Thursday, August 04, 2011

A Museum Day

I’ve been in NYC today, one of my museum days, and the museum was more crowded than I've ever seen it-- vast lines on fifth avenue. I asked if members had to stand on line, and the guard said Yes, or go to the lower entrance. Duh. So I went in that way, but there was a big line for tickets there too, so I went to membership desk and asked if members had to stand on line, and the women said they weren't letting people in, too many (which wasn't true, ) and gave me a button anyhow
So I went in.
Most of them are lined up for the McQueen show, which I already saw and wouldn't stand in line for. I spend a while looking at sarcophagi in the Roman galleries, and then drifted into Americas and found this small show of Andes tunics-- 500 - @ 1450 CE. Essentially big squares of cloth with a head hole, but beautiful weaving, patterns, "camelid" hair (llamas and vicunas etc.) some of native cotton. Colors rich from dry conditions between mountains and coast. One pale cotton one with pelicans woven into the pattern, and two nice tie dyes, one of which was a real knock out, that made me feel I was seeing something absolutely new. Specially woven squares and step shapes then sewed together, colors blue and yellow and red, with the tie die pale spots and dark center, but what was so moving was that one side was regular blocks, beautiful and regular, and the other half in a step pattern, some colors, but as if the regularity had been broken up with lightning or earthquakes-- all the same and yet all different. And the back of the tunic, the same, but opposite sides. Some basic philosophical statement here.
Also saw a nice exhibit in Modern of living artists' work with or around masks. Two clever artists from Benin (jerrijug face masks); Lynda Benglis (what do I know about her?) and some beautiful glass constructions that I wouldn't have tagged as masks, but okay, and then Willie Cole-- a mask called Shine made of black shoes, mostly patent leather, this hilarious splendid grimacing threatening face with square heeled shoe ears and pointed toe squinty eyes and rugged roiled cheeks-- oh I loved this thing.
Also his others, like the tall African wooden head dresses with lots of space-- he meade his of a pink girl's bicycle frame.
Finally, a nice Franz Hals exhibit, and I bought the bulletin and the audioguide and am trying to learn something.
Bought a kraut and mustard hot dog and walked to the West side via the golden green summer park, down B'way to the subway, to Penn Station and home.

Books for Readers # 144

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 144

August 3, 2011


MSW is doing a Two Day Q & A at Laura Bentley's "Open Mic" blog
the-- the Subject is Jump Start Your Novel.
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I feel in some unsettled way that reading is not as central to my life as it once was. I know that for many years I have found some of the satisfaction that used only to come from reading in other parts of my life– friends, family, my low key social activism. I suppose this is a good thing, and it isn't that I want to return to being a child whose real life is in books

But another part of it has to do with being discriminating. When I was young, I read everything with equal attention and hunger. It could be well-written, poorly written, adventure, nonfiction, fantasy– I didn't care. I have more specific things I want now. I recoil from the badly written and the inauthentic. I spend so much time on student work that when I am reading strictly for myself, I am extremely choosy. Almost daily now I read poetry because of the attention to the language. When I read novels or narrative nonfiction, I want to take a trip. I have less and less patience for prose that shows off or tricks me or can't figure out how to end– and then has an explosion or a rape, like bored kids writing "And then they all died."

Here are a couple of books that, for various reasons, satisfied my needs, sometime with a trip to another world, sometimes with honest self-exposure. First, I read an abridged TALE OF GENJI by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Royall Tyler. I don't know what it is with me and Genji, but I own two full length translations (see a very early one of these newsletters ). I was sitting on my screened back porch one rainy summer Sunday and something about the mistiness just made me want Genji on my Kindle, so I could go into that strange foreign world whenever I chose. I meant to dip in, but got caught by the undercurrent, and away I went.

