Not everyone knows that I am a writer of poems, usually of the terrible variety. In late high school and much of college, I wrote many. This was an ongoing effort to express emotions (often a combination of hurt and absolute rage), so what appears on those pages is not something I share. Much of it is not only bad, it's frightening. A few are better than others, but still not something I'm apt to let most people read unless they are very much in my inner circle.
During my final semester of college I had finished my biology major and was close to wrapping up my women's studies major. I had time and inclination in my schedule to not only spend many hours in the dance studio (I often wished that I could have majored in dance), but also to take a creative writing class. Jim Heynen, a phenomenon writing instructor, would sometimes give us cues in class for ideas for poems. The following poem (one of the few that I am actually willing to share publicly) came out of that.
My Mother's Voice
Cats carry disease. If you get one I
won't come visit you. They're sneaky.
When you have children you should stay home with them -
at least until they're old enough to go to school.
You seem thin - are you sure you're well?
It's that goofy diet of yours. Are you sure you're getting enough iron?
You could stand to lose
five pounds.
You should have your children early
and then
have your ovaries removed.
No man would want to marry
someone who acts like you.
Drive carefully.
Of course you can both stay in the house while we're gone.
Just make sure you sleep in separate rooms.
Your uncle's very sick, but I don't think you're supposed to know.
Do lesbians have periods?
My family never talked about cancer, even when my mother was sick.
No one talked about sex. I found out from
my little sister.
Those clothes aren't very feminine.
Madonna is a bad influence
on the young people of America.
Don't you want to look nice?
I wish you were back with those nice girls at St. Mary's.
Women are less stable than men because women have periods.
Why don't you get your hair cut?
You're good for our family - if you weren't here
we'd never think
about these things.
You write mean things about me in your journal,
don't you?
When I'm dead, you'll regret it!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
MishMash Plus Gone With the Wind
Reading (or not reading?) continues apace at my house. I finally finished a juvenile lit. book today called Julia Gillian (and the Quest for Joy) by Alison McGhee. This is the second book in the Julia Gillian series, and it's cute, with a good message... but not particularly compelling. My daughter Julia enjoyed hearing it read aloud (by Austin) more than I enjoyed reading it to myself, I suspect. I do enjoy the fact that the setting is Minneapolis and that the grade school kids in the book go to "Lake Harriet Elementary" (is there such a school? I have no idea!).
Possibly the most compelling part of the story is the odd names that Julia Gillian's grade school compatriots have. Are there a lot of kids named Bonwit, Lathrop and Cerise running around in Minneapolis? I'm not judging here; it just seems awfully unlikely.
So there's another book down on the way to one hundred; then I can buy another book. I've knocked out all of fourteen so far. Sigh.
The next book on my read it pile is titled (wait for it) Hellion Bride. It's a romance novel by Catherine Coulter that I believe I picked up for free. Of course I can't just let it go and get rid of it; it must be read first! Even if the title is completely absurd. (And really, even Hellion Bride can't compete with the bodice ripper title I recently spotted at the public library; The Earl Claims his Wife. And yes, I restrained myself and at least didn't bring that one home...)
The other book news I have is that I'm slowly reading The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting out loud to Julia. It's fairly absurd, but she seems to be enjoying it. My personal favorite part has been hearing about Dr. Doolittle's efforts to learn to speak to clams.
In the world of books, this last week was the 75th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. I have really mixed feelings about the novel; it's hard not to be swept up in the Rhett/Scarlett romance (or the fact that Scarlett is so stubborn and clueless about just what her feelings are for pretty much the entire story)... while at the same time, the content of the book moves between mildly and blatantly racist. I've read through it twice, the second time a few years ago. I found myself totally pulled into the scene where Rhett proposes to Scarlett... and then horrified just seconds later by the use of the "n" word along with content that I've deliberately forgotten.
The novel and the movie are an oddity, I think. I have equal measures of love and hate for the story; how can such beautifully drawn characters - characters that I actually do love - be so awful? Yes, it was written a long time ago and in a place (the South) that sentimentalizes aspects of the Civil War. But it's still hard for me to reconcile the story I love with the fact that so many of the characters I love think it's just fine to own a person.
