Hi all,
Welcome back...
The reading I did in April reinforced just how much I rely on outside influence for what I come up with on this blog. The post from Sunday was written very much in a style that I borrowed, if not outright copied, from Maggie Nelson's Bluets. The post from the end of April, about Maniac Magee, was something I worked on sporadically for a couple of months before The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit gave me an insight or two that I used to organize my ideas.
I also saw examples of books that reinforced some of my own instincts. David Whyte's Consolations reflects on simple everyday words with a depth and understanding that I try to reach for at least a few syllables when blogging about Lost In Translation. And in reading Chuck Klosterman's books or working through Shea Serrano's Rap Year Book, I noted even more methods for organizing and presenting the tangents that I tend to (happily) go off on fromline to line time to time.
One book that had no influence on my writing...
I thought Excellent Daughters by Katherine Zoepf was a really good example of a book you read to simply gain knowledge. In this case, Zoepf covers the past, present, and future of the role women play in the Arab world in a way that greatly expanded my understanding of the topic while also keeping the reading interesting and to the point (*).
My author-based reading projects continue...
I'm currently trying to read all the works from Maya Angelou, Haruki Murakami, and Chuck Klosterman. This month, I made it through Angelou's The Heart of a Woman and Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes. I think if these books make sense for you, you would already have read them, so no need for my attempt at a recommendation. However, I should note that Murakami's short story collection has one story about a boy who mows a woman's lawn that I really, really liked.
Klosterman's Killing Yourself To Live is a personal memoir intertwined with a cross-country trip to visit sites of various famous deaths in music. Like with the above, if you like Klosterman, you would be in no need of my recommendation.
His Chuck Klosterman IV might appeal to a broader reading audience. It is a collection of his work for various magazines, some additional essays, and a novella. There are also some hypothetical questions mixed in, which is notable because I believe he ended up releasing these as an adult card game, perhaps along the lines of 'Cards Against Humanity'.
Maggie Nelson x2...
It might be time to officially add this author to the above list- although Nelson's books are going by so fast I'll probably be done before I can formally consider it a 'reading project'. If Sunday's post was not a clear recommendation for Bluets (and I'll concede that it is not necessarily a recommendation, except for maybe that last line), I'll note again that the book was less than one hundred pages.
The Red Parts is written in a more traditional style. I would suggest reading Bluets and The Argonauts first and moving on to The Red Parts if you found those two books worth the time.
Two books about wandering...
Solnit's The Faraway Nearby was terrific. In short, it was a book written about stories. It was also a tough one to read straight through because it made me want to stop and think every three paragraphs.
In this book, Solnit points out that we often knew all along the very things we one day realize we believe in, messages we received and clung to long before the moment of revelation. What an outsider sees as a dramatic shift in direction is to the changed individual a simple acknowledgment of a long-simmering idea.
Reading this book helped me untangle the mess of notes and scribbles I accumulated for my Maniac Magee post at the end of April. It made me think of U2, a band I knew of long before I started listening to them, and that in turn helped me form a handful of loosely connected ideas into a coherent post (1).
She also talks a little bit about mazes and labyrinths. Mazes reminds me of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a book I flipped through from time to time over the past decade before I finally finished it this winter. This book, or at least the edition I have, was written in an unusual way- Sun Tzu makes a point or comment and the others involved- generals, governors, etc- chime in with their comments which add to or clarify Sun Tzu's point. Then it repeats. It is like a maze in the way it wanders, occasionally into dead ends, but always in search of a final goal- mastering war- which justifies the means.
Labyrinths reminds me of Bluets in the way that the wandering was the point. It sometimes moves toward the goal, it sometimes moves away, and it is difficult to always know exactly where you are. It reminds us to be present in the journey without needing to reach a goal which justifies it.
And speaking of music...
My inclusion of Eminem in the previous post came out of a mention of that clip from Rap Year Book. This book highlights one important song per year from 1979 to 2014 and I thought it was pretty good despite not having a major interest in rap myself.
One thought I had while reading was how the work and themes of early rap potentially impacted the way people like me take in the news today. Now, we have something like what happened a year ago in Ferguson and my response is 'another manifestation of a particular problem in this country'. Without listening to some of the songs and artists featured in this book and understanding their messages, maybe my reaction is 'hmmm, well sometimes things just happen'.
The way new music is consumed is changing so much now that I wonder which artists or what genre, if any, will provide the next form of widely heard social commentary (2).
Dan Carlin, in a recent Common Sense podcast, discussed an idea that is similar to the above. His show covered how the changing nature of news media meant people heard the same news as they used to hear in the past- just not simultaneously, as was the case when only a nightly telecast or morning newspaper was delivering the same content to everybody. This means the benefits of group outrage are vastly diminished and the capacity for collective action greatly altered.
