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The Kindle, Sexism, and Dracula

I got a Kindle for Christmas. My dad purchased them for all of us (mom, sis & fiance). Opening it was a mixed bag of emotions at first. My reactions ranged from “Cool! A new literary toy!” to “Oh shit! I’m contributing to the downfall of print literature.” I’m aware this is ridiculous.

The long and short of it is: the Kindle is cool. I like that you can loan books. I like that books are cheaper to download on the Kindle. I like that when I think or hear of a book I want to read, I can add it to my wish list and then download it. I like that I can make notes and annotations on the Kindle. Will I ever stop buying paper books? Does the sun shine in the sky? Please.

One of the aspects of the Kindle I like the most is you can download classics for free, so over Christmas I read Dracula. It was enjoyable; however, I was struck by the contradictory roles of women in the book. The two main female characters Mina and Lucy, are annoyingly traditional and yet interestingly progressive at the same time. For instance, before Lucy has the misfortune of becoming a vampire, she enjoys the attentions of three separate suitors who desire her hand in marriage. She talks about each of them, in detail, in a letter to Mina. Her view of them and how she handles their proposals reminds me a little bit of Sex & The City. She’s an attractive, intelligent capable woman who can have the pick of the litter. However, at the same time the way the men treat her in the book is very stereotypical. It is obvious Lucy is tough. She braves the transformation of becoming a vampire, she puts up with her dying mother and she manages to deal with strange incidents of sleepwalking and waking nightmares. However, the men in the book treat her like some sort of wilting flower. I mean, she’ the waking dead for crying out loud.


This is even more apparent in Mina’s character. After all of the men in the book come together for the common purpose of hunting down and destroying Dracula, they realize they need to organize all of their written accounts. Who volunteers to do this? Mina. She’s brilliant and as far as I can tell, a lot more organized than any of the men. However, even before she falls victim to Dracula herself, there is a constant (almost irritatingly constant) discussion about whether she should be spared the details of their quest for this fanged phantom. This is the only part of this book that I find ridiculous because it seems to me that if Mina has the strength to deal with her husband, Jonathan’s, terrible ordeal, the loss of her best friend Lucy, and the ravings of Renfield, she can probably hear about travel plans.

Despite all of this, I do enjoy this book. I like the way Stoker used diary entries and incorporated different viewpoints into the story. I also love reading a book about vampires that does not mention the names Bella, Jacob or Edward. Me? I’m on team Bram.

New Year, New Space

Finally, a place to work…


You may be able to tell by the slant of the walls and the overall odd shape of the space, that this not your typical “office.” Yes. It is a closet. Our guest room closet to be exact, which is way too big to be a closet, so it has become my office.

I’ve written two poems up here so far and this is my first blog post, so let’s hope the productivity continues.

Zombies, rings, 4th of July, and fireworks in a fir tree…

On Friday July 2, 2010 I pulled this ring (see below)…


out of this zombie…
RJ and I are engaged. I am very happy. I think the zombie is too.
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My parents visited this weekend and like all good parents, they did not arrive empty handed. They gifted us their original dining room set, which means now every room in our house has the appropriate furniture in it. To celebrate, see pictures below of our house with actual furniture. Hooray!

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My garden is blooming in full force.

Addiction Memoirs and Self Loathing

I don’t know what is about addiction memoirs that I am drawn to. But I just finished Dry by Augusten Burroughs this morning, and it occurred to me that I’ve read quite a few of these types of memoirs over the past several years. Of course I’m drawn to memoir in general. My first non-fiction class pretty much solidified that on day one, but there is something about the brutal honesty of these stories of addiction that really appeal to me. I’m sure some people think it has to do with “redemption” stories, but I don’t find addiction memoirs redemptive. I find them realistic. There is no guarantee that these people will continue therapy or stay on the wagon. As I mentioned in my previous post about Mary Karr’s Lit, what I liked most about the book was that she’s a work in progress. This is also how Dry ends. And whether you’re and addict or not, well we’re all works in progress.

I did not read Running With Scissors, I listened to it on CD while driving back and forth to Kentucky while I was getting my MFA. And while this may sound stupid, I didn’t realize how disturbing that book was until I read Dry. As I was telling R last night, because of the way Burroughs writes, I don’t think the horror of his situation sank in till I revisited it in Dry. For example, he refers to his rape and relationship with a pedophile. And while I consciously remember all this from Running With Scissors, I felt it more when I read Dry. The book is funny and heartbreaking. I read it in three days and would highly recommend it.

Dry did call something to mind that I’ve mulled over and will probably continue to mull over forever. What’s the deal with self loathing and writers? Even as I ask this question, all these cliches come to mind. I remember all the questions I get from my students in intro to creative writing class: Why do all good writers commit suicide? Why are they all alcoholics/drug addicts?
Some of them find all of this sexy. They want to be the brooding, skinny, chain smoking cliche. However, whenever I think about the writers that I love that fell victim to their pain (Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, Ernest Hemingway, Virgina Woolf, Anne Sexton and so on) I just feel sad. What could they given us if they had lived?