I own a copy of the film and I do watch it occasionally. Austin declines; he famously watched it with me once and somehow didn't realize it wasn't going to "end right." (Yes, I married a man who majored in English who didn't know what the end of Gone with the Wind was before we watched it together.) For myself, I love the costuming, acting, scenery... and many of the scenes. Yes, I feel uncomfortable with the scene where Rhett sweeps Scarlett off to the bedroom... but I prefer the implication that she's being swept off to the bedroom willingly to the notion that it's a marital rape happening off camera.
Any scene where Rhett is enjoying Scarlett's spirit and encouraging her to act in a way that will not be viewed as proper is fantastic. In particular I love how he gets his way and is able to dance with her despite her recent widowhood. I like it when he tells her that she needs kissing, and badly, and by someone who know how (swoon!). But my favorite is, of course, when he leaves her to finally become a soldier, despite knowing the South's cause is lost... but not before declaring that he loves Scarlett and swoops her into an embrace.
I know there is a whole book out there about Rhett called Rhett Butler's People. I am sure that, at some point, I will read it, if only to see if it offers any insight on one of my burning questions (namely is Belle Watling in love with Rhett, and is the child that she refers to having his child). But I hesitate a bit, because, even though I have mixed emotions about Gone with the Wind, it's a story that I grew up with and it does have so much in it that I love. Somehow it seems wrong to try to add to that.
Possibly the most compelling part of the story is the odd names that Julia Gillian's grade school compatriots have. Are there a lot of kids named Bonwit, Lathrop and Cerise running around in Minneapolis? I'm not judging here; it just seems awfully unlikely.
So there's another book down on the way to one hundred; then I can buy another book. I've knocked out all of fourteen so far. Sigh.
The next book on my read it pile is titled (wait for it) Hellion Bride. It's a romance novel by Catherine Coulter that I believe I picked up for free. Of course I can't just let it go and get rid of it; it must be read first! Even if the title is completely absurd. (And really, even Hellion Bride can't compete with the bodice ripper title I recently spotted at the public library; The Earl Claims his Wife. And yes, I restrained myself and at least didn't bring that one home...)
The other book news I have is that I'm slowly reading The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting out loud to Julia. It's fairly absurd, but she seems to be enjoying it. My personal favorite part has been hearing about Dr. Doolittle's efforts to learn to speak to clams.
In the world of books, this last week was the 75th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. I have really mixed feelings about the novel; it's hard not to be swept up in the Rhett/Scarlett romance (or the fact that Scarlett is so stubborn and clueless about just what her feelings are for pretty much the entire story)... while at the same time, the content of the book moves between mildly and blatantly racist. I've read through it twice, the second time a few years ago. I found myself totally pulled into the scene where Rhett proposes to Scarlett... and then horrified just seconds later by the use of the "n" word along with content that I've deliberately forgotten.
The novel and the movie are an oddity, I think. I have equal measures of love and hate for the story; how can such beautifully drawn characters - characters that I actually do love - be so awful? Yes, it was written a long time ago and in a place (the South) that sentimentalizes aspects of the Civil War. But it's still hard for me to reconcile the story I love with the fact that so many of the characters I love think it's just fine to own a person.
I own a copy of the film and I do watch it occasionally. Austin declines; he famously watched it with me once and somehow didn't realize it wasn't going to "end right." (Yes, I married a man who majored in English who didn't know what the end of Gone with the Wind was before we watched it together.) For myself, I love the costuming, acting, scenery... and many of the scenes. Yes, I feel uncomfortable with the scene where Rhett sweeps Scarlett off to the bedroom... but I prefer the implication that she's being swept off to the bedroom willingly to the notion that it's a marital rape happening off camera.
Any scene where Rhett is enjoying Scarlett's spirit and encouraging her to act in a way that will not be viewed as proper is fantastic. In particular I love how he gets his way and is able to dance with her despite her recent widowhood. I like it when he tells her that she needs kissing, and badly, and by someone who know how (swoon!). But my favorite is, of course, when he leaves her to finally become a soldier, despite knowing the South's cause is lost... but not before declaring that he loves Scarlett and swoops her into an embrace.
