So Many Books

Spring has finally sprung full force and the garden is a beautiful place. I forgot to mention back on May 1st when I posted a photo of goats beard that it was not actually blooming yet. It still isn’t and won’t be for another two weeks or so. The photo I posted was from last year. These, however, are from today.

Grape hyacinth

Catmint N faassenii “Walker’s Low”

Pussytoes Antennaria plantaginata

Pasque flower Anemone patens

And I’m thinking of trying photo blogging even though I am not a photographer, though it would be fun to learn more about. What do you think? A Clover and One Bee

I’m not quite sure how to write about Goldberg: Variations by Gabriel Josipovici. I want to sing its praises and string together sentences calling it amazing, brilliant, fantastic, marvelous. I want to tell everyone that they have to read this book. I want to say I feel inadequate to describe this book and leave it with just one word: wow. But none of that is satisfactory. I must try to say something to both help me understand what it was I read, and to try and compel you to read the book too.

Goldberg, a writer, is engaged by Tobias Westfield to read to him at night until he falls asleep. Westfield has insomnia and he hopes that someone reading to him will cure him of it. Goldberg arrives and prepares to begin reading. But Westfield wants to talk first. He tells Goldberg he does not want to hear any of the books that already exist. He wants Goldberg to read him something new every night. Goldberg is a writer after all, this should not be a difficult task. And so we are launched into the story of an artist asked to create something under a deadline, and please, make it good.

The book is composed of short “stories” that we are to suppose are what Goldberg writes and reads to Westfield every night. The stories circle around and around each other, characters and objects popping in out and never quite the same in each piece. Thus the variation. But what it all amounts to is a meditation on creativity and art–especially writing, but also the art of creating the self.

The reader is treated to expositions of The Odyssey, descriptions of containers, stories in which a butterfly flies into someone’s ear, stories of Westfield’s son making fun of him in various ways from stealing his mistress to forging a letter from God for Westfield to add to his collection of letters from great personages. We also get stories with Goldberg in them, struggling to write, visiting kings, or playing the role of wise sage. We even hear from Mrs. Goldberg who also likes to write and keeps a diary she doesn’t show her husband. Hers is a wonderful story in which she asks why we write. Her answer? It brings relief:

The feeling is palpable. As one writes the pain around the heart eases, the knots inside one are loosed, the state of shock into which one had been thrown gives way to something else, one picks up ones normal rhythm of breathing again, of moving. Not for long of course. There is no telling when the world will strike again…But writing down the simple facts seems to act as a release, as if one had at last come to accept what before one had refused to acknowledge…But why does writing do that to one when thinking cannot? What is the secret balm that lies in the simple act of putting words down on paper as I am doing now?

Mrs. Goldberg’s release stands in contrast to her husband’s anxiety over not being able to produce writing that will satisfy Westfield enough to keep him employed. But we have to wonder too why Goldberg writes and if he experiences, in spite of the surrounding anxiety to produce something, a form of release as well?

There is another story about the art of the fugue and how it contains a pursuer and a fleer, how they will never meet, can never meet, and how they are mirror images of one another. This is later, in another story, used to describe the writer and the story. I found this an intriguing idea. The pursuer and the pursued can never meet, yet they are always together, cannot be without each other, and even exist in one person–the writer is the story and the story is the writer, each pursue and possess and are possessed by the other but yet are never completely and entirely one.

I could go on and on. This book would be a fantastic book group book if the people in the group are adventurous and willing to trust that all the disparate pieces come together in the end. It takes work though, it is not an easy book. There are layers upon layers; you can stay on the surface or mine for gold. The book is so very discussable. It is one of those books that has Ideas in it, wrapped up in beautiful writing and a good story. It is the kind of book that lends itself to re-reading, and re-read it I will. Not right away though. I have to allow the first reading to sit for awhile and stew.

At last I know why all those who have been raving about Josipovici for the last year or so have been so excited about him. I am now an admirer and making plans for acquiring more of his books. It’s a bit too early yet to tell, but it looks promising that he will make it onto my list of favorite authors. Yup. He’s that good.

Time to pick the next book for the Slaves of Golconda. All are welcome to join in the reading and the discussion.

Put your two cents in

This week in school we are learning how to search the Internet beyond Google. We are learning about the Deep Web and all kinds of spiffy databases and directories that can point a person in some interesting directions. I’ve perhaps been having too much fun following links and playing around to see what turns up. I say too much fun because it has been taking me longer than usual to get through the readings this week. However, it’s all in the name of learning, right?

