Author Archives: Naptimewriting

Prop. 8

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Okay, I can’t let go of this constitutional amendment declaring some people unequal. Thankfully, neither can the rest of the No on 8 people.

So, historically, in a democracy such as ours, people vote for representatives and for laws. But there is a check on the hateful, ignorant, or misguided attempts of one group to hurt another. When the people enact a law that goes against the principles of the Constitution, the judiciary backs us up and makes us take back the law and start over again.

So the people pass a law. The Supreme Court says, um, you can’t do that. It’s not constitutional. And the people are supposed to say, damn. I wish I could have it my way, but I respect the constitution. But now, in the era of executive dictatorship, the people write a Constitutional Amendment to make their unConstitutional law into an unchecked and unassailable law?

There was a time that Americans wrote laws saying it wasn’t okay for blacks to marry whites. And the Supreme Court said, um, you can’t do that because all people are equal.

And we are.

So now people write laws saying one man can’t marry another man and one woman can’t marry another woman. And the Supreme Court said, um, you can’t do that because all people are equal. And instead of saying, aw shucks, it sucks to live in a country where all people are equal but I guess I’ll have to, people then write a Constitutional Amendment and say all people are equal except people who love similarly gendered people?

How did 52% of Californians say that people aren’t equal if I don’t like who they are?

How did 52% of Californians say, if this law is un-Constitutional, let’s change the Constitution?

Some Americans used to say that blacks were not equal and shouldn’t have equal rights, and they were wrong. And now they say it about gays, and they’re wrong again.

Know what totally sucks? By percentages, in California it was overwhelmingly African Americans who voted that some people aren’t equal and shouldn’t get to marry.

That’s at least Alanis Morisette ironic, even if not literary ironic.

I mean, it’s not surprising that the Church is willing to be on the wrong side of a civil rights issue again. Religion has been the excuse for oppressing women and for enslaving human beings. So I’m not shocked that the church groups are pouring their tithed dollars into making their rules seem like the only rules that are acceptable. But African Americans turning around after having the civil right to marry whomever they want, and take that away from another group? Tsk tsk, Californians. Tsk tsk.

Don’t hold your breath on your high horse, there, Utah. We’ll undo this miscarriage of justice soon.

Get off thy ass and get to work

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You know, I could continue to waste naptime blogging, reading other people’s blogs, and unpacking the eight-freaking-thousand boxes walling me into this new place. But I blog schlock read by an average of 50 people a day; I read awesome blogs that make me regret not doing more academic work, not writing, and not getting my life in perspective; and unpacking boxes just makes me mad that we have so much crap (for the normal triumvirate of wasteful capitalism, depleted savings, and un-zen clutter).

So I’m off to work on one paragraph of a novel, and to find the list of academic articles that showed enough promise to warrant someone to scrawl “work on this and have it published” in the margins.

See you when I have something decent to show for my life.

[are you f@ck*ng kidding me? I was spellchecking and The Tiny Tyrant awoke. So all I have to show for today’s naptime is a clean sink and a resolution to do something productive tomorrow. Godd@mn it.]

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So I’ve mentioned before what a weirdo I’m raising. Not to be dismissive or judgemental or anything. But he’s a weirdo of untoward proportions. This coming from a HUGE weirdo.

I’m taking a shower in the new house, and he comes running in. “Mommy. I need you, I call you.” Um, there’s a few words missing in there, and I need clarification. “If you need me, you’ll call me?”
“Yes.” And he turns, runs out, and slams the bathroom door.

Two minutes later, he comes back, peels back the edge of the shower curtain and says, “Mommy. Peanut just checking to see if you okay. You okay, okay, mommy?” I can’t help but smile, in that, “man, if someone has to love you, it’s sure a fine opportunity to have someone love you for their complete dependence on you” way. “Yes, baby, I’m okay.” He nods and runs out.

Two minutes later, he comes back, pushes the curtain aside, and says, “Mommy almost all done,” and leaves before I can answer.

Two minutes later, he comes back, peers around the curtain and says, “Mommy, Peanut getting angry Mommy in shower. Mommy all done shower. Peanut no want Mommy shower.” I explain that he can control his body, but he can’t control my body. “Peanut body want play outside. Peanut body no outside no Mommy. Peanut WANT control Mommy body.” And runs out.

Hours later, while he was in the tub, he kept insisting on having a cold bath. Cold bath, need a cold bath. Nope, sorry. It’s 65 degrees in the house (don’t worry–we’re not ogres. There is heat, and it’s on. It’s just set to go off at 57 degrees.) So Spouse announces it’s time to get out of bath (yes, of course he annouces five minutes then three minutes then one minute. What do you think we are, rookies?) Peanut drain the tub himself, then refuses to get out. He plays, no joke, for 10 minutes in a dry tub, naked, and covered with little water drops that he refuses to let us wipe off with (gasp) a towel. Window’s open. It’s November. (Granted, it’s November in the East Bay, but it’s still November.) He takes the tub toys and builds a pretend birthday cake. At least one hundred times. Each time he sings, “Yay, mommy birthday cake! Yay!” My birthday is later this week. We haven’t mentioned it in days. But he’s preparing his pretend celebration already.

So as he’s making the pretend cake, he pulls a cold, wet washcloth on his knee, and proclaims, “Ooooh. That cold. That no good idea, put that on Peanut leg. No good idea. Try something different.” And he builds another cake, with a washcloth fondant.

Um, there’s a thin, thin line between special education and gifted education, I’m guessing. And we’re living life on that line every day.

It’s not one of those days

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You know how some days you see a cold, dirty, sad homeless guy and you want to run to the ATM and withdraw what little you have left to hand over with a kiss?

You know how some days you look at the guy in the hospital cafeteria who is getting his toast out of the toaster and you think, “I hope you electrocute yourself.” And then wish, for his sake, that he weren’t in a hospital, because it’d be too easy to make it after the electrocution?

You know how you pour all your energy into an event, trying in every way to do your best and make everything come out just right, and after the event it turns out it didn’t really matter, and that some of the stuff you did was genius, and some of the stuff you did was a waste of time, and in the balance nobody really cares but you, anyway?

You know how some days you’re all uptight and anal about parenting exactly the best possible way, making your own life a living hell to give your kids a slight edge on being happier and healthier later in life?

You know how some days you just don’t care how you parent, handing over treat after treat, offering new toys from the rainy day closet, and smacking ’em on the arm (though you said you’d never, ever, ever) when they repeatedly get down from the table to grind pinto beans into the only rug in the house?

You know how some days you want to find all your old friends, the ones with whom you haven’t spoken in years, just to tell them that you’re a better person now, and certainly more interesting, and that maybe they should be your friend again because you have a lot to offer? Really?

You know how some days you want to delete most of your friends out of your phone and PDA and contact file and old, paper Rolodex because the bastards don’t ever seem to call or write anymore, and if they’re always going to wait for you to make the effort, then they can f*ck off?

You know how some days you just need a nap?

You know how some days you want to do yoga, then go running, then start a business, then volunteer, then write a novel, then go to the gym?

Yeah, well it’s not one of those days.

Rantlets, little rants of the day (iv)

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Hey, people who believe things: stop using your kids to campaign for you. It’s disgusting to have children who can’t form their own opinions holding signs for anything, let alone for hatred, discrimination, and bigotry.

Oh, and companies who make kids’ toys? So help me, if one more toy hollers out after being abandoned for 30 seconds, I’m gonna boycott your whole freaking company. Peanut actually has a toy that clears its throat and bellows, “Excuse me!” to get him to come back and play with it. Newsflash: you piss me off, I won’t buy your toys. Newsflash ii: toys that don’t know when it’s time to move on piss me off. Newsflash iii: when my kid’s falling asleep in the car, a toy that wakes him up to demand that he play some more really pisses me off. Newsflash iv: You know who you are, LeapFrog bastards. Unless you change your ways and announce your contrition publically, I’ll make sure you’re on the entertainment non grata list this Chrismakkah.

By the way, country: way to go on that election thing. I’m not totally pleased, vis a vis California ballot initiatives. But overall, you done good, nation. It’s nice to share this country with you.

Go vote

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Not sure where to vote?

govote.org

Not sure what ID you need?

www.govote.org

In a swing state and not convinced you want either candidate? Please, please, please consider following your gut rather than your party affiliation. Test what really matters to you at selectsmart.com and smartvoter.org

And if you live in a swing state and happen to be Peanut’s grandparent, I can tell you that, without discussing politics with him at all, he has a very clear preference for one of the candidates by appearance (from newspapers, magazines, and campaign posters) and for the same candidate by voice (listened to the podcast of the debates). He doesn’t even know their names, but he really wants one to be the boss and make the rules (he keeps telling me that B.M.D. voted for him as the boss of me. I reject this form of toddler democracy.)

Please, swing state grandparents, vote for the person Peanut wants because Peanut will be here longer than all of us and has to pay for our choices. And his parents’ votes don’t count because we’re in California. And we might all have to move to Canada if one of the candidates wins, and Peanut’s winter clothes are all in a POD somewhere while we try to find a place to live. So vote for his guy because otherwise he’ll freeze wearing just sandals and shorts in Quebec this winter.

And I’m not here to threaten Peanut’s love or anything, because that would be wrong, but we might not come visit certain states this winter if certain states screw up another election. Tell your neighbors. Their grandkids might not visit, either. Maybe.

Books I love, that nobody seems to read.

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After our extravaganza about classics we loathe, the erudite blogosphere and I have undertaken another endeavor.

Books we love that nobody seems to know about or read:

(This is harder than I thought it would be, since all my books are in a POD storage facility, waiting for us to either buy or rent, hinging on the daily fluctuations of the market, interest rates, and my hair-trigger vascillations. That said, if I know these are true loves from memory, isn’t that more authentic? Let’s pretend so.)

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Walker Evans and James Agee. Oh, my. Gorgeous photos. Compelling journalism.

Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zola Neale Hurston. Dear, me, that woman can write down to a person’s bones. Passion, love, poverty, power, and above all, the indefatigable soul of fatigued women. Damn.

Silences. Tillie Olsen. Can’t do it justice with words. Which is the point, as its goal is to textualize the silent periods of authors’ lives.

Collected Works. Grace Paley. Choose your favorites.

One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel Marquez Garcia. Maybe people are reading this and I don’t know. I did not find Love in the Time of Cholera enjoyable. Everyone who has ever read One Hundred Years, though, was touched to the core, by its magical realism and epic grasp on the human heart. Is this already on everyone’s list? Please go read it. The Nobel Prize announcement insisted that, in his writing, he creates: “a cosmos in which the human heart and the combined forces of history, time and again, burst the bounds of chaos – killing and procreation.” Who wouldn’t read all of his books after that?

Nightwood. Djuna Barnes. Some of the most compelling scenes I’ve ever read. Some of the most sadly endearing characters I’ve ever met. Some of the most confusing passages I’ve ever pushed through. Really, really brilliant work.

Wings. Shinsuke Tanaka. Gorgeously spun tale of joy and intolerance, difference, and love. As with all good stories, we have to fudge the ending a bit with our toddler, but it’s easy to change the story’s climax just a little to make sure everything turns out even more okay.

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Chris Ware. A poignant, gorgeous, thought provoking graphic novel. Especially tender about relationships of fathers and sons. The year I read it I gave it to everyone I knew for Chrismakkah.

Princess Bride. William Goldman. The cult following of the movie would imply a large fanbase for the book, which is (predictably, both for the track record of “the book was better” and for Goldman’s MASTERY of narration) ten thousand and three times better than the film.

Tender Buttons. Gertrude Stein. penelope said it first, but I second it. This is the work worth reading. There is molto there there.

Absolom, Absolom. William Faulkner. For some reason it’s neither read nor assigned as often as it should be. It’s the most compelling, for me, of his work because the female characters are the most poignantly drawn. As I Lay Dying is good, but not good enough to re-read a third time. The Sound and The Fury is remarkable, but harder reading. Light in August is brilliant and compelling but I can’t take the violence right now.

Poetical Dictionary. Lohren Green. Philosopher and History of Philosophy guy makes language visual and poetical. Very compelling intellectually.

An American Tragedy. Theodore Dreiser. I wrote my undergrad honors thesis on Sister Carrie, and I loved that book. And for a historical perspective on American industrialization and women, it still reigns supreme. But something about An American Tragedy just really floats my boat. No pun intended. Oh, dear, I should edit that out. No pun intended at all. Gross.

Not a Box. Antoinette Portis. Yes, it’s a children’s book, but it’s absolutely inspiring.

Infinite Jest. David Foster Wallace. Detailed and stream of consciousness and meticulous and hilarious and disturbing and prescient and nakedly raw. Delicious. Also Brief interviews with Hideous Men. Not so much The Girl with Curious Hair, only bits of which did I enjoy. Still working on Oblivion. I had taken a Wallace break to raise a child and write my own fiction, but now I’m tearfully relishing his every word. My God, I ache knowing that we’ll never get more.

The Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I keep a copy in every room, and in my glove compartment. (Okay, not really, but I’m considering it this week.)

I couldn’t include many of my favorites here because most people have read them and still read them, which disqualifies them by definition. But I feel the need to show some lovin’ to some of the greatest books ever written: Catch-22, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Joy Luck Club, Lord of the Flies, Green Eggs and Ham, The Color Purple, Their Eyes Were Watching God, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Grapes of Wrath.

Does this thing take quarters?

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On a long drive home today, I put in a CD and heard a lovely, nostalgic sound–a jukebox swallowing a quarter. My CD player, however, is not a jukebox, and just after the quarter dropped the right speaker went out. Then a high pitched squeal. Then the left speaker went out. I turned around to look at the sweet little creature who sat, totally clueless as to the wrath he would soon face, reading a Lowly Worm book.

“Did you put money in mommy’s radio?”

“No radio. CD player.”

“Did you put money in mommy’s CD player?”

“Yes.”

“Did Mommy tell you no money in the CD player?”

“hmmmmm. Yes.”

“When Mommy tells you no put money in CD, Mommy means no money in CD.”

“”Peanut put money in, money come back out.”

“No. Peanut put CD in, CD come back out. Peanut put money in, money break CD player.”

“Money no breaked it. Mommy breaked it.”

deep, deep breath.

“CD player is for CDs. No money in CD player. Do you understand?”

“Yes. No money in CD player. Money in radio.”

The words “boarding school” are taking on a whole new appeal to a now reformed AP mama…

The Grapes of Recession

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So Peanut and I were curled up in a large, comfy, red armchair before a warm, crackling fireplace of a hotel lobby yesterday. (I get more romantic moments with my kid than with my Spouse. Kind of funny, kind of creepy, kind of depressing.) Peanut was devouring grapes, and I was flipping through the Wall Street Journal. He still isn’t down with me reading adult material, but the fruit distraction helped.

He told me to stop reading. I asked which part he wanted me to read him. (I understand the “pay attention to me.” I won’t heed the “do what I tell you.” It’s a little game we play, where we both want control. And neither of us thinks it’s a game.)

He pointed to a graph of the Dow’s…um…progress over the past two months. “What dat?”

That, I told him is a chart that shows what people’s money is doing. Right now, I said, people are selling their money because they don’t want it. They don’t like to see money go down, down, down like this, and they are scared, so they’re selling their money.

“People scared…[he tried to find the words]…people scared ’bout money…[he tried to sign, but just kept repeating the sign for Roubik’s cube over and over]…people tell Peanut ’bout sad, scared, Peanut give them one grape, they no be sad, scared.”

I wanted to clarify. “So the people who are scared about money, sad about money can tell you that they’re scared and sad, and you’ll give them a grape?”

“Huh. And they be no more scared.”

“Honey, I think that is a great plan. That’s the best plan for being scared about money that I’ve ever heard. What a wonderful idea. We should tell this man about it [showed him Paulson’s picture].”

“hmmmm. No. No tell that man. Only tell people sad scared.” He popped another grape into his mouth and asked about an ad on the next page. I told him it was an ad, and he yelled NO at it, then turned the page with me.

So you heard it here first. We’re only telling you—the people who are scared and sad about the money graph—that you can tell your problems to our very thoughtful toddler, and he’ll give you one grape.

Only I don’t think he understands how many grapes that would be. The graph was small, and he must think that the scale is a bit more grape-able than it might really be. Then again, a sweet faced boy who really wants to fix your sadness with fruit…maybe that is the answer.

Psssst. Mr. Paulson. Mr. Darling. Mr. Lagarde. Mr. Manuel. And all other finance minister types. Don’t tell him I told you, but this guy has an idea to fix your…how do we put it…catastrophic international economic failure issues. Get this–a plan to stabalize markets and boost local, organic farm production. Win-win, no? Call us and we’ll give you details. Just be sure to spell the name correctly on the Nobel Prize.

When things feel out of control

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I’m totally overwhelmed lately, figuring out what to do next, from minute to minute and for the bigger decisions about where to live, how to best care for Peanut, my family, and myself.

So when things get tough, I try to focus on something bigger than my little problems. CNN has a moving article about the terrible, disgusting, horrific war on women going on in the Congo. It’s a military tactic to rape as many women as possible, because rape victims are shunned by families and villages. Best way to vanquish an opponent, apparently, is to weakend the famil structure so significantly that there are no families left. Interesting. If you’re a monster.

