Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in toruokada's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
6:41 am	executive vest So I'm covering for a supervisor, Geoff, while he's gone this week. Before he left, he and I talked. And his British accent somehow made this so much better. GEOFF: You've shaved. I don't know about someone shaving right before doing a relief role. It's like Samson and Delilah. Where's your power now? JOHN: Don't worry. I'll be fly. I've got my ties all lined up at home. GEOFF: Should've brought them in. Then I could've vetted them. (Sigh). You have to start thinking of these things. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
5:58 pm	the bell jar (book #75) UNDER THE DOME by Stephen King An invisible dome has dropped over the town of Chester's Mill, slicing deer, destroying vehicles, and imprisoning residents. No one seems to know where it came from, or why, but the piles of dead birds on both sides of the divide point to one stark fact: it's here. Swiftly--and this is a swift book, despite its 1000+ pages--we are introduced to many people. Key players include Dale "Barbie" Barbara, a veteran of the Iraq war with a heavy conscience; James Rennie, the second selectman, hell-bent on power; Julia Shumway, an attractive conservative in her mid-40s, sort of a sane Ann Coulter. There are kids and dogs, retirees and waitresses, burn-outs and doctors. There are, in one of the book's clunkier touches, two preachers: a liberal agnostic woman and a fire-and-brimstone self-flagellant. King moves effortlessly among the characters; he's done this sort of thing before. Throughout his career, he's shown great interest in what people do in extremity. Despite the ghosts and goblins, he's really a naturalist at heart. As the weather changes in the dome, the temperature rising and the air quality sinking, we start to realize the author's point: we're all under the dome, so try not to fuck up the planet. This would be disheartening with a lesser writer, but King, a veteran storyteller, doesn't allow his moral or message to detract from the tale's excitement. And it is exciting, at least at first; the pages flew by for me, although never quite as quickly as they did in the opening, when the dome dropped. Partly it's because Jim Rennie, the book's villain, never felt quite real to me, with his misplaced daintiness and black heart. The ending, I'm afraid, fails completely, coated as it is with soppy humanism and the memories of bad Star Trek episodes. King is our Dickens, and has been since 1978 or so. Like Dickens, he's wildly popular, often sentimental, given to grotesqueries and caricatures, and rarely less than gripping. Under The Dome is not King's Bleak House or even his Oliver Twist, but it's entertaining, and great swathes of it are scary as hell. I won't be at all surprised if I encounter the dome in my dreams. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
11:04 am	god must be carving the clouds into animal shapes Sam Weber's badass illustrations for a new edition of Lord of the Flies: http://sampaints.com/2009/10/lord-of-the-flies-2/ (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
6:37 am	the shinning Playboy has put up "The Bone Church," Stephen King's marvelous new narrative poem: http://www.playboy.com/articles/stephen-king-the-bone-church/index.html (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
9:08 pm	yes "I was not happy. Books stole my life." -- Borges, in old age, reflecting on his past (Comment on this)
4:56 pm	(book #74) THE EGYPTIANS by Alan Gardiner "The bowman is ready. The wrongdoer is everywhere. There is no man of yesterday. A man goes out to plough with his shield. A man smites his brother, his mother's son. Men sit in bushes until the benighted traveller comes, in order to plunder his load. The robber is a possessor of riches. Boxes of ebony are broken up. Precious acacia wood is cleft asunder. "He who possessed no property is now a man of wealth. The poor man is full of joy. Every town says: 'Let us suppress the powerful among us.' He who had no yoke of oxen is now possessor of a herd. The possessors of robes are now in rags. Gold and lapis lazuli, silver and turquoise are fastened on the necks of female slaves. All female slaves are free with their tongues. When their mistress speaks it is irksome to the servants. The children of princes are dashed against the walls." --Anonymous, circa 1274 BC Alan Gardiner's book, which centers around Egypt in the time of the pharoahs, is an introduction both to Egyptian history and Egyptology. It's as much about how we know what we know as it is about what we know, if that parses. It's not quite for the general reader; instead, it's aimed at the young scholar who wishes to enter the field. As such, it eschews much that is compelling--sexy--to the average reader, taken it for granted that he is already compelled. The book is never difficult, but it does sometimes border on dullness. "The first task which lay before the successors of Champollion was to establish the true order of Pre-Ptolemaic kings, and their decipherments quickly led to the rehibilitation, or at least the partial rehabilitation, of the Egyptian priest Manetho." Indeed. The reader should stick with the book, though, as insights into the society are generally interesting. A picture forms, of necessity fuzzily, of a deeply conservative people who venerated their ancestors and took great joy in life.  There are photographs of pyramids, the Sphinx, busts, statues, and those remain my favorite parts of the books, those and the excerpts from ancient writings. Gardiner's engaged in recovering, and he's honest about how difficult and uncertain such work is. Very often we have only conjecture and supposition. The sphinx holds its riddles. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