Because all the other searching I’ve been learning how to do has been in subscription-only databases I couldn’t really share much of what I found with you. But the Internet searching I am doing this week is free and you can poke around too, so I thought I’d share some of the more particularly bookish locations with you.

Start your search engines!

• Open Directory Project is a human-edited directory (you can become a volunteer editor if you feel so inclined). The point of the directory is for humans to cull the good from the bad and then organize it to make it easier for the searcher to find. Literature comes under the arts section in this directory and currently has 27,330 listings which are broken down even further into categories like “American Literature” (1,024) and “Short Stories” (21).
• Bubl Link is another directory. Created by librarians and organized into Dewey categories, this directory is hosted by the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathcyde University in Glasgow. And the 800s (literature and rhetoric) are filled with bookish goodness. It is a clean, and lovely directory, just what you would expect from librarians.
• The Virtual Library is another directory and just so happens to be the “oldest catalogue of the Web.” Not especially filled with bookish lisintgs, it does have fantastic leads to sites on gender studies, women’s history, art, and libraries including reference sources.
• Librarian’s Internet Index was created by librarians for librarians but it’s too good to keep a secret. It is not as easy to use as the directories where you click on useful headings, you have to do a search, but the searching is easy. And where else will you find a link to Wine Literature of the World?

In my playing around following links, I found two sites I thought were particularly fun and will definitely return to. The first is Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy and Utopia. It is a bibliography that “lists, cites, and describes sf & critical works from a feminist perspective.” There are links and other resources indexed too and among the vast book lists, also manages to include film and television, theater and performance art.

And finally, it seems as though I have seen this one before, but maybe not. Domestic Goddess a.k.a. “scribbling mobs of women” is a moderated e-journal focusing on women writers who mostly wrote between 1830-1920 and who wrote “domestic fiction.” Here you will find essays on the likes of Kate Chopin, Louisa May Alcott and Edith Wharton.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Internet? I recommend having a snack and your beverage of choice on-hand and an hour or two or more of time before you set off clicking around. And please, send a report if you find something really good.

I had a volunteer shift at the public library on Saturday. It was a rather quiet and boring day so when librarian “Mike” came by and said that he had forgotten my name I thought maybe he was going to stop to chat for a minute. I should have known better because last time librarian Mike spoke to me it was to scold me for answering a reference question and I wasn’t even answering a reference question! But that didn’t matter, “volunteers are not to answer reference questions” is all he could say over and over as I stood at the catalog computer explaining to a patron–who had asked me–that the “in transit” location listing on the book he had wanted to check out meant that someone else had already requested it and it wasn’t available. If librarian Mike weren’t busy chanting behind my back, he also would have heard me tell the patron that the librarian at the information desk could help him find another copy of the book. I’m sure I really made librarian Mike mad by ignoring him completely the entire time.

So why then did I think when librarian Mike approached me on Saturday that he was going to be nice and chat? Maybe it was because all I was doing was sitting at the welcome desk, smiling and saying good morning to people as they came into the library. There was absolutely nothing he could chant at me about.

After the exchange of “sorry I forgot your name” pleasantries, librarian Mike got down to the business of why he came over. It wasn’t to chat. “Don’t you have a name badge or something?” he asked. No, no name badges, I said. We’ve just got these, and I jiggled the lanyard around my neck that had a big button pin attached at the bottom that said “volunteer” on it. They used to be bigger badges I explained but with the library merger they took away our big badges and gave us these pins. ‘I see,” said librarian Mike as I continued to smile at him not yet realizing where this conversation was going. “Well,” he said, “would you please pin that to your shirt?” Huh? “It’s hard to see and we want patrons to know you are a volunteer,” he continued, “we don’t want them to think you are a librarian.” Uh, sure, I said.

I looked at the pin. I looked at my shirt. I imagined the hole the pin would put in my shirt. I thought, he’s not my supervisor and I don’t work here. I’m not going to ruin my shirt for this jerk. I kept smiling away at librarian Mike and made like I was taking the pin off the lanyard and going to put it on my shirt in order to get him to go away. He walked off to the reference desk on the other side of the library. I left the pin on the lanyard hanging around my neck and wondered if I was the only volunteer he picked on or if he was an equal opportunity bully. Good thing there was only half an hour left of my shift because I spent it grumpy, feeling insulted and belittled and stewing over librarian Mike.

