Also, My Back Is Killing Me

Today, September 25, marks a month since I drove to the campus of my former university, ready to begin a career as a newly-minted "graduate student" and hopefully take my place among the great scholars who have contributed to intelligent discussions of Shakespeare, Milton, and Michael Bay. Granted, a month ago it was just orientation (classes started the next week), but I figure it's worth marking the occasion.

I started off sick to my stomach as I walked to the building, and for the first couple of weeks I seriously questioned what the hell I thought I was doing. I'd forgotten how nerve-wracking it can be to find yourself in a new situation, friendless and anonymous until the first awkward movements towards getting to know your peers (classmates or co-workers) are over and you can get down to the nitty-gritty of mocking things together (like, in my classmates' case, certain dead French philosophers who may or may not have been full of shit). It had been four years at my previous place of employment, four long years where I'd built up a certain amount of goodwill and simple "being-stuck-together-ness" with my work friends, and now that was gone (though I still try to keep in touch via Facebook, it's just not the same).

A month in, and I can say this: it's a lot more challenging than I thought it'd be, but in a good way. I likely will never read Derrida for fun (hell, I don't think Derrida read Derrida for fun), but I did get around to reading Roland Barthes' Mythologies and I think I understood most of it. I'm a month in and feeling like, if I don't end up being the world's best grad student or anything ridiculous like that, I can at least aim for doing good enough to land some kind of rewarding job after.

I have been wrapped up in grad school, almost to the point of forgetting that there's other things beside it. I have classes Monday through Wednesday, at night, and once I swing by Taco Bell I'm heading home (though I might cut back on the TB; last night I had a dream where an alligator bit off my right arm, or maybe I dreamed that I was writing a short story where that happened to the main character; paging Dr. Freud!). I still try to read for fun, though nothing that distracts me for too long from my main objective of Trying to Read Foucault And Understand Him (almost a lost cause). I kinda wonder if I'm getting late-in-life ADD, because I like to read with the TV at home but sometimes it hurts more than it helps. Which is why, a lot of times, I head to the on-campus library to get bulk reading done (your lit theory, your short story from a classmate in Fiction class, etc.). My grandmother said something yesterday about how I can't spend my whole life reading; she doesn't know how appealing that sounds some days.

At any rate, I like what I'm doing, it's a lot more responsibility than I've had for four years or so. I wouldn't mind making the dean's list, but right now I'm just trying my best. You do the best with what you got, so what I got right now is being put to use. Also, my back is killing me, because my Lit Theory book could flatten a small country off the face of the earth. But then I've had back problems for years.

Updating the Canon With More Dead (and Not-Dead) White Guys

In a class discussion last night, we sat around debating the merits of the traditional "canon" of writers one should study in college, because for one thing Shakespeare has been done to death and also because the canon seems to lean disproportionately towards "dead white guys," mostly pre-WWII (so you got your Homer, your Hemingway, and your whatever anonymous asshole who wrote Beowulf). I was thinking afterwards about how we could update the canon not just to include more multicultural aspects (Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, just to name three that I encountered in undergrad classes not strictly devoted to the "Western literary canon") but also more relevant Dead White Guys, because if I have to hear one more time about Grendel I'll jump off a castle parapet (though it did inspire John Gardner's Grendel, which is fucking excellent by the way). So let's start with my picks for the Recently Dead (i.e. post-1945) White Guys, and then I'll throw in some Still-Alive (or Not-Dead) White Guys for balance (because I want to avoid the suggestion that we English majors are necrophiliacs).

Recently Dead White Guys

Vonnegut springs to mind immediately, you could have an entire class devoted to him (and should; I've only read about six or seven of his books but my god, what books!). Never dull, always engaging, and really challenging your perceptions (but not in quite the same shrill way as a contemporary, Gore Vidal).

David Foster Wallace, whose non-fiction I'm more familiar with (though I swear, I'll get around to Infinite Jest eventually).

Walker Percy is one of my personal favorites, I'm sure he's covered in Southern Lit classes but I think it's time to add him to the "essential reads" list.

