Change of format

Despite creating this blog for the specific quest of reading the Modern Library list in its entirety, I am slowly accepting that I will never be able to discipline myself enough to just follow the list.

So instead of letting this blog languish and die, I'm going to open it up to writing about any and all books I'm reading, meaning to read, attempting to read or swearing off reading.

Right now I'm reading John L. Hess' MY TIMES: A MEMOIR OF DISSENT. I love those Gray Lady books. I just finished Benjamin Kunkel's INDECISION, which is definitely one of my top books of 2005. I didn't even want to like it, but somewhere around page 175 I couldn't believe it's brilliance. Believe the hype! What are you reading?

Things I Have Been Reading Which Do Not Appear on the Modern Library List, Nor Have Any Guaranteed Value Whatsoever

Barbara Ehrenreich, BAIT AND SWITCH. It's not as good as NICKEL AND DIMED.
Stephen Carter, THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK. Borrowed from my mum. I liked the part about the liberal judge mom refusing to let her son read that pro-life appologia, Horton Hears a Who.
Hilary Mantel, GIVING UP THE GHOST. Memoir of a British novelist which the New Yorker promised was full of paranormal events and eerie coincidences. And in this case, David Remnick done me wrong.
David Itzkoff, LADS. Memoir of a former editor at "Details" and "Maxim." Pretty entertaining, actually, if you like press memoirs already.
Rick Moody, THE DIVINERS. Wildly entertaining novel about the schemers behind a Hollywood miniseries. Thick and convoluted like a Tom Wolfe book, but without any of those pesky authorial moral judgements. Did I mention that Moody is an alum of my own university? He, Marilynne Robinson (GILEAD, HOUSEKEEPING) and Jeffrey Eugenides (MIDDLESEX, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES). And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Jon Stewart, NAKED PICTURES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE. No, Stewart doesn't have a new book out; this actually came out pre-"Daily Show," in 1998 and I tracked it down on inter-library loan out of curiosity. It's not bad, but it's not Woody Allen; not surprisingly, some of it is pretty dated. Also, I might note that there are no actual naked pictures of famous people in it.

This list isn't an excuse. Really. It's totally not. Okay, maybe a little.

Vonnegut Update

As mentioned by the lovely Sarah, Vonnegut is indeed still alive. Not only that, I just saw him on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Not only that, he was hilarious.

Watch the madness here. My offer still stands, Mr. Vonnegut! Come forth and receive the Tinfoil Prize!

LN VS. ML extra: LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER, the sitcom pitch

Okay, so there's this woman. She's grown up wealthy, goes to school in a big city, very worldly... no, not Paris, I was thinking more Reese from "Legally Blonde," like she's smart, but cute as well. OK, Reese marries this nice, old-rich young guy, a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt type, and then he goes off to war... No, not a political drama. Definitely not Iraq!...I'm not a communist... Fine, you win, he's on a really dangerous business trip and he gets into an accident, where he loses -- well, there's no way to put this delicately, but he can't have sex any more. He's disabled... You think the disabilities people are going to sue us? Yeah. Fine. Whatever. The point is that it's irreversible. No kids, no bed time, nada. So he resigns from his job and decides to become a writer, since he's independently wealthy. So we have this young, sexy, married...Sure, we could give her a throwaway job, maybe an antique store, art gallery...young, sexy, functional housewife whose husband... No, we can't get Pam Anderson to play her. That's not what we were really thinking...Carson? From "Queer Eye"? I guess we could write him in, but that's not really the point. Anyway, the show's about her struggle to remain faithful, while acknowledging the fact that she's young and... No, we had pictured maybe by midseason sweeps she might take a lover, maybe her husband would say something like, I want us to have a child, even though it's not with me...You want that to happen in the pilot? Well, that is sort of unexpected. I mean, don't you think we should take more time to develop... Okay, I guess that could work... Well, ideally it wouldn't be competing with that infertility show, because we're not dealing with a reversible thing here. Yeah, I know the ADA is not going to like it, but that's just... So say there's this really hot, masculine groundskeeper we bring in as the love interest...Lawn boy? Well, if it worked for The O.C., Desperate Housewives... No, see if it was her husband's business partner, that's really not what we're... Okay, we'll look into it. Maybe the butler, or a security guard. The point is... I'm not trying to be classist here, I just think... Okay, Reese trying to resist temptation with the help of her sassy gay friend and... You want Steve Carell as the love interest? You know, I really don't think we're on the same page here at all. It's supposed to be someone masculine, you know, muscled... A lawyer? You know, maybe we're going in a different direction on this... Did you just say David Spade as the husband? Okay, that's it. I'm leaving. We're done here.

