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

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Oh, you are bringing back memories, Dan... I do so love this book.

The colloquialisms are almost as important a language as the actual Latin, Greek and French are. As 21st century Americans they are hard to catch sometimes.

Equally as difficult is knowing "where" you are physically, and this is important, because there are so many connections to Homer; where Ulysses went is way important because he was exploring the known world, and the unknown one, and as readers we need to pay attention to the difference... wait, if you can translate ancient Greek I am just telling you a bunch of stuff you already know.

Didn't Nabokov do a map of Joyce's Dublin? I forget. I used to have a copy.

Also, has anyone ever listened to an audio version of the book? A friend of mine was wondering if that might not be a good way to experience Finnegan's Wake - I bet it would be good for Ulysses.

In college, I used to go every year on Bloomsday to hear it read aloud at a bar in DC. I never went for the whole day... usually from 6 pm to 3 am with my fellow amateur writers. When we finished with Molly there was a round of Guinness on the house for anyone who made it to the end.

When I read it in college - a one-semester class on Ulysses only - our professor encouraged us to read it aloud, particularly if we were having trouble understanding what was going on. It really is so beautifully lyrical.

More than happy to add The Dead to our list. Maybe I'll make it the first week of September...

Happy Happy Birthday to Ben!

While I was driving yesterday I passed through Jackson, Mississippi and caught the sign for Eudora Welty's house just as I passed the exit. I didn't know she lived there from 1925 to 2001...!

Now that is a long time to live in the same place. I can't even imagine it.

I would try to catch it on the way back but I'm going through Kentucky instead for some good bourbon... Elijah Craig 18-year. I hope she would approve.

Brian, very cool site -- VERY cool.

(Isn't Apple disabling these sites? I got a note about my family site.)

I haven't read a whole lot of Dave Eggers. Really, just a few pieces in The New Yorker.

(Look, I've been in intellectual hibernation mode for a long time. I left writing behind and as a result stopped keeping up with what was happening... reading crap like Good to Great instead. I'm catching up, and I have a lot of it to do.)

Tonight I went to see Away We Go, which was written by him and Vendela Vida.

I laughed about 100 times and cried four.

It was a movie about the joys and pains of bringing children into the world and raising them.

It was touching, heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time. One line was "You have to be better than you ever thought you'd have to" and that is true, I think... well, there were many true moments in the film, for me.

A friend of mine complained that it was telling her how to be a good parent. I didn't get that from the film at all, though I believe she had only seen the preview. There was nothing preachy about it. It was a series of intimate portraits of family life, some of them hilarious, some sad, some gut-wrenching, some beautiful, and two people simply taking it in and coming to their own conclusions about what they do and don't want to become as parents.

I have to get me some more of this guy. Any recommendations for what I should read first?

And don't forget The Wife: ...

by the same author who wrote


(The Position is better. And yes. It's about exactly what you're thinking.)

I just set up an event for the evening of the 27th in downtown Seattle.

"But thn she remembered that this was indeed the same Derek who turned the lower extremities of her friends and family to hot puddles of jelly, and that they were suffering from paralysis and near death!"

A fascinating character study!

Near death and paralysis! This one must be a nail biter.

Here I was, writing such uneventful stuff. When the key all along was to just write about utterly ridiculous events happening to "fascinating characters"!

It is alluring and I can see the appeal of it myself...it's just ultimately negative, fanciful, counter-productive on a social level and mis-guided.

Not to mention sad. In the sense of how she viewed other human beings. I mean, there are other words for it, but I think it's sad that anyone would believe that living out that set of beliefs as though they were religious tenets themselves would live a lonely existence, indeed.

Ah, but have you heard about Alan Greenspan's connection to her? That could be the reason for the uptick... but I think something else is afoot.

I think there is an undercurrent of impotence, or maybe I'm just generalizing what I sense here in a major metro city in the U.S. - people feel vulnerable and powerless because of the recent unravelling of and loss of faith in ... say... the world financial system? Whole countries going bankrupt? People losing jobs left and right? Terrorist attacks? The U.S. selling all of its debt to China? What's next?

I sense a whole lot of anxiety around me. Maybe that's because I'm forced to be around CNBC for days at a time.

Ayn Rand's ideas around bootstrapping your way into success, the extreme self-reliance aspect of it, the divorce of intellect from emotion... it's appealing, I have to imagine. It was for me, when I felt as though I had no control over my present or future.

Those are awesome photos.

I have to admit that when I lived there I only went to Stratford-on-Avon. I doubt my parents would have known where to look for all of these great places.

FYI, anyone who is friends with me on Facebook can get my cell, emails, etc.

Wow. I just read the chapter about Erdedy waiting for his pot... that was just excruciating. And then Orin and the roaches - I could hardly read that one through. That was just so... gross...I still have the willies... and then that brief, horrifying Wardine passage and Bruce Green and Mildred... and the conversationalist passage...

How many characters are in this book, anyway? Should I be writing this down or drawing a chart?

Ha! That's true, actually.

Her characters are more caricatures of human beings than anything else - they are puppets in her play to explain/see objectivism in action. Lauren, if you read it as a philosophical treatise disguised as a novel, you'll be just fine.

When I was a teenager, objectivism appealed to me, probably because I grew up fast (isn't there a Tom Petty song about that?)... so the ideas, particularly around an individual rising above difficulties on her own, the whole rational self-interest thing, seemed pretty powerful to me: My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. (from Atlas Shrugged)

Also, it seemed convenient to avoid emotions. Using reason. Or at least to believe you can. That's where the android thing comes in. These days I pretty much think objectivism is bullshit because there is no such thing as objective reality. I think a lot of the whole let reason rule thing had to do with rejecting religion, for her. She goes on and on about how baseless faith is.

I also think she was reacting to the pernicious stereotype that women are "emotional" creatures not capable of "pure" rational thought. This still exists in our society - the jokes about a female president having PMS and pushing the Big Red Button... women not being able to be Navy pilots because you never know what they'll do during that time of the month... etc. Irritating shit like that. So in that way, I still like her defiant fist shaken in the face of stereotype.

ummmm.... When you say 'hang out', do you mean in the Evison sense of that phrase?

But... but Hugh... I was planning on bringing nightshirts for everyone to wear! Are you saying you won't wear yours!?

Kerry, I do believe you're right. Maybe we can meet in that bar called The Library at my hotel downtown. Seems a suitable watering hole and connotative meeting place.

Of course, we'll probably want to find someplace cheaper after the first $15 martini, but the first martini should always be the best one... or tequila shot... or whatever...

Hey, Kerry. I knew it was an L name. :-)

Let's get together on the 27th, shall we? Girls night out? Maybe Lauren could come too, if Owen can take a bottle. Although... one month in it's hard to be away from the baby...

I'll only have one bag. I'm a light packer.

Thanks bunches! I and my dwindling divorcee bank account appreciate it!

This is from Facebook status at about 5:00 his time today.

I didn't want to steal JE's thunder, but I think he might be busy right now:

yeeeeeeehaaaaaaaw! i'm a daddy!!!! owen carl hitchcock evison, 7 lbs 3 oz . . . big feet and big wedding tackle! . . .cute little feller!

Christopher wrote: "Ayn Rand is the biggest whore."

Easy, tiger. Did you know her personally? Sheesh.