Ulysses: Since Last Time

I am still working my way through Ulysses, though it has taken a decrease lately as Sarah has had a lot of work (she is the student who is reading it now as well), and I've had a lot of prep stuff and grad school stuff to get through. I'd decided to read Interpreter of Maladies a bit more as it is a collection of short stories, and is significantly easier to work through.

But just this morning I decided I needed to get back to Bloom and his day of semi-infamy. I'm also inspired by Charlie telling me to quit summarizing and mention something of interest. To this I can merely say, "try reading the book again, and saying that to my face." At this point Charlie would roundhouse kick me about the skull; he is a black belt, and I am fearful.

I was stuck on Episode 7 of Ulysses, "Aeolus". In the Odyssey this is when Odysseus' men happen to release the bad winds (tee hee) which causes the crew, who is almost home, to get blown drastically off course. This is transferred, in Joyce's novel, to the office of The Telegraph, a Dublin newspaper where Bloom is trying to place an advertisement. As he goes from man to man trying to get this simple task done, he is blown about, unable to speak with any given character for very long.

As I'd briefly mentioned in an earlier post, the book does a good job of causing the reader to experience the same thing as the characters. I may not completely grasp every nuance of the story, but I know how Odysseus must have felt, having seen the end of his journey, only to be thwarted. I can see the end of this chapter, but can't seem to get to it. I myself was drastically blown off course upon first reading, but luckily I kept my fortitude. I've turned the boat around, adjusted the sails, and am slowly plowing the boat on.

300: Minutes and Men

I love comic books. I love superheroes, and horror comics, and magic comics and all that jazz. Comics often do things that few other mediums can do ("it's pictures and words, you can do anything with picture and words"). I collect them in monthly floppy format; I buy them in collection as trade paperbacks; I buy them as original graphic novels. It is a fascinating medium. It also, usually, doesn't take very long to read. I read one this weekend in less than 300 minutes.

Frank Miller's 300 is the story of 300 Spartan soldiers at the Battle of Thermopylae. Miller is most famous for Sin City and his Batman series The Dark Night Returns; 300 is similar in feeling, though not in content. While Miller is largely known for crime work, it is not the crime element that he does so well, but the toughness of the characters; and there are few tougher than the Spartans.

His style is very bare. He both wrote and drew this story and he uses the images to tell a lot, which reflects the Spartan action over Spartan words. The book has every element of a good drama (and will make a great movie this March). It has strong characters that you can get behind while not completely liking; it has smart characters that speak plainly but simply; it has blood. Lots of blood. This is not nice neat war, this is dirty war. This is kill a man and use him as shield; kill many men and build a wall. When the Persians come to fight the Spartans they know what will happen if they die.

The battle stems from Spartan pride, and, having little knowledge of how Greece worked at the time, a sense of united Greece. The Spartans know they are not Athenians (pussies!), but they see the valuable of each of the different states that made up Greece, and they fight for that. Repeatedly, King Leonidas talks about how Greeks are freemen, as opposed to the Persians who are following the Man-God Xerxes. Xerxes himself is a likable character as he only asks for the King to say that Xerxes is a step higher than Leonidas (with almost no other requirements). Leonidas, however, is free, and is willing to fight for that freedom.

I won't give away the end, but you can do the math (300 vs. 10,000). The book ultimately shows victory is defined by an individual, even in times of war, and treaties are not always the only prizes in war. It also shows how damn good comics can be, and that people should read them more.

