Quotation: On Considering Heteronormativity in Society (Thank you, Jane Austen)

It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 

Mrs. Bennet — from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Nineteenth-Century British Novelist

Photo by Adam King on Unsplash

Source: Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. United Kingdom, RD Bentley, 1853.

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Quote on a New Orleans Setting from The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

The Moviegoer

The swamps are still burning at Chef Menteur and the sky over Gentilly is the color of ashes (p.17). 

Walker Percy, American Novelist and Writer 1916-1990

Walker Percy. The Moviegoer. Bantam Paperback. 1960

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Book Review: Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne

Absolute Brightness is a young adult novel.  

Absolute Brightness
by James Lecesne

Paperback, 352 pages

Published May 31st, 2016 by Feiwel & Friend
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I am reviewing the gay YA novel, Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne.

The Amazing Life of Leonard Pelkey
In the late 90s, James Lecesne raised awareness about gay teen suicide. He wrote a novella that was adapted into a short film about a precocious boy who feels rejected by his family and attempts suicide - only to be rattled back to his senses by a cute candy striper at the hospital. This was back in 1998. Trevor lives. Almost as a counterpoint, in Absolute Brightness (2016),* James Lecesne tells the story of a teenager, Leonard Pelkey, who is murdered in Neptune, New Jersey. 

Leonard is characterized as a nice, talkative fourteen-year-old boy. When he first arrives at his aunt's house - to move in - he is met with derision by his cousin, Phoebe, who is also the narrator of the story. Leonard seems oblivious to the fact that Phoebe does not take to lightly to his fashion decisions - pink and lime-green capri pants and a "too small T-shirt." However, for Phoebe, Leonard was "way too different." And it is this aversion to difference that Lecesne grapples with in this book.

Leonard has all the Packaging of a Gay Stereotype
While he is never outright labeled as gay, Leonard carries all the packaging of the gay male effeminate stereotype. He is characterized, in the novel, like Dorothy - "more the type to be heading toward a place like Oz, as in The Wizard of." He never gets there. And the novel turns directions.

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

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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
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Books I Remember Reading in 2011

I didn't keep an official list for 2011, but here is what I recalled from my fragmentary mental database. Also listed is my best and honorable mention in three categories: novels, philosophy, and history and culture. I am thinking I need to read more science-related books in 2012!

Novels

The best novel I read in 2011 is Home by Marilynne Robinson. Honorable mention goes to Remainder by Tom McCarthy. 

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

• Apart from the American Gods series, this one retells the story of the spider god Anansi. Expect charming Gaiman prose! B+

The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

• His Master's thesis turned novel, Wallace goes all Wittgenstein and ponders the limits of language in novel form. A-

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

• Read this book only because I felt like I need a fictional introduction to Brooklyn. While the novel centers on two boys' friendship in and around the Boerum Hill neighborhood, I found the novel to be evocative of the borrough as a whole. Wasn't too much into the invisibility theme, however. B

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

• Volume Three of Proust's Recherche corpus exudes with haute-bourgeoise shenanigans -- will Marcel just get a boyfriend already! The more mature of the volumes, in my opinion -- but equally as funny. A

Home by Marilynne Robinson

• The most beautiful and tragic novel I read this year. Shame I never read Gilead. I am working backwards. Agreeing with a critic (I forget who), Robinson creates a classic American tragic hero with Jack. A+

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

• First saw the BBC version. Loved it. London's Tube never seemed more inviting. And scary. One thing I love about Gaiman is the way he tells a story and his attention to quirky details. C+

Remainder by Tom McCarthy 

• Reminded me of Synecdoche, New York. Wonderful book nonetheless. Think: what if I could externalize my inner thoughts? This is the book's philosphical premise. A

Something Missing by Matthew Dicks

• Dicks wanted to write a great American novel but he failed. Or. It's just a nice romp into benign criminality. You decide. C-

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

• The Combray section all by itself is justification enough to read this book. Kisses, memory, and a sweet piece of cake ... ahhhhh. A+

Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

• If Swann's Way is about Marcel as a child, WBG is about blooming adolescence -- I guess. A-

Philosophy

The best philosophy book I read in 2011 was Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage by Stanley Cavell. Honorable mention goes to Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview by Jacques Derrida.

