Nov 1, 2009

General updates

I finished the Brothers Karamazov last week. The first hundred or so pages were daunting but as I grew comfortable with his long speeches and the characters I started to really love it. Initially I was concerned that the religion would be a sticking point for me but it really wasn't much of a problem at all.

Ultimately I view the book as Dostoevsky's attempt at rendering the inner workings and struggle of a man's soul. Dmitri Karamazov embodies the most noble and deplorable aspects of humanity and through his trial we see the dangers of the lies we tell ourselves and see a very real and convincing portrait of a person.

The style itself is really impressive. Dialogue is the main vehicle for the story-telling, not so much conversations but these fervent speeches. I will be reading Anna Karenina soon but am taking a break from the Russian epic for a little while.

Right now I'm reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, Frost by Thomas Bernhard, and 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The way that Marquez uses adjectives in combination is really beautiful and is something I would like to incorporate into my own writing more.

I've been doing some research about my potential destinations and Argentina or Chile is looking more and more favorable. This of course means I need to learn Spanish, but I think having something to do during my dreadful commute will be useful. I am still reluctant to sell the car but perhaps I can keep selling art in order to raise enough money - I am set on going either way. I still need to look into a visa, but hopefully I can swing 4-5 months in Buenos Ares or Santiago. I'm really hoping both cities have a climbing gym so I can keep climbing.

With Patagonia right there I am going to visit and do some bouldering there but the main purpose is finishing a first novel, no matter how terrible it may be! I have nearly finished a climbing problem that I've worked on for the last month or two and am pretty excited about finally nailing it. One of my fingers is a little tweaked but it's on my right hand so I should be able to compensate.

The writing itself is going fairly well but I feel sort of stuck on this one spot, but I think with some sleep and thought I will be able to resolve the scene. I haven't been able to write the past couple of days thanks to extra work (actually thankful, need the $) but this week I'll be keeping track of writing time and shooting for writing before and after work.

I watched Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive recently. I preferred Mulholland of the two but enjoyed both. Apparently, when I was really young my parents dressed me up as the Elephant Man and I wandered around Hollywood saying I am not an animal! I will probably watch more, Lost Highway has been recommended to me, but I loved the dangers of false dreams in Mulholland. The film was described as a poisoned valentine to Hollywood and I thought that was a really beautiful, apt description. Watching these neo-noirs and a really bad movie, Brick, has me wanting to read some more Raymond chandler soon, and to rewatch The Third Man. I also haven't seen Chinatown so maybe I should finally get that out of the way.

In general I am very happy and directed. I have something like 20 books to read which I'm excited for every one and I nearly have enough material for a writing sample to send to residency programs. Obviously, this will change as I edit things down and make improvements but I feel good.

And finally I will post some quotes from the Paris Review's Art of Fiction Interviews:

Henry Miller
INTERVIEWER
Didn't you say somewhere, "I am for obscenity and against pornography"?

MILLER
Well, it's very simple. The obscene would be the forthright, and pornography would be the roundabout. I believe in saying the truth, coming out with it cold, shocking if necessary, not disguising it. In other words, obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.

Julio Cortazar
INTERVIEWER
You have said at various times that, for you, literature is like a game. In what ways?

CORTÁZAR
For me, literature is a form of play. But I’ve always added that there are two forms of play: football, for example, which is basically a game, and then games that are very profound and serious. When children play, though they’re amusing themselves, they take it very seriously. It’s important. It’s just as serious for them now as love will be ten years from now. I remember when I was little and my parents used to say, “Okay, you’ve played enough, come take a bath now.” I found that completely idiotic, because, for me, the bath was a silly matter. It had no importance whatsoever, while playing with my friends was something serious. Literature is like that—it’s a game, but it’s a game one can put one’s life into. One can do everything for that game.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
In One Hundred Years of Solitude I used the insomnia plague as something of a literary trick since it’s the opposite of the sleeping plague. Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.

INTERVIEWER
Can you explain that analogy a little more?

GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
Both are very hard work. Writing something is almost as hard as making a table. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. Both are full of tricks and techniques. Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work are involved. And as Proust, I think, said, it takes ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. I never have done any carpentry, but it’s the job I admire most, especially because you can never find anyone to do it for you.

Tom Wolfe

INTERVIEWER
What denotes a “good” novel?

WOLFE
To me, it’s a novel that pulls you inside the central nervous system of the characters . . . and makes you feel in your bones their motivations as affected by the society of which they are a part. It is folly to believe that you can bring the psychology of an individual successfully to life without putting him very firmly in a social setting. After The Bonfire of the Vanities came out I was accused of the negative stereotyping of just about every ethnic and racial type known to New York City. I would always challenge anyone who wrote that to give me one example. I have been waiting ever since. I think what I actually did was to violate a rule of etiquette—that it’s all right to bring up the subject of racial and ethnic differences, but you must treat it in a certain way. Somewhere in the tale you must find an enlightened figure, preferably from the streets, who shows everyone the error of his or her ways; a higher synthesis is created and everyone leaves the stage perhaps sadder but a good deal wiser and a good deal kinder and more compassionate. Well, this just simply isn’t the way New York works. The best you can say is that New York is held together by competing antagonisms which tend to cancel one another out. I tried to face up to that as unflinchingly as I could.

Haruki Murakami

INTERVIEWER
What was the first book you read in English?

MURAKAMI
The Name Is Archer, by Ross MacDonald. I learned a lot of things from those books. Once I started, I couldn't stop. At the same time I also loved to read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Those books are also page-turners; they're very long, but I couldn't stop reading. So for me it's the same thing, Dostoyevsky and Raymond Chandler. Even now, my ideal for writing fiction is to put Dostoyevsky and Chandler together in one book. That's my goal.

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