Soldiers are dreamers

Alright... its time for me to sit down and finally write a post on Going After Cacciato, a novel by Tim O'Brien about the men in the Vietnam war and how they coped (or didn't). Although I technically finished the book on Saturday, its taken me four days just to get my thoughts together to try and write a cogent review. Well, more specifically, even though the book is a lot to take intellectually, its rather tough on the emotional side as well. Tim O'Brien does such a good job at crafting really believable, human characters that reading about their suffering and deaths is not particularly easy. Plus, because about half the story takes place in one of the character's imagination, which means that I spent a fair amount of time confused (see this post). After each chapter I had to pause and spend a few minutes thinking, which slowed down the reading considerably.
In brief, the book is about a soldier, Paul Berlin, who is stationed at an observation post, and keeps watch throughout the night. Another soldier in his platoon, Cacciato, decides to go AWOL, headed for Paris. About half of the book takes place in Paul Berlin's imagination as he accompanies his platoon to Paris, chasing after Cacciato, but there are plenty of flashbacks to things that really did happen. And lots of war stories. There was a lot to think about, but I'll mention 5 things that I wrote down in my black book of thoughts that struck me as worth spending more time thinking about...
1. At one point in his imagined tale, the platoon ends up in jail... an almost inescapable predicament, because they have no money or passports, and are scheduled to die the next morning. Paul Berlin seems unable to immediately work a way out of this scenario, and says:

"You could run, but you couldn't outrun the consequences of running.Not even in
imagination."

I'll admit that I'm somewhat of an escapist myself, which is likely why this little phrase stuck out. And, rather than the hang-in-there sort of cat hanging on a wash line message, but just a realistic reason to not run away from things...

2. The advice Paul Berlin's father gave him before he left:

You'll see some terrible stuff, sure, but try to look for the good things.
Try to learn.

Which I think is pertinent advice not only for being in Vietnam, but also making it through the day. Although I feel fairly skilled at the trying to learn part, I need to keep working on the looking for the good business. Which is really one of the most poignant messages about the book... if Paul Berlin can keep his head somewhat together in the middle of a war-torn jungle, I should be able to do it while I'm sitting on my couch in my pajamas.

3. There is an interesting imaginary conversation that Paul Berlin has with a Vietnamese girl who he is trying to help. Paul is trying to understand how the Vietnamese feel about the war, and wants her to understand that he was just following orders, was drafted, and doesn't really know what's going on any more than she does. But, in the conversation he asks:

What did she want? How did she see the war? What were her aims - peace, any
peace, peace with dignity? ... Peace and quiet? Peace and pride? Peace with
mashed potatoes and Swiss steak and vegetables, a full-tabled peace, indoor
plumbing, a peace with Oldsmobiles and Hondas and skyscrapers climbing from the fields , a peace of order and harmony and murals on public buildings?

More on peace to come in item #5, but I'm going chronologically in the book, so this quote will occupy the #3 position...

4. Paul Berlin learns some important lessons from his time in Vietnam:

It hurts to be shot. Dead men are heavy. Don't seek trouble, it'll find you
soon enough.

In times of extreme stress, life tends to boil down to a few simple facts like this.

5. And finally:

As happiness is not just the absence of sadness, peace is not just the
absence of war.

I find the concept of "peace" interesting... Is not being attacked regularly the definition of peace? Does peace imply freedom? Can people be forced to live in peace? Would people choose to live in peace without being forced to? Lots of questions to keep pondering...

So... this post is getting terribly long... The book is tough, a little slow, and somewhat confusing (particularly in the beginning), but I think there's a lot of good stuff in there that makes it worth the effort.

Thin

So, honest is best. I bought this book because I have a swimmer on every team I've coached who has had an eating problem. I look back at my high school career as a distance runner, and have realized that I didn;t eat nearly enough to fuel my body, or enough of the right foods (I worry how many female athletes never realize this, because it's so subconscience). I never had a full-blown eating problem, but I did know the skinny= faster equation, and while scared of it, did my best to hold by its standards. Not any diagnosable criteria, I realize now, but no healthy. Every anal athlete should have a set of goals each day as it pretains to nutrition....

My health was never a question, and I was not in danger. Not the case in some of my atheletes, no the people you met in "Thin." Danger, fear, worry. Behold the power of pictures. So scary. So true. It oly makes me worry more... and not ot be too dramatic, but how much time peoplewho suffer from this have left.

The book is a mix of had and type- written notes, and pictures, based on a HBO documentary. It's all too real. And sad.

Welcome To My Country by Lauren Slater

I am drawn to memoirs, especially associated with mental illness. To be inside the head of someone suffering from a disorder allows for a level of understanding that is unmatched by textbook facts on symptoms and treatments.

