Little Free Libraries!

I first heard about these little free libraries months ago or maybe even a year ago, but yesterday there was an article in the LA Times about these tiny libraries outside homes.  It's a totally cool idea, and here's the website where you can find lots of information about starting your own little free library:
http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/index.html

Carelessly Uttered: Who Said That?

Recently I've received questions about the quote that's below the title of this blog.  Readers from Arkansas, Colorado, and Rhode Island have wondered about it. Who wrote it?  Aphra Behn (English, 1640 - 1689). It's believed that she's the first woman in history to support herself by writing.  She was also a spy and was called The Incomparable because she was so darn good at it. She also went to debtor's prison, and it was after she got out that she started earning her living as a writer. Virginia Woolf said, "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."  The quote below the title of this blog is from her poem "Love's Witness."

Mississippi: Many Writers and One Abortion Clinic

Though I had fun singing M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i as a kid, I've never been there. Maybe someday I'll have the courage to visit. Yes, it's got quite a place in the literary world-- William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Barry Hannah, Beth Henley, and, of course, legal thriller superstar John Grisham-- and so many more writers. But Mississippi only has one abortion clinic, and it may be closed down in July.

Major News Announcement: Mississippi isn't a healthy place for women! And when state legislator Bubba Carpenter told a bunch of Republicans in May that "with the new law the Legislature had literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi" he sounds naive.  Or delusional.  Listen up, Bubba! Just because there isn't an abortion clinic in Mississippi doesn't mean women won't have abortions in Mississippi.  FYI: the do-it-yourself movement didn't start with HGTV.  Just in case you missed your women's history classes in high school: women have been taking care of unwanted pregnancies ever since, well, the beginning of time. And they will continue to do so. The clinic's doctor, Willie Parker, understands what Bubba apparently does not, and Dr.Parker "shudder[s] to think of the consequences" of closing the only clinic. And this is why abortion must be available in Mississippi and in every state.

Gardener of Stars by Carla Harryman

Here's a novel that's more like poetry than prose.  I found myself getting into the words, the sentences, the language, and that's why I kept reading.  Reading it was like jumping into an abstract or surreal painting. Wow.  Gardener of Stars  by Carla Harryman was published by Atelos.  Here are some excerpts:

"As the raft floated off to sea, out of the mouth of the estuary, semis rattled the hills above, beaming through the fog, delivering products to our delicious nowhere."

"Bladed clouds swell into hurling ribbons.
Jubilantly she takes the martini offered her from a tray and makes her way to the indoor spa where all are assembled around a kidney-shaped pool.  Her opponent is on the opposite side supervising the discharge of medicinal salts into the red liquid. As the attendant works her way around it, meaning collapses into the pool of blood, and the players are once again faced with the question of what to do with each other."

"The trumpet plays on the other side of the door from where I stand next to the john.  A pair of divinities, or giant parents, who are also twins, suffer the little children to come before them as they guard a constellation of keyholes to doorways all of which I want to enter.  Most parents are dumb and these are no exception: they are standing right in front of the place they want me to notice least."

Fiction Writing 101: Are Writers Made or Born?

I'm being lazy today, so I'm going to let Jack Kerouac answer the question posed above.  According to Kerouac: "Writers are made, for anybody who isn't illiterate can write; but geniuses of the writing art like Melville, Whitman or Thoreau are born. Let's examine the word 'genius.' It doesn't mean screwiness or eccentricity or excessive 'talent.' It is derived from the Latin word gignere (to beget) and a genius is simply a person who originates something never known before. Nobody but a Melville could have written Moby Dick, not even Whitman or Shakespeare. Nobody but Whitman could have conceived, originated and written Leaves of Grass; Whitman was born to write Leaves of Grass and Melville was born to write a Moby Dick."

Kerouac continues, of course: "When the question is therefore asked, 'Are writers made or born?' one should first ask, 'Do you mean writers with talent or writers with originality?' Because anyone can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing. Gertrude Stein invented a new form of writing and her imitators are just 'talents.'  Hemingway later invented his own form also. The criterion for judging talent or genius is ephemeral, speaking rationally in this world of graphs, but one gets the feeling definitely when a writer of genius amazes him by strokes of force never seen before and yet hauntingly familiar... the main thing to remember is that talent imitates genius because there's nothing else to imitate.  Since talent can't originate it has to imitate or interpret... Genius gives birth, talent delivers."

(From The Portable Jack Kerouac edited by Ann Charters.)

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

So as I said in my previous post (yep, the one right below), it had been decades since I'd read Death of a Salesman. An op-ed in the NY Times on May 3 ("Death of a Salesman's Dreams" by Lee Siegel) prompted me to read it again.  Everyone (yeah, everyone, right?) knows that the title gives away the ending, so the point of the play isn't that--gasp-- the salesman,Willy Loman, dies. And of course he dies emotionally, spiritually, and psychically before he dies physically, right? So what's the point?

I'm sure there are many points that high school teachers and college professors make when they're teaching Death of a Salesman, but as Lee Siegel writes, "while Death of a Salesman has consolidated its prestige as an exposure of middle-class delusions, the American middle class--as a social reality and a set of admirable values-- has nearly ceased to exist."  Yeah, the middle class has nearly ceased to exist in 2012.  So how are we to think about this play right now in 2012?  A play which is based upon mythology about the American dream, about middle class life, about the notion that by being a hard working, middle class employee you will be a success and you will be able to have what you want. What did Willy Loman want? Happiness and dignity but as Lee Siegel writes, "...today's capitalists no longer share Willy's belief that he could attain dignity through his work." Yeah, it's tough to swallow in 2012 that Willy ever believed such a thing.

It's very, very hard to believe people en masse can derive dignity from being an employee in 2012.  How can there be dignity when at any time we can be laid off, let go, down-sized, fired? (The lucky ones are demoted.) When our salaries are frozen or reduced? When our benefits, whatever they are, are taken away? How can there be dignity when it's understood so well in 2012 that employees are expendable? Of course employees were always expendable, but it wasn't quite so "in your face" back in the day.  As Siegel writes, "... it is unlikely that anyone [in our time] associates happiness and dignity with working hard for a comfortable existence purchased with a modest income" and that "in our current context, Willy's dreams of love, dignity and community through modest work make him a deluded loser."  Death of a Salesman is very intense and not only because the angst is unrelenting but because Willy Loman does indeed look painfully foolish in a world that doesn't exist.

But after I finished reading Death of a Salesman for the first time in decades, I read it again because the American dream is such a powerful mythology and because of what Arthur Miller wrote in his autobiography: "that he hoped the play would expose 'this pseudo life that thought to touch the clouds by standing on top of a refrigerator, waving a paid-up mortgage at the moon, victorious at last."