turpitude: n. 1. Base or shameful character; baseness, vileness; depravity, wickedness. b. with a and pl. An instance of this. c. Rendering the Latin turpitudo of the Vulgate: ‘nakedness’; ‘shame’. Obs. rare. 2. in lit. sense: Foulness, offensiveness, unsightliness. Obs. rare.
punnet: 1. Obs. rare. n. App.: a little pun. 2. n. A small light shallow container (originally made from strips or chips of wood) used esp. for strawberries, raspberries, mushrooms, and similar produce.
uxoriousness: n. The character or quality of being uxorious; doting or submissive fondness of one’s wife.
afeeble: v. To weaken, enfeeble. Obs.
affain: v. To feign to belong to (any one), to attribute ficticiously. Obs.
afel: n. Strength, physical force. Obs. [from the Old Norse]
afald: Obs. or dial. adj. 1. Single, singular, sole, only. Obs. 2. Simple, sincere, without duplicity; honest.
æstable: adj. ‘Belonging to summer.’ Obs.
gablock: Obs. exc. dial. n. [var. of gavelock.] 1. An artificial metallic spur for a fighting cock. Obs. 2. dial. An iron crowbar.
gadza: n. Obs. Some textile fabric.
gaig: v. Obs. [from local Scottish gaig (?) a cleft, chink (Jamaican English, which also gives geg n. and v. in the same senses.] trans. To chap, crack (earth). Only in pass.
2008/08/25
2008/08/24
Introversion
I know that people think I'm a bit odd. Strange. Intimidating sometimes. Okay with me, I suppose. Introverted people are like that. I don't know how many times someone has said to my wife, "You and your husband are so different, like complete opposites." (No one has ever said anything like this to me.) She loves people. I love people in small doses. I'm not unhappy, angry, irritated, depressed, annoyed, outraged, or anything else. If I were angry, you would know it instantly. Anyway, that's it.
2008/08/23
Things that shape this writer's artistic vision
Flannery O'Connor's Mystery & Manners:
"The novelist must be characterized not by his function but by his vision, and we must remember that his vision has to be transmitted and that the limitations and blind spots of his audience will very definitely affect the way he is able to show what he sees." (47)
"The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery." (79)
"The writer has to judge himself with a stranger’s eye and a stranger’s severity. The prophet in him has to see the freak. No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made." (81-82)
"For him [the artist], to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy or simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon the timeless, and that is only done by the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth." (82-83)
"The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot. The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged with it." (84)
"...sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment usually in the direction of an overemphasis on innocence, and that innocence, whenever it is overemphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural law to become its opposite." (147-148)
"Pornography, on the other hand, is essentially sentimental, for it leaves out the connection of sex with its hard purpose, and so far disconnects it from its meaning in life as to make it simply an experience for its own sake." (148)
Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Oedipus:
". . . the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of man as a species . . . man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other––not even in the sense of bipolar opposites within a relationship of causation, ideation, or expression (cause and effect, subject and object, etc.); rather, they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product." (4-5)
"[Process] must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself. Putting an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely––which, strictly speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely––it what creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate and independent entity." (5)
". . . when the theoretician reduces desiring-production to a production of fantasy, he is content to exploit to the fullest the idealist principle that defines desire as a lack, rather than a process of production, of "industrial" production. . . . If desire produces, its product is real. If desire is productive, it can be productive only in the real world and can produce only reality. . . . Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack its object. It is, rather, the subject that is missing in desire, or desire that lacks a fixed subject; there is no fixed subject unless there is repression. Desire and its object are one and the same thing." (26-27)
"The artist is the master of objects; he puts before us shattered, burned, broken-down objects, converting them to the régime of desiring-machines; the artist presents paranoiac machines, miraculating-machines, and celibate machines as so many technical machines, so as to cause desiring-machines to undermine technical machines. Even more important, the work of art itself is a desiring-machine. The artist stores up his treasures so as to create an immediate explosion, and that is why, to his way of thinking, destructions can never take place as rapidly as they ought to." (32)
"That is what style is, or rather the absence of style––asyntactic, agrammatical: the moment when language is no longer defined by what it says, even less by what makes it a signifying thing, but by what causes it to move, to flow, to explode––desire. For literature is like schizophrenia: a process and not a goal, a production and not an expression." (133)
"There is no longer any need for applying psychoanalysis to the work of art, since the work itself constitutes a successful psychoanalysis, a sublime 'transference' with exemplary collective virtualities." (134)
"The unconscious does not speak, it engineers. It is not expressive or representative, but productive." (180)
Ron Carlson's Ron Carlson Writes a Story:
"Vision, of course, is not teachable. What a person chooses to write about is not teachable. The passion a writer brings to the page is not teachable." (3)
"The process of writing a story, as opposed to writing a letter, or a research paper, or even a novel, is a process involving radical, substance-changing discovery. . . . I’ve also become convinced that a writer’s confidence in his/her process is as important as any accumulated craft dexterity or writing ‘skill.’" (4)
"How can you know what you know until you write it?" (10)
"Since I don’t know where I’m going, why would I hurry?" (41)
"Do we want a story to go elsewhere? Absolutely: elsewhere is our destination. We want the story to be true. We don’t want it to have a point, theme, doctrine. If we write the story well, those things will emerge--we can’t prevent it." (50)
"The single largest advantage a veteran writer has over the beginner is this tolerance for not knowing. It’s not style, skill, or any other dexterity. An experienced writer has been in those woods before and is willing to be lost; she knows that being lost is necessary for the discoveries to come. The seasoned writer waits, is patient, listens to her story as it talks to her." (15)
"We’re looking for the small acts that reveal character." (36)
"The assumption on the part of any writer that she is writing about people we all know (without explanation) is a useful one. It’s called not underestimating your audience; readers are terribly smart. It’s a relief and allows us to leave things out." (62)
My Own: Carlson’s "lost and loving it" metaphors are apt. One cannot experience mystery without being lost. Though I still think that typing out a first draft is risky, given the speed at which I type. By hand, however, a kind of patience takes over the writing process. Patient writing is obvious when you encounter it. Perhaps patience, stillness, and silence are things that should be presented repeatedly to undergraduate writers. Perhaps, also, undergraduate writers should have to experience the act of writing a story entirely by hand, so long as they are not physically incapable of doing so. [Right. Maybe I can teach Maude and Toby to square dance.]
Other (my own reflections):
Writing a story is not achieved by active, conscious manipulation of elements of the text. Rather, "trusting myself," as the metaphysical advice goes, means allowing the details of the story to come naturally without thinking about them. Do not go back and try to rewrite what you have written. Do not go back and try to connect the dots from point A to point B to C to D to E and so forth. Do not rely on theories, sociological, literary, political, theological, or otherwise to help you write the story. Do not rush through the writing of a story. By doing any of those things, a story cannot happen. A story cannot be crafted with craft alone. The story must take its shape first, be crafted second.
The Connect-the-dots writing process is similar to an inexperienced writer's effort to work overtly with symbol: it doesn't work. Connect-the-dots cannot happen in a character-driven story. The characters themselves make all the connections; the writer has to listen to the characters, not connect things. Characters in a story are real; the world in a story is real; the emotions, the objects, the words in a story are real. Characters have real motives and real agendas. Characters experience real emotions, real joys and real sorrows, real pain and real remorse. The reality of a narrative world and the characters who exist therein cannot be compromised. In this vein, I think that John Gardner’s "Vivid and continuous dream" is a metaphor that tries to explain the mystery, but lacks. Indeed, a dream seems very much like a story. But we wake up from dreams. Often, the narrative structure of a dream makes little sense. Listening to another person tell about a dream he had the other night can sometimes be an act of enormous patience. The narrative of a dream is full of holes and gaps, unexplainable things, unbelievable things. Stories are more than mere dreams. One's actual life is vivid and continuous, dreams can only seem that way.
Think of "trust" as an intransitive verb.
The reality of a story contains one kernel of absolute truth that is what the story is. The closest that a writer can approach to a story’s absolute truth is merely the best that the writer can do.