Essays by Michel de Montaigne

• I didn't read every one of the essays, but I recommend the Apology for Raymond Sebond. My favorite quote: "How do I know I am not playing with my cat but in fact, it is my cat playing with me?" A+

Francis Bacon: the Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze

• A readable Deleuze. In fact all of his "art" books are more readable than Anti-Oedipus, etc. You have to read this book with Google Images handy (or a monograph of Bacon's paintings) or the book does not make as much sense. B-

Learning to Live Finally: The Last Interview by Jacques Derrida

• Derrida speaks eloquently about legacy and mortality. Nicely done interview. The Last Interview is to Derrida what the Phadeo is to Socrates. A+

Must We Mean What We Say?: A Collection of Essays by Stanley Cavell

• The best essay is the one on modernity and art. Cavell writes as if every sentence is its own stand alone work. He is said to be our new Emerson. Hmmm? I am thinking of giving him serious consideration for 2012. A

Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage by Stanley Cavell

• Writing a paper on this book linking it with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Should be fun. This books does serious philosophy with classic American comedies from the 1930s - 1950s.  A+

The Republic by Plato

• Never actually sat and read this from Socrates's first words to the end in order -- mainly because when I did read it as an undergraduate it was cut up in pieces. Bad beginning made right. Now I done read it. Check out the last book. A+

Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality by Sigfried Kracauer

• Classic book on film theory. B+ 

The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film by Stanley Cavell

• Unusual book. I think I need to read it again to fully understand. The section on silence and film is brilliant as well as his meditation on Joan of Arc. A

History and Culture

The best in History and Culture goes to Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan, and Derrida by John Forrester. Honorable Mention goes to Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

Are You Considering Psychoanalysis? by Karen Horney

• Usually I avoid book titles that double as questions, but Horney's classic introduction text helped me to conceptualize psychoanalysis from the point of view of an analysand. Perhaps a bit dated, but helpful nonetheless. B+

Who Was Jacques Derrida?: An Intellectual Biography by Jason E. Powell

• Not a straight forward bio, but rather serves both as a survey of his work interwoven into a sort of love song about a life. Written from the perspective of a disciple rather than a distanced critic. A-

The Painter of Modern Life by Charles-Pierre Baudelaire

• This book is a gem. A must read for anyone seriously interested in aesthetics. Baudelaire does a reflection on painting that I feel corresponds to how we can think about film. A+

The Rise of the Novel: Studies in DeFoe, Richardson and Fielding by Ian Watt

• The first chapter is a bit of philosophizing about the novel and its relationship (or lack thereof) with realism, while the rest of the book positions the novel form historically within the context of the mass production of books and the emergence of a reading middle class. B+

Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan, and Derrida by John Forrester

• To write a book on psychoanalysis is difficult enough, but Forrester rises to the occasion by linking together seemingly effortlessly Lacan, Derrida, and Freud into a cohesive structure that makes this book a pleasure to read. Forrester's chapter on Freud, Breuer and Anna O. is exceptional criticism. I love how he interweaves the theme of gossip and psychoanalysis throughout the text.  A+

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

• Got hooked on Halpern's twitter feed and anticipated the book. Not as funny as the twitter posts that started the whole thing, mainly because the books attempts a cohesion that loses the ephemeral nature of tweeting. Good effort though! C-

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

• Wow. What can I say? I loved every page of this book. Besides the reason why Jobs is famous -- Apple, Pixar, iPads, and whatnot -- the book reveals a man who is certainly binary, both impassioned and cruel, visionary, but pig-headed. Now when Jobs's wife comes out of mourning, the world will come to know the other half of Steve. A+

We Boys in Love: Teenagers in Love Before Girl-Craziness by Jefferey P. Dennis

• Thought this book would be more of a literary criticism, but rather I found Dennis frames the adolescents in the films too rigidly through this idea that homosociality is more real when divorced from sexual desire. The book writes about homosociality in these great films, which by themselves are ripe for cultural criticism, but at the end of the day, Dennis says nothing substantial. C

Shout Out:

I would like to say thank you to the Brooklyn Public Library and the New York Public Library for providing me with access to most of these books, both in print and Kindle editions, when available! Go Public Libraries!

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Joyce Carol Oates at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute

Joyce Carol Oates
(image source: Jewish Week)

Lois Oppenheim Interviews Joyce Carol Oates
As far as inimitable serious novelists go, Joyce Carol Oates ranks right up there with Flannery O'Connor and James Joyce (the two that come to mind). And maybe Herman Melville. But his beard is way more stubby that Oates's wan piercing disposition.

At the New York Psychoanalytic Institute on 82nd street in the city Upper East Side, Lois Oppenheim interviewed Oates on Friday night (October 28th) as part of the Institute's conversation series.

Does Joyce Carol Oates Play?
Having paid the ten dollar student fee and considering myself interested in the intersection between literature and psychoanalysis (wherever that particular intersection will lead me — or one — I am not so sure), I sat myself down in the staid auditorium hall with a plastic glass of free cheap Cabernet Sauvignon.

Oppenheim began the conversation by commenting on how in an e-mail she had asked the author if she had wanted to "play" in Manhattan before the slated time she was supposed to speak at the Institute but then realizing that asking Joyce Carol Oates to play was probably the wrong word to use. Does Joyce Carol Oates play?

One would think not considering how much work she has produced since her first published book in 1963. She was born in 1938 (so that makes for about fifty years of literary output — about fifty books total).

I think Oates took offense to the question because she answered the question about "play" noting she loves to go to museums and view art as well as her teaching career which she considers playful (there is always laughter in the classroom). And there is the point Oppenheim missed that writing can be a form of play.

On Writing From Oates' Point of View
Oates spoke about the craft of writing, how the writer has the idea for a short story, novel, and so on, but the idea has to meet the limits of language. Writing is a process of falling short.

Oppenheim was interested in Oates's biography. Oates was molested as a girl. Her great grandparent was murdered. She spoke about the unspoken violence behind closed doors in the small town she lived in. Did the violence embedded in her background influence her writing and its emphasis on violence?

Oates seemed to resent the question. As if writing about violence, perhaps too much close attention to violence, automatically spoke about the writer's personality.

Oates seems to be a fiction writer not interested in people seeing her writing as an extension of Joyce Carol Oates. She would rather want people to see her writing as art, as an expansive testament to the human spirit.

Does Art Inspire Life Or Does Life Inspire Art?
The question of the evening was, "Is a writer's biography directly inferred by their writing, what they choose to write, what topics and themes they explore?" Does the writer write about herself or does she write about the universal stamp that makes us human, that makes us tick?

Oates made the remark that most writers write about themselves. Proust writes about himself. Phillip Roth writes about himself. Many writers write about themselves. Their stories are reflections of their own lives in some form or fashion.

Oates dismisses the idea that her writings are a mere byproduct of her own traumatic life. She wants to say, I think, that she is no different from anyone else. Most people on this planet, except maybe for the rarified individuals who inhabit the one percent of the world's first-class elite, experience suffering, and violence. She is no different. She writes about violence because it is something people experience.

The room was a bit electric. I loved hearing her speak. She spoke firmly yet not loudly. She seemed to project an aura of quite yet powerful (almost angry) intellectual power. In a certain sense, she is not the docile novelist. She would not be a good analysand, as I heard someone say after the discussion.

After the Interview, Oates Signed My Copy of Sourland
She signed my copy of Sourland. I told her I liked her short story "Dear Joyce Carol" published recently in her short story collection "Dear Husband,". Yes, the comma is included in the title.

She said I didn't look like a guy who would write her letters like the ones described in "Dear Joyce Carol." I think I agree with her. I have written letters to authors but never a series of letters like the ones described in this short story. Oates told me the story was inspired by real-life events. She said she has received letters like the one in the story many times. So maybe there is an element of biography ...

Maybe it is not so much that Oates writes about violence so she can talk about herself in a novel or story, but rather, what constitutes her as a person, as a novelist, as a serious writer, is one who attends to violence because it is immensely important. The novelist attends to the particular in the hopes of reaching for something profound. Is this not the paradox?

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Talk at Tulane University: Salman Rushdie in New Orleans