Thing is, I never pretend I am a librarian. I make it a point to tell patrons I am a volunteer when they ask me things I am not supposed to help them with, like reference questions, because I don’t want them to think I am lazy and don’t want to help them. Librarian Mike doesn’t know I am in library school but maybe he senses it; senses that I am comfortable and confident and that someday I am going to be an awesome librarian, the kind of librarian he can only dream of being. I will also be nice to volunteers.

Emerson’s address, Woman, was a lecture read before the Woman’s Rights Convention in Boston on September 20, 1855.

Emerson agrees with all the standard beliefs about women. Women are more delicate and more impressionable than men. They also are keepers of some kind of secret wisdom:

In this sense, as more delicate mercuries of the imponderable and immaterial influences, what they say and think is the shadow of coming events…all wisdoms Woman knows; though she takes them for granted, and does not explain them as discoveries, like the understanding of man. Men remark figure: women always catch the expression. They inspire by a look, and pass with us not so much by what they say or do, as by their presence. They learn so fast and convey the result so fast as to outrun the logic of their slow brother and make his acquisitions poor…And any remarkable opinion or movement shared by woman will be the first sign of revolution.

If I were sitting in the audience, my hand would shoot up into the air and I would have to interrupt. Erm, ’scuse me, Mr. Emerson? Um, yes, well, you certainly allocate quite a lot of power to women. I mean with all that wisdom, quick understanding and ability to incite revolution, maybe you could explain then why it is women have to hold a women’s rights convention? With all our supposed power, why is it women don’t already have the right to vote, own property, and have an education?

Perhaps it’s because women are all about sentiment while men are the ones with the will?

Man is the will, and Woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail: when Woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail. When women engage in any art or trade, it is usually as a resource, not as a primary object. The life of the affections is primary to them, so that there is usually no employment or career which they will not with their own applause and that of society quit for a suitable marriage. And they give entirely to their affections, set their whole fortune on the die, lose themselves eagerly in the glory of their husbands and children. Man stands astonished at a magnanimity he cannot pretend to.

Erm, Mr. Emerson? Astonished? Personally, I’m astonished you dare trot out that line of bull. I don’t see men lining up for the title of domestic god. So spare me the women live for their husband’s and children crap.

Of course the women have not produced any masterpieces baloney crops up. But that shouldn’t matter because women are the best creators of conversation. Besides, women don’t need to decorate canvas with paint or paper with words when women themselves are ornaments and decorate “life with manners, with properties, order and grace.”

Emerson agrees with the charge of the newspapers that women are “victims of temperament”

They have tears, and gayeties, and faintings, and glooms and devotion to trifles. Nature’s end, of maternity for twenty years, was of so supreme importance that it was to be secured at all events, even to the sacrifice of the highest beauty. They are more personal. Men taunt them that, whatever they do, say, read or write, they are thinking of themselves and their set. Men are not to the same degree temperamented, for there are multitudes of men who live to objects quite out of them, as to politics, to trade, to letters or an art, unhindered by any influence of constitution.

Right, men never think of themselves. They are completely objective and never make any kind of decisions out of self-interest. Uh-huh.

But in spite of all our failings and delicacies, Emerson declares that women “have an unquestionable right to their own property.” Very generous. It is always easy to give something when it was never your to give in the first place.

As far as voting goes, women should not be kept from it with the argument that they know nothing of the affairs of the world. A good number of men know nothing either and it is not uncommon for them to be told how to vote before they walk into the polls by their party. Emerson is certain women couldn’t do any worse.

The other argument that allowing women to become involved in politics would unsex and contaminate them, well, Emerson says,

that only accuses our existing politics, shows how barbarous we are, - that our policies are so crooked, made up of things not to be spoken, to be understood only by wink and nudge ; this man to be coaxed, that man to be bought, and that other to be duped. It is easy to see that there is contamination enough, but it rots the men now, and fills the air with stench.

I can agree with Emerson on that point. He also goes on to argue that in the US we have laws against taxation without representation, therefore if women are not allowed to vote, to represent themselves, then they should not be taxed either.

One more reason why women should be allowed more rights–they are so good and moral and have such a civilizing influence, that their increased presence in the public sphere can only further “improve and refine the men.”

The real root of the reason women want more rights however, appears to come down to the fact that men are falling down on the job of being men:

Woman should find in man her guardian. Silently she looks for that, and when she finds that. he is not, as she instantly does, she betakes her to her own defences, and does the best she can. But when he is her guardian, fulfilled with all nobleness, knows and accepts his duties as her brother, all goes well for both.