Hunter S. Thompson and George Plimpton - whoa there, I can hear you saying, weren't those two journalists? Well, yes (though HST's flights of drug-induced fancy could be said to straddle the border between fiction and non-fiction), but they showed that "literature" needn't be confined to such distinctions. Plus, they're really fucking good at what they do (I'd throw in Tom Wolfe, except that he's very much alive, and responsible for some doorstop-length novels that, like his namesake from earlier in the twentieth century, I've personally found unreadable).

It pains me to include Kerouac, but if you're going to have Burroughs and Ginsberg (especially in a Beats-heavy course), you gotta have him and his On the Road. Read it when you're in your twenties, you'll love it. Thirties? Not so much.

Not-Dead White Guys

Now, the fun part for me is in leading with Jonathan Lethem, who is currently my "author that I bore people by telling them how good he is." But really, he's that good: The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn will be required reading for college courses in fifty years, assuming a massive asteroid hasn't destroyed us all.

Thomas Pynchon, since the death of J.D. Salinger, has become the "reclusive writer in residence" for American letters, and he's still churning out interesting, dynamic material. Like Vonnegut, I think a course could be devoted to him alone. I'd like to teach that course, come to think of it (though I still need to tackle Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, Vineland, and Slow Learner).

Charles Portis is a fucking master of the written word, I read True Grit in one sitting. Some of his other books aren't quite up to that level, but The Dog of the South is closest. Do yourself a favor and read either of those, now.

Jonathan Franzen I respect more than I like, I read The Corrections with some "professional jealousy" (back then I was still thinking about tackling the Great American Novel), but Freedom was quite beautiful. He's pretentious as hell and an asshole to boot, but you don't have to like your authors on a personal level in order to read their work.

Chuck Klosterman has written some fiction, yes, but I'm more interested in his non-fiction. Again, a guy primarily known for non-fiction should get in because he's that fucking good. In my imaginary canon, it's a tie between him and Greil Marcus in the "writing about music" wing, and if I had to choose one...sorry, Greil.

Michael Chabon is big in my book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is one of the books that restored my faith in fiction. A must-read, even if he doesn't make it in for covering comic books and music in his novels.

Those are the Dead White Guys (and Not-Dead White Guys) I came up with, they don't have to elbow out the Even Deader White Guys or any Non-White Guys already in the canon (though I think we can all agree that Lord of the Flies should be put out of its misery). I'm not in charge and I don't get to pick, but I do get to daydream when I should be working on actual grad-school stuff.

McClure's Bookshop

A while back, I did a blog post about my favorite bookstores, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t mention any by name (because I wanted to be able to go back to those places without running the risk that something I may have said about any of them, however innocent or not meant as critical, might be perceived as such. Yelp and other online resources of rating places of business aside, I think we run the risk of doing so much online critiquing that we forget the very human faces behind the counter, the ones who didn’t know that we’d been judging them all along so that we could tell people later to go there or not go there). I’m going to mention one by name now, specifically because I learned that they’re closing soon. That place is McClure’s Bookstore, in downtown Clemson.

I went in on Saturday, after a less-than-satisfactory trip to the library, just on a whim (I believe the object of my perusal was the possibility of a Philip Larkin poetry collection being there. I’ve been reading James Wolcott’s “Critical Mass,” which sparked my interest in Larkin. Books have a funny way of leading you to other books like that). When I saw the sign on the door saying that McClure’s would be closing on October 18, I felt awful. It was a bit like a death in the family, albeit a slow and prolonged one, during which you were encouraged to rummage through the soon-to-be-departed loved one’s belongings. Everything was on sale, marked down considerably from its normal price. I picked up four books, paid what would be the usual cost of two together (it’s a used bookstore, so most of their inventory is in the four- to five-dollar range), and opined rather awkwardly that the place had been something of a second home for me. I’m sure the lady behind the counter (whose job would be kaput in a little over a month) felt it even more than I could imagine; I remember when the Winn-Dixie in West Union was shutting its doors in 2005, I jumped ship to the Ingles across the street and seeing the shelves of my former workplace decimated by bargain shoppers in W-D’s last days. I’ll never forget the remorse I felt when the Circuit City in Anderson was closing and I went by to be a bit of a vulture, looking to pick up CDs or DVDs on the cheap. The sight of those employees who were still there, their mixture of grudging acceptance of their fate and some ill-will towards the bastards hassling them over the price of a phone charger, it put me off the whole endeavor, and I left without making a purchase.

A bookstore is a refuge for me, always has been. I don’t remember when I first heard about McClure’s, or when it opened, or my first visit, but I have been there and often since at least the time I got my undergrad degree. I couldn’t list all the books I’ve bought there over the years, some read and loved and kept, others unread and donated elsewhere or read, appreciated, but not really for me and so falling into someone else’s hands through borrowing or donation (I could probably pick out the ones I donated to my local library, as most of them ended up on the hands of the “Friends of the Library,” and I see them in the book sale they hold every month). If anything, I can probably list some of the ones that I haven’t gotten to yet, because every bibliophile has that collection of books he or she just hasn’t gotten to around yet. But when we get the time, oh boy:

The Broom of the System (David Foster Wallace), Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (David Lipsky) – both are DFW-related (the first, of course, by Wallace, and a damn sight skinnier than Infinite Jest, the second a biography of sorts about him).

Nowhere to Run (Gerri Hirshey) – All about the rise of soul music and R&B. I am a sucker for music books.

Little Big Man (Thomas Berger) – Talk about coincidence: Berger died recently, so I picked up the book both because of that and also because repeated viewings of the movie over the years made me want to check it out.

The Confessions of Nat Turner (William Styron) – I read Sophie’s Choice in June or July, and thought I was ready to dip into another Styron. Not yet, though I have it and Lie Down In Darkness (bought at one of those library sales) waiting in the wings when I do.

The Eden Express (Mark Vonnegut) – Hearing this mentioned by Kurt Vonnegut (the father) and by Kurt’s biographer made me curious enough to pick it up.

At any rate, you get the idea: McClure’s has done a lot to add to the sagging of my bookshelves. I forgot to mention Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy, but I’m not sure I can get to the “no quotation marks around dialogue” in the novel. Not yet anyway. And there’s the four I bought today: a memoir by Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick, a Samuel Beckett novel (never read him before), George Orwell’s “Why I Write,” and a book compiling examples of bad imitation Faulkner.

I imagine I’ll be back before the store closes, though the selections will naturally slim down as time wears on and my fellow bibliophiles come to mourn and also gnaw at the remains. It’s a shame, really, because McClure’s was a fantastic excuse to stop downtown whenever I wasn’t at work or school and needed to kill some time aimlessly wandering the aisles. One of the things that gets lost in this rush to turn everything into an online emporium is the simple pleasure of wandering the aisles, waiting to see if anything catches your eye (and the surprises that sometimes do; I came across “Love In the Ruins” at McClure’s, read it in a day, and became a Walker Percy fan for life). I’ve come across so many things that I never thought I’d find, or books that I never thought I’d have any interest in reading, at McClure’s and other bookstores like, the small independent ones that don’t get the foot traffic of the big chain stores but which have their loyal customers. As always when a business that I loved is shutting its doors, the temptation to ask “could I have done more” crops up. I brought in books for store credit; suppose I hadn’t been so stingy and actually paid for some of the books I got on store credit?

But of course it’s not about that: Kathy and Ken (the owners) have their reasons for shutting down, and I respect that. I hate it, but I respect it. After they’re gone, downtown will be a bunch of bars, fast-food places, and sunglass stores (or at least one sunglass store). There’ll be clothing stores (including the one I used to work in), and did I mention the bars? (As a non-drinker, I see no joy in the idea of downtown being bar-centric, but I could social-drink just to avoid being rude.)

I will miss McClure’s, deeply. I have spent many hours there not just looking for a book, but looking. Not to get into an anti-internet rant here, but you can’t browse the shelves of an online bookstore, not like you could for real. Bing prompts you to search for something specific; suppose I don’t know what I want to search for, until I find it? Someday the bulk of our retail experience will be online (I’ve already had to buy two books for classes online, because they weren’t available at the one bookstore on-campus). It’ll be more convenient, but it won’t be as fun. Not for the browsers in the audience.