The Royall Tyler translation is very clear, and he does an especially good job with the frequent poems. On my first reading of Genji, I totally didn't get the poems, which were apparently an essential part of eleventh century Japanese court life and especially of court-ship in the court. Characters express their strongest emotions in their poems, and simultaneously show off and even compete with their artistry. There are a lot of sadly wet sleeves, usually in the form of dew covered flowers. When Genji is in exile by the sea, there are poems about the lonely salt water ocean waves.

I think my fascination with this ancient classic (written by a court lady circa 1000 Common Era) is that I feel with these people, and at the same time am amazed that I am feeling– every moment of their lives is governed by such different rules from mine. For example, fathers and mothers are constantly trying to give away their well-brought up and accomplished daughters to the emperor or other high status men as concubines. There is a political goal, of course– with a daughter in high places, perhaps even as Empress Mother, then the family's power is greatly enhanced.. That isn't so different from, say, Medieval Western king and queenship, although the Heian court is more upfront with training the girls to attract the emperor.

But then there is the subplot of how lovely sweet smelling high minded Genji essentially kidnaps a beautiful little girl and raises her to his own specifications and falls in love with her, and she with him. Meanwhile he has many other affairs, although in Genji's defense, he seems capable of loving and attending to all of them. He rarely abandons women. And there's the atmosphere: the secret fragrance in the night that tells you who is visiting your bedchamber, the curtains and blinds, handwriting that causes people to fall in love. This is a real trip into alternative reality (see below for an alternate reality book I didn't like).

The other two books I want to mention are of this present decade, also by women, and also with sexuality front and center. And both writers focus their books on homosexual men. Carter Seaton's AMO, AMAS, AMAT: AN UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE STORY is also about Mary Cate, a thirty-something Southern Baptist country club woman with all kinds of casual, unchallenged prejudices– especially against homosexuals. She enjoys her life, but feels cheated by the lack of romantic love that she believes is essential to true happiness. She meets tennis pro Nick Hamilton, falls for him hard and fast, especially because he is so different from men in her past. They marry, and immediately, things begin to fall apart– most disastrously when she discovers Nick's sexual orientation in the most humiliating way possible.

Mary Cate starts a new life by moving from her narrow if affluent home town to Atlanta where she rehabs a house in a neighborhood that proves to be a favorite place for gays and Lesbians. Slowly, as Mary Cate realizes that more and more of her good friends are gay, she becomes a deeper, more interesting human being. She gives up the fantasy that she can't live without a man, and she makes a family of the friends around her. She helps a man with AIDS through some of the rough times at the end of his life, and even reconnects with Nick. This is a story with a happy ending– but the happiness is not at all what the Mary Cate of the beginning would have imagined.

The other two books I want to mention are of this present decade, also by women, and also with sexuality front and center. And both writers focus their books on homosexual men. Carter Seaton's AMO, AMAS, AMAT: AN UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE STORY is also about Mary Cate, a thirty-something Southern Baptist country club woman with all kinds of casual, unchallenged prejudices– especially against homosexuals. She enjoys her life, but feels cheated by the lack of romantic love that she believes is essential to true happiness. She meets tennis pro Nick Hamilton, falls for him hard and fast, especially because he is so different from men in her past. They marry, and immediately, things begin to fall apart– most disastrously when she discovers Nick's sexual orientation in the most humiliating way possible.
Mary Cate starts a new life by moving from her narrow if affluent home town to Atlanta where she rehabs a house in a neighborhood that proves to be a favorite place for gays and Lesbians. Slowly, as Mary Cate realizes that more and more of her good friends are gay, she becomes a deeper, more interesting human being. She gives up the fantasy that she can't live without a man, and she makes a family of the friends around her. She helps a man with AIDS through some of the rough times at the end of his life, and even reconnects with Nick. This is a story with a happy ending– but the happiness is not at all what the Mary Cate of the beginning would have imagined.