"The novelist must be characterized not by his function but by his vision, and we must remember that his vision has to be transmitted and that the limitations and blind spots of his audience will very definitely affect the way he is able to show what he sees." (47)
"The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery." (79)
"The writer has to judge himself with a stranger’s eye and a stranger’s severity. The prophet in him has to see the freak. No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made." (81-82)
"For him [the artist], to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy or simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon the timeless, and that is only done by the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth." (82-83)
"The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot. The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged with it." (84)
"...sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment usually in the direction of an overemphasis on innocence, and that innocence, whenever it is overemphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural law to become its opposite." (147-148)
"Pornography, on the other hand, is essentially sentimental, for it leaves out the connection of sex with its hard purpose, and so far disconnects it from its meaning in life as to make it simply an experience for its own sake." (148)
Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Oedipus:
". . . the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of man as a species . . . man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other––not even in the sense of bipolar opposites within a relationship of causation, ideation, or expression (cause and effect, subject and object, etc.); rather, they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product." (4-5)
"[Process] must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself. Putting an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely––which, strictly speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly and prematurely––it what creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate and independent entity." (5)
". . . when the theoretician reduces desiring-production to a production of fantasy, he is content to exploit to the fullest the idealist principle that defines desire as a lack, rather than a process of production, of "industrial" production. . . . If desire produces, its product is real. If desire is productive, it can be productive only in the real world and can produce only reality. . . . Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack its object. It is, rather, the subject that is missing in desire, or desire that lacks a fixed subject; there is no fixed subject unless there is repression. Desire and its object are one and the same thing." (26-27)
"The artist is the master of objects; he puts before us shattered, burned, broken-down objects, converting them to the régime of desiring-machines; the artist presents paranoiac machines, miraculating-machines, and celibate machines as so many technical machines, so as to cause desiring-machines to undermine technical machines. Even more important, the work of art itself is a desiring-machine. The artist stores up his treasures so as to create an immediate explosion, and that is why, to his way of thinking, destructions can never take place as rapidly as they ought to." (32)
"That is what style is, or rather the absence of style––asyntactic, agrammatical: the moment when language is no longer defined by what it says, even less by what makes it a signifying thing, but by what causes it to move, to flow, to explode––desire. For literature is like schizophrenia: a process and not a goal, a production and not an expression." (133)
"There is no longer any need for applying psychoanalysis to the work of art, since the work itself constitutes a successful psychoanalysis, a sublime 'transference' with exemplary collective virtualities." (134)
"The unconscious does not speak, it engineers. It is not expressive or representative, but productive." (180)
Ron Carlson's Ron Carlson Writes a Story:
"Vision, of course, is not teachable. What a person chooses to write about is not teachable. The passion a writer brings to the page is not teachable." (3)
"The process of writing a story, as opposed to writing a letter, or a research paper, or even a novel, is a process involving radical, substance-changing discovery. . . . I’ve also become convinced that a writer’s confidence in his/her process is as important as any accumulated craft dexterity or writing ‘skill.’" (4)
"How can you know what you know until you write it?" (10)
"Since I don’t know where I’m going, why would I hurry?" (41)
"Do we want a story to go elsewhere? Absolutely: elsewhere is our destination. We want the story to be true. We don’t want it to have a point, theme, doctrine. If we write the story well, those things will emerge--we can’t prevent it." (50)
"The single largest advantage a veteran writer has over the beginner is this tolerance for not knowing. It’s not style, skill, or any other dexterity. An experienced writer has been in those woods before and is willing to be lost; she knows that being lost is necessary for the discoveries to come. The seasoned writer waits, is patient, listens to her story as it talks to her." (15)
"We’re looking for the small acts that reveal character." (36)
"The assumption on the part of any writer that she is writing about people we all know (without explanation) is a useful one. It’s called not underestimating your audience; readers are terribly smart. It’s a relief and allows us to leave things out." (62)
My Own: Carlson’s "lost and loving it" metaphors are apt. One cannot experience mystery without being lost. Though I still think that typing out a first draft is risky, given the speed at which I type. By hand, however, a kind of patience takes over the writing process. Patient writing is obvious when you encounter it. Perhaps patience, stillness, and silence are things that should be presented repeatedly to undergraduate writers. Perhaps, also, undergraduate writers should have to experience the act of writing a story entirely by hand, so long as they are not physically incapable of doing so. [Right. Maybe I can teach Maude and Toby to square dance.]
Other (my own reflections):
Writing a story is not achieved by active, conscious manipulation of elements of the text. Rather, "trusting myself," as the metaphysical advice goes, means allowing the details of the story to come naturally without thinking about them. Do not go back and try to rewrite what you have written. Do not go back and try to connect the dots from point A to point B to C to D to E and so forth. Do not rely on theories, sociological, literary, political, theological, or otherwise to help you write the story. Do not rush through the writing of a story. By doing any of those things, a story cannot happen. A story cannot be crafted with craft alone. The story must take its shape first, be crafted second.
The Connect-the-dots writing process is similar to an inexperienced writer's effort to work overtly with symbol: it doesn't work. Connect-the-dots cannot happen in a character-driven story. The characters themselves make all the connections; the writer has to listen to the characters, not connect things. Characters in a story are real; the world in a story is real; the emotions, the objects, the words in a story are real. Characters have real motives and real agendas. Characters experience real emotions, real joys and real sorrows, real pain and real remorse. The reality of a narrative world and the characters who exist therein cannot be compromised. In this vein, I think that John Gardner’s "Vivid and continuous dream" is a metaphor that tries to explain the mystery, but lacks. Indeed, a dream seems very much like a story. But we wake up from dreams. Often, the narrative structure of a dream makes little sense. Listening to another person tell about a dream he had the other night can sometimes be an act of enormous patience. The narrative of a dream is full of holes and gaps, unexplainable things, unbelievable things. Stories are more than mere dreams. One's actual life is vivid and continuous, dreams can only seem that way.
Think of "trust" as an intransitive verb.
The reality of a story contains one kernel of absolute truth that is what the story is. The closest that a writer can approach to a story’s absolute truth is merely the best that the writer can do.
2008/08/20
Eine große Liste
LAST UPDATE: 01-05-09
Abrams, M.H. et al (eds.). "The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume 2A: The Romantic Period."
Adams, Douglas. "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy."
Adams, Jane. "The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890-1990."
Agee, Jonis. "A .38 Special and a Broken Heart."
Aleith, R.C. "Bergsteigen: Basic Rock Climbing."
Alexie, Sherman. "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven."
Alexie, Sherman. "The Business of Fancydancing."
Alighieri, Dante. "The Divine Comedy."
Alinder, James and John Szarkowski (eds.). "Ansel Adams: Classic Images."
Allison, Dorothy. "Bastard out of Carolina."
Almond, Steve. "My Life in Heavy Metal."
Almond, Steve. "The Evil B.B. Chow and other stories."
Almond, Steve. "Candyfreak."
Amis, Martin. "The Information."
Amis, Martin. "The Rachel Papers."
Amis, Martin. "London Fields."
Amis, Martin. "Time’s Arrow."
Amis, Martin. "Yellow Dog."
Amis, Martin. "House of Meetings."
Amis, Martin. "Visiting Mrs. Nabokov."
Amis, Martin. "Einstein's Monsters."
Andersen, Hans Christian. "The Little Mermaid."
Ansay, A. Manette. "Read This and Tell Me What It Says."
Aristotle. "The Rhetoric and the Poetics."
Arnold, Matthew. "The Works of Matthew Arnold."
Arroyo, Fred. "The Region of Lost Names."
Atwood, Margaret. "The Handmaid’s Tale."
Atwood, Margaret. "Bluebeard’s Egg."
Atwood, Margaret. "Cat's Eye."
Atxaga, Bernardo. "Obabakoak."
Baldick, Chris (ed.). "The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales."
Bass, Rick. "The Diezmo."
Bass, Rick. "The Hermit’s Story."
Bass, Rick. "The Book of Yaak."
Babel, Isaac. "You Must Know Everything."
Bailey, Tom (ed.). "On Writing Short Stories."
Baker, James W. et al. "20th Century Bookkeeping & Accounting."
Ballard, J.G. "The Atrocity Exhibition."
Barney, Stephen A. "Word-Hoard: An Introduction to Old English Vocabulary."
Barthelme, Donald. "Sixty Stories."
Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky. "Reading the Lives of Others: A Sequence for Writers."
Baumann, Mary K. et al. "What’s Out There: Images from the Edge of the Universe."
Baxter, Charles. "First Light."
Baxter, Charles. "A Relative Stranger."
Baxter, Charles. "Burning Down the House."
Baxter, Charles. "The Art of Subtext."
Beale, Walter H. "A Pragmatic Theory of Rhetoric."
Beattie, Ann. "Another You."
Beckett, Samuel. "First Love and other shorts."
Bei, Ai. "Red Ivy Green Earth Mother."
Bellow, Saul. "Collected Stories."
Benedict, Pinckney. "Town Smokes."
Benedict, Pinckney. "The Wrecking Yard."
Benedict, Pinckney. "Dogs of God."
Berkeley, George. "Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous."
Berthoff, Ann E. "Forming / Thinking / Writing: The Composing Imagination."
Birch, Cyril (ed.). "Anthology of Chinese Literature: From Early Times to the 14th Century."
Bloom, Harold et al. "Deconstruction & Criticism."
Bocock, Maclin. "Heaven Lies About."
Born, Max. "Einstein’s Theory of Relativity."
Borror, Donald J. "Dictionary of Word Roots and Combining Forms."
Borrow, George. "Roving Adventures, or Lavengro, the Scholar-the Gipsy-the Priest."
Brewer, Robert Lee (ed.). "2008 Writer’s Market."
Bridwell, Tony. "It Happened in Minnesota."
Brontë, Charlotte. "Jane Eyre."
Brookner, Anita. "Hotel du Lac."
Brookner, Anita. "Fraud."
