Dramatic Interpretation: "Uninterrupted Consciousness Of Myself" from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions

In this post, I share an audio podcast dramatic interpretation of an excerpt from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions. 

Who would have thought a spanking would have sparked a revolution? In this Eighteenth Century biographical classic, the birth of the coming-of-age narrative finds its place in this sensuous tale of a boy's "first uninterrupted consciousness of himself" in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophical biography Confessions (1786).

PDF Copy for Printing

Dramatic Interpretation - "Dixie Dawn's Birthday Party" an Excerpt from Lewis Nordan's Novel Music of the Swamp

In this post, I present a dramatic interpretation of  an excerpt from Lewis Nordan's novel Music of the Swamp.

It’s Summer in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and Sugar Mecklin is invited to Dixie Dawn’s birthday party - but the thing is she and her family are the pariahs of this white-trash town and no one shows up but our brave protagonist Sugar - in this rollicking farcical dark comedy by American author Lewis Nordan . . .

PDF Copy for Printing

Inequality in America: W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk and HBO's The Night Of

A black stranger … for instance, is liable to be stopped anywhere on the public highway and made to state his business to the satisfaction of any white interrogator. If he fails to give a suitable answer, or seems too independent or “sassy,” he may be arrested or summarily driven away. 

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, p. 113

Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. I like to use this book as a point of reference because every time injustice is carried out, deniers will often remonstrate thusly: "But, that was then, this is now."

No. History tends to repeat itself. And not only that, old wounds heal slowly when subsumed under the relentless wheelhouse of time.

The tyranny of the interrogator persists. It hides behind "gun rights" lobbyists and political candidates using fear of the other to keep constituents voting for them on election day.

Americans live in a country where last year 1,134 people were killed by armed police officers. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African-American History scholar at Harvard, was arrested in front of his own home. American children do not have equal access to education. The United States, one of the world's most developed nations, fares poorly in its citizens' share of the wealth. Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Slovenia, and Ethiopia have better equality in the distribution of income across families than the United States. I am not just throwing out facts. I am suggesting that inequality spikes through multiple layers of society.

In The Night Of, Nasir Khan is accused of murdering a white woman.

I can't help but think about popular culture. In the HBO miniseries The Night Of, Nasir Kahn, a Pakistani American from Queens, is brought in as number one suspect in the murder of a young white girl on the Upper West Side. The season finale has not aired yet, so viewers don't know the identity of the killer. As a crime drama procedural puffed up as a cable television series, we're not sure if Naz is a killer or not -- but one thing the show makes clear is that once interrogated Naz is drawn into the bone-crushing bureaucracy of the criminal justice system, the perception of a mindless crowd, and the truth that even if Naz is innocent, once spooled through the system, Naz is transformed -- and it is not exactly a pretty transformation.

I digress a little bit. My main point is that the United States, with all of its proclamations of freedom, democracy, and justice for all, has difficulty in being honest about who exactly enjoys this so-called freedom, democracy, and justice.

PDF Copy for Printing

Image Source: HBO

Letter from Walker Percy to Fr. Dominic Braud, O.S.B.

American novelist Walker Percy wrote Fr. Dominic Braud a letter on March 9, 1980.

Letter from Walker Percy to Fr. Dominic Braud, O.S.B. (Stamped March 10, 2010; Handwritten)

Fr. Dominic Braud, O.S.B. was the choirmaster at Saint Joseph Abbey and Seminary College in St. Benedict, Louisiana for decades. He was a Benedictine monk and priest and he had formed a friendship with Percy after Percy had become an Oblate of Saint Benedict. In the following letter, it appears that Braud had sent Percy a copy of a poem written by William Alexander Percy that was set to music. William Alexander Percy was Walker Percy's guardian and raised Percy as if he were his own father. Click the link to retrieve a scan of the envelope, the back of the envelope, and the actual letter.