I know there is a whole book out there about Rhett called Rhett Butler's People. I am sure that, at some point, I will read it, if only to see if it offers any insight on one of my burning questions (namely is Belle Watling in love with Rhett, and is the child that she refers to having his child). But I hesitate a bit, because, even though I have mixed emotions about Gone with the Wind, it's a story that I grew up with and it does have so much in it that I love. Somehow it seems wrong to try to add to that.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
A Few Favorite Books EVAH (a.k.a. Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time)
Spring fever has hit my kids hard and it's gotten me, too. While I can normally read almost anything, no matter how painfully it is written (yes, Austin, I'm aware that there is a major exception here, you can just be quiet about that), lately it's like whatever I try to read, the words just slide away. I've been suffering a bit of a writing block as well - reviews, poems and the terrible romance novel I sometimes pick away at... it doesn't matter what it is, it's just not progressing well. Or, in some cases, at all.
Reading and writing have always been my safe place to go to no matter what the world throws at me. It's frustrating when it feels like it just isn't working. Thankfully there are a few books that I can always turn to.
My all-time favorite is Stephen King's The Stand. I fell in love with the original published version when I was in high school, and I was beyond thrilled when King released an unabridged version during the spring of my senior year. I got some fabulous graduation gifts; the unabridged version of my favorite book was one of them. I bought the book with my own money, but it was a gift just the same.
The book features a tremendous cast of characters, some romantic entanglements, and - my favorite thing - an apocalyptic theme. When I'm feeling sick or just blue, there's something oddly comforting about reading a book in which more than 99 percent of the world's population dies horribly of the flu. I love the book's overall themes, and I love the characters. I'm always happy to go back for a visit with Frannie Goldsmith and Stu Redman, Mother Abigail and the Walking Dude, Harold and Nick and Glenn.
More recently, I have been loving Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. It's been years since I've fallen so completely into a book that I totally forgot the world existed, but it happened the first time I read this series. This is critical for me; at least for a few books worth of time, I felt like I had found the door to Narnia again.
The Hunger Games features a futuristic dystopia in which North America has become a country called Panem. Panem is made up of twelve districts and the Capitol; the districts lost a destructive war and now the tyrannical government forces each district to sacrifice two children a year in remembrance. It's not as simple as just putting the children to death, though. Instead the twenty-four competitors face off in an elaborate arena. They must kill or be killed; only one may win and live.
Collins does a nice job with her other books (The Underland Chronicles - young adult/fantasy), but The Hunger Games far outshines her other series. All three books in the trilogy are compelling, but the first book is the best; I found it nearly impossible to put down the first time through. I'm moving through it a bit more slowing the second time around, savoring the interaction between heroine Katniss Everdeen and the boy from her district - and competitor in the arena, Peeta Mellark. The minor characters are also excellent. Now that casting for the film version is underway, I'm even more excited to see Haymitch and Effie Trinket come to life on the big screen. I would be surprised if it matches my expectations, but I do expect to at least enjoy it.
A final book for today's list is Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. It is true that, while I sometimes attempt to write romance stories, I'm not a huge fan of the genre. A lot of romance is beyond trite, and it's often humorless and stupid to boot. Not so with Gabaldon's brilliant series. Outlander (and it's many sequels) combines romance with time travel and history. It doesn't hurt that one of the main characters, Claire, is a nurse. Or at least she is in the first book... certainly Claire evolves a lot during the course of the books.
Gabaldon is not a typical romance writer; the woman has a Ph.D in some scientific discipline (I can never remember if it's marine biology or ecology or what), and she uses her research skills to create a story that is as historically accurate as possible. At times this is problematic. Certainly women were property of men in Scotland in the 1750s, and sometimes (probably often) they were legally beaten by their husbands. Later in the series slavery in America becomes an issue that Claire must contend with. Gabaldon is skillful with these issues, but I confess that - at least with the beating scene - I felt a bit uncomfortable.
The center of the series is the relationship between Claire Beachamp and Jamie Fraser, and it's very difficult to not fall in love with both of them and their story. They don't fall in love in a typical way, but it happens, although Claire also must contend with the ghost of her husband, Frank, who she can no longer reach. It's all rather brilliantly done, and (forgive me for being crass, dear readers) that includes the sex scenes. There's also humor, atmosphere, adventure and history. I've never recommended this book to anyone without having them come back and tell me how much they love it. Ever. I'm grateful that Gabaldon has continued this story for many more (very long) books, and that there is yet more to come.
And... that's it for now. A few books I dearly, dearly love. Check 'em out if you haven't already.
