and for that reason alone, I think that the story of Sal and Dean will sit with me for years to come.

I've previously talked about how I'm creating a master booklist that should keep me busy for many many years. I'm still

working on it...mostly I need to add 20-21st century books at this point. I've published the list thus far and will continue to add to it and check off books as I read them. It's listed in a mostly chronological order, primarily by date of the author's death. The chronology isn't 100% accurate and that doesn't concern me too much. But if you see anything missing, let me know. Again, I'm still working on 20-21st century so there is a LOT missing from that era at this point but I think the prior eras are pretty full.

One of the books that I read was a collection of Aesop's Fables. It was a fairly easy read, as the fables are all one paragraph and they are often redundant. I was struck by how long it has been since I have read any of his fables...in today's world, usually they are taught to children. But in the ancient world, these were cautionary tales told by adults, for adults. It wasn't until the 1700s when the fables became popular for teaching children.

In this translation by Laura Gibbs, there are 596 fables. WOW. I had no idea there were so many. I mostly knew about The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Man With the Golden Eggs, the City Mouse & the Country Mouse, and I had some vague childhood memory of the Lion & the Mouse.

But did you know about The Beaver and His Testicles?

What I also found interesting is that they don't have any remaining texts of Aesop's fables. But the fables were so popular that they are many copies written and transcribed by various scholars from across the centuries, the earliest of which is Phaedrus in the 1st century and numerous copies in the Middle Ages, all of which you can check out for yourself at Aesopica, maintained by Laura Gibbs, translator of the book pictured here. Definitely check out her site and check out the very cool illustrated editions including this one from Francis Barlow depicting the fable, The Lion in Love.

I'm so glad I decided to embark upon this literary adventure. I've only read a 8-10 books on the list so far but I have learned so much--about ancient Greece and Egypt, about literature and how the literature has shaped the world and other stories that would be later written.

I'm reading the first few books of the Bible right now. It's been nearly 15 years or so--probably in college in my Old Testament class (I went to a Presbyterian liberal arts college). As a lover of words and literature I have a hard time reading the Bible in many ways, especially the early books. There are stories that contradict other stories, or just don't make any sense. One in particular that drove me crazy is how the youngest son of Noah, Ham, accidentally walked in on his father one day when he was drunk, naked and passed out. He went out of the tent and told his brothers, who walked in backwards so they would not look upon their father's nakedness and covered him with a blanket. When Noah discovered that Ham had viewed him naked, he cursed all his descendants (those of Canaan) to be slaves. I read that and said, WTF? Because dad got all boozy and passed out and his son accidentally walked in on him, all his ancestors were to be punished? There are dozens of other episodes of this nature that drive me equally crazy, but then I will end up arguing Biblical theory with people and I don't really have any desire to do so. I do have faith in a higher power but I just can't take the Bible at face value. There are just too many passages that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Like how Lot's daughters got him drunk and slept with him when he was passed out in order to father children (of whom came the Moabites and Ammonites). Huh? Nothing happened to them for their lewd behavior but all of Ham's descendents are cursed to be slaves? Okay, I'll shut up now. :-)

I'm sure there is an Aesop Fable that would be perfect for my endlessly running off at the mouth...

I just finished the first book on the Great Books List that I decided to plow through as a new path to some form of

literary enlightenment. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a poem that tells the story of a hero-king who is 2/3 God and 1/3 man (curious how that works, huh?) that ruled the ancient city of Uruk in approximately 2650 B.C.E. The poem as we understand it today comes from a variety of tablet sources found in excavations all over the ancient world. The tablets are often in pieces or indecipherable but enough copies exist that translators have been able to piece together the majority of the ancient poem.

The most famous tablets were discovered in 1850 and 1853 by British archaeologists who found the royal libraries of Ashurbanipal, king of Nineveh. But those tablets weren't the only copies of the poem. It was a story that had been widely copied and distributed throughout the years and it is because of its ancient popularity that so many tablets have been discovered and have given us the ability to recover so much of the lost text.