As choices for how individuals use their attention expand, the challenge to harness collective energy to power major social shifts will only become more difficult. I suspect that the music and news industries will not meet this challenge, at least if they continue to apply the same approaches that were successful in the past, but I'm also skeptical of my own attempt to credit one industry or another with influencing social trends that took decades to reach full boil. It might just
When I resume the 'Lost In Translation' bracket, I'll talk more about...
Consolations, by David Whyte, since it ties so closely to what I am doing with the bracket.
One last 'Maniac Magee' comment- I promise, the last one...
One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is called The Moth. This podcast collects stories told at various Moth events from around the world.
Just a couple of months ago, a story a couple of decades old was told about a struggling writer- 'Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia'. This same Spinelli would eventually go on to write Maniac Magee. Thought it was a funny coincidence...
Anything else from April?
The podcast Reply All created an idea called 'Email Debt Forgiveness Day' which they 'celebrate' annually on April 30. The whole concept is that, on this day, you can reply to any email that has been sitting, ignored, in your inbox as if no time has passed at all since you received it.
I thought it was hilarious. The stories they got from some of the listeners about the emails they responded to covered quite a bit of ground and might be worth a listen.
That's about all from April. Thanks again for reading.
No post Friday- back on Tuesday with who knows what.
Tim
Footnotes!
1. One tangent...
I remember the exact moment I started listening to U2 more seriously. It was in 2006, right after the World Cup, and ABC ran a highlights montage with 'One' playing in the background. Even though I had heard their music countless times over the previous years, it was not until this particular moment that I considered the possibility of this band being one that I might like.
The montage cuts parts of the song so this link might be better if you are looking for just the music (plus a Bono speech about cell phones where he also asks you foryour money your voice).
2. Personal music tangent...
The Suburbs, by the Arcade Fire, might have tried this with their observations of suburban life's role in isolating or disillusioning kids. Drones, by Muse, might have tried this with their observations about western foreign policy and the automaton-like behavior of the individuals within those societies.
But these are albums I listened to. They are not exactly what I would describe as 'mainstream' and they don't reflect the views being described by the others who occupy the same musical genre. In fact, when it comes to albums, I just don't know any that a lot people listen to.
Welcome back...
The reading I did in April reinforced just how much I rely on outside influence for what I come up with on this blog. The post from Sunday was written very much in a style that I borrowed, if not outright copied, from Maggie Nelson's Bluets. The post from the end of April, about Maniac Magee, was something I worked on sporadically for a couple of months before The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit gave me an insight or two that I used to organize my ideas.
I also saw examples of books that reinforced some of my own instincts. David Whyte's Consolations reflects on simple everyday words with a depth and understanding that I try to reach for at least a few syllables when blogging about Lost In Translation. And in reading Chuck Klosterman's books or working through Shea Serrano's Rap Year Book, I noted even more methods for organizing and presenting the tangents that I tend to (happily) go off on from
One book that had no influence on my writing...
I thought Excellent Daughters by Katherine Zoepf was a really good example of a book you read to simply gain knowledge. In this case, Zoepf covers the past, present, and future of the role women play in the Arab world in a way that greatly expanded my understanding of the topic while also keeping the reading interesting and to the point (*).
*This is, now that I consider it, perhaps the entire opposite of this blog!I would recommend this book to anyone in my exact position a month ago- interested in the topic yet holding almost no knowledge about it.
My author-based reading projects continue...
I'm currently trying to read all the works from Maya Angelou, Haruki Murakami, and Chuck Klosterman. This month, I made it through Angelou's The Heart of a Woman and Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes. I think if these books make sense for you, you would already have read them, so no need for my attempt at a recommendation. However, I should note that Murakami's short story collection has one story about a boy who mows a woman's lawn that I really, really liked.
Klosterman's Killing Yourself To Live is a personal memoir intertwined with a cross-country trip to visit sites of various famous deaths in music. Like with the above, if you like Klosterman, you would be in no need of my recommendation.
His Chuck Klosterman IV might appeal to a broader reading audience. It is a collection of his work for various magazines, some additional essays, and a novella. There are also some hypothetical questions mixed in, which is notable because I believe he ended up releasing these as an adult card game, perhaps along the lines of 'Cards Against Humanity'.
Maggie Nelson x2...
It might be time to officially add this author to the above list- although Nelson's books are going by so fast I'll probably be done before I can formally consider it a 'reading project'. If Sunday's post was not a clear recommendation for Bluets (and I'll concede that it is not necessarily a recommendation, except for maybe that last line), I'll note again that the book was less than one hundred pages.