     I have transcribed the letter thus:

Walker Percy P.O. Box 510 Covington, LA 70433 March 9, 1980 Dear Father Dominic —      It was very good of you to send me the Green setting of Uncle Will's poem. No, I don't remember seeing it and so am all the more grateful for having it.      What would you say to my coming out sometime and demanding that you sing it? — Otherwise I'll never know how it sounds —        Many Thanks again, Walker

PDF Copy for Printing

Reading Is Not A Career Skill: Or Is It?

Young Person Reading

I noticed that I had “reading” as a skill on my Linkedin profile. Who puts reading as a skill on Linkedin? Seriously, the last time I told a prospective employer that I liked to read I think I lost the bid for the job.

Curious about reading as a marketable job skill, I punched in "reading as a skill" in the Linkedin search engine, and I got 3,987,983 hits. Certainly, most of these hits correlate to “Reading Teacher” or “Reading Stories” and not necessarily to barebones reading.

Lots of ink has been spilled about reading. And most of it good. PSA's love talking about reading! Hey, frigging Harry Potter loves to read. And I think there is a wonderful PSA of Meryl Streep reading a book.

But I guarantee you if you walk into a workplace and see a guy reading a book I bet you a million bucks his supervisor’s going to think: “that guy’s not doing his job.”

Hell, when I was a high school English teacher, I think when I brought a book to lunch or was caught reading during my planning period, I could swear I got the suspicious eyes from my principal.

Maybe I should have been grading papers. Or, something.

I never realized reading as a skill until I started to write for money.

See. Reading is good when you’re a writer. One of my clients needed some copy on the recent Jeff Koons exhibit at the Whitney so I wrote a five hundred word blurb so he could paste it to his blog. Simple.

I think he was impressed. I guess reading the Arts section of the Times paid off.

I like to think there is a special part of my brain that I like to call the Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations catch pan of useless but fun tidbits gleaned from years of idle reading.

I swear there must be a part of my unconscious that tags quotable quotes when I am reading.

It’s weird because I’ll be writing something and an appropriate quote that matches what I’m writing triggers in my Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations catch pan. It’s uncanny.

Now, these are the days before making notes on a Kindle.

Now all my memorable quotes are memorized for me by Amazon’s cloud service.

But it takes years of reading to build this skill set.

And I am not sure it is a skill set.

Until I get paid for reading, I am thinking of deleting “reading” from my list of attributes. It’s like one of those secret skills. You tell someone you’re reading, and they look at you like you’re from the get-go critiquing their non-reading.

There’s all this garbage circulating that the Internet squashes reading and replaces it with information pawing.

Now, I have a Feedly, bookmarks, and I paw the Web just like any other troll, but I also take time to fucking read. I mean sustained reading. Like reading for more than forty-five minutes without clicking backspace.

I honestly don’t understand all these Internet cleanse people. They complain they don’t have time to read, and they are all nostalgic for those days when they curled up with a book.

Maybe it’s easy for me because I take frequent local commutes on the New York City Subway System.

Until they install wireless access — that they have been doing in the nicer Manhattan parts — I will be content with reading unmolested.

PDF Copy for Printing

Image Courtesy:  distinctdisciples

Public Libraries Still Matter in the Age of Amazon

Poets House in Battery Park City (Manhattan)
is a good model for how libraries should look and feel.

News flash: libraries have been offering e-books for free long before Amazon started doling out an e-book subscription service. With Amazon’s recent Kindle Unlimited service, readers can access thousands of books for free. The catch? It’s ten dollars a month. But libraries have been offering a similar service for free to patrons for years. Why not more press on libraries? To answer some questions about libraries, free books, and bridging the digital divide, I teamed up with New York University Reference Librarian Ray Pun to discuss how libraries are helping to mind the digital gap. The result is this commentary.

Use It Or Lose It

There's a saying that goes "use it or lose it." It’s an apt reason to keep your brain active, because, you know, you’ll lose it. The analogy applies to why we use libraries and how they’re helping to not only bridge the digital divide but adding more fodder to the trough. If you don’t use books — well — I don’t even want to think about what it would be like to lose it.