Reading and writing have always been my safe place to go to no matter what the world throws at me. It's frustrating when it feels like it just isn't working. Thankfully there are a few books that I can always turn to.
My all-time favorite is Stephen King's The Stand. I fell in love with the original published version when I was in high school, and I was beyond thrilled when King released an unabridged version during the spring of my senior year. I got some fabulous graduation gifts; the unabridged version of my favorite book was one of them. I bought the book with my own money, but it was a gift just the same.
The book features a tremendous cast of characters, some romantic entanglements, and - my favorite thing - an apocalyptic theme. When I'm feeling sick or just blue, there's something oddly comforting about reading a book in which more than 99 percent of the world's population dies horribly of the flu. I love the book's overall themes, and I love the characters. I'm always happy to go back for a visit with Frannie Goldsmith and Stu Redman, Mother Abigail and the Walking Dude, Harold and Nick and Glenn.
More recently, I have been loving Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. It's been years since I've fallen so completely into a book that I totally forgot the world existed, but it happened the first time I read this series. This is critical for me; at least for a few books worth of time, I felt like I had found the door to Narnia again.
The Hunger Games features a futuristic dystopia in which North America has become a country called Panem. Panem is made up of twelve districts and the Capitol; the districts lost a destructive war and now the tyrannical government forces each district to sacrifice two children a year in remembrance. It's not as simple as just putting the children to death, though. Instead the twenty-four competitors face off in an elaborate arena. They must kill or be killed; only one may win and live.
Collins does a nice job with her other books (The Underland Chronicles - young adult/fantasy), but The Hunger Games far outshines her other series. All three books in the trilogy are compelling, but the first book is the best; I found it nearly impossible to put down the first time through. I'm moving through it a bit more slowing the second time around, savoring the interaction between heroine Katniss Everdeen and the boy from her district - and competitor in the arena, Peeta Mellark. The minor characters are also excellent. Now that casting for the film version is underway, I'm even more excited to see Haymitch and Effie Trinket come to life on the big screen. I would be surprised if it matches my expectations, but I do expect to at least enjoy it.
A final book for today's list is Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. It is true that, while I sometimes attempt to write romance stories, I'm not a huge fan of the genre. A lot of romance is beyond trite, and it's often humorless and stupid to boot. Not so with Gabaldon's brilliant series. Outlander (and it's many sequels) combines romance with time travel and history. It doesn't hurt that one of the main characters, Claire, is a nurse. Or at least she is in the first book... certainly Claire evolves a lot during the course of the books.
Gabaldon is not a typical romance writer; the woman has a Ph.D in some scientific discipline (I can never remember if it's marine biology or ecology or what), and she uses her research skills to create a story that is as historically accurate as possible. At times this is problematic. Certainly women were property of men in Scotland in the 1750s, and sometimes (probably often) they were legally beaten by their husbands. Later in the series slavery in America becomes an issue that Claire must contend with. Gabaldon is skillful with these issues, but I confess that - at least with the beating scene - I felt a bit uncomfortable.
The center of the series is the relationship between Claire Beachamp and Jamie Fraser, and it's very difficult to not fall in love with both of them and their story. They don't fall in love in a typical way, but it happens, although Claire also must contend with the ghost of her husband, Frank, who she can no longer reach. It's all rather brilliantly done, and (forgive me for being crass, dear readers) that includes the sex scenes. There's also humor, atmosphere, adventure and history. I've never recommended this book to anyone without having them come back and tell me how much they love it. Ever. I'm grateful that Gabaldon has continued this story for many more (very long) books, and that there is yet more to come.
And... that's it for now. A few books I dearly, dearly love. Check 'em out if you haven't already.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The Month That Would NOT Slow Down
I haven't been reading much this month. I hate - hate! - to make that confession, but it is what it is. People, friends who are pretty much family, events, classes... many things have taken me away from my routine life of reading, cross-stitching, doing laundry, and feeling a bit on the low side. Doubtless this is a good thing; I needed to remember that there are things that I enjoy and people that I love outside side of Austin, the kids, and the few friends I see frequently (Corinna, Andrew, Marnie... love you all!).
A few of the events have included a friend graduating from medical school (yay) and preparing to move away for his residency (boo), another friend getting married (yay) and bringing other old friends back to Minnesota (yay) for a hugely emotional, fantastic wedding. From there I went headfirst into taking a class in and getting certified in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (yay - but nerve-wracking). There is still more to come in this epic May of 2011; an anniversary party, a play to attend... and I'm skipping over some of the emotional content of the month (like Alex's choir concert... so much else) because I am getting overwhelmed just thinking about all of it.
