Esprit de L'Escalier

Quick question

I'm in the middle of an unbelievable case of school paper-related paralysis.  I have a twenty pager due tomorrow and I am not as far as I should be, given it's 7pm the day before it's due.  What am I doing here?   I have a quick question.

I need some book suggestions for my trip.  I'm hoping for some things that are related to the places I'll be visiting.  I'm thinking Vonnegut (I mean, I'm going to be in Dresden, so Slaughterhouse-Five seems a perfect fit), but besides that I'm stuck.  I'll be in Scotland, Ireland, Germany (for the longest) and the Netherlands.  Please help.  And send good thoughts to my stupid, procrastinating self.

Memorial Day: Remember

This morning was filled with ambient music.  We live on a hill and on the bottom of one of its sides is a cemetery.  Music wafted up from it as a choir sang patriotic songs and a marching band played.  Later there was some popping noises that I realized was ceremonial gun fire.  Today my mind keeps coming back to this poem, "Remember" by Christina Rossetti.

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Monday morning song and other thoughts

I was discussing the new Raconteurs album with some friends this weekend - actually, I was complaining about the radio in this town, and we were sharing some songs that we liked/hated, and I really like their new single. Anyhow, my friends asked me if I was familiar with Brendan Benson's solo stuff. When I said no, they showed me the video below, mostly because there are a plethora of Brendans in it and he's cute. The song has been stuck in my head ever since (in a good way). Please enjoy. (This is the sort of pop music I wish I could hear more of on the radio.)

Speaking of cute men, did anyone else see Masterpiece Theatre's newest version of A Room with a View? I didn't hate it, but I don't think 80+ minutes is long enough to tell the story. I did like Rafe Spall's George Emerson. He did a good job, and this version's George had more to say than the Merchant Ivory one of the mid-80s. Plus he's cute. Did anyone else see it? If so, how do you feel about the ending they gave it? I thought it was plausible and made everything more bittersweet. In the end it makes me want to re-read the book.

Speaking of books to read, the Outfit (a group of Chicago crime writers who keep a blog), are covering The Big Sleep this week. That reminds me I have to continue my noir education and read some more Chandler.

Quick note on school and reading

I don't have a lot of time to write right now, but wanted to a) drop down the creepy picture of baby rats and b) link quickly to something.

I don't have time to write NOT because I'm crazy busy (thank god), but have a couple hours and want to get the hell out of my academic building, where I spend too much time as it is. I fanagled my schedule this quarter so that I will have two afternoons a week to myself (and my studies). Two spring afternoons to loll in the quad reading, or spend in a sunny window seat at a coffee shop, studiously working. Best decision I've made in a while, which involved dropping a required class (that I'll have to take next spring) and picking up a class I'm very interested in (a super small seminar on sustainability and the urban form).

So anyway, my thoughts go out to Natasha and her continuing pest problem. My congratulations also go to my old work team, who just got the contract for the project I worked on for 2+ years renewed! GO TEAM!

I also want to link to this essay on the NYTimes about women, reading and dating. It's hilarious and oh-so-true.

Later. I'm off to soak up as much sun as I can. (And to of course finish my homework.)

(Update: Oh, I just read this post about "faux female empowerment" icons and have to agree. Partially because SatC bugs the hell out of me. And for the last two grafs:

The bottom line: If you were going to choose a gender-specific role model, why one of these four cardboard characters? As American women have won more and more rights, the feminist movement has had the luxury of branching off in many, even contradictory, directions. Feminist icons run the gamut from activist Gloria Steinem to porn star Jenna Jamison…not to mention our first viable female Presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton.

One friend suggested we organize a boycott of the Sex and the City movie. But it's just not that important. In an ideal world, former fans wouldn't show up because they've moved on. The movie—neither a hit nor a stinker—would simply go out with a whimper, just like any idea whose time had come and gone.

Amen to that, "like any idea whose time had come and gone." Later for real this time.

Updated, once again, several hours later:
Apparently, blog, I just can't get enough today. I did an errand, went to a coffee shop, read my homework for my class and scribbled on a big post-it something I was planning on appending to this post. Now, though, I think I'll append something slightly different.

Recently my mind has been taken up almost entirely in the things that I am studying, although (to me) this isn't really translating to this space. I think that's sort of a time issue. My posts since starting up school again full time have been more rushed and less thought out; more reactionary than anything else. In general I feel rushed and jumbled and worn out. I can't say I like that. I read a couple of articles recently about how meditation is supposed to be good for your health in the long run, and I'm thinking of trying it out to help me clear my head. (Are there books where you can learn that? No idea.) I want to take the time to write about the bigger issues I deal with in my classes that have me excited. Here's a pledge to try and make time and brain cells available to do so in this space. I think writing about it regularly and in a more measured way will help me de-jumble my ideas and reactions to the things I read and discuss in my classes.

Okay, that's seriously it for the day.

Finding Iris Chang

Last month I had the good fortune of attending one of my friends’ Sharon and Pat’s book parties. They have them from time to time to celebrate friends who are publishing memoirs, and they always include an interesting and diverse group of women, good food and excellent conversation. The author is always in attendance and I always look forward to the chance to hear about her writing process and herself.