Brower, Daniel R. "The World in the Twentieth Century: From Empires to Nations, 4th Edition."
Brown, Stewart and John Wickham (eds.). "The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories."
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. "Sonnets from the Portugeuse."
Bryson, Bill. "In a Sunburned Country."
Bulgakov, Mikhail. "The Master and Margarita."
Butler, Robert Olen. "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain."
Caillois, Roger. "Man, Play and Games."
Canin, Ethan. "Emperor of the Air."
Canin, Ethan. "Carry Me Across the Water."
Canty, Kevin. "A Stranger in this World."
Carlin, George. "Napalm & Silly Putty."
Carlson, Ron. "Ron Carlson Writes a Story."
Carver, Raymond. "Fires."
Carver, Raymond. "No Heroics, Please."
Carver, Raymond and Tom Jenks (eds.). "American Short Story Masterpieces."
Casares, Oscar. "Brownsville."
Cervantes, Miguel. "Don Quixote de la Mancha."
Chaisson, Eric and Steve McMillan. "Astronomy: A Beginner’s Guide to the Universe, 4th Edition."
Charters, Ann. "The Story and its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction."
Cheever, John. "Falconer."
Cheever, John. "The World of Apples."
Chekhov, Anton. "The Portable Chekhov."
Chesterton, G.K. "Utopia of Userers and other Essays."
Chesterton, G.K. "Orthodoxy."
Christ, Carol et al (eds.). "The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume 2B: The Victorian Age."
Christ, Henry I. and Jerome Shostak (eds.). "Short Stories."
Cliff, Michelle. "Abeng."
Conarroe, Joel (ed.). "Eight American Poets: An Anthology."
Confucius. "The Analects."
Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer."
Conrad, Joseph. "The Nigger of the Narcissus."
Coover, Robert. "The Origin of the Brunists."
Cordingly, David. "Under the Black Flag."
Cox, Michael and R.A. Gilbert (eds.). "Victorian Ghost Stories."
Crews, Harry. "A Feast of Snakes."
Crews, Harry. "Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader."
Crossley-Holland, Kevin (trans.). "The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology."
Cuddon, J.A. (ed.) "Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory."
Curtiss, David Raymond and Elton James Moulton. "Essentials of Trigonometry with Applications."
Danbom, David B. "Born in the Country: A History of Rural America."
Davis, Norman (ed.). "Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer, 9th Edition."
Dawid, Annie. "Lily in the Desert."
Dawson, Clayton L., et al. "Modern Russian I."
Dawson, Clayton L., et al. "Modern Russian II."
Decker, William Merrill. "Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications."
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia."
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia."
Derrida, Jacques. "Of Grammatology."
Derrida, Jacques and Maurizio Ferraris. "A Taste for the Secret."
Descartes, René. "Meditations of First Philosophy."
Dexter, Pete. "Paris Trout."
Dexter, Pete. "God’s Pocket."
Dexter, Pete. "The Paperboy."
Dexter, Pete. "Train."
Didion, Joan. "The Year of Magical Thinking."
Dobyns, Stephen. "Best Words, Best Order: Essays on Poetry."
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. "The Brothers Karamazov."
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. "Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky."
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. "Notes from Underground."
Drury, John. "The Poetry Dictionary."
Dubbe, Tom. "Nightmares and Secrets."
Dubus, Andre. "Dancing After Hours."
Dubus, Andre. "In the Bedroom."
Dunlop, Storm and Wil Tirion. "How to Identify the Night Sky."
Dunn, Katherine. "Geek Love."
Dunn, Katherine and Sean Tejarathci (ed.). "Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective’s Scrapbook."
Dunn, Stephen. "Different Hours."
Durrell, Martin et al. "Essential German Grammer."
Dybek, Stuart. "I Sailed With Magellan."
Ellison, Ralph. "Invisible Man."
Erdrich, Lise. "Night Train."
Evans, Donald G. "Good Memory After Bad."
Evans, Jorge. "Neighbors" (chapbook).
Ewen, Robert B. "An Introduction to Theories of Personality, 4th Edition."
Faulkner, William. "The Sound and the Fury."
Faulkner, William. "Light in August."
Faulkner, William. "Collected Stories."
Faulkner, William. "The Reivers."
Ferber, Peggy (ed.). "Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills."
Ferris, Joshua. "Then We Came to the End."
Finsand, Mary Jane et al. "Complete Diabetic Cookbook."
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Great Gatsby."
Foltz, Ramon D. and Thomas A. Penn. "Protecting Scientific Ideas & Inventions, 2nd Edition."
Ford, Richard. "Rock Springs."
Foucault, Michel. "The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Volume I."
Foucault, Michel. "Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison."
Franklin, Tom. "Poachers."
Friedlander, Edward Jay and John Lee. "Feature Writing for Newspapers and Magazines."
Furman, Laura. "The Glass House."
Gardner, John. "Grendel."
Gardner, John. "October Light."
Gardner, John. "On Moral Fiction."
Gardner, John. "The Art of Fiction."
Gay, William. "I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down."
Germain, Deanna. "Reaching Past the Wire: A Nurse at Abu Ghraib."
Ghose, Zulfikar. "Figures of Enchantment."
Gibaldi, Joseph. "MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th Edition."
Gilbert, Elizabeth. "The Last American Man."
Gillespie, Paula and Neal Lerner. "The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring."
Gilliland, Gail. "The Demon of Longing."
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper and other stories."
Gloeckner, Phoebe. "The Diary of a Teenage Girl."
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. "Faust."
Goffman, Erving. "Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity."
Goodwin, Ruby Berkley. "It’s Good To Be Black."
Goshgarian, Gary (ed.). "Exploring Language, 9th Edition."
Grass, Günter. "The Tin Drum."
Grass, Günter. "Die Blechtrommel." (in the German)
Grass, Günter. "Katz und Maus." (in the German)
Grass, Günter. "Crabwalk."
Grass, Günter. "The Flounder."
Grass, Günter. "The Günter Grass Reader."
Grattan, William. "Ghost Runners: A Novella."
Greene, Graham. "A Sense of Reality."
Griffith, Benjamin W. et al. "Barron’s Pocket Guide to Correct Grammar."
Grimes, Tom. "City of God."
Guerber, H.A. "The Myths of Greece and Rome."
Haddon, Mark. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time."
Haddon, Mark. "A Spot of Bother."
Hall, J.R. Clark. "A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th Edition."
Hanh, Thich Nhat. "The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajñaparamita Heart Sutra."
Hannah, Barry. "Airships."
Hannah, Barry. "Bats out of Hell."
Hannah, Barry. "Geronimo Rex."
Hansen, Ron. "Nebraska."
Hansen, Ron and Jim Shephard. "You’ve Got To Read This."
Harding, Warren ‘Batso.’ "Downward Bound: A Mad! Guide to Rock Climbing."
Harper, Kenneth et al (eds.). "New Voices: Contemporary Soviet Short Stories." (in the Russian)
Harris, Elizabeth. "The Ant Generator."
Heaney, Seamus. "Selected Poems: 1966-1987."
Hemingway, Ernest. "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
Hemingway, Ernest. "The Short Stories."
Hemingway, Ernest. "The Sun Also Rises."
Hersch, Patricia. "A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence."
Heynen, Jim. "The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap."
Hirshfield, Jane. "Given Sugar, Given Salt."
Hobsbawm, Eric. "The Age of Empire: 1875-1914."
Hofstadter, Douglas R. "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid."
Hollander, John. "Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse."
Horrell, C. William, et al. "Land Between the Rivers: The Southern Illinois Country."
Hribal, C.J. "Matty’s Heart."
Hugo, Richard. "The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing."
Hume, David. "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding."
Hunter, Seb. "Hell Bent for Leather: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict."
Hutson, Jan. "The Chicken Ranch: The True Story of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."
Hyde, Lewis. "The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World."
Imhoff, Edgar Allen. "Always of Home: A Southern Illinois Childhood."
Irving, John. "The World According to Garp."
Irving, John. "A Prayer for Owen Meany."
Isaacson, Walter. "Einstein: His Life and Universe."
Ivanhoe, Philip J. and Bryan W. Van Norden (eds.). "Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy."
Jacobs, Harriet A. "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl."
Johnson, Denis. "Resuscitation of a Hanged Man."
Johnson, Denis. "Jesus’ Son."
Jones, Thom. "The Pugilist at Rest."
Joseph, Diana. "I’m Sorry You Feel That Way."
Joyce, James. "Dubliners."
Joyce, James. "Finnegan’s Wake."
Joyce, James. "Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing."
Kant, Immanuel. "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics."
Kant, Immanuel. "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns."
Kaplan, Charles and William Davis Anderson. "Criticism: Major Statements."
Kafka, Franz. "The Complete Stories."
Kahler, Erich. "The Inward Turn of Narrative."
Kennedy, William. "The Ink Truck."
Kennedy, William. "Ironweed."
Kennedy, William. "Legs."
Kennedy, William. "The Flaming Corsage."
Kim, Scott. "Inversions."
Kincaid, Jamaica. "Annie John."
Klaits, Joseph. "Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts."
Klosterman, Chuck. "Fargo Rock City."
Klosterman, Chuck. "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs."
Kolln, Martha. "Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects."
Koplowitz, H.P. "Carbondale After Dark and other stories."
Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenthal. "The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect."
Krakauer, Jon. "Into Thin Air."
Krakauer, Jon. "Into The Wild."
Kramer, Kathryn. "A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space."
Kundera, Milan. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."
Kundera, Milan. "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting."
Kuusisto, Stephen, et al (eds.). "The Poet’s Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets."
Larrington, Carolyne (trans.). "The Poetic Edda."
Lauter et al. "The Heath Anthology of American Literature."
Lee, Li-Young. "Rose."
Leonard, Elmore. "Freaky Deaky."
Lerner, Betsy. "The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers."
Leser, Hartmut et al. "Diercke: Wörterbuch der Allgemeinen Geographie Band 2 N-Z." (in the German)
Lipking, Lawrence et al (eds.). "The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume 1C: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century."
Locke, John. "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding."
Lukács, Georg. "A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic."
Lynds, Dennis. "Talking to the World."
Machiavelli, Niccolo. "The Prince and the Discourses."
Madden, Charles F. (ed.) "Talks With Authors."
Mailer, Norman. "The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing."
Malamud, Bernard. "The Stories of Bernard Malamud."
Mann, Thomas. "Death in Venice and seven other stories."
Manning, Martha. "Chasing Grace: Reflections of a Catholic Girl, Grown Up."
Mansfield, Peter. "A History of the Middle East."
Mao Tse-Tung. "On Practice and Contradiction."
Márquez, Gabriel García. "The General in His Labyrinth."
Márquez, Gabriel García. "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. "The Communist Manifesto."
Mascaró, Juan (trans.). "The Upanishads."
Maxwell, William. "So Long, See You Tomorrow."
Maxwell, William. "Time Will Darken It."
Maxwell, William. "All the Days and Nights."
McCarthy, Cormac. "The Orchard Keeper."
McCarthy, Cormac. "Outer Dark."
McCarthy, Cormac. "Blood Meridian."
McCarthy, Cormac. "All the Pretty Horses."
McCarthy, Cormac. "No Country for Old Men."
McDonald, Russ. "The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents."
McMath, Robert C. "American Populism: A Social History 1877-1898."
McMurtry, Larry. "Lonesome Dove."
McMurtry, Larry. "Roads."
McPhee, John. "Irons in the Fire."
McPhee, John. "Uncommon Carriers."
Melville, Herman. "Moby-Dick."
Melville, Herman. "Billy Budd and other stories."
Merwin, W.S. "The Second Four Books of Poems."
Meyer, Milton W. "Japan: A Concise History, 3rd Edition."
Michaels, Leonard. "Going Places."
Miller, Barbara Stoler (trans.). "The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War."
Miller, Henry. "Tropic of Cancer."
Miller, Henry. "Tropic of Capricorn."
Milton, John. "The Complete Poems."
Minot, Susan. "Lust & Other Stories."
Mohlenbrock, Robert H. and John W. Voigt. "A Flora of Southern Illinois."
Moore, Lorrie. "Birds of America."
Morrison, Toni. "Tar Baby."
Mosko, Lauren (ed.). "2008 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market."
Munro, Alice. "Runaway."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Glory."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Lolita."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Pale Fire."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Pnin."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Transparent Things."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Look at the Harlequins!"
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Details of a Sunset and Other Stories."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Ada, or Ardor."
Neiman, Susan. "Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy."
Neely, Charles (collected by). "Tales and Songs of Southern Illinois."
New World Bible Translation Committee. "New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures."
Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Birth of Tragedy."
Nunez, Elizabeth. "Beyond the Limbo Silence."
Oates, Joyce Carol (ed.). "The Oxford Book of American Short Stories."
O’Brien, Tim. "The Things They Carried."
O’Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man is Hard to Find."
O’Connor, Flannery. "Three by Flannery O’Connor."
O’Connor, Flannery. "Mystery and Manners."
Olmstead, Robert. "River Dogs."
O'Reilley, Mary Rose. "The Love of Impermanent Things."
Ormes, Robert. "Guide to the Colorado Mountains."
Orwell, George. "Animal Farm & 1984."
Orwell, George. "The Collected Essays."
Paley, Grace. "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute."
Paterniti, Michael. "Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain."
Peterson, Roger Tory. "Birds of Eastern and Central North America."
Petterson, Per. "Out Stealing Horses."
Phillips, Jayne Anne. "Fast Lanes."
Phillips, John Bruce. "Computer Methods in the Study of Chromatographic Processes (Dissertation.)"
Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Fall of the House of Usher and other writings."
Pope, Alexander. "Selected Poetry."
Pope, John C. (ed.). "Eight Old English Poems."
Potter, Beatrix. "The Peter Rabbit Library."
Powell, Padgett. "Edisto."
Powell, Padgett. "Typical."
Powell, Padgett. "Aliens of Affection."
Prather, Hugh. "I touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me."
Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers. "Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature."
Prose, Francine. "Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them."
Proulx, Annie. "Close Range."
Rauch, Mabel Thompson. "The Little Hellion."
Rahula, Walpola. "What the Buddha Taught."
Redd, Teresa M. and Karen Schuster Webb. "A Teacher’s Introduction to African-American English: What a Teacher Should Know."
Regan, Stephen (ed.). "Irish Writing: An Anthology of Irish Literature in English 1789-1939."
Rich, Adrienne. "An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991."
Richard, Mark. "The Ice at the Bottom of the World."
Rilke, Rainer Maria. "Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus."
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. "Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics."
Rushdie, Salmon. "The Satanic Verses."
Sagan, Carl. "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark."
Satrapi, Marjane. "Persepolis."
Satrapi, Marjane. "Persepolis 2."
Schachner, Robert W. "The Official Scrabble Word-Finder."
Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. "The Nature of Narrative."
Sedaris, David. "Naked."
Sedaris, David. "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim."
Shakespeare, William. "The Merchant of Venice."
Shakespeare, William. "Twelfth Night."
Shakespeare, William. "Troilus and Cressida."
Shakespeare, William. "The Comedy of Errors."
Shakespeare, William. "Henry IV, part I."
Shakespeare, William. "Henry IV, part II."
Shakespeare, William. "The Taming of the Shrew."
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet."
Shakespeare, William. "The Tempest."
Shakespeare, William. "Measure for Measure."
Shakespeare, William. "Much Ado About Nothing."
Shakespeare, William. "Macbeth."
Sharpless, Rebecca. "Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940."
Sheffer, Roger. "Lost River."
Sheffer, Roger. "Music of the Inner Lakes."
Smith, Zadie. "White Teeth."
Sneed, Glenn J. "Ghost Towns of Southern Illinois."
Stevick, Philip. "Anti-Story: An Anthology of Experimental Fiction."
Strand, Mark and Eavan Boland. "The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms."
Strunk, William and E.B. White. "The Elements of Style."
Stull, William L. and Maureen P. Carroll. "Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver."
Sun-tzu, Ralph D. Sawyer (trans.). "The Art of War."
Swift, Jonathon. "Gulliver’s Travels."
Szatmary, David P. "Shay’s Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection."
Teichert, Herman and Lovette. "Allerlei zum Lesen."
Terrell, Peter et al (eds.). "Webster’s New World German Dictionary."
Thomas, Abigail. "Getting Over Tom."
Thompson, Hunter S. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Thompson, Hunter S. "Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ‘72."
Thompson, Hunter S. "Hell’s Angels."
Thon, Melanie Rae. "First, Body."
Thoreau, Henry David. "Civil Disobedience and other essays."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Hobbit."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Lord of the Rings."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "Morgoth’s Ring."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "Unfinished Tales."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Silmarillion."
Tolkien, J.R.R. (trans.) "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Pearl; Sir Orfeo."
Tolstoy, Leo. "A Confession."
Tolstoy, Leo. "War and Peace (Abridged)."
Trethewey, Natasha. "Bellocq’s Ophelia."
Trowbridge, William. "The Complete Book of Kong."
Turow, Joseph and Andrea L. Kavanaugh (eds.). "The Wired Homestead."
Twain, Mark. "Life on the Mississippi."
Twain, Mark. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Twain, Mark. "The Complete Short Stories."
Twain, Mark. "A Pen Warmed Up in Hell."
Twain, Mark (ed.). "Mark Twain’s Library of Humor."
Tyson, Lois. "Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide."
Uusi, Hillar and Veljo Ranniku. "Estonian Northern Coast." (in the English, Estonian, Russian?)
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Bagombo Snuff Box."
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons."
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Slaughterhouse-five."
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Cat’s Cradle."
Wagner, Erica. "Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters."
Waller, Robert James. "Old Songs in a New Cafe."
Watson, Catherine. "Home on the Road: Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth."