I was thinking of calling this post “Emerson Makes Me Want to Throw Up” for the way in which he describes women in such a stereotypical way. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why the women at the convention didn’t tar and feather him. But then I remembered it was 1855, Emerson is a product of his times, and it was meaningful that he was speaking at the convention in support of women’s rights at all. So while I can’t forgive him his “angels in the house” praise of women, I do appreciate his attempt to support women in becoming educated and moving beyond the purely domestic sphere, though I wish he could have managed a more enlightened argument.

Next week’s Emerson: Address at the Opening of Concord Free Public Library

The plant sale today was marvelous. We arrived to wait at about 9:30 for the doors to open at 11:00. Gardeners with their carts and wagons and wheelbarrows milled about. There was the low hum in the air that comes from hundreds of people talking. My Bookman and I found an unoccupied bench and parked our cart beside us. We had forgotten to bring books with us. How could we forget? Since we couldn’t read we talked about what books we were excited about reading.

My Bookman is looking forward to a new book by Matthew Woodring Stover, the author of Blade of Tyshalle which he loved. The book won’t be out until the end of the year. We are both looking forward to the Carlos Ruiz Zafon book to be published next spring that is a prequel to Shadow of the Wind. I was looking forward to reading a lot of things, but at the time, I was anticipating picking up A Field Guide to Getting Lost at the library later in the afternoon.

The time waiting flew by. We entered the building about 11:05 and had all of our plants and some we were picking up for friends, found, selected and paid for by 11:35. My orderly pre-planning aided by a numbered map handed out while we were waiting upon which we drew our path through the fray and my Bookman’s astounding cart handling abilities allowed us to purchase every single plant on our list. Now we just have to plant them. Which we began doing this afternoon. Every year we dig up a little more lawn with the goal of someday being lawn-free, at least in the front yard since the dog rules the backyard. Perhaps I will take a picture once we get everything in, though it won’t be very pretty since the plants are all very small, that’s why we can buy them so inexpensively (most are $1.50).

But enough about gardening. I did get to read a little bit last night. I luxuriated in Margaret Atwood’s poetry. I am almost two-thirds of the way through The Door and finding it absolutely fantastic. I swear there is nothing that woman can’t write.

This afternoon while taking a gardening break I began reading the book I was anticipating, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, and I am thus far loving it and I am only on page 19. She is currently mulling over what it means to be lost while circling around a quote by Meno:

How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?

She has also liberally quoted Thoreau and Virginia Woolf. Yup, this book and I are going to get on just fine.

Ah, vacation has begun. I can feel the stress already beginning to melt away. I have more LexisNexis searching to do for school tonight but I hope to be able to spend some time reading too, enough time for me to be able to have something of interest to post about tomorrow other than a quote or links. Of course, Maybe I’ll have a made gardener story to tell too.

In the meantime, I was not surprised to find this article in the New York Times that reports on a Department of Education report that has reviewed the results of President Bush’s $1billion a year Reading First program and found it wanting. Reading First is intended to improve the reading comprehension of of low-income children. The program, according to the Department of Education report has not improved reading scores. Can’t say that it’s much of a surprise really, I mean look whose idea it was. And to top that off there are allegations that federal officials and private contractors with ties to publishers “advised” educators on what reading materials to buy. There are also emails in which educators who wanted to follow an alternative curriculum as “dirtbags” who were “trying to crash our party.” Nope, no surprise that the program is a failure.

If that has gotten you down, check out the high school kids at the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest. These kids memorize and perform poems to compete for a $20,000 scholarship. The are bright and love poetry and totally get the poems they are reciting. They are truly inspiring.

I’ve not been able to do much reading lately. Or rather, when I have been able to read, I have been pouring over the big plant sale catalog (an annual fundraiser for the Friends’ school) and mapping out my plant-buying trajectory for Friday. In order not to get bogged down in the mass of mad gardeners, one has to have a plan.

School has also kept me busy. We have now moved on to learning how to use LexisNexis Academic. I can’t say that I like it very much. Instead of being able to type in the commands, I have to choose from drop down lists and check boxes. Blech. I know that’s supposed to make it easy and user friendly, but I hate it. It looks messy and I feel like my search is not entirely in my control.

I did get to read more of Larry McMurty’s Books: A Memoir at lunch the other day. It continues to be enjoyable. He writes like we’re talking over coffee; the conversation hops from here to there and then over there and then winds its way back to where it started only to move out from there in a different direction.