This past book party was in honor of Paula Kamen’s new book Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind, about her exploration of her friendship with Iris and the events that lead up to Iris’s suicide in 2004. I had met Paula at other book parties, and it is always a treat to see her.

I loved the book. To me it was fascinating on several levels. At its base, it’s the story of a long-term friendship and how that changes over time. It shows us how much we don’t know about each other, and also we impact each other, without our knowledge. It’s a look into Iris’s mind, through personal correspondence and interviews with close friends. As Paula says in her introduction, it gives us a glimpse into what it is like to be truly extraordinary. This is a book about a woman who was exceptionally intelligent and driven, and who truly cared for and cheered on those that she loved. The layer about mental illness, though, is the one I have been thinking about all month. The book is about hidden secrets and how those secrets destroyed a life.

Maybe because it’s the holidays and crazy relatives are front and center in my life, but mental illness has been floating back and forth in my mind lately. The one idea hit home the hardest for me in this book was about the mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder, which ultimately killed Iris. She was driven in a way I can’t even begin to understand, and achieved heights I never will, but she was also tormented by inner demons that I do not have.

I admire Paula for taking on this subject and seeing the need for more open discussions of mental illness and suicide. She found that psychiatry looks for depression and signs of mental illness that is very biased towards white cultural norms. Asian Americans have to overcome a double set of cultural norms with mental illness – the cultural norm of not discussing what is wrong and of having mental illness manifest or act out in different ways. We need to be more aware of red flags. Paula writes how people dismissed warning signs as Iris being excitable, or because people don’t want to see what is wrong, until it’s too late.

Today Heather Armstrong of Dooce writes about her own struggles of mental illness. I have always admired her frankness towards her own life. She is courageous and I thank her for telling us her story, so that others may tell her own. That’s what I’m taking away from Paula’s book, that we should seek help when we need it, and that needing help will not hurt us. I think embracing ourselves and our faults will make us stronger.

Today also marks the 70th anniversary of the Rape of Nanjing. Iris made her name on telling the world that story. It was probably the hardest book I’ve ever read, but one I was extremely glad to have read. This book makes you wonder if Iris’s suicide was preventable, and it probably was if people had been able to see warning signs. It’s hard to know, though, as hindsight makes it easy to judge the past. Iris has been a symbol for many groups, and I hope that now she can help others seek help.

I encourage you all to read this book. The topic may not sound the sunniest, but it's an intriguing look at, well, what it's like to be truly extraordinary. Iris was a fascinating person, and it's interesting to see how her determination and work ethic got her so far. She believed in making the world better by showing it its faults, and I think her advocacy was vital in opening up the world further. This book also shows us the importance at facing our fears about ourselves and getting help.

For more reading about Paula and Iris, see Salon's interview with Paula, and Paula's eulogy for Iris, which in some ways started this entire journey.

This has been cross-posted at new critics.

Novels and expansion

Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. The first to hear the hum of the siren were those who couldn’t sleep – the ill and bedridden, the mothers with sons at the front, women crying for the men they loved. To them it began as a long breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn’t long before the wailing filled the sky. It came from afar, beyond the horizon, slowly, almost lazily. Those still asleep dreamed of waves breaking over pebbles, a March storm whipping the woods, a herd of cows trampling the ground with their hooves, until finally sleep was shaken off and they struggled to open their eyes, murmuring, “Is it an air raid?”

So begins Suite Francaise by Irène Nemirovksy. I read it in June and meant to post about it, but never did. I just came across some notes I scribbled about it in my notebook. Her book has cinematic sweeps, moving from the general psyche to individuals. You can see the broad shot, setting the stage, as the director moves in closely to the main characters. Her gorgeous descriptions and put you in the moment, and you can hear and see the surroundings, smell the flowers in the trees.

It’s another WWII book, this time in France, during the Nazi occupation. It’s cinematic in its scope and description, and absolutely beautiful. Nemirovksy wrote from her experiences in France during the war. Book one is set in Paris, as the Nazis march in and Parisians decide whether or not to make an exodus into the countryside. Book two follows a country town during its occupation, and how the inhabitants and occupiers interact. She captures humanity in its many guises and foibles well.

Her book was supposed to be made of five sections, but she was killed in Auschwitz after only two were completed. Her daughters kept her notebooks without knowing what was in them for fifty years, only to have it published recently.

She wanted five sections, to mirror a symphony’s five movements, to have her stories expand like music. In the extensive, and fascinating, notes section, she quotes E.M. Forster, from Aspects of a Novel:

Music, though it does not employ human beings, though it is governed by intricate laws, nevertheless does off in its final expression a type of beauty which fiction might achieve in its own way. Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out. When the symphony is over we feel that the notes and tunes composing it have been liberated, and they have found in the rhythm of the whole their individual freedom. Cannot the novel be like that? Is there not something of it in War and Peace?

I love that idea of expansion, intersecting music and literature. Although I don't think it is limited to those art forms. Nevertheless, I think she accomplishes expansion in her novels. This book is powerful and beautiful and I urge you to put it on your reading list. Make sure to read the notes section as well, as you can read her plans for the remaining books, as well as letters and more information about her life.