Weaver, Constance. "Teaching Grammar in Context."
Weiss, Daniele Evan. "The Great Divide: How Females and Males Really Differ."
Wells, Rebecca. "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."
Westmoreland, Timothy. "Good as Any: Stories."
White, Ray and Duane Lindsay (eds.). "How I Got Published: Famous Authors Tell You in Their Own Words."
Wideman, John Edgar. "Brothers and Keepers."
Wiesel, Elie. "Conversations with Elie Wiesel."
Wight, Frederick S. "Goya."
Williams, Frederick (ed. & trans.). "A Cry of Kings: Six Greek Dramas in Modern English."
Williams, John A. "!Click Song."
Williams, Joy. "Honored Guest."
Williams, Joy. "Escapes."
Williams, Joy. "Taking Care."
Williams, Joy. "The Changeling."
Williams, Joy. "The Quick and the Dead."
Williams, Joy. "State of Grace."
Williams, Joy. "Ill Nature."
Williams, William Carlos. "Imaginations."
Williams, William Carlos. "The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909-1939."
Williford, Lex and Michael Martone (eds.). "The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction."
Wilson, Leigh Allison. "From the Bottom Up."
Wilson, Leigh Allison. "Wind."
Wolff, Tobias (ed.). "The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories."
Woodruff, Jay (ed.). "A Piece of Work: Five Writers Discuss Their Revisions."
Woods, Geraldine. "English Grammar for Dummies."
World Service Office, Inc. "Narcotics Anonymous, 5th Edition."
Wylie, Philip. "Generation of Vipers."
Yakobson, Helen. "Conversational Russian: An Intermediate Course."
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. "We."
Žižek, Slavoj. "Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences."
Žižek, Slavoj. "The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters."
Žižek, Slavoj. "The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality."
Žižek, Slavoj. "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle."
Žižek, Slavoj. "Welcome to the Desert of the Real."
Abrams, M.H. et al (eds.). "The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume 2A: The Romantic Period."
Adams, Douglas. "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy."
Adams, Jane. "The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890-1990."
Agee, Jonis. "A .38 Special and a Broken Heart."
Aleith, R.C. "Bergsteigen: Basic Rock Climbing."
Alexie, Sherman. "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven."
Alexie, Sherman. "The Business of Fancydancing."
Alighieri, Dante. "The Divine Comedy."
Alinder, James and John Szarkowski (eds.). "Ansel Adams: Classic Images."
Allison, Dorothy. "Bastard out of Carolina."
Almond, Steve. "My Life in Heavy Metal."
Almond, Steve. "The Evil B.B. Chow and other stories."
Almond, Steve. "Candyfreak."
Amis, Martin. "The Information."
Amis, Martin. "The Rachel Papers."
Amis, Martin. "London Fields."
Amis, Martin. "Time’s Arrow."
Amis, Martin. "Yellow Dog."
Amis, Martin. "House of Meetings."
Amis, Martin. "Visiting Mrs. Nabokov."
Amis, Martin. "Einstein's Monsters."
Andersen, Hans Christian. "The Little Mermaid."
Ansay, A. Manette. "Read This and Tell Me What It Says."
Aristotle. "The Rhetoric and the Poetics."
Arnold, Matthew. "The Works of Matthew Arnold."
Arroyo, Fred. "The Region of Lost Names."
Atwood, Margaret. "The Handmaid’s Tale."
Atwood, Margaret. "Bluebeard’s Egg."
Atwood, Margaret. "Cat's Eye."
Atxaga, Bernardo. "Obabakoak."
Baldick, Chris (ed.). "The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales."
Bass, Rick. "The Diezmo."
Bass, Rick. "The Hermit’s Story."
Bass, Rick. "The Book of Yaak."
Babel, Isaac. "You Must Know Everything."
Bailey, Tom (ed.). "On Writing Short Stories."
Baker, James W. et al. "20th Century Bookkeeping & Accounting."
Ballard, J.G. "The Atrocity Exhibition."
Barney, Stephen A. "Word-Hoard: An Introduction to Old English Vocabulary."
Barthelme, Donald. "Sixty Stories."
Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky. "Reading the Lives of Others: A Sequence for Writers."
Baumann, Mary K. et al. "What’s Out There: Images from the Edge of the Universe."
Baxter, Charles. "First Light."
Baxter, Charles. "A Relative Stranger."
Baxter, Charles. "Burning Down the House."
Baxter, Charles. "The Art of Subtext."
Beale, Walter H. "A Pragmatic Theory of Rhetoric."
Beattie, Ann. "Another You."
Beckett, Samuel. "First Love and other shorts."
Bei, Ai. "Red Ivy Green Earth Mother."
Bellow, Saul. "Collected Stories."
Benedict, Pinckney. "Town Smokes."
Benedict, Pinckney. "The Wrecking Yard."
Benedict, Pinckney. "Dogs of God."
Berkeley, George. "Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous."
Berthoff, Ann E. "Forming / Thinking / Writing: The Composing Imagination."
Birch, Cyril (ed.). "Anthology of Chinese Literature: From Early Times to the 14th Century."
Bloom, Harold et al. "Deconstruction & Criticism."
Bocock, Maclin. "Heaven Lies About."
Born, Max. "Einstein’s Theory of Relativity."
Borror, Donald J. "Dictionary of Word Roots and Combining Forms."
Borrow, George. "Roving Adventures, or Lavengro, the Scholar-the Gipsy-the Priest."
Brewer, Robert Lee (ed.). "2008 Writer’s Market."
Bridwell, Tony. "It Happened in Minnesota."
Brontë, Charlotte. "Jane Eyre."
Brookner, Anita. "Hotel du Lac."
Brookner, Anita. "Fraud."
Brower, Daniel R. "The World in the Twentieth Century: From Empires to Nations, 4th Edition."
Brown, Stewart and John Wickham (eds.). "The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories."
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. "Sonnets from the Portugeuse."
Bryson, Bill. "In a Sunburned Country."
Bulgakov, Mikhail. "The Master and Margarita."
Butler, Robert Olen. "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain."
Caillois, Roger. "Man, Play and Games."
Canin, Ethan. "Emperor of the Air."
Canin, Ethan. "Carry Me Across the Water."
Canty, Kevin. "A Stranger in this World."
Carlin, George. "Napalm & Silly Putty."
Carlson, Ron. "Ron Carlson Writes a Story."
Carver, Raymond. "Fires."
Carver, Raymond. "No Heroics, Please."
Carver, Raymond and Tom Jenks (eds.). "American Short Story Masterpieces."
Casares, Oscar. "Brownsville."
Cervantes, Miguel. "Don Quixote de la Mancha."
Chaisson, Eric and Steve McMillan. "Astronomy: A Beginner’s Guide to the Universe, 4th Edition."
Charters, Ann. "The Story and its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction."
Cheever, John. "Falconer."
Cheever, John. "The World of Apples."
Chekhov, Anton. "The Portable Chekhov."
Chesterton, G.K. "Utopia of Userers and other Essays."
Chesterton, G.K. "Orthodoxy."
Christ, Carol et al (eds.). "The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume 2B: The Victorian Age."
Christ, Henry I. and Jerome Shostak (eds.). "Short Stories."
Cliff, Michelle. "Abeng."
Conarroe, Joel (ed.). "Eight American Poets: An Anthology."
Confucius. "The Analects."
Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer."
Conrad, Joseph. "The Nigger of the Narcissus."
Coover, Robert. "The Origin of the Brunists."
Cordingly, David. "Under the Black Flag."
Cox, Michael and R.A. Gilbert (eds.). "Victorian Ghost Stories."
Crews, Harry. "A Feast of Snakes."
Crews, Harry. "Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader."
Crossley-Holland, Kevin (trans.). "The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology."
Cuddon, J.A. (ed.) "Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory."
Curtiss, David Raymond and Elton James Moulton. "Essentials of Trigonometry with Applications."
Danbom, David B. "Born in the Country: A History of Rural America."
Davis, Norman (ed.). "Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer, 9th Edition."
Dawid, Annie. "Lily in the Desert."
Dawson, Clayton L., et al. "Modern Russian I."
Dawson, Clayton L., et al. "Modern Russian II."
Decker, William Merrill. "Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications."
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia."
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia."
Derrida, Jacques. "Of Grammatology."
Derrida, Jacques and Maurizio Ferraris. "A Taste for the Secret."
Descartes, René. "Meditations of First Philosophy."
Dexter, Pete. "Paris Trout."
Dexter, Pete. "God’s Pocket."
Dexter, Pete. "The Paperboy."
Dexter, Pete. "Train."
Didion, Joan. "The Year of Magical Thinking."
Dobyns, Stephen. "Best Words, Best Order: Essays on Poetry."
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. "The Brothers Karamazov."
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. "Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky."
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. "Notes from Underground."
Drury, John. "The Poetry Dictionary."
Dubbe, Tom. "Nightmares and Secrets."
Dubus, Andre. "Dancing After Hours."
Dubus, Andre. "In the Bedroom."