8:05 pm	phrazes for the young "Yes, I know I'm going to hell in a purple basket/ Least I'll be in another world while you're pissing on my casket." --Julian Casablancas (2 Comments |Comment on this)
11:02 am	kristin wig reads suzanne somers' poetry Oh, my.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unD2bzhDkLk (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
9:27 pm	there's a danger in loving somebody too much (book #73) WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte Various film and TV adaptations over the years haven't done a thing to tame the wildness at the heart of Bronte's novel; the book still shakes, sometimes uncontrollably. Even its admirers describe it as fevered and overheated, and I'm afraid I can't count myself among its admirers. There are too many exclamation points and too many shouts. The name Heathcliff has become shorthand for a brooding, romantic male (or an orange cat, depending on which circles you travel in). In the book, he's also a prick. He's motivated by a jealous, possessive "love" that's more obsession than communion. His cruelty, which may have been compelling in a short story or even novella, becomes tedious and one-note when shown again, and again, over the course of the book. Like Dracula, Wuthering Heights seems genuinely to come from sexual repression, that old motivator. I'm tempted to excuse Bronte on the grounds that she wrote in a different time, but then, the bulk of the critics at the time shared my problems with the book. For all its occasional gothic creepiness, this is an unconvincing book, and its continuing popularity and classic status honestly surprise me. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
6:09 pm	you show them what you can do Cerealart's having a sale right now. If you enter the promo code NOVEMBERSALE, you get 40% off. I'd love to get Marcel Dzama's salt and pepper shakers, but can't really justify the expense. However, Yoshimoto Nara's cute drinking glasses are reasonable (at least for Cerealart), even before the sale. I'm tempted to get 40% off a couple of these girls: http://www.cerealart.com/shopexd.asp?id=441 (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
7:57 pm	:O “The universe is perfectly transparent. We exist as flaws in ancient glass.” --John Updike (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
6:59 pm	we are, we are the cats of the nation (book #72) SOLDIER OF ARETE by Gene Wolfe Soldier of Arete follows Soldier of Mist, which I read earlier this year. You remember my little review. Actually, you almost certainly don't, which is fine; I don't remember writing it. We're still better off than Latro, the titular soldier, who forgets almost everything that's happened to him once night falls. He carries a scroll, on which he writes most days, prodded to do so by Io, his little slave girl. "Slave" is an ugly word, but these were different times. 479 BC, more or less. Wolfe purports to have translated the scroll, and he adds occasional footnotes. The novel takes Herodotus as its model, mingling descriptions of battles and the political realm with oracles, visions, and appearances by the gods. This is a demanding, intensely rigorous and subtle novel, and as a reader I wasn't always up to the task. But Wolfe has said for a long time now that literature is that which can be read by an educated reader with pleasure and re-read with more pleasure. He has always written that way. I have one more book in the series to read sometime (Soldier of Sidon, which brings Latro to Egypt), and then, someday, I'll read them all again. I'm looking forward to it. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
12:19 pm	willenium (book #71) LONDON FIELDS by Martin Amis "This is a true story but I can't believe it's really happening. "It's a murder story, too. I can't believe my luck. "And a love story (I think), of all strange things, so late in the century, so late in the goddamned day. "This is the story of a murder. It hasn't happened yet. But it will. (It had better). I know the murderer, I know the murderee. I know the time, I know the place. I know the motive (her motive) and I know the means. I know who will be the foil, the fool, the poor foal, also utterly destroyed. And I couldn't stop them, I don't think, even if I wanted to. The girl will die. It's what she always wanted. You can't stop people, once they start. You can't stop people, once they start creating. "What a gift. This page is briefly stained by my tears of gratitude. Novelists don't usually have it so good, do they, when something real happens (something unified, dramatic and pretty saleable), and they just write it down?" At the time of its release, London Fields was notorious. Martin Amis had left his longtime agent, the wife of author Julian Barnes, which caused a huge rift in the two men's friendship, and had taken up with Andrew Wylie, known in the industry as The Jackal. Wylie secured an enormous