Tuesday, May 23, 2006
How Beloved is Beloved and other thoughts
The New York Times recently published the results of their survey to find out what is the best work of fiction in the last 25 years. The winner was Beloved by Toni Morrison. (here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/fiction-25-years.html) I can't say that I'm surprised and in fact I am ok with the results. Beloved is an excellent novel by one of America's best living novelist. I know that other critics have shunned the very concept of such a list, arguing that you simply cannot pick ONE book as the best and most representative of American fiction. I don't want to touch this point because I think overall literary fiction needs any positive press it can get. Already, many news outlets have reviewed the list, including Slate and NPR. My initial reactions to seeing it were one: damn, Roth had a lot of novels nominated; and two: where are the post-modernists? Where's Pynchon, Barth, and David Foster Wallace? DeLillo is well represented, and that's about it.
My explanation for this is that American post-modernists simply aren't that good. Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night and Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian's "Soul Mountain" are the best post-modern novels that I've read. DeLillo's White Noise is exactly that in comparison. I'm curious how history will judge American post-modernism. Pynchon will certainly remain in the canon, but I wonder how many others will?
My explanation for this is that American post-modernists simply aren't that good. Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night and Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian's "Soul Mountain" are the best post-modern novels that I've read. DeLillo's White Noise is exactly that in comparison. I'm curious how history will judge American post-modernism. Pynchon will certainly remain in the canon, but I wonder how many others will?
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Just the Facts, Ma'am
When I was in Belize, I overheard an American tourist talking about his reading habits to his companion during lunch. This man said that he mostly read nonfiction and particularly disdained narrative nonfiction. "What I really prefer to read are textbooks," he added.
Naturally, my brain exploded, and not because I hate reading textbooks. To simply consume information or process data misses out on the whole point of critical reading and in fact the entire enterprise of a liberal arts education. Such passivity on the reader's part distills intellectual inquiry into rote memorization, like learning a language by reading flash cards.
I wondered how this person reacts to culture. Does he simply abide by whatever trends or ideas are the norm? Dancing With the Stars is a hit show, I must watch that! Clay Aiken won American Idol, I have to buy his CD! It saddens me that someone can be so disengaged with culture, especially when one is in such a rich and distinct one as Belize. I wonder if this person ever left the 100 yard area of downtown San Pedro to experience the rest of the country, or if he didn't just get to know it by reading a brochure.
Naturally, my brain exploded, and not because I hate reading textbooks. To simply consume information or process data misses out on the whole point of critical reading and in fact the entire enterprise of a liberal arts education. Such passivity on the reader's part distills intellectual inquiry into rote memorization, like learning a language by reading flash cards.
I wondered how this person reacts to culture. Does he simply abide by whatever trends or ideas are the norm? Dancing With the Stars is a hit show, I must watch that! Clay Aiken won American Idol, I have to buy his CD! It saddens me that someone can be so disengaged with culture, especially when one is in such a rich and distinct one as Belize. I wonder if this person ever left the 100 yard area of downtown San Pedro to experience the rest of the country, or if he didn't just get to know it by reading a brochure.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
My Tremendous Husband
My husband always misuses the word tremendous. He thinks it is a superlative, as in, "I had a tremendous time." He is always describing the very best things as if they were tremendous. I've been married to him for almost eight years, but I've never corrected him, never once told him that tremendous means large, as in tremendous debt.
As an editor by trade, I am often annoyed by abuses of the English language. I cringe at data used in the singular. Impact as a verb is abhorrent. I generally bemoan the sad state of the apostrophe. Hyphens are a daily horror. The comma, a travesty. Don't even get me started on the semicolon.
Not that I'm a purist. A wise person once said that an inflexible language is a dead language. There is a certain latitude one may employ. I have recently accepted into my personal lexicon the word email as a verb. There is a precedent for it: We say that we are going to mail a letter just as easily as we say we're going to deliver the mail.
Although such misuses and abuses usually make me apoplectic, my husband's idiosyncratic vernacular often takes on the quality of an aphrodisiac. It's his bald enthusiasm for the word tremendous that undoes me, his obliviousness to the error. This is a man who can use the word gal without a hint of offensiveness. He isn't some swaggering Neanderthal talking down to the little lady. When he calls me his gal, the word is rooted in the most earnest bluegrass song ever sung. Gal is ringed in daisies, all the petals saying he loves me. It's quite tremendous.
As an editor by trade, I am often annoyed by abuses of the English language. I cringe at data used in the singular. Impact as a verb is abhorrent. I generally bemoan the sad state of the apostrophe. Hyphens are a daily horror. The comma, a travesty. Don't even get me started on the semicolon.
Not that I'm a purist. A wise person once said that an inflexible language is a dead language. There is a certain latitude one may employ. I have recently accepted into my personal lexicon the word email as a verb. There is a precedent for it: We say that we are going to mail a letter just as easily as we say we're going to deliver the mail.
Although such misuses and abuses usually make me apoplectic, my husband's idiosyncratic vernacular often takes on the quality of an aphrodisiac. It's his bald enthusiasm for the word tremendous that undoes me, his obliviousness to the error. This is a man who can use the word gal without a hint of offensiveness. He isn't some swaggering Neanderthal talking down to the little lady. When he calls me his gal, the word is rooted in the most earnest bluegrass song ever sung. Gal is ringed in daisies, all the petals saying he loves me. It's quite tremendous.
