So You Think You Can Howl

Day 242 of the "What are you reading, and why?' project, and so many people came into Babbitt's today that I could not keep track of all the books!  The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen went out, numerous children's books, some history, and a gigantic Shakespeare...to China!

Plus, Ron will soon be reading Rilke's Book of Hours!

But I know people are reading Howl, the long poem by Allen Ginsberg, or the book that contains it, or the Collected Poems, if not that original book, thanks to the movie now out about Ginsberg and the obscenity trial involving the book.

For instance, Courtney Crowder, editing assistant at Chicago Tribune Books, might be reading it now, having seen the film before she knew much about the poet, and tells us about 5 biographies of Ginsberg in this article.

The film Howl showed in my town last night as part of the Normal LGBT Film Festival, but I didn't get to see it, as I was watching volleyball.  But tonight I got to see Leading Ladies, a marvelous dance movie!  It's really sweet and funny, and one of the writers and three of the producers were there to talk about it.  It was fun to learn from the writer that she wanted to write a PG-13 movie with strong gay characters because there weren't any when some teens wanted to have an event a few years back.  The other co-writer kept imagining Benji Schwimmer--a winner of So You Think You Can Dance--in the role of Cedric, and it happened.  I like this kind of thinking: imagine it, and it comes true.

It's just like what Jiminy Cricket sings in "When You Wish Upon a Star."

And speaking of songs, a book I handled today was Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, with a preface by Richard Rodgers.  Just the lyrics, to many songs from musicals.  I fell in love with that book, wrote down the lines I always forget from "Out of My Dreams" from Oklahoma, and now I will be singing that to warm up for the last weekend of the cemetery walk tomorrow.....

Full List of Nobel Prizes in Lit

Link to list of Nobel Prize Winners in Literature here.  (Thanks to S. Jane!)  Congratulations this year to Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru.

Yesterday, the day of the announcement, was mostly my random riff on palladium, chemistry, poetry!

But I do want to know more about that literary feud! (Vargas Llosa & Garcia Marquez.)

Back to work (in bookstore) today, on our day off from the cemetery.  So, I'll be back later today with what someone is reading!

Maybe I can see what Vargas Llosa we've got, and we can set up a little display!  Or one of past as well as current winners.  It's nice to work in a used bookstore.  The old guys (and occasional gals) are there, too.  I'm pretty sure we have some Selma Lagerlof and Pearl S. Buck!

Nobel Prize Winners

Day 241 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and, as of today, some people are reading, for the first time, or re-reading, for the umpteenth time, some work by Mario Vargas Llosa, because this Peruvian writer is the winner of the Nobel Prize!

(You'll see that Wikipedia is already up to date on this, and will probably be altering the article rapidly as new info comes out.)

Yesterday's winners in chemistry, for their work with palladium, put me in mind of Palladium, this book of poems by Alice Fulton, with its gorgeous palladium print by Ellen Foscue Johnson, "Woman in the Grass."

I loved the NPR story yesterday, on the chemistry winners, when the Morning Edition host Steven Inkskeep said, "You lost me at 'palladium,'" and expert Joe Palco went back to define it.

Inskeep was thinking of the theatre definition, but Palco was speaking of the metal, used mostly as a catalyst.

That is the definition that serves in the first section of Fulton's Palladium, followed by poems that, in some way, riff off that.  And then she provides the other definitions, section by section, including the one about theatres and music halls.

Palladium process returns to the chemical definition and a print process in photography that produces beautiful rich blacks, and a precision and mystery, as in the black and white photo on the cover of the poetry book you see here.

Other definitions are mythological.  Athena made a palladium, a kind of talisman in honor of her friend Pallas, whom she accidentally killed.  Athena's palladium is associated with a cult object, the kind that fell from the sky in Troy, meaning safety, later called palta and connected with meteorites.  We always want to turn the scary thing--a sudden hot rock falling from the heavens--into something that insures our safety, don't we?

And, generally, the Nobel Prize secures the safety of a reputation, and honors a body of fine and valuable work.  But I definitely want to know more about this "literary feud"!!  Why did Vargas Llosa punch his friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the nose?!  Garcia Marquez is a Nobel Prize winner, too, from 1982, but the nose-punching incident was in 1976....still, professional rivalry, jealousy, or some personal issue?  Eh, Wikipedia...?!

Neuromancer and Atrocity Exhibition

Day 240 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Stephanie's boyfriend is reading Neuromancer by William Gibson, a cyberpunk novel that he was happy to find at Babbitt's.

But I learned this when I asked Stephanie, who is a museum intern and tour guide at the cemetery with me these days, "Is your boyfriend reading J. G. Ballard?"

"Yes!" she said, "Neuromancer!"  Then we had a conversation about Atrocity Exhibition, by J. G. Ballard.

So we are both a bit confused.  (I'm sure Stephanie's boyfriend will set us straight.  Or set me straight, the next time he is in Babbitt's.)

Anyway, Neuromancer won the 3 biggies of science fiction, the Nebula Award, the Phillip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award.  I'm sure it's a wonderful novel.

But as I continue in The Common Review, I am reading "Like Pain to a Knife: Reading J. G. Ballard's Fiction," by Paul Youngquist.  I have got to read some Ballard, as we both grew up during the violence of the 60s (race troubles, assassinations, war), having our childhood innocence spattered with civil blood, even as we continued on in a fairly sheltered existence.  As the violence, and its commercialization and regularity continued, the world changed around us, like a shattered windshield nobody ever fixed.

As Paul Youngquist explains it, Ballard went ahead and turned the psyche inside out in his fiction, since all that supposedly repressed stuff was clearly out there already.  And Youngquist himself could identify with that.  He says, "It's not me who needs a shrink.  It's the world."

I love the boldness of that.  Yes, the world is screwed up.  If you have a bit of borderline depression or generalized anxiety disorder, and Youngquist says he does, isn't that the most appropriate reaction to a world in which human life is valued very little, violence is commonplace, and no one really wants to fix things?

Oh...yes, that's always been the dark side of reality.

And the world could get blown up in a moment?  We have nuclear war.

Trashy Mystery, Poignant History

Day 239 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and, according to Kim, Tim "bought some trashy mystery to read on the airplane" at Babbitt's, where they went to find me, while I was in the cemetery.

I am exhausted, people!  (It's not your fault.)  I love this cemetery walk thingey.  I've done it since 2001, and I know this because the director came to my house to pick me up for a rehearsal on September 11, saying at the door, "Do you have your tv on?"  I did not, but we went inside and saw the second plane hit the tower.  No rehearsal that day.

In this cemetery walk, we bring back to life ordinary and extraordinary people who lived in our town and/or are buried here, and it's just amazing.  Townspeople come on the weekends, schoolchildren come on the weekdays, and everybody learns a lot, and it is a joyful and moving experience every year.

I was telling the radio interviewer how each year, to write the script, I read all the research and then wait for what comes back, what I remember about that real person's life, not necessarily the public history nor the readily-available facts.  This way, we all get to know the person buried there.

Today I found a letter in the mail from a stranger who had attended the walk on the weekend.  What a sweet thing.  He had gotten to know Helen Davis Stevenson, mother of Adlai the governor, later appointed to the United Nations by President John F. Kennedy.  She died before all his accomplishments, but she helped make him a great man.

And to see the sweet faces of children...ah!

Well.  I am exhausted because we do this 16 times a day on the weekends, and 24 times a day on the weekdays.  Whew!  But they feed us.

When I get home, I am too tired to read anything but magazine articles, and then, to make sure I fall asleep, I watch half a movie.  Last night it was Mrs. Parker, and the Vicious Circle, because 1) it is long 2) it has a lousy soundtrack 3) people talk at the same time and 4) I am in love with Campbell Scott.  Oops.  That doesn't put me to sleep, but the other stuff does.  Anyhoo....

It's possible that we are all mysteries to each other, yes, but we aren't trashy.  This cemetery walk was begun, in part, to reduce vandalism in the cemetery, and it has worked.  People love it, schools love it (and Illinois history is part of the curriculum), and we learn to value one another.  Yes, let us value one another.  Alive and dead.