So this has left me little to blog about in terms of books. I finished reading InterWorld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves (good stuff), but I haven't even managed to finish writing my Epinions review of it. I enjoyed it, but it's one of those books that are going to stay in the house that I somehow don't have much to say about here.
There are two topics I've been wanting to cover here that maybe don't fit perfectly (but who cares, this is my blog and if I want to I can write about worms or warts or whatever I want, right?). One is Books That I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time and one is Favorite Poems. Both topics might... let's be brutally honest here, they will take up multiple posts. Because I blog so infrequently, this could take years. I'm actually fine with that, though.
So. Here's a poem that I adore and never get tired of, that I think everyone should know.
i carry your heart with me
by e.e. cummings
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud)
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
***************************************
After reading that, I dare you to tell me that you don't like poetry.
More of my favorites to come in the nebulous future...
A few of the events have included a friend graduating from medical school (yay) and preparing to move away for his residency (boo), another friend getting married (yay) and bringing other old friends back to Minnesota (yay) for a hugely emotional, fantastic wedding. From there I went headfirst into taking a class in and getting certified in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (yay - but nerve-wracking). There is still more to come in this epic May of 2011; an anniversary party, a play to attend... and I'm skipping over some of the emotional content of the month (like Alex's choir concert... so much else) because I am getting overwhelmed just thinking about all of it.
So this has left me little to blog about in terms of books. I finished reading InterWorld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves (good stuff), but I haven't even managed to finish writing my Epinions review of it. I enjoyed it, but it's one of those books that are going to stay in the house that I somehow don't have much to say about here.
There are two topics I've been wanting to cover here that maybe don't fit perfectly (but who cares, this is my blog and if I want to I can write about worms or warts or whatever I want, right?). One is Books That I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time and one is Favorite Poems. Both topics might... let's be brutally honest here, they will take up multiple posts. Because I blog so infrequently, this could take years. I'm actually fine with that, though.
So. Here's a poem that I adore and never get tired of, that I think everyone should know.
i carry your heart with me
by e.e. cummings
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud)
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
***************************************
After reading that, I dare you to tell me that you don't like poetry.
More of my favorites to come in the nebulous future...
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Out of the House, Old Books!
I'm not making huge progress on reading this week, and the slowdown may continue for a bit, as I have a few weeks of major projects going on. This includes hopefully getting certified in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), which will require some study time.
Adding to my Too Many Books burden, we attended the 50th annual used book sale that benefits the Northfield Hospital Auxiliary. My husband limited himself to four or five purchases, but the kids each brought home a bunch of books. I stuck to my virtuous promise to buy no books until I have read 100 in the house, although I was tempted by a few.
A few books have left the house in the form of donations to the book exchange at my son's middle school. He donates books and receives coupons that he can use to "buy" other books. I can only hope that somehow fewer books are coming in than going out, but he is at least enjoying it.
Books I sent out the door for this exchange include Couplehood by Paul Reiser, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jaquelyn Mitchard (I hope I spelled that name right because I'm not going to look it up), Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean (a promotional copy from my Barnes and Noble days, read but in great shape), and some outdated books about politics. Two of the political ones were books panning George W. Bush (ugh, I was never going to re-read those, living through those eight years was enough for me) and one called Nine and Counting, about the nine women in the U.S. Senate. (There are now seventeen women in the U.S. Senate, so I got rid of that one on the basis of being hopelessly outdated.)
There are, I'm sure, plenty more books that I can get rid of without re-reading them; it's a matter of finding time to weed them out.
I'm still reading InterWorld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves, which is pretty good stuff for what I would classify as a juvenile (a bit too "young" to be called "young adult") sci fi book. It's fast reading; I'm just slow lately.
Adding to my Too Many Books burden, we attended the 50th annual used book sale that benefits the Northfield Hospital Auxiliary. My husband limited himself to four or five purchases, but the kids each brought home a bunch of books. I stuck to my virtuous promise to buy no books until I have read 100 in the house, although I was tempted by a few.