According to the book at the right (pg. xxvii (talk about lazy citations!)), translated by Andrew George:

The standard version of the Babylonian epic is known from a total of 73 manuscripts extant: the 35 that have survived from the libraries of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, 8 more tablets and fragments from the three other Assyrian cities (Ashur, Kalah and Huzirina), and 30 from Babylonia, especially the cities of Babylon and Uruk.

Several things stood out for me while I was reading:

• The poetic repitition, clearly a mechanism for driving memory for what was intially a long-standing oral poem. The poem, if it were intact, would be nearly 3,000 lines long (but according to George approximately 575 are missing). But if you took the numerous repeating stanzas out I imagine the entire piece would be closer to perhaps 1500-1800 lines. I find that I liked the repetition--it gave me a sense of ritual and of connection that drew me into the narrative.
  
• The use of the numbers seven, ten and thirteen in various ways throughout the poem. What struck me was how far back the significance of these numbers goes.
  
• The flood/ark comparisons which many other people have made so I don't need to. But the fact that hundreds of ancient cultures have a flood story make me personally doubt the word-for-word Noah story.
  
• This story takes place in what is now Iraq. Many of the tablets are/were housed at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, which has been subjected to looting during the war. The ancient Sumerian cities of Ur and Uruk are now located in what is currently a war zone. I find an incredible sadness about this...that so many of the world's oldest treasures have been or are being destroyed by senseless violence. 7,000 years of history gone in the blink of a suicide bomb or by air raids. These cities have importance in a variety of the world's religions, including Christianity. Ur is even thought to be the birthplace of Abraham. Sigh, it just makes my heart sick to know that we care more about blowing each other up than preserving world history. 
• In 2003, they think they found Gilgamesh's tomb, which sounds incredible...buried under the Euprhates.
  
  

Next on the list is the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which I have read in the past, but quite a long time ago, most likely when I was a little goth chick interested in spells or something. I picked up a used book from Powells but unfortunately, the copy that I have is from 1967 (and water-damaged...sometimes you get what you pay for, huh?). I am thinking I may look into a more up-to-date copy that incorporates findings/insight from the last 40 years.

Serene blogged about this and I just had to meme it. This week is Banned Book Week and below is the list of the top 100 challenged and banned books. My mom is probably one of those people that would think half these books be banned (she's against Harry Potter because it teaches evil magic, for example). I love you mom but this is where you are a little crazy (this is where she is also saying to herself, how do you know what I think...).

Here is this year's list. Like Serene, I'll italicized the ones I've read. There are quite a lot on here that I haven't read or not heard of and I'm surprised about many of the others. Some of them were my favorite books growing up, like Bridge to Terabithia, Wrinkle in Time, James & the Giant Peach, A Light in the Attic and the Judy Blume books--how on earth does a teenage girl figure anything out without Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. I remember that the version I had still talked about garter and panty fasteners for maxipads and I thought that was really weird.

Some of these I can see not being age appropriate and if I were a parent I might have a problem if Madonna's Sex or Anne Rice's Beauty series was available in my kid's elementary libraries. But I have a feeling that these books are being challenged from regular libraries or college libraries, not k-6. I would let my kids read those books when they are old enough to understand what is going on...and after I had the discussion with them that my parents never had with me (I learned about sex through all the sci-fi and fantasy books my dad left lying around the house...I was a voracious reader at age 8). Then I would encourage them to talk to me with questions.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier  I met him at a young writer's conference...he was very inspiring to me. I'm sort of sad that the book he signed is probably lost.
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson  This really was one of my absolute favorite books. I read it over and over. It really fired the imagination...I just loved it.
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger  Okay, I have to say that for some bizarre reason I still haven't read this book...
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle  I have this on order...I can't wait to read it again. I hear they are making movies finally?
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood   Atwood is one of my alltime favorite writers...and this book is the reason I found her writing in the first place.
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton This was an anthem for pre-teen angst. I couldn't imagine my childhood without S.E. Hinton books and the movies.
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende   Another of my favorite writers.
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford   WTF???????
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman  We had a copy of this book growing up...and old one that had been in the family for years. I'm sure that my mom has it in a box somewhere in the garage. It's probably worth a pile of money now.
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier