Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Well, I was always the dork in the class willing to put themselves out there first, so here I go again.

This is what I said after reading the first 100 pages of my very first Faulkner novel, which was this one, in April:

"I am just amazed by the layering of picture upon picture, phrase upon phrase, to create this world I can perfectly picture. It had to be rewrites, I think. It had to be done in stages... unless he was the kind of writer who pictures a world perfectly, closes his eyes, and it just flows out of him."

To me this is one of those things that makes him a master of language - the layering, the perfect beauty of the layers, what he leaves out for you to complete.

JE has mentioned before how much he hates phrases like "smelling the curve of a river" but it resonates for me perfectly - the curves of rivers have grasses and smell like water animals. They smell.

I think pornography does saturate and desensitize but I also think it provides such an unreal portrait of good or real sex that... well, wouldn't that make for interesting writing, dealing with that issue as a storyteller? I think so.

At this point the viewing of it is such a commonplace experience I would think it would make for good material. Digging deeper into the why's of it.

I think that the role of widely distributed pornography -- the kind so widely acceptable today as a portrait of enjoyable sex, which I would argue is anything but -- in everyday sex life and sexuality has *not* been explored - at least not in anything outside of erotica I've been exposed to. And not there, either, really. And that doesn't even touch on the amateur industry. (And no, I'm not on some stump about degrading females; I'm talking strictly about why those images represent pleasure for *anyone* the same way airbrushed photos represent constructed beauty.)

I can only really see Franzen taking that one on, for some reason.

But as I've mentioned before, I'm not nearly as widely read as most people here.

For instance, I've read some of Erica Jong's poetry and thought, well, that was really goddamn mediocre, so I didn't pick up her fiction that another member mentioned above.

These excerpts are amazing. Thank you for posting this. I will definitely read the whole thing.

Robert wrote: "I think Roiphe has a point, but I think her larger agenda is to compare unfavorably the current generation of "literary lions" with the one that has past. What I was struck most by here, though, is the idea that Roiphe is a "strident" feminist. Katie Roiphe (who is the daughter of the novelist Anne Roiphe) made her name as a writer with a contrarian attack on the idea of date rape. ..."

Well, technically it was only me that said that, and it's just my opinion. I remember that book -- I was in college when it came out and I recall the Brown University policy where someone had to ask the other person "can i do this" etc. before doing it... I wonder what happened to those policies.

Maybe strident is the wrong word, and I will be the first to admit that I react like oil does to water when I'm immersed in a feminist approach to something, perhaps because it was very much rammed down my throat, and I was expected to simply accept the world view as truth. Much the same way religious indoctrination happens, incidentally.

All that said, I don't disagree with the idea that a neutering has taken place, but again, that's kind of a personal, experience-based opinion.

I don't think sex/sexuality has been staked out and settled - I think it's always a moving target; the somewhat greater societal acceptance of alternative sexuality is a pretty clear indicator that it hasn't been. Maybe that's where the action is, though...

I have an extra with notes in the second half. I will *mail* that shizzle to you if it will get you to participate.

And I avoid post offices like the plague.

Matt, among the points of the article was about what happened to their content as they aged. Everyman is a great example of this, I think... we read that together back when we were on MySpace.

The exclusion of what women were doing - well, look, it's an editorial in the Times and the piece had to have some focus. Certainly the same article could be written on women writers, though the time periods might be flip-flopped in terms of exploration, perhaps?

I don't always agree with Roiphe's approach but one thing I think she has is a provocative stance that has more reason behind it than, say, Paglia. Her stuff is always thought and discussion provoking.

But yes, the glaring absence of what women are doing or were doing in that same space is a compelling question.

Another question is, what *are* the views and differing attitudes today and how are they being explored, if at all? Honestly I don't have a finger on the pulse of it, maybe because of dispersion and distribution and maybe because now there is a sub-genre of erotica and that's where the exploration really happens.

Some of what I've seen seems to involve what marriage is today, some of it involves "alternative" sexuality -- lesbian/gay/transgender/bisexual, some of it seems to involve infidelity, some of it has to involve the widespread use of pornography, right?... but I have to say, I'm hard-pressed to find much celebration or real, deep, exploration in much of what I read in literary fiction. But that could be a scope problem of my own.

I read this article in the NY Times Sunday Book Review by Katie Roiphe. It's about sex. It's about Updike, Roth and Mailer - their treatment of sex, vs. writers like DFW and Jonathan Safran Foer and other more contemporary writers.

I may not be a Princeton graduate or a professor, but when I read Roiphe, I don't often agree with her approach - I feel like it's very one-sided on the feminist side of things, by that I mean the shrill feminist side of things (I like balance). And in this article, she spends most of her time on the previous generation's writing about sex, maybe because there just isn't that much of it to be had in this generation's work... she restricts her critique to "literary lions."

I have so many thoughts on this article's topic that it would be hard to get them all down, but there is one part of it I do agree with her on - there is a neutered quality, an avoidance of sex, in the work of the contemporary writers she mentions and I do kind of ... wonder why.