Libraries Matter

I have a hunch that people think that since there’s the Internet then libraries don’t matter. It’s just a hunch, but it’s hidden in the comments I get on being a librarian: “You need a degree to do that?” Yes, librarians need a degree to do “that.” Putting aside my rancor for such questions, I think it tells us a little bit about the current cultural zeitgeist and where we’re going.

There's a misconception that if I can Google it then it must be free. While the open Internet is indeed a treasure trove of knowledge, it's also a depository of useless junk. Librarians keep the door open between the open Internet and its mass chaos of information and the stuff that’s behind closed doors.

To give an idea of what I am talking about, take a look at the Internet Public Library. It’s a deceptively simple website, but it does something different that Google does not do. Behind the HTML code and links are a team of librarians who are constantly updating links to provide access to good information. So, if you need to get reputable and accurate sources you could Google it, but knowing that a team of information specialists curate and cull the “good stuff” makes the Internet Public Library, a unique place.

Knowledge Deserves To Be Free

We tend to think of libraries as brick and mortar buildings that house books, and while this is true, the concept of “the library” is less about locking knowledge up in a safe deposit box, and more about the free dissemination of ideas. The word free is cheap, and I do not mean to suggest that “free” equates with “worthless.”

Libraries are free in the sense that they keep us as a community free from all the nasty stuff that comes from not being free. What would it look like to live in the tyranny of a library-less world? I’d say it would be rather gloomy. And not too pretty.

We might think, “I already own an iPad, and my house has enough books, so why should I bother about using the library?” The logic that stipulates freedom with “I already have that” is the logic that one day could threaten the very concept libraries embody — equal access to knowledge. I use knowledge in the broadest sense of the term. Knowledge cannot be confined by a book, iPad, or even Google’s vast search engine. Yet -- not everyone owns an iPad. And while according to an April 2014 Pew Research study, 87% of adults have access to the Internet, it isn’t 100%. Some libraries have started to mend the gap by lending out tablets such as iPads to people, library users, and complete strangers with library cards! Other institutions such as the New York Public Library are experimenting with a new service: lending portable MiFi Hotspot devices to underserved youth and communities by allowing them to have Internet access outside of the library hours.

Knowledge is bound up with community. Knowledge is supposed to be shareable, and the access we enjoy through our libraries is only as free as we struggle for its freedom. That’s why libraries, even though they are strapped with mounting operational costs and the threat of being cut off from state, local, and federal funding, continue to innovate, to continue to bridge the digital divide. For example, the simple innovation of providing MiFi devices to users who cannot access library services during opening hours closes the gap a little bit. Or loaning out iPads and laptops to users who otherwise cannot afford these gateways to knowledge.

Support Libraries

Support your public library, starting today and in numerous ways: whether it is with monetary or book donations, paying off your library fines or writing to your state and local assembly person about why your library is important to you and your community. You need to stand up for your library because you are standing up for your community. When you keep visiting your libraries, it brings up their “public services metrics” or in layman’s terms, the “headcount” reader goes up, which translates into more resources libraries can roll out for public use. Keeping the building filled with people who use it is good for the library. They can then report to their constituents about the increases of public users in their libraries on a quarterly basis.

I'll End With A Story

It reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me that I thought reflects what libraries do. When he was a teenager, he lived in a small town in South Louisiana with a local municipal public library. He went to the library in the Summer to find a book he wanted to read. He told me, “I don’t remember who told me about the book, but it was called Birdy by William Wharton.” The library did not have it nor did any of the local branches, so the librarian looked at him with a smile on her face and said, “Let’s do an interlibrary loan.” He told me that he didn’t know what an interlibrary loan was, but it sounded neat. “She had me fill out a form — and mind you; this was before the Internet was all the rage,” he said. “In a few weeks, the book arrived from the State Library, and I was able to read the book. I had no idea such a small miracle was possible.” For him, it was like Christmas in July; he’s now a writer and teaches philosophy. Now that ninety percent of all libraries in the U.S. loan out e-books, interlibrary loan looks like an antiquated version of lending, but most libraries still have it and it’s the most thanked-for feature of public libraries by patrons.