So if you’re in Clemson over the next month or so, drop by McClure’s and pick up a book or two, or three. Take a minute to remember the time you found that book you’d given up on, or discovered an author you’d never heard of who became your favorite. Don’t be shy about that collection of Hunter S. Thompson articles, you might not get another chance. And even if the history of the War of 1812 isn’t your thing, you might know someone for whom it is. Just take a minute to appreciate something beautiful, because it will be gone soon. And goddam it, what a loss.

My Civil Disobedience

In 1846, in the midst of his Walden two-year experiment, Henry David Thoreau was arrested for back taxes (specifically poll taxes that he hadn't paid in six years or so. Thank you, Wikipedia). He spent a night in jail rather than pay the fines, though he was released when someone paid them on his behalf. The root of his refusal to pay the taxes was his opposition to slavery and its almost pre-ordained spread thanks to the utterly illegal Mexican War being conducted at the time. Throeau got the essay "Civil Disobedience" out of it, a powerful statement of his unwillingness to go along with laws or governments that he deemed illegal. He died in 1862, just as the Civil War was getting into full swing. It was the conflict that would forever end the injustice of slavery, though certainly our racial history since then hasn't done much to make many think that all our problems ended in 1865.

Throeau's essay lived on, as inspiration to the non-violent movements of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It's not all non-violence (there was certainly enough there to suggest that Thoreau might not have been simply content with non-violent protest, though it's hard to see him as any kind of anarchist). It's up there with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other important documents that try and formulate what kind of nation we are to be.

But Thoreau's protest, his actual arrest, did nothing to prevent the Mexican War from escalating. It did nothing to halt the spread of slavery. In short, while noble, it was at best a gesture. This isn't a criticism, just a statement of fact. It gave birth to a great thing ("Civil Disobedience" the essay, as well as the concept of non-violent resistence), but it didn't impact the immediate situation one lick.

I bring all this up as a way to justify (to myself, if no one else) my decision to refrain from watching any NFL games until Roger Goodell is no longer the commissioner of the league. No, please, hear me out...

Okay, it's a stupid and futile gesture, because professional football is the number one sport in the country, and one guy saying he ain't watching anymore isn't going to mean much to the league. But I'm tired of the way in which Goodell, since the inaugeration of his reign, has been arbitrary in his "punishments" handed out to players, and the way in which he personifies the arrogance of the league.

This has been building up for a while, but what put me over the edge was the Ray Rice "suspension" of two games for domestic abuse. I'm sorry, but when you hit a woman, a slap on the wrist does not begin to cover it. Goodell, like all corporate jackasses, tried to cover himself by saying that the legal process hadn't found enough to convict Rice or even press charges against him. These are fine words coming from the guy notorious for brandishing the suspension baton over his charges even though they've often been cleared or only held briefly for acts and conduct off the field. Goodell has a track record of handing out excessive punishments, often to players of the African-American persuasion. I'm not saying Roger Goodell is a racist, but have you heard his defense of the Washington team nickname (as much a slur on Native Americans as the n-word is for African-Americans)? Give me a break.

And so I am taking a break, from watching the NFL. Whenever it's game day, I'll find something else to watch or just turn off the TV entirely. I won't be immune to the various shows on ESPN that feature highlights, of course (I'm banning the NFL, not sports TV), and I'll hope for my Giants to shock the world and once again stomp them out. But the NFL games themselves, glorifications of the mindset that the NFL is trying to enslave us with (namely "I have to watch this!"), will have no appeal for me, not anymore. Not while Goodell is in charge.

While we're on the subject, why have one commissioner for a sports league? Why not have a panel of more than one person in charge? The whole idea behind sports commissioners was born of the 1919 Black Sox scandal and the subsequent fury of the baseball owners when the players who bet on the World Series that year were acquitted in a court of law. They gave over power to one guy, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, with the understanding that the players would be banned for life. Nowadays, it seems like it's the commissioners who should be banned. Absolute power corrupts absolutely; maybe it's time we said enough with the idea of one man or woman having all the power over the sport. What really makes all this seem ridiculous is that, if you are suspended by the commissioner of a sport, you can always appeal your sentence...to the very commissioner who suspended you in the first place.

Orwell would be proud...