Carter Seaton's book is full of gay and Lesbian characters, and some of the scenes are from their points of view, but the sex acts are not often dramatized. NancyKay Shapiro's novel WHAT LOVE MEANS TO YOU PEOPLE, on the other hand, begins with a tour de force of very physical, very graphic, and downright hot scenes of gay sex. She makes a music of sex in the first third of this novel, as two unlikely men fall in love. Jim is a rich New Yorker, older, and bereft after a great loss, and Sean is young, poor, edgy, a talented artist, just in from the Midwest. Their love story is almost equally a paean to New York City. Many scenes take place in cafés and restaurants, and in grungy and magnificent apartments and houses. There is an enthusiastic richness of physical detail– food, wine, buildings, streets, and bodies, of course. It is a wonderfully, enhanced, reality with all sensations heightened.

And part of what is really amazing about this book is that the happy ending doesn't last– and that, I suppose, is part of the reality of it. The second half of the novel brings in Sean's sister and Sean's background, and the story gets rougher as it moves from the riches of new love to the stark horrors of the siblings', but especially Sean's, past. Plot comes to the fore, and a kind of ugliness in the backwoods of the Midwest that makes New York City seem like heaven on earth.

And the very final part takes these two disparate sections and finds a way to bring them into– if not exactly harmony, then a believable balance.

Take a look at these novels– they deserve readers.

Meredith Sue Willis

MORE SUGGESTIONS

Christine Willis suggests Montana, 1948: "Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, as it is told from a child's perspective with the benefit of the perspectives and guidance of an adult writer. The reader is exposed to the maltreatment of American Indians during the era but in a rather matter of fact way that does not elicit pity: it is simply the way things were. The story is in large part, however, built upon the different ways in which people do deal with prejudice against the American Indians, both the whites and the Indians. It is a short book that reads quickly because of high interest, straight forward language, and Watson's interesting turn of phrase."
Phyllis Moore liked this memoir: Beauty Before Comfort.

A COUPLE MORE FROM MSW


BUDDHISM: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION by Damien Keown is one of the handy little Oxford introductions to just about everything. I particularly like them for getting a few things straight about religions. Here, for example, I THINK I finally got the Mahayana tradition separated from Theraveda tradition. I like so much of what underlies Buddhism: that life is full of suffering– or at least dissatisfaction– so relax and deal with it via meditation, community, and compassion.
This next book is one I loved the idea of but managed to finish only by skimming. This was the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson's 760 page alternative history of the world, THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT. I kept saying to myself, if I'm going to read long historical narrations of wars in the Himalayas and elsewhere, why not read the real thing? It was just too much narration and explaining between the good parts. It reminded me of the endless small world play some children do– enriching and fascinating to them, but not to the rest of us. Or the Brontë siblings entertaining themselves for years with their interlocking romantic tales of Gondal and Angria.. A blogger said of Robinson that he alternately adores and hates his books, and that this one he has read several times because he can't decide if he adores it or hates it. A real glutton for punishment.
Finally, one more hammock-at-the-lake Elmore Leonard: THE HOT KID. This one has for its hero a brash but effective young federal marshall of a racially mixed background. It's set in Oklahoma in the days of Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger. It has the usual long strings of colorful dialog and doesn't get nasty until the spoiled bad boy son of a local rich guy starts plugging people just because they're in his way. This is the closest I've come to Leonard's western stories.

READ ONLINE

Recommended by Amy Wright: Michael Martone's short short nonfiction piece on the recent weather disasters in Alabama: http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/brev36/martone36.html
Barbara Crooker's older poem on strawberries was featured at:
http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=774 , and a new one "1950" appears in in Qarrtsiluni's issue on "imprisonment": http://qarrtsiluni.com/2011/07/22/1950/
A personal essay on witnessing the final space launch by Melanie Vickers appeared on July 28, 2011 at http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/201107271141

ANNOUNCEMENTS, CONTESTS, READINGS, ETC.