Librarians intrinsically know the value of libraries. We just don’t talk about it enough. Let’s spread the word. A call to action: use it and don’t lose it — for the present and future lovers of knowledge out there. Including me. And you. All of us. You can still subscribe to Kindle Unlimited if you want, but check out the library too.

By Greig Roselli (with Ray Pun)

N.B.: The above article is a reprint from the same LinkedIn Pulse article.

PDF Copy for Printing

Image Source: Poets House

Greig's Best Books Read in 2013

Taking my cue from Stephen King in the “Best of” issue of Entertainment Weekly and my High School librarian Margot Polley who every year lists her favorite books, I do the same for my favorite books read in 2013. Note I do not list books necessarily published in 2013, but books I read. This year I read a little bit of everything, so instead of listing books by categories, I decided to just list six memorable books that I thought were awesome. My criteria for selection was whether or not the book was fun to read. If you want to make your own list, go ahead. So here goes …

1. Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

The best novel I read this year. Shriver delivers in her latest diatribe-cum-novel on the healthy eating craze. Pandora Halfdanarson's brother Edison comes to live with her and he's 336 pounds -- a shock to the sister and her nuclear family. The novel glitters with cute tidbits like jabs on healthy eating -- none of the meals Pandora's health crazed husband cooks up are appealing. I love Shriver's nice touches like Pandora's line of talking dolls she sells online that say mean things for people you love. It's standard Shriver replete with an impressive vocabulary and insight into sibling relationships. 

2. Truffaut/Hitchcock by François Truffaut (an interview with Alfred Hitchcock)

The best cinema book I read. Two venerable directors talk about cinema in this classic interview conducted by the French New Wave director Truffaut and stringent auteur Hitchcock. Less on biography and more on form and execution, this book is a fascinating read for cinephiles. I personally love both Truffaut and Hitchcock and I came away with the conclusion that Truffaut makes moves born from his exacting emotional intuition and Hitchcock is the total opposite. Truffaut quizzes Hitchcock on each and every film he ever made and the result is a trip through film history and a rare chance to experience two great movie masters talk shop.  

3. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

The grossest book I ever read. I will never think about digestion the same ever again. I hear Mary Roach is famous for writing about taboo subjects like cadavers and stuff, and so I wanted to read her. Do you know why a dog throws up his food? He enjoyed the meal. Did you know that food, as it goes from your mouth to your stomach, is called a bolus? The book is chock full of AMAZING facts about eating and everything that goes with, from the mouth to the rectum. Mary Roach is funny and informative and she has the most clever footnotes ever contrived by an author. The book is not a list of facts about the digestive system. It's more of a series of encounters with scientists who are trying to innovate on everything from saliva to taste buds. 

4. Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt

The best philosophy book I read this year was written by a journalist. Holt asks everyone who will listen the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" This simple question is actually a doozy. Why does the universe exist at all? The universe could just as easily never have existed. I remember in College my Metaphysics professor spent weeks discussing it and I got a dose of it in reading Heidegger. This book does not require philosophical expertise and I think it is a good way to get into philosophy. 

5. The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

Every year I gobble up books written by the same author and this year the winner was A.M. Homes. The End of Alice is about Chappy, a murderer pedophile in Sing Sing who has an epistolary romance with an unnamed teenage girl who is obsessed with a young boy (who likes to collect his scabs and eat 'em). The novel reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates's fictional Dahmeresque novel Zombie. Homes wrote a postscript to the novel called Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel The End of Alice that I have yet to read.