So no, I don't expect too many other people to join me in this, not diehard football fans anyway. I'm willing to abstain from the NFL until some other hairpiece with a suit comes into office (who, I bet, will be even less palatable because he or she will be handpicked by Goodell, who was similarly handpicked by his predecessor Tagliabue). I went most of my life without succumbing to the lure of the NFL; I've only really been following the sport since 2007. Maybe I'm not the guy to be saying "down with Goodell," but I'm one of the ones saying it. And I'll continue to say it until he leaves. It's the absolute least I can do.

A Sense of Where You Are

Yesterday morning, I really, really wanted to throw up...

I should explain: yesterday was the graduate student orientation for the English department at school, and I had a legit excuse to be on campus for the first time since I graduated. Walking towards my old haunts in my snug new pants (I have gotten to waist size 40 now, though I expect that to change as the semester wears on and I am likely to have to park far, far away), I felt a wave of nostalgia for all the times, good and bad, I'd had on-campus in the past. Then I felt a wave of nausea.

I didn't puke, thankfully, though I did hyperventilate a little (well, climbing to the fourth floor of a building will do that, too), and I had to break for the nearest bathroom upon reaching the fourth floor and give myself silent validations in the mirror (if I'd said them out loud, people might have looked at me funny. It was pretty quiet in the hallway). I made it on time to the meeting place and sat towards the back, trying not to make an ass of myself.

Yes, college version 2.0 (the grad school edition) is finally within reach, and even as I type this I can feel the urge to bolt towards safer climes racing through me (or maybe it's the Mountain Dew). After all the bellyaching I've made about the past two weeks of "freedom," I am literally terrified of taking that big step towards grad school. But that's a good thing.

In all honesty, I'm much more comfortable being a failure at things; I know the ropes of picking yourself back up whenever something, be it a job opportunity or a relationship with someone, goes off the rails or never got on the track to begin with. I've been there, done that. I know my strengths (obsessive mix CDs of "love gone wrong" songs, for instance, or fruitless job searches on the internet), but success, or the opportunity for success? Uncharted territory, baby.

It is all new to me, and new can be scary, but it can also be invigorating. Just make sure you don't eat anything you don't want to taste again, in case things are *too* invigorating.

I recently read a book that I'd had my eye out for and stumbled across at a used bookstore a couple months back. It's called A Sense of Where You Are, about Bill Bradley before he was a senator or a New York Knick, back when he was just the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. Like a lot of things you might look forward to with anticipation, it didn't quite live up to the wait (I'd rate it three and a half stars, but the rating system on Facebook allows for no halves). But the title itself (about knowing where you are on the basketball court, where your teammates and/or opponents are) is a pretty good metaphor for life (and being an English guy, I love my metaphors). I'm not alone here, and I have plenty of things to look forward to as the semester begins. I just have to make sure I've got a good read on the layout of the court.

Or something like that.

It's not perfect, but it will fit for now. That urge to vomit (still have it, still haven't actually done so) will subside in time (or, with an ill-place dinner at one of the lesser-grade restaurants I might frequent, come spilling out in one glorious sweep), but mixed with the fear is some positive trembling. I think I'm ready, I certainly hope so (my current inability to reopen my Clemson email, moribund since my graduation in August 2008 not withstanding).

Wait, did I just write about wanting to vomit? And post it here? My apologies...:-p

What Will Your Verse Be?

My sister texted me Monday night, asking if Robin Williams had died. I thought she might have meant Robbie Williams, former-boy-bander-turned-no-hit-wonder. Wishful thinking on my part, as it turned out.

When someone dies by their own hand, as Williams did, it tends to make their work or life before then seem like a "countdown to self-destruction." You go over their last hours, trying to make sense of what, often times, will never make any sense no matter how often you examine it. It's part of our hard-wiring to seek answers where none may reside; how else to explain how legitimate conspiracy theory turns into fringe obsession? Lee Harvey Oswald may not have acted alone, but we'll never really know the truth, so it bothers us. I imagine the same will be true of Robin Williams.