Dunlop, Storm and Wil Tirion. "How to Identify the Night Sky."
Dunn, Katherine. "Geek Love."
Dunn, Katherine and Sean Tejarathci (ed.). "Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective’s Scrapbook."
Dunn, Stephen. "Different Hours."
Durrell, Martin et al. "Essential German Grammer."
Dybek, Stuart. "I Sailed With Magellan."
Ellison, Ralph. "Invisible Man."
Erdrich, Lise. "Night Train."
Evans, Donald G. "Good Memory After Bad."
Evans, Jorge. "Neighbors" (chapbook).
Ewen, Robert B. "An Introduction to Theories of Personality, 4th Edition."
Faulkner, William. "The Sound and the Fury."
Faulkner, William. "Light in August."
Faulkner, William. "Collected Stories."
Faulkner, William. "The Reivers."
Ferber, Peggy (ed.). "Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills."
Ferris, Joshua. "Then We Came to the End."
Finsand, Mary Jane et al. "Complete Diabetic Cookbook."
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Great Gatsby."
Foltz, Ramon D. and Thomas A. Penn. "Protecting Scientific Ideas & Inventions, 2nd Edition."
Ford, Richard. "Rock Springs."
Foucault, Michel. "The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Volume I."
Foucault, Michel. "Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison."
Franklin, Tom. "Poachers."
Friedlander, Edward Jay and John Lee. "Feature Writing for Newspapers and Magazines."
Furman, Laura. "The Glass House."
Gardner, John. "Grendel."
Gardner, John. "October Light."
Gardner, John. "On Moral Fiction."
Gardner, John. "The Art of Fiction."
Gay, William. "I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down."
Germain, Deanna. "Reaching Past the Wire: A Nurse at Abu Ghraib."
Ghose, Zulfikar. "Figures of Enchantment."
Gibaldi, Joseph. "MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th Edition."
Gilbert, Elizabeth. "The Last American Man."
Gillespie, Paula and Neal Lerner. "The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring."
Gilliland, Gail. "The Demon of Longing."
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-Paper and other stories."
Gloeckner, Phoebe. "The Diary of a Teenage Girl."
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. "Faust."
Goffman, Erving. "Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity."
Goodwin, Ruby Berkley. "It’s Good To Be Black."
Goshgarian, Gary (ed.). "Exploring Language, 9th Edition."
Grass, Günter. "The Tin Drum."
Grass, Günter. "Die Blechtrommel." (in the German)
Grass, Günter. "Katz und Maus." (in the German)
Grass, Günter. "Crabwalk."
Grass, Günter. "The Flounder."
Grass, Günter. "The Günter Grass Reader."
Grattan, William. "Ghost Runners: A Novella."
Greene, Graham. "A Sense of Reality."
Griffith, Benjamin W. et al. "Barron’s Pocket Guide to Correct Grammar."
Grimes, Tom. "City of God."
Guerber, H.A. "The Myths of Greece and Rome."
Haddon, Mark. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time."
Haddon, Mark. "A Spot of Bother."
Hall, J.R. Clark. "A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th Edition."
Hanh, Thich Nhat. "The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajñaparamita Heart Sutra."
Hannah, Barry. "Airships."
Hannah, Barry. "Bats out of Hell."
Hannah, Barry. "Geronimo Rex."
Hansen, Ron. "Nebraska."
Hansen, Ron and Jim Shephard. "You’ve Got To Read This."
Harding, Warren ‘Batso.’ "Downward Bound: A Mad! Guide to Rock Climbing."
Harper, Kenneth et al (eds.). "New Voices: Contemporary Soviet Short Stories." (in the Russian)
Harris, Elizabeth. "The Ant Generator."
Heaney, Seamus. "Selected Poems: 1966-1987."
Hemingway, Ernest. "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
Hemingway, Ernest. "The Short Stories."
Hemingway, Ernest. "The Sun Also Rises."
Hersch, Patricia. "A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence."
Heynen, Jim. "The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap."
Hirshfield, Jane. "Given Sugar, Given Salt."
Hobsbawm, Eric. "The Age of Empire: 1875-1914."
Hofstadter, Douglas R. "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid."
Hollander, John. "Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse."
Horrell, C. William, et al. "Land Between the Rivers: The Southern Illinois Country."
Hribal, C.J. "Matty’s Heart."
Hugo, Richard. "The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing."
Hume, David. "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding."
Hunter, Seb. "Hell Bent for Leather: Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict."
Hutson, Jan. "The Chicken Ranch: The True Story of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."
Hyde, Lewis. "The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World."
Imhoff, Edgar Allen. "Always of Home: A Southern Illinois Childhood."
Irving, John. "The World According to Garp."
Irving, John. "A Prayer for Owen Meany."
Isaacson, Walter. "Einstein: His Life and Universe."
Ivanhoe, Philip J. and Bryan W. Van Norden (eds.). "Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy."
Jacobs, Harriet A. "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl."
Johnson, Denis. "Resuscitation of a Hanged Man."
Johnson, Denis. "Jesus’ Son."
Jones, Thom. "The Pugilist at Rest."
Joseph, Diana. "I’m Sorry You Feel That Way."
Joyce, James. "Dubliners."
Joyce, James. "Finnegan’s Wake."
Joyce, James. "Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing."
Kant, Immanuel. "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics."
Kant, Immanuel. "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns."
Kaplan, Charles and William Davis Anderson. "Criticism: Major Statements."
Kafka, Franz. "The Complete Stories."
Kahler, Erich. "The Inward Turn of Narrative."
Kennedy, William. "The Ink Truck."
Kennedy, William. "Ironweed."
Kennedy, William. "Legs."
Kennedy, William. "The Flaming Corsage."
Kim, Scott. "Inversions."
Kincaid, Jamaica. "Annie John."
Klaits, Joseph. "Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts."
Klosterman, Chuck. "Fargo Rock City."
Klosterman, Chuck. "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs."
Kolln, Martha. "Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects."
Koplowitz, H.P. "Carbondale After Dark and other stories."
Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenthal. "The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect."
Krakauer, Jon. "Into Thin Air."
Krakauer, Jon. "Into The Wild."
Kramer, Kathryn. "A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space."
Kundera, Milan. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."
Kundera, Milan. "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting."
Kuusisto, Stephen, et al (eds.). "The Poet’s Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets."
Larrington, Carolyne (trans.). "The Poetic Edda."
Lauter et al. "The Heath Anthology of American Literature."
Lee, Li-Young. "Rose."
Leonard, Elmore. "Freaky Deaky."
Lerner, Betsy. "The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers."
Leser, Hartmut et al. "Diercke: Wörterbuch der Allgemeinen Geographie Band 2 N-Z." (in the German)
Lipking, Lawrence et al (eds.). "The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume 1C: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century."
Locke, John. "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding."
Lukács, Georg. "A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic."
Lynds, Dennis. "Talking to the World."
Machiavelli, Niccolo. "The Prince and the Discourses."
Madden, Charles F. (ed.) "Talks With Authors."
Mailer, Norman. "The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing."
Malamud, Bernard. "The Stories of Bernard Malamud."
Mann, Thomas. "Death in Venice and seven other stories."
Manning, Martha. "Chasing Grace: Reflections of a Catholic Girl, Grown Up."
Mansfield, Peter. "A History of the Middle East."
Mao Tse-Tung. "On Practice and Contradiction."
Márquez, Gabriel García. "The General in His Labyrinth."
Márquez, Gabriel García. "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. "The Communist Manifesto."
Mascaró, Juan (trans.). "The Upanishads."
Maxwell, William. "So Long, See You Tomorrow."
Maxwell, William. "Time Will Darken It."
Maxwell, William. "All the Days and Nights."
McCarthy, Cormac. "The Orchard Keeper."
McCarthy, Cormac. "Outer Dark."
McCarthy, Cormac. "Blood Meridian."
McCarthy, Cormac. "All the Pretty Horses."
McCarthy, Cormac. "No Country for Old Men."
McDonald, Russ. "The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents."
McMath, Robert C. "American Populism: A Social History 1877-1898."
McMurtry, Larry. "Lonesome Dove."
McMurtry, Larry. "Roads."
McPhee, John. "Irons in the Fire."
McPhee, John. "Uncommon Carriers."
Melville, Herman. "Moby-Dick."
Melville, Herman. "Billy Budd and other stories."
Merwin, W.S. "The Second Four Books of Poems."
Meyer, Milton W. "Japan: A Concise History, 3rd Edition."
Michaels, Leonard. "Going Places."
Miller, Barbara Stoler (trans.). "The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War."
Miller, Henry. "Tropic of Cancer."
Miller, Henry. "Tropic of Capricorn."
Milton, John. "The Complete Poems."
Minot, Susan. "Lust & Other Stories."
Mohlenbrock, Robert H. and John W. Voigt. "A Flora of Southern Illinois."
Moore, Lorrie. "Birds of America."
Morrison, Toni. "Tar Baby."
Mosko, Lauren (ed.). "2008 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market."
Munro, Alice. "Runaway."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Glory."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Lolita."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Pale Fire."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Pnin."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Transparent Things."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Look at the Harlequins!"
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Details of a Sunset and Other Stories."
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Ada, or Ardor."
Neiman, Susan. "Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy."
Neely, Charles (collected by). "Tales and Songs of Southern Illinois."
New World Bible Translation Committee. "New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures."
Nietzsche, Friedrich. "The Birth of Tragedy."
Nunez, Elizabeth. "Beyond the Limbo Silence."
Oates, Joyce Carol (ed.). "The Oxford Book of American Short Stories."
O’Brien, Tim. "The Things They Carried."
O’Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man is Hard to Find."
O’Connor, Flannery. "Three by Flannery O’Connor."
O’Connor, Flannery. "Mystery and Manners."
Olmstead, Robert. "River Dogs."
O'Reilley, Mary Rose. "The Love of Impermanent Things."
Ormes, Robert. "Guide to the Colorado Mountains."
Orwell, George. "Animal Farm & 1984."
Orwell, George. "The Collected Essays."
Paley, Grace. "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute."
Paterniti, Michael. "Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain."
Peterson, Roger Tory. "Birds of Eastern and Central North America."
Petterson, Per. "Out Stealing Horses."
Phillips, Jayne Anne. "Fast Lanes."
Phillips, John Bruce. "Computer Methods in the Study of Chromatographic Processes (Dissertation.)"
Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Fall of the House of Usher and other writings."
Pope, Alexander. "Selected Poetry."
Pope, John C. (ed.). "Eight Old English Poems."
Potter, Beatrix. "The Peter Rabbit Library."
Powell, Padgett. "Edisto."
Powell, Padgett. "Typical."
Powell, Padgett. "Aliens of Affection."
Prather, Hugh. "I touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me."
Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers. "Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature."
Prose, Francine. "Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them."
Proulx, Annie. "Close Range."
Rauch, Mabel Thompson. "The Little Hellion."
Rahula, Walpola. "What the Buddha Taught."
Redd, Teresa M. and Karen Schuster Webb. "A Teacher’s Introduction to African-American English: What a Teacher Should Know."
Regan, Stephen (ed.). "Irish Writing: An Anthology of Irish Literature in English 1789-1939."
Rich, Adrienne. "An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991."
Richard, Mark. "The Ice at the Bottom of the World."
Rilke, Rainer Maria. "Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus."
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. "Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics."
Rushdie, Salmon. "The Satanic Verses."
Sagan, Carl. "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark."
Satrapi, Marjane. "Persepolis."
Satrapi, Marjane. "Persepolis 2."
Schachner, Robert W. "The Official Scrabble Word-Finder."
Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. "The Nature of Narrative."
Sedaris, David. "Naked."
Sedaris, David. "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim."
Shakespeare, William. "The Merchant of Venice."
Shakespeare, William. "Twelfth Night."
Shakespeare, William. "Troilus and Cressida."
Shakespeare, William. "The Comedy of Errors."
Shakespeare, William. "Henry IV, part I."
Shakespeare, William. "Henry IV, part II."
Shakespeare, William. "The Taming of the Shrew."
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet."
Shakespeare, William. "The Tempest."
Shakespeare, William. "Measure for Measure."
Shakespeare, William. "Much Ado About Nothing."
Shakespeare, William. "Macbeth."
Sharpless, Rebecca. "Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940."
Sheffer, Roger. "Lost River."
Sheffer, Roger. "Music of the Inner Lakes."
Smith, Zadie. "White Teeth."
Sneed, Glenn J. "Ghost Towns of Southern Illinois."
Stevick, Philip. "Anti-Story: An Anthology of Experimental Fiction."
Strand, Mark and Eavan Boland. "The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms."
Strunk, William and E.B. White. "The Elements of Style."
Stull, William L. and Maureen P. Carroll. "Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver."
Sun-tzu, Ralph D. Sawyer (trans.). "The Art of War."
Swift, Jonathon. "Gulliver’s Travels."
Szatmary, David P. "Shay’s Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection."
Teichert, Herman and Lovette. "Allerlei zum Lesen."
Terrell, Peter et al (eds.). "Webster’s New World German Dictionary."
Thomas, Abigail. "Getting Over Tom."
Thompson, Hunter S. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Thompson, Hunter S. "Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ‘72."
Thompson, Hunter S. "Hell’s Angels."
Thon, Melanie Rae. "First, Body."
Thoreau, Henry David. "Civil Disobedience and other essays."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Hobbit."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Lord of the Rings."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "Morgoth’s Ring."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "Unfinished Tales."
Tolkien, J.R.R. "The Silmarillion."
Tolkien, J.R.R. (trans.) "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Pearl; Sir Orfeo."
Tolstoy, Leo. "A Confession."
Tolstoy, Leo. "War and Peace (Abridged)."
Trethewey, Natasha. "Bellocq’s Ophelia."
Trowbridge, William. "The Complete Book of Kong."
Turow, Joseph and Andrea L. Kavanaugh (eds.). "The Wired Homestead."
Twain, Mark. "Life on the Mississippi."
Twain, Mark. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Twain, Mark. "The Complete Short Stories."
Twain, Mark. "A Pen Warmed Up in Hell."
Twain, Mark (ed.). "Mark Twain’s Library of Humor."
Tyson, Lois. "Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide."
Uusi, Hillar and Veljo Ranniku. "Estonian Northern Coast." (in the English, Estonian, Russian?)
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Bagombo Snuff Box."
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons."
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Slaughterhouse-five."
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Cat’s Cradle."
Wagner, Erica. "Ariel’s Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters."
Waller, Robert James. "Old Songs in a New Cafe."
Watson, Catherine. "Home on the Road: Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth."
Weaver, Constance. "Teaching Grammar in Context."
Weiss, Daniele Evan. "The Great Divide: How Females and Males Really Differ."
Wells, Rebecca. "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."
Westmoreland, Timothy. "Good as Any: Stories."
White, Ray and Duane Lindsay (eds.). "How I Got Published: Famous Authors Tell You in Their Own Words."
Wideman, John Edgar. "Brothers and Keepers."
Wiesel, Elie. "Conversations with Elie Wiesel."
Wight, Frederick S. "Goya."
Williams, Frederick (ed. & trans.). "A Cry of Kings: Six Greek Dramas in Modern English."
Williams, John A. "!Click Song."
Williams, Joy. "Honored Guest."
Williams, Joy. "Escapes."
Williams, Joy. "Taking Care."
Williams, Joy. "The Changeling."
Williams, Joy. "The Quick and the Dead."
Williams, Joy. "State of Grace."
Williams, Joy. "Ill Nature."
Williams, William Carlos. "Imaginations."
Williams, William Carlos. "The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909-1939."
Williford, Lex and Michael Martone (eds.). "The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction."
Wilson, Leigh Allison. "From the Bottom Up."
Wilson, Leigh Allison. "Wind."
Wolff, Tobias (ed.). "The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories."
Woodruff, Jay (ed.). "A Piece of Work: Five Writers Discuss Their Revisions."
Woods, Geraldine. "English Grammar for Dummies."
World Service Office, Inc. "Narcotics Anonymous, 5th Edition."
Wylie, Philip. "Generation of Vipers."
Yakobson, Helen. "Conversational Russian: An Intermediate Course."
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. "We."
Žižek, Slavoj. "Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences."
Žižek, Slavoj. "The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters."
Žižek, Slavoj. "The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality."
Žižek, Slavoj. "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle."
Žižek, Slavoj. "Welcome to the Desert of the Real."
2008/08/16
Syringes to the nth power
After giving the question some thought (and some math), I would guess that I have used anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 syringes in the past four years. I have poked myself several thousand times within that timeframe. If I live to 50, I suppose I will have poked myself another 33,580 times. Give or take. (I'm not looking for symapthy: I'm used to poking myself. It would be weird if all of the sudden I didn't have to do it anymore. I'm just impressed by the numbers.)
Addendum: Who else is terrified of needles? I know I am. Every time I pay a visit to the phlebotomist I cannot watch the blood being drawn from my arm, and the pinching sensation that persists while the needle is inside me makes me feel queasy...even just thinking about it.
Addendum II: You don't need to say it; we're a bunch of pussies compared to the pain of, say, childbirth, kidney stones, or a long slow freeze.
Addendum III: ...And in all that time, I only had to reuse one syringe. I was at Denny's. I had forgotten to grab a clean syringe before we left home. There was a dirty one in the glucometer pack. It made me squirm.
Addendum: Who else is terrified of needles? I know I am. Every time I pay a visit to the phlebotomist I cannot watch the blood being drawn from my arm, and the pinching sensation that persists while the needle is inside me makes me feel queasy...even just thinking about it.
Addendum II: You don't need to say it; we're a bunch of pussies compared to the pain of, say, childbirth, kidney stones, or a long slow freeze.
Addendum III: ...And in all that time, I only had to reuse one syringe. I was at Denny's. I had forgotten to grab a clean syringe before we left home. There was a dirty one in the glucometer pack. It made me squirm.