Since I’ve not had much chance to read of late, I thought I’d toss out a bit of the passage I mentioned not long ago–last week was it? or the week before?–on Homer in Josipovici’s Goldberg: Variations. The passage is very long and involves Golberg expounding on The Odyssey and the character of Odysseus and why Homer depicts Odysseus as a liar. After doing some comparing and contrasting of Odysseus, Achilles and Hector and why Odysseus finds lying necessary (homecoming, it’s all about homecoming and very well put too), we come to this:

You ask me, Goldberg says, why Homer makes Odysseus a liar, and how he can square that with his presentation of him as the hero of his epic. The answer, I suspect, is that only he who holds firmly to a course of action he knows to be right can lie well. Mētis, cunning, requires the ability to keep silent when need be, and the ability to lie convincingly when that is required. However, I am sure you are right in suggesting that Odysseus seems to take pleasure in his lies in ways we would perhaps find reprehensible today. But is it not perhaps we who are at fault? asks Goldberg. Do we not have too anxious a relation to truth? Earlier ages, which trusted more in providence than we do, were not afraid of lies, saw them, in fact, as being necessary as speech itself to man in his dealings with others. The source of Odysseus’ lies is the same as the source of his cunning and endurance: an energy which is confident in its goal and relishes all challenges. For there is no doubt that Odysseus goes out of his way to seek adventures, whether in the den of the Cyclops or even, disguised, in his own home. The protection of Athena gives him the confidence to scheme, disguise himself and lie. Or perhaps Homer merely calls such confidence the living of a life under the protection of a goddess.

I still don’t like Odysseus, but after that, I feel like I understand him a little better.

Last week when I asked for suggestions of great books for armchair traveling I had no idea I would get the response I did. My TBR list has grown exponentially because of all the great recommendations. Because I shouldn’t be the only one with a list like this, here it is.

• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskel. Victorian England
• Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. Kenya. I read this after the movie came out and loved it.
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Bombay/Mumbai
• Peony in Love by Lisa See. China
• Death at La Fenice: a Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon. Venice
• Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski. India, China, Africa
• Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron. The Silk Road, China, Iran, Turkey
• Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk. Istanbul
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. 1920s Paris
• Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris by Sarah Turnbull. Paris
• Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia by Chris Stewart. Spain
• Confessions of an Eco Sinner: Travels to Find Where My Stuff Comes From by Fred Pearce
• Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes. Russia
• From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East, In Xanadu: A Quest (following Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Xanadu), City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters, all are by William Dalrymple
• The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. I’ve read this one and can say it is marvelous.
• Yoga for People Who Can’t Be bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer. Amsterdam, Cambodia, Rome, Indonesia, New Orleans, Libya, and places in between.
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, both by Rebecca Solnit
• The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. Afghanistan
• Kilvert’s Diary, 1870-1879 Francis Kilvert. Welsh borderlands, Victorian era
• Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson. Pakistan and Afghanistan
• Travels into the Interior of Africa by Mungo Park. 1795 West Africa
• Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley. Unmarried Victorian lady in Africa.
• Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean by Paul Theroux
• A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller by Frances Mayes
• Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue: Scenes from the Non-Christian World by Paul Bowles
• Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon by Colin Fletcher
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail and In a Sunburned Country (Australia) by Bill Bryson
• Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam by Andrew Pham
• Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines by Anthony Bourdain
• Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach (Paris, Oxford, Milan)
• Don’t Let’s Go the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood and Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller
• Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude by Dava Sobel
• War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Señior Vivo and the Coca Lord, and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernieres (fictional South American country)
• The 8.55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames (following Agatha Christie from London to Baghdad on a train)
• 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe by Mark Jacobson
• Royal Road to Romance by Richard Halliburton (Matterhorn, Gibraltar and other places)
• Forbidden Journey: From Peking to Kashmir by Ella Maillart and News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir by Peter Fleming (Maillart and Fleming were companions on the same trip in 1935)
• Frontiers of Heaven: A Journey to the End of China by Stanley Stewart
• Sahara by Michael Palin
• In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon
• Around Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks

And if that’s not enough, for more ideas there is Longitude, recommended reading for travelers and World Hum, travel dispatches from a shrinking planet.

Whew! That’s enough to keep me “traveling” for years! Thanks for all your suggestions.

For my vacation, I’ve decided to read one of my books for the Science 2008 Challenge, Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us and Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. And, of course, Herodotus. I wish I could read all of these books they sound so good! I’m halfway through my quarter at school so I will have to plan another “trip” when I get two-week break between classes.