   Salman Rushdie came to New Orleans last night to speak to a large assembly at Tulane’s Dixon Hall. If you don’t know already, Rushdie is a novelist known for Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses. He was placed on the Ayatollah Komeini’s “to kill list” because it was thought Satanic Verses defamed Islam. The fatwa against his life has been subsequently lifted, but it has not lifted the chatter that has circulated around the author and his controversial persona.
People Condemned Rushdie's Novel Satanic Verses Without Even Having Read It
    At the event, Rushdie spoke about how people condemned his novel without even having read it, going so far as to recount the story of a man who had publicly protested his book, but later on, read the novel, and exclaimed, “What was the big deal?”  “Asshole,” Rushdie said. “Why do people who condemn books never read them?” The people who want to get rid of books are the same people who say, “I am not a book person”!  That is the ludicrousness of the world, writ large. Rushdie also told a story about how Stephen King called up his publisher after having read Satanic Verses and realizing it was a great novel, told the publishers if they refused to put Rushdie’s book on the shelf then he was going to demand they remove all of his book from publication and call ten other best selling authors and demand that they do the same!  Rushdie laughed when he told this story saying, “And now, my book has outsold theirs!  There is no justice!”
According to Rushdie, A Novelist Writes "Fictions" But Tells More Truths than Politicians!
    He spoke frankly about politicians and how they do not tell the truth.  He said the novelist tells the truth because he is not ashamed to say in the beginning that his story is fiction! He spoke about the uselessness of fiction.  He said he was tired of the Utilitarian argument that novels have to be useful if they are to be read. Whatever happened to unadulterated pleasure? Alice in Wonderland, he said, is not a useful book. Its sole purpose is to create pleasure.  God forbid, anyone have a little pleasure!
       Perhaps, people are threatened by pleasure.  Are we really like the Puritan who thinks in his heart and is distraught that somewhere, somebody is having fun?
       Perhaps the role of literature is to open up the world just a little bit and to expand the cosmos.
Rushdie Makes Jibes About President Bush (And the Conservatives in the Crowd Squirmed A Bit)
     Rushdie was witty last night.  He made us laugh. He jabbed Bush. And he made the conservatives in the house queasy.  I saw a politician in the audience, but I cannot remember who it was (maybe it was Melinda Schwegmann): We don’t have many Salman Rushdie’s in our culture today, though.  Gone are the days of the public satirists. Perhaps, you can still find them on Youtube in the likes of Chris Crocker or on television with the Daily Show but the likes of Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain are few and far between.  It is like when they asked Dorothy Parker to speak about Horticulture.  “You can lead a horticulture but you cannot make her think!” (You have to say that joke out loud to get it!).
A Man's Daimon Is His Ethos
    I thought it was interesting that Rusdie was in New Orleans.  I think this was his first visit and I am glad I decided to attend. It invigorated me to hear a public intellectual speak who did not mouth the same tired babble over and over again.  I actually, got up and asked him a question. I had read an essay he had written on Heraclitus in Granta and he said his favorite quote from Heraclitus was "A man’s daimon (his character) is his ethos (or his fate)". So, I asked him, “What is Salman Rushdie’s daimon?”  He answered with another anecdote about him and his sister which I really do not recall the details because I was so nervous standing up there at the dais. It’s kind of nerve-wracking to ask a public intellectual a public question!

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Book Review: The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald

Pairing image with text in a narrative is contradictory: the flowing voice of the narrator with the frozen, almost totemic, images, is a strange combination.  The experience of the novel is oddly anti-nostalgic. The recounting of memory, of four different German expatriates, in Sebald’s The Emigrants, the text reads like a journal entry, as if the reader has stumbled upon a found notebook, scribbled with memories, and affixed with images, almost as if, negating the idea of a novel.  The images gesture toward a heuristic, as if they are supposed to add meaning to the text.
    For example, the image of a train track, with a copse of trees in the background is coupled with “In January 1984 news reached me … that on the evening of the 30th of December … Paul Beryter, who had been my teacher at primary school, had put an end to his life” (27).  Floating above the narrative voice stands the image of a train track, taken at ground level as if the photographer were lying on his stomach on top of the rails.  The track curves a little to the right and vanishes out of view where the school teacher, apparently, “had lain himself down in front of a train” (27).  The “photographer” is the character, a stolen shot, of his own death.  Looking at the image, the punctum is the shot of the skewed line punctuated with the narrator’s voice.  The meaning of the passage is inextricably linked with the image itself.  Removed from the pastiche of story, the image is not a referent to the story; it could be inserted into any other narrative of train tracks in the woods, and take on another meaning, altogether.
    But, here, as if purposely placed to evoke expression, like the drawing of Beyaert’s classroom (33) coupled with the expression in the text of recognition of another classmate who schooled with the narrator under Bereyter’s instruction.  The two, “immediately recognized each other,” both separately reading in the British Museum, coincidentally looking up and noticing one another “despite the quarter-century that had passed” (33).  The drawing of the classroom seating plan somehow is supposed to evoke the chance meeting of the two students, and their discussion of their dead professor.
    The plan of the classroom, assigned by Bereyter as a classroom assignment, apparently an exercise in drawing space to scale, becomes a memento of both the student’s meeting together by chance in the British Museum, and also, an object representing their shared time in the same classroom in 1946.  The images are not seemingly “pictures” of the past. They are rather representations.  For example, the photographs of the school children seem to be archival, meaning that they are not autobiographical.  The narrator says, about the pictures, apart from his own shared experiences (not pictured) that he was “scarcely distinguishable from those pictured here, a class that included myself” (47).  But, you are not supposed to point him out.  Nor is the stern teacher in the background supposed to be Beyert.  It is as if the history is lost but the images remain.

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