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.