6. The Last Pictures by Trevor Paglen

There is a certain class of artificial satellites flung into Earth's orbit that is far enough away to stay within Earth's gravitational field but will never either fall back to earth or drift off into interstellar space. They are, say, stuck. Paglen conceived and implemented a way to preserve human memory indefinitely, even after we are all gone. Attaching a small silicon disk etched with curated black and white photographs, Paglen aims to eternally archive humanity's sojourn on the blue planet. The idea is inspired by NASA's "Golden Record" project for the Voyager spacecraft, but less humanistic. The idea is that even after humans are extinct there will still be these "last pictures," a small testament to our shenanigans. Most of the photographs, like a bunch of wasps affixed with what looks like a jet pack, are only meaningful once you read the liner notes, but I like how Paglen tries to capture us in our foibles and shortcomings.

PDF Copy for Printing

Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas)

Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas) is a book of 13 essays about my journey from New Orleans to NYC. Most of the essays were originally written for this blog, Stones of Erasmus, which I then took out, mishmashed, and turned it into a story about my journey from New Orleans to New York, mixed in with anecdotes about things I shouldn't have said in subway cars, yeshivas, Catholic high schools, my college classroom -- you get the gist. Check it out. I made it into a Kindle Book Here.

PDF Copy for Sharing

Sharing The Myth of Sisyphus With Kids: The Original Rolling Stone

I’ve been teaching Greek myth to a class of 8-12-year-olds since February, and it’s been so much fun hearing what the kids say about myths when they process the psychological insights I can share. One of the primary themes of our class has been how and why the myth is still relevant today, thousands of years after these stories were first told. A particularly useful recent lesson was on the myth of Sisyphus, an excellent metaphor for human struggle.

The Myth of Sisyphus

Sisyphus was a Greek king in the evil trickster mold who found trouble with Zeus when he traded his knowledge of where Zeus was cavorting with a river nymph to her father in exchange for a spring of pure water for the people of his kingdom. In anger, Zeus had Sisyphus carried away to the underworld, but Sisyphus tricked Death into wearing his chains. No one could die until Ares released Death and gave Sisyphus to him.

Sisyphus tricked Death once again (Death must not have been the brightest guy), persuading him that since his (Sisyphus’) wife hadn’t performed the proper funeral rites, he must return to the upper world to correct the situation. Once there, of course, he lived happily for another 50 years or so.

For his offenses against the honor of the gods, Sisyphus is punished by being forced to push a large rock up a steep hill, only to see it roll back down again. He must trek down to the bottom of the mountain and start pushing still.

French-Algerian Writer Albert Camus Reinvents the Myth of Sisyphus for Modern Readers

In his seminal essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes about this myth, arguing that Sisyphus’ fate is the fate of every human. Every day we must do the same tasks: going to work, cleaning our homes, and making our meals. We roll the rock up the hill; each day, it rolls back down, and we must start again.

However, Camus argues that Sisyphus is not genuinely cursed because he isn’t unhappy with his fate. The gods can force him to repeat this task, but they can’t force him to hate it. He is content, and therefore Zeus’ punishment has failed.

Teaching the Myth to My Kids in the Classroom

It was refreshing when I explained all of this to my kids because they asked brilliant questions. They always want to know why the characters in Greek myths didn’t make different, better choices. One question came up: why doesn’t Sisyphus chip away at the rock to make it smaller and more manageable for himself? I compared that to working less hard on studying for an exam and getting a “C” instead of an “A.” You can always take steps to make things easier for yourself, but you’d be cheating yourself at the same time. They got it, and it was cool to see them getting it.

PDF Copy for Printing

Theresa of Avila on the Meaning of Life

Handwriting Credit: Greig Roselli

EZ Link for Sharing

The Best Novels I Read in 2012

Top Ten Novels Read in 2012

1.       Lionel Shriver. The Post-Birthday World .  2007. 528 pp.

I was intrigued by the storytelling. Shriver is da bomb.

2.       Lionel Shriver. We Need to Talk About Kevin. 2003. 400 pp.

About a high school shooting, it is a dark indictment of American mores.