So here are some links so you can learn more. And help. Please.

I, for one, am terrified of a lot lately: what’s happening to our economy, our election, our country. But not one-millioneth as terrified as the women of the Congo and their children must be. Please, please do something. Learning makes a difference. Talking makes a difference. Organizing makes a difference. Money makes a difference. You can make a difference.

INFO
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/10/15/congo.women/index.html
http://www.peacewomen.org/news/DRC/Jan06/stigma_of_rape.html

INFO AND DONATE
http://www.vday.org/contents/drcongo
http://www.womenforwomen.org/global-initiatives-helping-women/help-women-congo.php

SPEAK UP
http://www.petitiononline.com/Congo/petition.html

DO SOMETHING
http://www.runforcongowomen.org/

East coast, left coast, and “wonderful little pockets” in between

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According to Sarah Palin,

We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.

You know what? I’m tired of this your-America versus our-America bullshit. Every single citizen is part of the real America–part of the dichotomy between rich and poor, left and right, liberal and conservative, creative and analytical, educated and ignorant, entertained and bored, thoughtful and thoughtless.

Intentionally, superficially divisive politics fit into the latter category.

The real America is also the economic centers of the country. The farms, the factories, the skyscrapers, the theaters, the film backlots, the offices, the aerospace compounds, the retail centers, the universities, the tourist attractions. Cities are just as American as small towns. Small towns are just as American as cities. People are not more American because of their job, their background, their lack of education, or their residence in a swing state.

As Sarah Vowell said on The Daily Show the other day, if New York was American enough for the terrorists, it’s American enough for the rest of us.

I hope that after this election the nonsense about them versus us stops. Because every time politicians stoke that fire (every two years, just often enough to make it a permaflame) instead of focusing on the legitimate disagreements between their ideas, we all lose. Can’t we just have a civil discussion about how really bright minds come up with completely opposite ideas?

Stop pandering and realize that we all contribute. Some a lot more than others. But we’re all still citizens and every single vote should count.

I don’t know if we’ll make it through today.

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Here are two tasty little morsels from today, which has been a never-ending stream of the same.

M: Do you want to pull the laundry basket?

P: No. [walks off and up the stairs.]

M: Are you sure you don’t want to help?

P: No! Peanut no want pull laundry!

M: [whatever, fine by me] Okay. [starts pulling basket and gets to bottom of stairs.]

P: [loses it, crying and stomping] Peanut want do it!

M: [not sure what just happened] Okay…

P: No Mommy do it! Peanut want do it!

M: I just said okay. Go ahead. You do it.

P: [Stomps down stairs, grabs basket, wheels it ten feet back toward the laundry room, turns, and wheels it back.]

M: Thank you.

P: Mommy no say thank you. [mounting stairs] Mommy no come up stairs. Laundry no come up stairs.

M: Mommy and laundry need to come upstairs.

P: NO!

……

P: [in stroller, on our morning run] Peanut want that playground.

M: [always fine with stopping the run midway] Okay. [stops the stroller]

P: [screaming] Peanut no want this playground!

M: [befuddled but also endorphined] Okay. We’ll run to a different playground.

P: Peanut no want different playground! Peanut want this playground!

M: [rethinking career choice] Okay. [goes to unbuckle seat belt]

P: [hitting M’s hand] No! Peanut no get out!

M: How will you play if you won’t get out?

P: Peanut no play! Peanut no get out. Peanut not ANY!

M: Should I keep running?

P: Mommy no run.

M: Your choices are playground or Mommy running.

P: Not any. Peanut want different playground.

Sweet Mary, mother of my cousins, I’m gonna chuck this kid out with the next bathwater we can successfully get him into.

See what I’ve become? that should have read “into which we can successfully get him.” Know what? Mommy no care. Mommy want to send Little Mister Struggle For Independence to live with the Doctors Sears. They won’t notice another kid, and they are less likely to try to safe surrender him to the fire department than I am.

