on the shelf

The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
Excellent book, just finished at 2 a.m. last night. Had to keep reading it - very compulsive. It sat on my bookshelf for over a year before I had time to consume it, and consume I did.

A Personal Matter, Kenzaburo Oe
Also fairly amazing stuff, but I bet a lot of impact is lost in the translation from Japanese to English. Still it manages to successfully keep the reader at a loss for justifying humanity, wondering what humanity is even out there, and still hoping despite the odds. . . I admit it was also a page turner for me (although it took a few chapters to get really into caring about this character who isn't particularly likeable), and stayed up the previous night in thralls.

The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
This is a reread for me. I am finding it to be interesting the second time around, and just as helpful as it was the first. I have to admit I don't retain this sort of stuff well, and rereading criticism and theory is a must for me. This book was used in the one undergraduate fiction writing workshop I ever took, and it was about the only useful thing to come from the class. More on this below....

Collected Sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay
A book so old, it is out of print (although in poetry, shelf life seems to be less than a bag of pork rinds). I am currently still perusing because I find, as I do with all rhyming iambic pentameter, myself speaking and writing in a sing-songish manner, which necessitates reading this in smaller doses. Does anyone ever read an entire book of poetry straight through anymore, or am I the only one who does this? At any rate, with the popularity of the chapbook returning, perhaps there is some sort of trend going on. I am finding these poems to be dated, but one can say that of almost any dead writer I suppose. I want to like these poems more than I do - I feel that there is more to them than I am getting out of them, and I recognize that St. Vincent Millay wrote in the sonnet for the sake of the art form itself, but in places, so many places, she holds back in what could have been a stronger image/phrase/sound, all for the sake of the form. (In some of the sonnets she does manipulate very marginally the form, but since most of her sonnets are series poems, they all have that manipulation, making it still, somehow, restrictive.) In thinking about this, and about how other poets sometimes stay within set limits and manage to do so successfully (although that is a very objective matter), I think that she was also very limiting in the images she used, the language (including very odd syntax to get the rhyme or syllable as the line dictated), and overall arching themes. I guess I just don't see the mastery that I expect from her poems that other sonneteers hadn't already accomplished, making her poetry less exciting, and therefore, moot.

Of course, I may change my mind tomorrow.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Halfway through. So many things different from the movies. . . and I specifically waited until after seeing all the movies because I know that if I read a book first, the movie never lives up to it. I am starting to wonder if it may have back fired on me this time though.

Workshops, etc...
Well, my schedule for the next semester is set, and I am fairly ecstatic about it. I will be taking a fiction workshop, and here is where the excitement twinges. As mentioned, I had the misfortune of being in one that was horribly disappointing, and soured me on them after that. I know it was 100% the fault of the instructor, and I wonder how on earth this woman ever managed to get herself hired in the first place. (She seemed to have thought out an awful lot about the internet pornography industry in a very small scene in one of my pieces which I am not sure is redemptive or a further sign of her instability.) That aside, I am carrying this ambivalence with me. Fiction has always been the core of my writing desires, but being waylaid by poetry has been the best thing to happen to me in my writing life. I think of writers like Woolf and Faulkner, who I think manage to blend the rhythm and beauty of poetry into prose, and I feel that that is the caliber to aim for.

But I have trouble thinking in terms of short stories. Always have. My mind thinks novel length, always has and always will. (From one extreme to the other here, no chance for middle ground.) I am hoping that this workshop will redeem my earlier experience, or solidify it. We shall see!

As for moving, I did find a place that I am happy about. Living alone. Ah, the sheer loveliness of it all.