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September 2011 Blogs

Friday, September 16, 2011

For years I have wondered what the title Crying of Lot 49 written by Thomas Pynchon in 1966 referred to. So I finally checked the book out from Faulk Central to discover that the phrase is also the last line of the novel. The story is about a conspiracy to subvert the US postal system, and the main protagonist, Oedipa Mass, is a suburban housewife who becomes aware that there may be more to life than her sterile mode of existence. The novel is full of absurdist names, metaphors, freaky characters, allusions, cultural symbols, and terms overloaded with confusing meanings. The crying refers to the auctioneer's voice and lot 49 is the collection of stamps being auctioned. But the stamps may also be crying a message, but I am not re-reading the book to figure it out.

Below is an example of Pychon's writing, and the passage still resonates today since the government reported this week that more than 46 million Americans are living under the government’s official poverty line, which is the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has recorded such data.

Yet at least he had believed in the cars, maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in...bring with them the most godawful of trade-ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at...inside smelling hopeless of children, of supermarket booze, or two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust--and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused ...or had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 or 10¢, trading stamps, pink flyers advertising specials at the market, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads, Yellow Pages torn from the phone book, rags of old underwear or dresses that already were period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes--it nauseated him to look, but he had to look.

My favorite passage in the book is a conversation between Oedipa Maas and her psychiatrist, Dr. Hilarius.

“I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."
Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be".

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Trying hard to do...NOTHING

by: reference

"The tree on the mountain height is its own enemy.
The grease that feeds the light devours itself.
The cinnamon tree is edible: so it is cut down!
The lacquer tree is profitable: they maim it.
Every man knows how useful it is to be useful.

No one seems to know
How useful it is to be useless."

-Chuang Tzu

In January I resolved to read less. My intention being that if I read less I would have more time for other activities. Realizing I already had plenty of time for other activities and that what I truly lacked was time for idleness, I further resolved to do nothing. Good and proper nothingness: Sitting on my porch, walking, thinking, trying not to think. Being an inveterate reader, I couldn’t possibly just begin this new course. I had to read about doing nothing first. Below are a few books that provided further encouragement to do nothing:

The Way of Chuang Tzu (beautiful meditations on simplicity, humor, and contentment)
How to be Idle (Tom Hodgkinson's goal: convince folks of the merits of idleness)
Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness (great essays on simple pleasures)
Candide (Candide does everything before reaching a place and state where he can do nothing).

Months later I still love a good book about nothing, but I've also become more comfortable with nothingness. The fall seems a fitting time to really hone the craft of doing nothing.

Friday, September 09, 2011

Pride!!

by: reference

Tomorrow, the GLBT community in Austin will be celebrating Gay Pride.

Recently, I learned by serendipity about the death of Rudolf Brazda, one of the few survivors of Nazi concentration camps where he and other gay men had to wear a pink triangle attached to their uniforms denoting their sexual orientation. That pink triangle made them a target for brutality, abuse and object of “scientific” experimentation.

When I read about Brazda, I felt that I was the only person in the world who didn’t know about these atrocities. Then I jumped ahead in time to 1969 and started reading more in depth about the Stonewall riots in New York City. I learned about the before and after and how the protests changed the vision and rights of the GLTB community in this country.

Maybe because I have all this information fresh in my mind right now or maybe because of the love I have for my amazing friends in the GLBT community, that I am more excited than usual about this celebration in Austin. If you want to get in the mood for this important event, here’s a list of movies in the Austin Public Library collection that might help you:

Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Bent
Black is-- black ain't (Documentary)
Boys In the Band
Eyes Wide Open
It’s in the water
La Mission
Law of Desire
Longtime Companion
Paris Is Burning
Prayers for Bobby
Plan B
Purple Sea
Sasha
Suddenly Last Summer
Tongues untied (Documentary)
Transamerica
Wizard of Oz
Wilde
XXY

Tomorrow, go out, celebrate and be proud! Ah!! Don’t forget to read our two previous blog posts: From the Closet to the Courtroom and Gay Pride Month Book Lists.

*Thanks to JB for helping with the selection of titles for this post.

Friday, September 02, 2011

Taking Advantage

by: carolyn.rogers

Without intending to, I have recently read four novels where teachers or bosses have had a "consensual" sexual relationship with a teenage girl. The stories go beyond the specific relationship to illuminate the fraught relationships among friends, families, and entire communities. All four books are cleverly constructed and very well written.

The Adults by Alison Espach
Covert affair, while inappropriate, not to say illegal, seems to be mutual, but Emily is 15 and the English teacher is 25. This secret life reinforces Emily's separation from the adults who most disappoint her.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
A single mother and her teenage daughter, Amy, live an isolated life in New England until the intrusion into the life of Amy by her math teacher.

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
One of the three storylines in this identity thriller concerns Lucy Lattimore who runs off after her high school graduation with her history teacher.

The Good Parents by Joan London
Maya has moved from Western Australia to Melbourne where she finds a job in an office, and before she knows what is happening she begins an affair with her much older boss. When her parents travel to Melobourne to visit, she has disapperared.

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September 2011 Blogs

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