While some of Roth's sex scenes are kind of... amusing to read, particularly as a woman, I do think he captured something of the despair and beauty and the... humanity? of the act in a way that no other writer really does that I've read. I think we talked about it once, here, when Roth won an award for the worst sex scenes ever written.

Anyway... Here's the article and a highlight from it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/boo...

Why, then, should we be bothered by our literary lions’ continuing obsession with sex? Why should it threaten our insistent modern cynicism, our stern belief that sex is no cure for what David Foster Wallace called “ontological despair”? Why don’t we look at these older writers, who want to defeat death with sex, with the same fondness as we do the inventors of the first, failed airplanes, who stood on the tarmac with their unwieldy, impossible machines, and looked up at the sky?

I've not read Absalom, but I can tell you that I found Light in August to be a page-turner. I had to slow myself down at times just to read deeper, because I wanted so much to know what happened next.

I'm in, though I won't have a lot to add I can at least add to strength in numbers... and if anyone ever finds a book like that on my shelf it's only for blackmail purposes.

So I'll kick this discussion off a bit early with some general responses to this story.

I've read a fair amount of Oates' work. Mostly novels, some poetry, but I think a whole year could be spent just reading her oeuvre and you still might not get through it.

Oddly, I hadn't read this story. It had a bit of the qualities of When We Were The Mulvaneys and Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart, among others, but in this condensed form what struck me most was the building sense of terror.

SPOILER!!!

At first it all seems so mundane, so normal, so every day - and then when he shows up at her home and it becomes clear he's been following her, spying on her - my heart sunk to my stomach. I thought, don't go, don't go, don't leave the house... I was so scared for her but thought, no, she might be able to escape this... and then the threats. This teenage girl sacrifices herself for her family, and I think she knows she is going to die.

It's the inevitability of what's going to happen to her - the shocking nature of his language with her - it was simply terrifying.

So that's where I'll start. Surely I'm not the only person who was terrified?

You know, Jon, when I put all my books away I actually alphabetized them. Guess who you're next to. Nanny nanny boo boo.

I read Light in August much earlier in the year, and Hugh and I talked about it in email. It was my first Faulkner and I absolutely loved it.

I think we should all barrage Hugh with email to lead a discussion on it. His insights were fantastic.

If anyone is interested on reading up on the inspiration for the story, check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_...

And the lyrics to It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (1963)
http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/its-a...

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
All your reindeer armies, are all going home.
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

That's a really good question. I follow the rules! Did someone delete a post? I thought I was following "house"...

Anywhoooo...

We'll Always Have Paris, by Ray Bradbury

In my inbox today Amazon notified me that there is a Joseph Conrad book now available for my Kindle... The N-Word of Narcissus.

Look, I don't like the word any more than anyone else and I won't say it, but just looking at the title, the very first thing that popped into my head was, how did Joseph Conrad know the term "n-word"?

"Product Description
WordBridge Publishing has performed a public service in putting Joseph Conrad's neglected classic into a form accessible to modern readers. This new version addresses the reason for its neglect: the profusion of the so-called n-word throughout its pages. Hence, the introduction of "n-word" throughout the text, to remove this offence to modern sensibilities. The N-word of the Narcissus tells the tale of a fateful voyage of a British sailing ship, and on that voyage the ability of a lone black man to take the crew hostage. The ability of this man to manipulate an entire ship's crew can no longer be seen as a mere exercise in storytelling. Conrad in fact appears to have been the first to highlight the phenomenon of manipulation based in white guilt."

"A public service?"

I guess my thoughts are that in censoring the title and text, you take away the context and history of what people actually thought and how they spoke at the time the book was written. I think it's important to know and acknowledge the impact of the word, even if at the time it wasn't loaded with the weight it is now.

Is it the case that people can't move past the word itself and read the text?

I'm sure there are far more complex arguments for and against.

Will I get my revised edition of Huck Finn next?

The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

I did update it. Starting next year, we'll be rejuvenating this thread and I added suggestions from others as we went. I am looking forward to more Russkis, myself.

Adrian, those are absolutely fantastic.

Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

Well... as someone who has at least one foot in IT, I'd have to say, um, no.

It's actually safer, because most electronic information is stored in more than one physical location, if it's done properly. And its integrity is easier to maintain in terms of version and replicability.

Also, as to formats - while it may have been the case in the past that people designing formats such as ... say... PDF (portable document format) thought in an analog way about data formats, this is no longer the case. XML is a perfect example of what amounts to a universal language. It makes a blinding number of things possible on the web. And any future markup language will have to be backwards compatible with it, so it was a very carefully constructed language and continues to be carefully maintained.

Also, we are moving more and more away from the "document" that has "authors" as such, so that will change how we think of books, too.

All this goes to say, physical copies have the same limitations as electronic ones, both in terms of physical safety and language limitations.

Think about translations of Dostoevsky - couldn't you compare translating to his works into English for the wider world to the shift from basic HTML to the more advanced, extensible, and usable XML? I think so.