18. Kurt Vonnegut, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

I am floored that someone would write a book about war this good and I was never assigned to it. People, I am a literature major. I am one year away from completing my formal education. I'm not even sure if Vonnegut is still alive, but if he is I'd like to give him a medal. So step forward, Kurt! It'll have to be tinfoil, though, I'm not a dynamite inventor or anything.

...Words fail me. Just go read it.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 40-60

2. James Joyce, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

From StevieD.blogspot.com...

aunty dante says i can have a blog. i dont no what to rite. daddy and i saw a moocow todaay.
posted by StevieD 7.12.84 13:45

School sucks! I got a pandy from one of the prefects today because I broke my glasses, but I didn't do it on purpose! I wanna go home.
posted by StevieD 11.04.89 16:27

YAY Father Dolan says it wasn't my fault! I still wanna go home tho. OK, gotta go for bed check. Sign the guestbook.
posted by StevieD 11.04.89 20:23

Haven't had time much to write in here since I've been at my new school. We're having a retreat till Friday and I've been thinking a lot about the girls and last summer and stuff. Don't mean to be judgmental but what I was doing when I was at home for the summer was just plain wrong. I hope
posted by StevieD 12.10.98 09:45

So far so good with the new plan. Can't write more about it now though because I have more penance to do. I really feel like I am getting to a new level with my relationship with God, but you know what they say... new level means a new devil! Call the cell if you need me.
posted by StevieD 12.11.98 08:02

OMG the priest called me in today and asked if I had had a call! I would so love to be a priest, what do you think? New plan's going great now that I know where I'm headed. Yikes, late for evening mass!
posted by StevieD 12.12.98 19:23

So I'm at Trinity now. I like it okay. I dropped the new plan though. It's pretty complicated but I guess it leads back to this argument I had the other day with Davin when he was yelling at me about not turning in my draft card. It's not that I'm anti-war, I'm anti-citizenship, I guess. I don't want to be Irish or study Irish or be Catholic and have people look at me and define me like that. I told him I wanted to "fly by those nets." Then he called me a pussy.
posted by StevieD 04.26.03 15:45

Hey guys, tell me if you think this poem is any good. I'm reeeeeeally excited about it since it's the first poem I wrote in a long time that doesn't have to do with You-Know-Who. OK, here's what I got so far:

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim,
Tell no more of enchanted days.

So what do you think I should write next???
posted by StevieD 09.23.04 12:22

Met her today... in Grafton Street. The crowd brought us together. We both stopped. She asked me why I never came, said she had heard all sorts of stories about me...People began to look at us.
posted by StevieD 04.15.05 19:01

Honestly I think I'm going to give this blog up. I'm so busy these days forging in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race that I barely have time to check my e-mail. My dad's gone missing, too, and I'm going to have to go look for him in Dublin. So for the two of you that still read this, e-mail me, okay?
posted by StevieD 06.15.05 23:22

This post is dedicated to my TA for the Proust, Joyce and Faulkner course I took sophomore year. Amy V., sorry I didn't really read this book when I was supposed to. Also, you rule.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 39-61