Ten books other people love but I don’t

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Oh, the web is wonderful. After reading the following:

http://capacioushandbag.blogspot.com/2008/09/meme-that-i-just-made-up.html
http://outsidevoice.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/unlovedbooks/

Ten Books People Love but I don’t

I had to give it a go. Because the above posts made some EXCELLENT points re: the painful shittiness of Wuthering Heights, The Old Man and the Sea, and Heart of Darkness, I can simply agree wholeheartedly and move on to:

1. Billy Budd. The only thing more painful than social implications of his speech impediment is reading about it. Tragic? Aye. Dramatic? Aye. Now stick me in the eye so I don’t have to read it ever again. (My secret for those who loathe Moby Dick is: skip any chapter that begins with a whale or a boat. The dialogue and existential angst stuff is pretty darned good. Except that it’s Melville and I don’t much care. I’m just saying, if you have to read it, skip the whale and ship bits. Makes it a pretty quick read.)

2. Oliver Twist. B-uh-lech. Maybe it had soap-opera appeal as a subscription serial, but come on. Try Tale of Two Cities, instead. Still laborious in a “yup, clearly he was paid by the word” kind of way, but the final two pages make it all worth it. And I like a payoff. Which is why all the E.M. Forester-y British nineteenth century books that leave ends dangling, dripping with possibility and fraught with “if only” make me want to hurl them at the nearest open flame.

3. War and Peace. Ugh. Oh, God, please, don’t. Crime and Punishment, yes. Anna Karenina if you really, really want to. But barring those masterpieces, why, really, wend your way through Russian lit? They have long winters, lots of vodka, and enough space to be alone. I would not begrudge them their need for torturously long reads. But we don’t need the literary distractions. I’m not arguing for short books. I wanted to write my Master’s thesis on Infinite Jest, for heaven’s sake. But Anna and War are like reading all the “who begat whom” sections of the Bible. Were those guys paid by the word, too?

4. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Um, no. Stop with your Catholic angst and your paternal angst and your filial angst. Too much boy desperate to be a man but held back by his country, religion, and extensive knowledge of classic literature for me. (Seriously? A whole novel about Icarus and Daedalus? The painting is genius. The story is okay. The Irish reinterpretation is laborious and self-congratulatory.) Stephen is the Irish Holden Caufield, only not as easy to read. (Ulysses is worth it, though, for those dissing Joyce. But read the The Odyssey first. Or get a guide. Or read the critical edition. Ulysses is brilliant as a call and response to The Odyssey like O, Brother Where Art Thou is brilliant as a call and response to both. All three are abstruse on their own.)

5. The Sun Also Rises. Aaaaack! Ernest Hemingway, you offend my literary sensibilities. Again. Do you actually read, or do you just write? Jesus, le mot juste was never so dry or so overwraught with self importance. Bombastic in his superiority, Hemingway makes me gag, especially when he’s so obsessed with male genitalia. Try his Nick Adams stories, instead. The only way to fix Hemingway is to make his male characters prepubescent.

6. Gone with the Wind. Makes me want to strangle Scarlet and Rhett—for the entirety of the text. Please. Shut up already. You’re boring. Makes me want to let them secede. Or force them to read all the books on this list, over and over.

7. Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness. I know I said above that it was covered in the other anti-best-of lists, but I can’t not say it again and again. Poorly written, colonial racist eroticization of The Other, thinly veiled homoeroticism, and just plain uninteresting. More machismo-penis fiction, a la Hemingway. Assign it only as punishment for plagiarizers who will “do anything” to not fail your class.

8. On the Road. Holy Self-Absorbed Baby Boomers at Their Worst, Batman. Jeezus, why are we letting that generation run the world? They’re boring!

9. Confederacy of Dunces. ptooey! Did you not want to throttle Ignatious J. Reilly the whole way through? I’ve never met a more unsympathetic character in a novel. Why do people like this book? I felt like I was on the spinning wheel of fortune while a blindfolded knife thrower was on break waiting to maybe think about maybe making things interesting for me and the audience. After he made us all watch cubist films about paint drying.
Infuriating. Pulitzer? What? Try, instead, if you want funny yet tormented, self aware and philosophically important—Infinite Jest. And read the footnotes. Ten thousand times more worth your while than any of CoD.

11. The Great Gatsby. Okay, I said it. I know I’m the only one, and I’m willing to be alone on this one. Gatsby is full of horrible people doing horrible things, and not even in an important, changing the world kind of way. Give me biographies of dictators or famine or tracts about world poverty, but don’t make me pretend to be impressed, or even interested, in rich Americans who shat all over society. Yucky, icky self absorption, conspicuous consumption, devaluation of women’s bodies, and painfully obvious but unexamined divides between the many classes in American society. Plus, the narrator is way too Holden Caulfield for me, and you know how I feel about him. Entirely disagreeable and distasteful chap, that one.