amount of money for the book, and much of literary England took sides. Amis spent a fortune on expensive dental procedures, a fact that somehow got lots of coverage, and caused lots of outrage. It was a mess. In all of that, it became easy to lose track of the book itself, which, of all Amis' book that I've read, is the finest novel and maybe the second-finest book. It crackles and hums. It's the story of Nicola Six, a beautiful, self-loathing, destructive girl whose dark gravity pulls two men into her orbit: Keith Talent, a thug, obsessed with pornography and darts, and Guy Clinch, an upper-class man, romantic and easily led. The narrator--not Amis, but nevertheless an author--watches, and interacts, knowing the end of the story but leading us on, as Nicola leads her men on. Amis, ever vying for Nabokov's crown, sometimes reaches too far in his exuberance, but more often he doesn't; like a great athlete, he astonishes again and again with how easy he makes it seem. I'd be visibly straining. Actually, I'd be on the floor as EMTs brought the paddles. What a book! (Comment on this)
Monday, October 26th, 2009
12:09 am	time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future (book #70) MCSWEENEY'S #32 edited by Dave Eggers Ten short stories, set in ten different locations, all set fifteen years from now. 2024 is close enough that most of us will see it, barring some great catastrophe or bad luck. None of the authors here are particularly known for science fiction--if that's what this is; is anything set in the future by necessity SF?--but most have a scene-setting ability strong enough to make their futures feel real. My favorite, I think, is "The Black Square," by pediatrician and divinity student Chris Adrian. It's set in Nantucket, of all places, where a deep, maybe bottomless black square has appeared. A young gay man, reeling from a brutal breakup, heads there to enter the hole, which may lead just to oblivion but also, maybe, to a new world. I find it to be to the author's credit that he never tries to make the square believable; like the angels in other of his stories, you either accept it or not. Wells Tower contributes a story of red water and dangerous vitalty; Sheila Heti one in which teenagers are venerated by their communities, and the problems of physics are finally solved. I loved J. Erin Sweeney's story, in which two young sons of a dictator are smuggled out of their country, while the last remaining members of a dying species are released back to the wild. If there's a misstep here, and there is, it's in the inclusion of Heidi Julavits' "Material Proof of the Failure of Everything." Julavits is a talented, engaging essayist but a perverse, obtuse fiction writer. I was hoping she'd rise above herself--the story even has a good title--but she sinks back into convolution and aren't-I-clever dialogue. It's a shame. Otherwise, a fine collection that--as with all stories of the future--tells us less about where we'll be tomorrow than we are today. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
9:53 am	troll shard Lars Von Trier was given an ad hoc "most misogynist film" prize at Cannes for Antichrist, his latest damsel-in-distress picture. If I know anything about the director, he's thrilled. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
9:05 am	goodbye, columbus "What I would really like to do, what I would really love to happen to me, would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I died. So I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book." --Philip Roth (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
11:44 am	heavy is the head that wears the cat (book #69) THE WILD THINGS by Dave Eggers Eggers, having co-written a movie that expands on Maurice Sendak's famous--infamous--nine-sentence book, has written a novel about Max and the strange creatures he meets. It's not merely a novelization, but a further refracturing, and a chance to tell the author's own vision without recourse to special effects and the back-and-forth compromises, however well-intentioned, of co-writing. The story apes adventure--leaving home, sailing forth on a great journey, encountering new friends and dangers--but lacks much of adventure's traditional thrill, substituting for it a certain queasiness. Max is a child:  bright and curious, sure, but often uncertain, and given to anger and impulse. The wild things he meets are mercurial and needy, tangled in their own relationships. They talk of their priorities and issues, giving away the game: these are adults. This is us. The wild things ask that they be made happy forever, and Max tries to oblige, arranging war games and fort-building. But it's impossible to be happy forever, despite Max's optimstic attempts, and clouds gather. Feeling lost and powerless, tangled, held down, and ready to burst: childhood does feel like that, sometimes, maybe often, and the book captures that feeling well. This isn't Eggers' subtlest book (it's not even his best book this year, as Zeitoun came out this year too), and it really never rises again to the brilliance of its opening, real-world chapters. But it's honest. There's a little Max inside all of us; that sort of phrase, you'll agree, is usually said with a smile. Not so here. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