48. D. H. Lawrence, THE RAINBOW

In the last century, D. H. Lawrence pioneered the Möbius branch of literature by writing an infinite book. This book, THE RAINBOW, chronicled the history of a lower-middle-class family in the English Midlands and its sexed-up but non-deviant women, all of whom had rather disappointing lives except for that brief moment before marriage when they experienced sensual fulfillment. The book was able to loop around several topics like the state of fin-de-siécle public education and cathedral architecture to create a truly unending experience.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 38-62

35. William Faulkner, AS I LAY DYING

Erskine Caldwell, you should be taking notes. The theme material here is almost exactly the same as TOBACCO ROAD -- poor, multi-child Southern family on quixotic small-scale quest -- yet I savored this book over almost a week of commuting and wished it had been 200 pages longer when it ended. I want to go back to ABSALOM, ABSALOM! and say, Hey, Bill, I finally get it.

Why they didn't make everyone read this in high school -- we only had a semester of American lit, and because I took it in the fall we didn't have time to get to Faulkner -- is completely beyond me.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 37-63

87. Arnold Bennett, THE OLD WIVES' TALE

Once upon a time there were two sisters in a small town in England. The older sister married the shop assistant, bore one disobedient, lazy son and was quite content. The younger sister ran away with a traveling salesman who left her in Paris, where she established her own boarding house and became an entrepreneur par excellence. The younger sister is to be pitied, however, for wasting her life on business when she could have been popping out babies. In the end, they both still die (although the profligate younger one dies first!) Aren't women silly?

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 36-64

I'm not dead!

Dear readers,

I got distracted by Fun Summer Books and forgot about all those silly classics. I pledge to be better (I've returned with Arnold Bennett's THE OLD WIVES' TALE [#87]) for the rest of the summer.

Watch this space.

68. Sinclair Lewis, MAIN STREET

Idealistic librarian Carol marries a country doctor who caters to her dreams of finding a little "Middle Western" town and making it pretty and cultured. Then she moves to Gopher Prairie and the townspeople crush her dreams. I'm FROM Gopher Prairie (though it goes under a different name), so I can say that every word in this book is true... unfortunately. I think Lewis would be rotating in his grave like a Boston Chicken if he knew what replaced these Gopher Prairies -- the cookie-cutter suburbs that are even more soulless, more homogenous, and less open to new ideas.

So the moral of the story is, country mice don't marry city mice.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 35-65

71. Richard Hughes, A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA

Arrr, mateys! What we've got 'ere's a tale of pirates! Seven young landlubbers that get kidnapped by pirates! Shiver me timbers! We's supposed to get in 'r brains, but me mateys will understand, it's mostly about PIRATES!

Ellen versus the Modern Library: 34-66

78. Rudyard Kipling, KIM

I really wanted to hate this book, honestly. After being taught in 9th grade Non-Western World History that Kipling really wasn't being ironic when he used the phrase White Man's Burden, I figured anything he wrote would probably be just as disgustingly biased. So it is with a heavy heart that I announce that this book is actually quite fair to all those involved, not least its half-Irish, half-Indian hero. It reminds me of the fantasy books of my youth a lot more than the historical document it was probably taken for, but it's a good story. In fact, I may even recommend it to someone interested in that genre, but don't quote me on it.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 33-67

91. Erskine Caldwell, TOBACCO ROAD

Think of the worst cliché you can think of that involves the South, farmers, or poor people.

(wait for it, wait for it)

Yeah, it's probably from this book.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 32-68

69. Edith Wharton, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH

I expected to like this after THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and, although it took a long enough time to pick up, I found it hard to put down afterwards. Whartonian/ Jamesian New York has a lot of characteristics that appeal to me (the importance of letters, long descriptions of dresses) even among those that don't (the insistence on having a man, for example!) Lily Bart is my kind of heroine. I can't even think of this book as a tragedy because of the way she held her damn head up the entire time. I wish I could have done the same when similar things happened to me.

Ellen vs. the Modern Library: 31-69