"Welcome to my country" is 80% wonderful. Lauren is a first-year counselor in a group home for schizophrenic men. Her fears-to-concerns-to-comfort spectrum show the emotions we've been warned first-year counselors go through "is this good enoug" "can i really help" "why are there no results".....

The problem with a memoir is that there's a part of a person that you really don't care about-- you still get it in writing, and have to schlep through it to get to the parts you like. Flashbacks to her adolescent, eating disorder years and her own desire for control just as her patients strive for it as well worried me-- not that everyone magically becomes perfect when they've gotten an MA or PhD, but that if these issues are resolved, tehy should not play so actively into the counseling relationship.

The family history her patients present makes you worry and think all at once. Some mental disorders are so engranded in envornment, others spring up randomly. Makes you never want to have kids, really.

Bottom line: I have total respect for those who do, but no desire to work with scizophrenics. Or in a group home. A dorky delicacy, but not for typical consumption..

Into the Wild: the Conclusion

So today is the march for life, so a lot of students are out. Because of this I am allowing my students to have a reading day. I think reading is important, and if we don’t model it for them, they see no reason to do it, so there I am, in my chair, front of the room, reading with them. I just finished Into the Wild for the second time, and I’m nearly crying. There are few surprises in the book, especially after having already read it, but there is still something that speaks to the reader, particularly if the reader feels for Chris McCandless.

As the cover states, in April of 1992, Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan Wilderness after tramping around the country for two years. His body was found four months later. The mystery that builds is not a question of what happened to McCandless as much as why did it happen, and why did he do it. The story of McCandless has resonated with my students, but a large number of them cannot fathom why a man would do these things; the first answer is almost always “mental illness”. What could inspire a man to leave his family, give up his money and most of his belongings, for some grand dream of … something? Krakauer looks to the story of Chris, the people he met along his “quest”, the journal he wrote throughout, as well as the accounts of other men who’ve gone on similar journeys to try to get an answer; he goes so far as to tell his own story of hubris in trying to climb The Devil’s Thumb.

I have to say I admire what McCandless did. I could not leave my wife, or abandon my family the way he does; I also, however, see this as one of the downsides of relationship in general. I am big on freedom and choosing ones own path, but with that comes the realization, at least for me, that I must give up some of my freedoms for other things. McCandless simply does not do this, and the reason most would disagree with him is because it is easier for them to identify with the victims of this choice: the family and friends that are left behind. By becoming angry with McCandless for being selfish in his decision only supports the selfish views of the people that say he is selfish. “How could he do that do his family” could easily be argued with “how could his family prevent him from doing what he needed to do.”

I don’t think I would ever go off into the wild to live by myself, on my own, or even could. I would however love to find out how to live a bit more independently, and I don’t think my wife would completely disagree. We like having access to people, but don’t like having them around all the time, and McCandless, at his roots, believed the same thing (as witnessed in his constant relationships and repeated returns to society).

I would love being able to live independently; without a need for a job, or so many of the requirements that we really seem to put upon ourselves. And I, like the man, Rosellini, from the book, believe that humans may have gone too far (at least Americans) in that we can no longer live solely off the land. We have become a powerful tribe that needs the people around them to survive. I don’t like needing; I’ve always preferred wanting.

Who is Cacciato?

I'm really confused... I know, I know... Book #5 was supposed to be lighter and all, but it is definitely not. Exhibit A is the fact that its been almost a week since I finished my last book, because it has really taken some effort to get into Going After Cacciato, which I'm really only about 20% of the way into right now. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it has taken some effort to get Going After Cacciato. I thought it would be a nice contrast to The Eden Express, since they both happen at essentially the same time, they're both pretty male-centric, and most of the story happens in the woods. I didn't realize that they both also have pretty heavy themes of distinguishing reality from perception. It is definitely not a book to only read just before bed. Partly because I need more brain power than I typically have by that time of night, and also partly because its not at all good for having pleasant dreams. I really like Tim O'brien and his descriptions of the humanity of the Vietnam War, which makes it significantly easier to get into, and I trust that it'll start to come together as we go along here... But at the moment, I'm confused.