This is cross-posted at New Critics.

Madeleine L'Engle 1918-2007

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday at the age of 88. Her stories taught me a lot about how to think and see the world around me. I love A Wrinkle in Time, and the rest of the books in that series, and loved the Austin family as well. It seems to me that anyone who loved reading as a child came across her at some point or another. Amy is going to re-read her straight away, and I will once I finish my current book.

The above quote is from the NYTimes obituary, please read it and find out more about her interesting life.

A beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding

Yesterday Charles Simic was named the 15th poet laureate.

I first read Simic's collection The World Doesn't End for a class on tricksters I took as a freshman in college. (This class remains one of my favorites.) The book is full of dark images, absence as presence and unknowns, as well as a sly humor creeping in. I love it. Below is one of my favorites.

Once I knew, then I forgot. It was as if I had fallen asleep in a field only to discover at waking that a grove of trees had grown around me.

"Doubt nothing, believe everything," was my friend's idea of metaphysics, although his brother ran away with his wife. He still bought her a rose everyday, sat in an empty house for the next twenty years talking to her about the weather.

I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!

My friend's empty house one of its windows lit. The dark trees multiplying all around it.

Wizards and baseballs

I'm wimped out on my Friday plans, the thought of staying home and vegging was just too tempting. Saturday held wizards and baseballs for me. I picked up the last Harry Potter at my local bookstore when it opened at 10am. I finished the last 30 pages this morning. I enjoyed it, but will say no more about it...

Later I went to my first game at Wrigley Field with my friend Cindy. The Cubs lost, and it was a long, drawn out game, but I had a great time. Cindy's a lifelong Cubs fan and gave me a full historical overview of the stadium. Plus I had a hot dog and ran into a friend from school.

That evening Natasha and I had dinner and went to see the latest Harry Potter movie with our friend Elaine, which we all loved. The Order of the Phoenix was my least favorite book and the longest. When I first read it I thought it was endless and overly angsty. I mean, I thought Rowling got the teen angst stuff right, just a little too right. The movie, while it did gloss over and skip some side stories, did a great job telling the story. Elaine felt that the director got the boarding school aspect the best so far. I agree with her and am pleased to see him directing The Half-Blood Prince. Though I know die hards are probably angry at the edits, there was no way to film the book in its entirety.

A couple other things I'm liking:
- Clark and Michael: it's an online mockumentary-style show, the episodes last about 7-10 minutes and star Clark Duke and Michael Cera (George Michael in Arrested Development). My friend Ginny turned me onto it, as she loves Michael Cera. It's full of awkward pauses and uncomfortable humor, and is pretty hilarious. At least check out the clip of Michael on Letterman.

- The novels of Kate Atkinson. I just finished Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which I absolutely adored. A girl tells her rollicking life story, starting at her conception, and weaves in and out of her family's history. It's got a magical realism feeling to it and a huge heart and humor. I read Case Histories a couple of weeks ago, which I also enjoyed. The two books both tell women's stories, over different points in time, but Case Histories is a detective novel (of sorts). They both have humor and sadness, and I was crying at the end of Scenes, but in a good way.

Argh, some spills and my traveling books

Last night I was all but done with a post about the books I bought this weekend (which I will recreate in a moment), when el gato struck. He jumped up on the table and curled behind the laptop, as he's apt to do and then got up quickly and rammed straight into my glass of water, which spilled all over my laptop, which stopped working. Amid my cries of rage and explitives as I mopped up the mess, he ran over to my roommate and jumped straight for the glass of red wine in her hands. Which went flying ALL OVER THE COUCH, her and himself. This all happened at about 10:20 pm, which was already passed our normal bedtime.

Everything got put in the laundry (it came out), and Franky got a bath (I'm really glad I clipped his nails Sunday). We were not amused. I was not happy that I had to wait for my laptop to dry out, but it's working now and all is well.

Anyhow, I'm all but set to go. I packed on Sunday, which is HUGE for me. I NEVER pack early. When I went to study in Prague for five months, I packed the night before. (Picture a frazzled 20 year old version of me, in a basement surrounded by piles of clothes with my mother and sister wondering if I truly was crazy.) Which is how I ended up with about a dozen skirts in Eastern Europe in January.

I also hit up a couple of stores and came away with six quality used paperbacks, all for about $7. Which I think is the way to do it.

Here are the titles (from shortest to tallest, as they sit on my table, with my thoughts):

• Sara Paretsky, Tunnel Vision (she is a new favorite and will bring Chicago with me)


• P.G. Wodehouse, Sunset at Blandings (he makes everything more enjoyable)


• Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (random but looked intriguing)


• Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club (he's also always fun)


• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (to continue my noir jag)


• Philip Davison, The Long Suit (also random but spy novels travel well)

I might pop The Hobbit in too, because it's good to have an adventure story on your own adventure, and you never know what will happen when you step outside your door.

I think this is my last report before I go. I'm hoping to blog abroad, so stay tuned! There will be lots of photos and stories when I return.