The Red Parts is written in a more traditional style. I would suggest reading Bluets and The Argonauts first and moving on to The Red Parts if you found those two books worth the time.
Two books about wandering...
Solnit's The Faraway Nearby was terrific. In short, it was a book written about stories. It was also a tough one to read straight through because it made me want to stop and think every three paragraphs.
In this book, Solnit points out that we often knew all along the very things we one day realize we believe in, messages we received and clung to long before the moment of revelation. What an outsider sees as a dramatic shift in direction is to the changed individual a simple acknowledgment of a long-simmering idea.
Reading this book helped me untangle the mess of notes and scribbles I accumulated for my Maniac Magee post at the end of April. It made me think of U2, a band I knew of long before I started listening to them, and that in turn helped me form a handful of loosely connected ideas into a coherent post (1).
She also talks a little bit about mazes and labyrinths. Mazes reminds me of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a book I flipped through from time to time over the past decade before I finally finished it this winter. This book, or at least the edition I have, was written in an unusual way- Sun Tzu makes a point or comment and the others involved- generals, governors, etc- chime in with their comments which add to or clarify Sun Tzu's point. Then it repeats. It is like a maze in the way it wanders, occasionally into dead ends, but always in search of a final goal- mastering war- which justifies the means.
Labyrinths reminds me of Bluets in the way that the wandering was the point. It sometimes moves toward the goal, it sometimes moves away, and it is difficult to always know exactly where you are. It reminds us to be present in the journey without needing to reach a goal which justifies it.
And speaking of music...
My inclusion of Eminem in the previous post came out of a mention of that clip from Rap Year Book. This book highlights one important song per year from 1979 to 2014 and I thought it was pretty good despite not having a major interest in rap myself.
One thought I had while reading was how the work and themes of early rap potentially impacted the way people like me take in the news today. Now, we have something like what happened a year ago in Ferguson and my response is 'another manifestation of a particular problem in this country'. Without listening to some of the songs and artists featured in this book and understanding their messages, maybe my reaction is 'hmmm, well sometimes things just happen'.
The way new music is consumed is changing so much now that I wonder which artists or what genre, if any, will provide the next form of widely heard social commentary (2).
Dan Carlin, in a recent Common Sense podcast, discussed an idea that is similar to the above. His show covered how the changing nature of news media meant people heard the same news as they used to hear in the past- just not simultaneously, as was the case when only a nightly telecast or morning newspaper was delivering the same content to everybody. This means the benefits of group outrage are vastly diminished and the capacity for collective action greatly altered.
As choices for how individuals use their attention expand, the challenge to harness collective energy to power major social shifts will only become more difficult. I suspect that the music and news industries will not meet this challenge, at least if they continue to apply the same approaches that were successful in the past, but I'm also skeptical of my own attempt to credit one industry or another with influencing social trends that took decades to reach full boil. It might just
When I resume the 'Lost In Translation' bracket, I'll talk more about...
Consolations, by David Whyte, since it ties so closely to what I am doing with the bracket.
One last 'Maniac Magee' comment- I promise, the last one...
One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is called The Moth. This podcast collects stories told at various Moth events from around the world.
Just a couple of months ago, a story a couple of decades old was told about a struggling writer- 'Mr. Spinelli, the writer from Philadelphia'. This same Spinelli would eventually go on to write Maniac Magee. Thought it was a funny coincidence...
Anything else from April?
The podcast Reply All created an idea called 'Email Debt Forgiveness Day' which they 'celebrate' annually on April 30. The whole concept is that, on this day, you can reply to any email that has been sitting, ignored, in your inbox as if no time has passed at all since you received it.
I thought it was hilarious. The stories they got from some of the listeners about the emails they responded to covered quite a bit of ground and might be worth a listen.
That's about all from April. Thanks again for reading.
No post Friday- back on Tuesday with who knows what.
Tim
Footnotes!
1. One tangent...
I remember the exact moment I started listening to U2 more seriously. It was in 2006, right after the World Cup, and ABC ran a highlights montage with 'One' playing in the background. Even though I had heard their music countless times over the previous years, it was not until this particular moment that I considered the possibility of this band being one that I might like.
The montage cuts parts of the song so this link might be better if you are looking for just the music (plus a Bono speech about cell phones where he also asks you for
2. Personal music tangent...
The Suburbs, by the Arcade Fire, might have tried this with their observations of suburban life's role in isolating or disillusioning kids. Drones, by Muse, might have tried this with their observations about western foreign policy and the automaton-like behavior of the individuals within those societies.
But these are albums I listened to. They are not exactly what I would describe as 'mainstream' and they don't reflect the views being described by the others who occupy the same musical genre. In fact, when it comes to albums, I just don't know any that a lot people listen to.