JUANITA TORRENCE-THOMPSON, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher/Owner of Internationally acclaimed MOBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE seeks a GROUP of poets and/or editors or COLLEGE, organization or business individual/s to purchase and publish her 29-year old non-profit print magazine starting 2011. www.mobiuspoetry.com Serious buyers ONLY email: mobiusmag@earthlink.net or poetrytown@earthlink.net. Contributors included: RITA DOVE, NIKKI GIOVANNI, SONIA SANCHEZ, MARGE PIERCY, ROBERT BLY, DIANE WAKOSKI, YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA. CORNELIUS EADY, NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, DANIELA GIOSEFFI, COLETTE INEZ, HAL SIROWITZ, STEPHEN STEPANCHEV, LOUIS REYES RIVERA, A.D. WINANS, SAMUEL MENASHE, DUANE NIATUM, MAURICE KENNY, JOSEPH BRUCHAC, LYN LIFSHIN, SIMON PERCHIK, LAURA BOSS, TAMMY NUZZO MORGAN, GEORGE WALLACE, MAXWELL WHEAT, JR., DANIEL THOMAS MORAN, THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI, EDWARD BUTSCHER, SUSAN TERRIS, ROCHELLE RATNER, THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI, ED GALING, SANDY McINTOSH, TAMMY NUZZO MORGAN, JULIO MARZAN, ESTHER LEIPER, ROXANNE HOFFMAN, ELLARAINE LOCKIE, GEORGIA BANKS MARTIN, SUSAN TERRIS, LINDA LERNER, etc. Her other website is: www.poetrytown.com
Dolly Withrow has a column from the DAILY MAIL ( http://www.dailymail.com) "A Soap-Opera Approach to Grammar" that is being picked up by Routledge Publishers to be excerpted in an upcoming book!

George Brosi recommends Patricia Harman's ARMS WIDE OPEN: A MIDWIFE'S JOURNEY. He says: "What a perfect title for an author who is so open to life and to people of all backgrounds....This book is a fascinating and heart-warming read that demonstrates people can grow and still be true to their basic values."
Mark DeFoe's tenth chapbook of poems coming out this fall. Pre-publication orders are now being taken by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, KY. Order online at finishinglinepress.com and click on "new releases." The collection is titled In the Tourist Cave.
Barry Wildorf's historical novel, THE FLIGHT OF THE SORCERESS is now in print. This is a novel set in the 5th Century A.D. as it follows the desperate struggle of Hypatia, the last librarian of Alexandria and renowned mathematician, and Glenys, a Celtic healer, as they resist the misogyny of the newly-empowered Roman Catholic Church during the declining days of the Roman Empire. To purchase an autographed copy, go to http://flightofthesorceress.blogspot.com/ or get it directly from the publisher at Wild Child Publishing http://www.wildchildpublishing.com
Paul Maguire's novel PROFESSOR ATLAS AND THE SUMMONING DRAGON for 3rd - 8th graders is now available at:
http://www.amazon.com/Professor-Atlas-Summoning-Dagger-Maguire/dp/1457505096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312217858&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Professor-Atlas-Summoning-Dagger-Maguire/dp/1457505096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312217858&sr=8-1
Pamela Duncan recommends a new book by Erica Abrams Locklear, who teaches at UNC-Asheville. It's called Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women's Literacies. Learn more at http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Negotiating+a+Perilous+Empowerment
PROJECTOR, THE JOURNAL OF CREATIVE RESPONSE TO FILM, IS COMPILING ITS THIRD ISSUE. Deadline: August 31, 2011 Please submit stories, poems, and analytical inventions about movies to projectormagazine@yahoo.com . To see samples, go to http://www.projectormagazine.com
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: NYC: TALL TALES FROM THE CITY-- Deadline: September 21 They say, "We are publishing a Book of New York City Fiction. Looking for 1000-2500 word stories. You may submit by September 21. Check out the facebook event page for guidelines:
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138408566235129"