Opening Paragraph: The "wow" of Leonard Michaels
I can't let up with Leonard Michaels, not yet. Here is the opener of his story "Manikin"
"At the university she met a Turk who studied physics and spoke foreigner's English which in every turn expressed the unnatural desire to seize idiom and make it speak just for himself. He worked nights as a waiter, summers on construction gangs, and shot pool and played bridge with fraternity boys in order to make small change, and did whatever else he could to protect and supplement his university scholarship, living a mile from campus in a room without sink or closet or decent heating and stealing most of the food he ate, and when the University Hotel was robbed it was the Turk who had done it, an act of such speed the night porter couldn't say when it happened or who rushed in from the street to bludgeon him so murderously he took it in a personal way. On weekends the Turk tutored mediocrities in mathematics and French . . ."
"At the university she met a Turk who studied physics and spoke foreigner's English which in every turn expressed the unnatural desire to seize idiom and make it speak just for himself. He worked nights as a waiter, summers on construction gangs, and shot pool and played bridge with fraternity boys in order to make small change, and did whatever else he could to protect and supplement his university scholarship, living a mile from campus in a room without sink or closet or decent heating and stealing most of the food he ate, and when the University Hotel was robbed it was the Turk who had done it, an act of such speed the night porter couldn't say when it happened or who rushed in from the street to bludgeon him so murderously he took it in a personal way. On weekends the Turk tutored mediocrities in mathematics and French . . ."
2008/08/13
What an opening paragraph [should be]
The opening paragraph of "The Deal" by Leonard Michaels:
"Twenty were jammed together on the stoop; tiers of heads made one central head, and the wings rested along the banisters: a raggedy monster of boys studying her approach. Her white face and legs. She passed without looking, poked her sunglasses against the bridge of her nose and tucked her bag between her arms and ribs. She carried it at her hip like a rifle stock. On her spine forty eyes hung like poison berries. Bone dissolved beneath her lank beige silk, and the damp circle of her belt cut her in half. Independent legs struck toward the points of her shoes. Her breasts lifted and rode the air like porpoises. She would cross to the grocery as usual, buy cigarettes, then cross back despite their eyes. As if the neighborhood hadn't changed one bit. She slipped the bag forward to crack it against her belly and pluck out keys and change. In the gesture she was home from work. Her keys jangled in the sun as if they opened everything and the air received her. The monster, watching, saw the glove fall away."
Wow. Jesus.
"Twenty were jammed together on the stoop; tiers of heads made one central head, and the wings rested along the banisters: a raggedy monster of boys studying her approach. Her white face and legs. She passed without looking, poked her sunglasses against the bridge of her nose and tucked her bag between her arms and ribs. She carried it at her hip like a rifle stock. On her spine forty eyes hung like poison berries. Bone dissolved beneath her lank beige silk, and the damp circle of her belt cut her in half. Independent legs struck toward the points of her shoes. Her breasts lifted and rode the air like porpoises. She would cross to the grocery as usual, buy cigarettes, then cross back despite their eyes. As if the neighborhood hadn't changed one bit. She slipped the bag forward to crack it against her belly and pluck out keys and change. In the gesture she was home from work. Her keys jangled in the sun as if they opened everything and the air received her. The monster, watching, saw the glove fall away."
Wow. Jesus.
2008/08/12
How many of these goddamn things have I used in the past four years?
Here we see "The March to War." Twelve syringes marching in formation, arrow-shaped.
And here is the more traditional Syringe Bouquet. As small as it is, it makes a poor centerpiece, but a decent accent.
The 2:00 a.m. question
Now what in the hell am I supposed to do with a Ziploc bag full of 100-unit syringes? Play darts?
2008/08/05
Another List for the List of Lists
Some books the writer has read, not in part but in whole, this summer:
Joshua Farris, Then We Came to the End. At first, the first-person plural was hard to get used to. A bit annoying. But as you read on the perspective opens up to you, befitting life in an office. You are not "one of us" at first. But if you stay with it, you become one of us. We becomes like a more intimate third-person, capable of separating individual pieces of itself from the group as need demands.
Martin Amis, Time's Arrow. A book I recommend everyone read. Never before have I seen the depths of depravity turned so completely upside-down (backwards, that is) as to render the Holocaust as "the fires of creation." From a writer's perspective, the dual narrative is admirable and a great accomplishment; but I am left wondering: how could one make a third-person narrative move completely backward without relying on the narrator "speaking for"? (I am seriously considering studying Time's Arrow for the Comps.)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin. I have not read a Nabokov novel that I have not enjoyed immensely. Beyond admirable in Pnin is how Nabokov can get away with long, long stretches of exposition that do not bore. The details are lucid and vibrant and alive. And frankly, I don't care that I have to keep a notecard handy: so many strange and unfamiliar words, bizarre novelties they are, that I have to write down so I can look them up later. Of course, Timofey Pnin himself could be your grandpa or mine, despite (or perhaps as a consequence of) his stumbling along through small-town-college America. Artificial teeth, stubbornness, polite gruffness, gruff politeness...
Steve Almond, My Life in Heavy Metal. Henry Miller is the only other writer I can think of who so carefully believes in sex on the page. I paid close attention to the title story, in particular Almond's use of sensory verbs, the accumulation of small details, and release...of information. I can't help it: I think of this story and it's gushing Mexican mermaid, and it's so perfect that everything I read or write becomes a minor sexual pun. Almond's obsession runs through the book: the gushing lifeguard; the grimy Polish girl; two Greek women fistfighting in the street; pierced, youthful, Chinese Ling; and, of course, the Republican operative.
Tom Franklin, Poachers. This collection shows how at ease Franklin is with voice and dialect and colloquialisms. But, such is Alabama. Voices throughout the collection call to mind the variance of voice in Barry Hannah's stories (Bats out of Hell, Airships). Many of Franklin's characters succeed beautifully at failure, fail beautifully at success. But their redeeming moments are powerful. The fuel storage tank inspector, in the story "Dinosaurs," when he drives off with the gigantic stuffed rhinoceros...the moment just stays with you. The title-novella creates such suspense that all the unanswered questions don't seem to matter any by the end.
I am rubbing my hands together in anticipation. I am reading Martin Amis' Yellow Dog, roughly two-thirds of the way to the end. Coming soon in the mail: Nabokov's Glory; and Martin Amis' Einstein's Monsters.
Joshua Farris, Then We Came to the End. At first, the first-person plural was hard to get used to. A bit annoying. But as you read on the perspective opens up to you, befitting life in an office. You are not "one of us" at first. But if you stay with it, you become one of us. We becomes like a more intimate third-person, capable of separating individual pieces of itself from the group as need demands.
Martin Amis, Time's Arrow. A book I recommend everyone read. Never before have I seen the depths of depravity turned so completely upside-down (backwards, that is) as to render the Holocaust as "the fires of creation." From a writer's perspective, the dual narrative is admirable and a great accomplishment; but I am left wondering: how could one make a third-person narrative move completely backward without relying on the narrator "speaking for"? (I am seriously considering studying Time's Arrow for the Comps.)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin. I have not read a Nabokov novel that I have not enjoyed immensely. Beyond admirable in Pnin is how Nabokov can get away with long, long stretches of exposition that do not bore. The details are lucid and vibrant and alive. And frankly, I don't care that I have to keep a notecard handy: so many strange and unfamiliar words, bizarre novelties they are, that I have to write down so I can look them up later. Of course, Timofey Pnin himself could be your grandpa or mine, despite (or perhaps as a consequence of) his stumbling along through small-town-college America. Artificial teeth, stubbornness, polite gruffness, gruff politeness...
Steve Almond, My Life in Heavy Metal. Henry Miller is the only other writer I can think of who so carefully believes in sex on the page. I paid close attention to the title story, in particular Almond's use of sensory verbs, the accumulation of small details, and release...of information. I can't help it: I think of this story and it's gushing Mexican mermaid, and it's so perfect that everything I read or write becomes a minor sexual pun. Almond's obsession runs through the book: the gushing lifeguard; the grimy Polish girl; two Greek women fistfighting in the street; pierced, youthful, Chinese Ling; and, of course, the Republican operative.
Tom Franklin, Poachers. This collection shows how at ease Franklin is with voice and dialect and colloquialisms. But, such is Alabama. Voices throughout the collection call to mind the variance of voice in Barry Hannah's stories (Bats out of Hell, Airships). Many of Franklin's characters succeed beautifully at failure, fail beautifully at success. But their redeeming moments are powerful. The fuel storage tank inspector, in the story "Dinosaurs," when he drives off with the gigantic stuffed rhinoceros...the moment just stays with you. The title-novella creates such suspense that all the unanswered questions don't seem to matter any by the end.
I am rubbing my hands together in anticipation. I am reading Martin Amis' Yellow Dog, roughly two-thirds of the way to the end. Coming soon in the mail: Nabokov's Glory; and Martin Amis' Einstein's Monsters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