Much has been made of the "tears of a clown" thread in comedy, how performers make us laugh while masking their inner demons (or letting them out for all to see). I watched the Ken Burns documentary on Mark Twain when it re-aired recently, and his last years were full of turmoil and loss. It's no wonder that, in his last works, he was a misanthrope who held out little if any hope for humanity; he'd lost his wife, two of his three daughters (as well as a son when he was first married to Livy, who died a few months after being born), and much of his fortune (though he managed to pay off his creditors thanks to exhaustive world tours). Frankly, if you read about Twain's life, it's a miracle that he didn't kill himself.

Robin Williams, when I was a kid, was hysterically funny. Then, as I aged and he went into more family-friendly fare, his reputation became tarnished. Whether his later movies were really terrible or just had the reputation of being so, I can't say; I rarely felt that same excitement at seeing his name in the credits that I might have circa Good Morning, Vietnam or Dead Poets Society. Fact is, I'd thought that I outgrew him, and little that he did in the years since Mrs. Doubtfire really registered with me.

I guess that's why his loss hit so hard, not because I'd still treasured him but because I'd cast him aside. I have softened in my view of him of late, feeling like the good work he did from my childhood still holds up (and if you ever get the chance to see his stand-up, do). It's a little late, but still.

Depression doesn't care if you're rich and famous, or broke and miserable. It comes along to all of us, at some point, and sometimes it's just a passing phase. But sometimes it's an illness that needs treatment. I've known of two people personally connected to me who took their own lives, and let me say this: suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

I'd like to fancy myself as a "humorous fellow," and if you'll allow that (not saying I'm fricking hilarious all the time, but I have a pretty healthy sense of humor at least), I can say from experience that there's a lot of truth to the idea that comedians can be the most miserable bunch of people in the world. But humor allows for an outlet for all the rage, anger, sadness and whatever else comes with it and with life itself. What's most heartbreaking about Williams' suicide, apart from the obvious pain his family is in, is that he couldn't use that gift to help himself, not in the last days.

It's eerie to me now, considering that Dead Poets is my favorite Robin Williams performance, how that film deals with a suicide, and how it tears apart the school where Williams is the inspirational teacher. From mythology on down, through James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, through Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain, through Ernest Hemingway and David Foster Wallace, suicide has taken too many creative voices. Robin Williams is now one of those, and he will be missed.

The Great Two-Week Hiatus Between Work and Grad School

Friends, Romans, countrymen...I am out of a job for the time being.

By choice, mind you, by choice...my tenure at Tigertown Graphics (yeah, I said it!) ended this past week, on a Thursday instead of Friday because Friday starts the new pay period and I graciously decided that a check for one day of work wasn't worth it. So let me say to those TTG folks that I'm friends with on the Book of Faces: thank you for putting up with me for four years. I can be a handful (i.e., a pain in the ass sometimes), but I did enjoy the times when I wasn't being made to do work (I am incredibly lazy) and if you're friend with me on the Book of Faces, it means that I want to stay in touch with you (some of my peeps don't have Facebook accounts, so holler at me via smoke signals if you must). There is one particular person I don't want any contact with because he was always licking on me and stealing my food and just being a real hound with my free time. I speak, of course, of Dundee.

(Dundee was the dog/mascot of the back-area printing crew. Dogs can't have Facebook accounts)

Anyway, I am now in that limbo between work and grad school (and the assistantship that comes with it: I got the gig I wanted - helping with the Literary Festival - now it's just a matter of harassing Jonathan Lethem enough to get him to visit us in SC). I have a lot of free time, more free time than I really need, I think (but I won't volunteer any of it away for fruitless causes). I have plenty of time to get online and make an ass of myself (again, perhaps too much time). Right now I'm staying close to home because my grandma is away on vacation and my grandpa wanted to stay put. I'm reminded of how awful summer TV programming is, but I'm doing more reading-for-fun than anything else. Right now I'm in the middle of a Steve McQueen biography. I just finished a book about the outbreak of WWI in 1914. I'm covering all my bases.

I need to spend as little money as possible, I'm okay but I don't get paid by the school for a while so it might not be a bad idea to be a little thrifty. I'm looking forward to it, scared to death by it, and just in general preparing myself for some uncharted territory. I'm grateful for the opportunity, and I just hope I don't screw it up.

So, enjoy the last few weeks of summer, my friends, because once school starts back it's on like Donkey Kong.