9:40 am	sleepy cats wear bedtime hats (book #68) MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS by Michael Chabon As DVDA asked some years ago, "What makes a man?/ Is it the woman in his arms?/ Is it his quest for glory?" It may be these things, but Michael Chabon reminds us in these essays that, whatever has made us,  we are different men to different people. Chabon is a son, a husband, and a father, and he explores all these roles here. The book ends up part fractured autobiography, part guide to making your way through our world. Chabon describes himself as a semi-observant, bacon-eating Jew; he is clearly proud, describing his daughter's bat mitzvah, but he rolls his eyes at puny Hannukah, preferring Christmas, with its manger and Nativity. He values his children but reminds us that children are like Dorios--we can always make more--and that what we really need are more adults. He raises his eyebrows at traditional masculine values, epitomized in the inability to ask directions or take with stride a daugther's puberty, but he's defined by those values as well. Chabon neither dwells on nor avoids the less upright moments: the divorce of his first wife, and the sundering of his relationship with that first father-in-law; the copious amount of marijuana he'd smoked over the years before quitting; the empty, unsatisfied way he felt after, at fifteen years old, he slept with his mother's thirty-something friend; the Henry Miller-esque, "big-souled" womanizer he tried, without much sucess, to become. But such a list obscures how bright and positive the book is, even when dwelling on death and acid reflux. Several of these essays were familiar to me, as I read them in Details magazine, where the bulk of the book appeared in column form. Yes, Details. Maybe it pays well. I was glad to find them again--several of them impressed me enough that I'd posted excerpts from them here, on thls journal, over the years. The essays new to me are up to the author's usual rigorous standards, his masculine competence and grace. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
11:46 am	read this please because I love this I read an old interview of John Updike by Martin Amis done for the Guardian. I still am surprised that Updike's dead, and not sending poems to The New Yorker or stories to Atlantic. If the author has an heir, it's Michael Chabon, I think. I know: Jewish, doesn't write about God, adultery, or death often, and with genre leanings. What can you do. Here's a fragment of an essay Chabon wrote about his first father-in-law, years after Chabon had divorced the man's daughter: "When I saw him sometime later at his mother's funeral in Portland, my father-in-law told me that the day my divorce from his daughter came through was the saddest one in his life. Maybe that was when I started to understand what had happened. "What was I now to him? How can it have felt to have been divorced by someone he treated like a son? These are not considerations that comfort me or make me especially proud. I try to remind myself that in the long course of his life, I occupied only a tiny span of years toward the end, when everything gleams with an unconvincing luster, moving too quickly to be real. And I try to forget that for a short while I formed a layer, however thin, in the deep stratigraphy of his family, so that some later explorer, rummaging through the drawers of his big old desk, might brush aside a scorecard from the 1967 PGA Pacific Northwest Open signed by Arnold Palmer, or an old pencil-style typewriter eraser with a stiff brush on one end, stamped QUEEN CITY RIBBON CO., and turn up a faded photograph of me, in my sober blue suit, flower in my lapel, looking as if I knew what I was doing." (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 12th, 2009
11:22 pm	so large, so friendly, and so rich (book #67) HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster "One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister." Let's begin there, as the book does. There's a seeming off-handedness, even arbitrariness to the line. It's casual, shrugging; Forster doesn't seem to be trying too hard, which would probably invoke envy if not rage in writers, would-be and genuine, who have sweated blood over their first lines. You don't do that sort of thing, not if you wanted to be taken seriously. Forster probably did want to be taken seriously. It's just that he couldn't take the tedium of the heavy-handed. That isn't to say the novel shies away from the big themes: death, love, art, family, and the class system--this is England, after all--make their presence known. The author wants to be deft and weighty, sparkling and deep, and he doesn't quite have the genius for it. Few have (Fitzgerald did, later). The story is about a house, and about three families, one rich and seemingly carefree, one what we would call middle-class today, and one poor. Their actions seem as defined by money, and how much of it they have, than as by their character. In this, Forster risks snobbery, and he sometimes succumbs to it. I came to this book backward. I first read Zadie Smith's brilliant (superior!) update of it, On Beauty, and only now came to her source. Reading it, I kept remembering her characters. Instead of Englishmen, I saw Americans; instead of class, political leanings. The tracing, mightily embellished, has far outdone the initial drawing. I'm afraid Ms. Smith has spoiled Howards End for me. (Comment on this)