A few books have left the house in the form of donations to the book exchange at my son's middle school. He donates books and receives coupons that he can use to "buy" other books. I can only hope that somehow fewer books are coming in than going out, but he is at least enjoying it.
Books I sent out the door for this exchange include Couplehood by Paul Reiser, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jaquelyn Mitchard (I hope I spelled that name right because I'm not going to look it up), Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean (a promotional copy from my Barnes and Noble days, read but in great shape), and some outdated books about politics. Two of the political ones were books panning George W. Bush (ugh, I was never going to re-read those, living through those eight years was enough for me) and one called Nine and Counting, about the nine women in the U.S. Senate. (There are now seventeen women in the U.S. Senate, so I got rid of that one on the basis of being hopelessly outdated.)
There are, I'm sure, plenty more books that I can get rid of without re-reading them; it's a matter of finding time to weed them out.
I'm still reading InterWorld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves, which is pretty good stuff for what I would classify as a juvenile (a bit too "young" to be called "young adult") sci fi book. It's fast reading; I'm just slow lately.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Crichton Versus Crichton
It's been over a month since I managed to write on this blog... you'd think I was a super-busy person! Well, I am, to an extent, but a lot of it is manufactured stuff that I require myself to do... working out five times a week, for example. It's good that I do that, but no one is actually making me do it other than myself.
Okay, so now that we know my excuse for not blogging is that I'm Getting Fit, where am I with my reading-the-books-in-my-house project? Well, it's going pretty well! I finished that ridiculous Alchemy and Academe book and recycled it, finished reading Joe Hill's Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft (so great!), and finished reading my son's collection of Underland Chronicles books by Suzanne Collins (fun).
My most recent conquest has been yet another stripped book from my bookstore days, The Lost World by Michael Crichton. I finished it yesterday - the same day I decided to watch the famous "Love's Labor Lost" episode from the first season of ER, the now-defunct but still great television show... a show that was created by none other than Michael Crichton.
Crichton's fiction is always interesting to me, in that it's fun to read and fast-paced, but I always feel like I'm getting the same message: Beware Technology - It Could Destroy Us All! When I read Prey several years ago, I realized it was pretty much just Jurassic Park with nanotechnology instead of dinosaurs. The Lost World is pretty much just Jurassic Park with a few different characters. And I'm okay with that - because it was fun, fast-paced reading - but the underlying technophobia strikes me as a little much.
Consider this passage, where Ian Malcolm, chaos mathematician and survivor from the first book, opines about why he thinks "cyberspace means the end of our species."
"Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This whole idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok of Tokyo or London there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity."
While I actually (and weirdly) agree with some of that - it is annoying to imagine the Gap and Starbucks and McDonald's sitting in Tokyo and Moscow - and I also think it's really difficult to make millions of people change anything at all (see American politics in general), I think it's completely off the mark in a lot of ways. Put five billion people in cyberspace and it turns out that a lot of them will just continue to argue that their way is the right way forever and ever amen. This is true to the extent that there are entire news sources that deliberately slant their news one way or another. Even people who generally agree with each other that, say, that liberal viewpoints are "correct" will argue ad infinitum (see any ILX Politics thread at ilxor.com for further information, or if you feel like knocking your own head against a wall for a while).
The weird thing about all this is that, on the television series ER, medical technology was used constantly not as a threat but as a way to save lives. "Love's Labor Lost" shows heroic doctors spending a night trying to save a woman and her baby (admittedly this particular case showcased an extremely unlikely series of events and unfortunately scared a lot of pregnant women in early 1995 - but my point still stands). For a woman with pre-eclampsia or eclampsia (the first threatening diagnosis the character receives), it's critical to have access to intravenous medications and good fetal monitoring.
And yes, I realize Michael Crichton merely "created" ER, he didn't write it, and I acknowledge that there is a huge difference between a novel and a long-running television series. I just think it's odd to have the creator of both these worlds be so at odds with himself in his messages about technology.
Now I'm off to recycle The Lost World and leave it behind me, going on to another book from my shelves. I admit that I still like to read the paper ones and have them with me, but I don't think the new reading technologies (i.e. e-books, Kindles, iPads, etc.) are bad or destined to cause humanity to stop evolving and eventually die out. I think we have created a lot of problems that we need to solve, but I don't think cyberspace is one of them.