Baking, bouquets, and the beginning of term…

This week marked the beginning of the summer semester at school. I am teaching four courses this semester but only two of them meet face to face, the other two are online. This allows me to only have class twice a week, which is a welcome change from last summer when I was teaching six hours a day four days a week.

So far my students seem friendly and energetic. My classes have already shrunk from their original twenty two. There are always students who don’t show the first week, but for the most part everyone seems to be on target, so let’s hope it stays that way.

I am teaching a section of creative writing online this semester, so I’m sure I’ll be posting on that as the semester goes on. I’ve never taught the course online before, so it should be interesting.
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RJ and I pledged money to out local PBS/NPR affiliate this year. We watch PBS regularly and all I listen to in the car is NPR, so it’s a cause I don’t mind supporting. Our gift for our pledge was the cookbook All Cakes Considered, and I think it’s going to successfully make me a baking addict. I already love to cook and now that it’s summer and we’re getting our regular CSA box, I’m back to cooking with fresh produce, which is awesome. I’ve made two cakes so far out of this cookbook. Last night RJ casually dropped the hint “when are you going to make another cake?” The result was the chocolate pound cake shown below:

I’m going to slowly make my way through the cookbook, so I’m sure more pictures will soon follow.

I also made almond crusted talapia last week and made a fresh salad with our CSA bounty.

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The rejection letters from my last round of submissions are coming in, so it’s time to get going on the next round. I’ve put that on the agenda for next week. I always dedicate the first week back at school to school because there is usually little time for anything else. However, next week it’s back to the submissions and the regular writing.

I’ve also finished two books in the past couple of weeks, The Historian and Love in The Time of Cholera. I’ll post more about these books later, but I enjoyed both of them immensely and I hope to keep up my momentum with my reading throughout the summer.

Summer

It has been in the high 80’s for the past week or so. We finally relented and turned on our air conditioning. Our CSA is beginning this Tuesday and I go back to teach a week from Monday. Summer is here. I have a few projects planned for the summer, some writing related. I’ve written a few poems over the break, and I hope to keep going with that same momentum. I’ve started receiving rejection letters from the latest round of submissions, so it’s time for more to go out.

I’ve been cooking and eagerly awaiting for our CSA to start. Below are some pictures of what I made for dinner last night. It’s a variation on Spanakopita.


In gardening news, I out my tomato and pepper plants outside to toughen them up. I’ve also discovered that I have Day Lilies and Asian Lilies in my backyard. They’re beautiful, even though my dog, Kweli, has stomped over them a few times in his enthusiasm to chase squirrels. They’re also apparently very resilient.

Lit

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I recently finished reading Mary Karr’s Lit. I discovered Mary Karr in an introductory non fiction class that I took as an undergraduate. I had never really thought much about non fiction but when I read Cherry, I was struck by how much poetry and non fiction have in common. The vivid imagery, the lyricism of her lines, and the raw emotion really struck me. I read the Liar’s Club and when she came to a local university a few years ago with Franz Wright, I listened to her read from her poetry collection Sinner’s Welcome.

I think the dangers in writing a memoir are many. They can come off as too precious, too much like a self help manual, especially of you’re writing about overcoming addiction through a spiritual journey, which is essentially what Karr is doing in Lit. I have to admit that about halfway through the book, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to finish. The prose was gripping, the tone seemed genuine, but it seemed lofty to me that Karr was going to claim that God had saved her. My athesist boyfriend dismissed the book before even reading it because of these spiritual revelations. However, he was mistaken and so was I. Karr is not shoving religion down our throats in this memoir, and whether you believe or not, you can take something away from the gritty prose that fills this book. It is heartbreaking but it is also relatable and I think that’s what drew me in and kept me reading (I finished the book in one day). There were a lot of places where she could have fallen into cliche. I mean she’s a writer, a poet, and an alcoholic. It doesn’t get more formulaic then that, but I believe her joy, her pain, her struggle, and her small triumphs. She draws you into her life and somehow makes it yours.

Her relationships with her family are documented in brutally honest words, but there is also tenderness. When she describes the moment when she has to move her dying father to a nursing home is devastating, made worse by the fact that a stroke has rendered him almost speechless. When moving her mother from her disintegrating house towards the end of the book, it is a reenactmentof her father’s pain. Her mother feels stripped and naked in the new, stark white condo and that vulnerability results in a painful argument between mother and daughter. Family is a central theme in this memoir and is closely related to alienation, so much so that they almost become symbols for each other throughout the text.

This memoir is not a mantra and it does not deliver some lofty message. It is a real account of a life that is still being lived. The verdict is still out on how this story will end.