The Non-Designer’s Design Book

I think that we all know good design when we see it, but what are the basic visual principles that are common to good design? And how can I become more creative with my own work?

The Non-Designer's Design Book, by Robin Williams, is one of the most practical, useful books I have read in my entire life. I refer to it just about every other week, and it never fails to inspire and inform me to new heights of visual creativity. Whether you create documents for business or pleasure, you would do well to read this accessible and charming guide to the basics of typography and document design. The book is filled with easy-to-understand illustrations of the principles she teaches, and the author even provides you with quizzes to test your understanding.

The first part of the book is organized according to the four principles of design: Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, and Contrast. In the second part, she addresses the basics of type setting, such as how to achieve “contrast” instead of “conflict.” After reading this book, I use font size more boldly and occasionally accent my handouts with scripts. The author’s promise, made on the back of the book, has actually come true for me: I feel that my documents look more professional, organized, unified, and interesting. And I myself feel more empowered!

Philosophers and pseudo-intellectuals out there will also find the book refreshing. Is art truly in the eye of the beholder? What does font choice say about a person, a time period, a culture? To what extent can layout be used to make an argument, and how does it affect the way we read text?

I used to think that personal preference played a much larger role in determining the appeal of an image or design, but the author provides insights that seem universal. In the examples she provides, it’s hard to disagree with her rationale for choosing one layout over another, and yet you still leave the book feeling that there are infinite possibilities for creativity. (After all, if it really were that cut and dry, there would only be a few good designs out there, right?)

This book has lead me to the broader realization that many plans and projects fail not by effort or ability, but by design. And this is why you cannot afford to miss out on advice like the kind provided in this book.

- Charlie

Introducing... Charlie!

I have accepted the invitation of Matt and Kate to join this project, because I admire their intentions and because I had already planned on reading a few books myself this year. You might think of me as their sidekick – they will take on 25 books each, and myself more like 10. Although I begin without anywhere near the same level of commitment, I hope that my posts will be worth the time it takes to read them.

I should note briefly why this is such an unusual project for me. I tend to read like a scavenger – bits and pieces, a chapter here, ten pages there – from about ten or fifteen books at a time. Finishing an entire book, for me, is quite rare.

Anyways, on to the readings!

Ulysses: Episodes 4 & 5

Episode 4 introduces us to Mr. Leopold Bloom who likes fried kidneys because the slight taste of urine that they have. Leopold is making Molly, his wife, breakfast while she remains in bed, and he craves kidney (they are out). I know this feeling. Often time I’ve been making breakfast (I am the breakfast maker, Kate prefers making the other meals usually) and I’ll crave sausage, also because of its unique taste. Sometimes I will even run out to the store for that specific purpose, which is exactly what Bloom does. The stroll to Buckley’s shop (this is the second book I’ve read with a “Buckley” in it) is well described and the reader gets a hint that Bloom is specifically trying not to think of something in regards to his wife. When he returns, he fries up the kidney, serves his wife breakfast, and proceeds to… relieve himself… no… do #2… no too crude as well. You get the point. While reading on the toilet he also speaks about the death of a friend, whose funeral is the focal point of the sixth episode, “Hades”.

Episode 5 sees Leopold taking a circuitous route through Dublin on his way to the post office where he gets a mystery letter from a wannabe lover of his. Again, Bloom tries to control his thinking; whenever negative thoughts of Molly pop into his head, he quickly seems to notice any and everything around him. He ends up at the Turkish baths where he buys some soap and makes his way home.

Describing this book makes it sound ridiculous, and I know I am doing it a great disservice. At the moment, these foul and sparse notes are really the best I can do, which is kind of sad. It is so much fun reading this book because of the amount of work and concentration it takes. It, like The Dead Father, is more about the act of reading, then the story itself. The way that Joyce juxtaposes the Odyssey with Bloom’s day should make everyone feel that their days are vastly meaningful; unfortunately, if you can’t make that leap, I can definitely see where a person would not enjoy this book.

“I can’t go on, I’ll go on”