Okay, so now that we know my excuse for not blogging is that I'm Getting Fit, where am I with my reading-the-books-in-my-house project? Well, it's going pretty well! I finished that ridiculous Alchemy and Academe book and recycled it, finished reading Joe Hill's Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft (so great!), and finished reading my son's collection of Underland Chronicles books by Suzanne Collins (fun).
My most recent conquest has been yet another stripped book from my bookstore days, The Lost World by Michael Crichton. I finished it yesterday - the same day I decided to watch the famous "Love's Labor Lost" episode from the first season of ER, the now-defunct but still great television show... a show that was created by none other than Michael Crichton.
Crichton's fiction is always interesting to me, in that it's fun to read and fast-paced, but I always feel like I'm getting the same message: Beware Technology - It Could Destroy Us All! When I read Prey several years ago, I realized it was pretty much just Jurassic Park with nanotechnology instead of dinosaurs. The Lost World is pretty much just Jurassic Park with a few different characters. And I'm okay with that - because it was fun, fast-paced reading - but the underlying technophobia strikes me as a little much.
Consider this passage, where Ian Malcolm, chaos mathematician and survivor from the first book, opines about why he thinks "cyberspace means the end of our species."
"Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This whole idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok of Tokyo or London there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity."
While I actually (and weirdly) agree with some of that - it is annoying to imagine the Gap and Starbucks and McDonald's sitting in Tokyo and Moscow - and I also think it's really difficult to make millions of people change anything at all (see American politics in general), I think it's completely off the mark in a lot of ways. Put five billion people in cyberspace and it turns out that a lot of them will just continue to argue that their way is the right way forever and ever amen. This is true to the extent that there are entire news sources that deliberately slant their news one way or another. Even people who generally agree with each other that, say, that liberal viewpoints are "correct" will argue ad infinitum (see any ILX Politics thread at ilxor.com for further information, or if you feel like knocking your own head against a wall for a while).
The weird thing about all this is that, on the television series ER, medical technology was used constantly not as a threat but as a way to save lives. "Love's Labor Lost" shows heroic doctors spending a night trying to save a woman and her baby (admittedly this particular case showcased an extremely unlikely series of events and unfortunately scared a lot of pregnant women in early 1995 - but my point still stands). For a woman with pre-eclampsia or eclampsia (the first threatening diagnosis the character receives), it's critical to have access to intravenous medications and good fetal monitoring.
And yes, I realize Michael Crichton merely "created" ER, he didn't write it, and I acknowledge that there is a huge difference between a novel and a long-running television series. I just think it's odd to have the creator of both these worlds be so at odds with himself in his messages about technology.
Now I'm off to recycle The Lost World and leave it behind me, going on to another book from my shelves. I admit that I still like to read the paper ones and have them with me, but I don't think the new reading technologies (i.e. e-books, Kindles, iPads, etc.) are bad or destined to cause humanity to stop evolving and eventually die out. I think we have created a lot of problems that we need to solve, but I don't think cyberspace is one of them.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Solace of Zombies
As much as I didn't care for 30 Days of Night, I absolutely loved the first two Walking Dead graphic novels (Days Gone By and Miles Behind Us - author is Robert Kirkman). This isn't too surprising, I suppose; even though the very concept of zombies terrifies me, there's something brilliantly fun about end of the world narratives and the stories of survivors. Since I took my solemn vow to not buy any more books until I read 100 of the ones I already had (and don't think I'm not keeping careful track), I'm waiting with baited breath to see if my beloved husband will get me one or two (or fifty) more of these graphic novels for Mother's Day. Yes, Mother's Day is the next plausible gift-giving occasion in our house, and I am asking for zombie stories.
And now I am really, really jonesing for the stories because I feel like I need the distraction of reading something, well... intensely distracting. Lately it feels like the whole world is falling apart. The earthquakes and tsunamis and everything else in Japan was depressing, but felt far away. Then yesterday I was browsing my Facebook friends' status updates and saw that a friend from college, Emily Rapp, had written a blog post. And I looked at it and found that her baby - her sweet, adorable, smiley (at least in photos!) baby named Ronan - has Tay Sachs disease. Which, for those not in the know, is genetic, progressive, incurable and fatal.