3.       William Trevor. Felicia's Journey. 1994. 240 pp.

Stepping into this novel is like stepping on a hot plate with set to slow burn fuck up.

4.       Don Delillo. White Noise.  310 pp. 1985

Written over twenty years ago, this novel may be too ironic to still matter.

5.       Lionel Shriver. A Perfectly Good Family: A Novel  305 pp.

Southern family, a house, sibling rivalries – and the death of parents!

6.       Norton Juster. The Phantom Tollbooth. 1961. 272 pp.

Very clever novel about how to overcome boredom and to think for oneself.

7.       Terry Pratchett. Hogfather (Discworld, #20) 1996. 448 pp.

Ho Ho Ho. Death cracks me up. An alternative Christmas story for sure.

8.       Lindqvist, John Ajvide. Let the Right One In. 2005. 513 pp.

Child murderer(s), bullying, girl vampire, pedophilia and Sweden. Chilling.

9.       Joyce Carol Oates. Zombie 1995. 181 pp.

The ending is fucked up. Pair it up with Shriver’s Kevin and Trevor’s Felicia.

10.   Ransom Riggs. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine, #1)  2011. 352 pp.

It’ll make for good CGI film-making and the time travel makes sense. Sorta.

Honorable Mentions

George R.R. Martin. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) 1996. 693 pp.

   The names are fun. And maps! Surprisingly easy to follow.

Neil Gaiman. American Gods . 2001. 632 pp.

   Gaiman wants us to like his villains. I don’t mind.

Lonely Christopher. The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse 2011 190 pp.

   I was not stunned by this mess.

Charlaine Harris. All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #7)  2006. 323 pp.

   Don’t hate me but Allan Ball does a better job.

Neil Gaiman.Neverwhere 1996. 370 pp.

   Great concept: a world under London. Feels like Pullman. It isn’t.

Phillip K. Dick. The Simulacra. 1964. 214 pp.

   Sorry. I was not liking this paranoid regurgitation. Not Dick’s best.

Phillip K. Dick. Paycheck and Other Classic Stories 1952. 432 pp.

The one about the robots and the dude who builds a replica of his hometown are the best of the stories.

Shriver, Lionel. The Female of the Species 1987. 416 pp.

   I’d rather a story about the Masai then Gray and her failed trysts.

Rick Riordan. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1) 2005. 337 pp.

   The book is lackluster and I’d suggested Homer instead.

Daisuki Igarashi Children of the Sea, Volume 1 (Children of the Sea, #1)  Unknown date. 320 pp.

Too bad I read this book from left to right first! Duh. Read it from right to left.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

Great set of books: I loved the description of food. I hear there is a Hunger Games cookbook.

PDF Copy for Printing

Repurposing: Alice in Wonderland Book Clock

This nifty book clock clocks at fifty bucks at the Brooklyn holiday bazaar. Too bad I cannot afford it.

www.bugcicle.com 

PDF Copy for Printing

Quote: Kobo Abé On the Value of Work

The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.

Kobo Abé, The Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Image credit:  Greig Roselli
PDF Copy for Printing

Quotation: Walker Percy on Hurricanes in Louisiana

”I've noticed in Louisiana in hurricanes — my theory is that people enjoy hurricanes whether they say so or not. Because in hurricanes, terrible things are happening, people are getting killed, you're liable to get killed, there is a certain exhiliration. It comes from a peculiar sense of self, the vividness. As Einstein said, ’Life is dreary as hell. Ordinary life is dreary.’ Somebody asked him why he went into quantum mechanics. ’Well, to get away from the dreariness of ordinary life.’ Louisianans enjoy hurricanes if they're not too bad.”

Walker Percy, American novelist 

PDF Copy for Printing

Notes: 

Percy, Walker. "The Modern Prognosis: An Interview with Walker Percy" Reprinted from "The Novelist's Freedom": Walker Percy Talks About Science, Faith, and Fiction. Brent Short. Washinton: Sojourners, N/A May 1990. 27-29.