12. Tuesdays with Morrie. SCHLOCK! Oh, my, schlockedy schlock schlock. Get your carpe diem elsewhere. This is schlock.

13. Angela’s Ashes. I’ve now been disowned for saying this, but what is the appeal? The writing is fair to middling, and it’s neither depressing enough nor uplifting enough. As memoirs go, it’s filed twice under “yeah, right” and “who the hell cares?” Maudlin expressions of intense poverty are fine by me. I love me some well written memoirs of intense powerlessness. Somehow, dotting the “i”s with little smiley faces makes the whole thing seem disingenuous, no? You want a book about finding hope in absolutely desolate conditions? Try What is the What? by Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng.

(Now that I’ve read the list here, I feel less original about On the Road and Catcher in the Rye, but I also feel vindicated…)

Yes, that was more than ten. Ask anyone who has ever met me if I can follow rules or self-edit.

Our next assignment, overeducated blogosphere, is a list of books we love that nobody else is reading.

Onebody, twobody, redbody, bluebody

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Peanut, at the playground: Not anybody here….
Hey! Onebody here!…………….
Mama! Twobodies riding bicycles!…………………………..
Hey! Allbodies here is ladies!

The linguist in me loves this stuff.

Makes me want to dust off the letters of rec. and start working on a linguistics PhD this fall. Everybody else says have another kid. I say I have things to do and this one doesn’t sleep as it is. In fact, allbodies are up around 3 every, morning trying to convince onebody that human bodies need sleep.

Last night’s bedtime:
P: Peanut wake up at nighttime, say Mommy Mommy Daddy Daddy.
M: Mommy and Daddy need to sleep at nighttime. If you wake up you know you’re warm and safe and cozy, and you can see it’s nighttime, so you cuddle your doll and relax back to sleep.
P: If something hurt you, Peanut cuddle doll.
M: Yes, if something hurts you, your doll will cuddle you. What do you think imght hurt you?
P: Bees.

At 3am:
P: [screaming] Mommy! Mama! [crying] Something hurt you. Please, Mommy, cuddle.
M: Something hurt you?
P: Yes.
M: [suspicious that this is a ploy] What hurt you?
P: A lizard
M: [swallowing simultaneous urges to laugh and storm out] Well, tell the lizard to go home to sleep. Nighttime is for sleeping.
P: Go sleep, lizard.
M: Yeah. The lizard says it’s sorry for hurting you. It didn’t know you were sleeping. Sorry.
…..

P: [lying down and grabbing doll] Peanut sleep at nighttime, lizard.

You tell ’em.

Next time by yourself, though, please. What’s up with this early-childhood, needing-help crap? Don’t they make two year olds who can handle everything by themselves? Where do I get me one of them?

Talk of the town

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I’m not a people watcher. Couldn’t care less. Can sit in an airport or train station and never see the people around me. But I am a people listener. I hear the conversations behind me, in the stall next to me, at the table down the aisle. I listen, picturing how the people speaking could be in a novel, a play, a movie–what their whole story is and what moves them. I’m listening, empathizing with their plights, cheering their successes. I listen to people when I run, loving our new (if temporary) digs along the waterfront because I run and listen in on dozens of conversations from walkers, cyclists, and joggers.

And I have never, in decades of listening, experienced anything like this week.

Every single voice I heard, amongst those explicitly not talking to me, was talking about the economy. Every one. The ladies walking on the levee, the businessmen at the cafe, the family at Fleet Week, the couples holding hands at the library. Every, single non-me-focused voice is talking about the shitstorm that is our economy. How did we get here (that one I know…traunches); what is happening next (that one I know…massive recession); what is the government going to do (that one I don’t know…depends on the election, and neither option will fix things economically). And the people on whom I’m eavesdropping aren’t even in New York, looking at this.

It’s amazing to hear, for the first time, an eerily similar conversation from EVERYONE. (And really good for my novels, because people walking around just paralyzed with fear make for really good characters. I’m sorry we’re all hurting and scared. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s a major boon for my fiction.)

Check with The Fourth Turning, btw. This, even more than Sept. 11, puts us in another Crisis period; which puts me, as I’ve always suspected, with the Lost expat writers of the 20s. Our current generation of Hemingways and Steins and Fitzgeralds and Nins is working right now. And watch out–they’re listening when you go Rollerblading on the levee.