I have to step back a moment here and explain that Emily is one of those people who I have always admired for her brilliance and envied for her fantastic good looks. She's an amazing writer (her memoir, Poster Child, about growing up with a prosthetic leg is just great), too. We have never been close friends, but she was a reader at my wedding and she stayed with us a few years ago while she was on book tour. Mostly we went to the same college and participated in similar political activities (Feminists For Change, supporting the organization for gay students on campus, probably some other things but at this late date, who remembers?).
Basically, Ronan's fate doesn't have much to do with me. I will likely never meet him, although I can follow his blog and admire his Facebook photos. Emily lives on the other side of the country, so I'm no use to her, although I would love to be. But I'm still upset by this news, so much that my usual activities (obsessing about politics - I am so behind on the Libya situation at this point...) seem trivial. In fact, everything does.
I was reminded last night, a few hours after I discovered this horrifying news, that music can be a huge solace. I had to drive to a neighboring town to take my son's friend home, so I got to listen to the whole second act of the music from Rent. Say what you will about that show, hearing Without You seemed so perfect (even though I had forgotten that song entirely; mostly I just needed to hear a musical that I didn't think would make me sob, like Les Miserables always does). And I felt a little better after I got home.
Literature - even the type that is "only" zombie stories (yes, I know they're not Tolstoy or anything) - is also a source of solace for me. I love stories about surviving the end of the world anyway (my go-to novel when I'm sick is Stephen King's The Stand), and when it seems like everything that is happening on the planet is so dark, sometimes I guess it's good to see that, hey, things could be worse. I think there's some quote somewhere about how looking out into the dark from the dark, you can see a lot further... and maybe that's it, too.
Whatever, I hope I get to check out those zombie stories soon. Meanwhile, I'm working on the last book of Suzanne Collins' Underland Chronicles, Gregor and the Code of Claw. It's fine, but it's not really the distraction or the solace I'm currently seeking. On the upside, it will be one more book down on my quest to read books that are in my house.
And now I am really, really jonesing for the stories because I feel like I need the distraction of reading something, well... intensely distracting. Lately it feels like the whole world is falling apart. The earthquakes and tsunamis and everything else in Japan was depressing, but felt far away. Then yesterday I was browsing my Facebook friends' status updates and saw that a friend from college, Emily Rapp, had written a blog post. And I looked at it and found that her baby - her sweet, adorable, smiley (at least in photos!) baby named Ronan - has Tay Sachs disease. Which, for those not in the know, is genetic, progressive, incurable and fatal.
I have to step back a moment here and explain that Emily is one of those people who I have always admired for her brilliance and envied for her fantastic good looks. She's an amazing writer (her memoir, Poster Child, about growing up with a prosthetic leg is just great), too. We have never been close friends, but she was a reader at my wedding and she stayed with us a few years ago while she was on book tour. Mostly we went to the same college and participated in similar political activities (Feminists For Change, supporting the organization for gay students on campus, probably some other things but at this late date, who remembers?).
Basically, Ronan's fate doesn't have much to do with me. I will likely never meet him, although I can follow his blog and admire his Facebook photos. Emily lives on the other side of the country, so I'm no use to her, although I would love to be. But I'm still upset by this news, so much that my usual activities (obsessing about politics - I am so behind on the Libya situation at this point...) seem trivial. In fact, everything does.
I was reminded last night, a few hours after I discovered this horrifying news, that music can be a huge solace. I had to drive to a neighboring town to take my son's friend home, so I got to listen to the whole second act of the music from Rent. Say what you will about that show, hearing Without You seemed so perfect (even though I had forgotten that song entirely; mostly I just needed to hear a musical that I didn't think would make me sob, like Les Miserables always does). And I felt a little better after I got home.
Literature - even the type that is "only" zombie stories (yes, I know they're not Tolstoy or anything) - is also a source of solace for me. I love stories about surviving the end of the world anyway (my go-to novel when I'm sick is Stephen King's The Stand), and when it seems like everything that is happening on the planet is so dark, sometimes I guess it's good to see that, hey, things could be worse. I think there's some quote somewhere about how looking out into the dark from the dark, you can see a lot further... and maybe that's it, too.
Whatever, I hope I get to check out those zombie stories soon. Meanwhile, I'm working on the last book of Suzanne Collins' Underland Chronicles, Gregor and the Code of Claw. It's fine, but it's not really the distraction or the solace I'm currently seeking. On the upside, it will be one more book down on my quest to read books that are in my house.
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